A brand positioning focused on provenance can limit growth: the Doom Bar story

The situation

Provenance can be a strong foundation for a brand's positioning. It appeals to local consumers who want to support something of their own, and to visitors looking for something authentic from the region they're in.

But once a brand grows beyond its home market, into places where consumers have no connection to where it comes from, that positioning can start to lose relevance. It can become a barrier to growth rather than a driver of it.

I experienced this directly when managing the Doom Bar brand, during my time working at Sharp's Brewery. Doom Bar's positioning was built on being a proudly Cornish beer, and it had strong recognition and loyalty within Cornwall. But as the brand grew nationally, that positioning meant less and less to a large part of its new audience.

There was a second reason to change, too. Sharp's Brewery didn't have bottling facilities in Cornwall, so as volumes grew, a share of Doom Bar started to be brewed outside the county rather than transported from Cornwall for bottling elsewhere. Building the whole proposition around Cornish provenance was no longer entirely accurate.

What we did

The question was straightforward: if being a Cornish beer wasn't enough to drive growth beyond Cornwall, and no longer fully accurate, what should the positioning be built on instead?

The answer was to build it on an emotional territory instead, one that didn't depend on where the beer was brewed, but on what it meant to the people drinking it.

For people who already bought and loved Doom Bar, we explored the feelings they associated with the brand. We found that its strong association with Cornwall was closely tied to feelings of disconnecting from everyday pressures and reconnecting with the people they loved.

That thinking led to "In Your Element", Doom Bar's first advertising campaign, built around that feeling of switching off and spending time with people you love. It still featured Cornwall visually, since that's where the brand was born and still largely brewed. But the positioning itself was built on the feeling, not the place.

That emotional territory still needed to be grounded in something real about the product. Doom Bar's consistency and balanced flavour meant people knew exactly what they were getting, a reliable pint for the moments that mattered. That reliability wasn't the message itself, but it's what made the emotional promise credible.

The result

The campaign worked on two levels. Consumers who had tried Doom Bar while on holiday in Cornwall started drinking it back home as a way to reconnect with that feeling they had when spending time with people they loved, away from everyday life. Consumers who had never tried the brand, and had no connection to Cornwall at all, responded to the same positioning, because they recognised the feeling being portrayed, rather than a place they'd had no connection to. The positioning worked on its own terms, independent of geography.

The takeaway

A positioning built on provenance can be a strong starting point, especially for a brand focused on building affinity with its local market first. But it isn't usually enough on its own to support growth beyond that, especially with many other local competitors claiming the same.

It can also become a liability over time, as it did for Doom Bar, once demand outgrows what can be sourced or produced locally.

Need help?

If you are working on a brand whose positioning relies on provenance, but that story is starting to limit your growth, I can help. Get in touch if you'd like to talk it through, or take a look at my Brand Positioning service for more detail.