Having data is good, but we need to have insight on how to use it. The same goes for having a strong licence to our name. Acquiring the exclusive rights to use the Guinness brand led to no success for Linden Food Group, because they lacked the necessary knowledge to utilise it to its full potential. They did not know how public relations and marketing work together.
In a last ditch effort they brought in an agency to help them decide if they should axe the whole brand, or there is still a chance to revitalise their Guinness branded products.
A costly mistake
Linden’s initial idea was right, they just lacked the initiative and manpower to follow up on it. They had introduced the Guinness burgers through their most exclusive gourmet brand. However, they had no plan of action in place on how to launch the product. Customers were not educated nor confident enough to choose the novel, stout infused burgers.
In addition, their existing marketing and sales team did not have the capacity to give enough attention to the new line of products. Linden did not believe in the burgers as their perception was that only Guinness drinkers are interested in it. However they had not done any research beforehand so they misled themselves with this idea.
The agency did what they should’ve two years ago. They did research.
The key to success
They had narrowed down their audience to 400 people in the food industry and hospitality. In addition they had also conducted a quantitative survey of over a thousand of grocery shoppers, about their attitude and expectations towards a Guinness burger, and how often they drink said stout. As it turned out, more than eighty percent of the people who do not drink Guinness are still interested in a burger infused with it.
After proving Linden wrong, the agency created personas for potential buyers using the DiSC framework, illustrating how they operate and what are their biggest pain points. This way they could individually address them throughout the campaign, instead of talking to a wide crowd with generic messages.
The deep analysis was followed up with a large-scale multi-channel strategy, to engage decision makers and to introduce the Guinness burgers to them. An infographic was created with all the insight gathered from end consumers, in order to convince executives. The same data was used in HTML emails as well.
Butcher string tied brown paper envelopes were also sent out that contained a strong call-to-action in the form of a complimentary tasting session. At this point future partners were provided with convincing data about consumers and the opportunity to test the product. This was followed up by personalised plain text emails, that were meant to introduce a more personal form of communication.
Unseen benefits
The campaign led to appointments with retailers, and drove sales way above what the company had managed previously.
Linden’s case shows the importance of strong principles and insight. They have struggled for two years, because they did not understand their audience, nor their product. You can have all the elements of success, but if you lack insight, they cannot be utilised.
We need to know what makes our company unique, what service can we provide to partners, how we want them to perceive us and what we can do to achieve that. This is how public relations and marketing work together.
Linden gathered and shared relevant insight with their partners in order to market their product.