The Brand Farm

A celebration of brands & the strategy that drives them!

Functional Benefits

Unlike Seinfeld (the show about nothing) brands are about something. To have value, they must have benefit. Ultimately, the consumer asks, "What's this do for me?"

Brands deliver functional and emotional benefits to their users. Both are essential, but I believe the functional benefit is precedent in brand building. Everything else builds on this decision and no amount of marketing overcomes a mistake in this area.

Brands exist inside competitive sets or categories, and often sub-categories. These categories typically have a core functional benefit, maybe more than one. They are the price of entry. People buy detergents to clean clothes. People drink soda because they are thirsty. They eat when they are hungry. They buy pet food their pet will eat. You may or may not be able to differentiate around a category's functional benefit, but you better be competitive.

Which brings us to product performance. As a marketer, you must know the truth about your brand's performance compared to competition and compared to consumer expectation. No amount of trial overcomes lousy performance.

So within your competitive set, what is the core functional benefit(s)? Read more...

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Comment by Michael B. Moore on September 17, 2009 at 6:40pm: I generally agree with your comments here. brands are definitely about both physical and emotional benefits. that said, in some categories the balance between physical and emotional is quite different. In water, for example, its pretty much all about the emotional. H2O is H2O - but Fiji Water is "natural artesian water . . ."

At the end of the day, I view the equation and balance between the two as such: People make purchase decisions mostly based upon emotional considerations, but the physical must support/reinforce the emotional. Ferrari sells its Cavallino Rampante, but if the cars started to underperform - then sales would drop. Bounty is the "quicker picker upper" - but only as long as the paper towels do their thing etc.

Thoughts?

Comment by Alexandra Hobson on September 18, 2009 at 6:21pm: I'm not sure which is more important, the emotional or the physical. I'm not sure its important to know which though either. It's like asking which is more important, the brain or the heart? In practical terms the question is kind of foolish.

Brands need to meet both physical and emotional consumer needs. Better marketers will be those who skillfully know how to manipulate the mix of benefits in a way that maximizes revenue and profitability for their businesses.

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