Andrea McLearen 7/12/18 Andrea McLearen 7/12/18

12 Ways To Boost Perceived Value Without Sacrificing Profit

Recession. A jobless recovery. Consumer fears stoked with every bank announcement. No matter how much you spend in marketing, the news networks will out-GRP your glitziest appeals to spend with recommendations to consumers to belt-tighten. So how do you position your brand to “win” with cost-conscious consumers, without lowering your price?

Leonora Polonsky, former Manager, Global Marketing Knowledge & Innovation at Procter
& Gamble, conducted a multi-industry global study that identified 10 ways to increase perceived value (we’ve supplied two more ways, plus additional examples in many areas):

Plus two more from our experience and our Success Avenues™ database:

Make Money No Object – Elevate your message to a higher-level benefit where price doesn’t matter. Examples include Michelin: “there’s a lot riding on your tires” (commercial with baby on board, drove 7% annual growth) or DeBeers: “A diamond is forever” (making diamonds a small investment for a lifetime relationship).
Change the Unit of Measure – Equate the cost of your product to a more palatable equivalent, such as the iMac launch that claimed it costs less than $30/month to own (“about the price of 3 pizzas”) or a South American Fiat leasing offer for only $6 “or 3 beers a day.”
Use Price to Signal Quality – Rather than ignoring your premium pricing, embrace it. Alpen in the U.K. advertising attributed its (high) price point to higher-quality ingredients … catapulting its value impression and driving sales growth of 30%. Stella Artois is “reassuringly expensive.” The iconic “pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” ad is another example of not hiding from your premium position.
Change the Competitive Reference – Compare to a more expensive ‘gold standard’ product or service, often in an alternative channel. This is a P&G favorite tactic lately, including Crest Whitestrips comparison to whitening treatments by dentists, and Olay’s series of claims versus department store skin care brands, prescription dermatology remedies, or as an alternative to plastic surgery. DiGiorno got into the act with “delivery quality” pizza. Note: parity claims are fine if the competitor is higher price or perceived quality.
Showcase Extra Mileage – Demonstrate your product’s superior duration, such as a paper towel that absorbs more than many sheets from a competitor, or (as our President suffered from first-hand!), Imodium’s claim to work with one dose instead of 6 spoons of the “pink stuff” (Pepto-Bismol).
Encourage Indulgence – Give consumers an emotional reason to indulge, the classic one being “L’Oréal, because I’m worth it.” Another example is McDonald’s “You deserve a break today,” though they have more specific value menu messages available to them now.
Highlight Others’ Tradeoffs – Communicate added benefits, such as Clusivol Vitamins in the Philippines, which you should take because “getting sick costs more”; and a laundry detergent in Brazil that simplifies the laundry routine versus current practices, giving consumers more free time.
Minimize Perceived Risk – Warranties and guarantees are standard tactics in this area, such as the Old Spice “Prove It” guarantee. Working with a client in the identity protection space, we’ve marveled at LifeLock’s CEO, who brazenly includes his real social security number in the company’s ads and guarantees identity protection.
Create New Language to Elevate Worth – Oftentimes this leverages a “standard of excellence,” such as on Olay Daily “Facials” or “Gourmet” Popping Corn. One of our favorite examples: “SlowChurned” ice cream, healthy + yum!
Line Extend with Lower Price Variants – This is a P&G innovation strategy to stratify product lines based on pricing, such as Bounty Basic. Do so carefully, as there are several important risks to manage, plus it might open an “Achilles heel” for the brand … which thus far P&G’s competitors haven’t yet exploited.
Leverage Contagious Consumer Loyalty – Genuine, intense loyalty can be incredibly persuasive and improve value. For example, the “Swaps” campaign (“we’ll give you two of brand X for your brand Y”), while flat-footed, succeeded across numerous categories and geographies. Other examples include “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” (which consumers can’t resist doing) to “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” (in the 1920s).
Align with a Higher Purpose – More than cause marketing, this is a genuine, all-encompassing commitment to an issue of supreme importance to target consumers, such as Aveda’s environmental commitment or Stonyfield Farm’s and Honest Tea’s strict commitments to food purity and social responsibility standards. The more brands there are on the bandwagon, the less distinctive and impactful the cause may be (though it still could be a “price of entry” for consideration with some consumers).

Some of these are strategic equity builders that can drive a brand for years, others are more tactical and are best combined with stronger strategic positioning elements.

You can review Leonora’s presentation to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, including TV commercial and in-store P.O.P. examples, here; or contact us for an introduction.

Andrea McLearen 7/12/18 Andrea McLearen 7/12/18

Leveraging Innovation Summits as Ingenuity Catalysts

The bigger the company and the greater its internal resources, the easier it is to believe that “we have all the answers internally” when it comes to innovation and marketing ideas. And many people rightly complain that some brainstorming sessions create heaps of undeveloped ideas that never go anywhere. Yet two recent innovation summits that we were involved with have reminded us of the dramatic value that savvy, experienced outsiders with a fresh perspective can bring to a project in just a few days.

Read our two brief case studies and learning for the future:

The Re-framing Summit

The first event was an innovation summit we engineered for a Fortune 100 consumer products company to help re-frame a category/need-state they wanted to enter and find “blue oceans” (i.e., to find untapped new market opportunities that are strongly differentiated and, ideally, will grow the market). The participants included the project team, hand-picked innovators from across the corporation’s divisions, and a wide array of outside experts from marketing and innovation agencies. Together with the client and facilitator, it was a 2-½-day process comprised of:

Immersion to develop common understanding of the marketplace, consumer, competition, technology, etc.
Stimulus sessions to stretch people’s creativity and illuminate new strategic directions, featuring 3 interactive sessions:
1. Blue Ocean Strategy led an overview of how different strategic choices can redraw market lines via 6 key paths.
2. Jeff Goldstein introduced how the cognitive science of Schemas and Conceptual Blends guide how we think and can be vehicles for simple, crystal-clear-to-consumers innovation breakthroughs.
3. Jeff also introduced innovation Success Avenues™ leveraging 11 relevant models drawn from our database.
Platform Development & Assessment to convert insights and ideas into full re-framing strategies and new product ideas, and then evaluate and prioritize those strategic platforms.

The results included 12 prioritized new platform opportunities and a much deeper strategic understanding of the opportunities. Client feedback ranged from “transformational” to “best experience in my career.” The project team was energized, presented the platforms to corporate leadership, and used them to channel and focus subsequent innovation directions.

The New Brand Summit

The second event was hosted by another great innovation agency and was designed to develop 4 new brand “vector” opportunity areas we had identified into more robust, fully articulated product concepts. Participants included the project team, the agency strategists and creatives, and outside branding and beverage category practitioners (cooks, mixologists, etc.). The 1-½-day session included:

Orientation – A brief review of the objectives, process, and research to-date
Platform Development for each of the 4 areas, using magazines and discussions as stimuli to help complete templates and dioramas to illustrate platform ideas
Distillation by the core team to vote on, refine, and prioritize platforms

Results were strong, with 2 unique concept ideas developed for each of the 4 vectors, and diverse/unexpected creative value via new ideas, added ingredients, unique brand characters, product names, etc. After qualitative refinement, 3 of the 6 new beverage concepts generated top scores in consumer testing versus the concept database.

Key Learning From Innovation Summits

Both sessions avoided the “heap of ideas” brainstorming trap by having a well-defined purpose and output, using templates to structure ideas, and prioritizing and refining steps throughout
It’s important to have clearly defined processes to promote discussion in both large and small groups – in the first summit, the large group discussions were most illuminating, whereas in the second, the small groups yielded the “ah-ha” moments
The first session had a longer duration and richer sources of inspiration and stimuli, which, we believe, added extra value
“Voting” on ideas or areas can be helpful to prioritize, yet the commentary by passionate advocates of an idea and the ensuing discussion often illuminate new insights in ways that shift votes or may trump the group results
Visual templates and live illustrators can capture a dynamic living event, plus stimulate better dialogue and a more fun and creative atmosphere
Including people experienced in the particular category as some of the outside participants brings extra perspective beyond that of “merely” including smart/diverse people

Bottom-line, there’s no monopoly on good ideas, no matter the size of the company or the research conducted to-date.

If you want to battle-test your proposition, identify new growth opportunities, or generate/further develop robust innovation or marketing ideas, Innovation Summits can be great catalysts for success.