Musician’s Friend Rebrand
Background
Operating out of a suburban California garage in 1983, Musician’s Friend produced it’s first catalog selling guitar strings and a handful of other accessories. As one of the earliest catalog marketers of music gear and the first to focus on outfitting rock bands, Musician’s Friends experienced rapid growth.
Over the past few years the company has shifted it’s focus to e-commerce and moved to producing only a few print pieces a year. This change in the business model and strategy opened the door to a rebrand.
Key Business Issues
- After two years, new member sign-ups for the Musician’s Friend Backstage Pass rewards program have plateaued and are not meeting projected milestones. In addition, only a small percentage (approx. 10%) of members are engaged with the brand, program, and member benefits.
- Guitar Center, Sweetwater, Amazon, and other MI (Musical Instrument) Retailers are increasingly taking market share from Musician’s Friend, resulting in a decline in earnings YOY (Year-Over-Year) and a loss in brand equity.
Consulting
Through discovery we uncovered that the rewards program messaging was unclear, confusing, and difficult to decipher. Often interchanging between dollar amounts, points, percentages, and multipliers. A lack of awareness and a disjointed user experience were also contributing factors.
The Musician’s Friend Brand was losing equity quickly as their differentiators were not clearly or publicly communicated. The brand was focused heavily on competitive pricing and discounting products as opposed to managing the brand position & perception and building customer loyalty.
Strategy
Upon gathering informative insights it was clear that we needed to rename the program to clarify the purpose and value to the customer, create clear messaging that would be consistent and understandable, improve the website user experience to make using the program easier, and increase awareness.
To improve the brand’s image and retake ground that Musician’s Friend had lost we made a plan to reposition Musician’s Friend to lead a specific area of the industry and clearly differentiate them from their competitors. Through the process we would define a new brand narrative/story, brand attributes, voice, branding tool kit, and customer experience.
Activation
The Musician’s Friend Backstage Pass program was ultimately renamed to “Musician’s Friend Rewards” to eliminate any confusion as to what the program is. We implemented new messaging that captures attention and clearly communicates the benefits — “It Pays to Play: Get points, exclusive deals, and more. Join for Free.” And, we restructured the product pages to display the amount of points customers can earn for each item, added the function to easily use their points at checkout, and included messaging, CTAs, and the ability to quickly sign up for the program at each step of the checkout funnel.
Musician’s Friend was repositioned as the MI Retailer that is focused on being a friend and resource for all musicians at every stage of their journey. A new tagline was created — a sentiment that perfectly sums up their position in the market and places a stake in the ground — “Musically Yours.” An equally approachable and appropriate branding tool kit was developed to deliver a consistent and cohesive omni-channel experience.
A challenge that plagued the brand was the lack of cohesive visual storytelling. As no formal rules had been established, many campaigns had creative that lacked any visual branding and/or brand voice. Included in the new brand guidelines are copy directions for the brand voice—how writers should craft advertising copy, articles, interviews, social posts, etc. and Recipe Cards for designers to use as an aid to develop advertisements that are cohesive across all campaigns and marketing efforts.
Translating to E-Comm
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean in sapien in massa pellentesque tincidunt sit amet vel augue. In nulla justo, condimentum vitae velit a, dapibus tincidunt sem. Curabitur posuere nisl a justo porta feugiat. Praesent sit amet lectus nec augue facilisis euismod et eget ex.
Results
Following the activation of the revamped Musician’s Friend Rewards, the program grew from 225K members to over 400K in three months and tripled customer/member engagement with program benefits.
The launch of the rebrand resulted in a unified voice and identity across all campaigns and channels. With a goal to stop the bleeding, the YOY earnings stabilized and began to trend positive.