Strategic Advantage In Your Brand example essay topic

In order to create effective, impact ful marketing plans, you need to: - on the one hand, have a clear idea of the trends and issues going on in the market that have implications for your business, - and on the other hand, have a clear understanding of where you want your brand to be positioned in the market to best take advantage of, or minimise the impact of, those global trends and issues. Let me just say at the outset, that this is not rocket science. However, in the everyday mad, rushed world of marketing, we often take shortcuts, which can lead to not fully thinking through an important process clearly. By taking shortcuts, we sometimes even make the overall process longer, as we make mistakes and get distracted and then have to retrace our steps to get it right. And so if we get these two wrong, its going to be impossible to create effective plans if we aren't even setting the right criteria and issues to address to begin with.

A good example of a brand that lost its way with its positioning is Levi's. It started out as a good value product that offered consumers comfort, but as new high end competitors, like Calvin Klein and others came into the market, Levi's tried to out-sophisticate them, and appeal to the more fashion-conscious with new products and new advertising, which only confused consumers - lost their mainstream consumers, without attracting the younger, more fashion-conscious set. So by taking it step by step, we hope to make the process more clear in your minds, so you can act more strategically. "Strategic" is a very overused word - what do we mean by "strategic"? We like to talk about it as "advantageously positioning your product, brand or company, relative to the competition". So it can be short-term or long-term in its focus, as long as it focuses on creating an advantage versus competition.

People often talk about 'tactics' as not being strategic, but it depends on what the tactics are designed to accomplish. Therefore, when we talk about strategic brand positioning, we " re talking about how we go about creating a certain persona / impression for our brand in consumers' minds that maximises the brand's profitable sales potential by giving us an advantage versus competition. Think about some of the common brands in everyday life - Coke, McDonalds, Mercedes. Each have a particular positioning within their own category, a different reason-for-being with their consumers compared to their competitors - Pepsi, Burger King, BMW. This positioning is what sets them apart, by driving all the various brand drivers into different directions from those of their competitors. In understanding the trends and issues, what we are trying to end up with here is a summary of the key strategic issues facing your brand and your category: what's going on in the market that has repercussions for your brand?

There may be trends that are working to your brand's advantage, or to its disadvantage, but if you don't keep your finger on the pulse of the market, its easy to get left behind. The trends can broadly be summarised into the following areas: Consumer behaviour & preferences (usage, purchase, tastes, profiles) Market noise (competitor activity, activity in other substitute or complementary categories, structural or regulatory changes) Channel developments (existing, new) Technology development and enablers (product enhancement, consumer utility, distribution channel ease, communications channel) Once we have gathered this information, we are then in a position to use that as a base to assess what options there are in where we want to position our brand. A brand positioning statement is simply a concise summary of what space we want to own in consumer's minds. NOT what can we make a lot of cheaply, or what does the company make a lot of margin on, or what machinery do we have excess capacity on? It has to start and finish with the space we want to own - is it a strategic advantage relevant to consumers? Most brand positioning statements include the following information: Target audience Identified consumer need Brand benefit / advantage (how are we going to meet that need?) Reason to believe Brand personality Competitive set The real driver here obviously is the strategic advantage / benefit section.

Jack Trout, the author of the term 'brand positioning' many years ago, talks about the ladder consumers carry around in their heads for each product category, and where a brand is located on that ladder of preference. He says there are 3 keys: It is difficult to create something new and different in consumers' heads, Once a mind is made up, it is almost impossible to change it Therefore, where we really should be focussing is on manipulating what's already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist... What is that quintessential essence people associate with your brand? And how do you create that essence, then make it work as hard for you as it can? In marketing, 'different is good", but it needs to be relative to competition and relevant to consumers in order to give your product an advantage. Not just different to be different - for example, a premium chocolate that offers Echinacea or vitamin C - who cares?

That's not what people buy premium chocolate for. Quite often, though, in today's market, what we find is that there are more than enough brands available in the market to meet every possible consumer need, and then some. So what do we do to be unique? When you think about it, there are 4 different approaches to creating strategic advantage or benefit: Benefit superiority- delivering on a particular benefit better than anyone else in the market Benefit uniqueness - talking about a benefit that no one else in the market is talking about. Quite often, this can be a category benefit, not unique to your product, but no one else in the category is talking about it Product uniqueness via endorsement or niche positioning - products designed by a celebrity, or used by a professional organisation, or products made for the exacting standards of a small niche (for climbers of Everest, etc) Character uniqueness - the heritage of a brand, its personality, for example, Disney will forever be linked with Mickey Mouse and Nike with extreme sport It is critical that the strategic advantage be: Unique - strikingly different from what competitors do or say - you couldn't just put a competitor's brand name in place of your brand and have it still be valid Single-minded, makes choices - NOT all things to all people Authentic - captures the essence of the business and its vision and rings true to consumers' perceptions of your brand Emotional - appeals to the heart as well as the head It's also important to make the point that while the strategic advantage can be product-based, the brand positioning is broader than that - it is the quintessential essence of your brand. Creating a strategic advantage in your brand positioning can only come about through thorough understanding of consumer needs - what do consumers demand of our category, which needs are most important and how well does our brand deliver against those needs in comparison to others in the market?

For any particular category, there will be a number of consumer needs, but which are most important in driving consumer purchase decisions? This requires a great deal of consumer information and feedback - the closer you can get to your consumers, the better your understanding of their unmet needs will be. Once you have created a positioning that gives your brand strategic advantage, the final area we need to look at is our brand drivers - how hard / how effectively are each of them working to support that brand positioning? Even if you have a strategically strong positioning, your message can be diluted in the market via inconsistent delivery of that message across your various brand drivers: Logo Name Product Price Packaging Distribution Advertising Promotion Merchandising Market research Quality assurance R&D / Innovation Production costs Net, in order to have effective marketing planning, it is critical to start with an optimised positioning, firmly based on strong consumer and market knowledge and understanding.