Java Straight Up - coffee products

American Demographics, Feb, 2001 by Matthew Grimm

The key to this, according to marketing consultant and former Starbucks executive Scott Bedbury, is concocting a product that delivers the punch - in terms of robust flavor and kick - that drew these consumers to coffeehouses in the first place. Although we couldn't find it in any supermarkets nearby, Cafe Latte reputedly doesn't score well on this account. According to one product review, it comes off merely as an alternately themed GF International Coffee. "Although I enjoyed Folgers Cafe Latte as a mid-afternoon treat," reports Carolyn Wyman in Supermarket Sampler, "it's not strong enough either in coffee taste or caffeine (it has only half the blast of regular coffee) to get me out of bed."

Says Bedbury: "No matter how many products P&G or Unilever buy and throw into their standard channels, whatever they profess their target and purpose to be, their business model is essentially to serve these giant supermarkets, not the consumer. They have to forsake the high ground - no pun intended - in terms of making a product cost-efficient for mass production. You have to give them high marks for trying. But when people - especially this next generation of coffee drinkers - think of coffee, they don't think of red or green cans in coffee aisles. Certainly, slick packaging or advertising can't hurt, but it's not the long-term solution to what's going on here."

And in fact, coffee consumption patterns among the target group seem to bear this out. Once we look more closely at the gourmet coffee consumers among the 18- to 24-year-olds, their predilections, while being amenable to the idea of Cafe Latte, may run so much to the robust, high-octane coffeehouse drinks that caffeinated cocoa mixes just won't do. To wit, of 18- to 25-year-old coffee drinkers, 55 percent consume espresso-based drinks on a daily or occasional basis, tops of all demographic groups (52 percent for those aged 25 to 29; 48 percent for those 30 to 60), per the NCA survey. In 2000, 45 percent chose a cappuccino, up from 40 percent in 1999, while 29 percent ordered cafe mochas, up from 17 percent in 1999, and 21 percent savored cafe lattes, up from 17 percent. No other age group shows such dynamic movement in any category of coffee consumption.

P&G may score some initial trial success with the product, even after a magnanimous sampling program. College students, after all, need their caffeine injections made convenient for all-nighters, and Cafe Latte certainly will appear to belong to their generation more than Folgers Crystals does. But in the long run, the company is doing what so many massive packaged-goods companies have over the years: trying to apply basic sourcing and channel expertise in the context of a consumption category others have already pioneered. And this simply is not the basis anymore for brand legitimacy, especially among a young, adult set, so savvy, we are told time and again, to the wiles of marketing.