Ramey builds premium brands that help our clients reach higher – providing them with one of the greatest competitive advantages available.
Research by the Boston Consulting Group demonstrates that while premium brands in any category may generate only 20% of category volume and 40% of revenues, they generate a full 60% of the category’s profits.
Said another way, premium brands are profit-drivers. They out-sell their competitive set on a per-unit basis. Their margins are higher. They build closer, long-term relationships with their customers. And as a result, they often enjoy higher rates of customer satisfaction, retention, and advocacy.
For more than 35 years, we’ve helped our clients break out of the commodity trap and ladder-up to a premium position in their categories – ranging from the high-end home to financial services to travel and tourism. And along the way, we’ve learned a few valuable lessons:
First, premium doesn’t have to mean luxury. There are many, many categories with premium brands. Take coffee: If you decided to import wholesale coffee beans yourself, you might pay the equivalent of one or two cents per cup of coffee. Conversely, you can purchase a 12 oz bag of ground coffee at the grocery for 25 cents per cup. You can buy a mug at your local breakfast shop for $1 per cup. Or you can enjoy the premium experience: a Venti at Starbucks for $5 per cup. No wonder that the Starbucks brand was valued in 2020 by Statista for more than $11 billion.
Next, to command a higher price, you have to earn it. A price tag alone does not define premium. Premium brands differentiate themselves with a better-built product or service, an easier customer interface, better design and functionality, or a customer experience that is consistently above and beyond. The best premium brands figure out how to provide meaningful value to the lives of their customers – and in many cases, to the larger world.
For instance, our culinary client, Hestan, invented a line of titanium cookware that significantly out-performs ordinary cookware. Their product was battle-tested in many of the world’s top restaurants. They built unique product features that simply aren’t found on competitor brands. And moreover, Hestan provides a “cookware concierge” to help consumers pick the right pieces. That’s why a 10-piece set of Hestan Nanobond is as much as 15x higher priced than a leading competitor’s inferior set. And that’s why Hestan has enjoyed a 10x increase YOY in direct-to-consumer sales.
Finally, a premium brand must clearly understand its consumer. We regularly find, target, and motivate consumers to engage with and purchase our clients’ premium brands. And that starts with understanding these audiences very well. Thanks to our proprietary consumer databases, we know their mindsets and values and can craft better, more actionable content because of it. And we also know how to deliver that content with pinpoint accuracy, thanks in large part to our AI-powered, real-time media delivery systems.
The combination of content creation and content delivery, informed by our deep understanding of consumers, gives our clients the assurance that their marketing investments will generate a significant return on investment – and that their brands will continue to grow towards their fullest potential.
If you’ve been wondering whether a premium branding strategy might help your organization reach its fullest potential, we’d be happy to visit with you.
All the best,
Chris Ray, CEO
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