The incredible evolution of the Clover brand

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If you were to knock on the average South African's front door, chances that you'll find a Clover product are pretty good. It comes as no surprise, since Clover has been voted the *most trusted dairy brand in South Africa and is one of the few brands that have earned a place among the **world's top two percent of brands for the emotional bond it has with its consumers.

So, how does a successful, century-old brand like Clover stay fresh and innovative, without alienating its loyal consumers?

Essential DNA

Clover's latest Spread the Love campaign is not only taking the Clover brand to a new level, but is transforming the way agencies and marketing departments are communicating their brands to consumers. Denise Meadon, Group Manager: Marketing at Clover is the driving force behind Clover's Spread the Love campaign. “We realised we had to find a creative and innovative way to seek out the essential DNA of the Clover brand. The aim of the campaign was to address Clover's transformation to become an innovative and progressive Branded Consumer Goods (BCG) company,” says Denise.

Brand gurus will tell you that it is individuals who buy your brand. They will be the ones who consume it and allow you to enter their worlds. But we all know, consumers are ever-demanding, they are savvy and they can be fickle – a scenario Clover is well aware of. What's more is that the average consumer these days is overloaded with choices and at the end of the day they will only go where they believe they personally will benefit more from meaningful products and services over time.

Customer-centric

“It's all about being customer-centric,” says Denise. “As a BCG company, we could no longer just rely on our quality products to set us apart from our competitors – we needed to focus on making our customers the centre of our corporate culture.

Clover is essentially a feminine brand – simply by the nature of its intrinsic product properties as well as its value added role of feeding, nurturing and caring for consumers' health. The challenge was to maximise this goodness and wholesomeness of femininity in an unexpected, tangible, visibly arresting manner that would bring all the exceptional female qualities of caring and nurturing to the fore. All this over and above the basic functionality of the different Clover products,” says Denise.

Iconic females

Clover chose ten of South Africa's most iconic females (Miriam Makeba, Helen Suzman, Carrol Boyes, Ferial Haffajee, Marianne Fassler, Karen Zoid, Claire Johnston, Leleti Khumalo, Gcina Mhlope and Glenda Gray) as ambassadors to Spread the Love with Clover – drawing synergies between these icons' love for what they do and Clover's love that spans across a century for its products and customers. Each one of these female icons represented different symbols of love:

Helen Suzman	-	Perseverance is Love
Miriam Makeba	-	Grace is Love
Ferial Haffajee	-	Truth is power is Love
Claire Johnston	-	Togetherness is Love
Dr. Glenda Grey	-	Compassion is Love
Marianne Fassler	-	Creativity is Love
Leleti Khumalo	-	Sharing is Love
Karen Zoid	-	Music is Love
Carrol Boyes	-	Energy is Love
Gcina Mhlope	-	Knowledge is Love

“The idea was not to focus on the celebrity-status of these women per se, but rather on what they do, what they have achieved and how they have made a difference in the South African society. These female icons represent a very important facet of being female in South Africa. With this campaign, we aimed to celebrate their talents and harnessed it to concur with Clover's efforts over the last 100 years,” says Denise.

Enter Advertising Agency, Stimulii and world-renown photographer David LaChapelle.

A first for Clover

Clover's Spread the Love campaign is in many ways a first for Clover. For the first time ever in Clover's history, the focus was not product-specific, but rather on the emotional ties with the product.

“We wanted to tell our loyal consumers that we love and care about them so much that only the best tasting and most trusted quality Clover products are good enough for them. The campaign also shows a different side of the Clover brand that has never been done before, such as the cropping of the logo at the bottom of the teaser print campaign, as well as the almost surreal settings of the shots,” says Denise.

The beloved brand

“Our vision for the Clover brand is that it must become part of the everyday fabric of people's lives. In a competitive market place, consumers will gravitate towards the brands with which they have emotional ties. What better emotional bond to have than the maternal bond between a mother and feeding her family.

The female icons had to be portrayed in way that showed them at their most bountiful and most beautiful that immediately evoked all motherly analogies. David LaChapelle truly captured the vision and portrayed each one of these icons in a captivating, almost surreal way. It was LaChapelle's vision that each woman should hold a source of light. This orb symbolised so many things – not least which was Clover in the life of South Africans,” says Denise.

So what makes identity brands like Clover resonate with its customers? Says Denise: “We wanted to tap into the magical sweet spot to let the Clover brand deliver imaginative stories that are perfectly attuned to society's desires. We wanted to do something different to inspire our customers. For the next six months customers and visitors to our site will be sharing their stories on how they are ‘spreading the love' in their communities. These stories will be published on Clover's blog every month until the end of the campaign in August. Prizes will also be awarded to the winning contributions.”

Brand evolution

“The evolution of our brand is a work in progress that constantly revitalises our products, keeps us young at heart and universal in appeal. It's about searching for a timeless appeal across demographic lines and generational boundaries. We believe Clover's Spread the Love campaign has done that and more,” says Denise.

Milk is one of mankind's oldest, most nutritious and most essential foods and its history is as old as civilisation itself. In South Africa, milk has become a household name, thanks to Clover's proud history of over 100 years in the dairy industry.

“We have a long and proud relationship with our consumers. The challenge was to protect and nurture this relationship and not alienate our consumers, while on the other hand we had to keep our brand an innovative, creative and relevant to remain the most competitive,” says Denise.

Clover utilised the strength of these female icons to draw synergies with Clover's strong brand to inspire women (the purchase gatekeepers) to become even better mothers than they already are.

Some rules are meant to be broken

Some rules are meant to be broken. Clover has taken a bold step by using unconventional icons in unconventional settings to communicate a very basic product. It has transformed the brand by inventing a new story that both draws upon the brand's historic cultural authority and at the same time addresses a new utopian desire.

From its humble beginnings more than a century ago, Clover has become a brand synonymous with trusted quality and care – a brand that is certain to continue to grow as the much loved brand for at least another century.

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[12 Mar 2008 14:16]