Building better brands at Bord Bia’s Brand Forum

There were many lessons to be learned, and more importantly to be applied, from Pat’s talk. First, there was the choice of brand name and pack design. In a world literally groaning under the weight of hundreds of new gin brands, the first essential requirement for success is to stand out from the competition. The brand’s name and pack are uniquely distinctive and have given it a great start in life. The ‘democracy of information’ that characterises the digital age has led to more focus on rational and ‘real’ aspects of product quality and Gunpowder Gin fulfills this requirement in abundance; slow distilled by hand in a medieval copper pot gin still, vapour infused with a wide range of exotic oriental botanicals overlaid with a large dollop of Irish curiosity; what more could a demanding millennial want! All of the elements are described in well-crafted stories, wrapped in brilliantly designed promotional material. There is even an added local ingredient in the story; the intriguing Drumshanbo Jackalope. All successful brands need marketing communications to spread the word and Gunpowder’s mix of channels include brand activation, bringing the botanicals to life in sampling in-store displays, social media, made and managed in-house and consistent public relations generated by the success of the brand.

The less tangible elements of the brand’s personality are equally well thought out and constructed; culture, ambition and lifetime experience of the founder. The presentation described in detail the deliberate creation of a collaborative, driven, community-based culture among the Drumshanbo employees who are now able to share in an ambitious project that has no bounds; not just to create a global brand leader but to create the best spirit brands in the world, not just gin but vodka and whiskey as well. None of this would be possible without the ‘curious mind’ of the founder Pat Rigney. His lifetime experience of working for Diageo, one of the leading global spirit brands and his previous entrepreneurial experience with Boru Vodka has all come to fruition in the Shed Distillery.

Our second speaker rose to the difficult task of following Pat as he outlined an equally transformative marketing experience with the long-established UK brand of Frozen foods, Birds Eye. The brand is now owned by Nomad Foods a company with annual net revenues of €2.2b operating in thirteen western European countries. Wayne’s presentation concentrated on one of the Birds Eye brand which had been acquired by Nomad in 2015. It is a long established almost one-hundred-year-old brand built up mainly in the UK market by Unilever with a succession of well-loved advertising campaigns over the years.

However, it was bought over by one of the venture capital companies whose sole motivation was to squeeze the assets by reducing marketing communications expenditure, slimming down the workforce and creating a business which could subsequently be offloaded at a profit. The brand and the company were in poor shape when acquired by Nomad and Wayne Hudson was charged with turning it around. Significantly he began with the company culture which had been demotivated by the short-term activities of the previous owners. This involved regular sharing of information about the current position and future plans at ‘town-hall’ meetings in which all staff was encouraged to take responsibility and participate. The second task was to concentrate on the inherent attributes of frozen foods which had neglected and downgraded by the previous owners. The category had been allowed to become old-fashioned and not relevant to a new generation of consumer tastes whereas it could be positioned at the cutting edge of new consumer requirements; nutritious vegetable-based food frozen within two hours of being taken from the soil for added freshness and convenience. This is exactly what Nomad did and they also restored the marketing communications budgets to realistic levels because as memorably described by Wayne; ‘a pea is just a pea unless you tell people how good it is’. Much of this work was based on detailed market research carried out among consumers and it was interesting to note that many of the new lifestyle trends which emerged from this exercise are very similar to the Bord Bia’s consumer lifestyle trends.

A further example of polishing a strong but neglected brand asset was the transformation of the jolly but old-fashioned Captain Bird’s Eye into a cool modern hunk. There are a number of vital lessons here. The first is that if a brand has invested in significant marketing communications in the past but for some reason has withdrawn that investment for ten even twenty years the previous investment remains in people’s memory structure for a very long time and can be re-activated with new marketing communications designed to be relevant to changing social conditions. By making the advertising more contemporary and by referencing contemporary concerns about food and food preparation brands can be revitalised. In the past three years, Bird’s Eye sales have increased from £350m to £420m.

In summary, two memorable very different presentations but with one common denominator, a business leader committed not just to profitable brand growth but to achieve it through the creation of a culture that inspires a collaborative team to all play their role.

If you are a Brand Forum member and would like to join the Tone of Voice Workshop on 26th March, click here and for further information on Bord Bia’s Brand Forum go to www.BordBia.ie/BrandForum or contact Niamh.MacHale@BordBia.ie