We live in a world bursting at the seams with glutinous, sugar-frosted goodness and downright saturated with caffeinated beverages. Yet somehow Voodoo Doughnuts and Red Bull make their marketing voices heard over the seething cacophony of their competitors. While an obligatory tip-of-the-hat goes out to (what I find to be) the deliciousness of one of those donut shaped sugar bombs and the OG card held by Red Bull, these companies stand heads above the rest because they aren’t afraid to own their market.
Niche or not, owning your market is one of the most important things you can do for your product. Here’s how:
Aim Small
The common gut-reaction to outlining a clearly defined, pin-pointed target market is not a pleasant one: to actively exclude demographics from your marketing endeavors can feel like poking a hole in your company’s life raft. Though, this is one of the most important marketing moves you can make.
Take Voodoo Doughnuts: amidst an overcrowded and drab market in a country obsessed with teeny bikinis and paleo, their new Denver franchise sold nearly 200,000 doughnuts before they officially opened, and that’s after Anthony Bourdain proclaimed on national TV, of their signature maple-bacon bar, that “only late-era Elvis on medication would eat this.” How? They targeted a snarky, grungy, outcast demographic and insatiably piqued the interest of everyone else.
Owners Kenneth “Cat Daddy” Pogson and Tres Shannon offend and offend again, alienating some that don’t care to curse every time they say the name of a donut and others with “bleeding” voodoo doll shaped doughnuts positioned front and center in the glass baker’s case. This tactic seems to be laughably horrendous for students in Marketing 101. Though, an important takeaway here is that just because their target market margins are thin, doesn’t mean they are at all limiting the types that are buying their doughnuts. Voodoo shows us that fretting over “unsubscribers” is a futile endeavor; there is marketing power in making a statement that no one else dares to make: consumers respect the unexpected.
Be the Epicenter
Let’s be honest: Red Bull isn’t very good for you. It doesn’t do well in taste tests, its contents are not patented, but yet it somehow manages to nab 70 to 90 percent market share in 100 countries. How? Certainly not through product-centric marketing. No matter how many hi-res photos of that bullet-looking silver can with artful condensation are taken, Red Bull doesn’t see substantial sales spikes by making the product look better.
Instead, the company’s marketing team has figured out a way to craft an ongoing campaign that supersedes the product itself. Red Bull supports close to 500 world-class global extreme sports athletes and sponsors a number of sometimes wacky, sometimes record-breaking, always cutting-edge and widely watched athletic events. Founder Dietrich Mateschitz says, “If we don’t create the market, it doesn’t exist.” By being one of the loudest, and sometimes only sponsors of these wild events, they corner a market that most of their competition hasn’t even heard of yet. Mateschitz follows up, “we don’t bring the product to the consumer, we bring consumers to the product.”
Even those who have never put a can of the energy drink to their lips invariably recognizes the butting-bull-heads logo, and has been one of the 15 million viewers of their ridiculously well-received Art of Flight snowboarding video. As such, consumer loyalty to Red Bull lies not necessarily with the product but with the brand, and the company’s market therefore is ever expanding, dynamic and always relevant.
The Takeaway:
Be bold, be different. While it’s always important to keep a hawk’s eye on what your competition is up to, and what your safe, projected market looks like, consumers ultimately revere the fresh, the daring, and the creative. To craft a new niche is the best way to own it: just ask Caitlyn Jenner! With illustrious beginnings as a gold medalist Olympian, she was more recently known as a punctuation mark amidst the wild Kardashian conversation. While some see her path as a fall from grace, she has irrevocably carved away her old identity and has amassed incredible new popularity in her own new sense. While she was not the first transgender person to get the conversation started (think Laverne Cox), nor is she running a business or selling a product per-se, her ability to craft her own niche and own it follows the same successful formula as that of Voodoo Doughnuts and Red Bull. Now please excuse me while I grab my Vanity Fair magazine, crack a Red Bull and finish my Maple Bacon Bar.
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