The position of the brand in the customer’s mind (by Romina Giovannoli)
From the teachings of Al Ries and Jack Trout, in order to be successful in an overcrowded market, a company must create a position in the mind of the potential customer taking into account its strengths and weaknesses and those of the competition. To achieve this position one must focus on the perception of the customer rather than the reality of the product by linking his product, service to something that is already in the mind. From this it emerges that "the basic approach of positioning does not consist in creating something new and different, but in manipulating what is already present in the mind, in reconnecting existing connections" (Ries, Trout, 2021, p.17) . What is important is not what you do to the product, but what you do to the prospect's mind; hence the way the product is positioned in his mind. So, in the business world to be successful you have to get into people's minds first. The brand that enters the brain first on average obtains, in the long term, double the market share of the second and double the double of the third; a relationship that is difficult to change.
The leading brand in a category outperforms the one that follows it by a very large margin. Hertz surpasses Avis, General Motors surpasses Ford, Mc Donald's surpasses Burger King. Many marketers underestimate these benefits of being the first by attributing the successes of Kodak, IBM and Coca-Cola to the "sixth sense of marketing."
When the parties are reversed and the leader is not the first in a new category, the new product has little chance of success. Coca-Cola, when it launched a competing product, Mr Pibb, failed to dent Dr. Pepper's sales. Mr Pibb remained in a poor second place. Same thing happened to IBM when it launched its line of copiers competing with that of Xerox.
“The leader benefits from almost all material advantages. In the absence of specific reasons to the contrary, consumers are likely to choose to buy the brand they have already purchased. It is also much more likely that stores will supply more of the products of leading brands ”(Ries, Trout, 2021, p.60).
Keep in mind that the categories where brands play evenly are inherently unstable, because sooner or later a brand will take over and dominate the market.
“Leaders should use their short-term flexibility to secure a long-term stable future. Usually the leaders are those who break through the mind with a ladder on whose only step they have nailed their brand ”(Ries, Trout, 2021, p.62). So to maintain leadership, leaders need to strengthen the category in the prospect's mind. For example, Coca-Cola's advertising campaign, “The Real One”, is a strategy that can only work for a leader. Coca-Cola came first in the mind and to maintain this position it reinforced the concept of the original which is the standard by which all others are judged. Everything else is an imitation of "The real one".
The road to a person's mind is more difficult if you come second. In fact, what works for a leader doesn't necessarily work for someone who comes later. Very often leaders anticipate the moves of the competition and maintain their leadership position.
Those who arrive later find themselves in a different position that does not allow them to benefit from the same strategy as those who arrived first. Most products do not meet reasonable sales targets because instead of focusing on speed they focus on "best quality". The company in second place thinks that the road to success is to introduce a product that mimics another by improving some features. But being better than the competition is not enough. You have to get the product to market before someone else establishes their leadership. In most cases, the opposite is true. The copying company wastes time trying to improve the product. It then proceeds to launch with an advertising budget lower than the leader's, and then gives the product the name of the house to immediately secure a slice of the market. All tactics that do not allow him to find a free space in the customer's mind. To be successful, he must look for a market niche thinking the other way around, that is, going against the tide. If it cannot find the niche in the market because there are few niches to fill, “the company has to create one by repositioning the competitors who occupy those positions in the minds of the customers.
In other words, if you want to insert a new idea or a new product into your mind, you must first bring out those already present ”(Ries, Trout, 2021, pp.81-82).
When Tylenol hit the market, it burst the aspirin bubble.
"For millions of people who shouldn't be taking aspirin," her ad said. "If you suffer from stomach upset … or if you suffer from asthma, allergy or iron deficiency anemia, you would do well to consult your doctor before taking aspirin."
“Aspirin can irritate the gastric mucosa”, the advertising continued, “cause asthmatic or allergic reactions, produce small gastrointestinal bleeding. Fortunately, there is Tylenol ”.
So many words before mentioning the advertising product. Sales of Paracetamol Tylenol took off and became the number one brand in the pain reliever industry. From this example we deduce that in order for a repositioning strategy to work, something must be said about the competition that makes the potential customer change their mind.
Having a position in the mind also means that the brand name becomes a surrogate, or substitute, of the generic name. "What actually enters the mind is not the product, but its" name ", as if it were a hook to which the customer has hung certain characteristics" (Ries, Trout, 2021, p.129).
A brand that becomes generic is identified with the product. So, in the consumer's mind, Bayer is aspirin and all other brands are imitations of it. A line extension only weakens the basic position by creating confusion in the client's mind.
Let us always remember that in a market where many companies and products compete it is very difficult to get noticed if you do not enter people's minds first. “Better to be the first than better than the others. It is much easier to get into people's heads first than to convince them that your product is better than the one that got there first (Ries, Trout, p.15, 2016).
Romina Giovannoli
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The article The position of the brand in the customer's mind (by Romina Giovannoli) comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-posizione-del-brand-nella-mente-del-cliente-di-romina-giovannoli/ on Sat, 16 Oct 2021 06:58:42 +0000.