Does your new product have an image problem?

You can launch a new product into an old perception

Begonias certainly aren’t new to garden centres.

They’re colourful, relatively easy to grow, familiar and dependable.

But familiarity comes with associations.

Beth admitted that before taking part in the project, she saw them as a bit of a “Grandma plant”. Their research suggested younger consumers held similar perceptions, associating Begonias with older gardeners and the traditional packs of bedding plants they had seen in garden centres.

That creates an interesting marketing problem.

The new variety might be different.

But if the first thing somebody sees is Begonia, all their existing associations with Begonias arrive before you’ve had an opportunity to explain why this one deserves another look.

And this happens well beyond the world of horticulture. Categories acquire baggage.

A familiar product type becomes associated with a certain demographic, price point, usage occasion, level of quality or way of life.

And when that happens, changing the product may only solve half the problem.

You also need to change perceptions.

Start with what the audience thinks, not what you know

Product teams naturally know an enormous amount about what they sell.

They understand what has changed, why a new formulation is better, what makes one variety different and how much work has gone into creating it.

The customer usually doesn’t.

They see what is in front of them and interpret it through what they already know.

That is why the team’s market research was such an important part of this project.

Rather than simply saying, here is our exciting new Begonia, they started with an uncomfortable truth about the category.

Younger consumers weren’t necessarily waiting for a better Begonia. Some of them weren’t interested in Begonias at all.

So the marketing had to give them a reason to reconsider it. That’s an exciting starting point.

Positioning can sometimes mean deciding what not to lead with

The team made quite a bold decision.

They deliberately chose not to lead with the word Begonia.

Instead, they created the name Bountiful Pink, drawing attention to one of the plant’s most obvious characteristics: the sheer abundance of pink flowers it produces.

That shifts the starting point.

Instead of asking somebody to reconsider their opinion of Begonias, you’re giving them something appealing to respond to first.

The category still needs to be understood. Nobody wants to buy a mystery plant.

But there is a difference between providing category information and allowing the category to define the entire proposition.

It’s a principle that applies across plenty of product marketing.

You see, sometimes the most technically accurate sales description isn’t the most compelling place to begin.

You might discover a feature, outcome, occasion or emotional benefit that gives people a much stronger reason to pay attention.

The job isn’t to hide what the product is. It’s to understand what deserves to be communicated first.

Find the opportunity the product gives you

The team also spotted something useful in the product itself.

Bountiful Pink could work both outdoors and as a houseplant.

For a Begonia trying to reach a wider and potentially younger audience, that versatility created an opportunity.

It no longer had to live solely in the traditional mental picture of bedding plants in the garden.

It could sit on a windowsill, brighten a patio, or be given as a gift.

It could work for somebody with a garden or equally as well for somebody without one.

The team turned that into a clever piece of communication: a flippable plant label with outdoor care instructions on one side and indoor instructions on the other.

It’s a simple idea, but I like the thinking behind it.

They had identified an interesting benefit and then made that versatility easy for the customer to understand.

A new audience doesn’t mean abandoning the old one

There was another tension running through the project that feels particularly relevant to established brands.

If you deliberately make a familiar product younger, fresher or more contemporary, what happens to the people who already buy it?

Kate challenged Beth on exactly that during our conversation.

Were they at risk of making Begonias appeal to younger gardeners while putting off the traditional customers who already liked them?

Beth admitted it had been a major discussion within the team. Their earliest concept pushed harder against the traditional Begonia image. But as the project developed, their approach softened.

The QR code stayed, but it was an optional addition rather than the only route to useful information.

Straightforward care instructions remained on the label.

And after seeing the other team’s softer, warmer concept, the eventual design incorporated some of that thinking too.

The result wasn’t a bland compromise designed to offend nobody. It was an attempt to broaden the appeal without needlessly rejecting the people already buying the category.

That’s an important distinction to make. Brands sometimes talk about attracting a younger audience as though the existing audience is a problem that needs to be removed.

And usually, it isn’t.

A more useful way of looking at it would be:

What is preventing the new audience from seeing this as relevant to them?

Your brand identity can address that without pretending your established customers no longer exist.

Relevance isn’t the same as pretending to be young

There is another trap here too.

Trying to appeal to younger consumers can quickly descend into superficial signals of youthfulness.

A QR code. TikTok. Fashionable typography.  A phrase someone picked up from the Urban Dictionary.

Those things alone won’t make a product more relevant.

What I like about the Bountiful Pink story is that the team recognised the perception problem, and found a more appealing way into the product.

They highlighted a genuinely relevant use case and reconsidered how the information should be presented.

And then they thought about where and how people might encounter it.

Social content and the Gardeners’ World Live launch gave them a platform to amplify the message.

Beth created short-form content and an interactive activity called Bountiful Hunter, while giant handmade flowers gave the stand greater visual impact.

Those things helped create attention around the launch.

But they weren’t being asked to rescue an unclear proposition. The thinking had already happened.

Give retailers a reason to understand the story too

One of my favourite ideas actually came from the other team in the challenge.

They created a video for British Garden Centres staff explaining the plant and what made it special.

Beth openly admitted she wished her team had thought of it. I can see why.

For products sold through retail, the customer isn’t always the only person who needs to understand the story.

A buyer needs to understand why they should range it. Retail teams need enough confidence to talk about it. The packaging has to work when nobody is there to explain it. And then digital content may need to continue the story afterwards.

Those aren’t separate marketing problems. They’re different moments in the same journey.

And a proposition becomes much more valuable when it works across all of them.

Fresh eyes can expose assumptions

There is another reason the Launch Success Challenge is interesting.

The ten delegates came from very different areas of horticulture.

Beth works in plant health and had never worked in a garden centre. Other members brought experience from retail, education, gardening and other parts of the industry.

At one point, Beth described how a teammate with garden-centre experience would bring her back to reality when an idea didn’t reflect how an ordinary customer would actually behave.

That mixture of experience and perspectives is useful.

Expertise is invaluable, but spending years inside a category can make some assumptions invisible.

You know why customers should care.

You know why one product is technically superior.

You know what industry terminology means.

You know how the category has always been merchandised.

Someone coming at the same problem from another angle may ask a much simpler question:

Why would anybody choose this?

Good marketing needs both forms of thinking.

Enough knowledge to understand the product properly.

Enough curiosity to question the assumptions surrounding it.

Newness is only valuable if people can see why it’s relevant

Bountiful Pink was a genuinely new plant.

But the interesting marketing lesson isn’t simply that the team gave a Begonia some fresh branding.

It’s that they recognised the new product would arrive carrying an existing category perception with it. So they gave people another way into the story.

They focused on abundant flowers rather than relying on the category name.

They made indoor and outdoor use easy to understand.

They kept the needs of existing customers in mind while trying to attract new ones.

And they took the thinking through from identity and packaging into social, events and retail communication.

For any product brand, that’s worth considering.

When something new isn’t attracting the audience you hoped it would, it is tempting to focus on the product itself. But perhaps the product isn’t the problem.

Perhaps people are looking at it through an old perception, and you haven’t yet given them a reason to reconsider.