KEY Branding LESSONS Learned FROM “the breakfast of Champions”
Remember the Wheaties breakfast cereal tagline “the breakfast of champions?” That one little tagline has fueled the growth of Wheaties for over a hundred years. From featuring photos of Muhammad Ali and Bruce Jenner on the box, to honored veterans and even your local sports team - Wheaties has survived and thrived as a brand through the Great Depression, two world wars, and all the way to the present day’s tsunami wave of breakfast cereal explosion. As you know, there are so many breakfast cereal’s on offer today that they fill up an entire grocery aisle and feature everything from unicorn shaped marshmallows to ethically sourced quinoa. Still good old Wheaties sells like crazy.
It’s pretty astonishing when you think that an Irresistible Message, (step 2 of the Client Stampede Formula) - that was created well over a 100 years ago - is so effective and so evergreen that it is just as powerful in today’s modern age as it was all those years ago.
And this brings me to discuss a very important point for helping you grow your brand.
One of the biggest misconceptions about branding is that it’s all about the way your business looks - namely it’s logo, the look and feel of your website, what color palette you use, the quality and style of your photo imagery and so on. In truth, while design is an important part of building your brand identity, it’s only half of what’s truly needed. The other half - which also happens to be the most difficult part to create - is your Irresistible Messaging - namely what is the unique message that is going to magnetize people to your business. If you look at the design of the Wheaties box and even their logo, it has transformed over the years to stay fresh and updated - in just the same way your business design must remain updated. But don’t make the common mistake of believing that a fresh redesign is what’s going to bring flocks of new customers to your door. That’s one of the most common complaints we hear from companies who have invested tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in doing a rebranding project. The company looks better, and everyone working there feels better because they have a more modern look, but there’s little if any positive impact on sales. Because, put bluntly, new design isn’t what’s going to attract the new customers. That’s what your company has to invest in as a minimum to prevent yourself from looking outdated and being left behind. The new clients are going to come from a new design combined with Irresistible Messaging, which like wheaties has includes a powerful tagline as well as carefully crafted language that marries both the personality of your business along with precisely what your customers are looking for. That’s the real magic of a true rebrand that will create your client stampede.
So, to summarize - if you’re considering a rebrand, or you need help expanding your existing brand, understand the difference between a traditional rebrand - which simply focuses on refreshing your design , or a transformative rebrand which is going to elevate your messaging and truly grab the attention of your target audience. Done properly a Transformative Rebrand can be a game-changing strategy for your business that can leap frog your sales and elevate your status to market leader overnight. That’s why it’s one of my favorite marketing projects, because it requires a very high level of strategy combined with in-depth market and business analytics and large amounts of creativity and design.
So know what kind of brand building you’re looking to do before just blindly diving into a project - is it a traditional rebrand so your business doesn’t get left behind, or is it a Transformative Rebrand that’s going to take your business to the next level?
