Challenge
After five years of uncertainty, six months without their longtime CEO, a tired and dated brand and challenged sales in their core business, Bumble Bee was like a rudderless ship heading into the perfect storm with strong headwinds. They were in urgent need of clarity for how to navigate through a multitude of challenges. There was no compelling vision and no clear strategy. They had lost their connection to food, didn’t have an innovation strategy and had a culture that was radically impacted by the state of play. Needless to say, they were under pressure from their core competitors as well as emerging new brands and food trends. It was time to chart a new path, and that is when Bulldog Drummond was brought into help.
Solution
Forming the Strategy and Building the Brand We began our engagement by leading their executive team on a process to take a hard look at their past and reconcile with some of the biggest issues facing them. Through a series of workshops we arrived at a set of clear directives across every area of their business, including brand, culture, structure, product, consumer and category management. Each member of the executive team explored, debated and then committed to the change that would be necessary to cement the foundation for a turnaround strategy. With a number of legacy product brands sitting under the corporate brand, our first move was to determine how Bumble Bee Corporate would structure itself going forward. The resulting strategic architecture repositioned the company as “an ocean-inspired collection of brands”, putting clear guardrails on the fact that they were a seafood-first company while still allowing them to explore products that were not just from the sea but seafood-inspired—a clear path for growth. And then we looked at their brand. Step one was to put the focus back on food and inject energy and action into the organization. Step two was developing a clear and compelling vision expressed around “Seafood Love”, driving relevance and engagement with a new generation of consumers. Along with the vision, we developed a brand platform, a clear food philosophy and an impact strategy that would guide their actions on all fronts.
Results
We started by bringing their leadership team together to define the challenge. Together, with the challenge defined, we created an internal belief that this was a challenge worth solving. After 12 months of working closely together, they were rigorously following a turnaround growth strategy, had an engaged team firing on all cylinders and delivered their first growth year of revenue (and first profitable year) in over five years. Guided by a clear strategy, they had a plan to release refreshed product brands into the market along with new products to support their new position as well as an acquisition strategy to drive growth and relevance. And they recommitted to a clear sustainability strategy to demonstrate their commitment above and beyond profits.
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