The Gender Brand

Business, Network Marketing.

The law of positioning in advertising - advertising is a important instrument in the marketing world. One of those main factors is positioning.

Many factors should be addressed for advertising to be a successful. - poisoning solves the dangerous grime of being in the wrong place at the right time, developed to find ways of finding room for new products in highly developed markets, poisoning became a most important educative notion in the world' s developing markets. Advertising is not communication. The poisoning notion challenges an idea that is the heart and soul of the advertising community: that the primary function of advertising is to communicate. "Tell more, sell more" was the old advertising adage. Advertising is poisoning. What the best advertising does, is to establish, however and strengthen a position in the prospect' s mind. The best advertising communicates little concerning the product or service.

Marketing people used to talk about the 4 P' s: product, place, promotion, price. - and no company could begin a new brand without first writing a positioning. Now they talk about the 5 P' s, the original four plus positioning. When you study these poisoning statements, you can distinguish where marketing people have gotten off track in general. We want to locate our brand as the premier product in the category. They are written from the company' s point of view.

What' s wrong with a positioning statement like this? - it leaves the prospect out of the equation. All. A positioning statement should be made from the prospect' s point of view: There' s an open hole in the mind for a premium product in the category. Price is the easiest hole in the mind to understand and it' s one of the easiest holes to fill. The Open Hole. Haagen - Dazes decision to introduce a more expensive line of ice cream set up the" premium" ice - cream position for the brand and made Haagen - Dazs one of thestablemarketing successes of the past several decades.

It was the first brand to occupy the high - priced beer position in the mind. - what haagen - dazs did in ice cream, heineken did in beer. Then the folks at Anheuser - Busch decidedthat if Heineken was the first high - priced imported beer, then they could occupy the position as the first high - priced imported beer, a position that the Anheuser - Busch Michelob brand occupies today. Low price is another. High price is only one of the open holes in the mind. What Haagen - Dazs Heineken and Mercedes did at the high end, brands like Wal - Mart and South west Airlines have done at the low end. Stolichnaya was the first vodka to occupy the high - priced position in the mind.

Minds can change. - as time went on and the cold war heated up, americans were turned off by a russian vodka like stolichnaya. Today Absolute outsells Stolichnaya in the US by about three to one. So Absolute moved smartly into the high - priced vodka position. How many price holes are there in a typical mind? Basically there are three: the regular brand, the low priced brand and the high - priced brand. It depends on the category.

When you own three brands that occupy all three positions, you can be said to win the Triple Crown of Branding. - budweiser, the largest - selling regular beer. Anheuser - Busch, has Busch, for example, the largest - selling, low - priced beer. And Michelob, the largest - selling high - priced beer. Today, for example, Grey Goose Vodka, is growing faster than Absolut and is not far behind Stolichnaya in sales, and is sure to pass the Russian brand sometime in the future. "Country of origin" is another noticeable hole in the mind. In some categories, there is room for an" ultra high - priced" brand. Toyota was the first to fill the Japanese imported - car hole and became the leading brand.

Some consultants have called this positioning strategy, "the first - mover advantage, " nevertheless that is not so. - they did it again with lexus, which became the leading high - priced japanese automobile brand. It' s an advantage, but it' s not the reason that most leader brands got to be leader. That is, the brand that gets into the mind first is the winner, not necessarily the brand that is first in the category. It' s the" first minder" advantage. For instance, Duryea was the first automobile on the road, nevertheless never got into the mind.

The New Category. - ford was the first automobile in the mind. Sometimes there are no open holes in the prospect' s mind and you have to create one. Developed in the 1960s by a team of doctors to add the Gators football team at the University of Florida the band now does over$ 2 billion in worldwide sales. We describe this positioning strategy; "create a new category you can be first in. " Gatorade, was the first, for instance sports drink. PowerBar was the first energy bar and now rule this fast growing market. PowerBar to them is just a candy bar with a different name to help purchasers allay their guilt feelings about eating a candy bar.

Some critics, think this is, of course only wordplay. - most likely there is little actual difference between a candy bar and a powerbar, but not so in the mind. purchasers consider them to be two different categories. Buyers like alternative. The Number - two Brand. At times you can build a powerful brand just by giving purchasers an variety to the leading brand. Most likely if we can produce a superior product than the leader, " goes the thinking. "we won' t necessarily overtake them, nevertheless we will wind up in the number two position. " This is the worst possible approach for a prospect live number two brand why? Nevertheless what strategy can best deliver the number - two position?

For the reason that the better product cannot win in the marketplace even if purchasers expect it to win. - because the leader in your field has already created the perception of producing the superior product. As a matter of fact, there is a strong axiom, in the minds, or belief of purchasers that" the best product or service winin the marketplace. " While everyone believes that the better product will win in the marketplace, the worst possible strategy for any company is to strive to produce a" superior product. " Why is this so? If you endeavor to claim that your product is better, the prospect thinks, "No, it can' t be better. They try to( 1) produce a better product and( 2) communicate that difference to customers and prospects. Otherwise it would be the leader. " Yet what do most companies endeavor to do? While it' s easy to do( 1) , it' s almost impossible to do( 2) .

Royal Grown thinks so and their research shows that 57% of prospects prefer the test of Royal Crown cola to coca - cola Classic. - is royal grown cola a better tasting cola than coca - cola? That' s a pretty big difference. What they need to do, you might be thinking, is to communicate that disparity. Nevertheless, the better tasting cola( Royal Grown) has only two per cent of the cola market. Well they' ve tried that and it doesn' t work. "That can' t be, " the prospect thinks. "If Royal Crown were the better - tasting cola, it would be the leader, not coke. Would 100000 tastes tests have made a difference?

There should be something wrong with the research. " Essentially, the Royal crown company hired an independent research organization to conduct 00000 taste tests comparing its product with Coca - cola. - no. Then how do you become a strong number - two brand? You believe what you want to believe and if you believe that the superior product winin the marketplace, then you think coca - cola should be the superior product because it is the leader. You become the opposite of the leader. So Pepsi - cola said, "You don' t want to drink what your parents drank, you' re the Pepsi Generation. " The Specialist.

Coca - cola is the old, established brand which means that your parents drank coca - cola. - every coffee shop in american sells coffee, but they also sell hamburgers, french fries, hot dogs, apple pie, and dozens of, doughnuts other foods and beverages. So did McDonald' s, which specialized in hamburgers. So Starbucks specialized in coffee and became a very successful brand. And Dunkin' Donuts which specialized in doughnuts. The largest air - cargo company in America was Emery Air Freight. And subway which specialized in submarine sandwiches.

What Kind of services did Emery offer? - so federal express specialized in" small packages, overnight" and became a much more successful brand than emery. Everything - large packages, overnight delivery, mall packages, inexpensive two - and three - day deliveries. Enterprise Rent - Car specialized in the" insurance replacement" business and became the largest car - rental company in America. Hanes was the largest - Selling Panty - hose brand in department stores in America, but Hanes had a challenge. The Channel Brand.

Women were not shopping at department stores often enough. - supermarkets were the rational choice. (women visit a supermarket almost twice a week. ) therefore hanes developed a 2ndbrand for supermarket distribution only. Therefore the company wanted to increaseits distribution. The" L' eggs" name was particularly good choice because it was a double entendre( legs and eggs) . L' eggs, the first supermarket panty - hose brand, became the largest - selling panty - hose brand in the country. To strengthen the name, the product was packaged in a plastic container that appeared like an egg. The Gender Brand.

Marlboro became a big brand by positioning itself as the first cigarette for men. - sometimes you can build a brand by focusing on half the market. Virginia slims became a big brand by positioning itself as the first cigarette for women. The" Bad Name" Problem. Right Card became a big brand by positioning itself as the first deodorant for men. Complicating the search for an open hole in the mind is the issue of the name.

Ralph Lifshitz was a young fashion designer in New York who wished for better thing. - you can' t put a square peg in a round hole and you can' t fill a hole in the mind with a bad, name, or inappropriate. Therefore he changed his name to Ralph Lauren and made his Polo brand into the most successful fashion brand in the world. Of course not. Could he have accomplished his goal with the name polo Ralph Lifshitz? Many Asian names will not work outside of Asia.

When the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo company started to sell its products in the US, the company alteredits name to Sony. - names like daewoo, daihatsu and matsushita are difficult to pronounce and difficult to spell outside of asia. A good move. The" One Name, Two Holes" Problem. Many Asian companies that want to build worldwide brands will have to do the same. Then there is the problem of endeavoring to use identicalname to fill two different holes.

It was a catastrophe. - xerox, the leading brand of office copier, strived to get into the mainframe computer market with the xerox name. Are there successful examples of line extension? Or they happen with weak brands with little identity in their categories. Indeed, however these usually happen in weak markets where no single brand prevails the category. That means, if your brand doesn' t stand for anything in one category, you can move it to another category where it won' t stand for anything either. Some Companies think they can change what their brands symbolize.

The" Moving - the - Hole" Problem. - so volkswagen is endeavoring to sell a$ 100, 000 automobile called the phaeton. You can deepen a hole, you can broaden a hole, but the one thing you can' t do with a hole is move it. And Mercedes - Benz is endeavoring to sell$ 20, 000 A - class Vehicles. When a brand is strongly built in the mind, if ever, it can infrequently, be moved to a new location. That' s where you can win and that' s where you can also lose.

You can' t go wrong, if you take, nevertheless your mind off your product, and your company, your brand and focus instead on the mind of the consumer.