Botivo’s really clever positioning move

Jack doesn't drink, so he's seen his fair share of "all the flavour, none of the next day regret" messaging.

What we love about Botivo's copy was that there's none of that.

It's not about the lack of alcohol, it's just a drink that's perfect for drinking at the end of a long day that happens to be alcohol-free. Wicked smart.

As a category like alcohol free matures, things like "doesn't contain alcohol" that started as a differentiator quickly become table stakes.

This is something that psychologist Frederick Herzberg was talking about back in the ’60s when he suggested brands have hygiene factors (AKA, what we expect as a bare minimum) and motivators (AKA, what makes us want to buy).

Then, in the 1980s, Professor Noriaki Kano took it one step further with the The Kano Model which gave 5 factors (must-haves, performance factors, nice-to-haves, indifferent features and reverse features AKA things that put you off).

Most poetically, Kano called this phenomenon, where differentiators becoming hygiene factors, “the natural decay of delight”.

Love that. (We took this slight tangent just to include it.)

As Kano and Herzberg tell us, the things that delight customers when they’re a novelty very quickly become the ground floor of expectation as your category evolves and matures.

And that's what makes Botivo's copy so damn good.

They know that alcohol free is just table stakes.

But people aren't looking for something that is just alcohol free anymore. They're looking for something that replaces the ritual.

And that's what is really clever about Botivo's Yellow Hour messaging: it turns a product into a ritual. It's not just an alcohol-free drink, it's a drink to kick back after a long day or sip as the sunsets or drink with friends in the garden.

As you read it, it’s almost impossible not to start to picture yourself sitting in a garden or on a balcony at 6pm relaxing and sipping a Botivo as the warm, golden sunlight breaks through the trees. And because that mental image feels so concrete and tangible and real, it makes us want to make that mental picture a reality. It makes us want to buy Botivo to experience it for real.

In fact, a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that using tangible, specific, and vivid language like this makes customers more interested in the brand, more trusting of the brand because they’re confident, and—most importantly—more likely to buy.

And that's the thing that's really smart.

Every other AF is talking about "no texting your ex at 3am" or "no hangover for the 9am meeting". Botivo aren't replacing the regret of alcohol, they're replicating the joy of it.

And by doing that, they're not positioning themselves as an alternative to other AF drinks. They're positioning themselves as alternatives to a glass of wine or a Pimms or a beer. Super clever.

Which raises a really interesting question: is there a ritual or a moment in your customers' lives that you can own? Even better, is there a moment or ritual that nobody else is owning? How can you use your copy to make your product part of that part of a customer's day?

That's where the magic happens. (Spacegoods do the same thing, too.)