Rebranding a Declining Business

How do you cope when your business is in decline? There are plenty of examples of great services that just aren’t in high demand anymore. Businesses like travel agencies, the opera, ballet, & symphony. It can be a tough struggle to try to regain your audience. Too often, these types of businesses shy away from advertising. Bad idea. If anything, they should ramp up the frequency. The problem is, the business itself needs to adapt to excite a brand new clientele. The same old tricks aren’t going to work anymore. You need to find a new reason to be relevant. No worries! This can start in your advertising. Being interesting can be tough; especially when you get comfortable with a longstanding audience. Rebranding a declining business can be a lot like finding a new partner after being in a long relationship. You can have confidence issues. You start to forget what made you a catch in the first place. You need to break that mentality. Sticking with the same old routine isn’t going to get you anywhere. Go buy some new clothes, get a fresh haircut, and get out on the scene. Transform your advertising to attract your new audience. For the sake of this article, let’s focus on the opera. It’s a prime example of an industry/service that is in decline. The primary audience is aging and the younger generation isn’t filling the ranks. How do we change that? Does the average twenty something really know anything about the opera? Probably not. Everything the average young person associates with opera would usually be a stereotype. Let’s break that cycle! It’s time to reinvent! Here are a few examples of how to do that.

• Be surprising! – If the popular belief is that the opera is boring, then advertising for the opera has to be anything but boring. You need to shock people into consciousness. If your first thought for branding is to make a classy, low key, elegant commercial, then don’t do that!!! Make the opposite. Shock your audience into recognizing you as a new brand. Here’s an example...

Nobody would expect an opera ad to sound like that. But, that’s exactly what makes it stand out. If it was stuffy, classy, and unassuming, it would get lost in a radio stopset. You’d verify your audience’s opinions about the opera. And we’ve already established that what they currently believe isn’t brining them to the ticket counter. The message would be lost.

• Be honest – Just because something has a certain stigma to it, doesn’t mean that it’s true. It also doesn’t mean it has to be a negative point. The average 20-45 year old would think of the opera as boring. They may think it would all go over their heads. These are old stereotypes that they’ve hung onto for years. Challenge them. Like these 2 commercials…

These two spots try to connect with the listener on a personal level. Using childhood experiences as a universal platform, we can make a strong, believable connection with the listener. Going to the opera doesn’t seem like such an outlandish idea anymore.

• Be enticing - Reward your future audience! Everything gets a lot easier to sell when you add value. For something like the opera, it may be well worth your while to put on an entirely free performance for guests under 30. Sometimes people just need to see something to fall in love with it. Giving away one show for free and backing it up with an advertising campaign will fill the seats with a new audience. You then have an auditorium of new clients. Prove to them that they should buy their next ticket by being awesome.

To be honest, some of the best advertising campaigns to work on are the ones that seem the hardest. Usually they have the simplest and most exciting answers. If your business is in a steady decline, the one thing you need to remember is to loosen up, and change things up. What you’ve been doing isn’t working or has stopped working. The only way you’re going to find a new audience is to be interesting to them. So, find out who your new audience is, and design your business, and your advertising campaign around them. The only other choice you have is to let your business die. Don’t do that. Evolve.

Next week I'll talk a little about these things...

Audio Signatures! Let's talk about using them correctly. Next Wednesday...