Wednesday Wisdom - Successful Repositioning

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The Ultimate challenge
Making something cool and popular can be the hardest job. Many campaigns have tried and had plans massively backfire with consumers being evermore savvy to techniques used to pull sales. I am going to look into how sincerity and good placement can be the making of campaigns, and create an effective project that in turn drives sales and changes perception of a brand.


You Actually CAN Polish a Turd!
One campaign that sticks in my mind would be the repositioning of the Skoda brand by VW. Following the failure of an expensive and ineffective campaign for the Skoda Octavia, VW persevered and went back to basics for the new model Fabia’s campaign.
Working with the existing negative brand perception within the UK the tagline;

"The Fabia is a car so good that you won't believe it's a Skoda"

This campaign was deployed in print, poster and television adverts. in additional to the request for positive stories within consumer press and a successful auto magazine competition to win the new model, the success was more than impressive. Within the year 11, 000 Fabia’s had been purchased and the failed Octavia model was seeing a rise in sales. This massive shift in public opinion lead to the need for customers being on a waiting list for a new model.

At least with a new product you have a fresh start, with an unpopular or uncool product there is a raft of negativity to fight back against. Having humility and a sense of humor backed with the new found halo effect of the VW brand taking on the company, this honest and simple approach reduced consumer suspicion and helped build up positive connotations of the brand.


Revisiting An Old Favorite
The most recent repositioning of a classic household name is that of Yellow Pages – or Yell.
The new TV ad features a 40-something man searching record shops, flicking through racks of vinyl, in search of a trance record. His disc jockey name, or handle, is Day V Lately. With no luck he returns home to his daughter who helps by handing over her iPhone and loads the new Yell app.

It ends with the man locating the record and revealing he is Day V Lately. This all compared to the 1983 Yellow pages advert, with an elderly man looking for a book he wrote on fly fishing in his heyday, eventually finding it with help from his daughter and yellow pages.

This brings the concept right up to date.

• Making the protagonist younger to the original in order to be accessible to an audience that remember the original advert, but have a character they can relate to.
• Updating the sought after item to a record, an item with an immediate link to the rise in interest in vinyl.
• Updating technology and using the Apple iPhone4, massively popular therefore cool.
• Using the rise in popularity in Dj’s and electronic music to relate to a large audience.

In addition the “Real” elements, the feel of real people, real stores and in turn adds to the feel of a genuine story due to the lack of commercial “gloss”. It makes real the benefit of using the service and instills trust in the viewer. This re-branding or repositioning in the public realm is a prime example of simply updating a popular campaign in a reverent and relevant way can work wonders.

In conclusion, creating relatable characters and situations are key for the audience to get behind the brand and product ethos. Having a brand persona that is reliable, trustworthy and above all shows they are "tried and tested" good at their product or service is the basic message that successful campaigns put across. The important trick is to find a method of doing so that grabs the audience. In this case, either by sending up the brand in a lovably humorous way, or echoing the sturdy rock of the past and giving it a clever lick of paint.

Have there been any campaigns you have noticed that have done particularity good or badly recently? Comment with details to be included in part 2 of this article next week!

Till next time all.

V x