Brand Conflicts — A Lesson In Physics
Dec 15th, 2009 by David Svet
I love brand strategy. There’s nothing that I find more fulfilling than the process of developing positive perceptions. It’s fun to be called in to wade through the morass of product and service attributes, history, competition, and market conditions to try to figure out how to generate positive change. The puzzles are almost always unique — different forces playing against one another in a dynamically changing ecosystem. Therein lies one of the keys to figuring it out — simple physics.
Remember, two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Simple. It’s easy to understand. For some reason, it is darned difficult to execute.
At the heart of so many brand dilemmas is an obvious conflict — overlap. Overlapping goals, features, benefits, roles, responsibilities, promises, deliverables, and so on create competitive conflict. They become two objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time. The result is a brand problem that manifests itself in customers’ minds as confusion.
If you have two entities in an organization offering the same service to the same market, they are competing — competition breeds conflict. If your intention is to have multiple brands that compete, great. Otherwise, you are wasting precious resources, confusing your customer base, and irritating your employees. No amount of brand alteration will change this. If you are considering a rebranding initiative, take a close look at the source of the problem. It may actually be a simple physics problem.
glad i to stopped by and catch the physics lesson
i would also add that whether or not the ‘competitive conflict’ is intentional, we ensure that after a thorough analysis of said conflict, an integrated approach should be modeled to maximize impact on delivery..often with competing ideas/approaches there are opportunities to glean elements that actually enhance the overall strategy..so there 2 cents as per usual - a
That’s a great point Autom! Most conflicts that I’ve seen where duplication is the cause originated because something was missing. The other party simply tried to fill a void and kept shoveling until they started to cover their colleagues.