When All You Needed Was a Quality Product
I recently came across an older article from the Atlantic entitled How Brands Were Born: A Brief History of Modern Marketing. The author Marc De Swaan Arons sets out to break down the history of modern marketing as we know it. It begins by citing the Mad Men era of the 1960’s and the explosion of brands. Prior to that time a good business was able to focus on producing a quality product that was better than the competition and that was enough. Customers were often able to distinguish a good product from a not-so good product.
Fast forward to today and we have more products than ever thought possible, and the distinguishing factor is not quality. De Swaan Arons writes, “we live in a golden age for quality products.” He uses cars as an example, and how you don’t find cars that consistently break down or products that are faulty. The quality of products that we buy are now chosen by different metrics. The brands that have lasted the test of time, since the early days comes down to branding and marketing.
De Swaan Arons writes that modern branding and marketing “grew out of the standardization of quality products for consumers in the middle of the 20th century, which required companies to find a new way to differentiate themselves from their competitors.” The position of brand manager became responsible for creating a clear identity for the brand that differentiated them from their similar competitors.
To better appeal to the target consumer, brands created a “branded proposition” which was functional but also emotional. De Swaan Arons writes, “Over time, the emotional value would create a buffer against functional parity.” Companies began focusing on ways to create greater perceived value than their customers, allowing them to charge a little more.
The article goes on to discuss the importance of the big brands such as Tide, Kraft and Lipton in marketing activities. In the 1950’s and 60’s these big brands began succeeding by understanding the consumer more than their competitor and by getting the logo, pricing, advertising, packaging and promotions correct. Thus creating a well thought out articulate brand.
But creating a well thought out brand is more challenging than you expect. De Swaan Arons writes how in an interview with Jim Stengel, formerly of Procter & Gamble, who is considered one of the inventors of brand management stated, “while many of P&G’s products were very highly regarded for their functional qualities, some of our competitors had a stronger emotional bond with consumers’ hearts. There was a lot of trust in our products, but there wasn’t a lot of love.” It is this love that brands seek to achieve because knowing the facts about a product is one thing, but feeling emotion for a product is key.
When Marketing Department Meant Party Planning
The article goes on to explain how in the 80’s most retailers didn’t have a legitimate marketing department. The marketing departments that did exist back then did little more than party planning for store openings. In the early 90’s this began changing among retailers. Retailers began realizing that by selling better branded products they could in turn increase their brand profile and reputation.
But no retailers have succeeded more with modern marketing than in the U.K. according to De Swaan Arons. The large UK retailers such as Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury began recruiting marketers from the large suppliers like Procter & Gamble and Unilever. By hiring marketing experts from large brands, they were able to increase their own label brands value tremendously. De Swaan Arons writes, “The profit margins of these UK supermarkets chains is over double that of the rest of the world’s supermarkets.” The U.S. has a lot of catching up to do in comparison of their retailers, but companies like Wal-Mart are trying to slowly build their private label product lines.
In the past 30 years a lot has changed in terms of modern marketing. Now companies face a greater challenge than creating a great product, and from their getting their branding and messaging strong in hopes of connecting on an emotional level with their customer. This connection is key for distinguishing between the competition. But how can you create this emotional bond? By getting to know your customer through qualitative research studies in an attempt to truly understand them. In this way you can start creating a dialogue with them to better understand how your brand and products are being perceived and then you can start refining your message and image so as to create a better connection. We believe that our MROC software is the key to this understanding and dialogue with your customer. If you would like to find out more about how our software can help you, please contact us.