In her book Different–Escaping the Competitive Herd, Youngme Moon is wondering about how an alien coming from another planet could differentiate one brand of cereals from another. Actually, we, humans are so used to go through the different steps of the decision buying process that we are able to evaluate very quickly the different brands and to make a choice based on facts that could be very surprisingly insignificant for an alien.
What does make a brand different ? What could a company do to stand out from the other ones ?
This is a very complex but crucial question. With the brands multiplication and the products proliferation, being different has become a real stake for all the brands. Many brands just sell the same product : if we take the example of detergent, what is the difference between Ariel and Le Chat ? Their product have exactly the same functional value and generic attributes ! Aside from innovating and creating new products, brands have to find new ways to stand out and make their name shine.
Some of them do not hesitate to recycle old products and present them as new ones just by changing the packaging or the advertising. In Canada, Kraft Foods had made fun around this idea of “product renewing” : they are selling square biscuits called Shreddies, and in order to shed light on this products, they decided to advertised about the new diamond shape of Shreddies. The joke was that, as the biscuits were square, you just have to turn them to make them look diamond shape.
Beyond the joke, Shreddies case point out how unuseful can be the fact to change packaging and advertising or to “recycle” old products. So how to differentiate ? Is there a method to create brand differentiation ?
In his article Brand Difference and the Paradox of Different (http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2011/11/brand-strategy-and-the-paradox-of-different.html), the blogger Thomson Dowson worship the idea that “meaningful differentiation is a breakaway from conventional wisdom”. What does he mean ? Is this statement reliable ?
In order to understand this statement, we could take the example of Apple. What makes Apple so different from all the other phone and computer brands aside from technical characteristics ? The answer is simple : Apple succeeded in creating a whole universe around its products (they were the first to propose colored computersas we can see in their famous advertising "Beige", personalized iPods, special atmosphere in their shops…) and they stand out as the most reliable company on these markets. They succeeded in becoming the exception and not the rule, and this is what Thomson Dowson meant : a different brand is a one that brings consumer, not only what they need, but also what they want. They are rules breakers and stand out from the other as they propose more than just a functional value : they offer a unique experience and not just a product.
Apple advertising Beige :
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