Owning a Word in the Mind

By Russ Altman Assistant Director, Texas Tech Small Business Development Center – Abilene The most powerful concept in marketing is “owning” a word in the prospect’s mind and a company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to put a word in the mind of the prospect, not a complicated one, or not even one that’s been invented specifically for the purpose. This is the law of “focus,” as you burn your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word, as it is the ultimate marketing sacrifice. An astute leader will go one step further to solidify its position, as Heinz owns the word ketchup, but Heinz went on to isolate the most important ketchup attribute. “Slowest ketchup in the West” was how the company preempted the thickness attribute, by owning the word slow helps Heinz maintain 50 percent market share. If you are not the leader in the market, then your word has to have a narrow focus, while even more important, however, your word has to be available in your category. Prego went against leader Ragu in the spaghetti sauce market and captured a 27 percent market share with an idea borrowed from Heinz, that Prego’s word is thicker. The most effective words are simple and benefits driven, and no matter how complicated the product, no matter how complicated the needs of the market, it is always better to focus on one word or benefit rather than two, three, or four. If you properly choose “your word,” there will be a halo effect, and if you strongly establish one benefit, the prospect is likely to give you a lot of other benefits as well; a “thicker” spaghetti sauce implies quality, superior ingredients, value, and so on, while a “safer” car implies superior design and engineering. Whether the result of a deliberate program or not, most successful products are the ones that “own a word” in the mind such as Crest … cavities, McDonalds … fast, Mercedes … engineering, BMW … driving, Volvo … safety, Domino’s … home delivery, Pepsi … youth, Nordstrom … service, and Fed Ex … overnight. Atari used to own a valuable position through the word videogame, but when Atari wanted a bigger piece of the computer market, it wanted Atari to mean computers. But unfortunately for Atari, a host of other companies including Apple and IBM owned the word they were after. Atari’s diversification was a disaster, but the real irony was another company arrived in 1986 and took the work that Atari walked away from, and that company was Nintendo, which took over a majority of the market share of the videogame industry. At one point in the history of the American automotive industry, GM put forth the slogan, “Putting the quality on the road.” Guess what they were doing at Ford, that’s right, the same thing. “Quality is job 1.” Over at Chrysler, Lee Iacocca was proclaiming, “We don’t want to be the biggest, just the best.” While this is all great stuff inside the corporation, outside the corporation, the message falls apart. Does any company proclaim itself as the “un-quality” corporation? No, everyone stands for quality, and as a result, nobody does. So you cannot narrow the focus with quality or any other idea that does not have proponents for the opposite point of view. Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind, as when Energizer tried to take the word “long-lasting” away from Duracell who had it first, and Burger King tried to take away the word fast from McDonalds with its “Best food for fast times” campaign, but both campaigns failed to change the customer’s mind. Researchers can tell you what attributes people want and the mistaken assumption is that is what we should therefore advertise, but what researchers never tell you is that some other company already owns the word. Remember, you must own your niche and own it outright and no one else can occupy your space, and if you can’t own it, especially from a marketing expenditure outlay, then decrease the size of the niche until you can, and if somebody else occupies your chosen space you must try to reposition them. Article oginally publish on AbileneBiz.com

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