Posts in Differentiation

Cinematic storytelling borrows from great movie narratives

The Cinematic Secret to Effective Brand Communication

August 7th, 2024 Posted by Brand differentiation, brand marketing, brand messaging, Brand Soul, Differentiation, Emotional relevance, storytelling 0 comments on “The Cinematic Secret to Effective Brand Communication”

Who is the hero of your brand story?

If you want to witness great storytelling designed with skill to be engaging, immersive and occasionally transformational, go to the movies. Yet 90 percent of the time, storytelling in the brand communication world fails to engage, move or influence its intended audience because construction of the outreach is upside down.

  • There’s a simple formula in here to help improve the effectiveness of brand comms just about 100% of the time. It follows simple rules that great movie screenplays serve up with exceptional skill. But you don’t have to be a famous screenwriter to do this.

Granted words are meaningful and a deft hand at casting a narrative will matter in helping convey a message with stickiness and impact. That said the principles governing the ability to connect and engage are there for anyone to employ.

Here’s the fundamental insight that most brands fail to grasp:

  • The hero of your story isn’t your brand or product.
  • The hero is your customer — their wants, desires, aspirations, needs and concerns.

The role of your brand in powerful communication is a character that shows up often in the best movies: the guide, coach and enabler who supports the hero on their journey, and who selflessly helps the main character overcome adversity to improve and ultimately succeed.

The customer is James Bond and the brand is Q

The customer is Luke Skywalker and the brand is Yoda

The customer is Frodo and the brand is Gandolph

The customer is the hero of your story for the very simple reason that each and every day your user wakes up believing they are the hero of their own life journey. They have needs. They make mistakes. They suffer. They improve. They learn. They ultimately win. Their character coach in the form of Q or Yoda provides guidance and tools that help them prevail.

  • When the brand is focused on self-promotion and talks endlessly about product features and benefits, the communication is automatically embedded with a disconnect. For the very reason the brand is now competing with the customer for the hero role.

What happens: the customer walks right on by, tuning out the story while continuing to look for the brand that will help guide, improve, enhance and enable their own growth and fulfillment. For many in brand marketing this will appear counter-intuitive because they’ve been trained to believe that marketing is about selling product features and benefits.

Moviemakers know the one thing, the great insight, that will powerfully engage audiences they want to attract. Here it is: the person viewing their story is a human being and not a fact-based, analytical decision making machine.

We humans are feeling creatures who think and not thinking creatures who feel. Moviegoers put themselves in the hero’s shoes. They identify with the struggle, the challenges, the setbacks and the desire to learn and improve. Over the course of the movie, the main character overcomes barriers and eventually wins. We drink in the thrill of the victory at the end, embracing the journey with all of its harrowing conflict, usually doled about by a recognizable villain. Meanwhile the Yoda character dispenses counsel to evolve and improve.

This is the core essence of impactful storytelling.

Here is the recipe in sum:

Stop talking about yourself.

Embrace the humanity in front of you.

Recognize the power of emotion.

Be the guide and enabler.

Focus your narrative on the customer as hero.

Their lives. Their needs. Their struggles. Their desires.

Show them the way.

Help them win.

Care about their success.

Your brand communication will move from flying over the top of acceptance and into the center of seen, heard and appreciated. Some brands do this better than others to be sure.

The Nike of 2012 got it right in their pool of stories entitled Find Your Greatness. The soulful vignettes recounted the stories of people who faced various obstacles and challenges in their lives, and how they overcame those limitations. Was the communication focused on shoes, designs, product features or trendy fashion? NO. The heroes were real people struggling to grow and improve.

Are you seeing it?

The heartwarming stories draw us in so We-Pay-Attention.

Most important it makes us feel something. In that moment, the brand is connecting with the heart and soul of its customer. Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we’re witnessing engagement and results. In the end, your brand’s deeper meaning, purpose and thus ability to secure a base of committed enthusiasts and believers — runs in correlation and proportion to your focus on them and their journey.

Boom!!

It’s how people feel in the presence of your brand that ultimately tips the scale on the path to purchase. All of the facts and rationale for your better mousetrap will come into play post-purchase to satisfy our reflexive need for confirmation — evidence we made the right decision.

If you apply these principles to your brand communication, it will be transformational on the path to engagement. Your litmus test? Who you invoke as the hero of your story, and how the brand is positioned as guide and coach. There it is. The secret sauce of being seen and heard. So stop selling and start communicating.

It will take discipline and commitment to break with the past and walk from the self-promotion paradigm. Just remember how movies occasionally rivet your attention for two hours. The writers know how to craft the journey so you get invested in the outcome. You just need to work on bringing out your inner Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg.

Scene One, Take Two!!

If you think your brand might benefit from better, more relevant storytelling, use the link below to open an informal dialogue.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Sub-conscious informs consumer decisions and actions

Stretching the Boundaries of Emotional Marketing

June 17th, 2024 Posted by Behavioral psychology, brand marketing, Brand preference, Differentiation, Higher Purpose, Social proof, storytelling, Strategic Planning 0 comments on “Stretching the Boundaries of Emotional Marketing”

Engaging consumer sub-conscious for action and decisions

Neuroscience helps us understand that consumer actions and decisions (to buy) are controlled by the sub-conscious side of our brain. The conscious, learning area of our intellect will play a role post-purchase, as cognitive bias compels us to seek out more factual type information that confirms the wisdom of our choices.

  • This area of the brain isn’t influenced by analytical arguments and fact-based messaging. Yet we find the vast majority of CPG and retail marketing communication presumes that people process rational information on the road to making a purchase. Not true. Doesn’t happen that way.

It is how people FEEL in the presence of your brand that influences their decisions and actions. Heart-over-head every time. So why is this insight not the center of brand strategy? Rather it’s an afterthought or addressed only at the surface level through a compelling image for example that drives food appetite appeal.

All-in on sensory strategy

Profiled in a recent report by AXIOS, one company, Mastercard, has jumped fully into multi-sensory marketing strategies that stretch the very core of how a brand creates a feeling, a relationship, an emotion – knowing this is directly connected to below-conscious cues and actionable behaviors.

Mastercard is indeed pushing hard at the edges of differentiation by pulling their brand into totally unusual places that disrupt expectations of how a credit card payments brand might normally behave. In doing so they are actively mining virtually all of our sensory cues including taste, sight, smell, touch and sound. Authentic strategy is always a ‘swing for the fences’ kind of proposition that causes you to step back, blink and notice, and say “wow, that’s unexpected.”

  • Mastercard’s Priceless positioning amplifies the value of experiences over merely buying things. This is activated in ways that allows the brand to fully envelop the consumer in an encounter that closes the loop fully on emotional response.

A brand you hear, taste and smell

Mastercard amps its Priceless experience concept by opening fine dining restaurants, six of them so far, under the Priceless banner. You can snack on red and persimmon colored Ladurée macarons, while sipping signature cocktails that match the logo color scheme. Your Mastercard date-night experience enhanced with the compelling scent of either Priceless Passion or Priceless Optimism fragrances packaged in the same logo-inspired colors.

Leaving no stone unturned, 590 million POS terminals have been programmed to play a Mastercard pneumonic ‘song’ when every transaction is completed. The auditory layer again respectful of how people can experience Mastercard by conveying the scent, sound and flavor of its name and “Priceless” theme.

  • In an interview with AXIOS, Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar explains:  “The theory is that a normal human being is blessed with five senses. Each sense is a mechanism by which information goes into the individual’s brain, [where they] process it, and then they either think, feel, act or do something with it. Marketing people have only historically relied on the sense of sight and the sense of sound, and they were doing it in a highly intuitive rather than a scientific fashion.”

To drive the concept home Mastercard recently held a media dinner at their Peak with Priceless restaurant, on the 101st floor of 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan. The exquisite menu and inspiring views designed to mirror and breathe life into the kinds of experiences the “Priceless” branding campaign is founded. Likely AXIOS attended, don’t you think?

What’s going on here?

This brand fully embraces the humanity of people who use their product on a routine basis. Here planning and strategy combine to power-up emotional engagement between a payments company and the people they serve. Not by pushing factual statements or information dense narratives. Instead, knowing how people operate with the sub-conscious always in charge of the actions we take, the brand executes on all five senses.

What’s more, the novel and creative ways this effort manifests shows real thought and creativity at work in doing the unexpected in powerful ways.

Dialing up emotional context and brand interaction

Occasionally brands will look at ‘pop-up’ experiences solely through the lens of how media-genic and disruptive it is as an unexpected showcase location for their brand to show up. If you think this through to its emotional roots, so much more can be accomplished by considering the project holistically on ways to amplify all five senses. Why? Because that’s the key to open the door of sub-conscious influence.

How does this work?

The starting gate is understanding that actions and decisions by your customers are driven from the sub-conscious – and that complex part of our brain is far smarter than we give it credit. 60,000 times smarter than the conscious arena, to be exact.

  • Emotion is the path to influence here. Knowing this, how can you elevate experience and activity that interacts with the senses. How do you step completely outside your category norms and rules of behavior to show up in unexpected ways?

Mastercard made Priceless a tangible player in their activation scheme. Further, they fearlessly jumped all the way into the pool on this confident knowing they were playing directly to how humans operate.

Recognize fact-based selling for its true role

Your product or retail “what you do and how you do it” story comes after purchase as justification for the decision that was made. A great place to start on your rode to improved strategy is your brand “why” – your higher purpose, mission and value system that informs virtually every decision you make in the business.

  • Your Purpose is a great exploratory place to be when looking for a concept like Priceless and then pushing that idea further out on engaging people through the senses.

The creative work here can be some of the most exciting and gratifying you’ll encounter as a brand steward and builder. It can be liberating to let go of traditional feature/benefit tactics and let radical differentiation move your thinking into new territory.

It can be helpful to have a guide on this journey. That’s what we do. Use the email link below to share your ideas and ambitions for emotional marketing with a team of like-minded experts who can help you formulate the right plan.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

The relentless search for trust and validation

Answering the Relentless Search for Validation, Verification & Truth

June 12th, 2024 Posted by Agency Services, Brand Beliefs, Brand differentiation, brand marketing, brand messaging, Brand preference, Brand trust, Differentiation, engagement, Higher Purpose, storytelling, Strategic Planning 0 comments on “Answering the Relentless Search for Validation, Verification & Truth”

The updated formula for powerful brand communication

Today we nail, confirm, codify, canonize and draw the proverbial line in the sand, concerning what effective brand communication should focus on in recognition of vast consumer behavior changes. This article offers tangible direction about where to place your bets and how best to secure engagement with consumers that will lead to a lasting, trusted relationship.
 
So, what changed?
 
For 50 years (or more) brand communication was defined as the shiny amplifier in the marketing toolbox, a look-at-me cudgel for products determined to seek out attention. Marketing plans historically, traditionally, extolled the value of top-of-mind awareness-building as the best path downward from the lip of the ”purchase funnel”  — where awareness preceded everything else that could matter on the rocky road to a transaction.
 
The world, however, has shifted dramatically. The purchase funnel as we know it is no longer a relevant business recipe. As we flagged in an earlier post – today consumption is an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community participation and advocacy.

  • Old brand world: defined by conventional paid media awareness (digital or analog)
  • New brand world: defined by content, events, experiences, earned media and fandom

The new and improved role for brand comms

Much has been said about the decline of conventional, non-digital media as the sheer number of viable newspapers, magazines and radio stations has shrunk like conventional taxi service. A great deal of that subtraction due to the shift of media spending away from legacy media platforms. Why? Because consumers have left that building in droves. Digital media brands and platforms now proliferate as the vanguard of trend reporting and product assessment – and all of it online.

What has not declined and only advanced is the insatiable thirst for trusted guidance in a world rife with perceived uncertainty. Consumers universally hate risk (or the perception of it) and seek to avoid that experience. What people want more than ever is assurance of truth and credible corroboration of what brands claim and want them to believe. They also seek reliable coaching on their personal journey and support to determine what’s the best way to fulfill their hopes, wants and dreams.

Somehow this is lost on brands that continue to navigate the awareness pathway, thinking once consumers are aware of the brand’s better mouse trap of benefits, sales growth will inherently follow piggy-back style. However, consumers no longer play ball with that kind of marketing behavior. And they have other options.

Here’s the marketing challenge of the era: brand communication absent genuine, authentic strategy (pursuing differentiation, uniqueness, singularity rather than “better”) is largely a wasted effort (and spend). So too, is any product or service seeking attention ahead of real faith and belief. What’s missing for the consumer in that scenario? Trust. In its place, resides risk and plenty of it.

Our daily behaviors

Whether it’s apps like Instagram, Tik Tok or online news sites such as Fast Company, Thrillist and Axiom, we look to experience review and reportorial forms of content to help us sort the wheat from the chaff, the good from bad, the hot from not, the truth from fiction for what is important to us. We want assurance from a credible source to decide A vs. B. Is this an exercise in building awareness? No. It’s risk mitigation built on the back of a trusted source of guidance.

Doesn‘t it make sense then to shift the planning approach from aggregating eyeballs to winning hearts and earning trust? If so, how can we do that most effectively as stewards and builders of brand relationships and reputations?

What do all of these case study examples have in common?

Sara Lee – restoring brand relevance and growth.
Sargento – leaping ahead of the tyranny of a commodity category
Jamba Juice – restaging brand belief in the health and wellness era
First Alert – establishing a new category solely through editorial reporting
Champion Petfood – leveraging a unique brand strength for enhanced trust and reputation
Molson beer – restoring business credibility and brand resonance
Schuman Cheese – ending the era of category fraud and restoring trust and faith\

They all represent Emergent’s approach using an integration of client/agency collaboration, authentic sound strategy, consumer and trade insight, curated messaging, advocacy and trust tactics, credible voices, industry participation, focus in earned media and cross channel deployment creating a bandwagon effect (multiple sources that agree).

7-point recipe for effective brand communication

  1. Foundational strategic work on brand purpose, mission, values, differentiation, archetype, language, consumer insight and foundational narrative precedes tactical considerations
  2. Optimizing business behaviors, policies, plans and infrastructure to role model and enforce a culture of consumer centricity and brand reciprocity founded on improving consumers’ lives
  3. Brand communication designed around consumer as hero of storytelling, with brand operating as coach, guide and enabler of the consumer’s journey.
  4. Investment in building a community of advocates and trusted sources to verify and validate key messaging, build credibility and earn trust.
  5. Steering clear of self-promotion, feature/benefit selling and other old school behaviors that make consumer relationships transactional and self-serving
  6. Deep investment in earned media and integrated social community activations to influence consumer perceptions, build relationships, develop trust and affirm claims
  7. Seamless integration of message and story from web site to social channels, outbound communication and branded content creation

The best work falls from partnership

Our experience with this approach signals evidence that when brands invest in their “why” over how and what they do to imbue their brand with deeper meaning founded on a relentless drive to help improve consumers’ lives, the business results follow.

When earning trust and working to mitigate risk is foundational in go-to-market behaviors, a new era of engagement and relevance is established because consumers elect to “join” the brand’s mission as advocates rather than mere users.

  • We’ve seen this recipe pay dividends over and over because the brand and business’ heart are not only in the right place, the tools in the marketing toolkit have been optimized for relevance and meaning rather than chasing awareness.

The most powerful way to achieve these outcomes is through a true collaboration between brand and agency. Partnership vs. vendorship – are miles apart in outcome potential.

If this inspires questions and conversation about improving your marketing approach — Use this link to let us know if you would like to discuss further.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Brand Health Tune-Up

Here’s Your Roadmap to Improved Business Outcomes

June 10th, 2024 Posted by Agency Services, brand strategy, Brand trust, Differentiation, Higher Purpose, Strategic Planning, Uncategorized 0 comments on “Here’s Your Roadmap to Improved Business Outcomes”

Announcing our new service for mid-year brand fine-tuning and 2025 Planning!

Emergent has designed a customizable 7 Point Brand Health Tune-Up™ keying in on the most important strategic concerns to enhance your business’ results. This may be the insight you’ve been looking for to unlock your brand’s growth potential!

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Brands that lean into courage have the opportunity for uniqueness

The Most Underutilized Strategic Brand Asset: Courage

January 26th, 2024 Posted by Brand differentiation, brand messaging, brand strategy, Differentiation, Marketing Strategy 0 comments on “The Most Underutilized Strategic Brand Asset: Courage”

Bold moves can overcome limited uniqueness

Let’s face it, in the vast majority of CPG categories — despite efforts by some brands to push forms of differentiation — for the most part they are cloaked with sameness and similarity. It is just hard to find fertile territory for defensible, sustainable and obvious-to-everyone uniqueness. You may start out as a unicorn, until competing brands reverse engineer your leap, then differences in story and concept start to recede.

That doesn’t mean you should give up on constantly pushing the strategic envelope towards radical differentiation. The benefits of creating a “category of one” are remarkable and profitable. Brand standouts spend less on marketing because of their natural magnetism, allure and the elevated distinctive value they possess. It just doesn’t require constant drumbeating to out shout adjacent competitors. You don’t need to, and you aren’t focused on them to begin with.

Let’s be real: it’s likely over time that what made you famous will be commoditized. Jamba Juice invented the smoothie business. Over time smoothies were commoditized by similar competing products/brands and the emergence of RTD (ready to drink) versions in every corner of grocery and foodservice retail. Jamba started down a strategic path to differentiate itself by transforming into a healthy lifestyle brand. We know the details as we were part of the effort.

But that takes time, added investment — and less patient investors pushed back on doing anything that stepped beyond the core concept, forcing Jamba back into its commoditized cup. Which reminds me of Marlon Brando’s famous line from On The Waterfront, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody” – ah yes too many brands find themselves eventually in a wistful trap, at times of their own doing. (Assuming they recognize the lost opportunity).

Leaning into over-reach

But don’t despair, there’s another pathway available if you have the courage and fortitude to pursue it. Here it is – do something generic with such bravery and power it appears to others that you are the only game in town. Whatever that focus might be, you creatively own it, manifest it, and lean into it without reservation, hesitance or limitation.

In Will Guidara’s eye-opening book “Unreasonable Hospitality” he recounts the journey for his restaurant Eleven Madison Park to being named the best restaurant in the world. Not by pushing the envelope of complicated, artistic tweezer food excellence – a frankly similar strategy advanced by nearly every top-echelon restaurant and celebrity chef on the voyage to four stars-dom. No, they bent the rule and devoted themselves to ridiculous, unreasonable, over-the-top, crazy levels of hospitality and guest service. In doing so Eleven Madison became a category of one in a uber-class of similarly great kitchens all helmed by talented culinary commanders.

First Alert, the smoke alarm brand, invented the residential smoke detector and in doing so saved countless lives. An engineering driven company, it beat everyone else by being first with the most. Over time however, the transfer of marketplace power to large format retailers like Walmart and Home Depot, the business was commoditized and sold on price – technology appearing to most consumers as the same between brands. However, another tech innovation at First Alert opened the door to rethinking the brand and business.

First Alert once again stepped up to invent the residential carbon monoxide alarm, addressing an insidious household hazard and source of deadly blood poisoning from an invisible, odorless  gas released by malfunctioning furnaces, stoves, water heaters and fireplaces. The event created an opportunity to pivot, and First Alert embarked on a journey to home safety brand focused on the health, safety and wellbeing of families. The mission- oriented platform enabled a new brand voice in parallel with unusual collaboration partners that reached way beyond “stop, drop and roll.” It was a magical era for the company and its growth until ownership changes forced it backwards into the old engineering mindset and price driven player in commodity categories. Heavy sigh. We know the details because again we were engaged in building the strategic shift while it lasted over a nine-year period.

Outerwear brands embracing sustainability isn’t unique. Messaging around protecting planet earth is everywhere in the category. Strategically there’s not much separation in this business based on these beliefs and the tech in garments. But Patagonia has emerged as a category of one despite this condition by its sheer tenacity and willingness to over-reach, over-extend itself on the path to sustainable behaviors and policies.

If its broke, they fix it. Yes Patagonia, in their effort to reduce its impact on resource consumption and emissions, encourages users to avoid purchasing new garments by offering free and unlimited repairs on any of their products. Some might say, are you crazy? Like a fox we say. The continued efforts by Patagonia to break rules and stretch itself beyond ‘normal and expected’ is testament to a form of strategic brilliance. It is and they are unique in a business where other types of real differentiation are hard to own.

The requirement here is boldness and courage; to take your belief system and push it to ‘unreasonable’ edges. On the path you can expect to face decision making that will be hard, strange at times and difficult. You do it because as a business you actually, really, truly mean what you say and claim to be important. The call to action happens when the ethos holds the decision-making keys to the kingdom and you just over-commit.

Do something inspiring

If you’re looking for a consistent thread in these examples, it’s in executive leadership that is both visionary and courageous. That means leaders who hold the belief system close and see the advantages hidden in the tea leaves to push beyond the norms of expected and reasonable brand behaviors.

The Super Bowl is coming soon. While it may be distant memory for many, or not a memory at all for most, Apple introduced its Macintosh computer with one of the boldest and most ambitious TV commercials ever made. It was expensive to produce and air. It was an over-commit of the highest order employing a strategy counterintuitive to tech category behaviors. The marketing budget was invested in a swing for the fence that didn’t mention a single product feature or benefit. It was wholly a cinematic and emotional statement of ‘now you can change the world.’

Kapow in 60 seconds. It was a gutsy move to be sure and a manifestation in 1984 of new thinking about brand purpose and meaning that cast Apple as a category of one. The belief system held sway and the courage shown there was palpable. Jobs made it so, enabled by his creative partner Lee Clow from ad agency Chiat Day. Eventually Microsoft did their turn on the ‘graphical user interface’ innovation with Windows, but it never pushed Apple off its course. Even with some tech equivalence in there, Apple remains a separate, unique and distinct brand with a huge base of advocates and ambassadors.

  • Make no mistake, employees are part of the solution here. When you over commit, they need to join you as a population of insider, storytelling evangelists.

The roadmap to adventure

This all starts with your brand’s higher purpose, deeper meaning and belief system. If you don’t really have a fix on that then none of this really works because there’s nothing powerful enough to over-commit to.

  • What are you on the planet to accomplish beyond balance sheet imperatives? How are you working to improve people’s lives? Whatever your higher purpose might be that draws consumers in, you should know that people want to be a part of something greater than themselves.

Once you have refined your brand “why” it’s fair to ask what can you do to stretch and over-deliver on that promise? If the answers you come up with bring some discomfort, that’s a good thing. When courage is required, you know you’re on the right path.

Our point: differentiation isn’t always found only in the product and category you created. It can be brought to life going above and beyond to deliver on your purpose. This can get you to ownable differentiation, just remember you can’t take your foot off the gas. If you do, commoditization’s rustiness will begin to take root. In the immortal words of rock band Journey’s legendary lead singer Steve Perry, “Don’t Stop Believin.”

If this story inspires you to explore brand courage and boldness, and you’d like to discuss the potential framework with experienced hands, use the link below to start an informal conversation to discuss your journey to uniqueness.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Brand differentiation is better than being better

Leveraging “Better” is a Trap

November 15th, 2023 Posted by brand advocacy, Brand Beliefs, Brand differentiation, brand marketing, brand messaging, Brand preference, brand strategy, Differentiation, Insight 0 comments on “Leveraging “Better” is a Trap”

Don’t play in someone else’s sandbox

What we’re about to discuss here is vital to brand marketing best practices and sustainable business results.

Most of the time brands and businesses focus their marketing on being better than X. When you are better than X your brand identity is linked to a competing brand. This is a trap. Being better is actually worse. Being different is better than better. Why? Because superior products often lose to brands that dare to be different.

When better silently runs the show, your storytelling is always focused on features and benefits. Some may even strive to be the best – which is really “better” dressed in a suit. Example of a “better” expression: “more” is a slippery slope to feature selling. More control. More perks. More of magic ingredient X. You’ll find hidden under every feature benefit message there is a “better” snare.

  • It’s a misguided, if all too common, principle that inevitably focuses the conversation on competitive benchmarks and comparisons. It is an endless cycle that leaves real consumer traction and engagement unattended – because the story always makes the brand the hero and not the consumer.

Better brands are never about product features and benefits, and consumers no longer buy them anyway. That’s table stakes. Instead, people are attracted to deeper meaning, aligned values, higher purpose and are magnetically drawn to different. Your brand should offer a point of view, express opinions and bring a vision of the future.

Rule number one: in compelling brand storytelling the consumer must always be the hero of your narrative. Your brand should avoid competing with the consumer for the hero role. Every consumer, every day wakes up believing they are the hero of their life journey. Your brand’s proper messaging role is as coach, guide and empathetic enabler of their journey.

Stronger brands always focus on being unique, not better

Strategic brands say and do things differently

They hew a unique tone

They often carve a controversial path

They see the future through a different lens

They operate with a belief system

The belief is the benefit

Great brands are always founded on beliefs

You may think that users care about better. However, you just haven’t given them something greater to believe in. Shifting the story spotlight takes the glow off of your competitor – who incidentally really doesn’t matter to your future prospects and growth.

It isn’t easy to be different. It takes incredible discipline and the support of your leadership team not to fall back into feature/benefit selling. Strategic strength springs from a well-defined understanding of who you are as a brand and company, and what you want to become over time.

Following the path to different

Here are some examples of how you can embrace different in your strategic game plan.

1. Create a new category

Historically and traditionally skincare and make-up brands conveyed that beauty is always applied. It exists on the exterior as an aspirational expression of status seeking and attraction. More enlightened brands have arrived to flip the script by attaching a broader vision of what beauty is and how it manifests. Instead, real beauty comes from within.

Beauty evolves as a coalescing of better health, fitness, spiritual growth and is inclusive of different body types, ages and lifestyles. The brand voice morphs to focus on wellbeing, happiness and growth rather than the singular application of a product. This different view authors a unique voice that carries added relevance and value to its audience of believers in a more validating life view.

Category creation is the ultimate move to inject different into brand strategy and positioning.

2. Move from product utility to lifestyle association

All too often product communication is devoted to specific technologies, formulation superiority and benefits of same. The product and brand are always the authoritative voice. Instead, moving to a lifestyle brand strategy enables personal authority. Great lifestyle brands insert themselves into important moments and experiences sought after by users. These are often situations and memories that echo the brand’s deep belief system – it’s “why” rather than what or how.

Yeti is an iconic example of a brand enrobing itself in a cloak of lifestyle experiences that celebrate outdoor adventures and enable the freedom of the soul in nature. Yeti is not selling coolers and tumblers. It’s singular devotion to breathing life into the emotional experiences of lifestyle association endears itself to its audience of evangelists and ambassadors. Yeti’s deeper meaning separates and elevates it from other brands who offer similar products.

3. Change the story focus

Most brands talk up themselves incessantly. It’s always about who we are and what we do. There is self-reverence and promotion. All about me. Instead of revealing yourself to the customer, how about revealing the customer to themselves. Stop expressing who you are and start talking about the customer – their aspirations, interests and needs.

Most hotel brands focus on their properties to extol design, amenities, services, architecture and location. Here are our features. Frankly the entire conversation is nearly generic brand to brand and separated mostly by price class.

Along comes Airbnb to completely violate the rules and tropes of travel brand communication. Rather than say look at who we are, they flip the lens around to say I see who you are. It comes from a different view of what travel is and how it can be experienced. Belong Anywhere is a unique concept that makes the customer and user experience paramount. The brand becomes an enabler of a unique experience – a coach and guide on a different and more human way to experience travel and destinations.

4. Change the reality

Disruption can be a useful tool when it reorients what people take for granted. The goal is to help people find and accept a new reality. Everything we thought we knew about __________ is wrong. This is how to do it (understand it) right.

The emergence of sustainability strategies and a new understanding of the role our food system plays in climate change is a reality-changing condition. Most people don’t think of food as a contributor to global warming. A brand that steps fully into conscious consumption and the commitment to improving sustainability bona fides creates a game changing story for consumers – and potentially a transformational view of how food should be created.

Similarly, what we think we know about health, wellness and aging is ripe for a makeover. Creating a new reality is a road to difference, uniqueness and sought-after guidance. The new paradigm of belief positions your brand as arbiter of a new way of thinking, doing and believing.

Different is the Holy Grail, let’s look for it!

It is time to back away from being better or best to refocus your marketing and messaging energy on radical differentiation. Best practices in this area inevitably leads to refinement of brand belief systems and adding deeper meaning to who and what you are as a brand and business. Collectively, if you can do it and stick to it, your brand will benefit from a new era of transcendence and value to users who come to you for better and more lasting reasons than a product feature.

If this discussion stirs some thinking and questions in your mind, and you’d like to get those ideas on the table to ponder with some like-minded thinkers, let us know. We’d love to think with you about how this thinking can be applied to your brand and business. Here’s a link to start an informal conversation.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

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