Why Taster's Choice should fire their ad agency

Posted on Jul 5, 2009 in Coffee, Design, Marketing | 15 comments

Driving around the last few weeks I’ve seen a number of billboards for instant coffee. Starbucks instant coffee. But wait… why do Starbucks’ billboards say Taster’s Choice? I’m confused. Oh, I see now… they’re Taster’s Choice billboards talking about Starbucks. And that, in a nutshell, is why Nescafé (Taster’s Choice’s parent company) should fire their ad agency.

First, a few definitions:

• Starbucks VIA (their capitalization preference, not mine) is the coffee conglomerate’s new “ready brew” instant coffee product. Can’t speak on it, as they never sent me the free sample I requested.  Apparently, Howard Schultz and crew decided to offer a cheaper product for their caffeine-addicted customers to sip while reading their home foreclosure notices.
• Taster’s Choice (TC) is the instant coffee brand that’s been around forever (check your parent’s pantry for a glass jar of the stuff). It apparently—though I’ve never had it, either—is now sold in single-serving tear-open “sticks” like VIA.
• Advertising is the art of creating a strong desire for your product among your target audience. In this case, that audience is coffee drinkers, a group also known as “just about everybody.”

A Taster's Choice billboard. Seriously.

TC and its agency must not understand what advertising is. Take a look at one of their billboards:

Imagine you see this driving down the highway; you have between 2 and 10 seconds to glance at it as you drive. What do you see? Those I’ve asked reply their first impression is the GIANT word “Starbucks,” then “Welcome to the,” and lastly a red mug. Boom. That’s it. Ask most folks who paid for this thing? Starbucks. What’s it advertising, specifically? “Uh, some Starbucks thing… wait, don’t they some instant coffee thing now? That must be it.”

They followed the first rule of billboard design: keep it simple. Six big words that pop off the background, and a couple images. That’s good: in a billboard, all you can do is announce a tagline, leave an impression, reinforce your brand, or tease a memorable website address. That’s what they’re for, and at that they’re pretty effective. As long as the brand impression you leave with viewers is your brand, not that of the competitor entering your market. This is an epic fail on TC’s part.

Some might argue that the TC package is visible, as is the Nescafé logo on the mug. Wrong; based on billboard design rules that package is a blip at best, its text essentially invisible. Nescafé is more visible, but with no impact. First, many—if not most—people (myself included) don’t associate Nescafé with TC, so there’s a disconnect there. The proximity of the word “Starbucks” and the “Nescafé” just muddies the message for those who do recognize these brands: “Oh, is Starbucks serving Nescafé stuff now?” At best, it’s a muddied message; at worst, it’s free advertising for Starbucks.

TC made a few poor choices with this campaign. First, why mention Starbucks at all? Calling them out by name in any manner shows they’re on the defensive. Perhaps they should be; Starbucks is the coffee behemoth after all, and they may do well in this instant-coffee niche. Such advertising, even if done well (and this campaign wasn’t), can backfire.

Second, if they wanted to challenge Starbucks’ entry into their marketplace, why did they copy their competitor’s branding? It’s downright dumb to think that by looking like Starbucks’ campaign, they somehow have a greater ability to differentiate their product in the minds of their audience. No; it has the opposite effect. Look at Starbucks’ billboard (left), posted during the same timeframe as TC’s (right).

Starbuck's billboard for a general branding campaign

Another billboard in the campaign; same poor branding issue.

You would be forgiven if you confused the TC campaign for Starbucks’. Same all-capped font, same canvas-colored background, same earth-toned fonts. It’s clearly an attempt to imitate the aesthetic.

Only time will tell whether Starbucks VIA overtakes the instant-coffee market. But TC’s campaign certainly is helping them do it.

Update: turns out I’m not the only one who’s noticed this.

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