Can we change your mind?

Positioning a brand or product is challenging – but what about when you want to move it into a different sector – that’s a whole new ballgame! It’s time to cognitively reframe! Cognitive reframing is a term used in psychology that encourages us to look at a negative situation differently. The idea being that we can choose the perspective from which we look at things. We can also use this approach in marketing. Let’s say your brand is dwindling in a shrinking market or you see new potential in a different customer base. One plausible way to realise your brand’s full potential is to reframe how people view your brand or product.

My favourite story on reframing

First, there was wallpaper. As this product came about when coal fires were a thing, next came a product to clean it. Kutol Products produced a putty-like substance that could be wiped over wallpaper to remove dirt. It was a big seller. They had their positioning in the bag! However, after the Second World War, gas heating started replacing coal fires, and washable wallpaper hit the market. Joe McVicker (the nephew of the owner of Kutol Products Wallpaper Cleaner) was invited to save the company from bankruptcy. He was faced with the challenge of selling a product in a dying market, and he had a problem that re-positioning could not help with.

Joe’s sister-in-law Kay, a nursery school teacher, was looking for cheap ways to make Christmas decorations for her pupils. She read an article about creating ornaments with wallpaper cleaner and biscuit cutters. As she knew that Kutol Products Wallpaper Cleaner was non-toxic, she tried it. As she watched the children excitedly play using the putty, she decided to reframe how Joe looked at the product. It wasn’t a wallpaper cleaner. It was a toy. Soon Play-Doh was hitting the shelves in toy shops across the world. A win for cognitive reframing.

Some more examples:

My Gran used to eat prunes with her porridge at a time when they were openly advertised for their laxative effect (and subsequently became strongly associated with that). Their positioning was within the elderly market.  However, prunes had such a reputation that people would not want to be seen buying them.

Time for cognitive reframing. In the 1990s there was a movement to win permission to change the name of the prune to free it from its connotations. Research had shown that women aged 35 to 50 preferred the term ‘dried plum’. In 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported that plum growers had won permission to start calling prunes ‘dried plums’.

And it sort of worked.

What did happen was that that ‘dried plums’ ended up positioning themselves alongside all the other dried fruit – so companies like Sunsweet Inc. decided to re-embrace the prune!

And in that time, a new type of customer was born (literally) – new health-conscious consumers under the age of 30 were not aware of the constipation connotations. So prunes were pushed out as the new ‘superfood’ to millennials.

Lidl’s milk sales in Sweden were down. Swedish people had much pride for their milk, and, because of the name that Lidl used, it never occurred to them that the milk sold by Lidl was 100% Swedish and not imported from Germany.

Lidl’s reaction? A reframing campaign.

Loyal Swede, Bosse Elfgren made his beliefs about Lidl’s milk very clear:

‘Why the heck should I buy Lidl’s German milk?’ he wrote on Lidl’s Swedish Facebook page.

And Lidl listened. In a beautifully executed campaign, they re-packed their milk as ‘Bosse’s milk’.

Here’s the full story:

Upfield Holdings own brands such as I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, Blue Band and Flora, which are all popular margarine brands. They’re looking to take advantage of a market rising 4% yearly by reframing many of their products.

This year, Asda put security tags on Lurpak® butter, and there were no tags on margarine. Margarine was created to be a cheaper alternative to butter (Napoleon had a hand in this), and although it traditionally contained animal products, over time it became vegetarian. But it isn’t butter (as we’re reminded), and due to its positioning, many customers still associate it with being a cheaper alternative and still having a high trans fat content.

However, the vegan market is growing, and a YouGov poll showed that 5% of UK adults attempted to go vegan for Veganuary in 2021 (Shakespeare , 2021). By using more premium ingredients, Upfield is reframing ‘margarine’ as ‘plant-based butter’, and their marketing strategy is making dairy butter look like an inferior product.

How to do it

As you can see – it’s not easy to reframe a product. You’re battling with a history with schemas attached. If we think about cognitive reframing, then we think about changing the perspective that people already have of the product. It’s not a prune … it’s a dried plum; it’s not German milk … it’s your local milk; it’s not margarine … it’s vegan butter; it’s not wallpaper putty … it’s a child’s toy. What schemas do people attach to your product, and how can you change these so they take action?

Does it work?

Have you eaten any dried plums lately?