Discovering Differentiation

In a 1997 Harvard Business Review article titled ‘Discovering new points of differentiation’, Ian C. MacMillan and Rita Gunther McGrath argue that if companies examine customers’ entire experience with a product or service – the consumption chain – they can uncover opportunities to position their offerings in ways that neither they nor their competitors thought possible. They list a set of 11 questions to help identify new, consumer-based points of differentiation.

I took their list of questions and figured out brands that have used their framework effectively. The result is here for you to see. Figure out how can you differentiate your brand asking these simple questions.

1. How do people become aware of their need for your product and service?
Very often the consumer doesn’t know if she needs the product. We never needed a vacuum cleaner, for instance. The hell, even after buying it we never use it. When was the last time someone in your house used it? But we still bought it, didn’t we? Coz the Eureka Forbes guy came home demonstrated the product and brainwashed our wife or mother or sister into buying the damn thing. Now you know why most Indian homes still don’t have a microwave oven. The damn microwave guys never explained why we should ever buy one.

2. How do consumers make their final selection?
Case in point is Preethi mixie. The housewife typically enquires her friends and relatives when buying a mixie, a fact Preethi mixie used smartly in their advertising. Recall the ad. A collage of shots of different women, each one talking about the virtues of Preethi mixie and ending their quote with the words, ‘Buy a Preethi. I guarantee’! No wonder Preethi mixie is a bestseller today.

3. How do consumers order and purchase your product or service?
Look at what telephone & net booking of tickets, along with home delivery, have done to Sathyam cinemas. One thing movie goers hate is to go all the way to the theatre to find the tickets full. This, apart from other reasons, curtailed movie-going habit and many cinema theatres have been closing down. Not Sathyam that is growing stronger than ever. They tackled the root of the problem, and bingo, it is one of Madras’s most sought after theatre complexes today.

4. What happens when your product or service is delivered?
Have you heard of a video rental brand in the U.S called Netflix? They screwed Blockbuster and Co and revolutionized the way movies were rented in the U.S. Visit their site and amaze yourself with their unique delivery model.

5. How is your product or service paid for?
Most new home buyers depend on a home loan to buy their dream property. Hygrevar Home & Hearth, a leading Madras-based real estate brand realizes this and they not only sell their property but also help their customers get a home loan and help them complete all loan related formalities as well. No wonder, this helps differentiate Hygrevar from thousands of other real estate brands around!

6. How is your product stored?
Realizing the small space in bathrooms and the consequent small cabinets to hold toothpastes, Close up tooth gel redesigned its pack to make it stand up on its lid, thus making it easy for the consumer to store it. Smart, wouldn’t you agree.

7. How is your product moved around?
Imagine if a cooking gas brand gave free trolleys to the housewife to help her place gas cylinders on it and also move it around easily. The consumer might choose such a brand over others since she could lift it and move it around easily, without having to depend on others to help her.

8. What is the consumer really using your product for?
Arm & Hammer found that their baking soda made a great refrigerator deodorant and hence repositioned it and marketed it that way…successfully too.

9. What do consumers need help with, when they use your product?
You are working on a word document or a PowerPoint presentation and you have a doubt. It’s late in the night and you can’t call your friend. Wouldn’t you be grateful if Windows had a phone-in-help-centre - someone sitting 24x7 to answer your questions, clarify your doubts and suggest ideas? What can you offer for your product or service?

10. What about returns or exchanges?
Readers’ Digest uses this extensively and effectively. ‘Get a one-year subscription along with the free gift, read the magazine and if you don’t like it your money is refunded. While you get to keep the gift still’!

(It’s a pity this facility is not extended to matrimony!)

11. What happens when your product is disposed of or no longer used?
Apparel manufacturers use this to help consumers dispose their old dresses and by doing so inducing them into walking into their store to buy new ones. Recall their offer ads: ‘Gift your old pair of jeans and get Rs.250 off on our new one. Your old jean would be donated to XXX charity.’

A few good rules to keep your client happy

Rummaging old stuff does have its benefits. You could unearth hidden gems that have escaped your memory. I just did and found this - a document one of my ex-bosses passed on to me when I had first moved into the Advertising world. It was titled ’50 rules to keep client happy’.

Fifty wouldn’t fit in this blog and hence I condensed them into a manageable lot. The rules are applicable to anybody who serves a client. Not necessarily to account management of an ad agency.

One cursory look at this and you are going to describe them as old-fashioned, not so new, yeah-I-know-them stuff. But put your hand to your heart, or whatever is left of it, and tell yourself how many of this you practice.

That’s the point!

Product Knowledge
Crawl all over the customer’s products and/or services. Know them at least as well as your client contact does and you’ll be much more adept at counseling him or her when problems and opportunities arise.

Keep Clients Informed About Competitors
Keep alert for news of client competitors’ new hirings, new price structures, new products, new R&D projects, new acquisitions, new plants or modernization activities. When you’re privy to this kind of information, immediately send it, in writing, to the client and his or her boss as well.

Constant Contact
Even though you might be the world’s greatest, it often comes down to ‘what have you done for me lately?’ For some reason or other the out-of-sight, out-of-mind syndrome predominates the client psyche. It is therefore important that you make sure the client feels you are thinking only of him or her and their company 24 hours a day. Be sure your client gets something pertinent in the mail from you, besides your call report, at least once a week. You must let your client people feel they are constantly on your mind.

Punctuality
Never, ever be late for a meeting or date with a client. If you are sloppy in this regard, the client will sooner or later be convinced that you are sloppy in the way you are spending their money and handling his or her account. Remember, clients just don’t like to be kept waiting – your time is their money.

Call Reports
Very often people coming out of the same meeting or hanging up after a telephone conversation have totally different interpretation on what has transpired and therefore have no clear idea of who is to do what next. Putting important meeting details and discussions down on paper and distributing this information right after the session enables everyone involved to have a chance to get back to one another to rectify any misunderstandings that might have occurred.

Notebook
I don’t care how great a memory you have, you cannot hope to remember every single item in the myriad of details you have to retain in day-to-day handling. This is especially so after a substantial lapse of time. Keep a spiral-bound notebook. Date it daily and use it for keeping notes of meetings, phone calls, things that need taking care of and whatever.

New Ideas
Be a self-starter. Come up with new products ideas, new merchandising ideas, new promotion ideas, new manufacturing ideas, new tax benefit ideas, new acquisition and merger ideas, new tax shelter ideas, new cost-cutting ideas, new legal loopholes, anything you feel will benefit the client even though it might be way out of your professional purview.

Use Your Head and Your Client’s Products
Always help the hand that feeds you. If your client is a clothing store, buy and wear its clothes. If it sells toothpaste, be sure you and your family brush your teeth with that brand. It’s even smart to go a step further down the distribution chain and support your customer’s customers.

Customers and some telephone courtesy

I am not sure who reads this blog. If at all it is read by anyone. My profile views keep going up and it indicates someone, somewhere is reading all this somehow!

I wonder who reads them. Is it a he? A she? A student? A vice-president? Either way, if it is someone who is big enough to have a secretary or works in a company that is big enough to accommodate a receptionist or secretary, then what I am going to write about now might make sense. And for others, it will at least make them smile! No guarantee, though!

It’s about our secretary or receptionist or both. What’s this got to do in a marketing blog, you ask? Good question and I refuse to answer that for the simple reason I don’t know!

Oh, I can give one reason, however remote. It’s about how to treat our customers. Gotcha!

Now for the subject matter. It’s about telephone manners and a few key ones are in order. Never ever have your secretary or receptionist place a phone call and have the client hold until you pick up the phone. As marketers or advertisers, we are suppliers and, as such, we are in business to sell things to our customers or clients. As buyers, they deserve a few grams of respect. Having our secretary phone instead of personally doing it yourself gives an impression that you are more important or busier than the customer or client.

Also, let your secretary or receptionist not interrogate phone callers and put them through police-like inquisitions. “Who may I say is calling?” is a much better rejoinder than ‘Who is this?” Similarly, “You are calling in reference to?” sounds much better and saner rather than the rude “What’s it about?” Don’t expect them to know all this themselves. You have to take the trouble of telling them, teaching them and training them.

Speaking about telephone etiquette, I think you’ll like this piece from Bill Marsteller’s book, ‘Creative Management’:

This morning I called the newly appointed vice president of sales of one of the country’s largest publishing firms to invite him to lunch. I dialed the call myself, as I always do.

His secretary answered, “Mr. Shirt’s office.”

“This is Bill Marsteller. Is Mr. Shirt in?”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Bill Marsteller. It not only was; it still is.”

“How do you spell it?”

“M-A-R-S-T-E-L-L-E-R. Is Mr. Shirt in?”

“What company are you with, Mr. Marsteller?”

“Marsteller Inc. Is Mr. Shirt in?”

“Is that the advertising agency?”

“Yes. Now Miss –“

“Mr. Shirt has someone with him. May I tell him what this is about?”

“Look, Miss, just have him call me please. 752-6500.”

Time passes. The phone rings. I answer “Bill Marsteller.”

“Mr. Stuffed Shirt is calling Mr. Marsteller.”

“This is Bill Marsteller.”

“Will you hold please for Mr. Shirt?”

Time passes. I read the Wall Street Journal and finish Gone with the Wind.

Finally, “Bill? Stuffed here. What can I do for you?”

“Sorry,” I say. “I’ve forgotten why I called you. If it ever occurs to me, I’ll write a letter.”

Possibly to his president!

Bill Bernbach said...

I found an old file in my computer that had a collection of quotes credited to Bill Bernbach, one of the three who formed ‘Doyle Dane Bernbach Needham’. He is probably very old now or even very dead. Or maybe both!

Honestly I don’t know much about him. I don’t know if he, in his time or ours, was God’s gift to advertising. Nor do I know if he was an over-rated, over-blown ad guy. But I do know that some of his quotes make sense. Maybe not all, some!

I thought I could present here the ones that made some sense. If not for anything, at least to help you put them on your computer as a screensaver! A favourite way for some to show that they are advertising professionals!

Over to Bill….

“If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.”

“It’s not just what you say that stops people. It’s the way that you say it.”

“Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.”

“You can have everybody coming in on time, everybody leaving on time, all work finished on the due date, and still have a lousy ad, and fail.”

“I can put down on a page a picture of a man crying, and it’s just a picture of a man crying. Or I can put him down in such a way as to make you want to cry. The difference is artistry – the intangible thing that business distrusts.”

“It is one thing to have a selling proposition and quite another to sell it.”

“Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed…but dull?”

“We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics we forget that we can create them.”

“Be provocative. But be sure your provocativeness stems from your product. You are NOT right if in your ad you stand a man on his head JUST to get attention. You ARE right if you have him on his head to show how your product keeps things from falling out of his pockets.”

“I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.”

“A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.”

“Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.”

“Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.”

“The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.”

“Can you really judge an idea from a storyboard? How do you storyboard a smile?”

“There is practically nothing that is not capable of boring us.”

“Dullness won’t sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance.”

“Getting a product known isn’t the answer. Getting it wanted is the answer. Some of the best known product names have failed.”

“It’s not how short you make it; it’s how you make it short.”

“Logic and over analysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. It’s like love - the more you analyze it the faster is disappears.”

“A unique selling proposition is no longer enough. Without a unique selling talent it may die.”

“Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.”

“We don’t ask research to do what it was never meant to do, and that is to get an idea.”

“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of the society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.”

“More and more I have come to the conclusion that a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money."