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How We Revitalized the 100-Year-Old Oster Brand: A Marketing Case Study
How do you modernize a century-old brand without losing its soul?
Join Lee Roth, Co-Founder of The Actionists, and Lauren King, Brand Lead at Oster/Newell, for an insider's look at revitalizing one of America's most iconic appliance brands. Lauren shares the exact strategy she used to transform Oster from a "grandmother's blender" into a modern global powerhouse operating in 20+ countries.
What You'll Learn:
Key Takeaways:
Perfect for:
Brand managers, marketing directors, CMOs, and anyone working on heritage brands or global marketing strategies.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Meet Lauren King & Oster's 100-year journey
03:14 - The revitalization strategy framework
07:25 - Solving the global vs. local challenge
12:59 - Marketing trends that actually matter
15:39 - How to make marketing drive business results
18:05 - Using marketing to solve world problems
Transcript:
Lee Roth (00:05)
My name is Lee Roth, co-founder of The Actionists. And wow, it has been a really long time since we did one of these, but it's gonna be worth the wait because I'm with the one and only Lauren King. Lauren, it's so good to see you.
Lauren King (00:22)
Hey, Lee, it's great to be with you today.
Lee Roth (00:25)
Lauren, for everyone who doesn't know you, tell me about you, yourself, your role at Newell.
Lauren King (00:33)
I would love to tell you. So hi, I'm Lauren King. I am the brand lead of Oster. Oster is a large appliance brand that operates globally. So we sell everything from blenders to airfriers to steamers and irons in over 20 countries in the world.
Lee Roth (00:53)
And we work together on this brand and there's so much goodness with this brand and because it's had such a great and big past. But it's gotten a little older over time right and as a brand that was really looking to be revitalized, what got you excited about its potential?
Lauren King (01:13)
So you are absolutely right. Oster is a heritage brand. We actually turned 100 last year in 2024. It was started in the US in the Midwest in 1924 by someone named John Oster. So certainly inherited a brand with a ton of heritage, lore, and incredible fans worldwide of the brand.
Lee Roth (01:31)
Yeah.
Lauren King (01:42)
Having all of that heritage comes with its own challenges. You certainly have a ton of history that you're kind of carrying along with you as you go into the future. And some of it's great. Like we have people that come up to me all the time and say, I was married 50 years ago and the Oster blender I was gifted for my wedding is still being used every single day and it's such high quality. And it's incredible to be kind of part of people's stories and lives in that way. But the flip side of that is, you know, where someone might describe like, I think my grandmother has that blender. And, you know, that's both great, but also, hey, the association I think I want to have with you isn't the relationship I have with your family member, but I want to have a relationship directly with you and with the next generation. So it's always that challenge of taking the heritage as the benefit, but also thinking through what is your modern relationship with people.
Lee Roth (02:44)
I will say you guys make a phenomenal blender. We have we had a certain competitor that was a very expensive blender and about two years ago we switched and it's so much better. It's great. We are a big smoothie family. So I do very much appreciate your product so, we I think of you every day when we make our smoothies.
Lauren King (03:05)
Well, we appreciate you as a fan.
Lee Roth (03:14)
So you have this big brand with 100 years of this awesome heritage. What was your approach to revitalization? How did you think like, okay, I have this great thing, but how do I modernize it? How do I make it more contemporary? What was your approach?
Lauren King (03:32)
I think every great brand positioning and story starts with two important bases. The first is the consumer themselves and what is the insights of their lives? What are the universal truths and what are the culturally relevant truths for today that have to be considered? And then of course, everything we just talked about.
There's no authentic story that you can tell that doesn't derive from the history of the last 100 years. And so it was taking kind of those two important things, the heritage of the brand and where consumers were today and trying to find the middle insight that connected the two together. And that's really where you and your team helped us, helped guide us through the process of really delving into our heritage, but not just in a way that was self celebratory.
But in a way that was like, let's find the nuggets in here that actually matter to people and then tell that story in a clear way.
Lee Roth (04:34)
Well, thank you. And I love the approach because I feel like so many brands do one or the other, right? They're either very heritage forward and they're always focused on themselves or they're chasing some consumer trend but forgetting about who they are, right? And it can't be one or the other. It has to be that intersection. And I just, I love the way that you broke that down because it's so true.
Are there any, now that you've gone through it, are there any lessons that your future marketers should really be thinking about now that you've gone through it?
Lauren King (05:10)
I think that for Oster specifically, we had been kind of very reactive to maybe competitive pressure and also customer requests. And by customers, I mean, you know, the retailers that we go through. And those things are important. I mean, you always as a marketer have to keep your eye on the marketplace. You have to know who you're competing against. What is the relative category that your ultimate consumer is considering when they're going to purchase. But on the other hand, if you're always looking around and never looking internally, you're not progressing your own story. And so you can kind of lose the plot of the brand. And I think there are certain errors of this business that maybe lost the plot a little bit on who we were and what was important. And, you Lee, you and I are big believers in the importance of brand identity and brand positioning and that kind of stuff takes years to build. And we're lucky enough to have high recognition of Oster in the markets that we compete in. And so having that kind of singular story that makes sense to consumers that builds on each other year after year is one of the most valuable assets that you can have as a brand. So that's really the lifelong lesson I'll keep. I always believed that about a brand, but having seen it firsthand on this brand solidified the lesson.
Lee Roth (06:35)
Now I think those are great lessons to be sharing. And it's funny, you talked about multiple markets, right? And Oster is a global brand. And what's interesting about Oster is like, so you're running this global brand and it's based in the US, right? But it's not necessarily the biggest market. So you have the classic challenge that so many companies and so many brands have, which is global versus local. So I guess my question to you is how do you reconcile a brand that has this incredible success in one market but might have a lower profile and naturally it's home market? So you get to some kind of common platform? You have one market that's huge, your home market it's not as huge or has a lower profile is probably a better way of saying it. So how do you get them into one common platform?
Lauren King (07:25)
I mean, I think again, it was really similar to the exercise we talked about about heritage versus consumer, and then adding on kind of the spoke of geographic insights and truths about the brand. So it really was a brand mining exercise where we went through and said, you know, what is the truth of this brand and each of the major markets that it operates in, and then trying to find the overlap between them, and then being intentional about the harmonization from a certain point moving forward.
So, making sure that there were some things that are immovable that were based in innate human truths and the innate heritage of the brand. know, human truths that transcend geography or time, things like, you know, families want to nourish themselves, food brings people together, food is a way to share heritage and history. And that is a reality globally and an insight that isn't going to change in a generation or two that is truly insights that can be leveraged on a brand as old as Oster for the next 100 years. And then there are insights about markets that are very specific and potentially even temporal, right? They are only for a certain amount of time. And for sure, if you compete in the small home appliance category like we do, there are tons of trends. mean, we have seen the rise and fall of multiple categories, just whole categories.
Lee Roth (08:37)
Thanks.
Lauren King (08:50)
We always joke that juicing is a 10-year cycle. People get really into juicing, then they get tired of their juicers, lose them, and then they rediscover juicing as if it was brand new every 10 years. And I could go on, there's multiple categories like that, like bread baking, or there's even categories like arepa makers, which is one of our most popular products in Venezuela, but, you doesn't have as much popularity other places. And so those are...
Lee Roth (09:00)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren King (09:19)
Your category offerings, sets can change and surely flex with the different times and the different markets. But what you stand for as a brand and the insights, that has to be for a very long time and very, very focused.
Lee Roth (09:26)
Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, I love some of the global insights that you talked about that really transcend market to market. I think the other lesson that I saw through your leadership was that you brought people in from day one. And I think that's a big mistake that I see organizations make all the time. Like global will go do the global thing and then they'll try to sell it to the markets. But you didn't do that. You brought the markets to the table from day one. And so you're really getting all their insights and understanding all the different markets upfront and credit to you because so many marketers will skip that step and then have a really hard time later on selling it into the markets.
Lauren King (10:20)
That's exactly right. I mean, the people that are my right and left-hand man are my team members who work actually in the market. So my marketing lead in Mexico and Brazil, some of my biggest markets, they're the people I talk to most frequently, never make a major decision without their input because it's so critical to me that the things that we create and launch, the marketing messages are actually useful to the markets that they're going to be in.
And there's gotta be like a humbleness to you don't know everything, you know? Down to the translations, like when we try to name something that can work in multiple markets, and it's a word that technically on paper can translate, but the emotive meaning of that word can change a lot from market to market. There's just no way if you didn't grow up in the culture of that place that you would know that information. And so...
Lee Roth (10:56)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren King (11:12)
Constantly reaching out to those teams and getting their feedback. know, they're kind of an hour, almost hourly contact with me. And then on top of the best practices and learnings to share out, we do this monthly. This is a system I set up, but, you know, for example, we have incredible activations in markets like Argentina and Peru, and having those teams get to present to all the other teams in the globe and share what they did and how they did it. Sometimes it's like the scrappiest, easiest idea that can be applied everywhere is the best idea. And there's just sort of like, I think it's that humility that you're not going to be able to come up with every idea. And you also don't know everything. And that this is, be an open tent where everyone comes in and shares the best to get the best out.
Lee Roth (12:00)
So applause because first, having the humility, which most home markets don't have, right? There's usually this arrogance of like, we know everything. So first having that approach of like, no, no, we know what we know, but let's go and listen to the markets and then.
Again, applause to you for creating a forum for everyone to bring their best practices to life. Like, why do you have to reinvent the wheel every time? If Peru does something magical and it makes sense for the US or makes sense for China, do it. Like, you don't have to reinvent the world every single time. So kudos to you. Okay, let's get out of Newell for a moment and let's talk about marketing as a whole, right? And marketing feels like every second
It's evolving, right? And that can be really exciting. So my first question around marketing as it evolves at such a constant speed, is what makes you excited about it?
Lauren King (12:59)
Well, I think what's really fun about marketing I'd say two trends: the globalization of messages and how quickly things can be shared. So I the example of, you know, arepas in Venezuela. But the reality is that arepas are becoming really, really popular globally because we easily are all now sharing recipes and sharing things, and there are no borders to the kind of conversation that's being had. You know, when we're talking about all the time is the rise of, you know, the protein shake and protein drinks.
Drives a lot of blender sales and you know normally stuff like that would maybe be concentrated in a market like North America and not find its way to other markets for a couple of years but actually now we're finding those innovation cycles so much shorter because people are sharing and trends are kind of fired up from the beginning and so that's like a really interesting especially for a global brand it kind of makes our jobs a little bit better easier because we have insights sharing.
Lee Roth (13:46)
Yeah.
Lauren King (13:55)
But the exact opposite, which is another trend, which are kind of like this micro influencers or micro messages where your exact interests can be attuned to and shared with and you have content against it. Things as specific as like, I love a roller skate in Atlanta, Georgia, has its own gigantic community. And so I think that micro-messaging helps you find the people that are most interested in the products that serve them and the kinds of problems that they have in their life and the problem-solving that you can do for them every day. I think that's really exciting and no other time have you been able to focus your message so clearly to people that actually need and want to hear it.
Lee Roth (14:44)
So it's really a balancing act between these global trends and how do you act very quickly because you're going from one market to the other market very quickly due to social media and everything else. But at the same time, entering the micro communities and then having a real additive to those micro communities. By the way, if I ever joined that roller skating group, I would break every bone in my body. But that's a whole other topic. Yes.
Lauren King (15:08)
Okay, we'll skip that for your next visit.
No pressure.
Lee Roth (15:11)
Is there a drinking beer group? I think I'd be much better at that.
Lauren King (15:16)
We'll find it for you.
Lee Roth (15:20)
All right. Okay, my next question, and this is something you know I talk about all the time, but how can marketers be more effective in creating marketing that drives a business? And I ask that question because so much marketing is chasing tactics or chasing celebrities, but...
It's funny how often people are getting lost in tactics and not always thinking about marketing as a vehicle to drive the business. How do you think marketing as a whole, forgetting about Newell, but as a whole could be more effective in driving the business?
Lauren King (15:56)
I mean, the way that I think about anything I do in my life actually, and not just marketing, is the most important thing is to identify the goal. Which sounds really simple, but I think sometimes we step into action so quickly that we forget to reiterate what the actual outcomes we expect and need are. So I find a lot when, you in the same way as a marketer go, you always go back to the consumer for the truth. You always go back to the goal for the focus. And, you know, there are many activities we could do. I mean, as we were just talking about the change in marketing, there's truly an endless amount of activity out in the market that you could focus on. And without a goal, it's really hard to prioritize against all of those activation tools that you have at your disposal. And so as a marketer, I think
You're a leader in the organization, and your job is to focus resources against what the goal is. For most brands, the goal is to grow the brand in a profitable way. But with meaning that's durable. And by durable, I mean that it's not a one-time hit without any marketing. goes away completely. Durable brands have equity that lives on beyond
one activation or one campaign or one celebrity sponsorship. And so it's that focus on what the actual goal is. How do we prioritize everything that we can do? And then that gut check is this durable or is it not really going to have the long-term payoff?
Lee Roth (17:36)
I love it. I mean, it does, it is simple, right? But so many people forget it. And sometimes the simplest answer is the right answer.
Okay, my last question, and this is something new I'm doing for every person I speak to. And my last question is, if you could take on any issue in the world and use marketing to help solve it, what would be that issue, and how would you use marketing to help solve it? Big lofty question.
Lauren King (18:05)
Yeah, so I think this is probably both influenced by my personal life stage, but also the category that I work in. But I guess I most, you know, an issue I think a lot about is parental mental health and, you know, parents feeling good about the work that they do both in their house and potentially they work, they do externally and just the amount of pressure that is on parents to, you know, be everything to their children and give them incredible lives and raise, you know, like responsible, wonderful human beings. And at the same time, the contributing members of society. And that's a lot of pressure.
And I think that marketing could help with that, not just in kind of bringing products that help make people's lives better every day, but also in portraying life in a way that it's okay to not be perfect, to portray life imperfect, and that that still is winning and effective and good for kids and good for the world. That we kind of take, I think, as marketers, maybe taking the pressure down from perfect is actually a great contribution we can give to working, working parents, to all parents of family life, and to take that kind of pressure of perfect off so that people are great about the things that they do.
Lee Roth (19:33)
That is a great answer. I always joke around, I just accept the fact that I'm gonna suck at one thing at one time. What I always say is you just gotta get the balance of sucking right. You can't just suck all the time at working or as a parent. You just gotta balance it out, because you can't do everything perfect. I love that answer, it's spot on. So, thank you for sharing that.
So Lauren, this was awesome. I'm so glad we did this.
Lauren King (19:40)
Yes.
Me too, Lee!
Thanks for inviting me!
Lee Roth (20:02)
Anytime, anytime. And I hope everyone enjoyed this and stay tuned. There'll be plenty more. So Lauren, thanks so much and have a great weekend.
Lauren King (20:11)
You too.