Product parity exists in (too) many categories because technology advances have enabled the ability to replicate precise competitor formulations quickly. When product innovations hit a category marketplace, the clock is already ticking on adjacent businesses matching the move, an all-too-frequent behavior that carries unintended consequences.
What happens when consumers decide the differences between brand choices are so narrow they don’t matter anymore? In tandem, when private label brands meet, and in many cases, exceed the quality of national brand options at a friendlier price? It’s clear-eyed evidence that commoditization is starting to move in.
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Don’t Give In To Parity!
The ability to grow successfully and retain loyal users over time leans heavily on your efforts and courage to pursue differentiation. Critical now because the charade quotient of a category is directly correlated to its amount of trivial distinction. In the 1960s and 70’s ‘new and improved’ meant something. Today, it doesn’t mean much of anything. What’s missing are consequential gaps of brand separation. The steady dilution of uniqueness pushes brands to collapse on top of each other.
Embedded brand differentiation, the essence of superior strategy, is increasingly rare. Instead, what we see more often these days is the Mastery of Imitation. Too often, distinctiveness exists primarily in the minds of marketers while the reality of it is lost on consumers who just don’t see it. The number of bold brands that create genuine uniqueness and emotional resonance among consumers is dwindling.
What Does ‘Different’ Really Mean?
Sustainable differentiation is never an outcome of being well-rounded. Instead, it’s a result of lopsidedness that organically fights a herd-like regression towards the category middle. When a competitor moves in a new specific direction, it magnetically draws others to follow suit. Thus, entirely too much conformity exists in way too many businesses. Once bellwether features are copied, they cease to be special and instead turn into a baseline expectation.
All detergents fight stains
All premium pet foods push protein quality
All airlines promote frequent flier benefits
All delivery is fast
Squeezing ‘Differentiation’ Out Of Minuscule Discrepancies
The all-too-common brand preoccupation with focusing on competitive one-upmanship inevitably forces brands closer to each other, rendering the original distinctions meaningless. The marketers’ job, however, is to design a process that ensures people insist on brands they buy. They won’t accept substitutes.
- This effort is aided and abetted by understanding that people reveal who they are and what they care about through the product choices they make. Purchases have morphed into a flag and symbol of consumer identity. Are you actively mining their sought-after symbolism?
Are People Buying Out Of Routine Habit Or Passionate Commitment?
This is precisely why a brand’s higher purpose is strategically vital. When a person tangibly demonstrates their affection for a brand, it means the connection has gone deeper. Here’s the gambit: want to have a deeper relationship with your consumers? Then imbue your brand with deeper meaning. Give them something to believe in – a genuine, human-relevant purpose and mission. When you consider that most products are functionally similar to each other, you start to embrace that this is where the battlefield of sustainable competitive advantage will take shape.
Avoid Chasing The Competition
Marketing’s business mission is to help brands become irreplaceable. This is a never-ending struggle against the formidable patterns of competitive herding that exert dominant pressures on category behavior. Importantly, focusing on the competition isn’t compatible with investing in brand devotion and advocacy. The all-too-common effort to achieve “betterness” is a cloaked assassin that actually works in opposition to sound strategy. Devotion to being different creates more marketplace leverage than being better.
Defining the decline: Brands consumed with matching competitive maneuvers lose the bandwidth to generate inspiration. When too much familiarity exists, clear choices are invisible—that is, until a new brand comes along to lure people out of their entrenched consumption patterns.
Every business has its key user segments, and the proportional mix of these audiences helps form a useful barometer of business health:
Enamored with the category – intensely curious, exploring choices, looking for a compatible fit
Category connoisseurs – selective, informed, picky, ambassadors, believers
Bored with the category – have stopped paying attention
Cynical about the category – shopping for the cheapest option
It’s Always More Difficult To Come Up With Market-Disrupting Strategies
When a wider segment of users adopts an unhealthy relationship with a category, loyalists shrink while agnostics grow. On the other hand, brave brands address these conditions by putting a stake in the ground. They create heat and conversation. They pursue distinction over sameness. In a sea of uniformity and conformity, they stand out with magnetism authored by their beliefs, commitments, and higher purpose.
Charismatic Brand Development
These days, we’re surrounded by too many brands that don’t make much of an impression. A brand will stand out when it is inherently, truly, and visibly exceptional. This happens because the business isn’t focused on the competition. Instead, these brave players intentionally fight against forces that push brands to the middle in pursuit of a broader audience. Trying to be all things to all people means mattering to no one.
How To Escape Parity
Polarization – take sides, narrow your target, stand for something
Subtraction – edit and specialize by focusing on the needs of a specific heavy user segment
Differentiation – this is a mindset and commitment to pursuing unique category creation
Make consumers the center of your universe. Then, decide how your band can help them realize their dreams and aspirations. Look to meet and exceed their expectations, never mind what adjacent brands are doing. Let them chase each other.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Robert Wheatley, CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency.
At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define and articulate what makes them competitive and valuable. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth, and Brand Education
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