The strategy secret that saved Stella Artois

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INTRODUCTION
Welcome to SratLabs (formely Grow Club). New year. New name. New format. Some readers asked to try a shorter format so here goes & let’s not waste any more time.  Let me teach you one of the best strategy tools around. A tool that saved the beer company Stella Artois. And one of thirty tools we teach on the new STRATLABS™ course.

WEAKNESS TO STRENGTH
In the early 1980s Stella was struggling to cut through in the UK beer category. British drinkers thought Stella sounded a bit weird, came in a funny-looking glass and worst of all it was considerably more expensive than the competition. How did Stella turn things around? Well, they leveraged one a great tool we teach in STRATLABS. What is it and how did they do it? Let me show you.

Stella did what all great strategists do. They didn’t rush to a positioning or fill out one of the many strategy frameworks other ‘strategy gurus’ try to sell you. They knew that any strategic solution would only ever be as good as the problem identified. And so they went in search of better problems, ones that would reveal the real challenge & opportunity ahead.

They spent months researching their category and target market which in turn revealed an interesting truth. They discovered that whilst British consumers had been stuck in their ways, tastes were changing. They were increasingly open to paying more for exotic new foods such as Prawn Cocktail and beverages such as French wine. Why was this case? Well looking to culture we can see that the boom years of the 1980s had seen many Brits get rich quickly and adopt new status symbols, such as exotic foods, as way to show off their wealth. Understanding all of this shift helped Stella identify a better problem to solve.

It helped them to realize that whilst their initial challenge was ‘Stella was seen as overly expensive” there was an opportunity to turn this weakness into a strength. There was an opportunity to “show that Stella’s expensive price tag was a mark of quality’. A mark of quality just like the exotic foods and beverages they were increasingly favoring.

This simple & clever tool helped them turn their apparent weakness into a killer strength. One that would go on to inform their brand positioning & reshape their approach to business.  It saw them refuse to discount their product when most other beers did.  It saw them win placements in some of the poshest pubs & restaurants in the UK. And it changed the way the brand communicated, as we can see below.

Did it work? Fantastically. It established the brand in the UK and unlocked exponential growth. Now before I get to the final section for this week, I want to introduce our new readers to community shoutout.

COMMUNITY SHOUT OUT
Every week I give one reader a shoutout to my 19k followers on Linkedin. All you have to do is the following:

• Share this week’s newsletter on Linkedin and write something nice about it.

• Tag me in the post so I can see it.

During the year there will also be a few secret prizes and giveaways for those of you who do decide to share the content. 

CONCLUSION
Ok let’s wrap up this week's newsletter with the key things you must know to level up your strategic thinking. 

1. Don’t listen to the fake gurus and rush to using strategic frameworks. Always begin by identifying the real challenge & opportunity ahead. 

2. Don’t do what most brands do and shy away from their weaknesses. See if there are ways to turn this weakness into a strength. 

Hang on i hear you ask…how do I use this problem to write a strategic positioning? And what strategic model is best to use? All of this will be covered in future editions but if you want the true masterclass consider signing up for the STRATLABS course. Here coach in you the dark arts of brand strategy, showing everything we learned, working for the best brands in the world. You can pay monthly or as a one-off. And for a limited time, we have an early bird discount price. The first modules in the course, go live next weekend.

BTW what did you think of the shorter format - love it or hate it? Reply to this email and let me know. Always looking to make things better for you.

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant