Welcome to this week’s edition of In Media Res. Today is all about brand building, and how easily it can go wrong. We’re going to learn about the difference between differentiation and distinctiveness, and how attempts at differentiation brought down Robinhood’s brand in one dramatic week. I’m then going to unpack Dr Bronner’s to show how it’s done right, and propose a strategy to achieve distinctiveness for a newer brand - Quadpay.
Let’s dive in…
Differentiation Vs Distinctiveness
An important concept in brand building is distinguishing between differentiation and distinction.
Differentiation is what a brand says to try and be seen as different from their competitors.
Distinctiveness is created when unique brand assets are consistently deployed to help a brand become memorable to the consumer.
Industry rattling research proved that attempts at differentiation are mostly ineffective. You can read the original paper here, but the TL;DR is summed up by marketing science pioneer Byron Sharp:
“Rather than striving for perceived differentiation, marketers should seek distinctiveness. Branding lasts, differentiation doesn’t.” (From How Brands Grow)
Don’t believe?
I have a short exercise to help prove the power of distinctiveness over differentiation. I’m sure you can name the following brands just by their logos:
Now try to recall their ‘brand purpose’, or even a tagline? I’m guessing you couldn’t. This is because most attempts at differentiation are vague, hard to enact and lack tangibility:
Shell - Together, Anything is Possible
Pepsi - That’s What I Like
Twitter - See What’s Happening
Brand distinctiveness builds recognition, brand differentiation is mostly a wasted exercise in comms.
Caveat: If differentiation claims are memorable and consistently applied it can help make a brand distinct, ‘Just Do It’ from Nike is a famous example of this.
The dangerous part of differentiation
Not only can differentiation be ineffective, if brands make claims they can’t back up then it can be quite a disaster. Let’s look at Robinhood.
There’s nothing fundamentally different between Robinhood and other mobile first, non-commission trading platforms like Public, WeBull and SoFi:
They all have a simple user friendly interface
They are all designed for the everyday retail investor
They all integrate content to try educate beginners
To stand out, Robinhood tried to differentiate by positioning themselves as ‘for the people’
At first this differentiation was mostly harmless, mainly because it wasn’t convincing. While Robinhood was trying to tell the world about how it was for the people, the world shouted back that it was mostly perceived as a gamified trading app for making risky and ill-informed trades. This was a major theme of conversations on Reddit years before the GameStop chapter:
Differentiation moves from harmlessly ineffective to dangerously erosive when claims cannot be backed up. Robinhood destroyed years of brand building in one day when they froze the ability to purchase GameStop stock. @Nathanias summed up customer sentiment perfectly…
Interestingly many other trading platforms, like E-Trade, also halted trading, but because of Robinhood’s claim of ‘Democratizing finance for all’, they drew the most ire.
There are two clear lessons here:
1) Don’t make differentiated claims you can’t back up.
2) Constantly listen to your customers to ensure perceptions match your claims.
Dr Bronner’s
To understand how distinctiveness can be built, let’s look at one of my favourite, and one of the wackiest, brands out there: Dr Bronner’s.
Dr Bronner’s is a soap brand famous for it’s incredibly distinctive branding:
The package design contains a plethora of copy ramblings around psychedelic therapy, saving the planet and an origin story. However, there are no claims around what makes Dr Bonner’s brand different from others, or a mission statement on what they believe in. They simply use their label to highlight external causes they support. By avoiding differentiation, and focusing on distinctiveness, Dr Bonner’s has become an incredibly memorable brand. Here’s how they did it:
1) Distinct assets
Dr Bronner’s insanely verbose design is highly distinctive in a world of basic blandvertising. It’s hard to recall the actual causes outlined on the package, but the design and lengthy copy is instantly recognisable.
2) Consistency
All products, from soap, to body wash, to toothpaste, have the same distinct branding. It’s instantly recognisable across the board, raising the memorability of the brand.
3) Omnipresence
Dr Bronner’s understands that distribution = media. Every bodega, pharmacy and supermarket I walk into in NYC has Dr Bronner’s in the aisle. This presence builds frequency of exposure, which strengthens the consumer’s memory structure, making Dr Bronner’s unforgettable.
Potential for success: Quadpay
I’ve been quietly observing Quadpay, a buy now pay later platform that allows people to split purchases into four smaller payments instead of one. They don’t have a sprawling brand mission, opting instead for a brutally simple explanation of the product function:
Looking at their website and social presence made me see Quadpay as a branding blank canvas, so I’m using them to share some key tasks needed to establish a memorable brand:
1) Establish distinction
Currently Quadpay has a design that could be easily confused with many other Fintech brands. By trying to fit in, they aren’t standing out…
In particular their iconography is comedically similar to their major, and larger, competitor: Afterpay…
Quadpay should stand out from the crowd by creating incredibly distinct brand assets, distributed with the consistency required to solidify memory structures.
2) Build trust
Given that Quadpay is asking consumers for their financial info, building trust is massively important.
One of the best ways to do this is to amplify distinct assets in tangible, established media units: Out Of Home, TV and digital takeovers in premium contexts help to convince consumers of the stability of a brand. It’s a well trodden strategy for online brands that need ‘real world’ tangibility.
3) Build association
Quadpay is a new brand, so to establish it’s credentials it needs a leg up from trusted sources to deliver a seal of approval. This can happen through signing on reputable and large partners (as they have done) but also means investing in media partnerships, influencers and review sites.
What’s next?
What’s most interesting to me is seeing how Byron Sharp’s research on the effectiveness of distinctiveness over differentiation is holding true as media ecosystems evolve. Brands today are highly exposed, their actions easily scrutinised by the social media masses. There’s never been a more dangerous time to try and establish claims that a brand cannot back up, which means it’s more important than ever to invest in making brands distinct and memorable.
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