‘It’s not just price—it’s the mix of products’

Why product brands are so important and how retailers can make more of them

Guest Editor James Barnett spoke with industry veteran Bill Reeves, president of product development group Working Title Agency.  Reeves has previously worked for Word Entertainment, Big Idea Productions, Thomas Nelson and faith-based marketing group Propeller Consulting.

Products seem to have become more sophisticated and brands more important since you joined the industry in 1988 at Christian retail, would you agree?

Yes. That is correct. Branding is really what sets your products apart from other products in the same space. Not only has the consumer become more sophisticated in what they want, but also the way you brand has become more complex and more sophisticated than it was 25 years ago when I started in Christian retail. I think it’s a mix of the consumer’s demands and the product creation from the company.

Through your experience, what are the biggest advancements you’ve seen in the areas of product development and marketing?

I think product creators have figured out that a brand is not just a product that you create, put on the shelf and that you hope people buy. One of the things that a lot of retailers are guilty of is believing that the only thing you can do to affect the sale of a product is to lower the price. What good retailers are figuring out is that it’s not just the price—it’s the mix of the product, the sophistication of the product, it’s doing some intuitive research as to what the consumer wants, not just what you want to push on the consumer. All of those things play into the brands being more sophisticated today than they were 25 years ago.

What is a brand and how can it be helpful to retail?

A brand, at its core, is simply the thing that makes a product different than like products. For example, the taste of Coca-Cola over Pepsi or a Burger King hamburger over a McDonald’s hamburger. It’s the uniqueness of a product. In our space, that can vary. Brands can carry everything from denominational bents to theological bents. There are lots of different things to differentiate. There can be overt gospel presentation, such as in some of the movies we work on. There can be other movies where it’s just a biblical worldview. But they are all brands and they all are things that come to the Christian consumer with a biblical worldview, just with different angles.

What are some of the most recent brands you’ve helped to launch?

Over the last four or five years, I’ve been very fortunate to work with Provident Films and Affirm Films, which are both part of Sony Pictures, and Sony Music to launch brands like Fireproof and The Love Dare. I also recently worked with Courageous and the “Resolution” brands from Sherwood Baptist and the Kendrick brothers. Earlier this year, I worked on Soul Surfer with Sony and Affirm and the Hamilton family. One of the interesting things about the faith films side is it’s given our industry a unique opportunity to look at brands in a new and fresh way because movies oftentimes come with so many other ancillary products with them, it’s not just a movie, whereas a lot of other things in our industry are just one-off items. There have been a few things through the years where people have figured out that we can build on this. We can help people live with the message of the core product longer if we create some of these ancillary products and keep life in the brand.

Does creating a brand around a message with multiple products help create a movement like what we have seen happen with The Love Dare, Fireproof and Courageous?

Yes, it does. First and foremost, I have to applaud Provident Films for realizing you can’t just create a product and throw it against the wall and hope it sticks. Provident spent millions of dollars in accumulating and building significant teams of people to help on the development of these brands. I am in no way responsible for these brands being what they are. This is a team effort. And Provident is leading the way in that from the standpoint of having a team around it. As an example, with Fireproof there was a real need when people left the theater for us to be able to answer their question, which was, “What now?” People saw themselves on the screen. We believe that happened as well in Courageous where they said, “You know what? That’s me. That’s my marriage. That’s me as a father. Now what do I do?” The products were developed with the answer to that question in mind. It wasn’t to label-slap and just see how many things we could make and make money on. It was building those brands so we could answer the question, “What now?” And as a result we were able to touch a nerve with books like The Love Dare when people left Fireproof and books like The Resolution for Men and The Resolution for Women as people left Courageous. That’s really the intent of the products that my company creates. If people want just a general licensing and consumer products program, there are probably other companies to do it better. But if you want somebody who builds around the brand, tries to capture the ministry and the heart of the core product with the ancillary products, that’s our mission and that’s what we do.

What are the changes you’ve noticed at retail in the last five years dealing with brands?

One of the things that I’ve seen, and I’ll speak specifically to CBA retail in this case, is that CBA retail is doing a better job than their mass market and general market friends on aggregating brands in the store. One of the challenges we face in the general market is that individual buyers have their individual departments and it’s very, very hard to get products [merchandised] together. That is a competitive advantage that CBA stores have that when I walk into a major national chain store or even an independent store, they have gotten better over the last five years with aggregating the core product with its ancillary product in one place to say to me [as a customer], this is your brand-central location. If you want all the products in our brand, then you come here. Yes, the general market might carry one or two of those items, but they are not carrying everything. I’ve noticed CBA retail getting much better at that.

As brands have increasingly spanned categories and manufacturers, such as the products involved with Courageous, how can retailers maximize this?

Christian retail can support these brand creators by helping them. What I mean by that is it takes both. CBA retail was tremendously instrumental in the launch of Provident Films and Sherwood Pictures. And when I think back to the Christian retailers instrumental in helping launch VeggieTales and create that momentum 15, 20 years ago and when I think about what Christian retail did to launch some of our big Christian music artists, it came because Christian retail and the brand product creators were working together. One thing I often find is retailers who are skeptical of the companies—they make it difficult to be in business with them. And vice versa, sometimes the companies make it difficult to do business with the Christian retailers. When those two are working in sync and in lockstep there’s something very special about that. When they are out of step and only out for their own interests and not the interests of their partner, that’s when it can begin to fall apart. That’s what I would encourage both sides of the table to do, [to] continue to work together well. I find most Christian retailers are very good about that.

What can Christian retailers do in their stores that creates an advantage for the consumer?

Let’s take Courageous as an example. Right now, there are plans for the first quarter of the year for mass market to carry the DVD in a widespread way and the two “Resolution” books for men and women in a widespread way. The rest of the products—the soundtrack, the Resolution print, the DaySpring greeting cards, the Kerusso T-shirt, the book from Michael Catt, the pastor at Sherwood (Courageous Living), the book from one of the other executive producers of Courageous (Rite of Passage by Jim McBride, Moody Publishers)—most of those products are only available in CBA. So you merchandise them together and train your staff to point customers to those things. When they come to the counter with the DVD, have them trained to say, “Did you see the other products that go with this?” Take them over, show it to them. Those are the things that make brands. Certainly the companies have a vested interest in seeing those things do well, but the retailer also has a vested interest because if they pick a few things a year to focus on, like Courageous, Soul Surfer or Fireproof, those things provide the companies resources to be able to continue to make more of those for the retailer. That, in turn, makes a nice cycle.

What are some examples of the different properties available with Courageous?

Sherwood’s philosophy is really to provide ministry tools for folks when they leave the theater. They have so much they want to share with people, but they just can’t do it in two hours. So, they’ve created two core books called The Resolution for Men and The Resolution for Women. The Resolution for Men was written by Stephen and Alex Kendrick, the filmmakers, with Randy Alcorn, a best-selling CBA author. The Resolution for Women was written by Priscilla Shirer, who many folks know from speaking at Beth Moore conferences, and she’s also Dr. Tony Evans’ daughter. Those books are very resourceful and full of additional answers to the topics in the film. Sherwood also created a four-week and an eight-week church Bible study that can be used by churches that show clips from the film and go deeper into the topics. There is a book called Courageous Living, which is written by the pastor of Sherwood, which is 12 biblical stories of characters who showed courage. And a book called Rite of Passage which is for parents of older children who want to usher them into adulthood in a godly way. There are T-shirts that carry the message of the movie. We find a lot of people love to wear messages just as much as they love to talk about them. And then DaySpring has been a fantastic partner for us. There is a line of greeting cards, desk calendars—again, things that keep the message of the movie in front of people. You won’t see us doing bumper stickers or things that are just a little chotsky. You’ll find things that carry content and mean something.

With brands becoming increasingly prevalent and companies doing a better job at connecting them over product categories, how has this impacted the process of product development?  

I really believe that one of the biggest benefits that’s come from of our industry experiencing strong brands over the last few years, and not just one every 10 years, but one every two or three years, is that the product development process has become more what it is really supposed to be. When I studied marketing in college and I turned to page one of my Marketing 101 book, they teach you the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place and promotion. Our industry for a long time has felt that marketing is just the promotional part. You buy ads, you e-blast people, you put something on a website. But true marketing is getting involved with the product development process back in the early stages. That so much more is happening at the product companies and because of it, I think we are seeing better products. Product creators are very gifted people and marketers couldn’t create product on their own. But when they work together collaboratively, you experience what has been experienced over the last couple of years especially in this burgeoning faith film category. Provident Films is one of the best at it. They are very good about involving their marketing people in development of the product.

What are three ways retailers can make more effective use of multi-product brands?

They can aggregate them in-store, they can train their staff to take customers to them, and they can advertise and promote through their mediums to their end consumers that they have them. This isn’t really rocket science. It really does sometimes come down to just basic things that retailers know to do. The different between a good retailer and a bad retailer is execution of those things. Our strongest retailer partners execute those three things I just listed much better than those who are not [strong]. I think that is a critical component—being committed to the same excellence in the retail marketing side of it as the product creators are striving in the excellence of their product.

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