How would your brand rate on distinctiveness?

In the book "How Brands Grow", Byron Sharp set out to research and test long established assumptions on marketing. One of these assumptions that Prof Sharp tested was whether marketers indeed needed to differentiate their products/services at all cost from the competition.

Little evidence was found of the success in differentiating brands in the same category. Pizza Hut, KFC and McDonalds are all essentially fast food outlets.

When a brand makes consumers aware of its distinctiveness, it is more noticeable, recognisable, it improves recall and increase the changes of being sold.

By shifting the emphasis to brand distinctiveness instead of brand differentiation it becomes more cost effective to advertise a brand.

Just as blood letting was thought to have been the only way to rid the body of certain ailments, marketers need to consider old paradigms and take these new findings on board and ensure that every marketing dollar is applied to have a more effective impact.

Why are we in business?

No one will doubt the phenomenal success of the Virgin brand. Interestingly, Richard Branson runs the Virgin organisation by spending a third of his time on promotions, another third on fighting fires and the last third on prevention.

This approach can be applied to most Australian businesses, services and products, not-for-profits, local goverments or community organisations. It is an interesting balance between looking ahead at future opportunities (promotions) and threats (prevention) and acting on immediate threats (fighting fires) and immediate opportunities (promotions).

This approach underscores the importance of making the most and capitalising on the immediate and future threats and opportunities faced by organisations.

Drucker on the other hand was quoted to have said: "Because its purpose is to create a customer, any business enterprise has two and only two basic functions, marketing and innovation". Marketing in itself is an activity that promotes the company, its brand, products and services. Part of any marketing communications strategy is to ‘fight fires’, as Branson would call it, and many organisations uses innovation to prevent a reduction in growth and profit margins.

It seems as if Drucker and Branson are talking about similar topics. Innovation is nothing else than a prevention tactic to remain relevant, and many promotions are run to reduce the threat or shrinking margins.

In the end the challenge to us all is to find ‘others’ problems’ and turn them into ‘opportunities for us’, using elements within our control to create solutions that meets needs at a set price.