Truly Deeply/Madly

In a recent blog on the pre­mium nature of arti­san food brands I men­tioned our dear friend Lester Mar­shall from the Cof­fin Bay Oys­ter Farm. Lester is a truly inter­est­ing char­ac­ter. Two years ago he was a pas­sion­ate Oys­ter Farmer in the majes­tic waters of Cof­fin Bay, near Port Lin­coln, South Aus­tralia. Today he is an astute mas­ter of brand­ing. He has had a par­a­digm shift that is trans­form­ing his busi­ness. He has set in play a strat­egy that is mov­ing his busi­ness from sim­ply sell­ing his suc­cu­lent oys­ters unbranded in hes­s­ian bags to one that mar­kets a port­fo­lio of pre­mium branded oys­ters. His awak­en­ing to the power of brand­ing has also seen him become an inspi­ra­tional speaker and edu­ca­tor on how to build pre­mium regional food brands.

We first met Lester a cou­ple of years ago when we were engaged to rede­fine the regional brand of the Eyre Penin­sula on the south­ern coast of South Aus­tralia. Lester was an active par­tic­i­pant in a num­ber of brand explo­ration ses­sions we con­ducted with a large cross sec­tion of stake­hold­ers, and as a mem­ber of the Eyre Penin­sula Devel­op­ment Board he also par­tic­i­pated in the brand def­i­n­i­tion work­shop we ran.

But what I did not realise at the time was that in addi­tion to assist­ing us to define a com­pelling brand propo­si­tion for the regional brand he was going through an absolute trans­for­ma­tion in his own think­ing. He was awak­ened to the real­i­sa­tion that the same brand­ing approach could, and impor­tantly, should be applied to his own oys­ter busi­ness. And when Lester grabs a con­cept he grabs it firmly in both hands and squeezes it ever so firmly – he will never die won­der­ing. And his squeez­ing has began to shape an amaz­ing journey.

Lester Mar­shall went from oper­at­ing his busi­ness under the name of ‘Marshell’ Aqua­cul­ture (yes a crazy lit­tle play on the name Mar­shall) to seiz­ing the brand name Cof­fin Bay Oys­ter Farm. And I say seiz­ing, because over many years Cof­fin Bay had cre­ated very strong brand equity with oys­ter lovers, as a region of oys­ter farm­ers pro­duc­ing superb oys­ters. Qual­ity restau­rants through­out Aus­tralia reg­u­larly high­lighted Cof­fin Bay oys­ters on their menus and in one very bold move Lester was able to directly lever­age this equity into his own busi­ness — he became the Cof­fin Bay Oys­ter Farm. He was able to claim this latent equity sim­ply because none of his fel­low oys­ter farm­ers oper­ated with a brand mind­set. They sim­ply saw them­selves as oys­ter pro­duces, whereas Lester’s awak­en­ing meant that he saw him­self as a cre­ator of branded oysters.

But that was only the begin­ning. He then set about estab­lish­ing a port­fo­lio of sub-brands that would allow him to pro­duce dif­fer­ent oys­ters for dif­fer­ent occa­sions and impor­tantly dif­fer­ent price points. Take the Cupids for exam­ple, a small (40–50 mil­lime­ters) oys­ter that is ‘sweet, del­i­cate and petite’. While they may be smaller than a stan­dard oys­ter, they are twice as expen­sive. They are for the oys­ter eater seek­ing qual­ity over quan­tity. Lester’s brand mind­set has moved him away from think­ing that he is deal­ing in com­modi­ties, that an oys­ter is an oys­ter. Dif­fer­ent con­sumers, dif­fer­ent eat­ing occa­sions and dif­fer­ent branded Cof­fin Bay Oys­ter Farm prod­ucts to meet these needs – it is the oys­ter world through a brand lens.

And for Lester his brand jour­ney has taken him far from the blue waters of Cof­fin Bay. He applied for and was suc­cess­ful in being awarded a Nuffield schol­ar­ship to travel over­seas and study the mar­ket­ing of regional food brands. His trav­els took him to China, Europe, South Africa and Japan where he has been able to explore an amaz­ing array of pre­mium food brands and their path­ways to suc­cess. He has lit­er­ally eaten his way around the world, piec­ing together a frame­work for the cre­ation of pow­er­ful regional food brands.

This rather exhil­a­rat­ing brand jour­ney all com­menced because Lester was open to new ideas. All in all, a shuck­ing good effort! Bring on the Cupids.

Peter Singline, Brand Scientist

If you would like to hear Lester & Peter in full voice on Radio National Mel­bourne then lis­ten here.
Pete on Radio National

Tags: Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Coffin-Bay-Oyster-Farm, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne, Lester-Marshall

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 11:45 am and is filed under Brand Voice, Our Work, Small Brands Big Personalities, Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.