VentureNiche

Summary: Great small companies create specialized products that target an identified user group and are unique in the market. Great small companies most often don’t have the luxury of a brand manager or often even a marketing department. Learn from the branding efforts of the big guys and have your next product release be an even greater success in the market.

As I was drinking a Snapple green tea, waiting in the Des Moines airport, I took a close look at the Snapple packaging and had time to think about the amount of effort that is put into the graphics, the marketing message and the overall brand of the product. There was nothing unique or differentiated about the actual drinkable product inside. Cola is another great example of a non-niche product with practically no taste difference between any of the colas on the market. In taste tests consumers can’t tell the difference. Yet when you ask consumers they have a strong preference for one the drinks. The brand and marketing is the only differentiator between the drinks.

Imagine how you would sell your product if there was nothing unique about it on the market. What would you do differently?

Here is an interesting pdf of a study by McClure1 et al that looks at what happens in the brain when consuming cola. They perform blind taste tests and then also taste tests with brand cues for Coke and Pepsi while watching the subjects brain response using fMRI. The presence of brand images causes different areas of the brain to fire and interact with the taste centers to define the preference. Branding works in changing how we feel about the product especially in the case for Coke and apparently less so for Pepsi.

So how does this apply to our small companies? How would you brand and market your product if there were nothing unique or better about it compared to competing products on the market? Why don’t you do that currently? If the product can sell well on its own unique merits then the combination of a unique product and a strong brand and marketing message can only improve the sales of the product. So save some time, energy and budget when developing your next product and spend some effort on the branding and packaging of the product. You will improve the user experience and perception of the product and ultimately drive more sales.

1. McClure, Samuel M., Jian Li, Damon Tomlin, Kim S. Cypert, Latane M. Montague, and P. Read Montague (2004b), “Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks,”