July 27, 2007

Excerpt from Profitable Marketing Communications

The following excerpt is from Chapter 8 of Profitable Marketing Communications: A Guide to Marketing Return on Investment by Antony Young and Lucy Aitken. "The book introduces investment disciplines and strategies to marketing practices and gives insight into how marketers have delivered outstanding marketing return on investment. Finally, it provides a blueprint to maximize the returns from marketing communications" (Kogan Page ).
 

Chapter 8: Differentiate any way you can 

"If marketing and sales departments aren't helping to deliver a premium, what are they doing?"

Woody Harford, BA's Senior Vice President Commercial, North America

Investors frequently make the same mistakes as marketers in terms of following the herd: they rush to buy stock in companies that are the flavour of the moment rather than analysing whether their purchase is a good long-term investment.

If a company has taken the trouble to differentiate, however, it's a good bet for an investor because it will be more attractive to customers. Differentiation offers the additional advantage of helping marketing communications to stand out, making the marketing investor's job much more straightforward.

One of the most famous examples of a company that zigged when others zagged is Apple. In 1984, when Apple launched its 'Think Different' slogan with its legendary Super Bowl spot, it sold a corporate vision that was anti-establishment. From that point onwards, Apple Macs were for the cool crowd and PCs were for nerds.

In 1998, Apple launched the iMac, a more acceptable item of furniture to have in the front room than a boring beige box. The slogan? 'I think, therefore iMac.' Three years later, the iPod arrived and was trumpeted by a multicoloured integrated campaign that achieved instant stand-out.

Of course, the success of all three Mac products has had as much to do with their aesthetically pleasing design as with the advertising that wraps them up and presents them to consumers; there were other MP3 players on the market before the iPod, and lots of choice in the PC market before the Mac. But by following its own advice to 'Think Different' right from the start, Apple has marked out its territory. It's different to the competition in design, packaging and marketing. Apple has seeped into the national consciousness so much that, like Hoover before it, the iPod has become the generic term for an MP3 player. Thinking differently has paid off for Apple: its shares nearly quadrupled in value in 2004 when iPods started to fly off the shelves.

'Think Different' should be the slogan of all marketers who want their marketing communications to deliver a return. There is no point in being identical to the competition and saying the same thing - only perhaps a bit louder and across more platforms. As Jason Frost, Managing Director of Publicis Blueprint, points out: 'Any successful brand has found a way of differentiating, whether it's through accident or design.'

And each and every sector has its own cliché when it comes to marketing. For cars, it's a series of body shots interspersed with scenic views; hence the praise that was heaped upon Honda's 'Cog'. The ad, by Wieden+Kennedy in 2003, showed how a Honda Accord was constructed by filming a complex chain reaction involving 85 individual vehicle parts. Subsequent W+K ads maintained the Honda hallmark of being somehow different to other car brands, with 'Grrr' using animation to promote Honda's cleaner diesel engine, and 'Choir', a spot for its Civic model, which featured a 60-strong choir imitating the sounds by the car. The ads buck the trend in the car sector because they don't just show the product.

For beers, humour is de rigueur, so Stella Artois, with its arty, cinematic communications, is memorable. For banks, an erstwhile seriousness dominates, giving Halifax in the UK (see Chapter 12) instant appeal when it took a more light-hearted approach.

Differentiation can come from product benefits or clever communication. When Unilever's Elida Gibbs division launched its mild shampoo brand, Timotei, in the early 1980s, there was little about the product that was radically different to what was already available. Yet because women were showering daily and starting to wash their hair more frequently, the shampoo identified and occupied a new gap in the market for a mild shampoo that was ideal for frequent hair-washing. Sales soared. As Pamela Robertson (1998) points out, 'The real brilliance was in the targeting and positioning of Timotei... By positioning Timotei as a natural herbal shampoo with the attendant visual cues, the implication of gentleness was implicit. The differentiation was much more in the positioning than in a major product breakthrough.' The ideal situation for marketers is if they are promoting a product that already offers consumers a real unique benefit rather than a perceived one.

Using Ecomagination 

In 2003, General Electric (GE) launched a new slogan - Imagination at Work - which topped a poll of US consumers through an online vote hosted by Yahoo! Two years later, it launched a business strategy, Ecomagination, which formed the basis of a subsequent marketing campaign. This achieved genuine stand-out thanks to highlighting the unique nature of GE's product portfolio and environmentally friendly stance.

The global initiative, which launched in May 2005, has four goals: doubling the R&D investment by 2010, introducing a more extensive portfolio of energy-efficient products, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, and keeping the public up to date about GE's progress.

GE wanted to address its customers' needs and this meant helping them to reduce carbon emissions, make cost efficiencies and be mindful of their impact on the environment. The wind turbines and eco-locomotives featured in the communication - which ran across print, online, TV and outdoor - sold out, and GE's revenues increased from $6.2 billion in 2004 to $10 billion in 2005. The business objective is to reach $20 billion by 2010. GE came top in Fortune's 'Most Admired Companies' list in 2006.

Value versus price 

Decreasing price to increase a brand's fortunes is a dangerous drug. While its effects are often dramatic and instantaneous, its repercussions are insidious and long-standing. Businesses that chase volume by cutting price invariably end up sacrificing value, sometimes in the short term and almost always in the long run… The City intuitively understands this cycle, tending to mark down stock the moment price heads south.

Richard Storey, Planning Director, M&C Saatchi (Storey, 2005)

The biggest advantage of differentiating your product is that brands don't get sucked into competing on the lowest common denominator: price. Marketing is the most important vehicle through which you can maintain or grow product or service margins.

A combination of low cost and high quality will always be a hit with consumers. In Europe and the United States, over 50 per cent of the population shops at mass merchants such as Wal-Mart, buys flights from low-cost operators and visits websites for bargains. Value players attract customers with low prices and 'good-enough' quality, and this can serve as a differentiator in its own right. But when too many companies occupy this space, they fail to be distinctive to consumers.

 Rishad Tobaccowala, the chief executive of the consultancy Denuo, also points out that competing on price has serious ramifications for products and services with competitors in China and India, where manufacturing and servicing costs are a fraction of the price of Europe and the United States. He observes: 'Marketing officers tend to spend too much on the cost line rather than on the revenue or imagination line.'

Target, the US department store chain, is one retailer that eschewed the bargain basement approach for a strategy that set it apart from the competition. Founded in 1962, its market niche was described in the 1980s as 'upscale discount'. Designers like Michael Graves started to produce goods for the store. In a nod to its own delusions of grandeur, its advertising slogan became 'C'est Target' (with Target pronounced with a French accent, 'tar-jay'). Continuing its upscale ascent, a recent media first for the brand was to take every ad in the New Yorker. Sales continue on an upward curve, and Target opened 60 new stores across the United States in 2005 as its 'design for all' proposition resonated with the country's middle class.

If Target had followed a similar tactic to Wal-Mart or Kmart - two stores that pride themselves on offering consumers rock-bottom prices - it would have been lost in the wilderness. By differentiating itself from the start and positioning its range as more premium, it created a space into which it could grow.

Westin: the heavenly hotel 

The Westin Hotel invested in beds that had double the number of springs and that were smoother and softer than average hotel beds. Westin organized its marketing around the 'Heavenly bed' and has since added to the 'Heavenly' range with a two-nozzled shower, soap, shampoo and towels.

A week after the bed's introduction in 1999, Westin guests were enquiring about how they could purchase it for their own homes. More than 30,000 guests have now bought a Heavenly bed.

A Westin survey showed increases in guest loyalty and satisfaction, and it was surely no coincidence that 'comfort of bed' scored 8.96 out of 10 in 1999, a figure that rose to 9.19 in 2004. Home orders are still popular, with the Heavenly line predicted to generate $8 million in annual revenues.

How to differentiate your brand 

There is no reason for consumers to change their brand if a new product is a copy of what they are currently buying... Products need to be different either in reality or perceptually. The former is preferable but not always achievable. But perception can be just as persuasive.

Pamela Robertson (1998)

There are several ways in which products can stand out, and they can be linked to other aspects of business, such as a distribution strategy or promotional variables. When it comes to marketing, however, there are a number of tactics you can use to create a point of difference for your product.

This list of 10 is by no means intended to be exhaustive, but rather to offer some examples of routes to markets, and products or services that have successfully adopted them.

Each one is designed to follow the golden rule of differentiation: give the customer a specific benefit in return for buying your product. This benefit should offer value rather than rely on price as a differentiating feature:

  1. Emphasize a positive aspect of business practice. Consumers are becoming more ethically conscious and want information about how products are made. Reports of sweatshop labour continue to haunt big global businesses such as The Gap, Sears and Nike, with some consumers boycotting their product lines altogether. Other brands are using their credentials in this area as a selling point. American Apparel claims that its business is 'sweatshop-free'; the company manufactures its range of cotton basics in Los Angeles.

    Sustainability has also been a big differentiator for some brands, with certain products using their progress in this area as a selling point. The UK retailer Marks & Spencer has made its business more sustainable in that it sells only Fairtrade tea and coffee and has invested in a sustainable fishing supply chain. It also produces more environmentally friendly clothes that need less dry cleaning and don't use harsh dyes. The 'look behind the label' campaign spoke directly to consumers, informing them about these changes, and appealed to the retail chain's upmarket, ethically conscious customers. Soon after the campaign launched, Marks & Spencer's share price bucked the trend in a depressed retail environment.

  2. Use humour. You don't normally associate ads for laxatives with a sense of humour, but French agency Jean et Montmarin's 2002 TV spot for Ducolax was different. It starts with a woman packing her suitcase surrounded by her family, and a sense of sadness hangs heavy in the air. But she doesn't leave the house as we expect her to do; instead she heads for the toilet. Thanks to Ducolax, constipation sufferers no longer need to spend hours - or, as the suitcase suggests, days - locked in their bathrooms. What makes this ad even more brave is the fact that ads for medication are strictly regulated in France, making one with a light-hearted approach even more memorable.
  3. Take the simple route. Never underestimate the value of simplifying a message for consumers. There is an unbelievable amount of clutter in all media, and consumers don't have the time to figure out what each and every message is trying to communicate. O2 has benefited from cutting through the clutter in mobile communications and by being crystal clear about its product benefits by focusing on just one message at a time. This means that consumers on different tariffs are receiving the same message about the company. The consistent visual identity also contributes towards a brand 'voice', which some of O2's competitors lack.
  4. Leverage national heritage. When consumers can see where a brand comes from, it is easier for them to tap into what it is that's on offer. Sweden, for instance, brings to mind relaxation, clean design and simplicity. So it's no surprise that Ikea uses Swedish names for its products and further underlines its provenance in-store by selling national dishes in its café. Despite using localized advertising to appeal to different attitudes towards furniture and domestic life in the countries where it operates, it is unmistakably Swedish, most prominently through its love of blue and yellow, the colours of the country's flag.
  5. Build trust. If consumers feel that a product is tried and trusted, they are more likely to use it rather than to re-evaluate their brand choice. British Airways, for instance, consistently tops the 'most trusted' box in the airlines category in the Reader's Digest Trusted Brands survey. While consumers may have initially flocked to low-cost airlines, when the plane doesn't leave on time or lands miles out of a city centre, consumers want to return to a name they can trust instead. Similarly, the CEO of Tesco, Terry Leahy (2005: 40) made the point that: 'Trust will matter more and more. As the world shrinks but people's lives become more complicated, people will turn to brands and products they know and trust. Perceptions of trust will be shaped not just by price or service, but also by issues like the environment, health, labour conditions and animal welfare.'
  6. Understand and empathize. If you make an effort to be on the same wavelength as your target market you will stand a good chance of striking a chord with them and being front of mind. Radio and TV ads for the recruitment site Monster by Saatchi & Saatchi follow the theme of 'inner voices' where unhappy employees are taunted by voices compounding their situation and are encouraged to visit the recruitment site. Timing also plays a crucial factor - in January 2004, Monster played on the despondency that many workers feel returning to work after a break for the holidays. The campaign implores: 'Beware of the voices.'
  7. Don't underestimate reliability. On the face of it, reliability seems like a dull product characteristic with limited attraction for consumers. On the other hand, for certain products it's a must. Who wants a car that is anything other than reliable? Toyota has managed to create a stand-out in Europe by combining the fact that its cars are reliable with gentle humour positioning them as objects of desire.
  8. Use a celebrity. Celebrities tend to be used to advertise lifestyle products such as cars, mobile phone brands, designer clothes, perfumes and aftershaves. There aren't many that would happily promote crisps. This makes former England football captain Gary Lineker's 11-year stint as the face of Walkers crisps a differentiator. There's not only a long-term relationship between Lineker and the brand, but there's also differentiation in the ads themselves, with Lineker dressing up in a variety of roles, including a housewife and Austin Powers. The Lineker/Walkers association is in stark contrast to the use of English footballer David Beckham, who has been the face of Police sunglasses, Vodafone, Pepsi and Motorola.
  9. Use consumers. Pepsi was one of the first brands to do this with its Pepsi Taste Challenge, followed by the Pepsi Generation. Today, more brands are inviting consumers to help differentiate their product, either by being the face of the brand or by helping to generate communications content. Dove's 'real beauty' campaign uses real people rather than models and has used that as a springboard into debate around our different ideas of what beauty means. The Dove campaign stood out because it was different to the norm for its sector: there were no airbrushed models with alabaster skin.
  10. Associate. Mobile phone operator Orange has associated itself with film when so many of its competitors are trying to 'own' music. Orange not only offers two-for-one cinema tickets through its Orange Wednesdays initiative, but it also runs film-making competitions and runs tongue-in-cheek cinema ads featuring the 'Orange Film Academy' that remind film-goers to turn off their phones during the movie. It celebrates up-and-coming acting talent with its Rising Star award and makes film recommendations on its website.

The I word 

When trying to differentiate your product, there will be numerous references to the I word: insight. This is a much-used word in marketing communications and is responsible for reports produced by market research companies or planners trying to get to the bottom of a brand, where it fits in the marketplace and who it is trying to target.

As with marketing communications, the focus needs to be on the outcome rather than the output, so findings should be summarized into bullet points. Mark Sherrington, the author of Added Value (2003: 49), suggests asking five questions that challenge the strength of the insight, or what he terms 'how to spot the eureka moment':

  1. Is it fresh? Do you feel that you are looking at your market and your mission in a new way, even if the insight is really simple?
  2. Is it discerning? Do you feel you can compare it with other viable alternatives and confidently say it is better?
  3. Is it penetrating? Does it get beyond superficial analysis and conventional wisdom? Do you feel you have gone deeper into the market than anyone else before you?
  4. Is it the product or the fusion of more than one insight or, if you have chosen one simple insight, can you see how it links to other insights?
  5. Does it inspire you and others? Are the implications already starting to flow for how you can change strategy, innovate, communicate in new ways and see different things you will now measure for success?

Insight in action: creating a global brand through differentiation - Mandarin Oriental 

Challenge 

When M&C Saatchi Hong Kong started to work on the Mandarin Oriental business, it realized that there was no clear leader in the luxury hotel sector, despite Mandarin Oriental having the quality of customer experience to secure that positioning. What's more, hotel advertising tended to be bland and product-led, whereas Mandarin Oriental wanted to put the customer at the heart of the message. Finally, Mandarin Oriental needed to act like a luxury brand rather than a luxury hotel group.

Solution 

Conventional advertising was shunned. There were to be no shots of the hotel, no ads promoting individual hotels and no reservation details. Instead, M&C Saatchi wanted to reflect the affinity that Mandarin Oriental guests have with the brand.

M&C Saatchi's solution was to leverage the group's iconic logo to make a link with the celebrities featured in the ads using three simple words: 'He's/She's a fan.' The personalities in the ads - which have included Barry Humphries, Jane Seymour and Jerry Hall - were rewarded with a $10,000 donation to a charity. Crucially, the group's new chief executive, Edouard Ettedgui, had ambitious plans to expand the Asia-based hotel chain across Europe and the United States. The 'fan' campaign matched his vision for the brand.

Results 

In 2003, research conducted by the New Yorker magazine in the form of the Starch Readership Survey evaluated all the ads that ran in the publication the previous autumn. Even on a comparatively small media spend, Mandarin Oriental came top in recall against other long-standing and high-spending advertisers such as American Express. The ad also ranked first in terms of brand attribution. The campaign has redefined its category and created a sought-after global brand.

Avoid commoditization 

If you fall into the trap of safe, expected marketing choices, you will only add to the commoditization of your product or service. If you can think of examples of 'safe' marketing, you clearly possess an amazing memory; one characteristic of such communications is that they are instantly forgettable.

Whether or not marketers have segmented, integrated, implemented methods of tracking the success of particular channels or maximized their customer equity is irrelevant if a piece of communication remains ignored.

The biggest cost any marketer faces is not being noticed. 

There are different tactics that offer marketing communications portfolio managers a way of avoiding being ignored. Below, we have picked the most prominent and cherry-picked examples from around the world. All of them prove how getting noticed is all about looking at the bigger picture rather than the next advertising campaign.

The name game 

A company's name has to work beyond marketing, so it's essential to invest in one that is appropriate, memorable and distinctive, particularly now that search advertising is on the increase. The dotcom boom and bust in the late 1990s showed that companies that don't have the advantage of a memorable name are dead in the water from the start.

Perhaps the best example comes from one of the dullest sectors imaginable: directory enquiries services. In the UK, the telecom watchdog Oftel switched off the '192' directory enquiries number in 2002 to break the monopoly by the national telecom, BT. Numbers beginning '118' were randomly assigned to directory services operators.

The US directory company InfoNXX owned The Number, one of the new players. The Number invested £2 million of its advertising budget on acquiring the most memorable number - 118 118 - from a competitor.

It proved to be a shrewd investment. While all the numbers began with '118', many were obscure combinations. Some of the services had problems in differentiating themselves because their number was tricky to remember in the first place and didn't lend itself to a strong creative idea.

With 118 118, The Number was able to launch an integrated campaign starring two runners with the number '118'. The runners were everywhere throughout 2003 and their catchphrase - Got Your Number - entered the vernacular.

It also got ahead on the competition by launching early - long before the number went live - so it was already front of mind before communications for other '118' numbers began to appear.

By 2004, The Number had built up a 44 per cent market share. BT, the national telecom that used to own the directory services market, had just 34 per cent. The return on investment is compelling: on an investment of £13.5 million, the campaign's return was £45.4 million. The strong marketing communications strategy could not have emerged without the easiest number to remember - the name proved to be a critical first investment and proves the impact that such a decision can have on the entire communication portfolio.

Media magic 

Marketers maximize their chances of being noticed if they hit on either a product or a communications benefit that will appeal to consumers and then they differentiate in their selection of media too. The Economist campaign was different for using posters rather than global TV channels such as CNN and CNBC, backed up by press work. The differentiation is as much about being faithful to the outdoor medium as the strong creative.

One of our Marketing ROI stars, British Airways, had the novel media idea of 'turning New York blue' to make it stand out from the crowd. BA's distinctive blue colour was found adorning bizarre properties such as deli bags and apartment construction sites. By using British words - 'takeaway' on the deli bags and 'flats' on the building sites - it surrounded New Yorkers with authentic 'Britishness' at every turn of their day by extending the media idea beyond traditional touchpoints to give it much more impact.

Increasingly, marketers are realizing that an appropriate medium can enhance a creative treatment and bring it to life. In Japan, two examples embody this idea: Northwest Airlines used the inside panel of office window cleaners' external boxes to target a business audience, while Knorr Cup A Soup communicated warmth by writing the brand name in simulated steam on the windows of commuter trains.

Similarly, in Shanghai, Y Plus Yoga Centre wanted to promote its school on a negligible budget. Leo Burnett showed the flexibility of a yoga practitioner on the bendy stems of drinking straws and placed them at the juice bars frequented by the health-conscious target audience. Posters followed that fixed to the wall only halfway up, so that the top half of the poster would fall over, giving the illusion of the yoga practitioner bending backwards. Attendance at yoga classes improved considerably, and the bendy straws are now collectors' items.

Wrapping paper 

If the packaging for a product is distinctive and appealing, it can be one of the most important investments of all in the marketing communication portfolio. When ING launched in the United States in 2001, its distinctive orange colour helped it to stand out as a financial services brand where the predominant colours tend to be blue and green. And Pepsi-Cola differentiated Pepsi from Coke in the early 1970s by designing plastic bottles that were lighter and more transportable than Coke's glass one. Consumers will buy a product because of seductive packaging too, or even because the store bags are attractive to them in some way. Camper shoes, for instance, have red-and-white bags by the Catalan designer Martí Guixé scrawled with messages like 'If you don't need it, don't buy it'.

In the United States, L'Oréal Fructis shampoo differentiated in its packaging by using distinctive green upside-down bottles that stood out on pharmacy shelves. This echoes the recency theory outlined in Chapter 5, which refers to how purchasing decisions often hinge on the advertising closest to the point of sale. Packaging can work as advertising in itself, and needs to be carefully considered.

Courting controversy 

A marketing communications strategy that is controversial doesn't demand a huge media spend in today's world of blogs and links; it can show once or twice and, with the right PR management, will be picked up by bloggers and community sites such as YouTube.com. Coke recently showed its ad with a soundtrack sung by the White Stripes frontman Jack White just once on TV in the UK. Yet because controversy raged over whether or not White had 'sold out' for penning the track 'Love Is the Truth' specifically for the ad, the ad was picked up by news sources and blogs and took on a life of its own.

Sparking debate 

The traditional way that marketers spoke to consumers was by informing them that their products and services were the best available because they offered certain benefits and qualities that the competition couldn't quite match. As that tactic has become hackneyed, more innovative ways have emerged for marketers to grab attention, not least to persuade consumers to think a little more deeply about issues that go beyond simple purchasing behaviour. In other words, advertising used to sell dreams; today it's more interested in stirring up debate.

The Unilever brand Dove found this when it launched its Campaign for Real Beauty. Dove differentiated by inviting both women and men rather than the media and advertising to define beauty. Instead of starring the usual glossy, stick-thin, airbrushed models, billboards and ads featured real women - flaws and all. The global campaign launched in Europe in 2004 and asked 'Grey or gorgeous?', 'Wrinkled or wonderful?', 'Ugly spots or beauty spots?' Dove invited consumers to join in a debate about what constitutes beauty. Throughout 2005, the campaign rolled out across the United States and Asia, and sales of Dove products increased by 163 per cent. Unilever's research arm, Economatrician, claimed that Dove was 2005's most talked-about ad campaign. The brand has also set up its self-esteem fund to help women with body-image issues.

AOL encouraged debate over whether the internet is a good or bad thing through its 'discuss' site, while a long-copy cross-track poster campaign for Orange weighed up mobile phones. Both brands accepted that not every single consumer was cock-a-hoop about new technology, admitting that in fact the enabling qualities of these new media were not always a good thing. HSBC's global 'point of view' campaign broadens out this proposition by using simple posters to direct people online to debate subjects such as the viability of wind energy.

Debates don't always have to be a serious business, and some brands have used the fact that they divide opinion to have fun. The yeast extract spread Marmite became a much-loved national brand once again in the UK just by being honest about how people feel about the product through its 'You either love it or you hate it' strategy. Ads that showed a man gagging after kissing a girl who's just taken a bite from a Marmite-smeared bagel encapsulated the idea, and Marmite translated the strategy into other platforms, such as online where it has a 'love' site and a 'hate' site. In 2002, Marmite enjoyed a sales uplift of £47 million following an investment of £12 million.

Using spoofs 

Spoofs have become a particularly popular way to differentiate for marketing investors because they have the bonus effect of generating PR and thus more attention for the brand. Consumers are also more likely to remember spoofs.

In the United States, Crispin Porter + Bogusky invented the 'counterfeit Mini' campaign - where 'fake' cars were passed off as Minis. It generated extra attention when ads for the deliberately ridiculous-looking vehicles were placed in the classified ad pages of motoring press titles like Auto Trader. Meanwhile, public information leaflets pleaded: 'Protect yourself from the humiliation of owning a fake!'

DDB Paris produced an integrated campaign for SNCF Voyages - the flight-booking division of the national railways, SNCF, which suggested that a sub-Atlantic train service would connect Paris to New York in just eight hours. Radio stations and blogs picked up on the outdoor and online ads. The unorthodox activity promoted SNCF's flight-booking service - Voyages-sncf.com (VSF) - to encourage potential customers to realize that it offers much more than train tickets. After just one week, over 1 million people had visited the website and over 80 per cent of people interviewed by Ipsos understood that VSF offered a myriad of travel services. Amnesty International's 'protect the human' campaign featured a cinema ad by Mother London starring Teleshop, a spoof shopping channel selling guns and weapons. Other elements in the campaign included a fake roadshow that showed the ease with which an AK47 can be assembled. The incongruous environment was to hammer home the point that one person every minute dies as a result of armed violence.

Emotion 

Charities and non-profit organizations tend to play heavily on emotion in their marketing communications, but other brands use it to their advantage too. Crown Paints was one of them. At the end of the 1990s in the UK, Crown Paints was losing out to Dulux and own-branded paint products. So it brought colour into its communication, allowing Crown to occupy the emotional high ground. To differentiate its Breatheasy virtually odour-free paint, the Crown ad showed smartly dressed people who had unwittingly leaned against a freshly painted wall. By 2000, the Crown brand had grown by almost 66 per cent.

When not to differentiate... 

According to Michael Porter, the professor at Harvard Business School, there are three strategies open to businesses: low price, technology or differentiation, depending on where they are positioned in the marketplace. While marketing communications must be used if a differentiation strategy is being pursued, it's also important for firms that are seeking to undercut the competition and that are keen to encourage consumers to switch to their lower-priced alternative: they will show the similarity between the products available and focus on how their pricing is more competitive. Supermarkets use this trick on everyday branded products to boost footfall in their outlets.

Editing consumer choice 

Differentiation helps choices to be made, purchases to be bought and paid for, and habits to form. Without it, consumers wouldn't be able to articulate their preferences. As The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less (Schwartz, 2005: 42) says: 'Everything in life is choice. Every second of every day we are choosing and there are always alternatives. Human existence is defined by the choices people make.'

And the choices made by marketing portfolio managers must mark out their products and services if they are to stand a chance of being noticed by consumers.

Smart investors think different.

Posted by Rebecca at July 27, 2007 9:09 AM | TrackBack