This Once-Per-Century Rebranding Is a Case Study In Marketing Done Right

I tell my NYU integrated marketing class this all the time: every product and every brand can have an emotional benefit. It’s the emotional benefit that turns that product into a brand, and gives it a meaningful place in people’s lives.

An emotional benefit should be a fundamental basis of any marketing program and Driscoll’s new campaign for its line of fresh berries (available in grocery stores) proves my point.

The folks at Driscoll’s have been entrepreneurs for decades, and in fact they’ve just given the brand its first international makeover in over one hundred years. Probably too long to wait between brand refreshes, but this one is a good one nevertheless as it consistently ties the brand’s new identity around the world for the first time.

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At the heart of the new look and the new campaign is the emotional benefit that only the brand Driscoll’s can provide in the berry category … pure joy. Every Driscoll’s berry is like a little bit of happiness, no matter the berry. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. You get the point.

Crafting the new campaign was no small feat. It’s not easy to find emotions in mixed berries, but Driscoll’s has done it. Let’s break it down. The brand started with data, good data on how people feel about berries.

The brand then used that data as a basis to start to flesh out the creative for the campaign, leveraging the fact that consumers find berries to be the most fun of all fresh fruits. Makes sense, actually.

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Yes, berries bring much more joy that it’s fellow store mates … more joy than bananas or apples or pears. Pure joy.

Perhaps you have not thought about berries in this way before, but with this new campaign the brand is hoping that as consumers enter the grocery store and see the Driscoll’s display, they’ll actually feel something about the product that they may not have felt before. Generating that feeling is what being a brand is all about. Consistently delivering it worldwide is what good marketing is all about.

Perhaps after a hundred years, Driscoll’s has become the kind of brand it’s meant to be — spreading joy at a time when we particularly need it.

This is a lesson I teach my NYU students all throughout each semester … you have to find the emotional benefit of your brand if you want to make a connection with consumers. Without the emotional connection, you’re just another product on the shelf. Or another berry in the basket in this particular case.

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This is especially true for entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Finding the emotional benefit for your business will transform how you communicate with your customers, and will help you become more meaningful in their lives. When you don’t have the big marketing budgets of the mega-brands, it’s even more important to break through the marketing clutter with an emotional connection.

So dig deep for your own emotional benefit. Driscoll’s did a lot of research with its customers to discover how berries make them feel. Talk to you customers too, and get to know what they want from you. Find out what they want from you beyond just what your product or service offers. Find out how you can make them feel better … about themselves, about their friends and family, and about the world around them. Find out how to emotionally fit into their world.