Many brand owners mistakenly believe that if they can’t be the first, they must be the best and that the best product will win. This notion is rarely true, as there is no such thing as a single, universal ‘best’ product in the customer’s mind – it will be the one that suits each customer best. In most markets, premium and luxury brands tend to have smaller customer bases and smaller opportunities to grow, although their margins mean they can be very profitable.

Unlike ‘maximising’, where we look for the optimal solution (e.g., buying the best), ‘satisficing’, a combination of satisfy and suffice, was introduced by Herbert A. Simon in 1956. It is the idea that people don’t always look for the best but simply something that does the job – a blend of satisfying and sufficing.

You don’t actually have to be the first, you just need to be the first in the mind of the customer. This battle for the mind is more important than physically being the first. In other words, you must be the first to take it to the mass market.

A common myth is that Henry Ford invented the automobile. The first car is actually attributed to Karl Benz in 1885/6 with a three-wheeled ‘Motorwagen’3. Henry Ford launched his first car ten years later (1896) but created a new way to mass-produce cars, which helped him gain traction rapidly and so quickly established itself as first in the customer’s mind.

We can’t all be first to market; sometimes, it’s far easier to learn from mistakes and improve on what is out there, and then attempt to steal a slice of the action. This is when it becomes important to differentiate your brand from the market leader or create a new category of your own to dominate. For example, take the yoghurt market, where there are now a dizzying number of categories: Organic, Probiotic Drinking, Greek, Indulgent, Kids, Skyr, Kefir… the list goes on. For each of these, I suspect different brand names will come to mind.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is how the customer perceives the brand. Brands compete for the mind, which is why brand perceptions and positioning remain essential. Minimising the competition is important to becoming a long-lasting, successful brand. Putting the customer’s mindset at the heart of your business is one of the most fundamental aspects of this book, as Brand Momentum is all about understanding the brand from the customer’s perspective. The only way to find out where your brand stands and what it means is to talk to your target customers, listen to what they have to say, and, most importantly, ask the ‘right’ questions.

Put Brand Momentum to Work

To find out more, get your copy of Brand Momentum, the groundbreaking book that’s packed with cutting-edge research, innovative strategies, and the psychology behind momentum theory. This is the playbook every marketer and business leader needs in their arsenal to understand how brands truly grow.

To put Brand Momentum to Work in your business, reach out to the experts at Vision One. Our qualitative and quantitative research expertise has helped hundreds of organisations make better decisions and track marketing performance.

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