The Recipe for Doom Marketing
Read today ST’s Life, pg. 8: “Uberburger bites the dust. The most expensive burger in town’ is burnt by business woes but plans to make a comeback soon”
To cut the long story short, Mr. Murray Aitken and his shareholders (the owner) invested about S$1 million nine months and started a “Unique Burger Gourmet” F&B outlet in Millenia Walk that pride to sell the most expensive Burger in town: S$101! The burger packed with 180g wagyu beef patty, seared foie gras, truffle cream sauce and salad greens in a chamagne dressing. Deep pocket backup, Bold F&B concept, loud interior design (Styled like a noisy games arcade, it had a sunken bar, flatscreen TVs that aired music videos and bright red and yellow screaming from every wall), expensive ingredients etc. Sound like a successful recipe?
I salute Mr. Aitken for having the entrepreneur spirit and guts for implementing this business concept. Unfortunately, it takes more than that to succeed. After reading the papers and base on my surface understanding from the article (I could be wrong), this “Crash and Burnt” Uberburger’s lesson is the perfect recipe for what I call “Doom Marketing”.
Doom Marketing is using the wrong Marketing Mix and inappropriate Brand alignment for the following:
1. People: Who are the target audiences? High end or the masses? No clear indication and definition as I will show it to you using other marketing mix elements below. It seems that Mr. Aitken want to have “Best of Both World” and it back fire.
2. Location: I have no comment on Millenia Walk. Maybe classic place like Paragon or Palais Renaissance would be better? As for the interior, do you think people who can pay S$101 for a burger is the same with those who like to have milk shake, chase the latest Britney Spear’s MTV or hanging around at game arcade center? If not, why design the ambience to attract that segment of audience?
3. Price: It is stated that it has 14-burger menu priced from $9 diced chicken breast burger to a S$29 steak tartare burger. Ok, here is the issue. You have a signature burger that is S$101 and the lowest price burger is S$9. From a psychology perspective, why would I pay S$101 when I can have a S$9 burger at the same outlet regardless of their ingredients? The pricing matrix is too extreme and the owner is stepping on their own foot.
4. Product Positioning: If you want to offer high end with all the expensive ingredients, go all the way and leave no “gems” uncovered. Vice versa for the masses.
Learn from Toyota. It has been a known facts that Toyota go for masses with fuel efficiency, realiability and low maintainence car for the past 25 years. So when they want to capture a high end customers, they decided to launch it under “Lexus” brand catering to luxury buyer because the Toyota brand do not sit well with this targeted market perception. Focus and position well because using 1 brand for best of both world do not work well often.
By the way, I hope this is a good lesson for any business entrepreneur: Engage a good Branding and Marketing agency to handle your brand because IGNORANCE of proper brand and marketing strategies can be really expensive. Ask Mr. Atiken, he can share that with you.
Your comments?
Need Ideas That Sell? Drop me an email at ken@justmedia.com.sg
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Tashi Khoo said,
February 15, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
Hi Ken,
There are some typos maybe:
Maybe classic place like Pardgon or Palais Renaissance would be better? or Paragon?
“From a physiology perspective, why would I pay S$101 when I can have a S$9 burger at the same outlet regardless of their ingredients?” or Psychology?
“The pricing martix is too extreme and the owner is stepping on their own foot.” or Matrix?
Tashi Khoo
Wishing All Chinese A Happy And More Prosperous Year 2007
Charles said,
February 15, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
I agree with you, Ken.
I’ve read a marketing book that talks about the critical aspect of defining your IDEAL CUSTOMER and focus your marketing efforts on this group of people.
Quite simply, an ideal customer is someone with these 3 characteristics:
1. A customer who WANTS your product.
2. A customer who has the ABILITY to PAY for your product.
3. A customer who has the AUTHORITY to purchase your product.
It’s pretty obvious that Uberburger did not define clearly who their ideal customer is, that’s partly why their marketing was diluted and went haywire.
They should have engaged your branding services long ago…
Moonshi said,
February 17, 2007 @ 2:13 pm
My suggestions before you even think about marketing or branding, go read The 22 Immutable Laws of branding by Laura Ries and Al Ries.
That book saved me a LOT of TIME and MONEY from cunning marketing companies whom can’t even differentiate between marketing/branding and printing letterheads and brochures.
Stay driven!
Moonshi
Ken Chee said,
February 20, 2007 @ 4:42 pm
Hi Moonshi, what you are referring is usually “Design Specialist/Agency” that only focus on Brand Visual Communication part. It is very different from an True Blue Branding/Integrated Marketing Agency like us. Design agency are not cunning companies because you need to know what you are looking for in the first place. Different people see and understand branding from their own perspective. I am a firm believer brand strategy go beyond the surface of having nice brochure or letter head. At the same time, I find many Branding Agencies/Gurus too theory based and could not justify the business ROI.
Thus, I am conducting a ground breaking Branding seminar, “Brand Mastery” in Singapore on 31 Mar and 1 April that cater mainly to SME integrating the key essence of Sharp Branding Strategy while implementing tactical marketing strategies to generate ROI (in line with the overall Company Brand Vision). About 50% of the seats have been sold during a soft launch 2 weeks ago. Will announce in greater details after CNY. Let me if you are interested.
Care to share with us what you learn from the book so far?
Cheers!
Joseph said,
March 1, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
Also a great book by the same authors, check out The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.. The beginning is a bit repetitive but it gets better.
Joseph