In The Origin of Brands, there is an important theory that "brands become stronger and more dominant through evolution, but differentiation creates the conditions for the birth of new categories and brands". What enterprises need to do is to grasp the trend of differentiation, innovate categories, create new brands, develop categories, strengthen brands, control multiple categories with multiple brands, and finally form a brand tree of enterprises. How to do it specifically, let's see what the author says.
In 1809, a family of generations of doctors in Schlusberg, England, gave birth to a baby boy, who was sent to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine at the age of 16, and at the age of 20, was sent by his father to Cambridge University to study theology, graduating from Cambridge University at the age of 22. In December of the same year, he followed the warship "Beagle" on a round-the-world expedition and returned to Britain at the age of 27. After 23 years of research, at the age of 50, he published "On the Origin of Species Based on Natural Selection, that is, the Preservation of the Superior Races in the Struggle for Survival", and died of illness at the age of 73, and his body was buried next to Newton.
This great man is Charles Robert Darwin, author of "On the Origin of Species", Darwin has studied a large number of materials in many fields such as paleontology, biogeography, morphology, embryology and taxonomy for more than 20 years, focusing on natural selection, demonstrating the origin of species and the diversity and unity of life in nature from the aspects of variation, genetics, artificial selection, survival competition and adaptation.
"On the Origin of Species" ushered in a new era in the history of biological development, made the idea of evolution penetrate into all fields of natural science, caused a huge revolution in the entire human thought, and had a wide and far-reaching impact in the process of world history.
In 1981, Trout and Reese co-authored "Positioning", and in 2001, the American Marketing Institute selected "positioning" theory as "the most influential concept of American marketing ever". In 2009, the American "Advertising Age" magazine selected the first place in the "100 Best Business Classics of All Time".
In 2004, after 23 years of research, Al Reese, co-authored The Origin of Brands with his daughter Laura Reese, who pointed out that the laws of marketing and brand creation metaphors in Origin of Species provide the best model for brand building. Among his many books, Al Reese considers The Origin of the Brand to be his most important book.
Quoting the concept of "Origin of Species", an important theory of "The Origin of Brands" is that "brands become stronger and more dominant through evolution, but differentiation creates the conditions for the birth of new categories and new brands". Enterprises should grasp the trend of differentiation, innovate categories, create new brands, develop categories, strengthen brands, control multiple categories with multiple brands, and finally form a brand tree of enterprises.
The original title of this article is "category as cause, positioning as effect", in order to clarify the causal relationship between category and positioning, it is indispensable to brand and mind. Because the brand is the representative of the category, positioning is the manifestation of the mind, and all this is attributed to people's needs.
There will be a market if there is demand, there will be competition in the market, and there will be marketing when there is competition, all of which require enterprises to be different to improve the probability of success. Therefore, the purpose of marketing is to solve the competition, the means is to stimulate consumer demand, not to meet consumer demand, "inspire" and "satisfy" the difference in the two thinking will lead to a world of difference in the competitiveness of enterprises.
You can take a closer look at the successful brands and see how many of them are successful because they inspire consumer demand.
We buy a commodity to meet our diverse needs, material food, clothing, housing, firewood, rice, oil and salt, spiritual greed, obsession, love, and evil.
Demand is a current thought of the brain, which will guide us to produce corresponding acquisition behavior, which can be transactional behavior, stealing behavior, or inaction... And this behavioral process from stimulating needs to obtaining satisfaction is what we often call the mind.
Stephen Pinker, the greatest thinker of our time, the world's leading linguist and cognitive psychologist, made it clear in his book "Mental Exploration" that the mind is a system of several computational organs, which were naturally selected by our ancestors when solving the problem of survival, and the mind is not the brain, but what the brain does.
The mind is both a product of human evolution and a calculator for processing information. It is made up of several genetically designed modules designed to allow people to think, manipulate, and better interact with the world. And computing is the brain's processing of information to produce a series of instructions: vision, thinking, feeling, action...
In natural selection, behavior itself does not evolve, it is the mind that evolves.
For example: If you're poor right now, you have two options: rob, or do something part-time. The idea of looting does not exist only in the 21st century, it has existed since ancient times, and our ancestors robbed food and land by wood or stone tools, which was the only source of survival, and there was no such thing as moral condemnation at that time. And we in the 21st century, and the grabbing of food and territory is no longer the only source of our survival, the important thing is that this behavior will now be subject to moral condemnation and even legal sanctions.
Why do you choose part-time jobs when you know that there is no robbery and money is fast? Because the law and conscience bind your behavior. Mental activity is often a battle between desire and conscience.
The brain is used to process information, and the evolution of the mind is hidden in the value of information. The benefits of living in groups to our mental evolution are that the value of information is multiplied, and we can gain benefits by exchanging knowledge and information, which makes more and more information enter the brain, and the efficiency of mental processing information has higher requirements.
As we obtain more and more information, the efficiency of mental processing of information becomes higher and higher, many of the problems at that time are not problems at the moment, the value of information is increasing, and our minds are evolving in a more intelligent direction.
Using the knowledge in the field of computers, the mind can be regarded as an intelligent system, an intelligent system must not only fill with massive data (information), but also have the ability to classify and deduce, otherwise it cannot make judgments and behavioral feedback. This is actually a physiological process by which the mind receives information, processes information, and outputs information.
Marketing is to use the physiological mechanism of the brain to "process information" and "output information" to effectively "input information" to consumers, thereby triggering positive feedback on consumer behavior and consumer psychology.
The "consumer mind" we often talk about is that a certain thing has formed a broad unified understanding through the development of time and the interaction between people.
For example, eating walnuts can supplement the brain, at the beginning must be a small range of cognitive events, as more and more people believe in this matter, began to eat walnuts for the purpose of brain supplementation, the cognition that eating walnuts can supplement the brain has been ingrained in the minds of the vast majority of people, and even passed down from generation to generation.
It is with this broad and unified cognition that six walnuts will use the advertising slogan of "often use the brain, drink six more walnuts" to stimulate consumers' brain replenishment needs.
Two small thoughts:
- If you replace this slogan with "drinking six more walnuts can replenish the brain", what is the difference compared to the above?
- From a small range of cognitive events to more and more people believing that eating walnuts can replenish the brain, what happened to this process?
When analyzing the industry, I prefer to study the scale of the mind than the size of the market.
To clearly know whether consumers have awareness of the product/service you want to do, how large their cognitive range is currently, even if the current cognitive range is small, do not easily miss it, you have to judge whether this small range of cognition will be the commonality of human beings, so that you will have the confidence to stimulate the needs of more people to quickly expand the scale of the mind, so as to achieve business value.
Judging big business prospects from a small range of cognition requires not only vision, but also confidence and determination.
Peter Drucker said that "the purpose of the enterprise is to create customers", and the enterprise must run this purpose throughout, and it is necessary to rob the minds of consumers from the beginning, not to rob the market. The market follows the mind, it doesn't matter what the market has, the important thing is what is not satisfied in the consumer's mind, and the victory or defeat lies in the consumer's mind, which is the support of positioning theory.
The mind has categorical storage and likes simple, hard-to-remember features. Based on past experience, I have summarized three steps to building effective cognition in the mind:
- Step 1: Enter a simple, easy-to-remember, rooted and differentiated information;
- Step 2: Differentiated information must have high perceptual value expression to stimulate contact points to be remembered by the mind;
- Step 3: Appear in the mind from time to time and convey repetitive information. Read more about "What is the Mind"
The result of building effective awareness in the mind is that the name of the brand will remain in the mind, whether the consumer needs to buy it at the moment or not. The result of passing is that when consumers buy, the brand name comes to mind.
As mentioned above, the mind is an intelligent system that receives information, processes information, and feeds back information. The brand is the information nail that penetrates the mind, and the differentiated positioning makes this information nail sharper, and the focus is the swinging hammer, which concentrates the whole body at one point and fiercely nails the information in the consumer's mind.
We do only one purpose of branding, that is, to make the brand name in the minds of consumers and the category name to establish a strong correlation, because consumers are supplies to solve needs, with the brand to simplify decision-making, when this is done we will say, your brand in the minds of consumers positioning success.
When doing consulting, I often encounter many entrepreneurs who complain that their industry has categories and no brands, low market concentration, and no opportunities to build brands, which are all wrong ideas. How difficult it is to do a brand, not to mention to let your brand represent a category, what everyone can't do, does not mean that this thing will not exist, this kind of rectification of the industry, building a brand, leading the category often happens ah.
Therefore, the value of the brand is always only one, representing a category in the minds of consumers, and then there is a role of trust, recognition and premium. We use the proportion of the brand as the first choice in the consumer's mind to judge the mental share of the brand, and the mental share plus market size determine how big and strong your brand can be.
The best way to represent a category in the minds of consumers is not to follow existing competitors, but to create a new category that competitors are not doing, and then use a new brand name to represent this new category.
Creating new categories and launching new brands will only temporarily make you a leading brand, and the brand itself also needs to evolve to maintain a leading position, do not give competitors a wedding dress for new categories, and there are many existing first brands that are not the original category pioneers. Leading brands should strengthen category awareness, enlarge category scale, optimize category value, lead category development, and supervise category substitution.
Brands must not only tell consumers about the practical value of our new category, but also represent a spiritual value behind it. Spiritual value is an extension of practical value, Red Bull's energy drink, precisely because it can give people energy, will sponsor a variety of extreme sports, will have to challenge the limit, beyond the self-spiritual proposition, will make "your energy beyond your imagination" this slogan deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, consumers will believe that Red Bull can indeed replenish energy.
Practical value will make consumers remember the brand, and spiritual value will make consumers remember longer. Remember, remember for a long time, will be preferred in the mind. Think about whether falling in love is like this.
We often say that consumers are thinking about supplies, expressing with brands, causing consumers' desire to buy, promoting purchase is not the brand, but the category, consumers only say the representative brand of the category after deciding the category.
We have been emphasizing the creation of new categories, the root of creating new categories is in the consumer mind, and to find that existing but unmet need in the consumer mind, this is the opportunity for new categories.
In fact, the category is demand, one is corporate thinking, and the other is consumer thinking.
New categories can be new needs or old needs, and those so-called new needs are nothing more than better versions of old needs, because a person cannot express something that he has not seen.
A classic example is that I want a faster carriage, and I can build a faster carriage, which is nothing more than an upgrade on the existing components. But when you ask consumers to describe a faster "carriage" that is completely different from a horse-drawn carriage, they can't express it.
Therefore, it is consumers who have demand, and it is enterprises that create categories, two different thinking, but a system is needed to connect, that is, the brand system.
Borrowing the double helix structure of DNA in biology, I call the relationship between these three the double helix mechanism of marketing thinking, corporate thinking and consumer thinking are the two main chains of the double helix structure, and the brand system is the hydrogen bond connecting the two main chains.
This is also why no matter how entrepreneurs learn to do branding, how to think from the consumer's point of view when expressing marketing, will not make a successful brand 100% of the fundamental reason, because marketing is two sets of thinking, our brain will never think differently, people are almost impossible to suppress their subjective thinking, cognition is biased, and those so-called target groups are XX age, XX people in XX tier cities are even more ridiculous, a twin will not have exactly the same consumer cognition, Not to mention the so-called target population.
In nature, changes in the environment create the conditions for species to differentiate and evolve. In business, technological and cultural changes create the conditions for category differentiation and evolution.
The category will not remain static, because the scale of demand for the category will expand, as long as the size of the crowd expands, there will be more people with the demand for category upgrades, there will be more commercial value, there will be more competitors pouring into the track, if the products produced by your company have not changed, it will be eliminated by the competitors of the later change-seekers, and the survival of the fittest is not also a view in the theory of evolution.
In most cases, the old category will not be eliminated quickly, will be new and old categories coexist, due to the increase in the number of incoming enterprises, technological innovation will inevitably bring cultural innovation, the pace of life of consumers will be faster and faster, contact with more and more information, requirements will be higher and higher, when the new category in efficiency, price and experience in all aspects of crushing the old category, the old category will be quickly eliminated, we can also use the elimination rate of the old category to measure the development speed of the world.
There are two new categories in the new category, one is the updated new, the other is the innovative new, and the first two stages are one after the other. The upgrade of zero devices is the carriage of renewal, and the car is the carriage of innovation.
When you innovate a new category, be sure to choose two names, one is the category name and the other is the brand name. A good category name is a necessary condition for the expansion of the scale of the new category, since the category is derived from the mental needs of consumers, it must be an easy-to-understand name, so that it will be easy for consumers to remember, easy to say to the salesperson.
The brand name should be unique, simple and smooth, preferably with cultural meaning, but also easy to remember and easy to export. The category name is shared by the industry, and the brand name is unique to the enterprise.
When innovative categories are accepted and purchased by more and more consumers, competitors will also flock to the game, and category updates are needed to maintain the leading position in the industry, innovation gives birth to new categories, and updates to enhance the competitiveness of new categories.
In different development periods of categories, consumers and markets will have different performances:
- In the early stage of the launch of new categories, competitors are waiting for consumers to accept feedback and wait for the opportunity to enter the market;
- In the growth period of new categories, the scale of consumers' cognition is growing faster and faster, leaving competitors to enter the mental gap is the most in this period, enterprises must also judge the trend of industry development, and determine that there may be a large-scale, high-growth mental blank to occupy in the future;
- During the outbreak of new categories, leading brands doubled and the scale of brands expanded rapidly, and later competitors could only win by price if they had no competitive advantage in the mental space;
- During the stable period of new categories, the competition pattern has been determined, the growth of user scale is weak, and the head brands compete for the existing market;
- During the decline period of old categories, new categories appear, consumers slowly replace between new and old categories, and enterprises should look for a second growth curve, innovate categories, and keep enterprises.
At this time, there will be a common brand name extension problem, the second growth curve of the enterprise, should the new category use the old brand name?
In fact, the question is very simple, let's recall what the brand name is for?
Representative categories occupy the minds of consumers, so to solve this matter, we need to look at the two problems of crowd and cognition:
- First, are new and old categories a target group? If it is not a group of people, then it does not matter which brand name is used, anyway, everyone does not recognize, the old brand name of the enterprise is the new brand name in the minds of consumers; If your old brand name is known to both men and women, old and young, then look at the second step.
- Second, investigate what consumers' perception of the old brand is, and if the perception is no different from your new category, then use the old brand name, and vice versa.
With the continuous upgrading of the category, the continuous change of the market, the positioning must also change, the role of positioning is to find the breakthrough point with the greatest development potential and the highest cognitive acceptance for the category.
Regarding positioning, the Internet has been said to be rotten, but it does not mean that everyone will use it and can use it correctly. Why is positioning a fruit? Because the greatness and success of positioning is not to occupy a position in the minds of consumers, but positioning is called the word "positioning", which is also the most common sentence I say to many entrepreneurs about positioning.
To sum up, the core sentence of this article is "brand is the representative of the category, positioning is the manifestation of the mind, and all this is attributed to people's needs".
Category is the cause, positioning is the effect.
Mind is the way, brand is the technique.
This article was originally published by @Zhonghainuo on Everyone is a product manager, and reprinting without permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash and is based on the CC0 license.
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