5 things you need to know this week

How to go from a marketer to a brand owner

There’s a new energy drink on the scene and it comes from an unlikely source. Tenzing is the brainchild of former Red Bull marketer Huib van Bockel, who gave up his corporate role to fulfil his dream of launching his own product.

The aim of Tenzing is to be everything its competitors are not. It contains only natural ingredients – Himalayan rock minerals, green coffee, lemon juice – and has the same sugar level as coconut water. It is already stocked at Pod Restaurants and King’s College University and is also available online.

Van Bockel said his decision came about after he spotted a gap in the market for a lower sugar more natural energy drink. And he advises other marketers thinking about making the transition to brand owner to think carefully about whether their product is competitive and unique and to be willing to make sacrifices.

“You have to be emotionally prepared because the work is a lot tougher. If you have a big brand name behind you, it’s easy to get appointments. Obviously it’s not your name but the big brand name that helps you get your foot in the door. So on the one hand it’s tougher, but on the other hand it’s much more rewarding,” he explained.

BMW let consumers buy a car with their smartphone

A new BMW is now just a few clicks away on your smartphone after the car marque ran an experiential campaign with Shazam to let consumers buy a vehicle via their mobile phone.

Running in King’s Cross Station, the activity saw BMW’s agency FCB Inferno create an installation that displayed images of BMW cars which visitors could scan. They were then sent to the relevant page of the website to complete the purchase.

The aim was to promote the launch of BMW’s new ecommerce site, which it claims is the first full service online car buying site. It allows customers to view BMW’s full range of vehicles and specs, order the car, have finance or part exchange approved and arrange delivery. The process can take as little as 10 minutes.

BMW’s UK brand manager Nicola Green says: “We know how precious people’s time is so BMW Retail Online offers them the opportunity to explore purchasing at any time that suits them, in any place, offering any vehicle they wish from our product range – ultimate flexibility.

“The marketing, like the project itself, aims to bridge the gap between the physical and online space.”

‘The key to Christmas ad success is consistency’

Consumers awarded Warburtons’ ‘The Giant Crumpet Show’ the title of most successful Christmas TV ad and the brand says the key to its success is a consistent marketing message.

A survey by Millward Brown ranked Warburtons the highest on the key metric of whether its ad made people want to go out and buy the product. Warburtons’ marketing manager Nebula Norman says the breadmaker has “struggled to fulfil demand” since the ad went live on 14 November.

She believes the key to the campaign’s success is the idea of “episodic storytelling”. While each individual ad is different, they all have the same comedic storyline – using celebrities to pitch ideas to Warburtons’ chairman Jonathan Warburton.

“There is a wider trend around episodic storytelling in marketing right. The meerkats [for Compare the Market] are doing it with their film adverts and it’s working really well for us too.”

Nebula Norman, marketing manager, Warburtons

“Continuous campaigns help consumers with gaining familiarity for a brand and allow them to pick up where they left off so brand communications feel more relevant and less intrusive,” she said.

Costa launches assault on the lunch market

Not content with being the biggest coffee shop chain in the UK, Costa now has its sights set on the lucrative lunchtime trade with the opening of a new concept store on Tottenham Court Road in London.

‘Costa Fresco’ will be “food led”, presenting customers with a range of fresh food including pastries and quiches. While it might seem a shift for Costa, Carol Welch, its global brand and innovation director, says Costa is in fact going back to its roots.

“When Sergio and Bruno Costa opened their first store in London more than 40 years ago, they offered their customers freshly baked pastries each morning with their Mocha Italia blend, which Costa still serves today.

“We have taken that inspiration for quality coffee and baking and are now delivering that through baked products. This makes it very unique and specific to Costa,” she explained.

While it is just one store at the moment, Costa said it could roll it out further if its successful and is looking at other innovations to boost performance.

She explains: “At the moment, we are very much focusing on this as a concept store. It is something we believe we can do very effectively, and we think that there is a significant opportunity for expansion. But we need to make sure we get it right here first.

“We have a lot of exciting plans specifically looking at different things our customers have spoken to us about. It’s the start of a lot of exiting things you’ll see from us.”

Spotify wants to promote music in the same way broadcasters promote TV shows

Spotify has reams of content but admits it has not yet found a good way to promote it. And so it is looking to other media to find ways of getting people to engage.

“Over the next six months we are going to be promoting content almost like TV shows, similar to how Netflix would promote a show that gets people to re-engage with the product itself,” says CMO Seth Farbman.

Farbman has identified content such as its edited playlists on the ‘Discover Weekly’ tool as ripe for better marketing. They are sent out to users every Monday but Farbman says Spotify needs to get better at promoting them on an on-going basis.

It also wants to scale up attempts to tap into people’s emotional connection with music, using data to help inform its marketing. Farbman used the example of the ‘Found them first’ campaign it ran earlier this year, which heralded people as ‘tastemakers’ if they began listening to a particular artist before they hit the mainstream.

“Through user data we are able to identify what artists’ careers people have helped to launch,” he says. “That information taps into something really personal because people want to see that they are tastemakers. They want to know that their listening habits have a real meaningful impact and they want to be able to brag about it. We want to tell more and more of those stories that are deeply rooted in data.”