Juice Up Your Image
It's not the lively purple and green graphics, nor the
quaint sight of wheat grass growing in the display case that gets
you first. It's the scent of oranges, so piquant and insistent
that your mouth puckers and your stomach starts grumbling in sync
with the blenders. You are in smoothie heaven, swirling in a vortex
of delicious dilemmas. Do your taste buds demand raspberries or
strawberries, bananas or oranges? Do you choose the echinacea to
charge up your immunity or the ginseng to boost your energy?
Whichever way you go, you'll leave Jamba Juice positively
vibrating with health and vitality--even if some of that buzz
exists only in your mind.
Welcome to Kirk Perron's vision of 21st century marketing,
where advertising isn't king. Though the San Francisco-based
Jamba Juice Co. does have a marketing program--and a fine one at
that--founder and CEO Perron knows that no direct-mail,
coupon-driven, broadcast-based, image-enhancing stunt is going to
outperform the real hook at his outrageous fruit juice and smoothie
stores. His secret: It's the experience, stupid.
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"I don't consider us to be marketing-driven," says
Perron, 33. "We rely on people to spread the word. We
didn't invent smoothies or fresh-squeezed juices, but we've
created a niche by focusing on a sensory experience."
What's so ingenious about that? Nothing, unless you consider
that Jamba Juice has grown from a single unit--originally called
Juice Club--in the Central California town of San Luis Obispo to a
substantial 59 units in only seven years. Nothing, unless you
witness the mob of groovy patrons, including grandmothers and
baggy-clothed teens, that squeezes into the stores morning, noon
and night.
In a universe that's wise to every kind of marketing ploy,
Perron's experience-driven philosophy just might be the hardest
sell going. Let everyone else promise freshness, flavor, health,
nutrition, simplicity, affordability, sweetness and light. Jamba
Juice skips the promises and delivers--again and again.
Perron's cutting-edge savvy doesn't come from a
marketing textbook but from experience. The Jamba Juice story
begins in 1990, when a health-crazed Perron decided to turn his
"juicing" habit into a business. His particular brand of
high-quality, high-energy Juice Club smoothies and juices became so
popular, expansion was inevitable.
Juice Club tried its hand at franchising in 1993 but quickly
changed its plan and raised money from equity partners so the
company could maintain better control of its growing retail
network.
Though the Juice Club formula had been an unqualified success,
Perron felt it could use a little tweaking to compete in an
increasingly crowded environment. "As more stores began
opening, the name started getting lost in all the clutter," he
says, "There was Juice Stop and Juice Connection. We needed a
name that was more identifiable," and an image to go along
with it.
So Juice Club got itself some jamba, a West African word
for "celebration," and gave itself a hipper, more global
feeling. What was once a sterile, health-food-store atmosphere has
been replaced by vibrant purple, green, orange and hot pink colors
and natural wood.
"This business may look like one where you can buy a few
blenders and make a fortune, but it's more than that,"
Perron says. "Our company exists not simply to make money.
We're providing enrichment to our customers' lives. People
aren't stupid." Nor, he might add, are they susceptible to
the same old marketing hype: "They know what's
real."