Branding Strategy Insider

Differentiation Takes Place in the Mind

While the mind may still be a mystery, we know one thing about it that is for certain—it’s under attack. Most Western societies have become totally ‘‘overcommunicated.’’ The explosion of media forms, and the ensuing increase in the volume of communications, has dramatically affected the way people either take in or ignore the information offered to them.

Overcommunication has changed the whole game of communicating with and influencing people. What was overload in the 1970s turned into megaload by the turn of the century.

Here are some statistics to illustrate the problem:

*More information has been produced in the past 30 years than in the previous 5,000.
*The total of all printed knowledge doubles every four or five years.
*One weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.
*More than 4,000 books are published around the world every day.
*The average white-collar worker uses 70 kilograms of copy paper a year—twice the amount consumed 10 years ago.

Electronic Bombardment
And what about the electronic side of our overcommunicated society?

The Decline of Differentiation

Differentiation, of course, exists, but does so on the basis of a product or service actually owning values — real or perceived, rational or emotional — and occupying a real place in the consumers’ minds — beyond the consumers just being aware of them. And the degree to which they possess these values and have meaning in the consumers’ minds (beyond primacy of product) determines whether they have differentiated themselves. But fewer and fewer products and services are able to demonstrate any degree of actual differentiation.

To prove this, Brand Keys (a New York-based loyalty and engagement research consultancy) conducted an analysis of 1,847 products and services in 75 categories via their Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. Using a combination of psychological inquiry and factor regression, and causal path analyses, the customer assessments of the products and services, predictive of how positively or negatively consumers will act toward the products, identified a continuum along which all products and services could be placed depending on their degree of differentiation. As you migrate from left to right, you go from no (or low) differentiation to extremely high differentiation.

On average, the study found that only 21% of all the products and services examined had any points of differentiation that were meaningful to the consumers. This is nearly 10% less than a benchmark study that was conducted in 2003.

One Minute Distinct, The Next Generic

I spent last weekend visiting friends in Holland and headed home on Sunday evening from Schiphol Airport. ING has heavily branded itself throughout and the connecting 'jetbridge' that links the departure terminal to the aircraft was one long ad for the firm. 'Let's talk about your future' exclaimed the ads, as I headed for the plane.

I boarded my British Airways flight and dropped gratefully into my seat. Within seconds I was offered a drink and a steaming towel. Having foregone lunch to make the plane, I delved into my bag to find the sandwich I had hurriedly purchased in the airport. It was from a Dutch company called Sanday's Bakeries and the packaging was strangely familiar. In a tight, clean typeface it proclaimed 'All handmade naturally' and continued with the confirmation that each sandwich was 'made in our own kitchen, every day, fresh'. It ended with the handwritten signature of Sanday's boss.

The use of packaging to make clear statements of intent, the emphasis on quality and the handwritten signature of the chief executive are all hallmarks of Pret A Manger. When Pret entered the snack business 20 years ago, the standard approach to packaging was mass-produced and generic - just like the food. Pret's distinctive packaging was an effective way to signal its differentiation and communicate its brand equity. What was all this doing on a very average Dutch sandwich?

The answer is as old as marketing itself. Occasionally a great marketer consults a brand's positioning and then breaks the rules of standard marketing practice. They invent a new way of doing things. In Pret's case, its resolute focus on its core brand values of quality, freshness and being handmade led it to a very different kind of packaging. But last year's brand-specific innovation is this year's industry standard. Pret's success has meant many of its radical approaches have been copied by rivals and gradually subsumed into the standard way most sandwich chains do business. Where once there was brand-based differentiation, now there is just generic parity.