Positioning Guide 9

A product benefit is not a brand benefit.

A product benefit is what your product does.  When you talk about product benefits to end-users, they have to mentally translate the product benefit into what internal want/need the product benefit satisfies.  If you work in a given product or service category, you are more involved with and knowledgeable about your product or service than your target customer.  For you, the translation from product benefit to satisfied internal want/need seems to be an easy bridge to build.  However, you’re asking your target customer to do mental work in building that bridge, and your target customer doesn’t want to work.  Your product/service category and your brand isn’t important enough to your target customers warrant the mental work that it takes to build bridges in their minds.

As an example, an automobile manufacturer whose brand is associated with safety/security says that their car’s four wheel drive will give you “better traction when the going gets tough” thinking that the target customer will translate that product benefit into satisfaction of the internal want/need for security.  However, target customers think “better traction” is good, but will fail to translate the product benefit into the satisfaction of their safety/security wants/needs.

Let’s assume that the message “better traction” in this example registers with your target customers.  If a marketing researcher were to probe what “better traction” means to the target customers, I believe that the target customers would respond with something generic, such as, “I can keep going.”  In other words, the car is giving them the product benefit that they expect from a car – transportation or mobility.  This is the generic benefit of the product category and doesn’t differentiate the brand from other automotive brands. 

Too many marketers fall into the product benefit trap of more, better, bigger, faster.  They know that a given product attribute is important to their target consumers so they perform rigorous product testing against their competitors’ products.  They want to substantiate a claim of more or better or bigger or faster.  Their competitors are doing exactly the same thing.  One marketer will claim 20% more, the next will claim 15% faster, etc.  Who does the target consumer believe when presented with conflicting claims?  No one. 

We call our brand benefit a unique brand benefit.  If your messaging is claiming more, better, bigger, faster, your benefit isn’t unique.  You’re claiming the same thing as your competitors; you’re just claiming more, better, bigger, faster of the same thing.