It’s always important to have a deep, unvarnished understanding of your brand. This clarity is what allows leaders to make smart decisions, inspire confidence, and build trust inside and outside the organization. One must:
- Know its qualities and strengths.
- Acknowledge the organization’s accomplishments.
- Nourish a positive vision of the business’s future.
However, at the same time, the pathway to sustainable growth can be unwittingly compromised by the absence of unflinching, critical, self-examination and regular reality checks. Remarkably, a significant percentage of brands – we believe around 65% – are challenged by this systemic and reflexive ‘we’ve nailed it’ behavior.
Decision makers get so enamored with talking up the brand narrative and pitching their business bona fides that they become inoculated to the messy, compromised reality most companies will face — and thus never manage to truly overcome it. Instead, they’re content to float in the warm bath of competitor comparisons, while measuring success based on marginal increments of gain over others in their category.
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This Is Why Your Number One Job Is To:
This ‘moment of business truth’ assessment doesn’t require shouting the rough challenges from the rooftops. It’s vital, however, that you know it, see it, understand it, and manage it.
Truth Number One – Gravity Of The Vanilla Middle
Most product and service categories are flooded with comparable quality brand to brand. Why is that? Technology has advanced so significantly that competitors can quickly match any formulation or ingredient advantage. Moreover, brands that may have started at the precipice of invention and distinction can expect to see the edges of exceptionalism get filed down over time in pursuit of larger channels and broader addressable markets. Like a law of gravity, what was once immediately and genuinely distinctive inevitably moves closer to the vanilla middle as expansion accelerates.
There’s a word for this grinding-down process — it’s commoditization, a phenomenon that will come calling sooner or later in every successful category. How will you stand out — beyond trivial distinctions — when the tools designed to achieve efficiency are naturally undermining brand separation and, over time, will push products to become ever more similar.
The cause and effect of sameness is almost always increasing investment in chasing awareness, believing that the secret sauce is really unleashed in a clever ad, served up with growing levels of repetition — based on the assumption that the “win” goes to whoever is currently top of mind. Never mind the consumer’s increasingly clever methods of avoiding interruption marketing entirely. Unfortunately, we see this recur repeatedly. As categories mature, the distinctions between brands become more inconsequential. For the consumer, this trivialness is real and pushes competition towards price promotion and deal addiction because, frankly, the choices are interchangeable. This authors yet another call for price reductions and awareness chasing. It can become an unwinnable circle.
The antidote to sameness and similarity begins with honest and truthful assessments of where the brand and business are, supported by recognition that being X-percent better than your nearest competitor is only an invitation to further product commoditization. Stating it is better means the product is the same, only better (for a while), and perhaps that better-ness eventually ladders up to an inconsequential separation.
Pursuing Differentiation Is A Stronger Fight
Humans are hardwired to pay attention to what’s different and unique. Consumer eyes naturally glaze over in the presence of sameness. The biggest challenge then is honest evaluation of those distinctions over time, and a willingness to own up to the cracks in the story veneer when the differences brand to brand are getting narrower. This explains why sound strategy requires an ongoing, recurring commitment to the pursuit of radical differentiation.
When the brand is used to shouting exceptionalism and “we’re proud of” stories, it can be harder to identify and acknowledge a leak in the brand boat. This, in a manner of speaking, is one of the reasons why Emergent is here. Your brand will benefit from an experienced outside, third-party voice to examine the state of the state and help surface where commoditization is showing up, how to reset distinctiveness, and then recalibrate the story you’re telling.
- A sound strategy will always require courage.
- It is automatically bold.
- It champions difference and uniqueness.
- It doesn’t create questions; it answers them.
- It’s simple, understandable, and straightforward.
- If Venn diagrams are required to explain it, it’s likely not dialed in.
- Note that tactics are masquerading as strategies all the time.
There’s A Consequence To Business Expansion Along The Way
When premium high-value, lower-volume brands adopt high-volume expansion tactics, their perception of value is impacted. The decisions on where a brand exists in the value/volume journey will impact sales and pricing strategy as well as risk and profitability. This often shows up in channel decisions, such as when a brand moves from specialty retail to mass.
Inevitably, there will be pressures created by growth decisions. This dilemma – grow your volume and sacrifice some quality-to-value, or maintain value standards at the expense of volume. This resides at the center of most brand positioning, competitive, and growth planning. Here’s how to think about it.
The Three Stages Of Brand Growth
1. Marketplace Tension
A new brand emerges by addressing gaps and cracks in categories that are either unforeseen or underserved by the status quo. The new player educates and then provokes an opening by reframing the problem and providing a new alternative or by opening an adjacent category. If it gets consistent traction, the business should rapidly accelerate.
2. Broad Disruption
As the new business advances, competitors emerge and enter the market. The category expands horizontally and owning a distinct and differentiated position among a larger variety of players becomes essential to driving incremental growth. This happens while brands begin to fixate on their competitors.
3. Channel Expansion
In pursuit of volume growth and larger audiences, pressure to expand distribution into mass channels grows despite the margin compromises. Competitors converge and brand uniqueness shrinks. Now, supply chain efficiencies, optimizing formulas, and brand authority help push the business ahead until it eventually plateaus.
As a marketer, your job is to compete. Compete differently with The Blake Project.
Your Brand Purpose And Mission Operate As A Defensible Strategic Separator
Product similarity is a fact of life. Your brand’s higher purpose and mission are your own, and if you invest in it, the world you create and invite consumers to join will elevate your brand to a stronger position, diminishing the need to chase awareness. Instead, consumers are joining your brand community as ambassadors and evangelists because you’ve given them something worth believing in.
You are ultimately forging an identity that resonates. Want to have a deeper relationship with consumers? Then imbue your brand with deeper meaning. You go back to ground on the brand fundamentals, equity and what you stand for. You explore your “why” and cultivate a deeper understanding of what you offer beyond the product itself.
This inevitably leads to creating deeper connections with people based on shared interests and beliefs. If you push this to the front, you will help elevate and differentiate your brand in a more powerful way than chasing the tail of formulation ‘better-ness’. That doesn’t mean weak products win. Only the very best survive, and that’s now table stakes in business. Achieving different is a combination of constantly iterating product improvements while devoting energy to embracing your higher purpose, where long-term separation exists.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Robert Wheatley, CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency.
At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define and articulate what makes them competitive and valuable. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth, and Brand Education
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