When creating a brand or business, it is crucial to define what will be our brand differentiator. Having a strong brand differentiator will allow you to stand out from the competition and be memorable to customers.
What is a Brand Differentiator?
A brand differentiator, whether for a product or service, consists of the elements or characteristics that distinguish you from others and your competitors, enhancing your brand loyalty, sales, and growth.
There are various ways to differentiate your company, and understanding how you can do so will help you create a clear and focused strategy. To achieve this, consider three main types of differentiators:
• Sales
• Branding
• Usage
• Service
Sales-Based Brand Differentiator
Using sales as a differentiator allows you to use the process as a tool to persuade consumers to buy your product or service.
Cost Differentiator
Cost is a very effective differentiator for separating your products from others. However, it’s important not to misunderstand; if there’s a trend to differentiate by being more economical, you can also differentiate by being a more expensive product, which helps change the perception of the brand.
Example of a Sales-Based Brand Differentiator:
Pepsi once differentiated itself by advertising that one Pepsi was worth more than two Coca-Colas, although this was merely allegorical.
Branding as a Differentiator
Using branding as a differentiator means using aesthetics and experiences as tools to achieve good results.
Marketing Differentiation
Having completely alternative, innovative, and unique marketing strategies can help you stand out from the crowd, making your communication and marketing a powerful tool to differentiate yourself.
Brand Differentiation
The brand is the first thing a buyer sees, and it can be a significant differentiator. Being seen differently from others and standing out aesthetically among competitors is a great way to be distinctive.
Experience Differentiator
Brands that offer unforgettable experiences and memorable moments around their product or service allow other companies to be overshadowed, and your customers will constantly remember and think of you.
Example of Branding as a Differentiator:
Popi, a brand, distinguishes itself aesthetically by breaking away from the classic communication of a soda or soft drink, using a clear and direct design that helps users identify what the refreshment is.
Service Differentiation Strategy
A strong and important differentiator is the way companies treat you throughout their process, and the attention, follow-up, and support offered to customers are excellent ways to strongly and significantly differentiate yourself.
Attention Differentiation
Providing good customer service and making customers feel like they are the most important part of your company is an excellent differentiator. 96% of consumers say their buying decisions are based on the customer service provided by the company (information from HubSpot).
Follow-up Differentiation
Having an effective CRM or a follow-up on our customers’ purchases allows us to provide adequate and efficient follow-up, and having the right follow-up and an unforgettable experience allows us to differentiate ourselves from others.
Listening Differentiation
Actively listening to your consumers and making effective changes based on their comments is not only a great differentiator but also allows you to create a large community and stand out from other companies and competitors.
Example of Service Differentiation:
The video game Helldivers made changes that the community disliked, leaving reviews that they did not like the changes, so the developers decided to revert to the previous version and gave all players a new costume to use in the game.
Usage-Based Differentiation
Differentiating by usage is sometimes one of the most relevant because it changes the perception of a product or service, and achieving this is not easy.
Quality Differentiation
Having quality products is a great differentiator because it ensures that your customers will recommend you due to the quality of the product or service and continue buying.
Convenience Differentiation
Users are increasingly looking to save time and have more convenience at all times, so achieving a differentiation by convenience will not only benefit you, but your customers will thank you, especially if you simplify their lives, whether through automation or any type of convenience you can provide.
Innovation Differentiation
When products manage to make significant changes or propose their products or services in a different and innovative way, it is highly valuable to customers or users, and this definitely causes users to look at you differently from how they perceive your competitors.
Example of Usage-Based Differentiation:
Philips Hue smart bulbs, although many bulbs do what they do, stand out from the rest due to their intense colors, the quality of the app, and their interaction with smart assistants.
Although many of the differentiators you must have because the public expects their brands and companies to always have these features, having different elements that separate you from others is essential for achieving good results. Do you already have any of these differentiators in your business?
This year, elections will take place in several countries around the world, and these elections will have a significant impact on the direction of those countries in the coming years. This raises the question of what will happen with the elections and, specifically, what happens with their marketing. We will focus on the marketing of Mexican politicians because that is what we know best.
To understand political marketing, let’s first clarify that in the political case, it’s called advertising since advertising focuses on ideals and marketing on business. Having said this, we would also like to clarify some important points about political marketing.
Some characteristics of political marketing:
It has a defined and limited market, as it already works with adults.
It has a specific predefined period and an assigned budget.
It is adaptable and studies the impact of actions.
It combines traditional and digital marketing.
Having a solid personal brand is essential for achieving good results.
Political marketing sometimes takes place with practices that are not very ethical. If you are working in political advertising, it’s important to know the guidelines set by the authorities so you don’t get into trouble, in addition to considering the ethical and moral implications of these practices.
Unethical practices in political marketing:
Fake news
Social media and search engines are full of fake news, and this is not always accidental; some politicians promote the creation of campaigns with fake news. It’s important to distinguish between fake news and biased news; fake news provides false information, and biased news only loads the information with real data where it suits. Although this strategy, if well done, can achieve great success, it is not ethical and can get you into trouble.
Bots for positioning
The use of bots to position important topics is not new and surely will not disappear; bots position topics or news you want to put in the dialogue quickly and consistently. This tool has been used for years with great results, but like the previous one, it is unethical and will get you into trouble.
Gifts or vote buying
This practice happens less than it used to, but it still happens. In these practices, political marketers give away or deliver food, gifts, or some kind of incentive to vote for the desired politician.
Political marketing makes use of management, research, and communication to profile the “ideal product” for the “consumer – voter”, taking advantage of both traditional and digital marketing. Political campaigns require innovation, a multidisciplinary team, and detailed planning of messages to ensure effectiveness and emotionally connect with the audience. In this context, social media plays a crucial role, not only for spreading political projects but also for facing the challenges of fake news.
With this in mind, we bring you some political marketing campaigns from 2024 in Mexico.
Political campaigns in Mexico:
Mariana Rodríguez – Fosfo fosfo
Mariana is betting on becoming the mayor of Monterrey, with this in mind, she does what she knows best: being a great public figure who perfectly understands how social media works and using something that would have sunk anyone, which was her fosfo fosfo video, is now part of her campaign just as it was for her husband’s campaign.
Maynez Maynez president
Maynez is one of the candidates who appears not to participate significantly in the presidential competition, but with this in mind and knowing that nobody knows him, they have made a great political campaign so that his name is remembered and heard everywhere, to such an extent that my students sing it in classes, even if they do not vote for him, they are positioning him in an extraordinary way.
Xóchitl Gálvez
Xóchitl Gálvez’s campaign is betting on her story, what she is, what she has been, and a lot of work with technology. In her campaign, she is being very upfront against the current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Claudia Sheinbaum
Candidate Claudia Sheinbaum is focused on leveraging the current presidency and pushing what Morena has done in this six-year term and how she represents the continuity of the current presidency with clarity and presidential support.
These are the beginnings of political campaigns, and from this, we get to see how they create fun campaigns and others not so much, but in the end, it’s political advertising, which works extraordinarily today thanks to social media.
What do you think, which are the best campaigns of these elections?
As I know nothing about American football, every year the Super Bowl happens, I prefer to focus on what I do know and like: the commercials or the marketing. So, like every year, we bring you the commercials we liked the most from the Super Bowl 2024.
Good or bad, every year the Super Bowl commercials surprise us for better or worse, or just by the great artists they manage to get and even greater the productions they make for this event. Here are the 5 most interesting commercials from this Super Bowl:
Mountain Dew Commercial Super Bowl 2024
Featuring my crush Aubrey Plaza and leveraging her public persona characterized by being very indifferent and not paying much attention to things, comes the commercial she developed with Mountain Dew.
Squarespace Commercial Super Bowl 2024
Squarespace, a management tool, and in this beautiful commercial where aliens are invading the planet, but since everyone is on their phone, they don’t pay attention until the aliens make a website, showing the importance of having a website. If you still don’t have one, you can make it with the best marketing agency in Monterrey, BLNK 😉 😉
Google Pixel SB Commercial Super Bowl 2024
This commercial is very nice because it shows how the cell phone interacts with the user’s daily life and how having a cell phone impacts their life.
Dunkin Donuts Commercial Super Bowl 2024
We all love donuts, and in this delicious Dunkin Donuts commercial, we see Ben Affleck trying to impress Jennifer Lopez with the collaboration of Tom Brady and Matt Damon.
E*Trade Commercial Super Bowl 2024
A trading company with digital tools mocks the sport of pickleball, which is like tennis with small rackets, while talking about their finances, demonstrating how easy the sport is, just like managing your finances.
These commercials are not as interesting as they used to be, nor are they as fun and innovative as they were. Currently, few companies manage to make an impact. I believe this is something we will continue to see as they create commercials with decent narratives, and occasionally we will have very interesting commercials.
What do you think of the Super Bowl 2024 commercials? Did you like them, or were they as disappointing as the halftime show?
