Recently the New Yorker magazine featured an article explaining that most successful vendors in many product categories are the ones at the ends of the market.

In this case ends means either the ‘far better’ high priced end or the ‘aren’t bad low priced end. Companies in the Big Middle, where most of the customers were, are suffering, squeezed from both sides.  It’s an article that, when you stop and think about it, raises lots of questions about segmentation and the benefit (or not) of market share gain strategies, but that is a whole other blog.

Sandwiched in this otherwise interesting article was an observation that left me open mouthed:

‘ Today, consumers don’t need to rely on shorthand: they have Consumer Reports and J. D. Power, CNET and Amazon’s user ratings, and so on, which have made it easier to gauge differences in quality accurately.  The result is that brands matter less: a recent Nielsen survey found that more than sixty per cent of consumers think that stores’ generic products are equal in quality to brand-name ones.’

Brands matter less!? In a world of (often contradictory) information overload brands matter less?  In grocery stores where purchase decisions are measured in 100th’s of seconds or less brands matter less? 

You have got to be kidding – I would argue that the need for shorthand is going up not down.

Granted there is an awful lot of information out there and true, if your brand doesn’t stand authentically for something that differentiates you from the competition, you are in big trouble.  You will be found out, more quickly today than ever before.

This doesn’t mean brands matter less.  It means that brands matter more and it means that whatever is promised by the brand will have to be delivered far more robustly than ever before.

Yet again we have had the honour to contribute to a set of articles published in The Grocer in the last couple of weeks.

Alex Waters, director of Capabilities, comments in last week’s article “Can new campaign resolve the binge drinking problem?” written by Nicolette Allan and Richard Ford (25th July 2009). The article discusses whether the latest campaign against binge drinking (which will favour subtle persuasion over scare tactics) will work. For an extract of what Alex has to say please see below and the full article can be found on The Grocer’s website.

The week before, our director of Closeness, Anna Eggleton, comments in an article written by James Ball entitled “Clear Skies for Brands; Heavy Clouds for Own Label” (18th July 2009) discussing the performance of the 150 top UK’s food and drink manufacturers in the current economic climate. The piece examines which companies are rising to the challenge – versus own label and smaller branded companies that are struggling. Anna advices that middling brands have to out-think their bigger rivals, as they can’t outspend them. She adds that planning a riskier but well-targeted campaign is better than spreading a small pot of money thinly. Please find Anna’s full comments below, and for the entire article please click here.

And all good things come in threes: Richard Oldham, director of Innovation comments in the article “It’s not for men” written by Nicolette Allen on 27th of July. Nicolette questions brands such as beer and pizza, that have traditionally been the preserve of men, being targeted at women. Please see Richard’s thoughts below – the complete article can be found here.