Positioning Guide 8

In consumer marketing, your brand’s unique brand benefit should specify how your brand will satisfy the internal wants/needs of your target customer.

If you will recall Maslow’s Hierarchy from the “What is Marketing?” portion of this blog, we used the hierarchy as a concept for understanding consumers’ wants/needs.  If we use Maslow’s Hierarchy and Colgate Total as examples, Colgate Total promises to deliver the benefit of total protection.  We all want to be protected, and one might think that this unique brand benefit satisfies a portion of the safety wants/needs of Colgate Total’s target customers.  But the target customer for family toothpaste is Mom, and Mom wants to protect her family.  Protection of family is probably a social need.  The unique brand benefit of total protection satisfies a portion of the target customers’ social wants/needs.  Total protection is the value that Colgate Total promises to deliver to its target customers.

In the sports drink category, Gatorade through its historical marketing investments with winning teams and winning athletes has established itself as the brand for winners.  The need to be a winner is an ego want/need.  The value that Gatorade delivers to its target customers is that Gatorade will make them a winner.

Gatorade is an excellent example of brand positioning.  Not only has does it own the motivating benefit in the product category, the ownership of “winning” blocks other competitors in the category. That is, since Gatorade is the brand of winners, who buys the other brands in the category?  Losers!