Technique: Reframe the importance of your category or product.
Your biggest perception problem might be your biggest strength, if you find the right angle to reframe it.
Most butter ads are ignorable.
Zero personality. Same brand promise yada yada.
Nothing memorable.
So how do you shake things up to reinvigorate consumer interest in a familiar, boring, low-interest category... like butter?
Flora UK recently showed the World how to pave the path. Last January Flora introduced their plant-based butter alternative. And Flora introduced it in a radical, weird yet memorable new way.
You see, Flora Plant tastes and is creamy just like any ordinary butter.
So with the help of ad agency Pablo London Flora took this simple truth and shaked things up by challenging consumers to “Skip the cow”.
This simple message was first delivered through a 30-second documentary-style commercial featuring a fictional persona called Terry, owner of Terry’s Cafe.
The commercial starts with Terry addressing a classic consumer objection to plant-based butter. Terry says, “Yeah I know people say it tastes great and rich and creamy, but I’m not trying it.
No... I’m sticking with butter, thank you.”
Then Terry adds, “Oooooh, made from plants? Well, call me old fashioned, but I prefer my plants to have passed through all four chambers of a cow’s stomach and then expressed through the udders, as milk. Lovely. Normal.”
Don’t laugh, but this is a genius way of dramatizing the problem: Isn’t it weird that butter is “made in cows”?
If you think about it...every product is simple solution to a consumer problem.
So the more interesting, weird and top-priority the problem, the more important it is to position your alternative with a BANG.
If sales are flat or you’re launching a new product in a familiar, boring, low-interest category.... look beyond category norms and reframe your importance. But do it with a BANG.
Before
1. Attention grabber⇝ “A Fallen Grape discovery”.
2. Handle a classic objection or stereotype preventing people from buying⇝ “natural wines don’t have to taste like sauerkraut.”
3. Your promise⇝ “natural wines can taste good, too.”
My favorite example: Tonic water is usually the boring part of a cocktail. But British brand Fever-Tree found a fun angle to position their products as more important than what consumers think: “If three-quarters of your drink is the mixer, make sure you use the best.”
2. Find something relatable or new in popular culture and link your category to it.
3. Dramatize the problem and rescue the consumer with “your clever and punchy solution”
