Increasing sales by 4,600% - 3 creative business cases

Business case #1

In a commodities market, increasing sales by 4,600% seems like an unrealistic probability or even a miracle. However,  Intermarché, one of the largest supermarket chains in France made it happen through creative branding.

Every day 500 million litres of orange juice is sold globally, half of that in Europe. The competition is that every brand claims its juice to be the best. It is common sense that the fresher the juice, the better it is. Intermarché created a brand, utilizing the exact hour & minute that a bottle of juice is produced as the brand name for that bottle. For example, 8:30 means the bottle of juice was made at 8:30 am. The brand changes according to the actual production time. The price of each bottle of juice is very affordable i.e., about 1.5 Euro, equivalent to $2.2. After 3-weeks in the market, the traffic in the stores increased by 25% and the sales of the juice increased by 4,600%. Moreover, this creative brand generated a hot hashtag #LeJusLePlusFrais (the freshest juice) that further strengthened the brand message and rocketed the sales. Watch the video about this campaign on YouTube.

Business case #2

Coca-Cola ran a brand campaign in China called “song lyric bottle”. The company found out that the Millennials in China feel more comfortable chatting online, and consequently face some challenges when communicating in person. Coca-Cola created a way to bridge the gap through music. The company collected the famous lyrics of hundreds of the current pop songs and printed one lyric on each bottle. For the first time, you can express your feelings through lyrics. Moreover, Coca Cola utilized the advanced Augmented Reality (AR) technology that allows consumers to scan a bar code and enjoy the flash animation created according to this lyric or listen to the original song that includes the lyric. You can also download an app called “music icons” on your smartphone and share the lyric and animations with your friends. For example, you can purchase a bottle with the lyric “there is a rainbow always after the rain” to encourage your friend who is facing a life challenge. Coca-Cola also engaged the original singers of those lyrics to promote their respective lyrics to their millions of fans online. Watch the video about this campaign on YouTube.

Business case #3

In Japan, fewer and fewer young people read newspapers. On the other hand, mineral water is one of the most popular items in a convenience store. A mineral water producer creatively brought together the newspaper and a mineral water bottle and named it “news bottle”. Each day, the latest headlines will be printed on the bottle. The manufacturer utilized AR technology so that people can read the full story of a headline by scanning the barcode on the bottle. The company reduced the price of the bottle by half to make it more affordable to young people. Now, news can be accessed almost everywhere while you rehydrate. As a result, the company has sold 3,000 bottles of mineral water per store per month. This campaign was reported in various media and was able to generate extensive public awareness.  Watch the video about the campaign on YouTube.

The advantages of disadvantages

There was a famous battle in ancient Palestine three thousand years ago. In the Israelite camp, a shepherd boy named David stepped forward and volunteered to fight with a Philistine giant Goliath, six feet nine at least, wearing a bronze helmet and over a hundred pounds of full body armour. With nothing more than a stone and a sling, David won the battle. How could David turn the mission impossible to possible?

This battle story gives us new perspectives on advantages. Goliath is not exactly what we think. Yes, he is tall and armed with heavy weapons - a javelin, a spear and a sword. But he only has advantages when his opponents come close to him for hand-to-hand combat. David, on the other hand, refused the King’s sword and armour and put one of his stones into the leather pouch of a sling, and he fired at Goliath’s exposed forehead in the distance. What happened next is a matter of legend.

Here, people thought Goliath had the advantage in terms of physical might, which he did, except that physical might would not be the deciding factor. Goliath’s advantages became disadvantages when David came running toward him, powered by courage and speed: he was too big and too slow for this kind of opponent.

The story illustrates that there are no absolute advantages or disadvantages. Advantages at a certain point will turn into disadvantages. As an old Chinese saying states, going beyond the limit is as bad as falling short.

One reason we are often confused about advantages and disadvantages is that we forget we are in a U-shaped world. The psychologists Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant said that there is no such thing as an unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have costs that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.

An inverted - U curve has three parts, and each part follows a different logic. There is the left side, where doing more or having more makes things better. There’s the flat middle, where doing more doesn’t make much of a difference. And there’s the right side, where doing more or having more makes things worse. For example, butter is gold in the morning, silver at noon, lead at night. In fact, nearly everything of consequence follows the inverted U. It makes more sense to identify where we are on the curve and then make strategies accordingly.

In this ever changing world, more and more disruptors have shaken the giants’ territories. Advantages may come in other forms and the old rules will be replaced with new rules. Be open!

Source: David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell

Photography credit: Reference for Business