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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Out and About Marketing - Double the Fun, If You Follow the Rules!

The Baskin Robbins Double Header Cone screams, "I came out of an innovation session!"


That's okay though because it appears from the outside-looking-in to have a solid customer experience-based strategic foundation.

An ice cream cone allowing multiple flavors and formats side by side lets customers preferring cones experience them in a new, fun way. Who can beat two different ice cream flavors and formats (soft serve and scoop) the way YOU want to combine them, instead of randomly (mashed scoops), sequentially (scoops on top of each other), or in a forced swirl (for soft serve)?

It's fun for kids (who seemed to be the primary audience the day we were in Baskin Robbins) and probably makes a parent's life a little saner (since it helps more easily please a kid wanting multiple flavors). For Baskin Robbins, it creates some near term buzz and introduces a new, slightly higher price point to upsell customers who'd typically only buy a single cone.

Unfortunately, the poster's fine print clearly states "no substitutions." You can't have two scoops or two soft serve flavors. The Double Header cone "fun" doesn't extend to customer-driven innovation at the point of sale.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving (US-based readers), and be on the look-out for "out and about marketing" examples to share here! Brainzooming is taking a few days off and will be back Monday. - Mike Brown

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2 comments:

BarryD said...

ugh. the fine print, pin in the balloon of fun. Seriously? And, what's the business driver? did someone actually model the gross profit impact of two soft serve or two scoop options? There's a grand total of three combinations of this treat. So, it can't be that substitutions would cause a breakdown in the serving process while the server tries to remember all the iterations. Leave it to the suites to take the fun out of fun.

Mike Brown said...

I'm not sure the reason for the fine print Barry.

Maybe there's an unhealthy weight distribution with two scoops that makes little hands more likely to drop it? Maybe it's something about melting differences between the two types of ice cream? Neither sounds likely.

I agree though: I don't really think ice cream requires a lot of fine print!