Relax and Follow the Corona Extra Strategy to Delight Corona Agitated Customers
Original: May 2020, Repurposed: May 2020, Update: May 2020
According to the “2020 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and the Coronavirus” study, adults "are turning more and more to brands they are absolutely sure they can trust".
(In this study comparing “Canada” and “Worldwide” data, the “Worldwide” numbers are even higher for this expression ).
People trust you THE MOST on words, concepts or categories you own, not the ones you’ve gone and plastered your name on to.
This is, therefore, not the time for brand expansion - which we are against even under normal circumstances - but rather the time to narrow your focus.
As Al Ries wrote in his book "Focus" (published in 1996) and numerous articles, and as evidenced by 100s of examples:
"You can't expand your way to success. You can only narrow your way to success and then hope you don't spoil that success by overexpanding the brand."
A good example of this is the Corona Extra beer brand.
So much so that in 2011, it has even been the subject Norwegian marketing professor Lars Erling Olsen's doctorate study at the BI Norwegian Business School.
The study, which you can find in the link, is summarized there as follows.:
"Narrow Brands make you want to buy
May the 3rd, 2011
If you want a beer at the beach bar, the Mexican brand Corona quickly springs to mind. Brands characterized by few, but strong associations, perform better than brands with many associations, new research shows.
What is the situation for Corona Extra, which has been consistently implementing this strategy for years?
“According to Constellation Brands (STZ), sales of its flagship Corona beer soared 50%, well above the overall increase in beer sales.” – Forbes (Nielsen data).
Your Turn.
Decide in which area and / or who you will delight, focus on it and keep your promise;
1. Become an expert in a certain area: a specific benefit (“urgent need” as in the mobile delivery service getir), target audience (diabetic patients?), moment (5 o’clock tea?)…
These are just a few examples.
There are many ways to segment the market and choose a narrow area to dominate.
2. Focus on this area.
3. And once you start itching to expand, do not do this in your own country by launching new products under the same brand, go abroad.
What Nazım Salur, one of the founding partners of getir, said in 2016, is a great example of these 3 points:
Milliyet.com.tr, 06.05.2016
Salur, who pointed out that after the success of Getir in Turkey they decided to take the application abroad, said, "There is no other similar example in the world. In 10 minutes, we deliver 430 products to the desired address in Istanbul. Instant-need products is an area which no one else in the world has entered. When we succeeded in this area, we decided to go abroad before expanding into Anatolia, so that this idea would not be imitated in other countries. New York or San Francisco in the United States, London in the UK, Dubai, Moscow in Russia are the cities we plan to enter within a year."
Nowadays it is being discussed whether it is time to go global or not…
I listened live to Mr. Salur on the BUMED Instagram interview on Monday, May 18th, 2020; he said that they are still at the very beginning of the journey ("if the target is Kars we’re only in Izmit"), and that they will only consider they have achieved their goal when they become global.
Who are you going to delight and how?
If you have difficulty deciding, I would be happy to support you.
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