"Procter & Gamble’s trash may soon become other marketers’ treasure."
That was the opening line from a Wall Street Journal piece from 2014 entitled The Marketers’ Guide To Buying An Old P&G Brand. The article itself stems from P&G's decision last August to divest itself of some of its brands to focus on its higher-revenue generating brands.
So far, it has divested itself of some soap and beauty brands including Camay, Zest plus Duracell batteries.
As per the aforementioned Wall Street Journal piece there is a clear line of delineation for P&G when it comes to how much money they invested in some brands vs. others when it came to marketing dollars.
"Some of these brands draw relatively paltry amounts of marketing spending, according to Kantar Media data. P&G spent $2 million on Ivory and $702,000 on Era last year. Of the more than 100 brands P&G supports with advertising, over a quarter drew less than $100,000 in the U.S. last year, according to Kantar Media. In comparison, P&G spent over $1 billion in 2013 on its top five brands, including Crest ($274 million), Olay ($247 million), and Cover Girl ($215 million), Kantar Media estimates."
One Man's Trash...
Then there are P&G brands that have been dormant for a while. Orphaned brands, as the WSJ story refers to them by, offer very attractive business opportunities for these brands come to the table with varying levels of brand equity with them.
One such brand is Brim as "fill it to the rim, with Brim."
Here's an old TV spot to either help you remember the brand if you're old enough or introduce you to the brand if you under the age of say 35.
One man who thinks P&G's "trash" may be his treasure if Shae Hong, CEO of Sensio Inc., which now holds the rights to the name. To date, the brand has launched a line of coffeemakers under the Brim name. I caught up with Shae to dig deeper into why this brand, what the plans are for the brand and any advice for someone considering taking a chance on a P&G brand.
Steve Olenski: Why was the decision made to purchase the Brim brand? What about attracted you to it?
A: We created a strategic plan to enter into the drip coffee segment with some new innovation about 4 years ago, at the time we also identified that beyond the innovation we needed a well known brand amongst Gen x and baby boomers (since they primarily purchased drip coffee machines) - so when the opportunity came around for Brim it seemed perfect based on its brand heritage and high level of awareness with the 40-year old and older consumer.
Q: The coffee industry has seemingly been engulfed by the single-cup phenomenon that began with the Keurig K cups. What are your thoughts on this, will Brim ever introduce its own single-serve cup and if not, why?
Shae Hong: Right now we are creating solutions that bring you a "single serve" experience without the cost of a K-Cup or capsule and this is what we are focused on. As we launch the brand in bagged coffee and build that business this could be something we look at down the road but I don't see it in the near future.
Olenski: How is the brand currently being marketed and advertised?
Hong: We launched the brand with a marketing campaign in May of 2014 and that went through the summer with our launch of the SW20 and SW30 model coffeemakers. We also partnered with the TV retailing channel to launch as well as put big resources behind both social media and earned media efforts. These are still ongoing.
Olenski: What does the future hold for the brand?
Hong: Our plan is to build Brim into a dominant brand in the coffee maker space that represents innovation and solutions. Long term we see Brim continuing to grow as we expand out of coffee makers and into bagged coffee.
Olenski: Finally what advice would you give to someone who is considering doing what you did: buying an existing brand, in your case a dormant brand and for all intents and purposes bringing it back to life?
Hong: My advice would be to make sure and leverage the history of the brand and the assets that have been a part of that brands DNA. You can't replace historical marketing and the amount of awareness that was built prior and so the best thing to do is to leverage it and lean into what the heritage was rather than trying to re-invent it.
