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.

Dodging The Bullet

Classy

I was reading an article the other day about the failure of Blackberry. It was suggesting that they focussed too much on the weakness of their devices, instead of backing the advantages. In other words, they were playing catch up instead of pioneering. This in turn reminded me of an episode of Mad Men, whereby Donald Draper and his cronies were forced to re-invent the direction of a lucrative cigarette advertising deal, due to pressure from health groups publishing the fact that smoking can lead to cancer.


What they did, was simply highlight an advantage to smoking. The new Lucky Strike slogan was to be "It's toasted". Instead of trying to push the lifestyle or stating that smoking is healthy, they simply focussed on a different strength of the product. Now, take that approach and apply it to every day products. It is everywhere.

"The king of such a marketing tactic, however, are the golden arches"

When in Greggs the other day, the brown paper bags they put a pasty in proudly boasts that their Steak Bakes only have "prime cuts of beef". This is great news, something to shout about and gives off the image of a higher quality product. Of course, it is a mass produced pastry good, that costs under 10p to produce at most with all the nutritional value of, well, a Greggs pasty. But they have averted your attention away from such facts.

Lettice, must be good for me then

The king of such a marketing tactic, however, are the golden arches. McDonalds is always trying to tell us how "Fresh" their coffee is (despite being full of sugar) or how they sell bags of carrot sticks (that no one buys). The best ploy however is their British Beef campaign. The TV advert features innocent children (awww, so cute) playing around a farm in the countryside (full of green, green grass and fresh air) with the slogan something along the lines of "100% British Beef in our burgers". Well, great, well done McDonalds, by playing on a healthy environment with those who we cherish most, they come across all earthly. It may be British Beef, but that does not mean that a Big Mac is healthy for your children or that the meat is any good. I just meens they are playing on that little bit of jingoism we all have inside us. They even decorate their lorries with the slogan (which is probably just a lorry full of salt) and even the bit of paper on your tray as you carry your calorie filled McFlurry across the restaurant states it to reinforce how caring and sharing they are. Yeh, right.


This may read like a rant about Mcdonalds, but really it is genius and every company that employs similar schemes are the ones that succeed. Those that don't, flounder. Simple really, but with this in mind, it is genuinely surprising how blatant such campaigns are once you realise the workings behind it. Keep your eyes peeled next time you visit the supermarket...

So The PlayStation Vita Is Doomed, Right?

I admit it. I like playing video games. I know, that makes me a smelly, over-weight, single hermit that lives in a dark room and collects figurines from Star Wars. Or that's what you would assume if you lived in 1995. But you don't, you live in 2012 and everyone you know plays games, even yourself. Wether it's your mum playing Wii Fit, younger brother playing Call of Duty or yourself playing Peggle on your iPhone while on the loo (yes, I'm looking at you) games are no longer the reserve of TheKeith-en-ator2000, playing hours upon hours of Second Life.

Some controllers, yo!

One thing that has been interesting to watch over the past 10 years or so is the fall from grace of the PlayStation brand, while at the same time the world now plays on Farm Ville. Surely in a world where more people than ever before play video games, Sony were the ones in the prime position to capitalize. As I mentioned in another post, managing to get your product as the "de facto" in it's field is marketing gold dust. PlayStation used to be the term for playing games. Every week another article (most likely to be featured in the News of the World) would claim how "PlayStation ruins 13 year old child's education" or a TV presenter trying too hard to be down with teh kidz would throw in the term "Playing PlayStation" at every possible juncture. Yet, much like the Murdoch's falling empire, PlayStation isn't exactly in the public's zeitgeist any more.

No, that is XBox. By reading any lifestyle review section in a newspaper or magazine and you won't be able to go 3 paragraphs before reading the word "XBox" or "Kinect". A quick glance at television reveals that every single living room in the UK has factually got a Kinect. While Sony continue to churn out great games on what is undoubtedly a wonderful machine (I use mine everyday), the PS3 just seems a bit, well geeky. Geeky is not cool. No one really wants to be geeky. No, Geek-chic does not exist, that's just a polite way of saying someone has glasses.

Dad clearly had some constipation issues

When you buy an XBox you are not buying a machine to play games. Technically you are, but Microsoft never tell you directly. The wider audience will never get an Xbox with Kinect because it can do this, or that, or that the graphics are crazy or the voice activation a technical marvel (even though the device is, honestly, a bag of balls). Neither are they simply buying a games console with a penchant for displaying red lights. They spend their hard earned cash to buy into the lifestyle created by those cheesy adverts, YouTube videos and those family orientated editorial adverts in glossy publications.

Sony do none of this. A fact that always seems to get the angry video game forum goer (and they are very angry, because that is an entitlement on the internet) never fails to raise. You are endlessly reading articles, comments and posts lambasting Sony for their poor efforts at "marketing". Sony are about to launch the new PlayStation Vita and there are a whole host of articles comparing it to SmartPhones ("where you can get games for only 69p as opposed to £45"), with a general feeling that it will struggle in a market place dominated by apps.

"What never fails to surprise me is the general public's perception of what marketing actually entails."

Well I'm sorry, but of course it will. That is missing the point totally. The Vita does not exist to combat that. Sony phones are designed for that job, a fact that everyone has completely forgotten. The Vita has one of the clearest target markets for a new product for quite some time. While other companies are trying to spread their wings in search of a giant slice of mainstream appeal pie, Sony has switched their focus (for the time being) at the core customer. There is always a danger of trying to appeal to everyone. This simply is not possible without potentially damaging what made the product so great in the first place (do not mention Rare Ltd, I start to cry).

What never fails to surprise me is the general public's perception of what marketing actually entails. An expensive TV advert is only a tiny, tiny part of it. Taking the Vita as a prime example, Sony have really listened to what consumers wanted. They realised that there will always be a market for the gamer. There are features that people complained that the old PSP never had (two analogue sticks). There are the massive PS3 game franchises like Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet etc etc and collosal power even by home console standards. All topped off with a sprinkling of 3G, OLED and Touch Screen. It is all things to all gamers. By targeting a very specific market you can achieve a very strong, hardcore, loyal following. This can provide you with a solid foundation from which to build on down the line. 

2 typical Vita customers, and some men..

By aiming at the informed and technologically minded consumer first, the hope is they are the sort of person that will tweet about it, blog about it, post a video review on YouTube and generally spread the word to people they know who are perhaps less well informed. Ideally this will then snowball and in 2 or 3 years time you will still have a product that is selling well, provided you then start developing games aimed more at the FarmVille crowd.


So there, on paper the Vita is a perfectly executed Marketing Strategy. I just need to wait a while to see if the plan actually works. In the mean time, I'm off to pre-order one.