How to Brand in competition

What do you do when your competitor has all the features which you have in your product and all the products in the market have become commodities. At that time it’s only the brand that comes to rescue the product, if you have invested enough dollars in building the brand, more than investing have you made a place in the minds of the consumer. That matters and would help your brand survive the storm commanding a premium.

The above situation is quiet normal with all the products as they pass through the various stages of product life cycle. According to me the imitation happens at three levels

Stage 1-LAUNCH: The marketer has invested huge amount and time in bringing out the product and educating the customer about the new product. In this stage there are huge amounts spent as it’s a new product and doesn’t fly of shelf easily. It has to be pushed for sometime.
Advertising strategy in this stage is mainly concentrated on explaining the benefits of the new product and the focus is on product features mainly rational appeal.

Stage 2 -ATTACK: In this stage the competitor does some reverse engineering and tries to bring in a similar product which is sometimes more better than the former as he knows the loopholes and tries to fill them. In this stage the market is flooded with similar products trying to gain a market share. All the marketers try to spend huge amounts in drawing a difference with their product and end up imitating all the features in their product. Turning the brand into commodity.
Advertising strategy in this stage is to differentiate your offering from the other by hitting on the unique features and communicating this unique difference to the customer

Stage 3 –SURVIVAL: The Market has a slew of products which are quite similar in nature with little or no difference. All trying to gain consumers share of mind and share of heart. In this stage the marketers doesn’t focus on the product and tries to connect the product with the unique experience of using the brand, this is called as emotive appeal
In this stage the marketers try to strike the emotional chord with the customer and try to connect with the heart of the customer.

Below are few advertisements of successful brand which are at the peak stage and trying to strike a relationship with the customer

Coke is trying to differentiate from other fizzy drinks by focusing on the joy of family eating together. In this ad, the focus is neither on the taste nor other benefits but simply on the relationship of a family and the taste of food made by one’s Mother. The coke bottle is placed smartly in between the ad depicting that family enjoys having coke together. When a mother sees this ad she would rejoice about her importance in the family and would subconsciously associate coke with family bonding.



Parachute’s new ad shows the new girl who is responsible and how she plays different roles in her daily life. Even this ad doesn’t show the product or its features, it just emphasizes on women and how responsible she is. When a girl watches this ad the