Accept No Substitutes

With thousands of movies, you’d think Netflix would have all of the ‘must see’ hits. Yet, if you have spent any time scrolling through their endless pages, you’ve  quickly realized otherwise. Things have gotten better through the years, but it seems like most of their movies are of ‘direct to video’ quality. Nevertheless, each of us optimistically continues to look and occasionally we spy what appears to be a personal favorite—hey, isn’t that Transformers? Oh, there’s The Davinci Code. However, on closer inspection we realize its actually Transmorphers and The Davinci Treasure. These are mockbusters—lower budget versions of blockbusters meant to lure us in to a click.

With more content comes more confusion. It is true in media and its true in the endless shelves and screens of CPG. However, the annual Harris EquiTrend Study (released last week) found something interesting:

 “This year’s EQ study reflected an emerging trend in consumer behavior – the push to simplify and align with brands they know and trust….The decline reveals that consumers are becoming less connected to a large set of brands and more connected to a smaller, select set of brands, marked by decreasing brand awareness and quality perception in this year’s study.” (Emphasis mine)

Consumers’ answer to so much content is to narrow their focus. So how are competitors going to grab attention: look like trusted products. Video does it with mockbusters and CPG does it with private label. By imitating the attributes of favorite products, these items get into baskets (and maybe into rotation).  

What competitors have figured out is that consumers aren’t that observant. In fact, in my experience, even long-time customers can only recall the distinctive color of a box, the general shape of a logo or an iconic smell. Copy and claims are never top of mind. Therefore, mockbusters get clicked on and generic knock-offs get picked up off the shelf because they contain these basic, salient attributes.

This is why Nestle’s Kit Kat recently fought so hard against the Norwegian brand Kvikk Lunsj and their very familiar chocolate-covered, four-fingered wafer confection and Toblerone sued UK’s Poundland regarding their similarly mountainous chocolate, Twin Peaks. Because products are picked up in a Gladwellian “blink,” brands must guard their most fundamental of characteristics: Playdoh has trademarked their smell, Cadbury their color and Harley-Davidson their sound.

However, I predict that the brands that will win in the future will be those that proactively build a sensory moat around their products. That means developing tastes, textures, visuals and sounds that are so unique that they start off iconic, so stacked with irreproducible characteristics that they guard against those wanting to imitate.

So for all you entrepreneurs, product developers and marketers out there: assume that your consumer’s attention is limited and start thinking now about how you might create your own sensory moat.