4 PM. Cup-a-Soup. More people should do that. This is a Category Entry Point (CEP) for Cup-a-Soup. The brand has made an everyday moment very concrete and recognisable for consumers. When a brand achieves this, it leads to significant brand growth. But how do you do that?
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Let’s start with what you absolutely should not do. And that is to formulate a CEP in the broadest sense of the word. At Blauw, we often ask brand managers during a workshop to create a list of possible CEPs. They then have to choose a few to proceed with. At that point, it regularly happens that several CEPs that may seem similar are summarised. This creates a completely new CEP that is no longer recognisable to the target audience.
Why you should not summarise multiple CEPs
Consider ‘Children going to a hockey practice’ and ‘Children going to a football practice’. Marketers might think it’s smart to summarise these into, for example, ‘Children playing sports’. But it was precisely the hockey practice or football practice that made these moments so recognisable to the consumer. By summarising them, that recognisability is completely lost; it simply becomes too general.
Select the most promising Category Entry Points
The tendency to summarise various CEPs is understandable. The moment you engage with consumers and delve into and analyse your category, hundreds of situations can emerge that could trigger your product. Logically, you cannot work with so many CEPs. So, you want to make a selection. The trick is to choose the most promising ones, without individually adjusting the CEPs. That is, without summarising them into new CEPs, because in practice, you would otherwise lose their value.
Make a CEP Clear and Concrete
If you want more people to think of your brand, you need to make a CEP as recognisable, and therefore as clear and concrete, as possible. But how do you do that?
Describe the context: what, (with) whom, when, where (to), and why
At Blauw, during a CEP study, we organise one or more workshops where we help marketers describe a CEP as detailed as possible. First and foremost, we believe it is important that all the ‘W’s are strongly highlighted for the CEPs. The what, (with) whom, when, where (to), and why must be described as accurately as possible. Additionally, we use Six Word Stories. With this, marketers learn to describe CEPs in just six words in a clear and recognisable way for consumers. With all our experience, we can now say that this has proven to be an effective method for formulating CEPs very clearly and concretely.
