September 30, 2010

Competition is Proliferating Sameness - Part 2

In Part 1 of this blog series I reviewed the problem described by Author and Harvard Business School Professor Youngme Moon: more competition is actually creating less differentiation in the market not more. This is caused by lazy product marketers (my words) who benchmark their products against their competitors and augment them to close any gaps that exist.

This “Augmentation into Sameness’ phenomenon results in a blur to consumers who see most common product categories as having no noticeable differences.

Youngme introduces the reader to three categories of “Idea Brands” that go the other way and REALLY DO create meaningful differences among their competitive peers. They are:
> Reverse Brands —actually reverse Augmentation that strips brand attributes away and surprise the consumer with something new. I describe this approach as “strip & surprise”, “destroy & create” or “purge & reconstruct”. She offers Google and IKEA as examples.
> Breakaway Brands —create a new brand category: “not a Baby Diaper, but Big Kid Underpants” (Kimberly-Clark); “not a watch but the Everyday Fashion Accessory” (Swatch). This approach literally shows “..utter disregard for traditional category definitions.”
> Hostility Brands—play hard to get. “... are barriers to consumption; barriers that could be considered tests of our affiliation”. The MINI COOPER, Red Bull and Birkenstocks are offered as examples.

Youngme’s analysis of Idea Brands that fit into these 3 categories is helpful to Product Marketing folks looking to push differentiation at the product category level. Although she claims her book is not of the How-to variety, I think her detailed discussion with great examples is sufficiently rich that provides marketing practitioners with ideas to begin their work. It is certainly not in my view a purely theoretical treatise on the topic.

This quote sums up her feelings for her subject rather well I think:
Differentiation is not a tactic. It is not a flashy advertising campaign. It’s not a sparkly new feature set. It’s not a laminated frequent buyer card or a money-back guarantee. Differentiation is a way of thinking. It’s a mindset. It’s a commitment. A commitment to engage with people- not in a manner to which they are merely unaccustomed, but in a manner that they will value, respect, and yes perhaps even celebrate”

Nicely done Youngme. And thanks for your contribution to the conversation on how to guide organizations to BE DiFFERENT.

Cheers,
Roy

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Marketing into Sameness Part 1 Article

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Posted 9.30.10 at 07:00 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment