Breaking Through Commoditization: Strategic Brand Positioning in Saturated Markets
How milk tea brands in Singapore reveal universal principles for competitive differentiation.
When every competitor sells essentially the same product, smart brands create meaningful differentiation through strategic positioning. Singapore's bubble tea market—with over 20 major chains competing in a city you can drive across in 45 minutes—provides a fascinating case study for understanding competitive advantage in commoditized categories.
The lessons extend far beyond flavored beverages. Whether managing software platforms, fashion retailers in B2C or B2B world, the fundamental challenge remains identical: creating sustainable competitive advantage when customers perceive offerings as interchangeable.
The Commoditization Challenge
Market saturation creates predictable dynamics. Competitors often end up converging on similar features, pricing becomes the primary battleground, and differentiation attempts focus on increasingly marginal product variations. In Singapore's milk tea scene, this sometimes manifest as bewildering choices that customers struggle to meaningfully distinguish.
Consider the basic offering: tea, milk, sugar, and toppings served in similar cups at comparable prices. Functional differences between brands often prove negligible in blind taste tests. Yet some chains command premium pricing and inspire loyalty while others struggle for relevance.
The difference lies not just in what they sell, but in how they position what they sell.
Cultural Heritage as Strategic Moat
CHAGEE's market entry demonstrates how authentic cultural positioning creates defensive advantages. Rather than competing directly with established Taiwanese bubble tea brands, CHAGEE leveraged its Yunnan origins to reframe the entire category conversation around traditional Chinese tea culture—premium leaf quality, brewing expertise, and heritage craftsmanship.
This positioning transforms commodity tea leaves into cultural artifacts. Customers aren't buying beverages; they're accessing centuries of tea tradition. Authentic heritage narratives prove difficult for competitors to replicate without appearing derivative.
This cultural moat strategy applies across industries. Enterprise software companies leveraging Silicon Valley innovation narratives or fashion brands drawing on Italian craftsmanship heritage, all create similar positioning advantages.
Experience Design as Differentiation Engine
While competitors focus on product features, market leaders redesign the entire customer experience. HEYTEA transformed milk tea consumption from quick transactions into social experiences with Instagram-worthy aesthetics and community-building elements. CHAGEE created "tea bars" emphasizing craft and quality, positioning closer to specialty coffee than traditional bubble tea.
When products commoditize, experiences differentiate. Experience design proves harder to replicate than product features—competitors can copy drink recipes overnight, but rebuilding store concepts, developing extensive supply chains or distributorship access and shifting customer expectations requires significant time and investment.
Innovation Through Strategic Constraint
Counter-intuitively, effective differentiation sometimes comes from deliberately limiting options. CHAGEE's decision to avoid pearls and traditional toppings initially seemed disadvantageous but became its positioning strength, signaling focus on tea quality over condiments while appealing to health-conscious customers.
Hollin demonstrates another constraint-based strategy: daily rotating pearl flavors create artificial scarcity that generates more engagement than unlimited choice. Strategic constraints force clarity—brands trying to serve everyone end up serving no one particularly well.
The Marketing Investment Reality
Strategic positioning without proper marketing investment is wishful thinking disguised as strategy. Successful differentiation requires substantial upfront investment, go-to-market knowledge and sustained commitment across multiple fronts.
CHAGEE's Singapore re-entry demanded comprehensive investment in store design, staff training, brand communication, and operational systems. The controversial Dior-like packaging design likely required significant design investment, legal review, and risk management—hardly marketing work from an intern or entry level marketer.
Critical Investment Areas:
Brand Infrastructure: Store design standards, operational systems, and quality control mechanisms
Consumer Education: Sustained campaigns that build customer understanding of differentiation
Experience Consistency: Training systems and performance monitoring across all touchpoints
Competitive Intelligence: Market monitoring and response capabilities
Most positioning failures with good strategies stem from under-investment. Brands develop compelling concepts then allocate insufficient budget for proper execution, resulting in muddy market perception and price-based customer decisions.
Financial Reality: Investment vs. Returns
Premium-positioned brands command 15-30% price premiums while maintaining similar or higher retention rates. CHAGEE's jasmine milk tea sells for more than equivalent competitor offerings, yet are seeing consistent demand.
However, maintaining differentiation requires ongoing investment in brand communication, experience consistency, and competitive response. Brands that slash marketing budgets during growth phases inevitably see positioning advantages erode.
View positioning investment as competitive moat construction rather than marketing expense. Companies treating brand differentiation as operational necessity consistently outperform competitors in saturated markets.
Defensive Strategies and Scalability
Strong positioning creates natural defensive advantages. When CHAGEE owns "premium Chinese tea culture" in customers' minds, competitors face uphill battles attempting similar positioning. Brand equity becomes self-reinforcing as success validates original positioning choices.
Maintaining differentiation during rapid expansion requires systematic discipline:
Operational Consistency: Standardized protocols that preserve brand experience across locations
Cultural Integration: Embedding positioning into organizational culture, not just marketing materials
Continuous Innovation: Ongoing investment in differentiation rather than resting on initial success
Universal Strategic Principles
Singapore's milk tea market reveals differentiation principles applicable across industries:
Authenticity trumps fabrication—genuine heritage creates stronger positioning than manufactured uniqueness.
Experience design matters more than product features—customer journey differentiation becomes primary competitive advantage when core offerings commoditize.
Constraints enable focus—strategic limitations often create stronger positioning than unlimited options.
Marketing investment determines execution quality—positioning requires sustained financial commitment to infrastructure, education, and consistency.
Segment clarity drives precision—brands serving everyone serve no one particularly well.
The Path Forward
Commoditization isn't inevitable market destiny—it's strategic choice. Brands that actively manage positioning, invest in experience design, and maintain differentiation discipline can thrive in saturated markets.
Success requires moving beyond feature competition toward strategic differentiation that resonates with specific customer segments. In increasingly commoditized markets, survivors will understand positioning as strategic imperative, not marketing afterthought.
The question isn't whether your market will commoditize—it's whether you'll be ready with positioning strategies that transcend commodity competition. The fundamentals remain timeless: know your customers, understand your competition, create authentic value that competitors cannot easily replicate, and invest sufficiently in a consistent manner to make that value visible to your market.
Even the most mundane products can support premium positioning and customer loyalty. The brands that master this reality will define the next era of competitive advantage.
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Advisor for C-Suites to work with you and your teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes. We are the AI Adoption Partners for Neuron Labs and CX Sphere to support companies in ethical, responsible and sustainable AI adoption. Catch our weekly episodes of The Digital Maturity Blueprint Podcast by subscribing to our YouTube Channel.
Starbucks in Vietnam: Brand Power and Strategic Localization
In the decade since Starbucks first entered Vietnam in 2013, the global coffee giant has navigated a market with deeply entrenched coffee traditions and fierce local competition. Their journey offers valuable lessons in strategic adaptation while maintaining brand integrity.
Leveraging Core Competencies While Acknowledging Limitations
Starbucks entered Vietnam with a clear understanding of its strengths: premium branding, distinctive store ambiance, and global recognition. Rather than attempting to displace Vietnam's robust coffee culture, Starbucks positioned itself as a complementary experience.
Strategic Clarity:
Premium Positioning: Starbucks maintained its upscale branding rather than competing on price with local shops offering coffee for as little as $0.25.
Targeted Expansion: With over 90 stores nationwide as of 2023, Starbucks pursued measured growth rather than aggressive market saturation.
Global-Local Balance: The partnership with Hong Kong Maxim's Group brought operational expertise while allowing for market-specific adaptations.
This approach reflects a sharp self-awareness. Starbucks recognized that directly challenging Vietnam's Robusta-centred coffee traditions with its Arabica-based menu would be futile. Instead, it capitalized on its strengths as a premium global brand while acknowledging the limitations of its standard offerings in this unique market.
Consumer Intelligence: Understanding Vietnamese Preferences
The Vietnamese coffee market presented Starbucks with distinctive challenges:
Market Realities:
Strong cultural attachment to Robusta beans and traditional brewing methods (particularly the phin filter)
Established local competitors with deep cultural relevance and lower price points
A thriving street coffee scene offering authentic flavors at a fraction of Starbucks prices
Starbucks responded by refining its consumer targeting. Rather than pursuing the entire market, it focused on urban professionals, students, and expatriates seeking a premium café experience. The company understood that many Vietnamese visitors valued its stores more for ambiance and status than for coffee itself.
This consumer intelligence informed a critical insight: in Vietnam, Starbucks would need to be more than a coffee shop to succeed.
Localization Without Brand Dilution
Starbucks' approach to localization in Vietnam demonstrates the delicate balance between adaptation and brand consistency:
Targeted Adaptations:
Introduction of the Asian Dolce Latte, designed specifically for regional preferences
Seasonal beverages inspired by Vietnamese traditions, including Tet-themed drinks with festive packaging
Expanded selection of non-coffee options like smoothies and bubble tea
Smaller portion sizes catering to local preferences
What's particularly notable is what Starbucks chose not to change. The company maintained its core brand pillars—premium atmosphere, personalized service, and signature preparation methods—while selectively adapting its menu.
This selective approach to localization protected brand integrity while acknowledging market realities. Starbucks remained distinctively Starbucks, even as it incorporated elements relevant to Vietnamese consumers.
Strategic Targeting: Finding the Right Audience
Perhaps the most significant lesson from Starbucks' Vietnamese operations is the power of precise market targeting. Rather than attempting to convert traditional Vietnamese coffee drinkers, Starbucks identified specific segments where its value proposition resonated:
Core Segments:
Young urban professionals seeking a premium work and meeting space
Status-conscious consumers who value the brand's global cachet
Non-coffee drinkers attracted to Frappuccinos and other sweet offerings
Expatriates and internationally-oriented Vietnamese seeking familiar comforts
This narrow targeting allowed Starbucks to carve out a sustainable niche despite holding just 2% of Vietnam's $1.2 billion coffee market. By focusing on segments willing to pay premium prices for a different experience, Starbucks secured profitability without requiring market dominance.
The Payoff: A Sustainable Business Model
Starbucks' approach in Vietnam demonstrates how thoughtful adaptation can create sustainable business models even in challenging markets. The company's focus on long-term investments, sustainability initiatives, and community engagement has strengthened its connection with Vietnamese consumers.
While Starbucks may never achieve the market penetration it enjoys in other Asian countries, its Vietnamese operation demonstrates that selective adaptation and precise targeting can create viable business models even against entrenched local competition.
Key Takeaways for Global Brands
The Starbucks Vietnam story offers valuable insights for any global brand entering culturally distinct markets:
Know your non-negotiables: Identify the core elements that define your brand and maintain them rigorously.
Adapt strategically: Make selective adaptations based on deep market understanding rather than wholesale changes.
Target precisely: Focus on segments where your unique value proposition resonates rather than pursuing the entire market.
Build for sustainability: Measure success against your specific strategy rather than against competitors with different business models.
These principles demonstrate that effective market entry isn't about being everything to everyone—it's about being something distinctive to someone specific.
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Advisor for C-Suites to work with you and your teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes. We are the AI Adoption Partners for Neuron Labs and CX Sphere to support companies in ethical, responsible and sustainable AI adoption. Catch our weekly episodes of The Digital Maturity Blueprint Podcast by subscribing to our YouTube Channel.
Strategic Marketing Budget Planning: Beyond the Numbers
Marketing Planning Framework
In today's dynamic business landscape, effective marketing budget planning isn't just about allocating dollars—it's about making strategic investments that drive sustainable growth. As marketing leaders plan their annual budgets, it's crucial to take a holistic approach that considers past performance, customer journey, and team development.
Learning from the Past to Shape the Future
One of the most common pitfalls in marketing planning is the "rinse and repeat" approach. While it's tempting to simply duplicate last year's budget allocation, this strategy often leads to stagnation and missed opportunities. Historical performance analysis should serve as a guide, not a template.
Consider these key questions when reviewing past performance:
- Which campaigns delivered the highest marketing and business ROI?
- Where did we see diminishing returns?
- What channels consistently underperformed?
- Which initiatives showed promising early results but needed more time to mature?
By critically analyzing past performance, you can identify patterns, eliminate ineffective spending, and redirect resources to higher-potential opportunities.
Balancing Acquisition and Retention: The Growth Equation
While new customer acquisition often takes center stage in marketing discussions, sustainable growth requires a balanced approach. Your marketing budget should reflect the full customer journey and lifecycle - from awareness to advocacy.
Here's why this balance is crucial:
- Acquisition programs build market share and bring fresh revenue streams
- Retention initiatives typically cost less and yield higher ROI
- Satisfied existing customers become brand advocates, reducing acquisition costs
- Diversified programs provide stability during market fluctuations, especially when budgets are cut
Smart budget allocation means investing in both compelling acquisition campaigns and robust retention programs that nurture customer relationships and maximize lifetime value.
Investing in Your Greatest Asset: Your Team
A often-overlooked aspect of marketing budget planning is employee development. In an era of rapid technological change and evolving consumer behaviors, your team's capabilities can make or break your marketing success. Similarly, it cost more to hire and onboard new employees than to retain and cultivate existing ones.
Consider allocating budget for:
- Professional development and certifications
- Marketing technology training
- Industry conferences and workshops
- Team building and creativity sessions
- Tools and resources that enhance productivity
When you invest in your team's growth, you're not just building skills—you're fostering innovation, improving retention, and creating a culture of continuous improvement.
Building a Future-Proof Marketing Budget
Effective marketing budget planning requires a strategic balance of historical insights, customer-centric thinking, and people development. By taking this comprehensive approach, you can create a budget that not only drives immediate results but also builds long-term marketing capabilities.
Remember these key principles:
- Use historical data as a guide, not a constraint
- Balance acquisition and retention investments
- Include employee development as a core component
- Maintain flexibility for emerging opportunities and changing needs
- Document and measure everything
By embracing this holistic approach to budget planning, you'll be better positioned to navigate market changes, seize new opportunities, and build a sustainable competitive advantage.
The most successful marketing organizations understand that true growth comes from a powerful combination of smart strategy, customer focus, and invested talent. As you plan your next marketing budget, consider how each dollar can contribute to this winning formula.
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Advisor for C-Suites to work with you and your teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Two Seminars, Key Lessons Learnt
August and September were two monumental months for me as a business owner, where after more than two decades in high flying corporate roles, I found myself somewhat vulnerable at times during the events!
It’s not so much as trying to prove myself again as I learnt recently speaking to someone with eons of experience managing their own business. It’s more re-building a different brand than my own personal brand.
Marketing our own company’s brand is sometimes seen as more difficult than marketing another company’s brand. That is because we usually won’t have huge amount of resources, be it time or funds. What we have are usually huge doses of self doubt, especially when we face rejections.
Rejections were aplenty, especially when I was hosting my own exhibition booth at The Business Show Asia and it works both ways - I rejected others and others rejected me! On hindsight now, I see it as more misalignment in objectives and expectations aka the wrong fit. On that, I have learnt to qualify early and quality better.
I relieved the days where I was in a more junior position, setting up events from scratch, pulling up banners, packing gifts to printing tags. But I did it with way more pride now than before because I am now at a place where I truly appreciate the value all the little things can help to contribute to the eventual success of an event. If you don’t take pride in it, it will certainly be apparent to your customers!
Overseeing the planning by myself versus working with others to co-organize are also valuable experiences. Though working collaboratively as a team is nothing new to me and people who have worked with me before often tell me that they appreciate the trust I placed on them. I believe in walking the talk as a leader - we are all in it together and if the going gets tough, we face it together but ultimately, if I can provide the air cover as their leader, I certainly will and should! On this, lessons are aligning expectations to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Preparing for the worse and seeing the rainbow at the end -that’s another valuable lesson learnt as things can and often will go wrong in many ways. What we can do are to manage well what we can predict and make the best of what we cannot control.
All that said, I have thoroughly enjoyed myself and learnt a lot from both events. The highlights are always the interactions with people in person; that’s irreplaceable! The insights exchanged also inspired new ideas and perceptions. It also made me realized that we all don’t need to be absolute experts in every topic that we bring to the seminars - everyone is still learning, exploring, listening and forming their own enhanced observations through the sharing by others.
Next - I’m looking forward to October and November’s series of speaking events - Singapore > Bangkok > Singapore > Dubai > Singapore - Bring it on!
If you’re interested to watch key highlights and takeaways of the panel discussions held during these events, check here and follow our YouTube Channel!
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally and Advisor for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
If Marketing is A Stock, How Much Would You Value It?
Engage a marketing team for as little as $1,000 monthly.
You don’t need a CMO; you just need to tap on Gen AI to do your marketing for you.
Start-Ups don’t need a CMO or Experienced Marketing Leader; just hire a fresh graduate or a junior marketer since you as a Founder Can Do Everything!
Some horror stories I have been reading from LinkedIn either through people’s comments, posts or articles. I also had stories shared with me recently when I spoke with some junior marketers who are working for start-ups or micro businesses.
Let me turn this around for a moment and see how it makes you feel, if you are say a CEO, COO, CDO or whatever C-suite person who is likely to be a Founder of the next flashy app or platform or business:
Engage an IT team for as little as $1,000 monthly to develop and maintain the app for you.
We don’t need a CEO/COO/CDO; just hire a fresh graduate or junior sales/operations/digital manager to do your job.
It seems marketing is the single most replaceable or redundant job in any given company.
It also seems everybody and anybody can and knows marketing.
It’s the easiest skill to master in the world of business, sales, HR, IT, Data, operations, finance….the list goes on.
Perhaps it’s a bad encounter with a bad marketer. Or perhaps you actually have zero idea of what marketing can and should be doing for your business.
In any case, I feel sorry for you but as the saying goes, pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Companies need to be realistic and cognizant of the fact that the level of contribution and value of that contribution comes with experience in the field. There is no shortcut to it. Similar to any profession, the more experience the person has, especially across their own field, across the same and/or different industries and even across different countries, the more valuable the contribution.
This is different from say someone who has stayed on in their marketing position in the exact same company and same portfolio for decades and hasn’t learnt anything new, achieved anything new or launched anything new. It’s like a chef cooking the exact same dish year on year and not changing the menu at all - stale.
But to have the unrealistic expectations that a junior marketer should be able to think and act like a seasoned marketer, the shame is on you, not them.
In essence, a good and seasoned marketing leader can add value and provide guidance around:
customer acquisition, retention and sales enablement strategies
customer experience and lifecycle management
market and customer research and user testing needs
omni channel engagement and experience management
insights that can be gathered from customer data as well as interactions with your channels
shaping your product and business proposition, including providing opinions on areas for improvement
These are also tenets of core marketing functions and dependent on the exposure the marketer has had over the years of working across different portfolios, companies or industries.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally and Advisor for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Companies - Stop Launching Mediocre Products, Please.
Just as marketing is sometimes guilty of not going deep enough into the hoods of the true value proposition of what they are promoting on behalf of the company, business is just as guilty of launching mediocre products.
What is considered as a mediocre product? Is there such a thing as a bad product if it can sell?
In my experience, a mediocre product is one that is positioned largely on the following:
being first to market as its pure competitive advantage and nothing else
offering an incentive or price based positioning that can be easily displaced by its competitor who is willing to go lower or offer better
not making a real effort to tailor the products/services based on the needs of your target customers. Instead, you rely on marketing to position it and pretend that it is tailored for their needs when in fact, it is just a generic product/service that is catered for everyone
Based on above, it is telling that if a company focuses purely on quick wins and conversions, they are not looking to build a sustainable solution based product that addresses their customers’ actual needs. They are in it purely to make a quick buck from willing customers and what they usually end up with is a bunch of products/services that they have to keep topping up with more and more incentives/discounts/promotions/fancier taglines or creatives just to outdo their competition. I.e., they realize they don’t really have a truly unique selling point as they didn’t put in enough effort and thinking into developing something that cannot be easily replaced. Such approach will only work if you are the only seller or if the product and service is really hard to develop, thus you are confident most of your competitors are not able to achieve it..
Take for example, if you decide that there is a need currently in the market by for student aftercare services to support working parents who don’t have supportive company policies and flexible working arrangements. If you are offering a mediocre service, you will simply offer say - Free aftercare service for the first 3 months of signing up and 30% off if you sign up now for the next 3 months.
If you want to look at a more sustainable approach to avoid situations where a competitor offers say free aftercare for the first 4 months and 40% off if you sign up now, you will make an effort to find out more the other pain points associated with working parents and their children and try to bundle it into a more holistic “working parents aftercare services package” centered around - aftercare services, guided special out of school curriculum based on their children’s interests, customizable late afternoon snack option to cater for dietary preferences, access to resources for working parents and their children to adjust to such situations etc. Of these, some might be easily replicated but some like the out of school curriculum is not, as that’s unique to your company’s methodology and pedagogy.
It might take more effort and cost more but at least you won’t be caught in a pricing and promotional warfare with your competitors by tapping on your true strengths and unique capabilities. You might even be able to charge more or give less of a discount as you are selling the whole solution that addresses their pain points instead of a single, purely price/discount as-a-value based service/product that is more like a band aid that can be easily torn off and replaced.
The above is just a simple example of looking at why as marketers, we should pride ourselves as being valued business partners to bring the perspective of the customer to the table. Don’t be afraid to ask them hard questions, putting on the customer’s lens to ensure the outcome is a sustainable one, unless it’s part of the strategy to build something that is more seasonal or once-off to capitalize on a specific consumer trend.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Identifying an Addressable Need
I recently came across an analysis by someone showcasing the success of the oat milk brand called Oatly and how they created a need that led to their success.
I have a slightly different take on Oatly’s success in that they didn’t create a need but rather, they identified an addressable need in the consumer market, developed their product to suit the addressable market and designed their packaging and campaign that speaks to the addressable market.
Why is it addressable and why is it not a need creation in their case?
First of all, looking at the fundamental principles of the hierarchy of needs, oat milk in itself is not new. Oatly was not the one who first came out with Oat milk as an alternative to other plant milk varieties that are not from nuts, legumes or fruits. People don’t need Oatly as yet another oat milk alternative. Even for the use in beverages, especially coffee drinks for example, Oatly is not the first entrant in this market.
If you look at the consumer and fast moving consumer good space. there aren’t that many products that are really needs based in this modern day and age. Ask yourself in all seriously as a consumer, do you really need to have say a burger or a pizza or that soft drink? For such cases, what brands and companies are creating is a want and not so much a need, which makes it a lot harder of course.
How we can take a step further however to see if these wants actually can be addressed at a deeper layer, going into the consumer psyche and how we think, behave and act, perhaps there is an addressable need tagged to that specific want. For example, consumer A, let’s call him Billy, wants to eat pizza because it makes him feel good and why does it make him feel good? It reminded him of his grandma who used to make really nice pizzas for him when she’s still around. It makes him feel safe, warm and loved whenever he thinks about pizza now. The feeling of loved, security and safety is a need and not a want as we all know.
This is where the fundamental need that can be addressed by a company who wants to give their consumers the same warm, fuzzy, safe and feelings of love with their pizzas is more likely to win over consumers and build a sustainable brand versus a company that just serves pizzas to make money from pizza lovers.
In Oatly’s case, they identified an addressable want by consumers who are avid coffee drinkers who might fall into a few categories:
1) those who are lactose intolerant or vegan or just prefer not to take dairy with their coffee but yet prefer not to have black coffee
2) those who in 1) but are allergic to nuts or don’t like the taste and thus have been relying on other plant milks like soy or coconut
3) those falling into 1) and 2) but who don’t quite like the tastes of other current plant milk types available
Looking at the wants and preferences of the consumers, we can also look at what are the underlying needs of the consumers who don’t take dairy and prefer plant milk in general that are being addressed. For example, it might be a feeling of being healthier, which is more basic survival or a feeling that they are doing their part in supporting the rights of animals, which is more altruistic or self actualization.
I find that doing an extensive mapping by going back to basics of what your target consumers want and need helps to better identify what is that addressable need that you as a brand or company can cater for ultimately to form your proposition.
Going back to Oatly’s case, after they have identified the preliminary wants and needs, they would be looking at pain points their consumers are facing based on how, where and when they are consuming plant milk. In this case, oat milk is not new to the market, including in the coffee shops but it is just beginning to make some headwinds. Almond was the first to lay claim and make their presence felt after soy was dominating for a while as the alternative milk for barista brewed coffees. Oatly would have studied this for a while and gotten some feedback from prospective customers who are avid drinkers of coffee paired with plant milk, once they decided this would be a good place to target in terms of their distribution network.
They would need to consider not just the taste of their product when brewed with coffee but the price point as well both on the consumer side and the business side, meaning the cafe owners who will be buying the stocks from them before they developed their barista edition oat milk. If there are already a few other plant milk or early entrant oat milk varieties being supplied, what would be that key differentiator so Oatly can win? They would need to think about product variations to cater for standalone oat milk drinkers versus coffee drinkers who choose plant milk over dairy.
At this point, it wouldn’t just be the packaging. It would be taste, quality, price and ability to retain their flavour or even their flexibility in order quantities, inventory management and payment management, especially for smaller cafes.
This article is just a high level of how I personally like to work with brands as a marketer, on their positioning and campaigns. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list as there is much more to think about. But for starters, as marketers, we should always go back to the fundamental principles of the consumer psyche, marketing principles, proposition and business viability when working on our campaigns.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.