Stretching A Brand Too Far? - A Costa Coffee Problem

Costa Coffee have had a monumental rise to prominence over the past 5 years or so. Now the UK's largest coffeehouse (and second in the world) there is quite literally an opportunity to purchase a warm legal stimulate around every corner.

This blog comes about due to a crazy scenario I encountered at an M1 service station a few weeks back. Upon arrival, there was an outdoors Costa Coffee stand. Great, nice and convenient. But inside there was also a fully fledged Costa Coffee, just around the corner from the service station hot food area which served, yup, Costa Coffee. This is not forgetting the two Costa Coffee instant machines I'd also walked past. So in one service station, on one side of the M1 there were no less than 5 places to buy the same brand of coffee. Talk about over-kill.

But it goes on. Now pretty much every petrol station in the land has at least one Costa Coffee machine. You can buy Costa Cofee branded refills for your Tassimo coffee machine. Filter coffee? No problem, you can buy Costa branded too! Fancy one of those insulated mugs to take a warm drink with you out and about? You can get a Costa branded one. Now even cafe's within Asda supermarkets have...Costa Coffee! The Asda outlet in Leeds Crown Point, for instance, serves Costa Coffee, but is only a few doors down from a Costa Coffee. Worse, I know of a Costa Coffee that is a joining a Next, which has a cafe, which sells Costa Coffee!

This proliferation of the Costa brand is broadly a good thing. The more chances you see the Costa logo, the more likely you are to be thinking about it and then the more likely you are to feel like having one. Secondly, if you like a product it could lead on to you buying another from a different Costa line. Everyone wins and Costa have branched out to pretty much every revenue stream you could think of (apart from instant coffee, perhaps that's next?)

But here's the flip side. I bought a Costa from one of those service station machines they have (except I was in a WH Smiths, who had 3 of the things in store) and it was awful. I've had one in the past and it was quite pleasant, but not this one. The machine whirred away for what seemed like an hour and what I got was nothing more than steam water, a hint of milk and hardly any actual coffee. I even asked for a 'FREE' Vanilla shot, but didn't get one.

Now, clearly, there was a problem with the machine. Things go wrong, such is life. But by pure chance, I ended up recently in an awkward conversation with someone at a table who happened to be a Costa technician. His job was to drive around, fixing all the broken Costa machines. He assured me that this is an all too often affliction and that the company has expanded far too quickly, resulting in a dive in quality.

A classic dis-economy of scale. Expanding too quickly leads to errors. Without a solid backbone in place, instead of actually gaining customers from having more places to buy your products/services, you start turning away people because they have had negative experiences. The problem Costa are possibly encountering is such and I will certainly think twice before purchasing one again. In the same way a positive coffee could persuade me to buy some instant Costa for home, a bad coffee could put me off the entire brand.

You see, by all means expand, but test, recruit, research and practice before you do. Otherwise, before you know it, Costa may just become a fad rather than a brand with any lasting qualities.

Update:

Not wanting to get left behind, this is the very first thing that greets you upon entry into the Leeds General Infirmary...I kid you not.

The Super Bowl and It's Crazy Adverts

In case you missed it, recently the Super Bowl [XLVII] happened. This is a sporting event that I have a great interest in. Not, however, for the American Football. I once tried to watch it about 3 years ago, but really struggled. I managed until The Who had finished their half-time set and went to bed.

No, I can’t wait until the morning after, when all the amazing SuperBowl adverts get uploaded to the internet. Companies intent on making a statement advertise during the event. Heck, the sport often pauses just for TV Spot breaks. For a budding marketeer like myself, I always make a point to try and watch all the noteworthy adverts. This year was no exception and provided some very interesting trends.

The first is something America is very good at. Patriotism. There are many examples of this in 2013, such as the Dodge RAM pickup truck advert about religious farmers. But, the best (or worst) example this year was the Jeep advert. So “U.S.A.”, it’s no wonder that a great deal of American’s don’t know the wider world. Here we have dramatic music, American cars that are made in America, a voice over from Oprah Winfrey and a celebration of Jeep actually sponsoring the US troops and placing commemorative badges on the ve-hicles! It seems that if you want to sell in America, make it in America. Even the Korean Kia Sorento is now “Made in the US”.

Not going the Patriotic route? Find it too, well, predictable? Well, it would seem, the other trend was to be wacky. A bit out there. VW tried to recapture the public like their previous years attempts with a man speaking like a laid back Bob Marley (a not-so-subtle hint back to the days of Flower Power VW Beetles) but ultimately missed the mark a little. Website hosting service GoDaddy wheeled out both Patriotism (the first famous lady racing driver, Danica Patrick, who is American) and Wacky (a stereotyped geek, kissing a leggy blonde model). But far from the perfect marriage, it was a bit sick.

Other noteworthy weirdness was Fiat suggesting the electric 500 is good for sex, Stevie Wonder promoting Budweiser and Axe (or Lynx as we know it in the UK) running a promotion to literally send a competition winner into space. While we’re on a role, how about Mercedes-Benz trying too hard to be hip. The advert for the new CLA car features a young man, but the soundtrack is the Rolling Stones. Then Usher appears. Talk about not-cool Uncle talking about how many Friends he has on Facebook....

All the weirdness, is of course, very deliberate. It causes people to talk about the brand. So they hope. But there were a couple of spots that were genuinely funny. The M&M advert where they parody Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love was particularly smart, and Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) being self aware to promote milk while there is an apocalypse showed a certain self awareness.


We were also treated to PSY doing a version of Gangnam style.....but about....Pistachio nuts. No really. It has to be seen to be believed.

But lastly, the overarching theme was Social Media. Every single ad had to have an official #Hashtag. They were literally everywhere. Once a nice way of monitoring if your advert was a success of not, now very much de rigueur. More importantly, the hashtags used were universally odd. For instance, Audi's wasn't #Audi or #AudiSuperBowl but #Bravery. yes, it may get people talking on the internet, but is it on message for the brand?

However, despite all the gigantic sums of money paid for the advertisement slots, Oreo stole the show. Not only was their advert funny and clever, but their marketing team pulled an allnighter. During the game, the stadium suffered from a power-outage for about an hour. Oreo tweeted a pic, and they got more Tweets, Mentions and Retweets than anyone else. Well played Oreo.

Until next year, #SuperBowlAdvertHashTagOurBrandIsCool.