Distinctiveness – a recipe to win the consumer’s mind

The greatest challenge brands experience on their journey to stardom (or eventual decline) is an unrelenting force at work that drives sameness into category competition. Ask any brand minder and they will recite their product advantages, formulation improvements and what they deem believe are distinguishing features. Yet in reality these characteristics are often a mild gradation of difference. This all-too-common condition pushes purchase decisions into more marginal and subjective territory such as attraction to package graphics and photography.

If you want to win the battle for the mind, you need every advantage. That begins by recognizing the all but universal existence of traditional category conventions and behaviors. The trick is working overtime to separate the brand from the crowd in your category orbit. Like 10-year-olds at a soccer match, most competing category combatants chase the marketplace ball of go-to-market practices like a rabid pack around the field. They rarely separate fully to position themselves uniquely for a more strategic and ultimately game winning play.

Be different. No really, really, really different!

In every category brands must compete for share of brain, wallet, sometimes stomach, engagement, mattering and value to the user. Yet modern advancements in technology, innovation, ingredient sourcing and production have made it virtually impossible for any brand to sustainably own a secret sauce achievement over time. One that can radically separate it from the other contestants. Copying is now an achieve-able artform.

If anything, brand experiences become somewhat interchangeable and thus can (will) fall victim to lowest common denominator pricing maneuvers that create a pocketbook incentive for switching. On the other hand, brands with deeper relationships and emotional connection to users can overcome the frequent rust of commoditization and marginal distinction.

Here we make the case for radical differentiation!

Let’s work together to break the rules and category conventions of brand behavior by flying purposefully in the opposite direction. Your goals and objectives are better served by creating greater separation than deciding to “live with” the middle-of-road-ness that often exists side by side in how brands package and market themselves. It may feel safer to follow the pack, but in the end home run outcomes are unlikely when virtually every brand bat is going to be calibrated for a reasonably decent base hit with consumers.

• In fact, different is more powerful than better. Better is always a shade or degree move (perceptual). Unique can win devotion past the purchase decision.

Where can brands strategically separate?

Let’s start with who you are serving. Time and time again we’ve found that redefining who the core consumer is can offer a healthy start on the journey to radical differentiation. “All things to all people” will never be a recipe for distinction.

In every food, beverage and lifestyle brand category there are unique consumer cohorts. We also know that in many instances a more involved and engaged category buyer is often a heavy user who will represent a disproportionate share of brand sales volume and profit.

Narrowing the definition of who you want to serve is your first move towards better brand health, looking for the pockets of greater fan participation and emotional investment.

• We routinely conduct category segmentations not just to understand different cohorts shopping a set of brands but also to find the fanatics and warriors who are champions of a business based on their lifestyle and attitudinal quirks or preferences.

• Persona development work is key to helping define these slices of marketplace enthusiasts – those more likely to resonate to what’s on offer.

How do you design for them? What do they want? What constitutes a surprise and delight? How can you enhance relevance and resonance with them? Yes this means picking a narrower audience profile for planning. However, we’ve repeatedly observed this sharpened focus will improve every aspect of strategic gamesmanship while creating efficiencies in media communication. It sets the brand up to really engage groups of enthusiasts rather than being simply noticed (or not) by everyone.

Re-packaging the story

Designing language, tone and story relevance to the right audience is critical to set the brand apart. Spending time navigating Oatly’s website is a fascinating tour of a business with a unique voice, wearing its beliefs and values like a form of branded organic fashion. It’s not for everyone and isn’t intended to be so. It is a separator from all others, a rebel brand archetype that steps away from dairy conventions to do everything differently.

The words and narrative are masterfully curated to reflect the brand’s higher purpose around sustainability and a belief that an authentic human voice is more engaging than clever marketing speak. If the audience focus has first been narrowed to a band of believers, then the story should be refined to reflect and mirror their interests, concerns and values.

Symbolism 

These days product purchases are expressions and visible flags of values people want to be associated with or known to others for supporting.

The Nike brand isn’t really in the running shoe or athletic wear business. It is in the celebration of human commitment to athletic improvement and competition business. The brand is drenched in symbols of belief, striving, personal improvement, effort and achievement. These values transcend the levers of commerce and elevate Nike from all other players.

Can you add symbols and signals to your web site and outbound content that aligns your brand with shifts in popular culture important to your brand’s relevance and resonance?  

Looking for white space (differentiation) and trends to lead (culture change)

White space discovery is harder than it sounds. Our brains are wired perceptually to see what’s there rather than what’s not there. So how do you discover white space innovation in crowded categories? You must become a zealot customer anthropologist, studying their needs, wants and desires looking for under-served or unrecognized need states.

Both Beyond and Impossible plant-based meat companies arrived on the scene at a time when consumers increasingly viewed plant-based products as better for them. A trend gaining momentum across the food store. Witness the rampant growth of plant-based milk brands that upset the legacy dairy industry.

Their radical differentiation was to walk the opposite direction of improving vegan burgers for vegans. They set out to make plant-based burgers for meat lovers. Audacious. Charismatic. An impressive move to assault the beefy meat case. Their claim was bold and unique. The product experience delivered and now it’s a juggernaut of business expansion. A real zig to the common zag of most plant-based food innovations.

Higher purpose

People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to believe in brands that share their values, that provide a way to make a difference. When the brand voice goes beyond the product to embrace issues people care deeply about, the dynamics of the consumer brand relationship change. No longer just transactional, the brand is imbued with deeper meaning and the voice gains gravitas and potence.

This is how you create a community of activists, advocates, ambassadors and believers who can see themselves embedded in your mission. Remarkably this tends to lower the overall costs of marketing because the brand doesn’t need to beat people over the head with paid self-promotion. The community has its own engine, pushing word of mouth out horizontally.

Some of the more visible examples:

Patagonia and its out-sized commitment to sustainability

Ben & Jerry and its radical commitment to social activism

Panera Bread and its ongoing efforts to address hunger and transparency

Warby Parker and its mission to help provide sight to the seeing challenged

Timberland and its tree mandate to answer carbon footprint and climate change

Of note, higher purpose is a zig move for the very reason so many brands don’t recognize the value of it, or fail to execute authentically, fully. Higher purpose only works optimally when belief and dedication to the platform is religion inside the organization, flowing all the way through operations, marketplace behaviors and long-term strategic decisions.

What’s your higher purpose and the reason people should join your brand’s movement? Or do you still think a formulation tweak will lead to massive marketplace victory?

Designing to intentional difference

Radical differentiation is a strategic play. It is how you can win the battle for the consumer’s mind when (for the most part) product categories are noisy, fuzzy, blurry pools of sameness. Consider who you are serving and what a narrower focus could mean. Look at white space innovations and trends as an opportunity to step outside the category norms. Change your voice, behave differently at the shelf. Move out of the standardized look and feel in how your product is packaged.

Run in the opposite direction from the pack. You will stand out. People will notice. If it’s done right, it can mean a change in the future trajectory of your company.

Should this concept strike you as worthy of further exploration and you would like to get a fresh perspective on what it could mean for your business, let us know. We would love to discuss how this journey might benefit your brand.

Use this link to open an informal conversation.

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

Keys to successful customer journey mapping

What is the biggest marketing challenge facing food, beverage and lifestyle brands? Creating improvements to brand strategy that will deliver more impact and measurable outcomes from limited resources. Here we’ll talk about an important tool that can help remove risk and uncertainty from your marketing plan and spending decisions while optimizing effectiveness.

What do you ultimately need to deliver sustainable business growth? Consumers who love and appreciate your brand. Trustworthiness is harder to achieve than meets the eye. Relevance and higher value can only be secured when the consumer sees your brand as “mattering” to them on a deeper level than product functionality.

Embedding strategic insight and drawing the brand as close to your customer base as possible requires a disciplined approach. The plan strategy must assure that at every key point on their journey to purchase and later hopefully to evangelism, there’s connection with the right experience, the right message that mirrors their pain point, needs and aspirations.

This outcome is made possible by placing consumers at the center of your strategic planning process. To do this effectively and with clarity, Customer Journey Mapping is the best tool to hold the consumer priority feet to the relevance fire. We’re going to walk you through best practices in journey mapping, an incredibly exciting and important exercise that will bring greater resonance to every aspect of your brand strategy.

Ultimately it will inform more impactful and compelling brand communication and lead consumers to a trusted and closer relationship, for the very reason your interaction with them will resonate at each stage on their path to purchase.

The customer journey map process helps you address the following:

• Engage your customers in your brand message
• Believe your brand claims
• Appreciate your brand purpose
• Trust your brand
• Buy your brand with confidence
• Advocate for your brand

Successfully joining your customer on their journey requires you to think like they do. It will entail empathy, understanding and appreciation of their needs and concerns. The map brings this insight to life. Without it you’re really flying blind.

Your first objective always is to add value to their lives

Simply stated, to:

• Help them
• Educate and coach them
• Demonstrate you are showing up for them
• Empathize with their needs
• Fulfill your promises

Here’s the Emergent three-step recipe for an optimal Customer Journey Map

Step One – Persona understanding and Insight

As we’ve conveyed previously, consumer purchase behaviors are 100 percent driven by trying to avoid making a bad decision. Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman at Ogilvy & Mather, so accurately describes it, “a one percent chance of nightmare dwarfs a 99 percent chance of a five percent gain.” Accurately understanding and characterizing the consumer’s needs, pain points and “risk” related concerns begins with Persona creation.

Here we identify the key segments of your customer base from early adopters to heavy and occasional users to those motivated more by values or social issues such as sustainability. Within each cohort we take a deep dive on lifestyle, interests, needs, passions.

When fully built out the personas should address these six key questions:

1. What are the triggers (need/want) that kick off the purchase journey?
2. What are the pain points and practical needs they wish to solve?
3. What cultural and societal influences are at play?
4. Given purchases are largely symbolic signaling now, what symbols of relevance do they look for?
5. What are the emotional levers that impact their perceptions and actions?
6. What media do they consume and where?

To do this at an optimal level we operate like anthropologists who observe, investigate and study to know their interests and behaviors.

Step Two – Moments of truth on the path to purchase

The map segments their journey from discovery to purchase, digesting each step along the way so you can articulate what they think, feel and do. Armed with this understanding you’re able to design communications that meet the appropriate moment, thus assuring your brand remains relevant, engaging and helpful.

Here are the seven journey map components

• Discovery

Steps taken to identify the brand/product choices available for consideration based on consumers’ needs and alignment symbolically with how they see themselves and their values.

• Exploration

Within a shortlist of candidate brands the consumer is acquiring more information on features, benefits and lifestyle associations. Most of this occurs online in social channels, web sites and media platforms.

• Comparison

The shortlist alternatives are compared for plus and minus assessments of risk and ability to successfully answer the pain point or desire.

• Trust check to verify

Consumers look for recommendations and reviews from peers and credible experts or influencers. Their goal is to reduce risk by validating the claims made by a brand on results, ease of use and effectiveness. Social channel proof (testimonial) is a key component in achieving this trust.

• Purchase

The ease, convenience and absence of friction in the purchase process will influence perceptions of satisfaction and fulfillment of your promise.

• Experience

Everything that can be done to assure an optimal user experience is delivered to assure the outcome matches the perceived value proposition.

• Evangelize

Assuming all the previous steps have matched with their needs, the “discovery” aspects of a well-done brand experience will help initiate advocacy, word-of-mouth and sharing of experiences via word-of-mouth and the users’ social channels.

At each step the map is populated with an assessment of what consumers in the moment think, feel and do. This information is used to inform communications and messaging. The right words, at the right time, in the right place.

Step Three – translation to messaging and media plan

Armed now with a full understanding of your customers’ thinking, emotional needs and behaviors at each moment on their purchase journey, you’re in a position to serve up communication and content relevant to their needs as it evolves from need triggers all the way to potential ambassadorship.

Given the mapping focus comes back to what the consumer is thinking, feeling and doing at each step, you’re able to tailor messaging for whichever moment of truth they are in. By virtue of this added relevance, your brand can operate as a guide and empathetic coach at each phase, providing useful information while resolving issues that contribute to perceptions of risk or making a bad decision.

Media selection can be optimized to deliver the right kind of content; from social proof to purchase support and reassurance on issues they care about most. The tool should match the need. This creates greater marketer confidence –understanding what’s going on along the path and knowing which message to deliver. Important to outcomes because the plan now is free from hunches and assumptions about what to convey, when and where.

Mapping the Moments = Momentum

The customer journey map brings added rigor and discipline to the planning process, infuses consumer relevance throughout their journey and acts as guide to message and media based on audience behaviors and preferences.

The consumer recognizes your understanding of them amplified by the usefulness and value of what you’re able to tell them. In the year ahead, brand strategy improvements will be needed to step past the significant behavioral changes and attitude shifts authored on by the pandemic. The Journey Map is the way to get there.

If you think the Journey Map process might be right for you, and you’re interested in help and support, use this link to ask questions about what’s best for you.

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

What’s percolating inside the people behind great leaps in business…

Most often we publish stories about marketing best practices, brand strategy, communications planning and our specialty – emerging trends. However, as we say good riddance to a year many of us prefer to see in the rearview mirror, we’d like to offer a different story about hope, encouragement and guidance for a more prosperous future in 2021.

• The foundation of success and transformational change springs from a strategic vision that inspires leaps in growth and brand development. What is the unique alchemy that enables this kind of growth? Read on.                                                       

Does strategic vision descend from the heavens on a road near Damascus with a blinding light of revelation from on high?

Many of us in the marketing community have our favorite case studies that demonstrate strategic brilliance and imagination that serve as the foundation of great brands and businesses. Yet we also know that bold marketing moves happen periodically in many categories.

Are these happy accidents and moments of good fortune, bestowed by an unseen spiritual power as benevolent gift to a chosen few? No. Indeed visionary thinking and bold ideas come from the hearts and minds of those who are willing to lean in and break the conventions that can anchor brands to a form of floating, inert stasis in their category pool.

Witness the recent story in Forbes about the newly named Molson Coors Beverage Company, marking their transition from brewery-centric business to a broader and more inclusive portfolio of non-alcoholic, better-for-you brands. Led by visionary Pete Marino at the helm of their Emerging Growth unit, the company is now locked onto evolving consumer trends and preferences, while simultaneously adding value to their distributor relationships. Brilliant.

Game-changing thinking that moves brands and retailers to an improved trajectory is a very human adventure. At the root of all progress are people and teams who assemble the plans and strategies capable of out-sized leaps in growth.

Here we peel the onion on the requirements and conditions that lead to this level of result. At the heart of every great exploration in marketing ‘unchained’ (the kind that teams sign up for as passionate advocates on a mission) is a series of similar characteristics.

Who are you? Yes, you.

All of us have formative stories about who we are. Mine began in Edinburgh, Scotland where I was born. My parents lived there as expats while my father worked on his doctorate degree in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He was offered a teaching position, kicking off a back-and-forth adventure of living in Scotland during the school year, broken up by summertime trips back to the States. In those days the affordable voyages were on Cunard ocean liners for a six-day transatlantic crossing.

From age zero to five I did this repeatedly, generating my own exploratory mindset. To wit, I got lost on the Queen Mary at four years of age, attempting a self-guided below-deck tour to try and find the engine room. Ships and trains were a passion. This innate curiosity remains steadfast in my own repertoire of behaviors. That, and a fondness for warmer destinations after the icy toddler years residing in an 18^th century Georgian row house with no central heating. Brrrr!

Can you cite moments and experiences in your own life that helped form your point of view? Your ‘personal chemistry’ is a result of these imprints. Self-awareness of these events helps bring shape and understanding to why you do what you do. It is through this mindfulness that we come to understand how best to direct our strengths and performances.

The personal chemistry required to pursue a strategic leap usually includes a blend of the following:

• Appetite for risk
• Willingness to zig when everyone around you zags
• Departing from convention
• Thrill of new territory exploration
• A desire to invent, create something new
• A belief it can always be better

Confidence in your convictions

What is the common thread that runs through individuals who search for greater meaning and deeper values in the brands they guide? A passion to improve people’s lives and the world around us.

Convictions come in two varieties: first is an acquired point of view borne from study, research, soliciting the opinions of those you trust and listening to experts in your orbit you respect. The unfortunate second is a more rigid principle, an outcome of arrogance that you’re smarter than everyone else. Uff.

• Great ideas and contributions to better thinking come from everywhere and anyone. As a marketing leader your humility is the first requirement to see and comprehend these nuggets of insight. Without this openness and curiosity, you are ultimately flying blind.

• We are reminded of the incredible story of Richard Montañez, the erstwhile janitor at Frito-Lay who dreamed up the concept and recipe for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Richard had the temerity to contact the CEO after a C-suite request for innovative ideas from ‘anyone in the company’ and convinced the executive team to make an investment in this Latino market facing snack concept. It was one of Frito Lay’s biggest ever product launches. Richard is now a VP of Latino market sales for Pepsico. His conviction made it happen.

It is within an attitude of operating in service of others and the greater good that big ideas tend to manifest. When you’re able to connect strategy to improving people’s lives – serving unmet needs – you have the basic ingredients of a transformational leap in brand development.

This perspective offers the infrastructure of a mission and value system others will rally around. The convictions that emerge from this approach form the basis of an authentic higher purpose, one that can spell the difference in attracting a genuine community of real fans and advocates.

Convictions stirred with strategy are a strong mix.

Failure is your best friend

Do you believe that failure is a good thing? There is no greater teacher than failing. All of the wins you experience won’t add up to half the insight you will secure through failing and then adapting. If you think you should never fail, then you will never learn.

Fear of what others think or retribution or blame or criticism collectively act as a deep freeze on innovation and a willingness to step outside convention to break new ground. Failure is good and to be embraced as a teaching moment. It’s when you’re most open to insight and epiphany on how to improve. Admitting failure is a laudable character trait and provides the key to learning from mistakes or errors in judgement.

When I started Emergent it was on the back of an idea: I believed the entire food, beverage industry was standing on the edge of a sea change. People had connected the dots between what they ingest and the quality of their lives. The industry however was focused on features and benefits rather than devotion to health and wellness. This was the first business I started based on strategic insight (idea) rather than a large anchor client (cash flow). An adventure in bootstrapping. I thought the CPG world would beat a path to Emergent’s door.

In a word, no. Others I knew said “too niche, too focused, too anchored to an outlier idea.” It took years for the traction to begin to happen. It was no rocket sled – a humbling period of reflection and self-doubt. Every ounce of persistence would be required to march forward.

Say yes to risk and failure. You’ll sleep better for it. You’ll refine your understanding with it, evolve and improve.

Attend the Church of the Consumer

We love to talk about value creation in marketing. What value can there be in creation without putting the consumer at the center of this calling? Too many times companies turn inward, planning around their own self-interests, viewing the customer as a strict transactional outcome of sales and marketing. The blindness this causes is the reason why so many businesses eventually stall or never grow faster than the category in which they reside.

The consumer is not a walking wallet, they are our first priority. It is their needs and interests we are on the planet to serve. Your passion and willingness to invent on their behalf must be informed by deep understanding of their concerns, interests, needs, wants and desires.

• To do this effectively requires investing time and resources in consumer anthropology
• Your business model is constructed around your users and their needs
• You instinctively look for ways to improve their lives
• You care about their personal success and wellbeing
• Your team sees this consumer-centric mission with clarity and dedication

This is much harder to do than it sounds. The pull of self-interest is very strong.

Study leads to epiphany

Great ideas don’t fall from the sky. Instead they are an outcome of examination, study, listening, observing, researching and absorbing. If you are open to change, wanting to test the limits and ready to take the required risks associated with innovating, then you’ll find a bigger picture forming.

Your passion and convictions must activate to bring others along on the journey. Yes, there will be attempts to kill new ideas along the way. There will be naysayers and resistance. However the strength of your story will hold sway.

Ideas are fragile. Keep the faith.

2021 is here, now is the time

When opportunities for strategic leaps move from concept to reality, you will have the opportunity to create momentum. This is what we all live for, strive to do and with it comes knowledge of our impact on people’s lives and in turn the growth of the business.

If you find this kind of thinking refreshing or inspiring, and want to bounce ideas off like-minded experts, use this link to open an informal conversation about your concept. We can help you build and refine, and bring a strategic game plan to life.

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