Whitepaper
Find Your Why & Future Proof Your Brand Introduction
Written by David Lemley President and Head of Strategy at Retail Voodoo
Having a cause for your brand — a corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy or saving the whales or donating product to needy families — is now part of the toolbox for better-for-you food and beverage brands. A cause is no longer a point of difference.
And differentiation is the key to growth and long-term relevance for your brand. If you want to avoid playing in what I call “the pit” — that swirl of
competitors with virtually identical products, all using low pricing and “new!” flavors to woo finicky consumers — then you absolutely must understand what points of difference matter to consumers.
So how do you identify your brand’s superpower and leap over all the others playing in your space? In other words, how do you truly, meaningfully differentiate?
Find Your Why & Future Proof Your Brand
Identify Your Brand’s True Opportunity
We’ll begin this quest for differentiation with a standard whitespace analysis — a Venn diagram with three circles (audience, competition, capability). The whitespace formed by the overlap indicates an opportunity gap that you can mine for new product ideas.
Conventional marketing wisdom suggests that the intersection of audience (what people will buy), competitors, and capabilities (what we make) is where gold lies.
I’ll let you in on a secret: The center of that Venn diagram is an absolute war zone.
Why? Because EVERYONE is playing in that space. “Conventional marketing wisdom” means that every brand out there is using the same methodology to identify areas for growth. And unless you’re a Fortune 50 company with endless resources to deploy on big-budget campaigns to drive awareness, you’ll lose.
Wildly successful brands should solve big problems/needs for people, and do it narrowly and uniquely enough to define their category.
Sharp positioning empowers brand leaders to communicate bravely, clearly, and crisply — so they do not sound like everyone else (or anyone else for that matter). This is Beloved & Dominant Brand status in action.
To do this, your whitespace map may need an overhaul.
A New Whitespace Approach
Let’s take a look at our interpretation of the whitespace diagram.
There are two obvious areas of overlap to avoid:
The Pit — where your expertise and your competitors’ connect. You’ll be forever copying each other, chasing each other to land new products on retail shelves, resorting to discounts to drive sales, and becoming interchangeable in the consumer’s mind.
We Can’t Win — where your competition’s superpower overlaps the consumer’s desire. You’ll constantly be playing catch-up and trying to win an audience that’s already established a preferred brand.
Now look at the center — where conventional wisdom says we should be looking for opportunity, right?
Marketers and C-suite leaders are drawn to the center like moths to the flame because it’s safe. You don’t have to define an audience or clue people into a need they didn’t know they had. Since others are playing in that space, you have proof of concept. This broad brand positioning soothes the marketer’s fear that they’ll lose the audience if they don’t follow category conventions and echo what other brands in the market are doing.
Your WHY is Your Key Point of Differentiation
As we’ve consulted with 300+ brands over the years, we’ve determined that the center of that Venn diagram is not where smart companies invest their energies. Instead, real opportunity lies in the larger quadrant to the northwest of center. When we first understood this, our minds were blown.
The New Whitespace — where What We Rock At and What the Customer Buys overlap — is fertile territory.
What We Rock At is not about product. Look at your competitive landscape: More companies are making more products in more iterations than ever. That’s because the barrier to entry is low; anyone anywhere can make anything.
Case in point: Think about hard seltzer. After White Claw won the hearts and minds of a generation, everyone, including Budweiser and Corona, got on the seltzer bandwagon. And despite the best creative and ominous ads spends, both brands along with
many others are starting to retreat from the category.
Your goal is to create a barrier to entry where competitors aren’t able to easily copy your products or gain traction. What We Rock At, then, is about your brand’s values. Your WHY.
The reason people love one brand vs. another is NOT because of product uniqueness.
Ideologically, WHY is up-funnel from cause. Your brand’s WHY — the wrong it aims to right, the disadvantaged it seeks to champion, the world it seeks to build — creates a long-term, defensible point of difference.
The reasons people love one brand vs. another is not because of product uniqueness. People love a brand when they feel that it is their idea. When it fits into their lives so well that they seek it out even in the face of price, competition, and inconvenience. When they get behind the WHY.
It’s easy to conflate WHY and cause. Cause marketing started to become a thing in the early 2000s. Simon Sinek hadn’t yet published “Start with Why.” Companies started putting the World Wildlife Fund logo on packaging and donating product and checked the cause box.
But consumers today expect CSR and triple-bottom-line practices from the brands they buy. They’re numb to impassioned brand statements about feeding needy children. They seek brands that align with their values, elevate their self-perception, and represent who they want to be in the world. They feel they can’t make a measurable difference on issues they care about without the backing of the brands they favor.
Find Your Why & Future Proof Your Brand
Differentiation and Product Development
If you’re like many brands we advise, you have a robust R&D pipeline generating lots of new product ideas. (It’s not a bad problem to have, but you’ll still have to make decisions. Here are some ways to align your product development with your brand promise.) The New Whitespace model steers you away from making your own spin on the products your competitors are making. It focuses you to make less, better stuff.
You rock at it and nobody else does, so it creates a barrier to entry;
other companies might catch up, but you’ll be a leader. The New Whitespace also grants you the opportunity to own a psychographic vs. a demographic. When you rock at something, and people want it and buy it, you get into their mental headspace rather than just their shopping cart.
Anchoring innovation and growth in this larger quadrant requires that you’re disciplined enough in product development and marcomm to know
A powerful mission makes your brand future proof.
who you are and who you’re not and how you’re different from your competitors. And it requires that your team is confident enough to let go of consumers who will never be among your “always and forever,” starkraving fans. Your goal is to attract those folks who love your brand and choose your products every time, not just when you’ve bought promotion space or sent out a coupon.
In fact, we’re walking a current client through the opportunityidentification process using this New Whitespace map. They’ve been a bit stuck on following what competitors are making and hoping their established retail partnerships will
support their efforts. Instead, we’re helping them see new opportunities where their audience desires and their existing but untapped capability overlap.
Your WHY Drives Every Business Decision
A powerful mission not only competition-proofs your brand, it also makes you future proof.
When you set a true North Star, it’ll be gravitational for the entire organization, and it’ll inform every bit of decision making. You’ll stop having meetings around price or clicks or ingredients and instead focus on how you can spread the gospel of the brand. Eventually, it becomes selffulfilling because you’ll have an army of people who are actively recruiting others on your behalf. And when a competitor steps into your space, it will reek of opportunism, also-ran, and copycat.
Find Your Why & Future Proof Your Brand Conclusion
As you’re business planning, feel free to use our map with the New Whitespace concept. It’s a great tool for conversation, focus, and organizational alignment. We guarantee it’ll spark new thinking when you share it with your leadership or R&D team.
We’ve helped brands like Essentia and HighKey identify their WHY and explode their market positions. We’re here when you’re ready to get to work.
Let‘s talk about your WHY.
Footnotes & Sources
1. https://retail-voodoo.com/book/
2. https://retail-voodoo.com/ insights/focus-your-food-beverageinnovation-on-your-brands-promise/
3. https://retail-voodoo.com/ insights/does-your-naturals-brandhave-a-mission-or-just-a-missionstatement/
4. https://retail-voodoo.com/ insights/if-youre-not-in-alignmentyoure-out-of-luck/
About Beloved And Dominant Brands
The guide for brand-owners, marketers, investors, and leaders to take their better-for-you brand from one of many to category prominence. Empowers your team to conduct a category audit unlike any other.
Beloved & Dominant Brands will have you and your team asking questions about your company, your brands, and your marketplace that you have never asked before.
About Retail Voodoo
We are a branding agency passionate about building brands that connect powerfully with consumers. The brands we partner with take a stand: For people, purpose, and planet. We guide clients to solve complex business challenges so they can evolve into category leaders that consumers actively love with their mind, body, and souls.