chapter 4
listening to the consumer makes your business homogeneous
When a consumer wants or needs a good or service, they don't think about the brand, but the category. If their car is always at the mechanics, they'll think about getting a new car, not a particular brand of car. If a family discovers their fridge isn't big enough, they'll think about buying a bigger fridge, rather than a particular brand of fridge. The category comes first, followed by the brand. The more you listen to the consumer, the more you understand the category. But if you're not careful, you begin to behave like everyone else in the category. It's the main reason so many brands within a category look and feel increasingly similar over time. Each brand draws on the same consumer needs and meets those needs in their respective brand offering. The more prolonged the existence of the category, and the longer the brand is within that category, the more homogenised it becomes.
Further, these days it's common to give everyone a say. Ideas are circulated for ‘builds' and ‘input'. But asking many people for input invariably leads to a regression towards the mean and ultimately, homogenisation.
Listen to Forrester. CX is dangerous
There's an unnecessary amount of attention given to customer experience (CX) and putting the customer first, and we see a massive homogenisation of brands already across many categories. Even those smart people at the international research agency Forrester agree. It's not an understatement to say they are a world leader in understanding technology and consumers and have tracked CX and its impact on branding for several years.
In a recent report, Forrester's principal analyst, Jay Pattisall, looked at the role of creativity in building brands and businesses and the role that consumer understanding has in limiting growth. He writes that CX ‘has become homogenised, and technology is now table stakes as customers can no longer distinguish one experience from another'.1 This should be pretty scary stuff for most brand owners — and I can demonstrate how prevalent the issue is right now. Go online and look at the landing pages of two or three of the big banks, or two or three fashion retailers, or the major supermarkets in your area. You'll begin to see how strikingly similar they are. It's the same when booking a flight regardless of the airline, or booking a room in a hotel. The CX for all of these brands within the same category is often the same and built off the same insights and consumer understanding. As the Forrester report describes, ‘Every brand offered the same digital experience because they all address the same customer needs, use the same technology platforms, and design for the same mobile use case.'
Further, Forrester has measured CX for several years with its Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), based on proprietary consumer survey data. The CX Index shows little sign of brand progress. The implication is that brands are experiencing homogenisation because of CX-led solutions. Differentiation and bringing the brand to life is not happening because of the pursuit of CX. The CX Index goes to 100 000 customers annually and is measured across 300 brands. In 2019, all 300 brands tracked by the CX Index were lapsing, lock-stepping or lagging. Digital sameness was pervasive. According to the report, organisations will have to look for a different way to grow their customer base. But before I continue with the heavy stuff, here's a fun anecdote about nappies.
Are you thinking of nappies?
In my book The Advertising Effect: How to change behaviour, I told the humbling story about the first time I bought nappies. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't for a baby. (That would happen in later years.) I was in Cannes about to give a keynote presentation in front of my advertising peers, but the night before the big event, I endured a horrific bout of diarrhoea. Rather than risk total humiliation, I bought a nappy and wore it under my jeans while on stage. It was a life-saver.
For most of us, nappies are one of the least cared about or considered products. We don't even think about them unless near the birth of a child. At that point, the care factor goes from zero to extremely interested rather quickly. This usually happens between the time your partner utters the words, ‘Darling, I think it's coming' and ‘Isn't he/she beautiful'. Just after the ‘Isn't he/she beautiful' part comes the tender, cute but mildly disgusting and ultimately nerve-racking experience of putting a nappy on your child. It's a fiddly affair made all the more difficult by a black cord at the baby's belly button that has a big plastic peg clipped over the end of it. (You wonder if the peg should go in or out of the nappy.)
Anyway, the nappy is attached, the baby comes home and the parents then need to decide what brand of nappy to buy. They weigh up the pros and cons of up to three nappy brands, make their decision and then purchase the brand of nappy. If they, and the baby, have a positive experience with that brand, they'll probably repeat the purchase over the next four years. The example of nappies demonstrates the process by which most of us make decisions about brands. I'll take you through this model and explain why customer understanding is mostly responsible for the homogeneity of brands.
How we buy just about anything
In 2007, McKinsey consultants outlined the consumer decision journey. This replaced the linear sales funnel, first described by E. St Elmo Lewis in 1898 and regarded as the first formal theory of marketing. The sales funnel is an outdated concept that states consumers systematically move from awareness of your brand, through to discovery, evaluation, intent, purchase and loyalty. The problem with the funnel is the buying process is no longer linear. Prospects don't enter at the top of the funnel and steadily move through it. Instead, they enter at any point and may jump around the different stages or stay in one stage indefinitely. The loop captures a more complex decision-making process. My agency, Thinkerbell, uses a modified version of the purchase cycle when developing communications plans (see figure 4.1).
Figure 4.1: the purchase cycle for just about anything
Passive consideration
It all starts with passive consideration, a marketing euphemism that describes the state people are in when they're not thinking about your brand or business. In this stage, people go about their lives and don't care about your brand. They are oblivious to a brand's advertising and, if asked, would say they're not aware of it. This is where most consumers are most of the time. In the example of nappies, this is where people are until they reach the ‘Isn't he/she beautiful' point. Most people don't care about nappies until there's a trigger: they're about to have a baby.
The trigger
The trigger happens when someone needs what your category offers. There can be several triggers for a particular category, known as ‘category entry points', which I'll talk about later. In the case of nappies, the trigger is the birth of a child (or when giving a career-defining presentation in Cannes with a bout of crazy bad diarrhoea). If you are thirsty when entering a service station, you decide to buy a drink. The trigger is thirst. If your car fails to start, it triggers the thought that you should buy a new car. The birth of a child might also act as a trigger to buy a new car. A new job could trigger the need for a more impressive car. Importantly, the trigger is nearly always the category, not the brand.
The exception is when your business is the category, which is discussed in chapter 6. You need a drink, not a particular brand of drink. You need a car, not a specific brand of car. And yes, when you have a baby, you need nappies, not a particular brand of nappy. When the need for the category is triggered, then comes the realisation that several brands are available.
Active consideration
During this stage, each brand is considered and evaluated on how well it meets your wants and needs. Will this drink satisfy your thirst? Is the nappy adequately absorbent? The choice is assessed according to the consumer's goal for the category. The active consideration or evaluation process is complex and multifaceted, but I use this formula: what I get divided by what I pay times context. In the world of nappies, there are usually one to three brands to consider, and the job is to choose one brand.
Purchase/decision
After active consideration comes the decision. You choose a brand.
Reconsideration
After using the brand, you decide if you will use it again. Will you repeat this choice? If not, which brand will you choose next time? If you had a positive experience with a particular brand, you're possibly more likely to choose it again.
The consumer wants your category, not you
Now, you may be thinking, ‘This is fine, Adam, but how does understanding the consumer make my brand generic?'
In chapter 3, I make a thought-provoking case that brand insight risks coating your brand in Teflon, where it slides in and out of consumer consciousness. The issue with the purchase cycle is that your brand is rarely considered in isolation; it's compared against alternatives. When a consumer is triggered to purchase, the category emerges and several brands come into consideration before the purchase. It's the job of each brand to stand for something distinctive and to occupy a unique place in a consumer's mind. When the category is triggered, your brand should own that real estate. However, the better a marketer understands the consumer, and the more they understand the triggers for the category, the more likely each brand will compete in the same category entry points using the same techniques, strategies, approaches and triggers.
Let me explain using a category I know a lot about: the hotel industry.
I'm sure you've had the experience of booking and staying at a business hotel. Most are pretty similar. Imagine your research asserts that price, location and comfort are the three strongest category drivers for choosing a business hotel. Other research reveals Instagram and morning TV influence consumer decisions. So you, along with most hotels, duke it out using these messages in these media environments.
A brand I'm familiar with has taken a different approach. QT Hotels is a chain of cool, upmarket hotels across Australia and New Zealand. Any time I visit Sydney, I insist on staying there. The hotel has several talking points — a fantastic bar, plush and sumptuous furnishings, free espresso martini makers in the rooms and the most incredible lifts. When you step into one of their lifts, the music is dynamically activated according to how many people are in the lift. If one person is in the lift, ‘I'm so lonely' comes through the speakers. If two people are in the lift, you'll hear Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' singing ‘Islands in the stream'. And if there are three or more people, it's party time. As popular and fun as it is, I doubt a consumer would include it on a decision tree matrix. It's merely a talkable feature of the hotel.
Steve Jobs said:
People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.
David Seargeant is cut from the same cloth. David is the founder and designer of QT Hotels, and he went beyond the predictable consumer triggers (price, location, comfort) to create a unique customer experience. He put BX (brand experience) before CX. For him, the brand expression is key. The brand expression is reflected in everything from the style of uniforms worn by reception staff to the eccentric in-house dining options to how guests are greeted to the look and feel of every room. Each is tightly controlled according to David's vision. Other hoteliers look at category drivers and drop the price of a room, talk about location and the excellent night's sleep you'll have at their hotel. And what does that lead to? Homogenisation. It's a real problem in the hotel industry as marketers focus on the guest over and above brand expression.
I worked with David on several campaigns for QT hotels. One of the most successful was ‘Room for Dessert' around Valentine's Day. Diners at signature QT restaurants received an added surprise with their final course — a room key. When you ordered dessert, you were automatically checked into one of the designer QT rooms, with a half bottle of Champagne waiting for you (on ice, of course). As other corporate hotels dial up their location, comfy beds and proximity to the CBD, QT is creating its own rules.
A tension for most brands is a need to be part of the category when the consumer makes a decision. So, they each dial up the ‘category drivers'. If market research finds the category drivers for hotels is comfy beds, then all hotels offer comfy beds. If people say they want a car that marries style with performance, that's what they'll all offer. The customer only considers what they need from the category, and brands clamber over one another to deliver on them – leaving differentiation by the wayside.
Homogenisation of style
Home furniture has also fallen victim to homogenisation, partly due to what I call the ‘Pinterest-isation' of design. Discovered a lounge you love? Post it on Pinterest for others to like and share until all couches start to look the same. Design has been democratised, which isn't necessarily a good thing. As the mainstream grows, it's become more difficult for distinctive designers and lone wolf artisans to stand out. It's a gravitational power that's sucking everyone towards the norm.
Homogeneity within technology
Likewise, the logos of major technology companies reveal a determined stripping away of identity and individuality. According to type designer James Edmondson, brands have shifted from distinctive logos to ones with the same sans serif font. The ‘o' in Spotify used to have three lines in rainbow formation above it, connoting sound. The letters in Airbnb were puffy with blue edging, suggesting a comfy bed in the sky. And Pinterest lost its craft look and its ‘pin'. Perhaps the only logo that has improved is Google's, although its old one implied ‘if we do a logo in colourful Times New Roman font it means we don't care about logos, which is possibly cool for a tech company like Google'. See figure 4.2 for the evolution of the logos over time.
Figure 4.2: logo convergence
Source: Adapted from a tweet from OHnoTypeCo
So what happened? There are a few reasons for logo convergence. The newer logos are cleaner and easier to see on a small screen, which is what many of us use. Serif and curves are harder to view and messier on a small screen. But I think there's a richness in the mess, which I'll elaborate on later. Another reason is that tech startups generally can't afford slick, shiny logos when starting and a mate's mate does the job cheaply.
Some brand experts suggest the logo isn't as important anymore. Who would confuse Google with Spotify? Ford makes trucks and McDonald's makes burgers, but both have identifiable logos. In my view, the scrappy edges, ugly bits and personality are being shaved off in our increasingly functional and utilitarian world. Logos are usually a mix of an ownable typeface with something of meaning to the company.
Over time, however, the logo is cleaned up and the rough bits removed. It means logos have become more generic and look like everyone else's in the category. Look at how the logos for AT&T and Google have changed over time (figure 4.3, overleaf).
Figure 4.3: changing logos with the times
Why do cars look like this?
There was a time not so long ago when different car brands looked, well, different. Today, if you removed the badge, many people wouldn't be able to identify the brand. This homogenisation is captured in designer Adrian Hanft's image of 23 cars from 21 manufacturers (figure 4.4, overleaf).
Figure 4.4: Adrian Hanft's ‘Zombie-mobile
Source: Adrian Hanft, Medium
In his article titled ‘The Zombie-mobile' Adrian says car manufacturers want to blend in rather than stand out. He writes,
Brand experts insist that success comes from promoting your unique attributes, but in practice, differentiation is less profitable than consolidation. In game theory, this is called the Nash equilibrium and is seen at every intersection where a Burger King opens across the street from McDonald's, or a Costco opens next door to a Sam's Club. Competition doesn't produce variety, it results in commoditization until we are left with 23 identical variations of the same vehicle.2
He's right to some extent. It's much easier to conform and create a bigger category of sameness than stand for something different. However, this is precisely why listening to the consumer kills brands. Consumers don't want to think. They want things to be as easy as possible, and if you go along with that, it means offering the same product as everyone else, including cars. For example, before the advent of the SUV, every car manufacturer claimed their brand married style and performance. One of the few industry innovations was the development and demand for the SUV for perceived safety reasons. It's been a saviour for the car industry. Tesla is the only manufacturer to produce an entirely different car, and in 2018 it outsold Mercedes-Benz in the United States.
Tesla's approach to research
In chapter 6, I'll talk about how creating the category is a surefire way to ensure differentiation. In cases where your brand creates the category, any insights will be helpful because you are the only player in the category. This is the case for the Tesla Model X SUV, the first fully electric SUV alternative in the marketplace. Writing in Bloomberg, Dana Hull describes the process Tesla went through to make sure this car appealed to women, particularly so-called ‘soccer moms'. Hull writes,
… Tesla invited a dozen women … for a three-hour focus group … The participants, most of whom drove minivans and SUVs, were asked what they like and don't like about their vehicles. Among the big issues: safety, a third row and getting kids in and out of car seats.
For a brand creating a new category, this is an excellent use of time, effort and money. The three-hour focus group uncovered the desires and gripes for a segment of consumers the organisation needed to understand. If the insights outlined in the article came from the focus group, it's great. But to be honest, I'm a bit sceptical because the insights that parents want safety, more space and easy access are hardly revolutionary. And Tesla delivered on them.
Marketing is a mass-market game
Some, but not all, agree with the notion that marketing is a mass-market game. Therefore marketers need to understand the drivers of the category that appeal to the most people and deliver on those drivers. As I mentioned before, if you're thirsty and want a bit of a pick-me-up you're likely to reach for a Coke (as it delivers on those drivers). Research companies have spent years attempting to understand category drivers. But the risk is the more you gain an insight into how consumers make decisions, and the more you act on this insight, the more likely it is you'll do what your competitors are doing, and therefore conform to category norms. In understanding the triggers for the category, you'll sell the brand at the same time and in the same way as the others. In understanding the category drivers, you'll risk building the brand and communicating in the same way as every other brand within the category.
Accounting firms all advertise the same message at the same time of year: ‘We love numbers and tax knowledge even though you think it's boring'. Or take car brands, with their end-of-financial-year run-out sales — the categories act in unison, and everything starts to feel the same.
The wisdom of crowds also leads to homogeneity
James Surowiecki's best-selling book The Wisdom of Crowds had a significant impact on me. I was conducting a lot of market research at the time and it helped me see the value in what I was doing. When you speak with many people with diverse opinions and bring together their findings, you'll create something of value. The book also covers the ways in which market research often gets it wrong, and the conditions required to allow the wisdom of crowds.
The central premise of the book is that groups make better decisions than any single member of the group alone. The book opens with the story of a crowd at a county fair accurately guessing the weight of an ox when their guesses were averaged. Some speculated the ox to be heavier than it was, while others guessed it was lighter, while others guessed with greater accuracy. It stands that these guesses present themselves in somewhat of a normal distribution and the higher estimates counterbalanced the lower ones. In the end, the average is ascertained and that average is very similar to the ox's actual weight. It's an excellent example of the wisdom of crowds, or that ‘none of us is as smart as all of us'.
The concept works in the case of guessing the weight of an ox or the number of jelly beans in a jar. It also arguably works with betting pools and predicting stock market rises and falls. Market research assumes that the same applies to ideas and brands. I think it has a similar effect, but that similar effect is damaging because it drags a brand towards the mean.
As mentioned earlier, most people assess a brand against how well the product or service meets the category need. And an array of insights, that is, the amalgamation of everyone's opinions, will invariably get you to a place where your brand services the mean.
In 2015, global professional services firm Ernst & Young made headlines around the world when it announced job applicants were no longer required to have a tertiary degree. The firm said it found no evidence of a positive correlation between academic success and achievement at the company, so they ditched the condition. This points to a growing lack of faith in the promise of tertiary education.
The tertiary education sector is very competitive, with universities fighting each other for students. Most conduct focus groups to gain an edge. It's something I know a bit about after conducting a series of them. One evening, I facilitated a group in a funky-looking room near the city. The vibe of the place was corporate cool, with deliberately mismatched furniture. It felt welcoming, except for the one-way mirror looming above the table and the microphones hanging low from the ceiling to capture every word. When I asked this group what they wanted from their university degree, one bohemian-looking woman said, ‘People look at me and judge me, and on a bad day I judge myself too and think I'm just not ready to enter the workforce. What I want from university is both to feel ready to enter the workforce with the right skills, but more than that, I want to feel ready as an individual. I want to feel like I know what I need to know to get a job.' There were empathetic nods around the table.
Other people said they wanted to attend university to explore ideas and philosophy. One chap said, with a wry smile, that the primary purpose of going to university was to party as hard as you can because life will never be this easy again. Other people spoke about using the university as a testing ground to find out what they wanted to do. Another woman with shocking pink dreadlocked hair said university is a dream. She can lie on the lawn and daydream and then go and have coffee and talk about things. But the consensus view was that university would help them get a job. Ask many people what they want and it will come down to the average.
The university I did research for is competing against every other university. And guess what respondents said in their focus groups, surveys and questionnaires? They also said they want to get a job. And so over time, each university loses its identity and gravitates towards the mean. All promise that if you attend their university, you will get a job. The amalgamation of these insights, especially when you optimise the content through A/B testing, would look a little like figure 4.5, with the size of the bubble reflecting how many people agreed with that insight.
Figure 4.5: university focus group insights
It follows that most of the advertising in the category is against the biggest need, again leading to homogeneity. (I've called the institution ‘Modern University' to protect its identity.)
Which university recommends the value of just letting your mind wander and be free? There are so many options available. I'm not saying any is right, and nor have I tested them to see which would be more effective. However, through research and opinion amalgamation, it's increasingly rare to see communications like this:
Each of these territories — imagination, broad learning, delayed gratification — are genuine and interesting to play with when considering what a university could stand for. But over time, there's a regression towards the mean because of the inundation of consumer insight.
There are several reasons why so many brands, especially older brands in mature categories, start to look and feel the same. But perhaps the main reason is they all draw on the same knowledge base. And this is a group of people who are all pretty much buying the same brands, and want precisely the same thing from each brand in the category. Unfortunately, not only does listening to the consumer make us more like everyone else, but it can also hamper breakthrough thinking.
Take the mock ads I created. They play with themes of exploration, boredom and the time taken to complete a degree. What does market research reveal about what people want from universities today? As well as an ability to get a job, prospective students asked for applied learning or study that's focused on real-world settings. They desire connections with the workforce and shorter, bite-sized courses. And it's in these areas that innovation is taking place with online education platforms such as Coursera, Udacity and MasterClass emerging. None is an established university. As a result, mainstream universities are now offering short courses, fewer arts subjects and more vocationally focused choices.
For some, this is great. I know of one university that's making excellent inroads in this space. But it's not the only option, and it becomes harder to notice other opportunities when you chase consumer insight at the expense of your brand.
This is not limited to education. Take another established category: banks. Most consumers say they want lower interest rates for lending products and higher interest rates for saving products. They want fewer fees and less complexity, and therefore that's what the major financial institutions all offer. The wisdom of crowds sometimes doesn't deliver a smart result.
What about Kodak?
Or any other brand that's no longer with us because it lost touch with what the consumer wanted and didn't adapt and remodel? Well, to those, I say, of course. I don't advocate keeping your head in the sand or suggest you ignore the consumer. I'm just trying to correct for the zealousness of a corporate culture that's chasing after every consumer insight. The other half of the marketing equation always has, and always will be, ensuring the consumer wants what you sell. We simply need to keep a balanced perspective. In order to stay ahead of the curve and innovate, it's important to understand where insights are from.
The difference between being customer led (bad) and understanding your market (good) was outlined in 1998 in an article titled ‘Customer led, and market orientated: Let's not confuse the two' published in Strategic Management Journal.3 Kodak, for the record, was neither; it was more ‘head in the sand'. Understanding the latent, unexpressed and future needs of the market is preferable for an organisation (market orientation) rather than satisfying customers' expressed needs, which can be short-term, reactive and prioritised ahead of the brand.
Fear the power of tradition
A good friend of mine was pretty wild at university. He was always seeing bands, took loads of drugs and went off the rails. Fast forward ten years and he was an up-and-coming lawyer and settling down to get married. On the big day, he cut a fine figure in his suit. We were all shocked at how normal and textbook and lovely the wedding was. In his speech he said, ‘Never underestimate the power of tradition', and I knew what he meant. We often fall into a groove or path because it's comfortable and familiar. This might work when choosing a life partner, but not in building a brand.
Brands need to stand for something distinctive. I hope I've highlighted the dangers inherent in asking groups of people about a brand or idea you may control. The more people you ask, the more the advice will take you to insights that already exist.
Notes
- 1 Pattisall, J. (2019). The Cost of Losing Creativity: The ROI model for agency creativity. Forrester.
- 2 Hanft, A. (2015). ‘The Zombie-mobile'. Medium.
- 3 Slater, S., & Narver, J.C. (1996). ‘Customer-led and market-oriented: Let's not confuse the two'. Strategic Management Journal, vol. 19, iss. 10, pp. 1001–1006.