The biscuits story ends here …

Discovering the world of biscuits and gaining many insights of this market, its competitors, its customers’ behavior as well as its ways of communicating and advertising with them helped us to learn a lot and to improve our knowledge both on this specific market but also on the branding process happening in it. Building and managing a brand in the biscuits market can be a long and difficult journey but when understanding it one can avoid many ambushes and obstacles and achieved in making a successful lovemark.

After getting an overall sight of the biscuits market and defining its major components and characteristics, we focused our attention on the competition and on the key success factors required to succeed in beating this very competition. We identified the key players and their strategies but we also learned about their strategic brand management. And that’s why we came up with a positioning map that highlighted the major aspects of the different brand formula and the various touchpoints for value creation of this market. 

Then we explored and went deeper into the motivations and emotions of the customers of biscuits in order to understand what truly drive them when they are purchasing biscuits. 

At that time, we discovered a famous cow and a quite interesting Vichy fabric. Indeed we began to learn more and more about the brands we chose: Michel & Augustin and Bonne Maman. We started to look at their products, their packaging and their communication strategies. We tried to leverage the knowledge of our branding courses and applied the concepts learned in class to our brands, leading us to the achievement of the customer-based brand equity pyramid of each of our brands and to the understanding of their overall branding strategy. 

Eventually managing this blog and learning all these concepts about branding and information about Bonne Maman and Michel & Augustin allowed us to dig deeper into our analysis of these brands.

Managing a brand in our globalized and ever-changing environment is quite a challenge and having these management tools is essential to give birth to a successful brand and to keep it alive and ensure its steady ongoing success!

Thank you for following and reading our articles!We really hope you had pleasure in it and now all we can do is wish you a merry little Christmas and a happy new year! (and a lot of Christmas biscuits, of course ;) !)

From:  Vanille, Madeleine, Framboise & Fraise.

Photo: 
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/christmasbiscuits_93733
- http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-and-eat-biscuits-19/

Brand communities

With the booming of digital marketing and social media, building brand communities has become a truly strategic tool for companies. In this article, we’ll first define the notion of brand community as well as the challenges it implies in terms of strategic brand management. Then, we’ll focus on Michel et Augustin and Bonne Maman examples, that are really different. 

According to Albert Muniz Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn (Brand community, Journal of Consumer Research, 2011) brand community is “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand”. Generally speaking, the concept is often used to talk about the customers, fans and advocates of a brand. The more the community is strong and loyal, the more it is likely to turn a small brand into a successful one. “The people out in the marketplace who embrace the values of the brands, as customers and/or purchase influencers, are the brand’s true owners” wrote ad agency Blade Creative Branding. 

Actually, brand communities have a great power, as they become promoters of the brands, but they are also groups that marketers are interested in as they reduce the costs of communication (by sharing their enthusiasm about the brand by word of mouth) and they provide potential new buyers by inviting their friends into the community. Moreover, brand communities are a way to add value to the customer experience as it gets people closer to the brand they love, it is hence really important to develop and feed the interest of the customers by providing them an animated and nice community.

Retrieved from How brand communities create value (HJ Schau, 2009)

Now that we have seen how important brand communities are, let’s focus on Michel et Augustin and Bonne Maman. 

Michel et Augustin really focuses on its customers and often tries to surprise them with new events and giveaways. A lot of communication is done through their official Facebook page, which totalizes 66,502 likes. They communicate about special events like the open-house days of la Bananeraie or their special meetings (the next “Boire une vache avec…” will be on January 13 with special guests Pierre Hermé and Charles Znaty). They often invite customers to taste their products or propose new recipes and the current special giveaway “Les 4 vaches en or” prize is a trip to La Réunion with the whole Michel et Augustin team to discover more about vanilla. The brand really wants to imply the customer and this objective can be seen through their close, friendly tone. 

Bonne Maman's brand community doesn’t really exist. Of course the brand has it fans but there is no official animated brand community. Even though Bonne Maman sometimes organizes events such as cooking workshops, the brand isn’t involved at all on social media and it doesn’t seem that it’s interested in developing its proper community. Some might think that the brand might want to keep the mystery and tradition that characterize it by keeping a certain distance with the customer but nowadays it’s primordial that brands get involved deeper with their customers to benefit from the advantages of the community…

By Vanille

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_community
http://www.micheletaugustin.com/missionlareunion/programme/
Brand communities, marketing and media, DM Kalman (2009)
How brand communities create value, HJ Schau (2009)

Pictures:
http://newcarnetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/social-media-community-300x244.jpg
How brand communities create value, HJ Schau (2009)

Brand Awareness and Lovemarks !

To test the Brand Awareness of Bonne Maman and Michel et Augustin, we have created a questionnaire and have interrogated over 50 persons. The main goal of this questionnaire was to evaluate the brand recognition of those 2 brands and to figure out if they are considered as Lovemarks by the consumers. 

Top of mind

First of all, we asked the consumers to name 5 biscuits brands. We figured out that Bonne Maman and Michel et Augustin are not the “top of mind” brands. When people think about biscuits brands, they think about Lu, BN, Prince, Saint Michel and Delacre. 

Bonne Maman is more famous for its marmalades than for its biscuits. Michel et Augustin has been named by a few respondents but is not part of “top of mind”. 

To understand, we asked some questions regarding brand awareness. 

Brand Recognition: 

We talk about brand recognition when potential consumers are able to recognize and identify a brand. To test the brand recognition of the respondents, we asked them if they could identify a brand from modified images:

- Over 98% of the respondents recognized the brand Bonne Maman. 

- Whereas only 67% of them recognized the brand Michel et Augustin. 

The brand awareness of Bonne Maman is way better than the one of Michel et Augustin. Bonne Maman, is well-known for its marmalades and most part of consumers are able to recognize the famous red and white Vichy fabric. Moreover, Bonne Maman has been created in 1971 and is considered as traditional brand. 

On the other hand, Michel et Augustin is a young brand, created 9 years ago and still has to gain awareness. Even if the brand is well-known by the young generation, most part of the older generation (over 40 years old) has never heard about the brand. 

Lovemarkers 

We also wanted to know if the brands Bonne Maman and Michel et Augustin were considered as brands, commodities or as Lovemarks. The respondents had to rank some criteria on a scale from HOT to COLD, HOT being the best grade. The criteria were ranked on 2 categories, Respect and Love. 

To be a Lovemark, the brand has to achieve 41 points! 

Results:

- Bonne Maman is a Lovemark with 41 points! 

The brand has very good results in the categories Performance, Trust, Reputation, Sensuality and Intimacy. Indeed, Bonne Maman is perceived as a high quality brand. It is a reliable brand and consumers are never disappointed when they buy Bonne Maman products. 

- Michel et Augustin is a Commodity with 36 points! 

The brand has good grades in the categories Performance, Reputation and Sensuality. However, Michel et Augustin should try to improve its performance on the categories Trust and Mystery. This young brand still has to prove itself and to gain the trust of the consumers.

Sources: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kAVBDRSsndPsZHgyrKHC1A67hCRNZUS1_tZyhjRBnzU/viewform

Author : Madeleine