The “hard” sciences (such as physics and chemistry) are often obsessed with the search for universal truths – those reassuring phenomena (such as gravity) that are constant across time and place.
In our desire to present marketing as a “hard” science, marketers often fall into the same mindset of wanting to find the one, perfect solution to a given problem – the optimal combination of product features that will yield the highest conjoint scores; or the positioning concept that will have universal appeal.
This is a dangerous myth. If I have learnt one thing, it is that anything to do with humans is going to involve a limited dose of universality (in the form of a Jungian archetypes or a levels of need in Maslow’s hierarchy) and a big dose of variability. For example, while it is true that all humans crave status, we have remarkably different preferences for the specific way in which this need for status should be met - for some it is about flashy cars, for others it is about the number of followers we have on Twitter. For some, security is essentially a financial concept; for others, security is predominantly an emotional concept.
This variability means it is a myth to try to conceive the “perfect” product or positioning. There is no universal “perfection” – the concept of “perfect” only makes sense in the context of a clearly defined audience.
This means there are as many “perfect” products or positionings as there are clusters of individuals with similar wants and needs. The goal of marketing is to identify the optimal strategy for appealing to an economically viable number of these clusters.
This inevitably means that brand strategy is based as much on who we are NOT trying to appeal to, as much as who to appeal to. It is liberating to recognize that branding is not about creating universal appeal – it is about identifying the specific segment of the population to whom you are able to present a uniquely compelling proposition.
