How Nespresso Went From Trendy to Boring… and Back Again

In this episode of Full Fat Marketing, Leonora breaks down how Nespresso went from revolutionary to ordinary to desirable again by shifting the meaning around the product rather than changing the product itself.

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Disclaimer: Insights shared are based on Leonora’s experience with food and hospitality brands and are for educational purposes only. Results may vary.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There was a time when owning an espresso machine felt kind of revolutionary. Like if someone had one in their kitchen, you probably thought, oh my gosh, they've really got their life together. I remember the first time I bought my first espresso machine. What a moment that was. I honestly felt on top of the world. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I thought this is it now. You know, when you spend your paycheck on something like that, and it is just something else, and you get home and you unpack it and you just have that first cup of coffee. Nothing, nothing beats it. And it felt at the time like really sleek, modern, futuristic. Like coffee had finally entered its Apple product era. And then somewhere along the way, it got a bit boring. And I don't know if you've ever noticed this about Nespresso. It became a bit everyone's aunt has one, corporate apartment kitchen vibes, middle shelf at John Lewis, and yet somehow it's become cool again. Which is really, really interesting because the product itself did not dramatically change at all, but the meaning around it did. Nespresso is a brilliant example of what happens when a product goes from revolutionary to ordinary to desirable again. And if your product has started feeling a bit stale, this is exactly the kind of shift you need to be paying attention to. I'm Leonora and this is a Full Fat Marketing Podcast where you'll hear the uncomfortable strategy truths for FB brands that most people won't tell you, but I will. Now, this is really not an episode about coffee. It's an episode about how brands lose cultural energy and how they sometimes get it back. When Nespresso first launched, it felt like the future. And I'm actually not kidding here because it was crazy. Remember when it first opened, the whole shop experience was the sleekest, coolest thing ever. I mean, even just having like the sleeves with the pods was just nuts. And then I remember like when you had like the tills and then you had the coffee behind the tills, like in those little squares, and you had all the sleeves in there. And at the time, I thought that was wild. Like it was just because usually, I mean, that's that's so counterintuitive. Usually you'd have like coffee in a supermarket and you pick it off the shelf yourself, but that just felt so luxurious. You were just immersed in the brand culture like no other. Going there to buy your coffee was just such an experience. When Nespresso released its first coffee machine, although I always have this like Doctor Who reference in my head when I think about it, it almost feels like it was a TARDIS, although it looked nothing like it. It did not feel like a pod machine, it felt like a smarter way to live. It made coffee feel like more elegant, really grown up, more modern. And great brands don't just launch products, they launch new beliefs around that product. And Espresso's belief was basically you should not have to choose between convenience and sophistication. Before that, and before they actually came along, home coffee often felt like one of two things functional, basic, and a bit sad, or complicated, messy, and too much effort before 8 a.m. And Espresso came and said, no, actually, you can have something that feels polished, elevated, and ridiculously easy and also delicious. It was not just solving a practical problem, it was making people feel like they were upgrading their life. And this is where desirability starts as well. Then it became normal. Once enough people start adopting something and start having something, the very thing that made it exciting can start making it feel, well, less exciting. And that's exactly what happened here. Suddenly, Nespresso was no longer the future of coffee. It was the thing that everyone already has. And sadly, once a product becomes too familiar like that, it can start slipping into this really weird zone of being useful but not exciting, relevant but not talked about, and widely owned but not culturally interesting. And that's the point where a lot of brands panic. This is when they realize practicality alone does not keep a product desirable. A product can still work perfectly well and still start losing its cultural relevance. And the thing was, the product didn't change much. The context around it did. And espresso did not become cool again because it suddenly became brand new. It became cool again because the world around it changed. It started getting some feelers out there for the marketing and associating itself with things like cozy morning routines, polished kitchen, elevated home habits, quiet life content, and that really changed everything. Suddenly, Espresso was not just relying on the product to carry the whole brand. They started attaching it to people who brought a whole different kind of meaning to it with them based on what was working mainly on social media. I mean, what a year COVID was for an espresso, by the way. There was a noticeable shift in the brand during that period for sure. It was like they sort of disappeared off the face of the earth and then they came straight back with a vengeance, you know, and then suddenly everybody was obsessed over buying an espresso machine again. Like who remembers when they brought George Clooney on board? Because that was huge at the time. He made the brand feel really like grown up, polished, sophisticated. I mean, every time he came on my screen to do an espresso ad, I was like, what a man. God, it was something else. But he gave Nespresso this really effortless, slightly unattainable energy. It no longer felt like just a coffee machine. It felt more like a lifestyle choice for adults with taste that made it really sexy. Then fast forward, and now they're bringing in people like Dualipa. She's like the latest person to come in, the latest celebrity endorsement for them, which gives the brand a completely different kind of cool look. Now it feels really young, current, aesthetic, more socially visible. And every time they shift that face of the brand, they're not just changing the campaign, they change what the brand means. Once a product starts helping people create a feeling or a mood or a version of themselves they like, it becomes much easier to want. And again, really touches on that really high desire. And this is what made it really cool again. It stopped being about coffee. It became more interesting again when it stopped being just about convenience or caffeine or coffee quality and started being about like ritual taste, domestic identity. People were no longer buying it like this is the most efficient coffee option. They were buying it more like this fits the kind of life I want to have. If your product has started feeling less exciting, less talked about, less culturally alive, sometimes it just means that the meaning around it has just flatlined a bit. I just want also want to make really clear that you don't need to endorse celebs for it to get somewhere. This is just what Nespresso decided to do. You just need to get much clearer on what your product means now, what role it plays in people's lives, what kind of feeling it creates, and why someone should still care about it today. And the clever thing with Nespresso is this as well. Even when they had like people like David Beckham, for instance, like a celeb endorsement, this is where it was starting to really like explode on social media, and especially with like cozy creators or people who had like these really, really aesthetic, beautiful houses. And Nespresso picked up on that as well. And so they started releasing colorful coffee machines, special mugs with like flowers on them, because it was really going for this like feminine aesthetic because that was what was really blowing up on social media. Even as like a brand yourself, you just need to start noticing what people are doing, even if they're not using your brand per se, what content is relevant now and how your product could fit into that is a really clever way of doing it. Products don't need reinventing, they just need reframing. They need a stronger identity, they need a more relevant place in the customer's life. If you're a founder, marketing manager listening to this, here's the practical takeaway from this episode. Ask yourself this Has our product become useful but emotionally flat? Are we still marketing around what it does instead of what it means? Have we outgrown the story we originally launched with? Does our product still feel relevant to the people who want it now? And if not, what new role could it play? And that's where a lot of hidden opportunity lives in making it mean something again. This is what gives that brand energy and that second life. Products don't just stay desirable because they were once innovative, they stay desirable when they keep finding new ways to matter and stay relevant. And a really good example of this, although, okay, it's not food, but Apple released the laptop Neos. And this is a really, really clever one as well because they wanted to appeal more to Gen Z. Obviously, a big part of like Gen Z that's come out is like sort of they love colours and they love things that are really interactive and visually aesthetic, especially with like doing a lot of content and being on social media a lot more. And they released these laptops, which are much cheaper, so a lot more people can afford them, but they all come in these sort of amazing colours. So again, it's being able to reinvent yourself in a way that's still the same product, but does it a little bit differently and for a reason. So that's another really clever example, by the way. And also that's the full fat version. Tomorrow I'm talking about why every cafe suddenly looks the same and why that is becoming a much bigger problem than people realise. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, you can listen to Full Fat Marketing Podcast wherever you get your podcasts with new bite size episodes released daily from Monday to Friday. You can thank me later for that. And if you're enjoying this episode, I'd really love it if you left a rating and a review, as it really helps more people find it. I'll see you tomorrow.