Caboose Cut Loose

If your product is pretty much exactly the same as your competitors, its up to luck as to which one a consumer chooses off the shelf right? Wrong.

It’s up to you to make your product different. If it’s not… then change it in some way that will make it stand out, or be more beneficial to then end user. Take bottled water. Can you honestly say that you can taste the difference between the 7/11 brand, Evian, Mt Franklin… or any of the other brands? Its all just water really. A lot of it now days isn’t even spring water, but just purified tap water. So what makes these brands different? Positioning, and packaging have a lot to do with it. Pricing also alters the perception of quality… but at the end of the day, its still just water.

That was the case until a Melbourne company, wanted to get a piece of the market, and launched their own brand… Another Bloody Water. With its unapologetic, no-frills label, it really stands out on the shelf. Its priced maybe slightly above the average, but its actually been awarded with media praise for being of higher quality than any other water on the market.

Quality isn’t what is moving bottles off shelves though. The marketing of it is.

Another fantastic example of how a product that wasn’t very unique has made itself stand out, is Hardy’s Wine. Back in my hospitality days when I was funding university (well the social side of it at least), Hardy’s wine was the house wine at 3 separate establishments I worked at. Its a cheaper wine, of reasonable quality… but its one of hundreds on the market. Hardy’s have struck gold with their latest packaging, teaming up with New Zealand company “Singlz”, and offering single serve bottles of wine.

Suddenly, Hardy’s wine is appearing in even more places… even Cirque du Soleil is on board with it. Its quick to serve, a generous size, plastic, yet doesn’t look tacky. Whilst the packaging isn’t faultless (the bottle contains more wine than the glass holds and doesn’t seal without the cup… so for the first few sips you are forced to carry a bottle in one hand and the glass in the other), it’s done enough to set itself apart from other brands for caterers and bars.

So if your product isn’t special… how can you make it special? How can you change it to be that little bit different, or to appeal to a different market?

A few small changes might triple your sales!

Post a comment

Name: (required)

Email Address: (will not be published) (required)

URL:

Comments: