brand names

In many businesses, including supermarketing, all managements, leaders and followers alike, share a great and growing problem: differentiation. Whether they are selling groceries or insurance policies, PCs or petrol, the problem is finding a Unique Selling Proposition.

The strain is showing in the advertising. The potent USP concept was devised by an adman, Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates. He sought features so distinctive in the client's product that the agency could create equally distinctive, telling ads.

Today commercials often say little about the product, simply because there's little to say - little, that is, which can't be matched by every competitor. That leaves only two options: to differentiate in internal processes, including service; and to differentiate in external perception, to have the most puissant 'power brand'.

In Managing Customer Value, T.Bradley Gale defined this as 'a name that means satisfaction, quality and value to the customer.' If the SQV combo is more or less the same - as among the leading supermarkets - competitors vie to do unto others as Coke did unto Pepsi. Brand power is used to build brand power. The name of the game is The Name.

In more crowded markets than Coke's, though, name-power can suddenly dissipate. In 1994, Del Monte, IBM, Michelin and Moulinex were among brands given 'negative value' by an American magazine, because 'a competing generic product could have generated higher profits on the same level of sales.' That is arguable. But those managements had lost the generic battle, at least temporarily. Why?

They fell behind on QSV - and differentiation, which brings the wheel full circle. If you can't differentiate meaningfully, are you stuck? In fact, you can revive brand power without differentiating much (Asda, say), or differentiate without building much of a brand - like Majestic Wine, whose USP lies in selling only by the case.

So far, Majestic has neither needed nor achieved true brand recognition. But it has obeyed a golden paradox: constancy of change. By always experimenting, innovating and investing heavily in new QSV ideas, you keep brands fresh, customers coming and competitors guessing. And you strengthen The Name. The moment that customers say, not 'I'm going to Asda' (or Tesco, etc), but 'I'm going to the supermarket', the game is lost.