WARC Talks: Differentiation and distinctiveness

Foreign.

Hello and welcome to the Warp podcast. My name's David Tiltman. And today we're talking about two terms that have generated a lot of discussion over the past few weeks, differentiation and distinctiveness. So what's the backstory here? Well, differentiation, and we'll define what that means in this episode has been a well worn concept in marketing for well, more than 40 years. Jack Trout even wrote a book called Differentiate or Die. But over the past decade, it has arguably fallen out of fashion with more focus on a concept called distinctiveness. And again, we're going to define what that means too. In the past few months, we've seen a few pundits making a fresh case for differentiation. In one of our sessions in Cannes, Kansar, along with the said business school in Oxford, argued that what they call perceived difference was key to driving profit and to driving what they call breakthrough growth. And then recently, Mark Ritson released a webinar called Defending Differentiation in which he tried to find a sort of middle ground between these concepts. Now, the mass ranks of LinkedIn and Twitter have been having their say, but we wanted to turn to two people who are embedded in the research to get to the bottom of it. And I'm delighted to say we have Jenny Romaniak, Research professor of Marketing and Associate Director International at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute. And we have Koen Pauls, Distinguished professor of Marketing at Northeastern University. So Jenny Koen, thank you for being with us today.

Thanks for having us.

Great to be here.

So I'm going to start with I guess a slightly top level question. We've got two words here that are quite long words that both begin with D and outside of the marketing world would be regarded as synonyms. Why is this such a big deal and how important is this to, to marketers to really, to really understand? Is it a bit of a storm in the teacup or is there something we really need to get to the bottom of here? So Kohen, I'm going to start with you.

I would say it's not a big deal at all if you have unlimited resources, right? I mean just spend all your free time and money on chasing boats. You're set. So unfortunately we live in a world of very limited resources and you have to make some start trade offs as a marketer. And so as we will define differentiation and distinctiveness as really distinct and differentiated ideas and also implying different priorities about where you should spend your attention and money as a company, I think it is important for managers to pay attention.

Jenny, I'm going to disagree because I actually think that differentiation following that strategy can be dangerous and detrimental to brand success. And so I actually think that distinctiveness, it's hard to, I have yet to see an argument that says distinctiveness is bad. And when we define it in the context of the brand, so not just standing out for standing out case, but standing out as the brand and easily recognizable of the brand. But as we talk today, I think we'll uncover some situations where differentiation is a dangerous strategy to follow. And so that means that it does matter because it dictates what you do and it dictates how you see the future and it dictates how you try to succeed at marketing. So I actually think it's really important. But I am going to take one point and this is this whole thing about differentiation versus distinctiveness really misses the point. And it's actually differentiation versus mental availability. And when we get to the definitions, we'll talk more about that because I think we're only focusing on one part of it. And differentiation as a concept is a multi pronged concept. It's not just one thing.

Great. Well, we're two minutes in and we've already got disagreements so we've, that's a good start. Okay, well let's, let's get straight into to a definition then. So we, we're talking about, let's start with differentiation. And Kohen, I'm going to start, I'm going to start with you on this. What, what in your view, having researched this and looked, looked across the literature, is a sort of usable definition of differentiation?

Well, it's basically about your product or service or your brand being perceived as relatively better on an attribute that matters to consumers. So it could be great value or convenience. As a supermarket, it could be my BMW hugging the road. So it's an attribute that matters to consumers in their buying decisions and that you are seen as relatively better.

And when Kantar talk about difference, they talk about perceived difference. And that would be the same presumably.

This is absolutely, in marketing know everything is about perception. Right. So, so as we will get to in a moment. So in, in my and other people's research, there's huge benefits to being seen as relatively better than the competition. It's not just that you get a much easier time with your distinctiveness advertising, you know, it's much easier to get people's attention for your message. If you're being seen as relatively better. You also get more investors to kind of buy your company stock. You get better employees, you get it easier to get penetration with retailers. So Differentiation has a huge benefit, but if it doesn't exist, if consumers don't perceive any difference between brands in that sense, then it's a fool's errand.

And Jenny, are you sort of happy with that definition even if you're not happy with that?

Yeah, I'm uncomfortable with this cherry picking of terms. So differentiation as it's defined and has been used for many years by many scholars has been this idea that you offer something that different from other brands that is either unique or better. Now I notice we've been throwing this unique out because we don't like it. And that's like me saying I don't like cooked vegetables. So my definition of healthy is not going to include cooked vegetables because I don't like them. I can't do that. Healthy cooked vegetables are part of a healthy diet. Just because I don't like them doesn't mean that they don't actually comprise health. So let's in there it's about two different aspects and that is that you need to be different from other brands and it has to be something that people value. Now how they value it can be because you offer it and other brands don't. That's uniqueness argument. Or you offer it better than other brands. That's the superiority argument. Now one thing we have to be really careful of is, and this is sometimes a trap people fall into is they talk, they take on the asymmetry of information as being a form of differentiation. So for example, if Khan came out to Australia, there's a whole heap of brands here in Australia that I know more about than he probably would. So I would have more information about which brands and what they offer and things like that. So I have greater information than what he does. So there's an asymmetry when we're making choice. So he might make a different choice to me because he doesn't know that this brand has this quality. That's not differentiation. And so we have to be really careful that we don't fall into that trap, that our imperfect memories, that's about mental availability. That's not about differentiation. So let's go back to the real point of the differentiation was about it's about uniqueness or superiority. Now I do love the fact that people are saying quite clearly that it's uniqueness. There is no evidence to support it. And I found that in my own research, in testing that now there's claims about superiority. I'd like to see the evidence that underpins that. And more importantly, I'd like to See how it's measured. And this is the one thing that concepts are one thing, but measurement is how we test stuff. And the uncomfortableness I have about the people proposing differentiation is that when I try to ask, how do we measure this? I get a lot of slippery answers. So, Colin, can I throw that back to you? How do you measure creation?

And this goes to kind of the evidence for differentiation, right? So I typically kind of answer three very important question for any kind of metric. First of all, is it real? I mean, is there any evidence that at least some customers see differentiation in brands? And then second, do we have any evidence it drives outcomes that we care about, such as sales or price premium and things like that? And then of course, third, very importantly, can we do something about it? I mean, a metric is only as good as our ability to do something and to reach it. So for the first one, I go back to this wonderful, wonderful article by the great Jenny Byron and the late Andrew Ehrenberg, right, 2007 in the Australasian Marketing Journal, where they really kind of contrast their wonderful methodology of asking people about which brands are different, which brands are unique. Contrast that with Junge Rubricon. And so to their credit, they already asked both questions unique and different. And so they look at the whole spectrum. I think it's the UK and Australia, Jenny, and it's really from water and sauces to electronics and cars and computers and stuff that we think are what we call higher involvement that people may think more clearly about. Maybe just as a guess, David, if you look at in each category, the number of consumers that feel that at least one of the brands is either unique or different, and I'll give you one reference for cars in the UK, it's only 19%. So only 19% say that one of the brands in cars in the UK is unique or different. Guess what the average is across the categories in this research.

Guess, guess what the percentage of was 19% in cars I'm given. The other ones are, I don't know, less differentiated than I'm going to go with 5%.

So the answer is 54%.

54 asks completely wrong.

So my way of looking at this research is that with the very kind of methodology that is very careful not to overestimate differentiation, we find that 54% of the respondents see that one of the brands in the category is either unique or different. Now, of course, one of the conclusions of this paper is like, look, differentiation is not a necessary condition to buy. You don't have to see brands as differentiated to Buy one. But I would say don't let anybody tell you that consumers don't perceive differentiations. A lot of consumers do. And by the way, these may be very influential in the category as influencers of other people.

Okay, so you're saying that the measure of differentiation is that people can actively know that the brand is unique or different. The reason we tested it was not because we believed this was a measure. It was actually because Young and Rubicum used it as part of their brand asset valuator. And it was what they used. Actually the reason I did that research was because when we got the data, we sorted out through all the what we called irrelevant attributes because they had such low response rates. And it just happened. Those were the ones in there. And I went, well, that's interesting. And then we started investigating it further. So yeah, so I'm a bit surprised by that because there's lots of other ways that have been proposed. None of them I'm particularly comfortable with. But I'm surprised that you're leaning on a measure that we've put forward.

But yeah, I mean, because I know you've done other research into differentiation as well. So in the work that you've done, do you find that this sort of metric does make a difference in some buying situations? I mean, that was the sort of.

Second, that is the second question. And I must admit I'm typically analyzing secondary data that have been gathered for me. Right. And you ask us not to get too specific a methodology, but I typically kind of try to link a metric to either business outcomes like market share and then to kind of what marketing actions can drive it. So we have this very interesting forthcoming research. This is in the Management and Business Review with Oliver Cole. And so we looked at 153 brands across all kind of different fast moving goods categories. And it's in the UK and Germany, but also in Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Indonesia. So we have more mature markets and more emerging markets. And the question that they asked is, does this brand offer something that other brands do not? And this was together with other questions in terms of does it cost more than it should and are you aware of the brand? And so forth. It's unfortunately a measure of brand awareness. Not true mental availability there, but we're like, okay, we can live with that one. And so what we looked at was two things. Do changes in differentiation drive changes in some of the other metrics? And also how big is the impact compared to brand awareness, compared to penetration and so forth at two main findings. So first of all, for Many brands, changes to differentiation do precede changes to penetration. Our data are monthly over several years and changes to penetration, perceived value, market share and customer satisfaction there. Second, the average impact across all these brands is actually pretty substantial. So if you look at customer recommendations, differentiation is the biggest driver of customer recommendations in driving penetration. It's on par with brand awareness and in terms of driving market share, it starts after brand awareness and customer satisfaction. So, so we actually see that across all these brands, brand awareness, customer satisfaction and differentiation, sorry, they're the very key drivers of the business outcome. A final finding that gets important in your last point here is that, you know, does it, does it differ for brands? Yes. So differentiation is a main driver for smaller brands and in emerging markets, whereas if you look at bigger brands in mature markets, it comes third after things like brand awareness in terms of, of driving market share.

I want to come back to that point about whether context matters in this, in this argument. So we'll come back to that in a moment. But Jenny, I'd like to talk a little bit about the case against differentiation because that's obviously one of the well known arguments that came out of how brands grow and has been put forward by the, by the Institute over the past decade. Tell us the basics of that. Why, why do you downplay differentiation as a priority for marketers?

Yeah, so, so the first thing I want to clear up is that we've never said differentiation doesn't exist, nor do we say that it's not of value, it's just very quickly copied and there's more tends to be more differentiation within a brand's portfolio than when you compare across brands. So it's often linked to innovation. And I think that we've looked at innovation in the wrong way, in that innovation as a lens is a way of taking the category forward and better addressing customer needs. It doesn't necessarily have to be for the purpose of differentiation. So sometimes people get those messed up. But the case against it is, first of all, if differentiation was the dominant thing that drove brand choice, we would see a very different empirical world than what we currently do. So all of the laws of growth, the duplication of purchase law, the double jeopardy law and the brand user profiles hardly differ law, these all wouldn't exist in a differentiated world. There's just, it would. We would see a totally different empirical patterns. So that tells us that even if differentiation helps us feel for a short time, it doesn't, it's here for a good time, not a long time, was maybe, how I would put it the other thing that. So that was the first sort of big picture. Now, I mean, I do some work in biobehavior, but my stuff is more about the stuff in people's heads. So when I sort of look at how that's structured in people's heads, again, if differentiation was that important, we would see memory structures forming quite differently. Also relevant here is, for me personally was also put a question mark on it is the work from Scott Armstrong on competitor orientation and how that actually can be quite a dangerous to profitability of firms. And so that idea of focusing on the competitor, which differentiation does, by the nature of offering something other brands do not, I think distracts from the core point, which is about offering something that customers do want. And I think sometimes those things get interplayed in that. But yeah, my questions first came from looking at the real world and going, well, yikes, the real world doesn't look like it's very differentiated. So how's that working then? I've done empirical testing that's looked at it from the perspective of Cohen's referred to the 2007 paper. I've also tested uniqueness to see whether or not because differentiation, if it exists in people's minds, would be that I think this brand has something other brands don't. We can actually measure that in memories. When you look at people's memories and what they say doesn't exist, it's very little. And we've just done a big meta analysis of category entry points to see if there's evidence of that there. We don't see it. I've looked at differentiation from this perspective of correspondence analysis charts where you plot to see how different brands are perceived and to see if that's related. And I've looked at that in relation to general levels of brand knowledge, price, premium, worth paying more for actual price paid. Found very little correlations between those. I've looked at it from the perspective of brand ownership at aggregate level. Again, so some work that's coming out soon, but it's about looking at whether or not big brands, successful brands, have to be perceived as owning an attribute in order to be successful. And the answer is no, they don't. So there's a whole heap of different pieces that have come together from what I've seen other people do as well as what I've done. Because when I couldn't find the evidence, I thought, well, I better go out and see what I can do to contribute to this. And I've yet to see anything that's convinced me either from what other people have done or what I've found that mean that I would spend a lot of time worrying about differentiation.

What we're seeing at the moment, I guess, is an argument, and Mark Ritson makes this one, this particularly forcefully, is that the influence of how brands grow has moved the industry too far away from caring about differentiation at all. Let's say, you know, we're sort of. His argument is that we've gone to the extreme the other way. Do you feel that's warranted? Do you feel that's a sort of fair sort of criticism?

Again, this goes back to this idea of, is it differentiation versus distinctiveness? It's not. It's. So differentiation has its two elements, being looking different and being of value. So being different, but of something of value. So we've split them up and said, yeah, you don't want to look exactly the same as your competitors. That's distinctiveness standing out in the environment, being looking like you. And I've yet to see anyone argue that that's a bad thing, that sort of stuff, that having being well known as your brand, being easily identified as your brand, is a thing. And so then it comes to the question of what. But what about the value? And this is based on a misplaced assumption that consumers need a solid reason to buy. The reality is we can buy based on very trivial things. Like that one was a bit closer. Oh, they put that brand on the top shelf. And I'm only 5 foot 6. I'm going for the one that's on the shelf in front of me. I just feel like something a bit different today. You know, I walked home, we went to see the Barbie movie today, and I walked back to my office and I had a choice of three sushi trains I could have had lunch at, and I had to choose one. And I chose one based on the fact that I hadn't been there for a while. So all of this idea that differentiation has to provide, the brand has to provide a reason to buy. And so therefore, I have to find something that's different, that I can say that will make people buy my brand. And that flows through to how we develop our brand positionings, how we have advertising. The persuasive model of advertising, it actually permeates social. So much of our marketing thinking that that's a danger because we're missing the really obvious, and that is that consumers have imperfect information. They make decisions very quickly, sometimes based on benign stimuli that are around us or things that we call physical availability that don't seem to come into play in this differentiation model and that we can buy different things from pure mental availability. And that's where category entry points come into it, that you can just have different category entry points, they can bring different brands to mind and you can make choices based on things that are going on in the environment and you don't need it to be different from other brands. I didn't need the sushi train I went to to be different from other sushi trains. In order for me to go, I just had to choose one because I was hungry. So, yeah, I don't think it's. The answer is no.

And that's why, if I can respond to some of those, because I love your example also how you got into the industry, right? Because I have kind of the opposite. So as a teenager I was very much, kind of not very much caring about brands based, you know, just basing what was close to me. And I actually got into marketing because I was fascinating how some other people felt brands were really important and differentiated. And I was like, why on earth would you buy more for that particular brand? So I wanted to kind of, I wanted to start with the agreement, right? I mean, I love the 3C's framework of customer, company and competition. And yes, we should always work backwards from the customer. And so, you know, in your target customer, think about what do they value, what do they have in mind? And marketing and business is winning it, not against the competition, it's winning it for the customers. And I also think it's kind of useful to distinguish differentiation and distinctiveness distinguishes is your brand looking like yourself. It's about the sea of the company. It doesn't have something directly to do with the competition. Whereas differentiation indeed says, look, you know, within the competitive set of choices, we want to be perceived as relatively better. The other thing I want to respond to, which I don't agree with, is that differentiation has to be the sustainable competitive advantage that you have without having to invest in it. So at Tuck, I linked up with Richard Alvini, a strategy professor, and in the 90s, he wrote this book about hypercompetition that he disagreed with this whole field and this endless pursuit of the sustainable competitive advantage. And we agreed because I don't see that in my research either. We agree that it's just running faster than the competition, right? So if you have an attribute that people think you're relatively better, let's say safety for Volvo in maybe the 1990s, all of your competition is constantly trying to catch up. Because if the customers value the attribute and you're mostly going after the same customers. Right? Ehrenberg Baas Institute shows you that in their data, then of course they're going to try to catch up. And so just like you have to run faster than the bear who's chasing you or running faster than the person next to you, you do have to constantly work on maintaining that perception of relatively better. So I would say yes, differentiation can exist. It's hard to kind of create and sustain. And I would also agree that it's very often linked to something besides marketing communication. So my dissertation is about long term marketing effectiveness. So a brand doing something and then getting a huge bump that is enduring in sales and that virtually never happens only with marketing communication. It's always connected to also something else in the marketing mix. Either you have a product innovation or a service innovation or you reframe price or you open the new distribution channel and make it much more convenient for people to buy. So I would say differentiation is broader. It does have to do with how you're perceived relative to the competition. But it doesn't have to be something that is unique and it doesn't have to be something that you can just put on the shelf and be guaranteed that it exists for years and years to come without you continuously having to invest in it.

So there's a couple of really interesting points I just want to. Because we're going to have to talk about distinctiveness as well. So I want to make sure we've got time to move on. But I think there's a couple of really interesting points there. One of which is this idea that differentiation is hard to maintain. And so that in itself, from a marketing point of view, if you are going to go down that route then as you say, how are you going to keep running? Are you only looking for a very short term advantage or is this something you can maintain? The second thing that I think is really interesting is that point about communications and how Jenny, your big concern was that this opens us up to a very rational approach to the customer and therefore a rational or persuasive suasion approach to communications, which I think, I think we'd all agree is, is not a good thing. And Kohen, I think your point, which I think is very interesting is that differentiation is not about, is not really a thing about communications if it exists. It's not, you know, it should not be starting and ending in communications anyway. So communications is having to do a different job. So sorry, I just wanted to try and capture some of the things that stood out there. But do any of you sort of massively disagree with those, those sort of three, three points?

I hear this language of slipping into, of that you must be better. So how do you, how do you think consumers judge if you're better? Given consumers only use a few brands and they don't pay attention, they pay less attention to advertising of brands they don't use. So how do you think you get the perception of being better? How does that build in people's brains? That I don't understand. I mean, I understand how people learn stuff, but I don't understand how people make that sort of judgment given the incomplete information that they have.

So that bring. I guess that brings us on to the sort of next question, which, what I want to explore, which is whether any of this is. Any of this is sort of contextual to. You mentioned earlier about sort of emerging markets versus established categories. But I've also heard, I guess one thing that stuck in my brain, I can't remember who said it now, was differentiation matters. When it matters. Like you're the, you're the only. You're the only. You're the only telco that has the iPhone, for example, back in the day. Now they all have them. But at the time, you know, Apple was doing exclusive things like that. So again, that comes back into, into a sort of a, A better product or service rather than a sort of, you know, a better position in someone's mind.

Differentiation because you have patents. So pharmaceutical companies are differentiated. So Viagra, when that came out, that was differentiated. They had a patent, no one could copy it officially anyway and sort of stuff. So you do get that, and you do can get it through those sorts of contractual relationships where you lock in exclusivity and things like that. Yeah. So it sorts of. Tesla, when it first started, because of its technological advantage in the cars that had, was differentiated. So there is. It's not that differentiation doesn't exist, but then when you have something like I remember seeing an ad for Colgate that said, now with oxygen.

You might need oxygen to live.

When Arby's had an ad, because I didn't go into it to see this happen, that talked about how they sliced their meats fresh. This was their counter to Subway. So they didn't just make it fresh in front of you, they actually sliced the meat in front of you that was also differentiated. Yeah, so, so we, we have so, so often we lord the successes, but we don't see all the litters of failures along the way. And sorry, I just want to Say one more thing with, with new brands because we have such a bias that it has to be differentiated to even get through the gate to launch. We don't know whether or not a brand could succeed purely on mental availability alone and not offer something different, but just do a good job of doing in the category.

You could argue liquid death is water in a can, but it's the, it's an extremely distinctive.

Actually probably argue that for pretty much any water brand.

True, true. Wrap us up on differentiation.

I love your telco example. Right. You know, I was really inspired this is back in my masters in the 90s by a practitioner article. I think it was California Management Review. But there was somebody who had been in telco in several countries in the whole world and so he noticed I was always this about 18 month window where the cell phone penetration in the country went from like below 10% to over 80%. And so he makes this big case that that's indeed the time to be really kind of on your game. Right. And they didn't have patents or anything like that. But you know, do you choose to advertise based on your high coverage, your low prices, you know, your flexibility, family plans? This is all very important. So there are indeed periods and I always say kind of, you know, for any long term advantage you need somebody to learn. So this is a time where Intelco customers are really open to learn because suddenly it becomes available the category and they will pay more attention to your message and to your differentiated advantage than in other times. So I think that when people are more open to learning, that is the time to do this. The other thing what I wanted to comment on is and how do they find out the quality? Which was a great point, Chadi. So nowadays I typically look at brands, products with online reviews. So consumers are talking to each other and it may be a small minority of people who leave like Amazon reviews and so forth. But from these review, as a consumer I learn a lot about, you know, what people like and don't like about the product. I, you know, marketers learn a lot from that one about what they, they apparently offer as value which they may not even have realized themselves because they're so focused on their intended differentiation and being different from the company competition. As Jenny said, marketers learn a lot from that consumer generated information which can inform your future marketing communication to reinforce it, it can enforce your future product development and so forth. So we now have a lot more ways to learn quality also about brands that we haven't used before and marketers have A lot more ways to kind of figure out what their customers actually value instead of what they think they value and to reinforce that message.

Yeah, but we don't do that for the vast majority of things we buy. When's the last time you did it for your toothpaste or your toilet paper or your deodorant? No, I mean, I just bought an E bike and I chose it. Well, I actually wanted a pretty color one, but I couldn't. I ended up with a quite boring one because it was sort of thing. But, yeah, I mean, that's the thing is that, yes, there's always been ways for consumer to learn, but they don't because most of the time they know brands will do what they need to do.

I'm gonna. I'm gonna move us on to distinctiveness, because otherwise this will just be a differentiation podcast. So listen, we. We've sort of described distinctiveness a couple of times already and, you know, looking like yourself. But Jenny, is there a sort of formal definition, as someone who studied this in. In a lot of depth. Depth that you use when people ask you, what is distinctiveness?

Yeah, I mean, I think we feel cautioned to use the term distinctiveness because that can often lead people to feel like it's just standing out for the sake of standing out, but it's not. It's standing out in a way that you're easily recognizable as your brand. So that's why we talk about distinctive brand assets as elements of distinctiveness, because what makes them valuable is they're known at your brand. And we've done testing on this and found that, you know, it's not the creative alone that tracks attention. It's actually the fact that it's a familiar device that people know is linked to the brand. So that's the value of distinctive assets. It's not that they are creative devices, it's that they're branding devices. And so that's important. So, yeah, it's basically anything. So distinctiveness in total is when you put all these things together to look like you. Just like we all, you know, we all know people, we all know things that have a certain style of clothing where you could go, oh, they'd wear that, they wouldn't wear that. Well, that's what, you know, distinctive is. That's an ad that looks like that brand's ads. That's a product that looks like that brand's products. You know, it's just that familiarity comes through that.

And how do you achieve that then? Because you talked about distinctive brand assets which is, is again another concept that the, the Institute is, has, has put forward and propounded and has become sort of industry parlance. Is that the main route through pushing, pushing brand assets repeatedly or are there other ways?

Yeah, they're elements of sensory. So we talk mainly about visual and audio assets, but they can also be tactile. Smell, taste as well, can be, you know, there's, you know, if you, I'm thinking Campari, you know the taste of Campari. There is a taste of Campari. You can tell when it's in something, it's cocktail out here. That's why I'm thinking of that. And so you can tap into all those other senses. But yeah, I don't know of a way to achieve distinctive brand assets without engaging the senses. And then it's about breaking it down. Now we have types of assets that fit into that, but pretty much it's anything sensory can be a distinctive brand asset. Just some have more practical use than others.

And again, you've researched this over multiple years, these things. You use the term recognition or recognizable earlier. And that's the key really here, isn't it? It's that once you've built that distinctiveness, recognizability, whatever you want to call it, over time it becomes a sort of self reinforcing thing, presumably because you're just making it easier and easier for people to spot you.

To a certain extent it's important to remember that the natural state of memory is to decay. And so you do have to keep links up. I mean, we often treat memory like it's something that's a, you know, you do it, you go home. No, it's constantly evolving, not in our favor unless we act positively towards it.

Right.

Have new people entering into a category. So at individual level, without reinforcement, it will decay. At brand level, without further building, you won't get those new people. There are, it's, it's amazing to believe, but there are people in this world that do not know just do it means Nike. Someone has to teach them this at some point in time. So, so yeah, so it's, it's a constant battle to keep them, which is why we can't have unlimited assets over time. We don't need them. But also we couldn't because we wouldn't have the resources to keep building them.

If, if I may put a remark in there because, you know, the, this is a perfect thing. David, you know, earlier you talked about, wow, differentiation seems something really tough and very expensive to do. Right. The same thing goes for distinctiveness so, you know, if I, if I use myself as an example, right. I think somebody says, you know, with all these smart, practical people in Australia and the uk, why is there no thought leader in North America? And I was like, well, well, you know, yes, you know, I would, I would love to step into that role, but think about how much better I would have to become a distinctiveness and also repeat it over time to get to a highly distinctive brand. Right. So I would say anything in world, you know, in marketing world having is worth kind of investing in. And that's, that's why this is important.

Maybe they think you're European because you don't have the accent down pat.

That may be positive.

Let's just look at a couple of examples who maybe just pick one each. Who in the market do you think think is distinctive looks like themselves?

My favorite, I think one of my favorite examples is McDonald's. I think they hit it out of the park constantly, both in pretty much everything I do. I mean, I love their World cup ads, the ones where they just. It's that beautiful mesh of. It includes the sport. But the brand is key in there. It doesn't. Like, you see so many World cup ads. We have the, the Women's World cup cup here right now. Go Matilda's. And yeah, so we've got all of their World cup advertising. And so many of them are that old tribe of footballers playing football. And then there's a brand at the end, whereas McDonald's has made it about having McDonald's as part of the game after the game, whether you win, whether you lose, no matter who you're with on your way to the game, at the game, you're eating McDonald's. And, and so, yeah, I mean, yeah, so they, I just think they have a fabulous US use and playfulness with their distinctive assets.

Kern, I completely agree. I mean, my youngest is crazy about McDonald's. And every time we see the Golden Arches, it's McDonald's time, right? So golden arches is a very nice example of something that it's not an attribute that's supposed to logically matter to consumers, but they recognize it. The other thing I would say is Nike. So Nike kind of, you know, even though, as you said, not the whole world know the just do it the same swoosh. They have been using it in very playful and really fun ways. I think over time.

Jenny, you made a comment earlier that you've never seen anyone argue that distinctiveness doesn't matter. And I just want to sense. Check that with Kohn because would you agree with that? The distinctiveness, whether or not you like differentiation? Distinctiveness is important.

I think it's so important. So just like Jenny, I was fascinated by brain research, right. So. So if you want to read anything about it, I love Bjork and Bjork. This is an article in the 90s where they basically kind of look at your long term memory as a sense of notes. So this is, for instance applied in the time that there was this rumor in the US that McDonald's used worms instead of beef in their meat. And that was really damaging in those counties in the US where it was there. And so marketers said, well, we have to contradict it. We have to say, no, we use 100% beaver and so forth. And unfortunately that just reinforces the memory link in people's head between, hey, McDonald's has issues, right? So how does memory work? So what they did in that experiment is linking it to something else, you know, to childhood memories, for instance. In another experiment, which is much harder to do practically, they linked worms to something positive. They had an associate say, oh, I just had worms yesterday in this new French restaurant and I was broken. So that's another potential, but harder to do in practice. But so memory structures, indeed. So over time they decay, especially when a competitor comes in and tries to negate it. Right. So if I have, let's see, Bayon W is great in turning or Apple has a great ease of use. Right. Another differentiated advantage example of a company, the competitor will constantly try to instead link the that to them. And so the more the competitor is kind of, you know, successful in pushing on that point, the harder you have to work by reinforcing the link in people's memories. Otherwise, you know, sooner or later you are indeed going to going to lose it.

So I'm going to sort of bring this to some sort of conclusion. I don't think we've come to a grand consensus, unfortunately. But I guess where I'm hearing that we do sort of agree is like we all agree. Distinctiveness is an important factor. Recognizing a brand as itself in a world of decaying memory structures is super important. So that's clearly something we want to invest in. I mean, this industry loves a false binary. Yeah. So we love to say it's either one thing or another. Is there a world where distinctiveness and differentiation are two things you can pursue together as sort of Ritson is trying to get the sort of best of both? Or is it a sort of. Like these things are choices and we either lean all the way into one or all the way into another and never the twain shall meet. Or is there a third option? Jenny, kick us off on that one.

Yeah, no, I don't think it's an argument between differentiation, distinctiveness. I think it's an argument between do you try to. Do you think people need a reason to buy your brand, that you're somehow better than competitors? Or is it just enough that they have salient memories of you and that you offer good stuff in the category? And I think the evidence is to the latter. Now if you genuinely have something like a patent or something that you are or a technology breakthrough, like for example, when Nespresso first launched pods in the coffee category, revolutionizer category, they had an advantage period of time. Yeah, we need that to keep the category forward. But don't go chasing the different and unique at the expense of the relevant and the useful for customers. So I don't see it as differentiation versus distinctiveness. I think it's do you want to try to be differentiated at the expense of usefulness versus building up links to the things that people, the reasons why people come into the category, the category.

Entry points con bring us home.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely no surprise that I fully agree with Jenny's first sentence, right? I mean, kind of really understand your consumer. Do they need some differentiation reason to buy a brand or not? But of course I disagree with is this dichotomy between differentiation and usefulness. Differentiation is on an attribute that is useful to consumers. I think the main question is I'm a quantitative marketer, so I like to give kind of spending advice. And so in which conditions should you spend a bit more versus one versus the other? And I think that's absolutely key. So my dream is still to go to this kind of like a thermostat, right? A closed loop system that we measure things for you and that based on the measurement we say, well, at this point in time you should spend a bit more on distinctiveness until you get over a threshold and then you should spend a bit more on differentiation. I mean, all the way back to my dissertation, I had this with mental and physical availability. I was like, well, if you're an up and coming brand in fast moving consumer goods, right, you want mental availability, you want the consumers to know you and to recognize you. You also want to have retail penetration and you have to spend your resources to get distribution. At which point should you spend more on one or the other and which should come first and in which condition? And I think it's a very similar argument with distinctiveness and differentiation. There must be certain conditions where it just pays to up the ante a bit more in one of them. And I think it would be very cool to research with great data which these conditions are and what we can give us. Very kind of, you know, timely and practical advice.

Okay, well, that was absolutely fascinating. So thank you so much, Khan. Thank you, Jenny, for a really interesting and. And I know we didn't always agree, but I think that was really useful in terms of pulling those terms apart, really trying to understand where different, different parties in the debate are coming from. And, and hopefully our listeners will have picked up some really good advice along the way. So thank you, Karen. Thank you, Jenny. That concludes this episode of the Walk Podcast. If you like what you've heard, please do follow the Walk podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. And if you really like what you heard, please do leave us a review. We'll be back next time, but until then, thanks for listening.