Creativity Unlimited: Thinking Inside the Box for Business Innovation

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Shaking the box side to side

It is seldom the best product that wins. Instead, it's about making your offer as attractive to the consumer as you can. In the final analysis, it doesn't matter why people think about your brand. The most important thing to do is create the right conditions for them to do so. Don't forget that success begins and ends in the mind of the consumer.

It is seldom the best product that wins. People rarely if ever know which is the best product; we don't even generally know what it means for a product to be the best. Is the car that is best the one that is the cheapest, the fastest, the best looking, the safest, or the most exciting to drive? And how do you judge different combinations of these characteristics? Instead of making the best product (whatever that is in fact) it's about making the most attractive and appealing offer that you can. In the study of the importance of brand reputation, we saw earlier how two characteristics of the offer are decisive for it to be perceived as attractive. Firstly, the offer needs to be well known, which means that consumers quickly think of it, and it must be easy for us to understand what it means. Secondly, it must be perceived as unique in the sense that it has no other obvious alternatives.

To create an attractive offer, in other words, requires that you highlight the characteristics of the product or brand ...