The Curious Case of Disappearing Differentiation

?[Differentiation 'versus' or 'plus' Distinction are back in the spotlight.?A quick look at how something can 'disappear' and still be there and what this may mean moving forward.]

?All is not always as is claimed:

In the Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’, the stolen gemstone is found awaiting attempted digestion in the entrails of a Christmas Goose.?In Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’, another detective, Dupin, correctly identifies that the item in question remains in plain sight in the blackmailer’s room, merely made to look like it is of no importance. It is often the case that items of value that have mysteriously vanished may be discovered if only one can follow the clues.

So it may be with differentiation in Professor Byron Sharp’s classic ‘How Brands Grow’.

The Mystery:

How does the mystery of the disappearance of differentiation unfold?

First, we are told of the ‘usage effect’, a bias where current and recent users of your brand are simply better able to express views because they have encountered your brand. So larger brands inevitably score better on key perceptual measures. This is something the data certainly upholds.

Next a remedy is proposed: this bias needs to be controlled for - which means removed.?This is promptly enacted, using the relative difference in user bases, in other words, brand size.?And as if by the sleight of hand of a master conjurer, apparently high levels of differentiation have now all but disappeared - only a shallow vestige remains as if to taunt you forever about your former riches or, perhaps, to serve as a moral lesson about your prior, unenlightened, assumptions.

Now the scene needs tidying to lead us to see the new normality in this statistically derived view.?The new concepts of ‘Physical and Mental Availability’ are produced, representing the ease of encountering a product or service (‘physical’) and whether people have heard of it and can recognise it (‘mental’). ?

‘Mental Availability’ is further elaborated on in the guise of ‘Distinctive Brand Assets’, created objects of culture, that serve to nudge us onwards in what feels like a predetermined path to purchase.

And all is explained.

Is there any 'Mystery' at all here?

It all hinges of course on the boldness of the act of calling so much of your customers’ perception of your brand a ‘bias’ that needs to be removed, and whether you agree with this.?

For Professor Sharp, it is a bias.?His conviction, and it’s a conviction that informs how he treats the data, is that perception and attitudes follow decision or action.

If it is such a bias, then removing the 'usage effect' will reveal the true state of differentiation.

Before the psychological insights of William James, this sort of thing would have sounded outlandish. However, we now have a much better understanding of the mind's counterintuitive workings.?

It is most definitely the case that the simple act of doing something can make us feel more positive about that thing.? That is a non-controversial viewpoint.

There is something to Professor Sharp’s conviction here.?

It is simply not always the case.??Holding that it is, is controversial.

Professor Koen Pauwels rightly points out “the behaviorist foundations of the Ehrenberg-Bass approach” in the apparent assumption that causal power for perceptual shifts should always be granted to behaviour.?

Pauwels’ work, plus analysis from Kantar, plus a defence of his own scientific method by Professor Felipe Thomaz, plus, perhaps, a more nuanced read of the wider psychological literature in these areas, reveals that attitude and behaviour are intertwined in feedback loops that can’t easily be attributed entirely to one or the other.?

Attitudinal shifts can change behaviour.?Behavioural shifts can change attitudes.?To determine which is happening requires data capable of time-based sequencing of such changes and looks context specific.?

Yet there is something to Professor Sharp’s conviction.?There are some strong patterns shown in data that span categories, time, and geography.?It would be wrong to deny this.?It's just that these matters are not as categorical as seems to be supposed.?As above, other researchers have data that is time sequenced and that proves attitudes can and do precede behaviour also.

Let’s return to our mystery, therefore.?

Can we find the missing differentiation?

If, in the real world, differentiation should not have vanished so entirely then it cannot have vanished here either.?That would break not just branding (as Professor Thomaz put it) but more fundamental laws.

So where is it now?

That’s trivial for any detective.?

Whatever remains of it is hiding in plain sight.

Since the control mechanic used removed the ‘usage effect’, it follows that any genuine influence of perceived differentiation among your current and recent users is now stored within 'Mental and Physical Availability' which are, as above, set up as the new descriptors of what drives size.

It is, like the Blue Carbuncle, on its way to the digestive tracts but retrievable.?

It is, like the Purloined Letter, stashed away in a different and maybe reduced or even tarnished form but it is still there.

Whether it is possible or desirable to return it to its former state is what now needs to be considered.

The Aftermath:

It's fair to say that the claims around differentiation have been long one of the most controversial of the many claims made in 'How Brands Grow'. But this area in particular has, of late, resurfaced - largely amongst academics, but with obvious relevance for practitioners.

Professor Mark Ritson who has long defended strategic segmentation of brands as well as differentiation against the most radical reinterpretations by Professor Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass and is of course a seasoned marketing practitioner himself, has dissected some of the above and more in his typically forthright manner in videos that are part of his Mini MBA.?

His conclusion is pragmatic: both Differentiation and Distinctiveness play a role.?We now have the two Ds that can sit side by side on a single page.

Pragmatism to get on with things per se is a good aim, and it isn’t just pragmatism of course – there is some truth in what Professor Sharp says.

It’s just that – from my comms point of view especially – the dissection into 'Mental and Physical Availability' and then into ‘Distinctive Brand Assets’ feels very removed from considering ideas that will stir the motivations of real people in the real world.?It's like discussing the dismembered skeleton rather than the living creature. Brand worlds and brand codes are maybe better terms because they are far more suggestive of the feedback loops that must be designed in.

Bill Bernbach – who, we should remember, challenged the then (1950s) prevalent approaches in advertising and communication, which were behaviourist and overly mechanical – separated things into WHAT to say and HOW to say it.?That’s overly communication focused perhaps given the broader picture now and Bernbach was very big on communication as persuasion which would now need to be reinterpreted – but it may remind us there is not as much of a divide between differentiation and distinctiveness once we hit the cauldron of real-world application through stores, people, product, experience, service, online presence, advertising, packaging, PR, sponsorships, and the myriad other ways where brands and people meet.

Additionally, if Kantar are correct and differentiation matters most when a brand is younger (which intuitively makes sense), isn't it reasonable to say that what the brand stands for should be the starting point and any assets should be linked to this? That flow may remain true as a way of approaching things even in more mature markets and with established brands.

Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned but the essence of positioning was to show that how brands really grow is through ideas that are brought into being that are capable of setting you apart from other brands and of, however weakly, stirring the emotions of real people in the real and messy world because it is in the minds of those people that brands ultimately belong. I've never seen any really persuasive refutation of this in How Brands Grow or anywhere else.