DiAmoNDs aren't a brands best friend *(final.v.250)

I won't  be making any further reference  to Dungeons and Dragons. This is as close to an absolute as you'll get from me today,sorry. Also *apologies to the late Marilyn Monroe  for butchering  the title of her hit song "Diamonds are a girl's  best friend" from the1953 film "Gentlemen  prefer Blondes".

*Prologue: 

 1) There are no absolutes, successful marketing is  an ever changing context sport (did I come up with that ,or did I borrow from someone else?).

2)  Observe humbly and broadly ,Learn, experiment, apply,learn;repeat. 

*Introduction

Its all become a bit heated again on Twitter , so here's another unsolicited, resolutely neutral  and academically uninformed take,based entirely on my  packaged goods experience, which  spans two centuries.

I was stirred from my sick bed ( did I mention I have Covid yet?) by that hothead and  seeker of justice  Thom Binding @Slightly_Random  poking at another favorite  Marketing Twitter Sore,namely the meaning and value of differentiaton  vs distinctiveness. I'm deeply indebted to the articles by prof. Mark Ritson  @markritson in Marketing Week  @MarketingWeekEd ,and I have a flawed understanding of How Brands Grow 1.0 by Prof. Byron Sharp @ProfByron. I also read the recent LinkedIn post by Prof Jenni Romaniuk on the topic, and agree with her conclusion .

The parameters of discussion  seem to revolve around the following  areas of debate:

*Definition of the terminology  is as usual featuring strongly:

The meanings and thus the  differences  between  them are in the roots of the words themselves. Please do your own work  people. I think they're  actually  family. 

*The utility  of either in different parts of the marketing  landscape 

This is for me the interesting area. Contributors to this thread  have broken this down  into a number of constituent parts: Brand vs product,  and marketing  and operations as opposed to the comms world.

I think we need as ever to step back from our professional interest in marketing  and  be more focused on  being the voice of the consumer , for that is our job as marketers.

Wise people have been telling us for a while now that actually consumers aren't generally that interested  in our brands , or our ads, and I wager no amount of prawn cocktail  snacks and fizzy beverages in a late night  focus group will really  make them interested  in  what us marketers do behind closed doors , never mind argue about D&D.

So for me , for the record , in packaged goods  from a consumer first perspective  and working backwards and away from the consumer into the belly of the beast you  firstly need to be available, then  to stand out ie mental and physical availability ( distinctive get up and comms );if possible  better somehow  across one of the 4 Ps,  not necessarily  different , and then if you can be different in a meaningful way that's a good thing. If you're  selling blocks of cheddar say then the margins for differentiaton are  slim, but distinctiveness  is  certainly possible. 

The importance  placed on differentiaton  by some marketers, especially I would guess in packaged goods ,warrants  a little explanation.  Brand owners and retailers alike ( who still  overwhelmingly  control physical access to consumers ) demand improved odds on any and all lines stocked improving overall sales and category market  share,  not to mention profit ( did someone mention profit?) . The more a product  and  brand is  relevantly different from its  nearest competition  the more  pricing power and profit there is for the brand owner  and  therefore that line becomes unsubstitutable . In packaged goods  a large brand will benefit from distinctiveness  and of course habit /systems 1 behavior, irrespective  of whether it is also different or not  than a lesser known  competitor. 

Launching me too  products or brands is generally a short cut to nowhere in an open market landscape, with a) retailers having fairly brutal minimum  sales and profit threshold hurdles  to be reached within  a limited time frame, with twice yearly reviews and delistings  a feature in the UK at least; b) or unless the me too  brand owner is a market  leading brand leveraging   its market  or share of voice dominance  to copy the innovation of others.

 So, differentiaton is a good goal if meeting unmet needs, but distinctiveness  is a must. If you don't stand out simply you won't be noticed or bought. 

Examples of some brands with products  which had both differentiaton  and distinctiveness :  Vienetta, Marmite,Ferrero Rocher. 

Bonne Maman and Nutella deserve a special mention for distinctiveness  without any  technical  wizardry.

 I can't  really  think of examples of successful differentiaton without  distinctiveness  in an open market, but please do give me examples. 

D&D in brands you ask? In some categories the brand carries  a heavier 'look at me' burden than arguably the product ,  fashion and luxury goods spring to mind. I've worked in strategic brand development, in packaged foods ,and was  regularly  confronted by what I still  consider  if unqualified and unchallenged as  the  siren call of the mermaid luring us onto the rocks theory which says 'none of our competitors is in space x, we can own it, we should go into it'....

Where would you place brands like : Tony's chocolonely? For me it's both distinctive in get up and tone of comms  and differentiated in brand positioning.  product is fairly standard chocolate albeit in jawbreaking profile of chunks. Body Shop in its founder days was both distinctive in getup and product as well as differentiated

When it comes to the role of D&D in comms,  history  suggests  that the consumer is most likely to notice and be interested ie  comms more effective  when  messages focus on what benefits accrue to them by  choosing  our brand  and product , duly presented in a distinctive and entertaining  manner, rather than a focus on features in isolation .  Topically and perhaps fortuitously I do not work in the airline business  which is clearly  a very different  market to mayonnaise... and no I have not reinvented features and benefits thank you...

The debate about the primordial importance of differentiaton  or not is unlikely to be definitively  answered,  because no absolutes.... Only one company in my personal memory database put  differentiated Innovation  so high up the list , and that was 3M the inventors of Post It notes , where it was at one time  reportedly mandated that executives spend 30% of their time on breakthrough Innovation  projects.

In conclusion  I  believe  that for distinctiveness and differentiaton   the more you have the better  , just like distinctive assets.  But ultimately  of the two  distinctiveness  is more critical to business success. 

I'm going to go and probably  throw up now ,thanks to  covid and Crohn's disease holding a simultaneous  rave in my body.  I hope reading this is much easier on you than it was for me writing this ...

What's Brand love got to do with it?

 There is  an ongoing tension between different  viewpoints around pretty much every aspect of marketing  ,and  recently we have been discussing  on Twitter whether  brand loyalty exists(@paulmarkbailey) ,  those who are seemingly always down on our  own discipline(@derekwalker)  and points inbetween.  

I'm concentrating my comments  around  packaged consumer goods as it is my field of useful experience ; if you know or think different from elsewhere do please chip in.

The question of preference vs loyalty  is interesting  because  the debate  highlights  the need to embrace not only the ambiguities of human behaviors and the limitations of data to tell us what not why , but the importance as ever  of context , shared understanding of the marketing lexicon  and at a more  fundamental level the future of the world... or brands anyway. 

To over simplify /  dramatize  : If there's no such thing as brand  loyalty  and by extension   no such thing as brand added value why isn't everyone  just buying the cheapest , usually a perfectly  good enough private label (I'm talking lemonade not luxury look at me status brands )?

The main vectors potentially to this are :

* Consumer indifference and repertoire purchase :    when  consumer brand indifference meets product  parity, you get a risk of  wholesale substitutability.  Strong brands do exist  in my experience even in categories with little  product differentiaton or status , be it eg staple products like cheddar cheese here in Britain and elsewhere in my  professional travels.

*preference vs loyalty: arguably loyalty is a  somewhat loaded, psychological  term which does not belong in debate about  eg prepackaged cheese or toilet cleaner.

'Loyalty is preference'   seemed to be one marker in the debate ,  but I don't think that goes quite far enough. Loyalty  is  a  feature of   (some ) human relationships and for me it goes beyond  a transactional  relationship  which is  what most consumers have with brands; if brand x isn't available  they'll   happily  buy  brand y as we all  know.  Preference  as a concept is unburdened by any sense of obligation to follow through with purchase, unlike loyalty anyway so at a  nuanced minimum it is a more binding notion ? 

I would suggest loyalty  goes beyond logic and reason  and may entail a personal cost ; just ask long suffering supporters of  long term unsuccessful  sports teams. By contrast if a brand of  say mobile phone comes up with an altogether better functional  product  unless the pain of switching is too high it is likely  it will steal users from other brands or systems tied into its ecosystem of eg of apps and software.

*The importance as ever  of context:   

It is not loyalty  if the barrier to switching is too high for consumers, see internet providers , banks , utility providers, such that laws have been introduced  to protect consumer freedom to switch provider. In packaged goods switching  meets the  time pressured repurchase  habit with consumers spending literally only  seconds in front of a typical  or virtual  display shelf to find their usual choices, the vagaries  of negotiated  physical distribution and on shelf  visibility eg pack location and  number of facings, display within category  eg eye level vs top shelf or bottom shelf also play a role ; and  private label  often using  similar designs to leading brands, supposedly not copying as such but using established category ie brand leader  visual design colour  codes ...

*The commercial value of targeting loyalists vs all category consumers. 

Whilst I get and agree with aspects of the  prevailing belief  in the wisdom of targeting all consumers and that penetration is  the key objective , it begs one question  for me which is : what are the consequences  then for differentiaton and targeting  products against specific target consumers and their needs or CEPs?

Look to the cola brands as an example  of  wrestling with the right balance  between  brand campaigns  and brand block dominated  designs  vs  more product specific  approaches. It may  well  be true that consumers of full fat cola will also buy light  variants ( not gonna pick a fight with Prof Byron Sharp am I ..), but  as a traditional marketer I would argue they as products meet different  need states and have different benefits ,even though the consumer profiles  may overlap in the same person at some points , whether it be same person consuming  or as  someone  purchasing for a  family  unit.

Hope this contributes to the debate in some way ; do let me know what you think ...

Thanks again to marketing Twitter for sparking this piece, acknowledgements and attributions  * :Tina Turner; @paulmarkbailey ,@johnnieego,@andywheatley,@clayton_phillip,@derekwalker,@Jonlombardo ,@bruceclarkprof,@keerti007,@AtomicAdMan