November 11, 2011
Will Starbucks Brand Name Transfer To Juice?
The news that Starbucks is getting into the juice business comes as no surprise.
The fact that they offer so many products in their stores including food and cold drinks (lemonade and other juices), has long indicated that they want the brand to mean more to us than just coffee.
They dropped $30 million on a small juice company called Evolution Fresh Inc., which has a large presence on the West Coast. The Evolution beverages will replace the Naked Inc. beverages sold in Starbucks stores, as well as go into supermarkets with evolution.
Whether they rebrand these juices or not, one element of their strategy is to use their presence in the Starbucks stores to generate awareness. The WSJ quotes Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz as saying that getting these juices in front of the 60 million people who frequent Starbucks each week is "equivalent to airing a commercial on the top three television shows weekly." Maybe, maybe not.
Additionally, the company has announced plans to open a new chain centered on wholesome beverages and food that will tap into the $1.6 billion juice market and the $50 billion health foods market.
No matter what the stores are called, "Starbucks has the clout, marketing savvy and name recognition to make its juice and health foods a premium brand and take market share from competitors," or so the LA Times quotes one expert enthusing.
But will they use the brand equity of Starbucks?
It's a tough call, but I would imagine they will in some form or another, partly because it seems obvious that the juice stores will offer coffee and other goodies, and people already see Starbucks as a spot where they can get a myriad of products.
Apple Computer changed its name to Apple, Inc. as it broadened its product line with iPods, iPhones, and iPads. This was a great move despite initial skepticism in the industry that the company would struggle to sell in these new product categories.
Juice has long been an open gambit for Starbucks anyway, and as Seattlepi says, $30 million is "chump change" to the coffee giant.
If Starbucks goes into this venture wholeheartedly, they could transform the juice business the way they transformed coffee.
Remember when people thought expensive coffee wouldn't work?
Technorati Tags: Coffee, Starbucks, Juice, Branding, Naming, Marketing
Posted by William Lozito at 7:54 AM
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October 12, 2011
Dr Pepper Reaches out to Men In Bold New "No Women Allowed" Branding
The trend in diet drink sales is to appeal to men. Men are, in many ways, the last frontier for this sector.
Received wisdom has it that they shy away from diet drinks because the product naming and branding is so clearly feminine.
Dr Pepper has a new drink called Dr Pepper Ten and the company is doing everything to sell the idea that this stuff is indeed macho. In fact, the new ad campaign is taking the route of "No Girls Allowed" quite literally with the tagline "It's Not for Women."
One woman blogger has reacted with some amusement about this noting that the ads, which have a heavy Star Wars flavor, seem to ignore the fact that "there are girls out there who like jungle battles and laser fights with futuristic bad guys."
More than that, she says, "The saddest part, however, is that even though this ad campaign kind of pisses me off, it does it in a way that makes me want to drink Dr Pepper Ten just to spite anyone who thinks I'm not allowed to."
This might be, in fact, what Dr Pepper expects.
There is a school of thought that says that women want to be part of things that they are purposely excluded from. In fact, 40% of those who have tried the drink are women.
There is now a page on Dr Pepper's Facebook, that gives men ideas on how to be more macho, although it is clear that women get the joke.
The packaging is in gunmetal gray and of course it promises only ten "bold tasting calories."
I leave you with Dr Pepper's 10 Man'Ments. These are snippets of advice taken from the Facebook page:
- Thou shalt not OMG. If it's not exploding, it's not exciting.
- Thou shalt not pucker up. Kissy faces are never manly.
- Thou shalt not post pics of your outfit. Unless it's battle armor and you have a giant sword and/or small bazooka.
- Thou shalt not post furry animal videos. Exceptions made for beasts fighting to the death and bears destroying idyllic picnic scenes.
- Thou shalt not make a "man-gagement" album. That is all.
- Thou shalt not share your horoscope. Daily.
- Thou shalt not Instagram your lunch. Real men each lunch, not tweet it.
- Thou shalt not untag unflattering pics. We know you were there.
- Thou shalt not end a comment with a =).
- Thou shalt not make a Facbeook profile for your pet, baby and/or imaginary friend.
Technorati Tags: Dr Pepper, Dr Pepper 10, Dr Pepper 10 Branding
Posted by William Lozito at 8:00 AM
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October 10, 2011
Naming and Branding in Chinglish - Now on Broadway
If you're familiar with branding and naming faux pas, you won't be surprised to learn that Broadway's new play, Chinglish, about a American businessman who travels to China is a comedy.
That's because direct literal translation from one language to another can be a dangerous thing. Language, after all, is more than mere words, it has a syntactic and cultural component that one overlooks only at one's peril.
In the play, for example, translating a sign for Handicapped Restrooms to Deformed Man's Toilet has significant consequences.
Our experience in naming and branding products for clients in China is no less complex. Both Mandarin and Cantonese are tonal languages written in a Hanzi script filled with subtleties lying in wait to trap a non-native speaker. Depending on the tone, the same phoneme root can mean prestigious or crooked.
Even the internationally-savvy, like Coca-Cola, have tripped on this slippery slope. They took great care to get the phonetics correct in pronouncing Coca-Cola in Chinese.
However, the name manipulators forgot the meaning of the symbols they selected which was read as "ke-kou-ke-la," only to learn this meant "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax."
Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le," that means "happiness in the mouth."
As you can see, there's a lot more to it than translate.google.com
Technorati Tags: Coca-Cola, Translation, Product Naming, Faux Pas, Language, Chinese
Posted by Diane Prange at 9:39 AM
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September 16, 2011
Move to Change High Fructose Corn Syrup Naming to Corn Syrup Not That Sweet
I have written about the move to have high fructose corn syrup referred to as "corn sugar" by producers before.
There is an obvious reason for this - "corn sugar" looks a lot more appetizing then "high fructose corn syrup."
Now, it seems the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned the corn industry to stop using the term until it gets regulatory approval.
This is bad news for the corn industry, who wants to distance itself from the "high fructose corn syrup" name due to the fact that scientists have linked the product to obesity, diabetes and a slew of other health issues.
The Corn Refiners Association has already been using the term "corn sugar" on TV and on two websites - cornsugar.com and sweetsurprise.com. The problem here is that The Corn Refiners Association is not selling a product, but rather an industry.
The FDA can and will go after companies that misrepresent or mislabel ingredients and products, and will indeed go after companies that call high fructose corn syrup "corn sugar." Of course, beet and cane sugar producers are up in arms about this.
One FDA representative says, "It would be affirmatively misleading to change the name of the ingredient after all this time, especially in light of the controversy surrounding it... If we allow it, we will rightly be mocked both on the substance of the outcome and the process through which it was achieved."
The problem here is that obesity is a growing concern in the US. Thus, the naming of sweeteners in general is an extremely sensitive issue. The corn producers know this and have created advertisements that are meant to ease our fears.
I, of course, am not a nutrition expert. However, the product seems to be coming out of a pretty bad pedigree. At one point it was called "Frankenfood" because it is not a natural product.
The received wisdom in this is that this product is simply not great for you but for that matter cane sugar is also not recommended.
We do not need any more prompting.
Technorati Tags: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Sugar, Corn Sugar Naming, Naming, Branding
Posted by William Lozito at 8:17 AM
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August 5, 2011
Sheets Energy Strips: More Unsavory Energy Drink Product Naming
Some new energy drink product names leave you scratching your head.
Whether we are talking about a drink called "Cocaine" or an anti-energy drink called "Drank," energy drink product names are just wacky. But the new product out there has moved from weird to plain old frightening. It's called "Sheets Energy Strips."
These are consumable energy sheets you stick on your tongue to get an instant jolt of energy, "each serving contains caffeine comparable to a cup of premium coffee plus vitamins E, B12 and B6."
Just imagine the possibilities. Why, you don't even need to drink anything to get the caffeine rush that keeps us all going. Just apply some of this stuff to your tongue and whammo.
This product, which comes in an assortment of flavors, was voted Best New Product of the Year at the 2011 ECRM Diet, Vitamin and Sports Nutrition Show.
LeBron James is involved with this new product. There are other celebrity endorsements from "fellow NBA superstar (and Florida native) Amare Stoudemire of the New York Knicks; NFL running back Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens; and recording artists Pitbull, DMC and Doug E. Fresh."
The idea is to convince us that hits of caffeine can make you a better athlete.
LeBron does not have his image on the product (which one blogger says is a good idea). In regards to the packaging, "The happy face with the tongue sticking out is reminiscent of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy mascot, only for a block of red on the tongue."
Make no mistake about it, this is feeding right into the rise of caffeine addiction among kids and the packaging makes it look more like a product related to recreational drug use than an athletic performance enhancer.
This simply cannot be a coincidence.
Neither can the name. Sheets. As in, maybe, sheets of acid? Because the only other sheet you put on your tongue contains LSD, and these guys must also be aware of this. "Scoring sheets" is slang for buying small pieces of paper with drops of LSD on them, also called "blotter." It's been that way since Woodstock.
Like I said, this product name leaves you scratching your head.
Technorati Tags: Sheets Energy Strips, Energy Drinks, Energy Drink Product Naming, Naming, Branding, Product Naming, LeBron James
Posted by William Lozito at 9:41 AM
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