Cool cities & neighborhood are not enough to build brands anymore
Are world's top cities the only places to build 🥃 🍺 brands in?
Not anymore. They've lost the oligopoly.
We need to go much deeper than picking a cool street on a map:
Until 2020, we have only had the illusion that picking a top-class city could have helped us identify our niche.
In fact, thinking that we knew where to list our brand in the right spots, walking the streets of Shoreditch, Brooklyn or Eixample was good but not quite enough.
True, it was a level deeper than approaching a market as a whole country but those are the most crowded spots on the map, where all premium brands want to launch in.
We need more granularity than that:
1) what category and occasion are you in?
2) how does your brand serves that purpose?
3) are there any 2nd tier cities where we could start from?
4) where are the top 3 bars and restaurant types that fit your brand? 5) why should that customer buy it the "again"?
A "posh" or "hipster" brand positioning could have been a brief for a sales team 10 years ago. In fact, that was a lousy brief even in 2019, let alone 2021.
There is now a need for a deeper introspective journey for a brand to understand where the best route to market is.
Where has your brand the potential to become a must-stock item?
It might be where you less expect it on that map.
Brands are built bottom up, not top down.
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