Contrarian branding by BIS Publishers

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 23

BRANDING TECHNOLOGY Some say that brands have become less important, now that we rely increasingly on technology to guide us in our decision making. What does it matter if you have a Prada or a Gucci bag, now that the digital assistant will be making all of your purchase decisions for you? How relevant is a brand if all brands can be compared transparently? Considering we can make purchasing decisions anywhere and at any time, is it not then more important to have a dominant presence as a brand at that moment? And how important is it then that people know what you stand for? On the other hand, you could say that for technology to be a success, branding is more important than ever. Marshall McLuhan taught us that we are inclined to march backwards into the future. We look at new technologies based on what we already know. Notable is the first car, that was designed and named as a horseless carriage. The horse carriage was the existing model and although the arrival of the combustion engine meant that horses were no longer needed, the carriage was the frame of reference applied to the first car. We can laugh about it, but we do exactly the same now. We talk about a self-driving car, simply because we are accustomed to driving the cars ourselves. But the future car without a steering wheel will probably resemble a travelling study or hotel room more than the vehicle that we now call a car. The same is true of the smartphone. We still call it a phone, whilst we spend most of our time on it doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with making a phone call. Yet we still perceive it as a telephone. Or what about smart glasses? They’ve got little in common with those things that once helped us to see more clearly. They’ll probably look more like a portable screen or a digital direction-indicator. This has everything to do with branding. How you name a technology colours the way we see it and treat it. In the same way, we treat a car differently if we call it a BMW or Alfa Romeo. There is a certain meaning linked to a name. Branding is about managing that meaning. Because it makes quite a big difference if we brand a car as a carriage without horse, or as an automobile (something that drives itself). Moreover, a brand can help to define what a self-driving could be. From Apple’s perspective, the car is an Ipad on wheels. If Ikea would introduce a car it would be more like a mobile home. Brands provide meaning to technology and help to guide the innovation process. Brands also help to create acceptance for technology. A good example is the introduction of the Snap Glasses, the sunglasses that allow you to record what you are seeing and send it to your friends with one press of the button. A few years earlier, Google managed with its Google Glass to give everyone the shivers, with what was then perceived as a tool to spy on people. This aspect (‘I look at you and record you’) is not an issue for the purchasers of the Snap Glass. It also seems that

people are less panicky if filmed by a Snap Glass. This is partly due to branding. Snap stands for something different than Google. Everything about Snap is light-hearted. The messages you send disappear automatically within 24 hours. You can edit the photos with the most hilarious filters and overlays. And in the same way, Snap introduced its glasses. As a colourful pair of sunglasses instead of a cool instrument. At Google, a pair of glasses is a tool. At Snap, it’s a toy. The same technology, branded in a different way. Now that technology is making more and more possible, branding is getting an important role in pinpointing what the technology actually is. Branding supports us in how we should give meaning to something we are not yet familiar with.

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 5. 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 5 https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/disrupting-procter-gamblecpg-startups/

Once a company has been successful in a particular field, it never takes long before others also enter that terrain, Unreliable Reliable but doing it just that little bit better. As competition increases in this way, the Low quality High quality differences between providers on this same scale are getting smaller. At the ends of the spectrum, the contrast is, Slow Fast after all, greatest: high quality versus low quality, high user-friendliness versus low user-friendliness, heavy engine Reliable Unreliable versus light engine, very healthy versus very unhealthy, extreme right versus extreme left. There are only two of these Low quality High quality extreme, clearly exaggerated positions available. The rest have to get into a position more or less in the middle. And it Slow Fast automatically becomes more crowded as the number grows. The characteristics then grow towards each other. BeReliable Unreliable come nuances. What remains is a field of grey tones: all providers that are just that little bit better, smarter, better looking, Low quality High quality more expensive, cheaper, more powerful or more human. It is interesting that marketing and advertising always try to Slow Fast convince us of the fact that products are better, smarter or cheaper. But by doing this, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re actually shooting themselves in the foot: as everyone starts claiming more and more in the superlative, the underlying contrast becomes less and less. This fading of brand characteristics is common. Reflected, for example, in the dynamics between a market leader and a low-cost brand. Low-cost brands stand out when they are compared to the market leader. Take the airline industry. The first cheap airlines in Europe, EasyJet and Ryanair, got noticed

FADING

quickly because they were different to the major market leaders, such as British Airways, Air France, klm or Lufthansa. But as their numbers increased, they were no longer just competing with the market leader, but also with each other in particular. And the differences between EasyJet, Ryanair, Transavia, Air Berlin or Vueling are far less significant. Their characteristics fade away easily because they are compared with each other. Just as the difference between the low-cost airlines Scoot, Jetstar, TigerAir, Citilink, Spring or Indigo is not so large as say, between Scoot and Emirates. The extent to whether people view something as a nuance or rather as an essential difference, depends in particular on the knowledge about, and interest in, a particular product. For the average layman, the difference between a Boeing 737 and a Boeing 747 is a small difference; on a sliding scale the one is slightly smaller than the other. But an aircraft expert will probably not view these same planes as nuances on a sliding scale but as two totally different aircrafts.

FRAGMENTATION

In the case of dilution and fading, characteristics disappear because they are too similar to their surroundings. To be visible then, you may want to increase the difference with your surroundings. FRAGMENTATION

THE INCLUSION OF NEW CHARACTERISTICS LEADS TO AN ABSTRACT IDENTITY

a need to introduce one overall concept. A common thread that encompasses all of the different concepts. To embrace, for example, concepts such as ‘trustworthy’, ‘human’, ‘innovative’, ‘committed’ and ‘expert’, an identity could be presented as ‘a modern bank of high quality’. A concept incorporating the category of concepts. The underlying structure of an abstract identity is based on traditional taxonomy. A taxonomy consists of higher and lower positioned categories of characteristics. The higher positioned category includes all the characteristics of the lower posi48

THE INCLUSION

‘A qualitative bank’ Enterprising Committed

Human

Reliable

tioned categories. A classic taxonomy is for example that of the ‘animal’ (higher positioned category), ‘dog’ (mid category) and ‘Labrador’ (lower category). The higher positioned category is an abstraction of the lower characteristics. An abstract self-image is a higher positioned category (‘a modern, qualitative bank’) that comes about as sum of the lower positioned concepts (a bank that is innovative, human, committed etc.). The emergence of an abstract self-image can be compared to a glass full of coloured liquid. An organisation has a specific characteristic (human, for example), symbolised by the glass full of red liquid. In response to the competition, the organisation decides to incorporate another characteristic (reliable, for example). This characteristic is green. It then includes another characteristic (commitment, say), symbolised by the colour purple. An abstract self-image emerges when these colours mix into an undefined green. All of the colours (read: characteristics) are locked up within this colour. And so, the identity of a brand becomes more abstract as the newly added characteristics mix with each other within the identity. This is illustrated in the images above on page 48 (the large circle is the development of an abstract self-image). 49

CONTRARIAN BRANDING

This is exactly what successful brands manage to achieve: they split the field of competition into two: themselves and ‘the other’. They do this by choosing a position that simply divides the mental space of consumers and customers into two. One of the most successful examples are the brands that want to free people from the existing order. Those who manage to establish themselves in a credible way as liberator, can designate the entire field of competition to the has-been, out-of-date corner. Over the years, several types of liberators have emerged. From Uber to Blockchain and from WikiLeaks to Virgin. All promising, in their own way, to offer people salvation. The liberator that we’ve heard a lot about in the last twenty years is the outsider. The most famous example is of course Steve Jobs. In his biography, the founder of Apple emerges as a cutthroat man 16. He hurled abuse at his staff and parked his car in a disabled parking place. And he definitely didn’t suffer fools gladly. Behind the endearing Apple logo lurked a man who operated ruthlessly. Jobs had a ‘binary view’ of the world: you were a hero or a jerk. There was nothing in-between. Sometimes you could be a hero in the morning and a jerk by the end of the day. Or vice versa. There’s a story about an unfortunate man who happened to take the lift in Steve’s company. He was fired on the spot when he said something that the great captain didn’t take a liking to. The divisive view of Jobs must have been extremely difficult for his immediate environment, but also contributed to his unprecedented perfectionism. Something was either ‘the best ever’ or it was crap, brilliant or ‘the worst thing he’d ever seen’. Here too, there was no room for leeway. Why something landed in the good camp or bad camp was often difficult for an outsider to understand. It was all about the smallest of details. He could 16 Isaacson, W. (2012). Steve Jobs, de biografie. Utrecht: Spectrum.

get terribly annoyed about a small seam that was visible, a screw top that didn’t screw properly, the dullness of a particular metal or a tiny adjustment in the moulding of a computer casing. Every mistake in the production process was comprehensively measured and incessantly adjusted, turned, enlarged and replaced. It all sucked until it was 100% right. Jobs was open to a broad range of ideas and had a keen eye for what was brought to him. He assessed the ideas with his ‘binary view’ (‘fantastic’ or ‘a disaster’) to subsequently improve it relentlessly, until it was perfect. His eyes worked like a laser, transforming the raw material inch by inch into a beautiful diamond. That this meant producing the necessary waste was just par for the course. Just as importantly, Jobs treated his competitors in the same way. During his entire career, he saw himself as an enlightened rebel standing up against the imperium of evil. The competitor always represented the dark-side. Depravity. It started with ibm: ‘If, for whatever reason, we make a few enormous mistakes and ibm wins, then it’s my personal foreboding that we will plunge into some kind of dark computer middle-age that will last about twenty years,’ Jobs told an interviewer. Jobs maintained this radical, hostile approach to his competitors until his death. After ibm, it was at&t, then Microsoft, Samsung, Google and Facebook. He presented himself as the outsider, liberating humanity from the ‘establishment’. He changed the way in which people looked at his competitors. He reduced the field of competitors into two groups: Apple and the big, bad competitor. Even later, when Apple’s market share had shrunk to less than five percent, he still managed to convince the public that the actual battle was between Apple and all of the other ‘Microsoft brands’. Relative differences between competitors were replaced by a large, absolute contradiction: good (liberator) and evil (establishment). In his eyes, the competitive reality was coloured, or rather: colourless. There was only space for black and white. And in this way, Jobs made Apple the bodybuilder in a canteen full of nerds. 65

example, or insiders or central authority. Thanks to the presence of a ‘counterpoint’ (what do we not want in particular?) it becomes clearer how people should behave in line with the identity. The disadvantage of a grey identity is that the boundaries it sets aren’t sharp. It doesn’t give any direction, like the financial service provider that wants to be ‘slightly enterprising’ and/or ‘slightly trustworthy’. The devil is in the suffix ‘slightly’. It’s too vague and leaves too much room for interpretation. The vagueness stems from the lack of clear contrast. Those who present themselves as extremely enterprising, distancing themselves from the old-fashioned and slow way of doing business, gain a perspective that already gives more direction. The contrasting contradictory identity of contrarian brands draws a sharper boundary between what does and does not belong to the identity behaviour, increasing the ability of an identity to steer behaviour. Finally: the disadvantage of the multiple identity. This also disappears at the moment the brand identity is based on contrarian branding. The multiple identity is characterised by the lack of a link between different identity characteristics. Contrarian

Establishment

Liberators

Self interest

Your interest

Guilty

Innocent

Restrictive

Free

Conservative

Adventurous

Hypocrite

Sincere

Vague

Clear

branding is based on a contradiction out of which other contradictory concept pairs can emerge. Instead of the identity characteristics competing with each other, they reinforce each other. In the case of the people’s liberator, this could give rise to a subsequent set of opposing concepts (see illustration on the previous page). The identity characteristics all correspond to the set of concepts in the right-hand column. These concepts are related to each other because they find their match in a common contradictory background (left-hand column). And even though there are multiple characteristics, they form a guiding whole. The accompanying contrasting background of a contrarian identity means that there is strategy: that a clear choice has been made with the objective of increasing the chance of being chosen as brand.

Finally, the question of whether contrarian branding is the only effective remedy for a growing field of competitors. It isn’t. There is another option. Rewind to our single in search of love: what he could do, is beat the competition on all fronts. He presents himself as ‘the ideal man’ (or woman, of course). A profile showcasing a perfectly balanced personality, outclassing his competition on every level. These are the brands that position themselves as the (mental) market leaders, who are less vulnerable for new entrants because they do nearly everything well. However many new parties there are, they manage to always be just that little bit better. Like Google, that in the ‘search engine’ segment still always scores better on all relevant dimensions, such as ease of use and speed. Or Amazon that stays ahead TO OUTDO of its competition on all dimensions related to online retail. Or Coca-Cola, that stays ahead of its competition in terms of flavour, distribution and consistent brand management. They may still be ranked on a sliding scale, but they consistently occupy the end of that scale. On all aspects that people find important, they simply do it better. This strategy doesn’t have many downsides. It’s just reserved for the very few. For those that aren’t successful, there is another option: ensure that the field of competition is pushed radically into the background.

does not read any user information and thus protects privacy. These brands are replacing gradual differences through the absolute presence or absence of a particular technology. In doing so, they camouflage the mutual differences between their competitors. Instead, what stands out is that they all lack the same technology. An alternative way to make a gradual concept absolute, is with clever use of language. When an insurance company says that they want to be transparent, then you could perceive this as a gradual concept. As a company, you can say that you are more transparent than another company. You can, as a company, also pledge to present or communicate things in a more transparent way from now on. But when an insurance company or a financial services provider claims to be crystal clear, it’s slightly different. For about a decade now, brands have emerged in the different segments of the financial world that have positioned themselves as ‘crystal clear’ (try googling crystal clear and financial services). Crystal clear is an absolute concept. It leaves no room for nuance. Nobody would describe themselves as being slightly crystal clear. Or promise to be more crystal clear in the things they do. Language simply doesn’t allow for the concept to be used in a gradual way. Another way to prevent the emergence of a sliding scale, is to make it unattractive for competitors to settle somewhere in the middle ground. Take Dove, one of the first cosmetic brands to claim the concept of ‘honest’. Or the online retailer Everlane that has a radical, honest approach. Making the costs totally transparent and showing exactly what they earn. When someone says that they are honest, then it’s not much use for anyone else to say that they are slightly honest. Someone is either honest or not. Slightly honest means that you are not honest. Honest is a concept with an absolute connotation. Who uses it, and can deliver, doesn’t have to be afraid that his competitors are going to worm their way in-between with a nuanced version. Another good example is the women’s clothing brand Zady. It promotes itself based on a sustainable philosophy. This can 90

quickly become a gradual characteristic: one brand is just a little bit more sustainable than the other. Zady manages to prevent this by giving their very own interpretation to the concept. On their website, we can read about what the brand believes in: ‘You know the feeling. Staring at an overflowing closet, with a never-ending sense of having nothing to wear. Clothing with seams coming apart after only a few turns in the wash. It began with simply wanting to understand ‘quality’. What we uncovered was the why behind our low-quality goods. A system training us to buy more and more products of an increasingly lower quality by an industry that hides the outrageously high environmental and social cost of its production. It’s a systemic issue. We’re not afraid of that. We’re building a company that proves there’s a better way. This isn’t a trend. This is the new standard.’ The Zady brand is rebelling against sustainability as a trend (greenwashing), but also against thinking in trends, which is responsible for an extremely high turnover of clothing of a very poor quality. Zady introduces a new standard, whereby it dismisses other clothing brands as trend followers. This too is not a concept that invites occupying the middle ground. The Australian beauty care brand Aesop uses the same strategy. On the outside, you see modern, laboratory-like packaging, retail environments adapted to every city but that still have the same type of universal, serene vibe. The wording on the products has a certain depth, but manages not to be pompous or trendy. The brand has a sophisticated sheen that feels simple and authentic. Aesop challenges beauty industry rules. No glossy folders or loud advertisements. No claims of eternal beauty or anti-ageing. The mission that keeps everything together is also of exceptional elegance 22:‘Aesop values all human endeavours undertaken with intellectual rigor vision and a nod to the whimsical. We advocate the use of our products as part of a balanced life that includes a healthy diet, sensible exercise, a moderate intake of red wine and a regular dose of stimulating literature’. 22 www.aesop.com

but then with glasses and accessories. These brands are often cheaper than their competitors, but are so much more than discounters. By positioning themselves as ‘do good’ brands, they implicitly label their rivals as ‘bad’. Another dimension that is difficult to make gradual, is nationality. The Chinese sport-clothing brand Li Ning for example, makes convenient use of patriotic sentiment to contrast itself against the big foreign giants such as Nike and Adidas. Or Volvo, that with its new claim ‘Made by Sweden’, has found an absolute distinction (slightly Swedish is not going to work for the competition). Choose what side you want to stand on. All the gradual product differences are shadowed by a much larger, absolute comparison. An effective way to make a gradual characteristic absolute, is thus to relate it to archetypes where the polarisation between the lead players has been dramatized through books, films, stories and language, and has been absorbed and relayed on by large groups. The underlying structure of this is that of a metaphor: gradual characteristics of an organisation, person, product or service (such as simple/less simple, fast/slow, expensive/ cheap) are projected into a completely different domain, that of polarised, archetypal figures. The result is that these organisations, people, products or services are not only associated with these gradual concepts, but also with the archetypal image, in which there is no space for adopting the middle ground. They become factual symbols of the archetypal meanings. For the established parties, this makes it extremely difficult to formulate an adequate answer. Whatever they do, however good they are and whatever their track record, what sticks in particular is that they suddenly belong to an anonymous group. The wrong group. A final example of a completely different kind: the American brand Shinola. The brand brings watches, bags and even bicycles onto the market. All based on the concept, made in Detroit. American craftsmanship from the city that was once so famous for its car industry but as a result of the crisis, came to be on the 94

The story of American craftsmanship,

Foreign

recovery and resilience

Metaphoric

projection

Expensive

Reasonable price

verge of collapse. Shinola — an old shoe polish brand bought up by entrepreneur Tom Kartsotis and provided with a new narrative — wants to breathe life back into the pride of American craftmanship from Detroit. The result is a range of products less expensive than the authentic luxury foreign (watch) brands. But that are laced with the aura of American resurrection. Typifying was that president Obama didn’t wear an expensive Swiss watch, but a far more affordable Shinola. Craftmanship for an affordable price. But here too: Shinola doesn’t look for its position on the sliding scale from high-low price, but in the symbolic dimension where the distinction is absolute (American pride against foreign luxury brands). Because of this metaphoric effect, Shinola’s products represent not only craftsmanship at a reasonable price, but have also become the symbol for American resilience.

THE EXPORTED CONTRAST: FROM GOOGLE TO SNAP

The idea behind the exported contrast is: you’ve already got an absolute contrast in a certain market segment anyway, why

THE IMPORTED CONTRAST

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ridiculous, of course. But the mechanism behind it is used a lot. Namely: embracing a contrasting context from another world, to contrast yourself against within your own category. Coffee and tea are warm, cosy and innocent, in contrast to war. But by linking your coffee with war, you import a completely different (opposing) context that you can use to your advantage. Marketing is full of such examples. The successful marketing of the iPad could, for example, be partly explained by the fact that it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as much contrast itself against other tablets, but was compared in use more to traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and books. The fact that Apple quickly had the largest and most interesting range of electronic newspapers and magazines in its App Store, made the comparison with the physical variants pretty obvious. And you could also say that the iPad was actually the first tablet and so had no real immediate competition to contrast itself against. More so than a user-friendly e-reader, initially the iPad was a handy, reasonably-priced magazine and newspaper shop. In this way, iPad created an absolute division: that of paper information carriers versus electronic. An interesting fact is that Steve Jobs was always against the use of the stylus, an electronic pen. This would have to compete with the pen and paper. In his eyes, it was better to find a radical alternative form of interaction

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(your finger as stylus). One that completely distinguishes you from traditional tools, such as paper. Jobs understood intuitively that the iPad shouldn’t primarily be an inconvenient, cumbersome manifestation of a paper world, but an alternative from another world. Those who present themselves as an alternative to the magazine or newspaper, stand out more than those who try to beat the competition on the bits, bytes or electronic features of competing tablets. They use an entirely new market to enable their own characteristics to stand out. Unlike with the external contrast, for Apple it wasn’t about actually competing with newspapers and magazine. Apple really needed their content. It used them at most (implicitly) as a context to stand out against. Sometimes this happens more explicitly. A few years ago, the Spanish shoe brand Camper ran a campaign with the theme ‘Walk Don’t Run’. In supporting internet videos, you see people walking, taking in the countryside around them. It appears to be an obvious statement: a walking shoe brand that especially encourages people to look around them and relax. The archetypal image (living slowly, saying farewell to the rushed, urban lifestyle), is a normal way for walking shoe brands to profile themselves. You can expect walking shoes to encourage people to walk, and the association with nature isn’t really unusual for most of these brands. But these images are in sharp contrast to the backdrop of the fast sneaker world (‘don’t run’). You can apparently then also stand out with few contrasting characteristics, namely by only taking on comparisons with a completely different segment, that of the fast sneaker brands such as Nike, Adidas and Puma. Camper imported contrast by making use of two archetypal (‘absolute’) images, namely ‘slow living’ versus ‘stressful living’. Another example is the milk presented as a healthy alternative to soft drinks. Most milk brands are pretty similar, but the brand that contrasts itself to soft drinks suddenly gets noticed as a healthy, unsweetened alternative. Or consider what brands 105

Other luxury categories occupied by non-American brands

Exported contrast

The story of

Reasonably priced

American recovery

alternative for expensive foreign luxury goods

Internal contrast (metaphoric)

Don’t drive, just cycle

A subscription

A bicycle made in Detroit

(Cars as a context

Imported

that makes

contrast

for a gym External contrast

(Diﬀerent market)

the bicycle stand out)

Bicycle =

Gym =

outside and ownership

inside and rent

For the cost of an annual gym membership, you’ve also got a new bike. You see: non-contrasting characteristics become absolute in a new market. All kinds of absolute advantages spring to mind. A gym is inside, you can take the bike outside. A gym is rental, the bike is ownership. With the imported contrast, you don’t look for a new market as contrasting context to be active in, but instead use a context as comparison to highlight the characteristics of your brand. To find this context, you can use the structure of the examples mentioned: make coffee, not war or walk, don’t run. In our example 108

of the bike from Detroit, you say â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;get on your bike, not in your carâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. You sell your bike as opponent of the car. The second question is what you can do if that happens to you. What can you do if you are victim of the absolute polarity of your opponent? Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s take the liberators as an example, that we came across in the section about the internal contrast. These are the brands that challenge established parties by, for example, being straightforward or honest. What could you now do as well-established party against these challengers, when driven into the corner by them? You can of course give in. In other words: become more straightforward or honest yourself. This is a commonly heard impulsive response from established brands under a lot of pressure. From the perspective of common well-being, this is, of course, good to do. When established brands do something fundamentally wrong, this demands an adjustment. But allowing yourself to be explicitly represented by such improvement behaviour, is very dangerous. You then attempt to make a sliding scale of an absolute dimension: you shift up a bit, towards the straightforward or honest position of the newcomers. The danger of this has already been discussed. Slightly straightforward is not straightforward. And a little bit honest is not honest. The party that gives in, runs the risk of easily been tossed back to the negative counter pole. Moreover, such a turnaround is actually a confirmation of guilt: you apparently were in fact not straightforward or honest. You run the risk that the accusations are harder to shake off. Instead of showing off with the improvements to your own pitfalls, a brand can also choose to make his weakness a strength. In response to parties that present themselves as straightforward, you can say that oversimplification is even more dangerous. Inferring that some things are not straightforward and whoever claims such, is not acting in the best interests of their customers. This defence is possible in markets in 109

Have we slowly started to find it more important that something works, rather than being beautiful? What in any case is striking, is that the popularity of one seems to go hand in hand with the unpopularity of the other. In daily life, the two can also be at odds with each other. Something that is beautiful, is not always good. This suspicious feature of beauty, as being a ‘hidden temptress’, is deeply anchored in Western culture. We are accustomed to the idea that too much beauty may conceal evil intentions. This idea goes back to Odysseus and the Sirens. In the bible, beauty is also often something that can’t always be trusted. It starts with the beautiful apple on the tree in paradise on earth. Later in history, beauty and functionality grow even further apart in cultural terms, because of the division between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In modern Western history, both are often presented as each other’s opposites, as so beautifully expressed by Bertrand Russell 24: ‘A worm is useful, but not beautiful; a tiger is beautiful, but not useful. Darwin, who wasn’t a romanticist, praised the worm. Blake, the tiger.’ Imagination is at the heart of Romanticism, reason at the heart of Enlightenment. Scientists at the time of the Enlightenment adhered to the perception of ‘purity’ that could be clouded by beauty. This idea can be found reflected in many aspects of society. For example, in the perception that a (too) well-written piece is scientifically-seen suspicious. That a philosopher who can write well couldn’t be a proper philosopher. Would this be the reason why some scientists make little effort to write in ‘normal’ language? A brand that has been able to bridge the conflict between beauty and content very successfully is Monocle. The objective of founder Tyler Brule was to make the ultimate combination between ‘style and substance’. A cross between design magazine 24 Russell, B. (1991): Geschiedenis van de westerse filosofie in verband met politieke en sociale omstandigheden van de oudste tijden tot heden. 14de druk. Utrecht: Servire.

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Wallpaper (where he worked previously) and The Economist. Monocle makes of Wallpaper a magazine for design with less serious content, and of the Economist a serious, but badly designed magazine. Nowadays, Monocle is much more than just a magazine. It is a store, a publisher, radio station and café. It represents a lifestyle that combines a focus on beauty with serious content. The potential negative connection between beauty and functionality also resounds in brands that raise the suspicion of not being that good, because they are simply too well-designed. A car brand such as Alfa Romeo has had to deal for a while now with this presumption: beautiful, but don’t be surprised if the window doesn’t close properly after a while. This division is further supported by a familiar and deeper-seated stereotype, namely that of the individual with a focus on appearance that cares less about the intrinsic quality, and the content-focused person who doesn’t care as much about appearance. This has led to a dilemma felt, and indeed fed, in some markets: should I rely on how good something looks with the risk that it doesn’t work as well, or should I just accept something that looks less appealing, knowing that it will work well? There are brands that offer a solution to this dilemma and so stand out from the rest. They demonstrate that beauty is not a concealment, but an expression of quality. For example, by viewing technical qualities as a form of beauty. Such as Oakley, who produce glasses, sneakers and other clothing. The motto, in the words of the founder, is as follows: ‘We make artistic creations with mechanical souls’. Oakley presents itself as the best of two worlds: aesthetics and quality. It breaks through a negative connection by making products with a combination of two positive characteristics: being beautiful and good. Like a nerd with too much eye for looking good. By doing so, Oakley introduces a new division to the market: the good, but ugly brands, (the functional brands of glasses for specific sports, for example) and the good-looking brands, of a lesser quality (the mainstream sports brands that have introduced a flashy pair of sunglasses to their range that technically 121

a new category of special offer websites has emerged. Gilt.com in fashion, for example, Priceline for travel and brands such as Ibood, Westwing, Stubhub, Flashdeal, Wagjag or Snapdeal each try in their own way to offer a constant stream of deals. Sometimes by simply buying in big, sometimes via an auction format, or via a community format. They can do so because online retailers have to keep less stock, can organise buying power and can create involving formats that help convince manufacturers to sell their products at a lower price. Contrary to the expensive quality stores, what’s on offer is much cheaper. Instead of one-off special offers, it has lots. And unlike low-cost stores, it has a better assortment in terms of quality, including superior brands. The brands above connect the characteristics of three, up to recently separate and opposing segments. In doing so, it makes all quality stores too expensive, one special offer too limited and all the suppliers of cheaper goods not qualitative enough.

CONSTANT

Retailers

oﬀering

quality

cheap,

goods

inferior goods

GOOD

CHEAP

(quality) Retailers with special oﬀers

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Magic leap and the bottom half of Bono

In February 2005, the Irish singer Bono made a speech during the annual ted conference in Palo Alto, California. He was not present in person. The visitors saw his head on a large screen set up on the stage. From that large screen, he said the following to the audience: ‘At this very moment, you are viewing my upper half. My lower half is appearing at a different conference in a different country.’ Humans are seized by the desire to be somewhere else. This longing has led to the invention of the wheel, the cart, the boat, the bicycle, the car, the motorbike and not to forget, the aeroplane and rocket. Now, a large part of the world population can ‘be somewhere else’ by using one of these to move them. Vehicle technology has increased our freedom of movement. We can move from here to there. And: we can get from here to their increasingly faster. But although it gets increasingly faster, time still remains the only limitation: we can’t

NOW Being here now: natural state

Being there now: telecom now

HERE

THERE

Going from here to there: vehicles

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7 A BARREL FULL OF CONTRADICTIONS

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A must read for every marketeer, designer, product developer, strategist, politician or entrepreneur who is eager to stand out from the crowd! A compelling new answer on how brands can stand out in the age of abundance.

The world is busier than ever. Brands are competing for market share and new brands are being introduced. While warehouses fill up with boxes and supermarket shelves overflow giving an increasingly vast range of choices, 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 in creating brand associations that radically split a competitive field into absolute opposites or are able to reconcile these in unexpected ways. In this book you will learn how to catch the publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye by creating polarity. This goes beyond just being different. It offers a sophisticated technique to set brands apart from all other competitors in a radical way. The in-depth knowledge reflected is written lightheartedly and comes with a wealth of examples. Roland describes unique ways to guarantee that brands will create a breakthrough.

Prof. dr. Roland van der Vorst is Managing Director of FreedomLab and Professor of Strategic Design for Brand Development at Delft University of Technology. Roland is consultant, speaker and considered a thought leader in the field of strategic brand management and innovation.