If you don’t make a choice it will get made for you.
By someone else.
Either the customer or a competitor.
Avoiding the choice won’t make it go away.
The point about the Binary Brief is you have to make uncomfortable choices.
You have to choose what not to go for, as well as what to go for.
Of course everybody wants everything.
But you can’t have everything.
And no one wants to tell the client that, because that’s how you lose a pitch.
If you try to have everything you’ll end up with nothing.
So given you can’t have everything, what is the one thing that’s absolutely crucial.
The thing you can’t live without.
If don’t prioritise it will lead to confusion.
Your message will be dispersed.
It will lose power and become confusing and invisible.
Take Sainsburys for example.
Years ago, Sainsburys had become complacent.
For decades, they had been the country’s biggest food supermarket.
Their message was simple, “Good food costs less at Sainsburys”.
But Tesco overtook them in sales.
Because Tesco sold everything: electronics, toys, clothes.
So Sainsbury panicked, and started to copy Tesco.
They took the account out of AMV and moved it to M&C.
The brief was now to convey that Sainsburys sold everything, but do it without losing their food heritage.
Complicated or what?
So with that as a brief, the creatives wrote the campaign, “Making life taste better”.
Now that answers the Marketing brief, because it’s ticked all the boxes.
But because no one translated it into a Communication brief, it means nothing to the ordinary shopper.
The person who buys the stuff they sell.
Does it mean, for instance, “We not only make better tasting food, we make all aspects of life better”?
And if so, what does that man?
Does it mean, “We make more aspects of life better because we now sell more things”?
If so, that’s Market Growth for comprehensive retailers.
In which case more shoppers would go to Tesco.
Because they are market leaders in comprehensive retailing.
Which is the sole reason Sainsburys was running the campaign.
Because they wanted to upset that status quo.
Not reinforce it.
So Sainsburys lost its focus, its way, and consequently lots of sales.
Until AMV won the account back.
They did it by spotting that, although their overall sales weren’t as big as Tesco, Sainsburys still sold more food.
In fact, Sainsbury were market leaders in food retail.
Now spotting that fact was crucial.
It meant they could reframe the communication brief away from fighting for Brand Share in supermarkets, a market where Tesco were the biggest.
To Market Growth for quality food, a market where Sainsburys were the biggest.
There wasn’t enough difference to make enough people switch supermarkets.
Which is what Brand advertising would try to do.
But (with 14 million store visits a week) they didn’t need to.
They could do it by getting more money from their Existing Customers.
(If everyone spends an average £1.50 extra, that’s £1 BILLION a year.)
So they did “Try something different.”
They didn’t sell Sainsburys the brand.
They sold (say) nutmeg, or coriander, or parmesan, or ginger.
They didn’t do the expected route: Brand Share/ Triallists/ Brand.
They thought upstream, and did Market Growth/ Current Users/ Product.
The way they got a bigger share of the food market was to sell people food they hadn’t tried before (Market Growth for nutmeg, etc).
Followed through from TV commercials into POS all over the store.
Not Triallists but Current Users.
And communicate the merits of trying something new, like nutmeg (Product, not Brand).
Because you’re talking to Current Users, you didn’t have to do Brand.
They’re already in your shop, they’re already using your brand.
So Sainsburys had a simpler, clearer communication brief.
Which is how they achieved nearly £3 BILLION extra revenue over 2 years.
Clarity, simplicity, consisitency.
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Would this not have led to more people trying new things in tesco’s too? Like DVD players…
Maybe you haven’t seen the ads Arthur.
Each commercial was Jamie Oliver making a recipe that involved the item Sainsburys wanted you to try, like Nutmeg. So it was only food related.
Then all over the store, POS suggesting things to try. That was the whole point about concentrating on food.
that’s a common business trap: ignoring the existing users. “we already own them, why should we care for them?”
that and the fact that every service or product can mean only one thing to customers. not two, not three… one.
wasn’t there some statistic a while ago where someone calculated the cost of bringing existing and new customer to your store?
don’t know the exact numbers but the difference was huge.
will try to find it.
Finding new ways to get more money from your existing customers, rather than paying to get new ones is a fundamental strategy for many, if not all, businesses. Disagree that you can ignore the brand element though - existing customers still care about this and it plays a huge part in customer loyalty. Which is why Sainsbury’s forked out for Jamie Oliver rather than Rusty Lee.
But if you’re a tesco’s customer you won’t see the POS stuff in sainsburys so you may just be inspired to try a funny looking cucumber type thing in tesco’s.
Anyway, I like all this binary stuff.
I give it a 1 out of either 0 or 1.
Haha.
Hello Dave, am really trying to perfect this binary brief so that i can use it, cause i think its simple and genius. I have a question in the case of Sainsbury what if the marketing brief asked them to draw n new customer and increase the customer base, a competition like the one done by mobile companies who compete for subscribers, with a case scenario where they were not market leader, maybe they are third but still best in the food department, what would be the best approach.
Brand share cause they were number three/ trial list cause of the same reason and Product to entice the customers with the different foods the had
Arthur.
It doesn’t matter what Tesco customers do, either way Sainsburys won’t make money out of them.
And anyway, they’re not as strong as Sainsburys in food.
Which leads on to Client-Side’s point, product advertising actually did a lot for the brand.
Choosing things people normally wouldn’t buy made Sainsburys seem the food experts.
I agree to a point. But I still think Tesco probably did ok out of Sainsbury’s inspiring people to try something new. Like if Borders inspired people to read more but I buy books from Woolworths, or did.
Did you like my 1 out of 0 or 1 joke?
Muhile,
Your scenario sounds like Brand Share/ Triallists/ Product.
But it does depend on the food being different/better than the (larger) competitors.
Sainsburys is a funny one really. They try to compete with everyone so in a way remain very neutral. I think they are the most accessible for customers, but therefore have less appeal to most customers.
I think the serving suggestions idea works with someone like Jamie Oliver fronting it, but otherwise it is quite weak.
Take care of the existing users or catch new one? Pretty hamletic question.
A good example could be the Italian mobile phone market. One of the biggest mobile phone market in the world.
In Italy there are 4 different operators, TIM, Vodafone, Wind and 3.
The first two are the biggest so you choose them to be sure to have the line all the time you need.
Wind and 3 are very cheap so you choose it for the promotion or to have a new generation phone at a very low price.
In Italy there are more than 85 millions of sim card it it means that 140% of the adults has a sim card. In other words, each Italian adult owns more than one sim card.
I’m not good in math but you haven’t to be a genius to understand that if you have 3 sim card and your monthly mobile phone budget is 50€ each operator will earn only 16€ in stead of 50€.
Now the question is: Some marketing manager is thinking to do something to convince their client to have only one sim?
Unfortunately the answer is no.
Costanza, Why is the answer no i’d reckon alll for have a unique USP and if the do applying Brand share/current customers/ product, the company can get a bigger chunk of the budget, or what do you reckon dave is it as complex as it sounds.
Muhile and Costanza.
It seems to me phone users must have one of the two biggest networks, for coverage.
And everyone wants at least one smaller network, for price.
So, if I was a bigger network, I would introduce a cut price SIM which you could only get as part of a package with the main network SIM..
The deal for both would be cheaper to the customer than a separate big network (plus someone else’s smaller network).
You would bring in new customers from the competing bigger network and smaller networks because of cost.
You would only offer the cheaper deal to people who have both your SIMS as a package.
You would make a smaller margin on this deal, but you would have more customers.
So that’s Market Growth/Triallists/Product.
The Product (rational) is price, but it also does a great job for your brand in terms of scale (emotion/image).
Once you see how many customers the smaller networks lose, you may even be able to put the price back up a bit.
You will also make money on overlapping usage, and save money on admin.
Dave
That is what you would advice the bigger network in your scenario to do, but bare in mind some Agencies are given such a brief with no option of advising the client on introducing a promotion/product you are just told just encourage the customers to use my SIM card and not the others. And what if your client is one of the small ones.
Once you have the marketing to communication brief, how do you come up with that killer marketing strategy apologies if my question is off
Local anti-supermarket protesters only needed a marker pen.
“Making life taste bitter”
It was all over Brighton…….
“Making life taste bitter”?
cool. free advertising.
Muhile.
Sounds like the client has already given your agency the communication brief: Brand-Share/Trial/Product.
It doesn’t sound like they want to discuss it.
So it doesn’t sound like you’ve got any choice.
You have to find or invent a reason to switch from other networks.
I’m a bit late to this one but find it fascinating. what if you’re told your current users are two completely different audiences? do you still force the choice?
thanks
Hi Ewan.
I don’t know the specific case, but as a principle yes.
Clarity, focus, consistency.
There would have to be a very good reason not to.
thanks. i must stop listening to the research.
really appreciate the response.