Month: December 2010

In Seth Godin’s recent post, he mentioned about how being different can help to attract attention to your new idea and project. It applies to marketer to wants to launch a product that already exists in the market. The key idea is down to how you stand out among your competitors, not fitting in to be similar to the existing product.

I agree with his view that ‘you can’t stand out if you fit in all the way.’ When you launch a new product, how you differentiate and position yourself as being someone who offers a better value from the consumer’s point of view is important in determining the success of a product. ‘Deciding which part isn’t going to match’ which is finding a way to make your product looks more attractive by contrasting it’s unique qualities with other competing products can create a competitive advantage for the marketer.

Product differentiation can be achieved in many ways. It may be as simple as packaging the goods in a creative way, or incorporating new functional features, even sometimes, just creating a new advertising campaign. Here are some products that I find interesting and innovative.

Traditionally, private labeling has been strongest in commodities which have low involvement such as butter, eggs , flour and sugar. Now, more and more consumers are trading down to private label brands, while more private brands are getting sophisticated and investing in brand strategies.

As the private label market matures, it takes on more diverse products and services. For instance, Tesco in the UK offers petrol, President’s Choice from Canadian retailer Loblaw offers anything from cereals to financial services and Costco’s Kirkland Signature offers tires, fresh food and alcoholic beverages.

Private labels products are less expensive, thus, they are often perceived as lower quality alternative. A  large part of growing in the private label market now involves improving the product’s quality. This raises the threat to branded product. How should the branded competitors react to threat?

In John‘s blog, he mention about the value of advertising for the tobacco industry when the ad is dominated by negative effects of the product. It is true that tobacco advertising is very highly regulated. Some or all forms of tobacco advertising are banned in many countries. These ads then serve to drive brand awareness and brand preference among smokers.

Instead of advertising using conventional way which has a lot of restrictions, tobacco companies use other forms of campaigns to drive sales and increase brand and customer loyalty.  Some examples of these campaigns include sponsoring in auto racing teams, and other sports such as snooker, crickets…