Recession Marketing: Don’t Do A Moxie

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Businesses whose reaction to the economic downturn is to consolidate their client base, rather than seek to invigorate it, may wish to consider the daddy of all cautionary tales. It concerns the American soft drink brand Moxie, who gifted Coca Cola the chance of global domination in the Great Depression.

Moxie had everything going for it in the pre-depression era – history, brand awareness and market share. At that time, Coca Cola was a distant second in the popularity stakes.

But let’s first look at the history of Moxie, because this is the key to its downfall. Moxie began life in the mid-nineteenth century as an elixir that could “cure paralysis, softening of the brain, nervousness and insomnia”. It was invented by Augustin Thompson, who sold his dubious restorative from town to town.

But as the years passed, Thompson changed tack; he dropped the medical sales pitch and focused instead on selling his product as “a delicious drink that will satisfy everyone’s taste”.

Moxie had a 10-year head start on Coca Cola, and by the early part of the century it was being brilliantly merchandised using every promotional gimmick of the time, including endorsements from silent film stars such as Ed Wynn and George M. Cohan.

Moxie also became heavily linked with amusement parks, dance halls and holiday resorts on the Eastern Seaboard. Then, in the late 20s of the last century, it established a huge new production facility that became know as ‘Moxieland’. After a short while, Moxie even began to promote this as a tourist attraction.

But then came the Depression. Moxie executives felt that advertising in such a climate would be distasteful, and elected to increase spending on its sugar reserves, while cutting back on its popular advertising campaigns.

Coca Cola, however, took the opposite view, and quickly repositioned itself as an antidote to Depression-era gloom. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what became of Moxie? It is still being sold, but its distribution is limited to the Boston hinterland, where Moxieland was built.

The moral? If you cease to seek new clients, you will find yourself losing market share to your more aggressive competitors – perhaps disastrously so. Don’t do a Moxie.

Planet Client is the only blog helping businesses win clients, keep clients and understand clients. It is part of journalist Sean Ashcroft’s unique client gift service, Sticky Clients

categories: client relations,client retention,customer relations,customer retention,small business,business

Tagged with: client relations • client retention • Marketing

Filed under: Marketing

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