Marketing symposium at Johnson School asks what makes brands legendary

Robert Bailey, an executive vice president at the advertising agency BBDO, talks to Johnson School students in Sage Hall, Oct. 31, on what has kept the Juicy Fruit brand successful, during a marketing symposium. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By Linda Myers

"Building and Sustaining Legendary Brands and Icons" was the subject of a marketing symposium held at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management Oct. 30-31.

In addition to a keynote address by Gerald Ostrov, company group chair of Johnson & Johnson Worldwide Vision Care, and talks by people from such marketing giants as Unilever and Citigroup, one of the presentations that drew a large, attentive audience was about chewing gum.

Robert Bailey, executive vice president for research and planning at BBDO, one of the world's top advertising agencies, spoke about managing the Juicy Fruit brand, which has become legendary since it was first introduced to the American public 110 years ago.

In the competitive field of chewing gum sales, 153 million units of Juicy Fruit were sold last year in more than 350,000 outlets, Bailey said, and the popular pineapple-peach-flavored gum in the bright yellow package enjoys 99 percent total awareness -- meaning nearly all Americans have heard of it. It also has international reach, selling well in places as disparate as Germany and China.

With that kind of success, couldn't Wrigley's, the maker of Juicy Fruit, rest on its laurels and let the revenues roll in? No, said Bailey, who peppered his talk with cautionary tales about other companies that went under after mismanaging long-reigning brands

His advertising agency -- which promotes some of the most-well-known brands on supermarket shelves, among them Campbell's, Pepsi and Bayer -- has done so by gaining a deep understanding of each product's customer base and changing with the times.

The rules are basic, not rocket science, said Bailey: "Make a quality product that's well-known and well-regarded, with a point of difference, sold at a fair price and available everywhere."

Keep your product reasonably differentiated from the rest of your competitors' products, Bailey elaborated. Make it stand out (Juicy Fruit's yellow packaging does that), keep prices low and consumer promotions to a minimum and retain control of how trade vendors price the product (something that competitor Chiclets, now defunct, was not able to do), he said.

In addition, "Keep acquiring knowledge through quality research," Bailey advised. "Don't be seduced by the snake oil salesmen, the latest fad." Wrigley's initially lost revenue when sugarless gum rose to prominence in the '80s. "Juicy Fruit was in a lot of trouble, but we stayed the course and rebuilt the business," said Bailey. When the sugarless fad ended, some competing brands, BeechNut among them, went out of business, he said.

The average age of the Juicy Fruit consumer is under 20, with 3- to 11-year-olds making up the heart of the business, but with "chewers" 20 years old and over accounting for 40 percent, Bailey said. The over-35 set tends to prefer mintier flavors, he observed.

The brand's youthful image is part of its success. Consumers who buy Juicy Fruit associate it with people who are fun to be with, have a good sense of humor and don't take life too seriously, said Bailey. He showed a series of television ads for Juicy Fruit from the '80s (families picking packs of gum from the Juicy Fruit tree) through the '90s (attractive, lightly clad young people engaged in outdoor sports, popping gum into their mouths) to the present (a workplace scene in which a young subordinate teleports a pack of Juicy Fruit out of his boss's pocket). "Jingles are out, humor is now in," Bailey noted.

Further advice from Bailey on managing a legendary brand: "Don't over-market. Focus on the big decisions. Sometimes the best decision is to just say no, to the next consumer sweepstakes, to changing positioning unnecessarily, to changing price prematurely. Always search for innovations that can meaningfully grow volume and company profits." He ended his presentation by distributing free Juicy Fruit five-stick packs to the audience.

The event was organized by the Marketing Association, a student group, with assistance from marketing Associate Professor Douglas Stayman, Professor Vithala Rao and others at the Johnson School.

"The symposium went really well, with lots of interesting topics that generated student interest," said Aparna Agrawal, Marketing Association vice president in charge of the event.