The Best Tool for the Job
The next four posts in our Leadership Marketing Series will focus on one of each of the human needs we’ve previously discussed. Starting with the need to perform something specific, i.e., “get it done well,” we focus on Power Brands.
Power Brands Lead the Way
Products that promise to provide a specific function better than anyone else are called Power Brands. They create relationships with their customers that are grounded in dependable performance and framed around a very specific core category benefit. They promise superior efficacy and build their brand promise by being the best solution (or best tool) for exactly what you need. When they deliver, Power Brands lead to the emotional benefits of confidence, dependability, and trust – the sense that “you can rely on us to get the job done well." Given the obvious emotional benefits, most pharmaceutical and healthcare brands launch and remain in the Power Quadrant, inadvertently establishing long-term competitive situations for share-of-voice and share-of-mind. Their positioning statements become increasingly more finely tuned and occasionally descend to irrelevance.
Generating their Power
Power Brands achieve and maintain their leadership positions through five very consistent communications strategies:
All communications define the category’s core functional benefit and prove they own it.
Messages focus on the product and how well it performs, usually including superlatives, such as fastest, quickest, strongest, etc.
They often rely on a “problem/solution” approach to their advertising, including visual demonstrations of performance and studies.
Generating trial is critical to Power Brand success: If the product truly does what it claims, and customers see that for themselves, then more than likely the customer will become a convert. Coupons, samples and free demos are all common Power Brand tactics.
Constant innovation is essential to maintaining competitive advantage. Tide laundry detergent, for example, has promoted the "whitest whites" for generations, and sustained that claim via hundreds of product improvements and modifications.
Power Brands promise to provide a specific function, better than anyone else, and create relationships with customers that are grounded in performance.
