Mask, Positioning, Branding, Desire and Necessity

Positioning, in a limited way, is about perspective change. Brands succeed by re-orienting consumers to look at things in different manner. By doing this brands gain desirability. The key idea is to kill tendency to view a thing in generic manner. Consider a brand like Mont Blanc: is it a pen or something else? For reflection generated eye image it certainly is a pen but its interpretation in mind is not. This renders Mont Blanc a highly desirable pen not for its writing superiority but for the idea it ‘stands for’.  This is the result positioning.

Now consider the masks that people are urged to wear to protect them and prevent the spread of Covid 19. The challenge is how to make people follow the protocol. It may be necessary but for many it is not desirable. It is necessary for bikers to wear helmet for safety but do they do so voluntarily? How necessary is drinking single malt whiskey and how high do people pay for it ?

Helmet is stuck in ‘to be avoided’ product frame and Single Malt ‘to be had’ frame.

Positioning is about relativity. What category is a brand made to stand in ‘in relation to’?  Consider common salt, sodium chloride how its perceptions vary depending upon its location:

• Sodium chloride in a lab: it is a chemical compound
• Sodium chloride in pharmacy: it is medicine
• Sodium chloride in kitchen: common salt
• Sodium chloride in chef’s kitchen: taste maker
• Sodium chloride in factory: preservative

This location based generic perception commoditization and pull is entirely likely to be need or necessity based. But positioning is empowering. A product can be placed in a perceptual space different from location oriented perception. Remember Mont Blanc is a pen but in perception it is established in ‘relation to’ accessories territory used by consumers to convey their identity, ‘who they are’. This makes the brand highly desirable. It chooses to operate in higher order orbit. Similarly some people ‘cultivate’ taste (disliked taste- sacrifice) to belong to category that Single Malts operate in.

So what is challenge for increasing adherence to mask wearing protocol? Consider mask’s positioning in ‘relation to’:

• Mask in ‘relation to risk’ (doctors, industrial sites, pollution): in this scheme, masks are located in their generic territory of protective gear. It is likely to appeal to risk avoiding thinking centric (high on cognition) group of people. The appeal of mask lies in its functionality, the protection.
• Mask in ‘relation to identity and expression’ (site of fashion, life style and statement): this would require inhibiting masks from getting into generic territory and planting or placing alongside conspicuous things. The conspicuous things are typically deployed to make the invisible person visible (self expression/ symbolism) and satisfy desire for belongingness. This however would require product modification (mask designed as accessory, not looking like a typical mask) and communication context of use (fashion/ dressing up/life style/ attitude).

What do you think a Rolex is? Is it a watch? Those who perceive it as a watch are not its customers and can never be. Have you seen people wearing the Cutter and Wayfarer (Rayban) wearing indoors: out of necessity (shades to ban ultraviolet rays) or desire (to let others know who they are). Mask needs to break away from the narrow boundary of protection to becoming object of desire. 

Value, Branding, Cool, and War between Apple and Samsung

There is war out there. And the war is no longer cold, hush-hush; rather it is an explicit direct bloody combat. Apple’s strategy to expand its market by diluting affordability barrier through its attractive installment plans launched in collaboration with its trade partners has been met with almost identical campaign by Samsung for its Galaxy range. The body copy, message and creative execution appear remarkably similar to each other.

Galaxy and Apple are both aspirational brands. People want them but their high price restricts their market to top tier of the market. Price advantage is one of the measures of a brand’s command over its customers. Apple’s products including mobile devices have for long commanded huge price premiums. People use expressions like ‘cool’, ‘cult’ and ‘iconic’ to describe Apple products. There is something amorphous about Apple which makes its offers / products beyond comparison. The mystery and mystique of Apple brand has not been any short of what cult gurus have on their followers. Take for instance the connection between Osho and his followers. There is everything but reason why people follow Osho. The connection transcends logic and rationality. Like gurus, some brands manage to intersect with people on highly sacred and valued spaces to create reason defying bonds. At the heart of cult following is dedication stemming out of emotional commitment.  Apple has been of such brands besides Beetle, Saab, Vespa and Harley Davidson. These are magnets to their followers.

But recent advertisements of Apple iPhone are quite opposite to the idea of a cult brand. The appeal is purely rational and attempt is to reach out to a larger set of customers. It is reverse of magnetism, madness, spell and euphoria.  Apple through its new installment program has made its handsets within the reach of a larger set of audience. The new ads questions: ‘Why wait?’ along with a picture of iPhone 5 and mention of words ‘for Rs 16,990’. The body copy of the ad describes three attractive installment plans with a monthly outgo of as small as Rs 1376. 

The competition between Samsung and Apple is quite palpable and direct. In almost identical format, Samsung launched a counter campaign to promote their Galaxy range of smart phones. The headline goes as: ‘The incredibly creative Samsung Galaxy Note II own it for just Rs 99 per day. The message is that now a potential buyer can choose from Galaxy range (Galaxy Note 800, SIII, Note, Grand and Galaxy Camera) of instruments on easy and attractive EMI scheme (monthly outgo as little as Rs 1790).

The two things common to both Galaxy and iPhone communication are focus on price and promotion. Price and sales promotion assume importance when brands become similar. The brand parity or commonality renders customer choice slippery. Apple for long enjoyed a status of a brand as ‘beyond compare’. Customers took pride in its ownership and the experiential ‘wow’ rendered its demand inelastic and insulated from competition. But things now appear to be different for brand Apple.  Jan 17, 2013 Forbes post was headlined as ‘perception scores show Samsung, Apple at parity’. The BrandIndex data mentioned in the post says that ‘perception of the iPhone is outpacing perception of the Galaxy; those scores have been trending closer over the past few months’. The crux of the issue here is not which of the two phones is better rather iPhone has become an object of comparison with others.

Brands derive their strength from connections that they forge with customers. There are three fundamental routes to value creation: utility, symbolism, and experience.  Functional brands thrive by delivering utility though performance of certain functions (use ability). Brands in the symbolic space are valued for self-concept enhancement and social esteem (symbolic meaning). And brands can be desired for experiential aspects or hedonic pleasure (sensory gratification).  Performance centric brands compete on logic and reason and hence fail at creating ‘mindlessness’ and ‘passionate devotion’. They continue to be trapped in comparison discourse.  But brands that that jump over cognition and forge affective links through hedonism and psychological significance escape ‘thinking scrutinizing mind’. The ‘cool’ factor stemmed from Apple’s touch, feel and psychological meaning.

The current campaign focused on price and EMIs appeal to reason which is antithesis of what cool brands are all about.  

Sleepy Needs, Unsought goods and ‘Wish I had it’

On Sunday February 17, 2013 the first page of Sunday Times was a shocker. The front page of the newspaper contained the following headlines:

• ‘Short circuits spark 75% city fires’
• ‘Farmer loses Rs 15L in fire’
• ‘Woman dies in LPG blast’
• ‘Family loss both children in blaze’
• ‘Car catches fire in Lucknow’
• ‘Fire erupts on 3^rd floor of Indiranagar school’
• ‘TV sparks blaze in Andheri tower’

 The entire page was flooded with news related to fire and devastation it causes. The reporting could shock anybody out his or her slumber. And in the middle of the page, a message in red ink sounded a warning: YOU MAY BE LUCKY …But ARE YOU SAFE? Disturbing visuals like a distressed women crying, fire billowing out of a building and fire fighters dousing the fire aggravated discomfort by stirring anguish and pain over loss of human lives and property.

The newspaper ‘disturbed’ readers literally. It ‘interfered with normal arrangement’ (absence of agitation, trouble, balance, poise, equilibrium) of the way people look at fire and fire fighting equipments. The message aimed to throwing people out of their mental balance (cognitions in harmony). It disturbed the belief that we are ‘safe’. Safety is taken for granted. It created a friction in cognition & feeling. It compelled people to pay attention to the fact as to how safe they are? It questioned: is it their luck which has saved them from the fury of fire so far or they are actually safe?

This was an advertisement in the garb of actual news which used ‘shock and awe’ strategy to capture attention and sought to engage prospects into an issue which is taken for granted (low involvement). A balanced state or lack of friction makes the system closed and withdrawn (out of buying space). Throwing a potential customer out of his poise is essential to pushing him or her into decision frame or solution seeking behavior. The upsetting of mind created by the first page was followed by a big advertisement of a new product named ‘Fireguard’, a new fire extinguisher (by Eureka Forbes) with the headline: ‘It takes one call to get it. Or a life time to regret it.’ The ad signed off with a statement ‘Get it. Or regret it’.

Fire extinguisher is a low priority product because it is not perceived to be significant. This is due to the fact that people do not entertain an uncomfortable idea of fire to them to their property and take their safety for granted. Its ownership is not important psychologically or socially (higher order needs) and hence are not desired. However they assume importance when exceptions happen. When it rains we look for umbrella, when electricity goes off we look for candles/torch, when our car breaks down we wish we had bought breakdown service and when burglary happens we repent on not having taken an insurance policy. These are cases of sleepy needs and hence products that satisfy them are sought after.

Marketing is difficult to a sleepy consumer. Unlike an active customer (who is in a state of automatic arousal) a sleepy consumer is a withdrawn and closed system. People tend to be open and look out for anything that is of interest to them like interest in diamonds or sports or electronics. Marketing is easy in these situations. So what do you do to get a consumer who is in sleepy state with respect to a product that you intend to market?

Technically the Fireguard launch ad aims to shift people from their sleepy state to lively/ alert state. The message alerts its prospects by linking the product to an issue of importance (high involvement issue- devastating fire). This it raises the level of significance or importance that a customer attaches to a phenomenon. This shift is first essential step in starting an engagement with target customer. The brand is likely to succeed if brand manages to achieve importance transference. For instance Rexona deodorant once ran a campaign which showed how body odor could lead to socially embarrassing situation (rejection). Here the brand used social rejections (important issue) to gain importance in consumer’s life.

Brands win when they become important to their target consumers. But this is difficult for brands in those categories to which consumers are sleepy.