Mexican Beer? What brand is first in your head?
For many it would be Corona, the leading Mexican import and share leader of the entire import beer category. People buy categories first and the top of mind brands within those mental brackets. Energy drink: it’s Red Bull. Heavy motorcycles: it’s Harley. European style coffee drinks: it’s Starbucks. And so on. In the February 19th edition of AdAge, marketing guru, Al Ries, has a wonderful column on category creation and its central role in successful brand and business strategy. His example is Nintendo’s runaway success with Wii - not a better or more powerful video-game console, a different one that represents development of a new category in the digital gaming battle.
“There is no best auto company, there is no best car. You’re really competing now to be unique. One can still be a large company by meeting a very well chosen set of needs. Whole Foods is not trying to be a great food retailer. It is trying to meet the needs of a certain set of customers. Those customers view the 183-store chain’s eco-friendly ethos as representative of a healthy, socially responsible lifestyle they want to identify with.” Michael Porter, Harvard Business School.
The driving force behind uniqueness can be best expressed as the search for different. The outcome of that search most certainly can be the launch of a new category where a brand rightfully claims its innovation and leadership mantle. As Ries said in his column: “Marketing is a battle of categories…Creating a category and then branding that category in such a way that your brand is perceived as the innovator and leader is the essence of marketing today…The brand is only a marker for the category itself.”
So often the conversation in branding circles is about being better. Who is going to argue with continuous improvement, right? But the battleground has changed with product proliferation (too many products chasing too few consumers) and commoditization forces working to turn brands into blands. The first order of business these days is no longer just differentiation — it’s radical differentiation. And the end game is the development of new categories that a brand can be number one in.
This is the ultimate re-definition of thinking outside the box — by creating new boxes that in turn become the mental shorthand for consumer brand selection and preference.
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