I have always been fascinated by people who buy nearly bankrupt companies, turn them around, then sell them for a neat profit. Now, there are companies out there that do the same thing for brands. Take River West brands for example. They are bringing back Salon Selectives. Daneen from Spoiled Pretty quotes the following:

“The re-introduction of Salon Selectives represents a great opportunity
for our company,” said Dr. Eugene Zeffren, CEO of SSB, the company that
distributes and markets Salon Selectives. “Our research shows that the
brand still has over 80 percent awareness among our target consumers.
These women don’t just remember the Salon Selectives name, they retain
a host of other positive associations, including the apple scent and
the customized hair care message – they can even sing the jingle.”

So – with its reintroduction, Salon Selectives does not have to start from scratch. It already has 80% awareness! This is every marketers dream to work with (and now that jingle is going to be in my head for the rest of the day ).

On their Brand Properties page, there is a wide variety of options, including Coleco, Underalls and Eagle Snacks. From a business strategy perspective, these seem to be strange bedfellows, but River West goes into an interesting explanation of their value proposition:

What do the brands below have in common? If you’re
looking for manufacturing synergies, you won’t find any. What ties them
together is this: they were all once big businesses and important parts
of Americana during their first runs, all went off the market
completely or close to it at one point in time, and all of them have
returned or will soon return to the marketplace thanks in no small part
to the work we do at River West Brands.

River West does more than simply re-release the brands, it actually creates new value.  Jennifer Wells from Report on Business discusses this example:

Take the case of Brim coffee, a dead brand until River West came
along. There was high consumer recall of the product and its
advertising motto: “Fill it to the rim with Brim.” Better yet, says Mr.
Thomann, fewer than 10 per cent of survey respondents remembered that
Brim was a decaffeinated coffee. (“Fill it to the rim” played on the
notion that you needn’t worry about the jittery effects of caffeine.)

That memory gap has left River West free to seek a reformulation of
the beverage, which the company hopes to relaunch no later than the
first quarter of ’09. The new coffee will be caffeinated and pumped
with vitamins and minerals – “Fill it to the rim with Brim because it’s
filled with goodness.”

I find this idea very compelling, since it shows the true value of brand building. Once the mind becomes familiar with a brand, that familiarity is precious psychological real-estate. As the market-place gets more and more cluttered, the value of that psychological real-estate on old brands keeps on growing.

We recently released a site for Condo-Garage, a condo built especially for cars. It is a very innovative idea, so I was excited to take on the project. This is the first automobile condo in Canada. The main challenges of the project were:
1. This is a high-end product, so we had to be more aspirational and less utilitarian.

2. This is a new concept, so although we wanted to be aspirational, we still had to describe what the product was.

3. We wanted to use best practices in SEO and usability while maintaining an attractive look on the site.

Marketing to the Affluent

During my research, I found a number of characteristics of affluent consumers (I also added an observation based on my personal experience with affluent Canadians in particular):

• Affluent customers want to be distinguished from the crowd: they only want to be seen in
  a certain place, using only certain brands. They want to be one step ahead of everyone else.
• They seek exclusivity:
  ‘limited editions’, price is an indicator of exclusivity, want to avoid using popular brands.
• They want to feel unique and special: personalization of products and services
• They seek convenience: value their time as much as their money.
• They are willing to pay a premium: They want the best quality, exclusivity, satisfaction
  and outstanding customer service.
• High involvement buying behavior: degree of engagement with the client needs to be high.
  Make buying an experience.
• Canadians: Often take cues from other parts of the world for trends – especially from the US. However, Canadians are less open about conspicuous consumption.

During my development process with partners such as Jar Creative and Arxis, I made sure to show and describe in detail my observations on affluent customers. We created exclusivity by adding images of luxury vehicles throughout the logo, site and rendering and we emphasized personalization and convenience in the copy.

Describing the Product

After years of working in the software industry, I became very frustrated with aspirational marketing, that doesn’t actually inform. Yes, your site looks great – but does your program do what I need? During this project, I made sure that we actually described the product, without appearing too utilitarian. For example, you can see the logo looks very garage-like – emphasizing that you can hold a number of different items inside. We also put a watermark of  Toronto in the background, showing where the garage is located.

SEO and Usability

Most condo sites are built in Flash, but I moved away from that, trading a flashy presentation for a better ranking on search engines. Having additional text also helped us with #2, describing the product. We also added a news section, where we write regular articles that would be of interest for Condo-Garage prospects. We did this mostly for SEO purposes, to continually add new content and be revisited by search engines. To my happy surprise, users are saying that they enjoy the articles and find them helpful.

Conclusion

We are still very early on in this release but so far the results from our AdWords and other campaigns have been successful. I feel that creating a brand based on market research and product needs and making it consistent makes it stand out to the users that we want to impress, while describing the concept. I feel very fortunate to be a part of this project, and I am looking forward to seeing its success continue to grow.