This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Where brand leaders meet
This is the first of a series of posts we will be doing that tackle real world brands – asking you the question: what would you do differently if you managed this brand?
Let’s take Tully’s: a Washington brand which has gone head to head with Starbucks and has acknowledged and even accepted its second place status. Its strengths: hand-crafted coffee – from the small-batch roasted beans to the barista-pulled shots (read not automated and something Starbucks doesn’t do anymore), its size (remains small and local), and its summer menu of ice cream specialties. Its weaknesses: not differentiated in a Starbucks-led market, lacks internal culture, and doesn’t know what it wants to be.
If you were Tully’s brand manager, what would you do to take it from brand zero to brand hero? Lay it out for us and next week, we’ll throw our ideas into the mix and see if we can’t build a better brand for the local coffee chain.
3 Responses to “How could this brand BE better?”
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June 29th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I just came back from Denver where I was hanging out in a lot of cafes — none of them Starbuck’s or a chain. These were local coffee shops with lots of personality; that’s what missing at Starbuck’s — personality. Tully’s needs to bring back the local coffeeshop feel — comfy seats, bulletin boards, art, mellow hip music. Tully’s has a chance to be more friendly not tragically hip — something really missing in many coffeeshops. And it should embrace Fair Trade Coffee! Maybe it could feature a coffee country every month and play music and have art from that country.
June 29th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
I think the first step is what you mentioned above: they need to figure out what they want to be. I feel that the ubiquity of Starbucks has began to lead that brand to an “everything to everyone” situation (everyone goes to Starbucks, not just those who need “affordable luxury” or crave the “third place”). I think this creates an opportunity for brands like Tully’s to choose something very specific as their position (the opposite of everything to everyone) and own the heck out of it. To do this, you have to be comfortable knowing that by not being everything to everyone, you’re in fact going to be NOT RIGHT for part of the market. In my experience you can’t build a strong brand until you know whom exactly you’re NOT right for, just as well as you know those you are right for.
June 30th, 2007 at 1:53 am
Tully’s is not succeeding because they are trying to copy Starbucks. One of the former CEOs, maybe he’s still the CEO, not sure, said his business strategy was to put a store next to every Starbucks store. Well, obviously he doesn’t have the capital to do that and even if he did he’s just trying to be another Starbucks.
Tully’s needs to create a coffee afficionado culture, not a mass production one. Their strength is their hand pulled small batch coffee. They need to market to those who want a better cup of coffee and a place that feels local, not international. They need to focus on why their coffee is better and less on reaching those who come to them just because they are nearby.
They need to remove any similarities to Starbucks - similar sounding drinks, merchandising and store layout and create a place that speaks to being local and yet coffee sophisticated. Perhaps they have regular coffee tastings, or a coffee bar similar to wine tastings. They should put out a blog about all things coffee - the coffee growers they buy from, the importance of making espresso by hand, the subtleties between regions, etc. They also need to get involved in the community by sponsoring local events. They need to promote themselves through word of mouth marketing and not mass advertising.
Arden Clise