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FROM THE FIELD
May 2005
Learning From Tony the Tiger
With
all the talk about overcapacity and price pressures, sooner or
later you realize you need to work harder to set yourself apart
from the crowd.
What’s your
differentiation? And how, exactly, are you communicating it? Do
your customers really know how you’re different? How do you get
inside their heads, and what message are you leaving?
Most if not all
operator put huge effort into menu development as a
differentiator, and that’s important. But it’s only the ante for
getting into the game. Beyond a certain point, degrees of
wonderfulness are hard to gage. And besides, it’s easy for
competitors to knock off menu items.
Other important
differentiations often are not in the core product, but in the
peripherals. For most of you, that means service, décor and so
on. Are you fast? Are you comfortable? Is your “stuff” more
interesting to look at than the other guy’s? For your suppliers,
the parallels are things like technical services, parts
availability and so on. The price tag may be on the core product
or service, but the customer’s paying based on the brand, which
is the perceived package of everything combined. So how’s
your package different?
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Telling
customers how you're different? Or hoping they
figure it out?
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Many years ago,
a Leo Burnett adman who often turned up in Ad Age for his
creative work for clients like Maytag, Green Giant, Marlboro and
Kellogg’s, told a simple story that made an indelible
impression. Back in the 1950s, he recalled, Kellogg’s needed to
build market for its Frosted Flakes. But how?
“Can you think
of anything as generic as frosted cornflakes?” he asked.
There was precious little to differentiate. The solution? “If
you cannot differentiate the product itself, you create
something that you can differentiate, and then you attach
it to the product,” he declared.
In Kellogg’s
case, the solution turned out to be Tony The Tiger, an identity
still measured as one of the top 10 icons in the history of
marketing. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes quickly became the
top-selling cereal brand and for a half-century remained number
one. Only in the past couple years has Cheerios eclipsed it,
largely on the strength of several new flavors of the same
Cheerios brand.
What did Tony
have to do with cornflakes? Nothing, but the point is that even
a me-too product could soar if attached to a valuable
peripheral. Tony created an identity and a bond with customers
that generic flakes alone could not. The icon wouldn’t have
worked if the flakes were no good. But the product held up its
end, and Tony did the rest.
McDonald’s, too,
has understood this identity business all along. In the
beginning, its signage featured a character known as Speedy,
with speed, not the food, being the key differentiator. Later
came Ronald McDonald. A clown. Perfect for appealing to the kids
who became the baby boomers. But clowns are happy, and happy was
good for adults too. “A Good Time for the Great Taste” pushed
two buttons, one for a good time and one for the food. “You
Deserve A Break Today” was about convenience. Each character and
each tagline pushed consumer hot buttons.
So do you need
a character? Probably not. But you need something that’s
clearly different, and you need to communicate it.
Remember, it’s
not about what’s on the plate. It’s about what’s in their heads.
Brian Ward
Chief Editor
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