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. 

Brand, Emotions and Affective Blindness

Marketers wish that their customers were blind and deaf to appeals made by competition. None of the tools in marketer’s arsenal can physically ‘switch off’ two of the most important gateways of perception. The problem is further compounded by ‘pro competition’ polices which seek to neutralize attempts of firms to monopolize the market. The challenge is not to find solution through structural alteration but work it out through consumer mind space.  This is precisely great brands seek to create. Branding in this sense is about developing ‘competition proof’ and ‘competition immune’ brands.

Consider some of the brand in identity building space like Rolex, Mont Blanc, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. The fierce fanatic like desire or pull that they create simply cannot be explained by the application of rationality. Then the essential question is what lies at their heart and what defines their soul. The emotional outburst and consequent surge of the urge suspends reason in animation making people behave in trance like manner. Otherwise how could a time keeping device or a trunk command such mind boggling prices?

The cognitive school explains consumer behavior through a hierarchy comprising of cognition leads to affect which mediate behavior. This was challenged affect based choice model which proposed that emotion affect behavior directly and is a different processing system.  Emotions can mediate preference without involving cognition (separate pathway). While the most decisions are based on cognitive processing some may be mediated by emotions unconsciously.

The affect based choice model seeks to explain the role of emotions in choice for self expressive or symbolic products. It is defined by self focus, holistic, non-verbal:

1. Emotional choices are more about self rather than what is evaluated. The user (trier) is at the center not what is used (tried). Consider trying a Chanel shade. The choice is base on the imagination of how the person appears. Emotional judgments are self involving the focus in on the person.
2. Emotional choices are marked by an ‘overall’ impression rather than analysis of individual attributes. The overall preference for a Rolex cannot be traced back to its attributes. Feelings cannot be adequately expressed and communicated. You cannot explain what you like a Rolex.
3. How are emotions communicated? Verbal language cannot capture the essence of emotions therefore non-verbal communication is used. Images are soaked in meaning and their interpretation tends be subconscious and private. Imagine emotions evoked by J&J baby.

The beauty of emotion based choice is that once it is formed it repels reason based evaluations. Emotions can overwhelm reason. One of the critical decisions in branding strategy is to decide brand’s intended perception. By emotionalizing the brand it may be possible to take a jump over cognition and achieve its insulation from the challenges that stems from consumer ‘thinking mind’.

Anna Brand: From Promise to Delivery (8)

There are top brands and then there are the also rans and then there are named commodities. The route to the top is tough and difficult. Brands are not ‘advertised products’. Advertising and other forms of communication is the essential first step in etching ‘what the brand stands for’ in prospects’ minds. It is an ‘imprinting’ process. The brand name is ‘burnt’ or ‘etched’ in mind space. Unlike a few who reach to the top, thousands of other brands just don’t. They end up confusing ‘essential’ with ‘sufficient’. Burning a brand name certainly requires establishing an invisible conduit between the brander on the one hand and the target customer on the other.

This invisible conduit (communication) conveys the brand meaning as a starting point in developing relationship. Brand Anna is very clearly and firmly etched in terms of its meaning (anti corruption). It does not mean that the brand is established. Right now only ‘name’ or ‘symbol’ is planted. Brand ‘performance’ or ‘delivery’ is yet to begin. The onus on Brand Anna is very high as a very high level of expectations (or ‘promising’) has been created. Normally cardinal principle in brand management is to always ‘under promise and over deliver’. What is next for the Brand Anna?

Consider top brands like:Toyota, Gillette, Disney, Nokia, Apple, and IBM. Clever communication alone has not created these brands to be what they are. The defining aspect of these brands is their ‘value delivery’. Hundreds of ‘commodity with name’ brands are launched only to fail because managers fail to attend to the delivery challenges. The superficial aspects take precedence over the substantive aspects. Having firmly ‘appropriated’ a concept (like Gillette razors- freedom from  dependence on barber or Toyota – provision of a ‘reliable personal transportation’) these companies invested in the creation of back end processes (manufacturing and supply chain) and ‘continuous’ improvements such that the ‘delivery’ at the ‘moment of truth’ does not fail the brand (‘brand is a promise’). The true brand never fails the customer expectations and wins customer confidence (‘brand as trust mark’).

Take a brand like Gillette to see how a razor has been improved over time by continuous improvements. Brand Anna now needs to move over from ‘awareness to delivery’ mode. It must create structures and systems that people are able to actually ‘fight corruption’. The brand must go beyond rhetoric which relies on an oath that “I shall neither take nor give bribe”. It is easier said than done. Bribe is ‘inconvenience monetized’. The system sometimes is systematically orchestrated to reduce the ‘choice’ for the hapless citizen. It is sometimes difficult to take on the system singularly. Hence this is the time for the creation of an ‘anti corruption system’ outside the system which is to be fought with.

All good brands start with a ‘narrow’ front. Toyota is still a car, Gillette is primarily a razor and Rolex is a watch.Toyota’s ‘relentlessly pursuit of perfection’ in automobile manufacturing, Gillette’s ceaseless perfection of razor and Rolex’s boundary breaking innovations in horology has made these brand a cut above the rest. Brand Anna has achieved a brilliant success at the first stage of brand building. Now is the time to invest in systems and processes which would allow hapless people to easily ‘plug and play’ into a structurally sound ‘counter system’. There can not be fair play between two unequal parties. The system of corruption is strong therefore the anti corruption must also take the form of an equally powerful ‘anti system’. Worldwide consumer movement could only become a serious ‘countervailing’ force only by moving beyond the ‘movement’ to ‘system’. In the US Ralph Nadar took head on heavy weights ofDetroit. In India Anna has done the same for corruption. In the absence of systems the brand has a risk become becoming hollow. Now is the time to give the brand a high performing ‘organization’.