I’m back

 

One day there we were having a departmental meeting discussing plans on how we were going to revive one of our most beloved brands. This brand used to do very well but due to a business decision to prioritize another brand over this brand, the bottle format of our beloved brand had been out of stock for more than 18 months.

When this brand was launched, I was a second-year student at the University of Ghana, Legon. This drink was my go-to drink anytime I had lunch at the Odo Rise Restaurant in the Akuafo Hall of the university. I must confess that I had lunch there every working day of the week. This means that I had this drink every Monday to Friday. The brand then was positioned as the best of both worlds (a blend of Malt and Cola). This novelty was generally accepted and patronized by the market when it was introduced to the Ghanaian consumer. This was because it was the very first time such a product had hit the market and as the typical Ghanaian consumer trend would have it, they rushed for the product in droves. Same with the following; Alvaro, Spacefon SIM cards, MTN Momo just to mention a few.

With regards to the product’s performance, it exceeded all parameters in the first year of launch, volume, revenue, and profit. The product was well advertised on TV and radio, and you were likely to see a poster, crates, or fridges of the product in your neighborhood store or the nearest beer bar. The product’s product awareness and distribution were not the issue. The biggest issue was that the product shared the same production line with the company’s cash cow of the business.

So as it usually goes after a successful year of launch, a brand in such as situation is sometimes not given attention anymore, attention is now shifted back to the cash cow and once in a while when there is production space, the new product is then slotted in for production.

I have seen this scenario played out a lot of times in my marketing career spanning 2007 till date. I must confess that this product shared the production line with 2 other well-established products that were equally doing well

This issue plagued this star product and it went out of stock for more than 18 months. After such a long absence the business decided to launch a can version of the bottle product to at least keep product presence and awareness going while they figure out how they invest in production expansion in a plant that was not ready at that time to accommodate expansion.  

The issue is that the can version came with a different taste and consumers like me who already knew the product from launch easily identified the change in taste and so were not hooked onto the new taste they were now been served in the can version so the cans did not do well when introduced.

Months after this played out, I joined the business as the brand manager for the product and its mother brand. I was responsible for doing everything marketing to drive these two brands, the mother brand and the brand extension as we call it in marketing. Truth be told, like any bright stepson, you will not always be given the attention and resources needed to succeed. Focus was always given to the mother brand and only 20% of the remaining attention went to this star product.

After several business discussions on what to do to this product, consideration was given to providing all the resources needed to revive it. This demand came from the regional team sitting in the Africa office situated in London. The team in London sent some good money to see through whatever plans we wanted to embark on to turn this brand around. I had a strong feeling that Ghana’s nonperformance on this brand was hurting someone’s yearly performance assessment in London. Contrary to Ghana’s performance, the product was doing very well in Kenya, Nigeria, and Cameroon.

So with this new revival wave blowing, we came up with a master plan to reverse the decline. The plan was themed “I’m Back”. This theme was suggested by the Marketing Director. It was more like the return of Arnold Schwaszennegar after his “Hastalavista” declaration in Terminator I. That theme energized us to craft the plan.

When we were all set and ready to present our plan to the Marketing Director, my boss emailed her the pre-read for her review a day before. On the morning of the presentation, the Marketing Director came to the office at about 8:30 am. After her usual morning coffee, she came to our corner where I was stationed with my boss, and said, “I have read your elaborate plan and I think it will not work”. She said to the hearing of everyone in the office. My immediate thoughts were “Why won’t it work”? I believed in the 360 plan that the consumer was going to clamor for the product as soon as we started rolling out this plan.

The marketing director perhaps sensing some misgivings on my face turned to me and asked, “Kwame, if you had a girlfriend called Ama who was pretty, sweet, loving, lovable, and did everything a girlfriend desired to do and one day you woke up and she was gone without any notice, how will you feel?” she asked. Then she added “ Before you answer, imagine that this girl ghosted you for 18 months. No text, no calls, no messages in your Facebook inbox, nothing. After moving on eighteen months down the line, you settle on Jane, a cute chic who is doing equally well and even better than Ama, and then one Saturday while watching Chelsea beat Manchester United 6-0 in your living room, you hear a knock on the door. When you open the door, Ama is smiling from ear to ear, and then she creams “Hey I’m Baaaack!!!! Now tell me, how will you feel? And what will you do”?

“I will immediately tell her to go back to wherever she is coming from and I will slam the door in her face”, I said. Then she said, “That’s what consumers will do to your campaign if you roll it out. It will be a waste of business resources and your time and energy if you do that”.

“Your brand ghosted loyal consumers without a word like Ama did. They moved on to settle on other equally good products that came on the market while you were away, and now you want them to come back after close to two years of your active absence? your plan won’t work, no plan will work”, she added. My boss and I looked at each other indicating through eye contact that we needed to shelve this plan and we did.

Six months down the line, the business started receiving huge volumes of near-expiry cans from trade. Employees were given 6 to 12 trays of the drink to take home monthly and for Christmas to lessen the cost of FDA superised decanting which I believe was three times the cost of the total number of products to be destroyed.

During that period, you could always find huge quantities of the product in cans in my dad’s house every single day. My younger brother, Michael, enjoyed it so much that the following year when I was changing jobs to now go and manage Ghana’s biggest bathing soap brand, Michael was not happy with my decision because according to him, he would no longer drink soft drinks and besides, I can’t drink soap.

This story here is not about Ama or Michael. It is about how businesses put effort and valuable resources into launching products, getting the Ghanaian consumer to know the product, and try the product and after getting continuous repeat purchases after sampling or their first purchase, we decide through our internal inefficiencies and challenges to pull the products from the market and comeback after a long absence and expect the consumer to rush back for your product.

They would have moved on to try other products in town. You will be fortunate to have them do that. Listen to Kofi Kinataa’s “Single and Free” track. That is the nature of the Ghanaian consumer and for the Ghanaian trader, his or her shelves will not lay bare. It will immediately be replaced by another product the very moment you stop supplying them.

Have a great day and thank you for reading a piece of my mind. I hope waking up at 2 am on June 5th, 2024 to finish this write-up has been beneficial.