Why Cully & Sully and Keogh's Crisps Get It When It Comes To Branding

by Keith Browning

Every product or service is a brand. It doesn't matter how long the product or service has been around, how big or small the company is or how much money, if any, the company has invested in building its brand. When you think of branding as the sum total of the attitudes, opinions and associations you have about something, everything is, by definition, a brand. Just as Coca Cola, McDonald's or Nike are brands, so too are Snap Printing, UCD or your local pub. Whether you choose to manage your brand or not, however, is up to you.

A common mistake when it comes to branding is that you need a lot of money but while money certainly helps, it's not an essential ingredient. From an Irish standpoint, there have been a few individuals in recent years that have built exceptional brands on a shoestring.

Cully & Sully

Cullen Allen and Colum O'Sullivan, the founders of Cully & Sully, sold their soup company for about €9 million, less than eight years after starting. With Cully & Sully, the soup itself isn't what's amazing. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad but there is nothing spectacular about the product itself compared to the other products in their category. Further, Cully & Sully didn't actually make the product themselves - it was contracted out!

So how did two guys from Cork end up with €4.5 million each for a soup company? It's not because they're such excellent soup makers. They did it by building a strong brand. They didn't have a lot of money but they had a clear vision. It began with the name 'Cully & Sully'. As branding expert John Fanning, author of 'The Importance of Being Branded' puts it, 'it's better to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth than a wooden one' so getting the name right is important. Secondly and crucially, they had excellent pack design. This is an extremely underestimated aspect of branding, particularly in Ireland. At the time, soup packaging all tended to be cartons with lots of bright colors and text. Cully & Sully's oval containers and black coloring stood out on shelves. At that time, choosing black as the color for a food product was a risky move but certainly paid off.

They also have excellent copy, alluding to their Ballymaloe background without going completely overboard with it. They clearly found inspiration for the copy from Innocent smoothies but then Innocent got theirs from Ben & Jerry's. Generally this isn't an issue as long as you're in different industries. As long as you can stand out in your category, taking proven strategies from others and applying them to your own can be a great move.

Finally, Cully & Sully are media friendly guys, who went out to food markets, fairs and shows up and down the country like Taste of Dublin & Bloom. This combined with the name, copy, design, packaging, Ballymaloe background and media friendliness all built the Cully & Sully brand. A brand that consumers bought in to and international firms were willing to pay millions for. And a brand that didn't cost millions to build. The soup itself is not bad either!

Keogh's Crisps

Keogh's set up their crisp brand when they saw the potato market in decline, as Irish people became more and more sophisticated in their tastes. They purchased the necessary equipment and began to produce crisps on their farm. But how is another crisp brand to differentiate in a crowded marketplace, competing against long established firms? They did it by building a powerful brand.

Here we have a group of genuine Irish potato farmers making crisps. What a great story! They actually look quite cool (for farmers!) and photograph well, which is a big help. Producing "hand cooked crisps on our farm", Keogh's crisps are "grown with love in Ireland". They have a fantastic gimmick in 'Spud Nav', which allows consumers to trace their crisps back to the farm based on a number on each pack that can be entered in to their website! They have flavors like 'Shamrock and Sour Cream', which sets them apart from competitors, as it's different and distinctly Irish. The packaging is good and premium, although personally I prefer some of the others in their category like Kettle's.

I think Keogh's are one to watch. They just recently signed a deal with Tesco UK but getting on to supermarket shelves in the UK is only the beginning I feel. After all, if Ireland can't be famous for potatoes around the world, what can we be famous for?!

The point here is that it's very difficult to create a point of difference with your actual product. Products are so easily replicable. But you can do it with your marketing communication. Cully & Sully and Keogh's are just two in a long list of examples of individuals that have built very strong brands without spending millions doing so. And building a strong brand means more customers are willing to purchase from you, more regularly - and are prepared to pay a premium price for your product. What more could you ask of your brand?!