Let’s awaken a Sleeping Giant

Dude! We’re getting the brand back together.

“Happy brands are all alike; every unhappy brand is unhappy in its own way.” — Leo Tolstoy, probably

The year is 2059, and you are the brand new Marketing Director for still entirely fictional Black Anvil Laundry. Yes, you were the Marketing Director for Black Anvil Laundry back in the 2020s, but this is a new year and literally a new you … and you find yourself up against it. 

Black Anvil Laundry used to be this amazing, innovative company. You used to be a market leader. People used to covet your washing machines and dryers. You won a gaggle of design awards. Your ad campaigns were legendary. The more you dive into the history of the brand, the more you ask yourself, “What the hell happened?”

What happened is that Black Anvil Laundry fell asleep. It happens all the time. Not your fault, of course, but it is your responsibility.

You take your concerns to your CEO, who is also very new. She thinks for a bit … and then asks you to come up with a strategy to get Black Anvil Laundry back on top. You call us. Together, we get to work. 

In order to figure out what the hell happened — and what to do about it — we start with a diagnosis. 

We talk with past and present customers. We visit them on laundry day to see how they use the machines and which features they like the most. We talk with people who used to own Black Anvil Laundry but switched to a different brand. We talk to people who have actually inherited their washing machine and dryer from dearly departed relatives (advertising works!). We talk with younger people, aspiring luxury buyers who might one day choose the brand. We ask questions, listen, observe and take notes.

Then we talk to your product development team, your designers and engineers, your finance people, your sales team, your supply chain people, your customer service team, HR and your C-suite. 

We go to trade shows and talk with retailers, interior designers, home renovators and anyone else we can think of. We look at what your competitors are doing and where they seem to be going. 

Using the COGS of Marketing Effectiveness, we measure Black Anvil Laundry’s mental availability, physical availability, distinctive brand assets, creative effectiveness, category entry points and more to check the health of the brand. 

We sift through decades of brand history — campaigns, positioning statements, product launches, models, designs that never made it to the showroom floor, notes the founder and original team made. Anything that helps us understand the DNA of Black Anvil Laundry.

Here’s what we find:

Black Anvil Laundry has iconic distinctive brand assets, a solid reputation for heirloom quality and some lingering fumes of fame from the old “Inheritance” campaign. You also have 35 years of design, engineering and manufacturing expertise. That’s the good news. Here’s the less-good news … 

The premium laundry appliance category you helped create is now crowded. All of your competitors are offering machines with pretty much the same quality, performance, energy and water efficiency and so on. As for design, their machines don’t look like Black Anvil Laundry, but they all have a distinct look. 

Physical availability is eroding. You used to be everywhere premium appliances are sold. Today, you’re being crowded out online and in stores by bigger brands with more expansive product lines. 

Mental availability continues to evaporate. Black Anvil Laundry has a “not your father’s Oldsmobile” problem. Older buyers remember your brand, but younger buyers don’t really know who you are. At best, they see a legacy brand with little cultural relevance. 

You’re losing the ability to command a premium price. Years of discounting and an absence of brand building mean that customers aren’t willing to pay what they used to. That’s a problem for a luxury brand. 

Ultimately, the core problem is a lack of focus. Everyone has been trying to drive the bus in a million different directions. Finance became obsessed with efficiency, sales with quarterly goals, marketing with comms and leadership with managing the day-to-day. The product development and manufacturing teams eventually just put their heads down and did what they were told. 

Somewhere along the way, Black Anvil Laundry lost the plot. 

Strategy is all about making choices, and based on what we’ve learned, here are yours: 

You could choose to steer in the direction of the skid and become a mass market brand, though competing at scale with the Maytags and Whirlpools of the world will be challenging. You could choose to reassert Black Anvil Laundry as the dominant luxury washer and dryer brand. You could choose to get out of the washer and dryer game altogether and make fancy toasters or cappuccino machines instead. 

Which of these is the right choice? Ooh! Excellent question. The answer is: It depends. What would you do? 

You present everything to the CEO and the rest of the C-suite. Ultimately, the team decides together that … 

Going forward, Black Anvil Laundry will be singularly obsessed with building and selling the most beautiful, premium, coveted, heirloom-quality washing machines and dryers on Earth. 

That means every decision, every goal, every ad, every tactic, every Excel sheet, every link in the supply chain, every weld, every meeting that could’ve been an email exists in service of this guiding principle. 

Now it’s time for some coherent actions based on the 4 Ps. 

Product: 

1. Eliminate any products and product lines that do not ladder up to the new guiding principle. No more Black Anvil Laundry podcast mics or beach towels.
2. The bigger brands have crowded your space? Make a new one. Develop a limited, ultra-premium, exclusive Founder Series with the original silhouette, updated technology and serialized owner registry. The big dogs can play at scale, but you can play at speed.
3. In the next 3–5 years, develop Anvil Everyday — a line of slightly more accessible washing machines and dryers for aspiring luxury buyers. If Black Anvil Laundry is Ralph Lauren, Anvil Everyday is Polo (not a perfect analogy, but it’s close). The goal here is to expand our audience and give us a bigger footprint both on the floor and online. 
4. Test limited runs of branded laundry accessories — baskets, racks, shelving, vents, etc. — with luxury home goods retailers like Jonathan Adler and Lawson-Fenning.

Pricing: 

1. End discounting immediately. 
2. Raise the price on flagship washers and dryers to become even more exclusive and unapologetically expensive.
3. Offer ultra-premium Founder Series models at super-premium prices. 
4. Price Anvil everyday low enough to recruit a broader audience of buyers, yet premium enough to protect the brand halo. 

Place (physical availability):

1. Get the sales team out there to strengthen relationships with existing retail networks and close long-term deals for more floor space on better terms. Yes, you want to be in Home Depot and Lowe’s because even though you’re an exclusive luxury brand, you want as many people as possible to see and engage with Black Anvil Laundry. Exclusivity is a vibe.
2. Expand the dealer network. Develop new and exclusive collaborations with non-traditional partners like luxury home goods retailers, boutique hotels and airports.
3. Because a huge percentage of search terms are generic (“high-efficiency washing machine” vs. “Whirlpool”), make sure you have enough of the right products and product pages to win organic search.
4. Eventually expand to the UK and European markets. 

Promotion:

1. Revive the “Inheritance” campaign with a new cast, a new story and a modern take. Make it 80% familiar, 20% new. Call it “Birthright,” and dial up the drama and atmosphere. 
2. Create expansive in-store displays tied to the new “Birthright” campaign. 
3. Sponsor a limited series podcast where each episode tells a story of a famous or infamous inheritance. There was incredible drama surrounding Picasso’s estate. Howard Hughes, Barry White and Prince never wrote wills, and the fights for their fortunes were wild.  
4. Find sponsorship opportunities with teams that have been passed down from generation to generation — the Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs and New York Rangers come to mind, but there are others. Collaborate with family-owned luxury companies like LVMH. 
5. Create an international puzzle/strategy/mystery game that leads people on a hunt to uncover a mysterious inheritance. No purchase necessary to enter or win, of course. 

Easier said than done? Always. 

So what does this mean for you?

We don’t know if your brand is a Sleeping Giant, so not to get all Jeff Foxworthy on you …

If you’re an established brand in a highly competitive category, and you’ve been slowly losing ground for a number of years … you might be a Sleeping Giant. 

If you’re a challenger brand that has reached a plateau and can’t quite get to the next level no matter what you try … you might be a Sleeping Giant. 

If you’ve got a fantastic new product or service that people can’t find, don’t understand or don’t seem to care about … you might be a Sleeping Giant. 

Every brand is different, but with any Sleeping Giant, there’s a whole lot of potential to be unlocked. Easy? Nope. Fun? Absolutely. Everyone coming together to kick ass and chew bubblegum in the same direction is gloriously fun. 

So if you think your brand might be a Sleeping Giant, give us a call. We can help wake it up. See you next time. 

Sources!

1. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters – Richard Rumelt