The Importance of Differentiation

Have you ever experienced or saw consumer in a store alley, standing in front of a shelf for quite sometimes confused what product to choose and buy? This might happened because he/she saw so many product in the same category with different colors, sizes, fragrances, offerings, etc. The problem is, all looks the same in the eye of consumer. So by the end of the day, they will choose the cheapest. Off course we don't want this to happen with our brand. 

In marketing world, one of the biggest challenge for marketer would be to create brand differentiation. It is very important to show our consumer that our brand is different, unique. Because by having such a unique selling point, we will help consumer to decide and choose our brand instead of others.  

Many brands have successful and many have failed in creating differentiation. Few of brands that has successfully create differentiation is LeMinerale, Mayora bottled water brand that launch in 2015 and Super Pell, Unilever floor cleaner brand in Indonesia. If we take Super Pell as the case, in the year 2006-2007 the brand struggled to grow because so many players in the market offered the same positioning. Every brand tried to offer consumer variety of fragrance, from fruity to aroma therapy. In the store, the same thing happened, consumer will found a lot of brands with colorful pack on shelf with no distinct differentiation, make consumer confuse which one to buy. 
  
With this challenging situation, Super Pell marketing team finally decided to create unique differentiation for Super Pell despite the nature of the product is quite hard to be differentiated. First they define the existing possible positioning in the category and map all the player in the market as you may see in figure 1.  

Figure 1. Floor Cleaner Market Mapping

From the mapping we know that the category could be split into 3 big clusters that offers Nice Fragrance, Clean Result and Anti Bacteria. We also identified that all of players at that time were fall into the nice fragrance and anti bacteria clusters, leaving Clean cluster with no brand. Nice fragrance filled with brands like Super Pell, So Klin, SOS, Sleek, etc. While anti bacteria cluster filled with Wipol, SOS, etc. 

Looking at the mapping, we decided to move super pell positioning from fragrance to clean cluster and offer consumer with Super Pell with new positioning as the only floor cleaner brand that offer Total Clean. As part of implementation of this new positioning, we did some changes in brand Marketing Mix elements as below:

A. Product

We made changes on the formulation to get stronger cleaning result. Do series of test vs competitor to ensure SP product performance are winning. Beside the formulation, we also change the pack design to reflect the clean properties. This is done by making the pack color looks clean and premium as we could see in Figure 2. The new pack design also helps the brand to be stand out on the shelf compared to others.

Figure 2. Super Pell Pack Range

B. Place

With the new packaging design, Super Pell looks differentiated compared to other player. The brand easily found and identified. We also negotiate with customer/store to get shelf blocking. Earlier stores arrange floor cleaner product based on fragrance or color. With new negotiation, we get the shelf blocking where consumer could see our product easily.

C. Promotion

We need to let consumer know what is new with the brand, and make it relevant for them. To do this, we create new brand campaign called "5 Sign of Total Clean". The campaign was done in both ATL and BTL. Series of TVC was created with the message of Total Clean. 

Figure 3. Super Pell Relaunch TVC

Super Pell new differentiation finally resulted with strong double digit growth. Significantly improved compared to previous year where the brand was suffered for minus growth.

- BA -