Marketing strategies for two opposite customer groups – trendy & pregnant
Calling on all marketing experts! Or at least any entrepreneur (in-training, even) who has an opinion …
One of our new StartupNation Community Advisory Board members, Aron North, has a marketing dilemma. Aron has asked me to go to the StartupNation community to get some small business marketing strategies advice. Here’s the challenge:
Aron’s company, Perfect Beverage LLC, has identified two distinctly different customer groups for their product, a non-alcoholic top shelf cocktail mix made with all-natural ginger. The two customer groups are:
• 25-35 year old women dancing and drinking in the clubs of Los Angeles
• Pregnant women
Here’s how Aron tells the story …
The big question I have is how do you market this while not marketing it. You don’t want to lose your edge with the twenty-somethings. We currently don’t have plans to market the product in that manner – we think it would hurt our trendy bar image.
Wow! What a fascinating marketing dilemma. What do you think?
Can Aron successfully market to both audiences simultaneously? Hey, if anyone watched the recent season of the BravoTV series Project Runway (Suzanne and I are hooked – last night was the final episode. Congratulations to Chloe, the winner!), you know that a very pregnant Heidi Klum looked as fashionable & trendy as ever in her stylish outfits.
Should he listen to the market and abandon the initial focus in favor of a potentially larger market base?
How about splitting the company into two distinct brands?
Help a brother out!
By the way, every visitor to StartupNation.com will be able to go directly to the entire community with this kind of question/conversation as soon as we launch the upcoming community forum boards next week. The forums will be a part of an overall new community initiative where everyone will be able to post their own personal profile with links to their own websites, photos of themselves and lots more cool stuff. You’ll be able to position yourself as a mentor or expert in your area of expertise or just join in on the conversations. Stay tuned!
March 9th, 2006 at 11:09 am
[blue]There’s some marketing 101 to this question Joel - I’m wondering if Aron has assessed which group is a) the larger target market, b) offers the most growth potential, c) provides a cohesive ’segment’ that can be marketed to most efficiently.
Doing that kind of side by side comparison could reveal a lot about where to dedicate his efforts. I’d guess most pregnant women are in that same age range, and they’re probably not completely tuning out the channels and messaging he’d be using to market the product (except for the in-the-bar marketing, we hope) to those trendy 25-35 year olds.[/blue]
March 9th, 2006 at 11:11 am
Very interesting (and welcomed) challenge…
I would position I like the idea of 2 brands, but might be expensive.
Joel you hit the nail on the head with the Heidi Klum reference.
I don’t have kids so please forgive me if I sound presumptous…I’m thinking that pregnant women WANT to be treated the same as the 20 something…
If you look at what some of the clothing manufacturers are doing such as Pea in the Pod, they are now making items that designed to work before, during and after pregnancy…
In other words all that may be necesary is some tweaking of the advertising copy for each target.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:14 am
I am thinking the pregnant[i]b) offers the most growth potential, [/i] as they are brining future customers into the world.
March 9th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
What a cool dilemma.
It sounds like the medicinal aspect of this product is reaching an accidental market.
But, I’m with Kim. I wouldn’t necessarily differentiate the brand. But I might find a way to mention this other use.
I think the key marketing concept of this cocktail is the universally hip healthiness of it–whether you’re partying or pregnant.
On another note, I am so glad that rotten Santino didn’t win!
March 9th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Ohh Matt! I was actually rooting for Santino once Andrae & Nick were eliminated. He was the most interesting one.
March 9th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Yet another angle might be to position the drink as a great mixer–it mixes well with vodka, or works well on it’s own. Think of Red Bull. It wasn’t designed to be a mixer, but is now a favorite among bar flies everywhere. Gatorade too was popular in this capacity for a while. I think that this offers you an opportunity to market the drink to health concious drinkers and non drinkers, as well as pregnant women. As Chuck mentioned, these women do fall into your target age range, and probably still like to hit the smoke free bars of L.A. with their friends, espeically early in their pregnancies.
And for the record, Santino was robbed.
March 9th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Lisa… Joel
I agree with you on the marketing of this great product.
But come on.
Santino was a Jay-wanna-be.
March 9th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Speaking of Red Bull and unique marketing juxtapositions, have you heard this one:
The Red Bull energy drink company has bought the MetroStars, and the Major League Soccer team will be known as the New York Red Bulls.
I imagine there would be a lot of soccer moms ready for a Perfect Beverage drink!
March 9th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
If only ALL companies had such problems!!
My immediate instinct points to the fact that pregnancy is a condition that is temporary (hopefully!) - there may come a time when the "pregnancy market" individuals wind up back in the nightclubs (sans bambinos!).
The pregnant women are also from the same age bracket as your "nightlife" market.
I would look to put a few regrigerators with your product into maternity clothing stores (much like Jones Soda did with the skateboarding/surfing crowd), and see what happens.
Pregnant 25-35 yr alod women still have friends that are frequenting night clubs as well.
In my humble opinion all of this would point to NOT splitting the brands, but building the total HEALTHY brand image accross several markets.
John
March 9th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Everybody’s thinking that the groups are mutually exclusive? One goes from being a clubber to pregnant and then eventually back to clubbing? Don’t forget that the first few months of pregnant are NOT waddling around the house with hand on hip and running to the bathroom every 10 minutes. On the contrary, morning sickness (where ginger is the most important) is most often a first trimester thing. Your 25-35 trendy club gal who has just found out that she’s pregnant is probably going to want to be out in the clubs as long as she can. What a great way to not feel self conscious about being the only person in your group not consuming alcohol! Everybody’s drinking your product. And, hey, it avoids that awkward moment when everybody finds out. "Can I get a ginger ale?" "Oh my god, you’re pregnant!"
Maybe popularize the product in the nightclubs and put some sort of "You don’t have to give up the night life" or "Take a little bit of the night life with you" for the freshly pregnant crowd. If the drink is seen as something that the trendy nightclub crowd are all drinking, I think that pregnant ladies will be happy to have it in the house. Friends do come over and visit, after all. "Let me get you all a drink, I’m having water" gets boring. The fact that it helps with morning sickness ends up being a bonus, rather than the message.
P.S. I’m male but my wife’s pregnant with our third child so I’m not totally coming from left field ;).
March 9th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Nice discussion going here and lots of good ideas. It makes me really look forward to the launch of the community forum boards.
Aron, it seems like your situation might be tailor made for PR. Let consumers experience the additional benefit/market for your product the same way you did – as a pleasant surprise that no one expected. The “pregnant women love it” angle works as a nice sidebar to trend stories about your mixer – even better if some of the pregnant women it focuses on are still going out to the clubs and enjoying the same mixer as their friends.
And if you just happen to get a trendy, pregnant TV personality or a pregnant character in a scripted TV show to mention it on the air….
March 10th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Hi Michael,
I was thinking about PR myself…I might try to connect with some of the blogs on motherhood/family, etc. such as dotmom.com or babyblogs.com…perhaps sponsor a page?
Also, I’ve noticed that there are several TV news anchors on Fox and MSNBC who are pregnant, pitching to those personalities directly might be a good tactic.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:37 am
I’m 22 and am a little younger than your target age range, but I spoke with some of my female friends. They unanimously said that if they had already tried the drink and enjoyed it, they would continue to consume it regardless of the type of marketing. I don’t live anywhere near LA so that may be of no help to you.
I think you should try to promote it as a drink for women. Help define the genderline that seems to be bent and broken at so many times in our society.
Also if you do find yourself successful in marketing to both clubbers and pregnant women, you don’t want to put pregnant women in a situation where people think she’s consuming alcohol. Regardless of whether or not she actually is. One way you might be able to solve that problem is by marketing the mixer served with alhohol as always having a lime, but when your drinking it without alcohol it has a cherry. Its a basic example but i hope it gets the point across. Something like that is pretty subtle, but any women who has been exposed to advertising that defines the difference would appreciate it.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Health is health…..stick to that. Just change the creative to hit Gen Y in their media and Moms in theirs. Internet is huge for both audiences! Best of luck. Hope we help to make you a millionaire Aron.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Also, don’t forget about the tried and true direct mail…in that medium, you have the benefit of being able to test various messages and control clusters as well as various calls to action.
The catalogue companies are brilliant at this.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
I think you should leak it out to magazines for pregnant women (FitPregnancy), etc. that a cool mixer is also a great cure for morning sickness. As someone who falls in that market group and is pregnant, I know that the idea of going to clubs is not appealing when you are feeling green. However, the idea of something to help with the nausea is awesome! You could also market it in health food stores next to other ginger-related products. Perhaps you could give samples to some OBGYN’s to give to some of their patients? I don’t think it would turn off the club-goers to know that their mixer is also a good cure for morning sickness. They will probably be needing it someday (maybe the very next day!)!
March 10th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
The benefit of easing nausea is wonderful, while a person is in the early stages of pregnancy…but I would also be cautious with that aspect in ad copy and in pr…each time I read about that point, it turns me away from thoughts of buying it.
As someone pointed out earlier on in this discussion, you first have to determine which of the targets, albiet linked, has the most revenue potential.