Should any company want to challenge Coke’s and Pepsi’s positions in the soda drink industry, it would have to invest significant resources into its marketing campaign; even then, it’s no guarantee that such investments are worthwhile.
Sodastream- a company that sells soda-making machine- has successfully done just that.
Sodastream’s most recent ad, which was intended to be released as a Super Bowl 2013 ad, was banned by CBS. CBS was allegedly uncomfortable with the idea of the two most ubiquitous brands during the game-also the two big names that bring in a lot of ad revenues for the company- being “outsmarted”.
This anecdote is an interesting example of STP. Sodastream identified its main customer segment as regular soda drinkers who normally consume bottled soda from Coke and Pepsi, and planned to target this segment during the Super Bowl, whose audience is likely to overlap with their main customer segment. The ingenuity, however, lies in the firm’s marketing position and how it rolls out its ad without wasting millions on buying the airtime. The banned ad portrays Sodastream as a company that takes the high road- a soda-making machine that helps reduce use of plastic bottles, thus saves the Earth. Furthermore, Sodastream positions itself as directly against the biggest names in the industry- Coke and Pepsi- and it can’t do that any more explicitly (hence the ban). This risky positioning strategy usually turns out to be unsuccessful due to the insurmountable inertia of the big brands. However, the facts that the banned ad was viewed and discussed on Youtube and other websites by millions of people even before the game, and that Sodastream posted its largest stock market gains to date suggest that Sodastream’s marketing tactic has been successful in more than one way.