When everybody in the market zigs, zag!
When everybody in the market zig, zag. This is the central argument of Marty Neumeier as he tries to address the marketing strategies that are applied in most of the market. According to Neumeier, businesses are speeding up; they keep on popping day in day out. The market trends are changing from the cheap, good and fast products to free, perfect, now products. With such developments in the market, the products cluster the market making it even difficult for the clients to choose from the variety provided. People tend to follow the same suit in the market where the same methods of marketing and branding are used in the hunt for customers. However, according to Neumeier, for a better brand to be built, a company must be radically different from the rest in the market.
Unlike what people still think that competitions come from companies, Neumeier suggests otherwise. He says that the today’s competition comes from clutter and not from other companies. The market clutter comes in five different forms. Product clutter is the first form of the market clutter. According to Neumeier (2006), the market is full of different products, for innovation to be called so; a new product must be unique in its own way. It must be able to beat the already existing product in the market. Other forms of market clutter according to Neumeier include message clutter, advertising clutter, feature clutter and media clutter.
According to Neumeier (2006), too much of information on a product or market creates a situation he calls poverty of attention. He explains this concept by giving different scenarios of how a product’s activities can have an impact on the brain of a potential buyer. It is not a must that a seller of a product provides a lot of information about the product to make it sell.
In case you thought that the brand of your product is the logo of the company or the corporate identity, then you are terribly wrong. According to Neumeier (2006), a product’s brand have no relationship with the company’s logo neither does it with the corporate identity. Also, a brand is not a product. Then what is a brand? Neumeier explains a brand as a person’s guts feelings about a product and organization. An organization must struggle to build a reputation with its customers in case it wants to make a good brand. Therefore, the brand of a product is not what an organization can say it is, but what the buyers and other stakeholders outside the organization say it is. Another explanation of branding is ability by an organization to get more people to buy more products for a longer period at the highest price possible.
How do we create a brand? Neumeier explains that people like purchasing in tribes (2006). Every product has a Unique Buying Tribe (UBT) and people must be pushed into such UBTs. A Unique Buying Tribe is brought together by s belonging that they have for a product. How? Traditionally, people used to advertise their products through the mass media. However, potential buyers are starting to lose their trusts on the mass media. The advertisement is no longer cool as it was before. People are tired of the one-way conversation the advertising media provide. What will replace advertisement then? According to Neumeier (2006), branding is the next level of marketing. However, he notes that in branding, things are still the same as they were in the advertisement. There is still that one-way communication which can still lead to mistrust from the side of the buyers.
The challenges faced in branding make Neumeier come up with a solution. Be different. His two sentenced solution is aimed at making sure that the market is not cluttered with the same product competing for the same buyers. Neumeier concludes that “When Everybody Zigs, Zag.”
References
Marty, N. (2006) ZAG: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands. Pearson Education, doi: 0132798123, 9780132798129
