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Channel: Nabob Coffee – In the CEO Afterlife

Brand Surgery – excerpts from my Marketing Magazine article

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When I was a young product manager back in the ’70s, the only people I could talk to about brands were my colleagues in the marketing department and the advertising agency. Now my accountant, my lawyer, my portfolio manager and even my neighbour talk to me about brands. It’s a subject that I’ve never tired of, but I must admit to some frustration in seeing how brands have been managed over the years. Ostensibly, consumer brands are resurrecting their past luster, but in my view their health remains tenuous.

There may be improved stock market confidence in some of the companies that produce the world’s best-known brands, but a fundamental flaw exists in the management process that is supposed to renew brand health.

The blemish is the abdication of strategic attention by the organization’s most senior marketing executives to the enhancement of brand equity. These executives and their CEOs have been so preoccupied with the management mania of the day (years back it was TQM, then right-sizing and now Internet solutions) that their eye has been off the heartbeat of the consumer goods business. And it is unlikely that they will now suddenly redirect attention to the brand-building cause. They talk a good line about “brand value” and the importance of brands to a company, but it is often lip service. The role has been relegated to middle managers who are brand custodians, not leaders in innovation. Through no fault of their own, they either lack the experience, the clout or the motivation to drive innovation into the brands they manage.
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Indeed, a case can be made where specific restructuring is necessary to bring companies to the new economic reality. But why does brand building have to take a back seat during this era of corporate change? With few exceptions, there is little evidence of value-adding to North America’s most famous brands. I see evidence in niche and specialty markets; I suspect senior people in smaller companies spearhead inventions.
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A vast number of famous brand names need brand surgery. But before marketers embark on the operation, they must be sure the patient is in the hands of a capable surgeon. Reparatory initiatives do not mean spending more money on advertising and promotion; this is not the prescription for the ailment that requires surgery. The brand surgery philosophy is one of treating products as patients who are no longer thriving, more likely dying from ill health. Many brands fall under this diagnosis; they are the patients that must be nursed back to health.
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Is it any wonder private labels exploit the weaknesses of the neglected brand-names? Lower costs can offset store-brand gains when the savings are passed on to consumers. But in the long term, cost-cutting does not build brand equity. CEOs must recognize that their own personal attention holds the key to the continued earnings stream. In most companies, the cost savings realized from downsizing has already expired. So if not a concerted brand- building priority, what is the next management mania for profitability gains?
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Companies need the direct and passionate involvement of senior management in product and brand innovation. When ingenuity is achieved, marketers will be motivated to increase their communication effort in order to share the news with their target markets. This is when the “spend more on advertising” does pay off–when there is something compelling and tangible to talk about. It’s only at this stage that today’s customers are prepared to listen.

Turnarounds and the Big Play

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I’ve been in business a long time. If you don’t believe me, just look at my profile picture – that was taken a couple of years ago, (okay, maybe I’m being a bit generous on that timeline). My point is this: I’ve had my share of corporate turnarounds. Believe me, there’s nothing that can match the turnaround experience in teaching or seasoning a young manager. My most daunting resurrection was my first one – that of the Canadian unit of Jacobs Suchard, at the time called Nabob Foods. I was Nabob’s VP of Marketing, a 32 year-old disciple of an excellent turnaround CEO – a fellow by the name of Hugo Powell who eventually moved on to Interbrew (now Anheuser-Busch InBev) as CEO.

Reversing a business in red ink toughens you. The principles of success become ingrained in your business DNA. Rule 1 of the turnaround is Grab the cash. The means to that end is quickly slashing sku’s and product lines to reduce inventories. Make your first cut your biggest cut is Rule 2 – that goes for business consolidation as well as headcount reduction. So now you’ve cut costs and freed up some cash. That’s far from the end of it. You have yet to strengthen the strategic health of the enterprise. Pull that off and you have fulfilled the Golden Rule of the turnaround.

Sadly, most plans to improve sales and market share are based on doing a little more of the same and trying to do it better. Familiar examples are spending more on advertising, introducing new products or line extensions, expanding distribution. These risk-averse measures seldom work in turnaround situations. In fact, these moves often increase the bleeding because they are not transformational, not strategic, and not game-changing. Usually, one or two “big” plays make the difference. In the case of struggling Nabob Foods, two significant innovations facilitated the turnaround. New vacuum-packing technology drove sales and coffee-roasting advancements cut costs by 15%. Half of that cost savings went to the consumer – the other half went to our bottom line. Nabob Coffee’s market share accelerated to 25% and national leadership as arch rival Maxwell House worked to catch up. And guess what? While they played catch-up, we were already working on the next innovation. That strategy continued for years.

A better-known and much larger example is the Apple turnaround. Steve Jobs snatched Apple from a funeral pyre with two big plays. Firstly, by facilitating all aspects of Apple’s hardware and pre-installing its own operating system, he secured sustainable competitive insularity. Secondly, he innovated with blockbuster products iMac and iPod.

Opposite of the Apple way is an “old economy” player, the Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s happens to be profitable but they’ve been trying to fix their weakening soup franchise for the past 15 years. Tell me, does the Wall Street Journal’s blurb on their latest foray into renewal sound conventional or transformational to you? “Campbell’s,” say WSJ, “is implementing more-efficient advertising and introducing tastier, more relevant products for today’s consumer, like a new line of Slow Kettle soups with more-sophisticated flavors. The turnaround will take time.” Damn right it will.

10 Ways to Slay Goliath

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My business career is characterized with a bunch of David versus Goliath encounters. As a 23 year-old Macleans Toothpaste Brand Manager in 1970, my colleagues and I competed against powerhouses P&G, Colgate and Unilever. When I joined Jacobs Suchard (then Nabob Foods) in 1977, I found myself up against the muscle of Kraft and Nestle. Wherever I went, the major competitor was 20 times larger. That is clout. And yet, our little band of rebels was able to outmaneuver that might with two potent weapons that cost absolutely nothing.

Here’s the point. When you know you will never be the low-cost producer nor will you ever have the resources to outspend the big cat, you find other ways to skin it – okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement. Clout allows these giants to grow, but there is absolutely no reason why a smaller player cannot become a market leader within their chosen market(s). As long as the “Davids” are able to resist the urge to become generalists by expanding into too many markets with too many products, they can win. I should know; I spent 17 years at Jacobs Suchard winning within the intensely competitive coffee and chocolate markets.

The secret to thriving against mega-company competition comes down to three potent armaments – strategy, creativity, and culture. Here are 10 ways to survive in a world where big keeps getting bigger:

  1. They are slow.  You be fast.
  2. They are bureaucratic.  You be nimble.
  3. They are risk averse.  You be entrepreneurial.
  4. They are fact-centric; the more the better.  You make decisions when you have most, but not all of the information; that affords the “first-in” advantage.
  5. They are generalists.  You be specialists.
  6. They value doing things right.  You value doing right things.
  7. They grow by doing more and more.  You grow by doing less, better.
  8. They are conventional and reactive.  You be distinctive and farsighted.
  9. They are obsessed with efficiencies and processes.  You be obsessed with innovation.
  10. They leverage their financial resources.  You leverage your creativity.

If your company is suffering the clout of a giant, I suggest you rank your performance against these 10 commandments of giant slaying. Undoubtedly, you will come up short. Change won’t happen overnight because you are likely facing a shift in corporate culture. Achieving the right culture is possible, but it seldom happens unless the organization is blessed with a strong and tenacious CEO who passionately practices the tenets of entrepreneurial leadership.

 

The 5 Best Bargains in Business

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If you think I’m going to list of a bunch of product bargains or discount sales, think again. This blog is about the side of business that drives superior performance at no extra cost. For now, I’d like you to forget about throwing heaps of cash at such initiatives as computer systems, advertising, equipment, recruiting – even training. And for a moment, stop worrying about low-cost foreign competition and the sluggish North American economy. The best bargains in business can help you deal with any setback. The good news is that these bargains can be unleashed from your existing overheads. People with the right mindsets create magic.

 Here are the 5 best bargains in the world of business:

  1.  Leadership heads the list. A good leader costs as much as a bad one. The best leaders have the ability to instill clarity of vision and a compelling purpose that inspires people to make the extra effort. As we know, Steve Jobs wasn’t the easiest guy to work with, but the results? Outstanding. Apple employees not only believed in his vision, they delivered it over and over again.
  2. Simplicity. Companies that insist on simplicity are generally the most successful businesses. This is a corollary to leadership but it is also a core value that must permeate the entire organization. Everyone on the same page fighting complexity creates sustainable winners. The California-based In-N-Out Burger Chain is a wonderful example of keeping things  simple. Just look at their menu – 3 beef burgers, fries, shakes and soft drinks. If you want chicken, salad, pizza or wraps, go elsewhere.
  3. Culture. Culture takes time. But once you have it, once you leverage it and see the results, you are on your way. It is a state of mind that says, “These are the things that really matter in this company.” Some companies thrive on an innovative culture. Others pride themselves on getting things done. Zappos and Patagonia are in a class by themselves. When culture is the brand, you’ve nailed it.
  4. Doing less, better.Thirty-five years ago I was part of a turnaround of a company that competed in 8 different food categories with over a thousand stock keeping units. We cut that “red-ink” business back to a coffee and tea company with 35 sku’s. Sales went up and the company went into the black. Within 3 years, Nabob Coffee became Canada’s top selling coffee. Doing less, better trumps doing more with less and doing more with more. The fact that giant companies don’t operate this way opens the door for the smaller competitor.
  5. Creativity. While the above bargains don’t have to cost extra money, they take considerable effort and in some cases, considerable time. This is not necessarily the case for creativity. The Big Idea and the process of creating and implementing the thought is the last great bargain in business. I spent an entire career espousing the power of creativity, and the companies I touched did very well by it. As for today, Red Bull stands out as the quintessential idea machine.

Whining about the economy, budget constraints, and low-cost competition does nothing to improve a company’s well-being. Businesses who live by these 5 bargains are the ones who enjoy success – both in the journey and the bottom-line destination. But, beware. Bureaucracy lurks on the periphery, waiting for its opening to subvert the lean, mean, business machine. In the final analysis, bureaucracy is every company’s greatest threat.

The Strategy of Hustle

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I’ve read a lot of books on strategy. The best ones influenced my mode of operation as an executive of Jacobs Suchard, the maker of coffee and chocolate brands, Jacobs, Nabob, Toblerone, Suchard and Côte d’Or. I was devoted to master strategies and “big play” innovations that ideally positioned a company to dominate their chosen market(s) and enjoy sustainable competitive advantage. The philosophy begins with a mindset obsessed with the competition. It worked well for me in my 17 years at Jacobs Suchard, although I am the first to admit that we managed just two blockbuster strategic innovations over that time period – both were technical in nature, and thankfully, both were well-marketed. In hingsight, two big, game-changing plays was a damn good record.

Big plays are the stories business journalists love to write about. In today’s world, Apple, Google and Facebook are the poster boys of transformational innovation. But, should every company be striving for this type of strategic advantage? Not necessarily. At the other end of the transformational spectrum are firms that have made the conscious decision not to fuss over competitive rivalry. They set their sights on another perfectly good strategy – the strategy of hustle. In short, they get things done by concentrating on the operational details and operating within a quick and nimble modus operandi. The “get it done” strategy can be effective in a vast number of industries.

Successful private label manufacturers have been operating this way for years. Mother Parker’s Tea & Coffee is a premier North American private label manufacturer. This company is content to let the “branded” players develop new products, new forms of packaging, and new manufacturing processes: they’re not bashful about replicating advancements to ensure their customers aren’t disadvantaged. In cases where ”get it done” companies such as Mother Parker’s do unleash innovations in systems, processes, products or services, the innovations seldom qualify as transformational innovations. The innovations are incremental, and often easily copied. No big deal.

Hustle is a strategy that delivers superior results to thousands of retailers, restaurants, and service companies. I can’t think of a better example than California-based In-N-Out Burger. Unlike so many other fast food restaurants, this one has earned the word “fast” within its category nomenclature. Hustle companies obsessively work at reducing costs and improving products and service. They don’t use their precious time to strategically hypothesize or intellectualize. They map a course of action and just do it. From top to bottom, everyone knows the rules of the game. Even recruiting is affected by the strategy; guess who they hire? People who hustle.

This is not to say these companies lack vision. Make no mistake; visions needn’t be so narrow that they are repressive. They are broad enough that employees who thrive on hustle are given the scope to seek new opportunities. When all is said and done, regardless of whether a company is a master strategist or a proponent of the hustle mindset, superior execution is critical. In the case of the “get it done” companies, superior execution is imbedded into a culture that thrills customers and shareholders.

In Praise of Average Joes

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This website was created to share my views and experiences with the next generation of business leaders. That meant reflecting on past situations and determining the factors that were critical to the outcome. The times have changed, but the tools that determine success or failure have not. Companies, large and small, cannot survive without great leadership, sound strategy and flawless execution. Those that thrive, go a step further; they worship innovation and breathe culture.

Indeed, there are plenty of sub-segments of these key success factors such as creativity, teamwork, and recruitment. But the resource that continues to be overlooked by CEOs and Boards is the organization’s Average Joe. Average Joes are the majority of the work force. Because they aren’t categorized as whiz kids or water walkers, it’s easy to take them for granted. Do not take them for granted. Applaud them. Nurture their talent. Listen to them. Take pleasure watching them make a difference. These individuals are the hidden MVPs of the organization.

Five examples from decades ago at Nabob Jacobs Suchard:

  1. Ronnie, a union employee, promoted the culture of teamwork and inclusiveness. He never missed the company Christmas party or the summer social event. Ronnie was an organizer – a leader in cultural development. He refused to be blocked by the brick wall that separates management from union in most companies. In fact, it was Ronnie who took a sledge hammer to that wall and turned it into rubble.
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  2. Bruce, a Marketing Manager who struggled with detail, flourished as a creative resource. Bruce masterminded the sponsorship of a charitable event – the one in the visual. When paraplegic athlete Rick Hansen returned to Canada after wheeling around the world, Bruce’s promotion increased our coffee sales by 3 share points – in hard cash, that was several million dollars at the bottom line.
  3. Gary, an ex-marine middle manager in the sales department looked beyond conventional distribution channels to drive our Toblerone Chocolate business. He identified the link between the brand’s Swiss heritage and that of the restaurant chain, Swiss Chalet. Gary’s idea of a free Toblerone with Christmas meals increased sales by millions of bars . . . and the offer continued for 6 years after that. For the record, Kraft, who now own Toblerone, likely have a Gary in their stable, but have failed to unleash his talent. That might explain why Swiss Chalet has switched to Lindt.
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  4. Paul, a salesman in Edmonton, was the sales department’s answer to Ronnie. Paul wore the company colors on the job and off the job. A CEO couldn’t ask for a better soldier in the battlefield. Paul set the values example for every employee. He laughed a lot and made hard work fun. That’s important , especially when a business slips into an economic downturn.
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  5. Gail, an accounting clerk, inspired people like no other. Each year, a group of employees partook in a one-week Outward Bound team-building excursion. Though Gail was fighting breast cancer, she volunteered, claiming she was well enough to endure the hardships of mountain wilderness. As it turned out, on the final day, the ten women on that expedition hauled Gail to the top of the world (the peak) on a stretcher. She asked them to keep the secret. Within the year, Gail was gone and ten years later, one of her team mates shared her story.

No one is an average Joe. Not Ronnie, not Bruce, Gary, Paul or Gail. These folks are a company’s most valuable players, the unsung heroes. Leaders ought to treat them as such.

Nabob and the Coffee Kerfuffle: How the 120-year-old brand managed to maintain its challenger status.

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Article was by Jennifer Horn, Strategy Magazine.

Respect_new2Nabob, you’re a feisty fella. In the ’80s, you famously smashed the paper bags of rival Maxwell House in ads to prove your own superior packaging. Not long after, you took aim at the coffee bean itself, ruling out the seeds that didn’t quite fit your strict flavour and aroma standards. And today, you’re crossing swords with society’s (arguably) pretentious coffee culture.

Does the world really need another creamy, cinnamony macchiato, you ask in a campaign that implores specialty coffee connoisseurs to “Respect the Bean” by choosing a no-frills black cup of Nabob instead. As Ogilvy’s Ian MacKellar, who helped develop the current creative platform, would say: “For any campaign or creative idea, it helps to have a conflict, a tension, an enemy.” Nabob has seen many during its 120 years in the coffee biz.

Nabob survived near-bankruptcy in the ’70s by making the tough decision to streamline its business and become a specialist (versus the generalist it was originally set up to be, once carrying a myriad of product lines from coffee to jams to spices). Years later, it took on bigger players by introducing new innovative packaging to the market, and subsequently carving out a double-digit share when few thought it could be done. Today, Nabob faces yet another challenge: finding its place in the quickly dilating coffee industry. Speciality coffee shops are competing with retail brands for consumers’ attention in the grocery aisle, new coffee formats are being introduced (such as single-cup brewing systems), and U.S. competitors are entering the market.

“There is exponential growth to be had. And everyone is trying to climb to the top of that to get ahead,” explains Heather Fadali, senior brand manager for coffee at Kraft Heinz, Nabob’s parent company. “It’s a mature category that is still trying to figure itself out… Because it is so competitive, it really is about understanding who you are, what you stand for, and what you don’t.”

It’s a lesson Nabob learned early on (and continued to learn over the years), particularly when it was drowning in red ink nearly five decades ago.

From grocery generalist to coffee specialist

Before things got so complicated – before “consumers [could get] their coffee when they want, how they want it, where they want it” (as Fadali puts it, likening the shift to the evolution of personal tech) – Nabob was itself considered complicated. The Vancouver-born brand wasn’t always just premium roast coffee beans. At one point, it was “kind of like the Kraft Foods of Western Canada,” says former Nabob CEO John Bell.

It actually used to play in 12 different product categories. What is today a coffee specialist was once a grocery generalist, with Nabob carrying an assortment of teas, spices, desserts, peanut butters and jams (to name a few) in its product portfolio. Nabob was a big supplier of its original owners Kelly, Douglas & Co. wholesale grocers (prior to Bell’s arrival in 1977), which meant its market share inside competitive retailers was, naturally, quite low.

“By stocking and supporting Nabob, [competitor retailers would be] basically fortifying their competition,” he explains. “But when the company was purchased [in 1976 by Jacobs], we were in a free world of competition, and then suddenly we didn’t have the support of Kelly Douglas any more. It raised the cost of the company substantially.”

Nabob, says Bell, was in hot water. When he was asked to join the company as VP of marketing, along with Hugo Powell as president, the company’s costs were eating at its profits. Its wages were 15% higher than then-competitors Kraft and Nestle, market share was down, employees were desperately unmotivated and the company was simply overextended, he says. “We were virtually bankrupt, except for one shareholder who kept us alive because they believed in us.”

Hugo Powell & John Bell 1980

Desperate times called for desperate measures. The change in management, which included Bell and Powell, meant a big change in how the company would operate in the following decades. In 1977, the year the two executives joined, Nabob decided to sell and dissolve eight of its 12 product lines. This led to the loss of more than 300 jobs and the closure of a plant. For a while, the team tried to save its peanut butter brand, Squirrel, and its jam product line, says Bell, but after a few years, they too were cut, with the peanut butter business sold to Canada Packers in 1981.

So, the company was down to two product categories: coffee and tea. While the former was used as a “strategic brand to invest in,” the latter was seen as a “cash cow, which we used to fund the strategic business” (it, too, was eventually dissolved). The aggressive cuts were a huge gamble, considering it meant the company’s portfolio would go from $70 million to $40 million in value, says Bell.

The team also had to go through the pangs of training its employees to be strictly coffee experts, conducting “cuppings” (otherwise known as coffee tastings) and product knowledge courses so that “when a neighbour asked them about coffee, they would be able to talk about the origins, the roast, the grind.”

When management looked at all the categories it was playing in, they realized Nabob would have a strategic advantage in coffee compared to its competitors Kraft and Nestle. “We felt by becoming a coffee specialist, we could win,” Bell says.

“I came from the packaged goods industry, and when [I arrived at Nabob] we were looking at it as just another packaged product, like a soap or a detergent. And yet when we became a specialist, we looked at it more like a wine. So we could start to understand the connection to coffee, the same as people who own wineries do.”

Vacuum Pack Launch 1979Its strategy to get out ahead of the competition rested on the innovative, hard, vacuum-sealed packaging its then-parent company, Jacob Suchard, was using in Europe at the time. Nabob brought the new packaging – which stored coffee beans inside a foil vacuum pack so no stale air would get in, while also ensuring none of its flavour and aroma would get out – to Canada in 1978.

“The communication [of the new packaging to consumers] was the most difficult part,” admits Bell. “We tried with one campaign, and failed. We put the vacuum pack on shelves along with [Nabob’s] soft paper bags and tin cans [which is what the competition was also using]… and, of course, the consumer settled on what they were used to.”

They simply ignored the new packaging. “So another bold step was required. We decided to discontinue all of our paper bags, and only give the consumer one choice – the vacuum pack – and come out with bold advertising.” That was the year Nabob went on the offensive and brazenly tried its hand at comparative advertising.

This means (packaging) war

strategy pic ReynoldsWorking with agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves in 1979, Nabob launched what became one of its more famous TV spots, called “Microphone.” It featured a winsome, grey-haired fellow (an actor by the name of Michael Reynolds, whom the brand continued to use as its spokesman for about a decade) gamely introducing its vacuum pack by taking a dig at rival Maxwell House’s paper packaging. Reynolds conducts a “smell” test, telling the audience that the competitor’s “ordinary, old-fashioned, soft paper bags” allow you to smell “the coffee inside, on the outside.” Then he compares it to Nabob’s hard vacuum box, which has no smell at all (proving that its aroma and taste is locked in and can’t escape).

He also knocks Nabob’s box with his closed fist to demonstrate the pack’s durability, and opens the two brands’ packages under a microphone to demonstrate the flat sound the Maxwell House bags make when being opened, compared to the fresh sound from Nabob’s boxes. “Now I ask, which one do you think makes a better, fresher cup of coffee?” At the end of the 60-second spot, before taking a sip, Reynolds haughtily answers: “You’re absolutely right.”

This type of aggressive, competitive advertising went on for a couple more years, says Bell. The brand created various other ruthless ads where Reynolds took the hard Nabob box and broke Maxwell House’s paper bag in a single blow before pushing its coffee beans off the table.

What’s important (and interesting to note) is that these ads didn’t actually impact Maxwell House’s business. But they did affect some of the other smaller brands that Nabob competed against, which helped it become “the rallying brand for everybody who didn’t like Maxwell House” and “the standard as the competitor to Maxwell House,” Bob Bryant, then-chairman and CEO of Bryant, Fulton and Shee told strategy back in 2001, when he was asked to name the best product demonstration he had seen during his career.

“Within two years, the brand went from a small share to 25% of the Canadian market,” notes Bell. In Ontario specifically, he says, the share sat at about 4% before jumping to 25%, two years after it initiated the advertising war. In the West, where Nabob had a much stronger penetration, the share sat at 35%. That number increased to 40%. The brand wasn’t originally in Quebec or the Maritimes, but after a few years, it managed to enter and carve out about 15% of those two markets, adds Bell.

The marketing strategy became a case study, which was added to the curriculum at places like Harvard and the London School of Business. The brand also went on to win industry accolades such as the BCAMA’s Marketer of the Year award in 1981.

“We were big believers in creativity and we had a culture of big ideas. It made sense, because we looked at the competition as our well-financed enemy, and so there was no way we could win at the spending war,” says Bell. “So we had to make sure our advertising was [intrusive], our promotions were better and to continually innovate with new things.”

Not just your average quality Joe

It wasn’t long before the competition matched Nabob’s vacuum pack, says Bell. Within a couple of years, others like main rival Maxwell House had started launching their own hard boxes. “We went, ‘OK, so now what point of difference do we have?’” That’s when the brand shifted its strategy, once again, and developed the long-standing “Better Beans. Better Coffee” positioning.

The original spokesman introduced the platform with the famous “yardstick” in tow. The ruler in the spot was used to remove all of the coffee beans (which sat stacked up in rolling mounds on a boardroom table, representing all the harvested beans in the world) that did not fit Nabob’s quality standards. The beans had to be grown high enough on the mountain and they had to be ripe enough, with “only a precious few chosen.” The physical yardstick was integrated into spots for years to come. (In fact, it still makes an appearance in the brand’s creative today, such as at the end of its more recent “Respect the Bean” spots.)

That original 1985 “Yardstick” commercial, says Bell, saw the highest day-after recall the brand had ever tracked at the time. “The [industry] average recall was about 20%. And all of the commercials we made – we made about 40 to 50 in the 17 years I was there – our average recall was about 28%.”

Capturing a brewing cultural tension

Ogilvy’s MacKellar, who worked on the brand for about four years (the agency held the account almost twice as long, before it moved over to Taxi 2 last year), says people still remember the ruler spot that fortified Nabob’s positioning around “quality coffee” years later.

“People really remembered that and understood that Nabob always believed in the quality of the beans that they would put in the bag,” he says, pointing out how quality continues to be called out in Nabob’s current platform. In online and TV spots, Nabob is shown visiting Colombian coffee bean farmers and asking them to taste various specialty coffees, from cappuccinos to macchiatos to iced coffees, with the subjects showing their (polite, to a point) disgust after taking a sip. “It says the same thing, [showing how the brand offers] a line of full bean coffee that is stringently picked and identified by quality growers in Colombia.”

Sure, research showed that Canadians have an affinity for the brand, and remember its positioning around quality coffee. But before “Respect the Bean” was launched, Nabob wasn’t enjoying the relevance it once had, says MacKellar. Positive association with the brand was there, but it wasn’t very strong, adds Fadali at Kraft Heinz, which purchased Nabob in 1994.

strategy pic“What sets campaigns apart is really having a cultural tension that resonates with your target audience and one you can effectively communicate your brand through,” she says of the approach her team is taking. “The [current] POV is quality coffee without pretence. We’re talking to our consumers in a no-nonsense voice. [And] the cultural tension is the absurdity and complexity of the current state of our coffee culture.”

Stephanie Santiago, group account director at Taxi 2, adds that the team will continue to build on Nabob’s quality message in future creative. “You’ll see us have some fun with the ridiculousness of coffee culture and how Nabob is the antithesis of that,” she says, adding that it’s juxtaposing the brand with the “increasingly pretentious and complicated coffee culture” to stand out.

“Respect the Bean” plays into one of two coffee culture trends that Johanna Faigelman, cultural anthropologist and CEO of Human Branding, has seen in her research of the space. The first revolves around millennial palates, with the younger gen growing up on sweet specialty coffee drinks — making expectations of what they want out of a cup of Joe very different from the consumer Nabob is after (who Fadali describes as “someone who believes substance trumps style” and who doesn’t “buy into brands because of their badge.”) Faigelman believes Nabob is making a push toward the “artisanal-everything” trend. “If anything, people are trying to get back to the simple roots, the true intentions of food and beverage,” she says. “That’s a good [trend] to hook onto as a coffee manufacturer in terms of where our psyches are when it comes to the ethics of food.

“The great things that Nabob has stood for from the beginning has allowed us to have credibility with consumers today,” says Fadali. “If we didn’t have that relevance around authenticity, consumers would be demanding that of us.”

In other words, Nabob is still playing the part of the scrappy brand on a soldierly path to stand out in its corner of the coffee space. It’s gone from combative advertising, to adopting an austere stance on quality control, to a movement against the follies of conceited coffee culture. And it’s still fighting to outflank the competition, one no-frills black cup of coffee at a time.





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