Is your brand strong enough to start a movement?

Have you ever launched a new marketing campaign? Many times, a campaign is conceived based directly on the sales process, and then moved into the realm of advertising. That means starting with the sales process and expanding upon it. For those not in sales, and looking for a starting place, many times we begin with FAB, which stands for:

• Feature - what your product does.
• Advantage - what makes it better than the competition.
• Benefit - why the customer’s life is better with this product.

What if you have a really strong product, that completely decimates the competition? What if your advantage is so great, that in your opinion, the choice of going with the competition is actually hurting the customer?

Rather than focusing on simple advantages that your product gives over the competition, you need to start a movement against your competition. An example of this idea is Smart (the car brand). Their cultural movement is that buying a large, gas-guzzling vehicle is wasteful, harmful, and irresponsible. Spend some time on their Facebook wall, and you’ll see that they have created an environment that is less about the car, and more about anti- big vehicles. They have effectively created a movement. Let’s face it, there are lots of small vehicles that get comparable gas mileage. Yet none make the statement of “I hate gas guzzlers” like a Smart does.

The Nissan Leaf does the same thing, with making it less about the car, and more about how you cause no harm to the environment. They are focusing on their advantage to the point that the marketing becomes less about the product’s merits, and more about how the competition hurts you. In their most recent commercial, a polar bear hugs the owner of a Leaf. This clearly states that the goal of saving the environment can come about from the Leaf’s movement of eliminating gas burning vehicles.

Others have tried this, and haven’t been able to take it out of the advantage stage. Watch an AT&T or Verizon commercial, and the two spend a lot of time putting down the other’s service. That’s because they couldn’t turn it into a movement, but kept it at the level of a perceived advantage. No one signs a contract with Verizon thinking, “AT&T is trying to destroy the planet with bad service.” 

While we’re discussing cell phones, we have to touch base on Apple. That brand has so effectively become a movement that Apple Evangelist is in Wikipedia. There is even an Anti-Apple movement. We’re talking about computer devices, not political parties, although the discussion between an Apple Evangelist and a (Windows based) PC user can sound like a political debate.

So what’s the point you ask? How does this result in sales? Simple = people are always much more loyal to a cause than to a product. Can your product revolutionize how people think of your product versus your competition? Can you replace advertising for a product with informing the masses of your brand’s movement?