How to awaken ‘a sleeping giant’ brand

As Diamond White attempts to rebrand itself as a premium cider, Hornall Anderson looks at what else could be done to elevate the brand – and the lessons that other drinks could learn.

It is wonderful to watch Brookfield Drinks putting so much hard work into reviving Diamond White. It is relaunching the drink, which was popular during the 1980s and 1990s, as a premium refreshing cider which offers a lower alcohol alternative to wine. It is being rolled out in 500ml cans and two litre plastic bottles featuring blue and silver branding and a “diamond apple” logo. This was an iconic brand which in its heyday set out to appeal to a younger market during the age of alcopops. There will doubtless be consumers who remember the brand fondly and will be keen to buy into its charm again.

Brookfield Drinks bought Diamond White two years ago from C&C Group, the owner of Magners. Amongst Brookfield Drinks’ central aims is focusing on and developing larger companies’ brands with heritage and provenance which might have been neglected, but which have high latent consumer awareness. On its website it states by giving these brands renewed focus and care it wants to re-energise them to a level they truly deserve. It will support the relaunch with a website and significant promotional and marketing investment, according to The Grocer.

It is a great time to relaunch a brand like Diamond White. Looking at the drinks market, locally made, craft and artisan is huge. Consumers want to know where their drinks are produced and where the ingredients come from. Tapping into this premium and more sophisticated market by rebranding Diamond White is a golden opportunity.

Every company has a sleeping giant: a once great brand waiting in the wings to be given a new lease of life. These are brands with a big personality that have somehow faded away.

Marmite was once a sleeping giant too. Ten years ago, everybody knew what Marmite was, but the love for the brand had disappeared. Today, Marmite has become a figure of speech. The brand was rejuvenated by reminding shoppers this was a product with a personality so strong, that you either loved it or hated it.

So how would we give once great brands like Diamond White the Marmite treatment? The first step to waking up a sleeping giant is to understand what makes your product stand out. For Marmite it was the flavour: lots of people loved the taste but they did not know it was Marmite because they were eating it in Twiglets or Walkers. We needed to make sure that we owned the flavour.

We also held an innovation session with entrepreneurial marketers at Unilever where we encouraged them to dream up as many weird and wonderful Marmite ideas as they could. They were asked to put a red sticker on ideas they hated and a green sticker on those they loved. And we got stacks of fantastic suggestions including: Marmite flavoured rice cakes and limited editions.

We launched Marmite Champagne on Valentine’s Day and Ma’amite for the Queen’s Jubilee. There were branded snacks, merchandise and a social media campaign with our members’ club the Marmarati. Getting your brand out there with extra products from snacks to keyrings raises your profile with consumers, while highlighting the brand’s personality makes shoppers even more likely to talk about it. Introducing a super-premium Diamond White cider could be an avenue to investigate for the future, perhaps by focusing heavily on craft and artisan trends. Once you have a super-premium drink in your portfolio this helps to elevate a brand. You could even create premium Diamond White cider and Maldon sea salt flavoured crisps to raise awareness further.