Differentiation’s role in marketing strategy is rethought in this journal article (which builds on an earlier report for corporate members). It presents a small mountain of varied empirical evidence, including direct measures of perceived difference:
(Download journal version of differentiation)
Differentiation (a benefit or “reason to buy” for the consumer) and Distinctiveness (a brand looking like itself) are different things. This isn’t just semantics, as any lawyer or judge will tell you. Distinctiveness (branding) is legally defensible, while differentiation is not (other than time limited patent protection).
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Dear Professor,
In the book Marketing : Theory, Evidence and practice , it has been mentioned that when we are advertising for new brands, it is important we should not talk about benefits of category codes as they are normally associated with Market leaders or other brands.
So let us assume a hypothetical situation
I have a new brand with distinctive brand assets like Logo, Name, colour and I advertise the new brand with pack shot, Brand name, consumptions shot etc. However I also mention the benefit of a new brand which turns out to be category code benefit. Will this increase mental availability of new brand or will it increase mental availability of Existing market leader ? Will be grateful if you can clarify.
Thanks for a wonderful book ! There are critical questions/ case studies which are lovely. Will appreciate if there is any discussion/answer key available for the same !
Most advertising advertises the category, that’s life. And it’s important for a new brand to signal which category it belongs to.
Whenever we advertise we advertise the whole category, itâs unavoidable – as we do what consumers to know what it is we are selling. But we want to maximise the benefit for our brand, and that means making sure that we look like us, not a competitor brand.
This is particularly hard for a new brand, as the value of its distinctive brand assets will be low – few people will know that the belong to that brand. So it become extra important NOT to look like another brand in the category. Stay away from using colours, shapes, fonts, style that already belong to other brands.
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Hi all
Let’s say you’re an existing category brand that has ideated / launching an added benefits/premiumised NPD with particular functional advantage, new to category, albeit still relevant to the category; and advertises this in it’s distinct style/assets etc does this then become a ‘Distinct advantage’ or even distinct differentiation – is that worth shooting for or preposterous?
It’s plain old differentiation. (distinctiveness is about branding and that takes time)
An old thread, but hopefully still plugged in…
In Marketing: TEP, p,50: “Effective advertising often taps into existing memory structures consumers have concerning the product category. This is one of the (good) reasons why much advertising in a category shares many similarities…you will see that each different brand makes use of many of the same category-relevant cues.”
Is it fair, then, to say that although you want to be as distinct as possible, you don’t want to go too far? Atom Bank in the UK recently produced some incredibly distinctive work, that doesn’t suggest “bank”. Is this bad practice? https://www.prweek.com/article/1660385/frank-creates-outdoor-ad-campaign-atom-bank
You are correct. Being distinctive means “looking like you”. It doesn’t mean doing whacky things.