Opinion
The “—er” positioning and a broken media ecosystem: A challenge and an opportunity for brands
Summary
In the evolving marketing landscape, brands struggle to stand out amid commoditization and algorithm-driven media. Shubhranshu Singh of Tata Motors highlights the importance of emotional connections and consumer trust, warning that reliance on algorithms may lead to cultural uniformity."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…"
In these opening lines of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, Charles Dickens emphasizes that transformational times are both full of hope and horror. We are at a similar crossroads in terms of the marketing’s evolution.
There are two big realities in the present age. First, brands are struggling to differentiate meaningfully. Technological advancement is forcing commoditization. The only way to create brands is to attach meaning to them. The only way to do so is via access to media.
But, here comes the second part, the legacy media ecosystem is broken and digital media is constrictive.
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When one brand is just like another except cheap-er, small-er, bigg-er, thinn-er, sharp-er, light-er, fast-er, or even bett-er, we can see there is trouble.
Denise Lee Yohn (brand expert) called it the “-er position". It relegates a brand to a subordinate status bound to use another brand as a reference point. If a brand spotlights its comparative value, it implicates its inherent value. Its value proposition becomes: I am just as good as Brand X, but ’ _er.’
Great brands don’t operate in a reactive mode. They are bold and confident. They create a consumer mindset and cultural reference points. They identify powerful ideas on the horizon and discover ways to advance them. They create markets.
The fact is that the “-er" product or service doesn’t win unless the perceived value is ‘- er’ too.
How to do that?
Think in terms of emotions. Humans will always be emotional, irrational, and unpredictable. That is why marketing can never be reduced to a Newtonian science.
The texture, quality and intensity of human interaction matter. Brands are trusted, but building that trust needs engagement. As communicators, brands need charge of social dialogue to transmit facts. But there is now less opportunity to do so.
Media has shifted from being big, broadcast and infrequent to being small, social and always on. The 20th-century content world was about hits. The 21st-century digital entertainment economy is about niches. Within niches, brands try to efficiently target prospects. But, successful marketing isn’t about optimizing efficiency. Without evocative meaning, every brand is a base commodity. So, when sameness is enforced – be it in specs, use of media, processes, references, faces, places, and the route to market - one ends up in a massive undifferentiated heap along with everyone else.
Audience access is controlled by social media platforms with self-serving algorithms. India’s consumer world is organized around the mobile phone. Brands need a mobile-first strategy to have a chance.
This disruption has been introduced by TikTok across the world. Vertical short videos on auto play mode and injected by algorithms.
Billions of people with smartphones have led to stupendous amounts of content. In 2007, YouTube had 6 hours of content uploaded every minute. In 2024, on average, 500 hours of content were uploaded every minute.
Spotify has 60,000 tracks added every day in 2022, totalling a staggering 21 million tracks in a year. In 2008, the entire iTunes music store was at only 8 million tracks.
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But people have limited time, hence search, click, trending tabs, and standardized, vertical scrolling have become the default format across all platforms with superscripted, ultra-packed videos, of a short duration lasting an average of 20 seconds.
The casualty is attention span. We don’t look and find. We get served and consume reflexively.
Algorithms are responsible for Google’s search results, Facebook feeds, Spotify’s playlists, the thumbnails on the Netflix homepage and even how our mail is sorted into folders.
Algorithmic recommendations shape the vast majority of our experiences based only on our previous actions and the pre-selection of content that most suits the pattern of our behaviour and that of people like us.
The business model of social platforms is simply to get more people, keep them engaged in an always-on mode and make the offerings accessible, replicable, and participatory, but controlled. Shoshana Zuboff labelled it as ‘Surveillance Capitalism’. Tim Wu called it ‘The Attention Economy’. Eli Parisar called the resulting ecosystem a ‘Filter Bubble’. All of it is true. None of it is truly avoidable.
The world is a smaller place, navigable in a few clicks but there is a cultural homogenization with similar behaviours and preferences diminishing unique identities.
A consumer is nothing ‘average’. She is more than her clicking self but recommendations limit exposure to alternative perspectives and curtail enrichment via diverse cultural experiences.
In the new social media ecosystem, individual choice and creativity have been compromised and excused away in the name of information sorting and providing superior user experience. We are losing our capacity to engage for long, to remain curious and stay emotionally motivated.
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Therefore, a platform’s format has itself become more important than the message. The canvas is more important than the art and the orchestra is more precious than the music.
Unless brands own the emotion and engender trust, things may go from bad to worse.
Winter is coming!
Shubhranshu Singh is chief marketing officer of Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles.
