“Here is the strategy: Vertical Brand Utility. We do not rebrand. We reposition .”
James leans forward. “So we dumb down the product?” “No,” Mara counters. “We reframe it. We stop selling strength . We start selling certainty .”
The room divides.
Wilkins Headquarters, 12th Floor Strategy Room, 8:00 AM
Mara kicks off. She clicks a slide titled The Awareness Cliff . “Brand recall for Wilkins in the consumer home improvement sector is 11%. That’s below ‘store brand generic’ at 14%,” she says flatly. “We are the invisible giant. We sell 2 million gallons of industrial epoxy a year, but on Amazon, our one-star reviews come from dads who say, ‘This industrial tube didn’t come with a nozzle.’ We’re selling a jet engine to people who want a bicycle pump.” wilkins marketing strategy session
“Our value is zero failure rate. A roof tile stuck with Wilkins stays stuck. That’s boring, but true. If we put a cartoon lizard on the package, the factory guys will think we’ve gone soft.”
Mara erases part of the whiteboard and draws two columns: vs. Life Mode . “Here is the strategy: Vertical Brand Utility
The smell of stale coffee and fresh marker ink hangs in the air. On the whiteboard, a single phrase is circled in red: “Wilkins: Trusted. But not chosen.”