Contrarian Branding: Stand Out by Camouflaging the Competition - Softcover

Van Der Vorst, Roland

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9063694636 ISBN 13: 9789063694630

Publisher: BIS Publishers, 2017

Synopsis

The world is busier than ever. One of the major challenges for brands is how to stand out from the competition: brands competing for market share, new brands that are being introduced, and indeed politicians fighting for attention in a crowded arena. The answer is certainly not to create more and more messages. Instead, brand managers should be able to craft ‘polar’ brand associations. This book shows how brands catch the eye by creating polarity. This goes further than just being different. It’s a sophisticated technique to set brands apart from all other competitors in a radical way. This can be done by creating brand associations that radically split a competitive field into absolute opposites or are able to reconcile these in unexpected ways. Lightheartedly and with a wealth of examples, the book describes unique ways of guaranteeing that brands create a break through. Contrarian Branding is a must for brands eager to stand out from the crowd.

About this title

About the Author

Prof. dr. van der Vorst is Managing Director of FreedomLab and Professor of Strategic Design for Brand Development at TU Delft, The Netherlands. Roland has always worked at the crossroads of strategic and creative thinking and is considered a thought leader in the field of strategic brand management. Roland has been a chairman of BBDO Netherlands, launched his own agency (THEY) and has been an entrepreneur in Singapore.

From the Back Cover

The world is busier than ever. One of the major challenges for brands is how to stand out of the competition: brands competing for market share, new brands that are being introduced, and indeed politicians fighting for attention in a crowded arena. What to make of all the brand content being thrust through the digital channels every day by those in search of a willing audience?
In the ocean of competing supply, it's easier to drown than to float to the surface. While warehouses and supermarket shelves overflow, inboxes and servers fill up and everyone has more and more choice, the question arises: What does it take for a brand to stand out? How do brands consistently get themselves noticed in a world that has more and more to offer?
The answer is certainly not to create more and more messages. Instead, brand managers should be able to craft 'polar' brand associations. In this book, professor, top strategist and entrepreneur Roland van der Vorst shows how brands catch the eye by creating polarity. This goes further than just being different. It's a sophisticated technique to set brands apart from all other competitors in a radical way. This can be done by creating brand associations that radically split a competitive field into absolute opposites or are able to reconcile these in unexpected ways. Lightheartedly and with a wealth of examples, he describes unique ways of guaranteeing brands to create a break through. Contrarian Branding is a must for brands eager to stand out from the crowd.

Prof. dr. van der Vorst is Managing Director of FreedomLab and Professor of Strategic Design for Brand Development at TU Delft. Roland has always worked at the crossroads of strategic and creative thinking and is considered a thought leader in the field of strategic brand management. Roland has been a chairman of BBDO Netherlands, launched his own agency (THEY) and has been an entrepreneur in Singapore.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Contrarian Branding

Stand Out By Camouflaging The Competition

By Roland van der Vorst

BIS Publishers

Copyright © 2017 Roland van der Vorst and BIS Publishers
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-90-6369-463-0

Contents

INTRODUCTION, 
1 EXTERNAL PRESSURE ON THE BRAND, 
2 INTERNAL PRESSURE ON THE BRAND, 
3 CONTRARIAN BRANDING, 
4 ABSOLUTE POLARITY, 
5 BIPOLARITY, 
6 TRIPOLARITY, 
7 A BARREL FULL OF CONTRADICTIONS, 
LIST OF BRANDS, 

CHAPTER 1

EXTERNAL PRESSURE ON THE BRAND

Let's first take a look at the question of how a brand disappears so easily as markets become more crowded. And what this means for your chances of being picked out.

THE PRESSURE

Together, we're producing increasingly more products, with the variety also continuing to grow. Because, for one, few want to go through life as wallflower.

Many people like to validate their identity with a unique purchase. They want a car that's just that little bit different to the neighbour's, a unique case for their mobile phone, and if possible, a kitchen that says something about who they are. If everyone keeps expressing their personality with products, then this automatically leads to more variety. Businesses are also increasingly better at responding to these demands. They have the technology to allow them to supply tailored goods at an increasingly cheaper price.

Another reason why there are increasingly more products, is digitalisation. In the digital domain, it's pretty easy to make more for less money. Take financial services for example, or subscriptions to telephone companies and energy suppliers. A new pricing structure for your smartphone can be created in a flash and can be introduced to the market relatively quickly. No need to chop down trees or buy in steel. The building blocks of such a product are ones and zeros. They're almost unlimited in availability.

Once you have a good working network and payment system, coming up with a new subscription form every month is easy. And for such a telephone subscription, there's no need to rent an expensive stock warehouse. It only takes up space on the server or within the administrative process. There's also no need for a lorry to make deliveries to the stores, because it can be sold online.

For these kinds of subscriptions, but also for financial products such as an insurance policy or current account, there are few limitations to repeatedly introducing something new to the market. It's no coincidence that banks or telephone companies have dozens, or even hundreds of products on offer.

This rings even more true for brands whose origin is digital. A brand such as the Chinese Wechat has, in a short time, been able to develop from a chat service into a service you can use to order a taxi, get food delivered, play casual games, buy a plane ticket, reserve a cinema ticket, make an appointment at the doctors, send money to your friends, keep track of your fitness targets, pay the water bill, find geo-targeted coupons, follow the news, find friends and help recognise music. This fast expansion of the product range is possible because we're dealing with digital services. They are logical, because at the heart of this service is a chatbot, ready to solve everything for you. In the slipstream of this, it seems only natural to offer all kinds of new services. Platforms such as Amazon, Google, Uber, Airbnb and other social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Linked-in and Snapchat can also expand the services they offer relatively easily. Not only because a lot of the new services are digital, but also because they have an enormous customer base which allows them to offer new products and services at low acquisition costs.

Wherever digital technology is given a prominent role in product development, the additional costs of producing new products quickly reduce. Once the investment in equipment and people has taken place, it doesn't cost much more to make an additional version. This is a blessing for every product developer. Not hampered by analogue stock costs or growth expectations, he's able to unleash his creativity. Just like a child making castles in the sandpit. There's enough sand, so the more different castles you can make, the better. It doesn't matter if not all the castles are taken, they don't take up much room and if they don't meet expectations: knock them down and just make them again. The sandpit is big enough. The result of all this is that the digital shelves are heaving, and the inboxes, smartphones and cloud servers are filling up.

And we haven't even broached the biggest cause of the new flood of products, namely yourself. Digital technology has made a potential producer of everyone. Anyone with a bit of common sense can make his own fizzy drink, open a second-hand clothes shop or start his own radio station. And that's not to mention all the self-made photos, music, films, games, applications, blogs or apps that we all put out there to the rest of the world on a daily basis. If you're really smart, you can earn money from them too. This is a stimulus for many to continue producing. Resulting in a spectacular increase in the self-made products on offer as well. And it keeps growing. The sum of all these small private initiatives totals an enormous number that just keeps on growing. By no means are all of these initiatives successful. Most do-it- yourselfers have to be satisfied with a small group of followers. In the physical world, these initiatives would have disappeared from the shops a long time ago. But online, they remain available for longer. Someone, somewhere online is interested. And thus, even the most insignificant products remain available. Like scrap metal floating through the digital universe.

It's easy to make something, and even easier to copy something. A new product can be copied in a blink of an eye. Particularly digital products, that are all made with the same abundance of ones and zeros. Hence making it more difficult in the long-term to distinguish yourself in terms of technical qualities.

And so, the importance of brands increases. Because if everyone can more or less make the same content, it's all about how you package it. It's no coincidence that the product range of brands with a digital origin are expanding: the brand is used to give meaning to new services.

You'd think that the influx of new brands is unique to the technology sector. But nothing is further from the truth. There's almost no market where new technology, in combination with the willing investment dollar, doesn't lead to an influx of new brands. Look for example at the fast-moving category in which a concern such as Proctor & Gamble are being besieged by not only more traditional competitors, but start-ups too.

This wealth of products on offer doesn't necessarily have to be a problem for the general public. There are scientists that claim that our brains adapt and can now better deal with multiple signals. There are also digital filters that help reduce what's on offer to clear proportions. But for everyone who has something to offer, and so is dependent on demand, these large amounts can be troublesome.

THE FADE-AWAY DYNAMIC

A fuller market can be a problem for brands. Simple probability calculations show us that with the growth of the number of alternatives, the chance to be picked up on shrinks. There are more alternatives for the same space. Psychological studies confirm this: we find it more difficult to make a choice when faced with an increased number of alternatives. A famous experiment investigated how people react to a shelf of twenty-four different types of jam and a shelf of six kinds of jam. Guess what? The shelf with twenty-four kinds of jam attracted more people who wanted to taste jam than the shelf with six types. But in fact, the chance that people actually bought a jar of jam, was much higher in the set-up where people could only choose from six types. We are apparently less likely to choose if faced with more choice.

But there is another reason why abundance reduces the chance of a brand being chosen: in a large crowd, it's difficult to identify something. Think about an over-full supermarket shelf, where the logo of an article easily gets lost against the logos of all the other products on the shelf. Or the noise of the city in which it's difficult to hear something else. The increase in the number of noises makes individual tones harder to identify. They quickly fade away into a wall of sound.

Our eyes and ears seem only be able to deal with more impulses by allowing these to resemble each other. The more differences there are, the more the differences seem to disappear. And the more difficult it becomes to pick something out. But what is true for a logo and city noise is also true for the special characteristics of a brand. In an environment where everyone is shouting about how good they are, these specific positive points can also easily be engulfed. Whilst it's precisely these special characteristics that play such a major role in influencing choices. We choose a politician because, for example, he stands for something or evokes association with a strong leader. Just as when we buy a particular jam because we think it's cheap, tastes good or is perhaps sustainable. The influence of these particular characteristics on our choice behaviour is significant, even though it doesn't always happen consciously. We say that we have voted for a politician because he comes across as being strong, but on closer inspection it's because, for example, we simply like him. Or listen to how people justify the purchase of their new car. Somebody says (and thinks) that he wants the car because it's a good, reliable drive, but on questioning it comes to light that above all, he wants to impress his friends with his new purchase.

Although their influence is often subconscious, positive qualities are important if you want people to choose your brand. They increase the chance of people being interested enough to enter the voting booth with positive intentions, stand in front of the shelf full of jam, walk into the showroom or run to the store. A cheerful shop assistant or dominant neighbour can always get in the way and change their mind, but these positive qualities have for the time being put these people on the right track.

The collection of associations in people's minds (that can take the form of particular characteristics, properties, or sometimes even entire stories or life philosophies) is what we call a brand. Brands increase the chance that a product or company is chosen because they can activate the appropriate particular associations in the brain of the buyer at the appropriate moment.

Take a look at the difference between the photos on the next page. The logos on the front of the different cars conjure up a completely different field of associations. With the BMW you think of enjoyment, spottiness and German luxury and with Alfa Romeo of Italian temperament. A logo is the gateway to these associations.

It's important for a brand to own characteristics that in one way or another rise above those of the competitors. But now that the range on offer keeps growing, there are also increasingly more parties all wanting to emphasis their own strong points. The supermarket is full of brands all claiming to be better, tastier, more sustainable and cheaper. And that's not to mention all the politicians that consider themselves more stable, more effective or more down to earth than the competitor. We're bombarded with these qualities. And just like a logo or tone fades away against a wall of colour or sound, so they can easily fade away against a backdrop of competitive features fighting for our attention. Meaning that they cannot do their work, which is helping you to get chosen.

To discover how these characteristics can float to the surface, we must first find out how they are engulfed under the influence of extreme competition. There are three possible causes: the brand's characteristics can dilute, fade or fragment.

DILUTION

The most obvious way in which characteristics can fade away is when they are overtaken by others. An example from a personal perspective: you think you're unique by going trekking through the Amazon, when suddenly everyone puts on their hiking boots and heads to the Amazon. You start yoga, everyone starts yoga. You fade away, because you're no longer unique. The wallflower nobody wants to see.

Take Volkswagen. This brand has long been known as the reliable car in its class. Even without the diesel scandal, this once characteristic aspect of Volkswagen has been under fire for a while. The brand is surrounded in Europe by brands that are now seen as reliable too, such as Toyota, Subaru, Peugeot, Citroen and Opel. Reliability has become a generic feature in the car industry; something shared by nearly everyone.

Now it's never great when someone else gets their hands on your successful characteristics. But it really becomes a problem when they also add their own specific features. Subaru, for example, is seen as reliable and cheap. Toyota is reliable and environmentally friendly. When everyone is reliable, that feature no longer stands out. It dilutes: it loses strength because it is being watered down with too many of the same features. But if everyone then also combines reliability with another specific characteristic that you don't have, then the characteristic slowly fades out of view.

Specific features stand out more and push the generic characteristics into the background. The latter can easily become a canvas against which the first can contrast themselves. If Subaru, just like its first competitors, is seen as a reliable car, then it is its affordable qualities that catch the eye. When Toyota is seen as being just as reliable as all the other cars in its class, then it can make a good impression with its environmentally friendly qualities.

The reliable character of Subaru and Toyota has then only become one condition. You can compare it to paintings that all have the same frame. The frame is generic and ensures that the image (the specific feature) is highlighted.

As in the illustration above. In the illustration on the left we see brands that all have their own individual feature (colour) but also share a feature (half-white). That shared feature will eventually become a white background offering contrast to the individual features.

FADING

Where a positive feature dilutes by being shared with its environment (becoming generic), it fades due to lack of contrast with the same environment. Again, an example from a personal situation: imagine excelling head and shoulders above all of your colleagues because you're the best in your field, only for everyone around you to suddenly get better. The contrast with your colleagues becomes less. They creep up on you. Your own qualities fade against the background of your colleagues that keep improving.

Features can fade when classified on a sliding scale, such as good versus bad. It's a very natural thing to do. It's a recognised strategy of our brains to classify things around us in that way. If we look out across wooded mountain tops for example, we can classify the trees based on their colour nuances, from light green to dark green. If we are talking to friends about our favourite films, we immediately rate all the films that we've seen from good to bad.

It's also really normal to compare what's on offer with each other, using such a sliding scale. Such as price versus quality: the one product is just that bit better and more expensive than the other. Popular examples in service provision are the size of an organisation, the quality of contact with the customer or how extensive the services available are. With products in the supermarket, it can be about the content of ingredients considered to be unhealthy, such as sugars, fats, salt or alcohol. The result is: products that trump each other on containing just a little more or a little less of those damaging ingredients. A popular way of defining technology is the degree of power, such as the amount of horsepower, terabytes or kilowatts. In politics, the sliding scale was a favourite for a long time: the one party is viewed as more right or more left, more progressive or more conservative than the others.

FADING

Once a company has been successful in a particular field, it never takes long before others also enter that terrain, but doing it just that little bit better. As competition increases in this way, the differences between providers on this same scale are getting smaller. At the ends of the spectrum, the contrast is, after all, greatest: high quality versus low quality, high user-friendliness versus low user-friendliness, heavy engine versus light engine, very healthy versus very unhealthy, extreme right versus extreme left. There are only two of these extreme, clearly exaggerated positions available. The rest have to get into a position more or less in the middle. And it automatically becomes more crowded as the number grows. The characteristics then grow towards each other. Become nuances. What remains is a field of grey tones: all providers that are just that little bit better, smarter, better looking, more expensive, cheaper, more powerful or more human. It is interesting that marketing and advertising always try to convince us of the fact that products are better, smarter or cheaper. But by doing this, they're actually shooting themselves in the foot: as everyone starts claiming more and more in the superlative, the underlying contrast becomes less and less.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Contrarian Branding by Roland van der Vorst. Copyright © 2017 Roland van der Vorst and BIS Publishers. Excerpted by permission of BIS Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: BIS Publishers
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9063694636
• ISBN 13: 9789063694630
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192