Cultural Positioning - New Brand Marketing

How should new brands position themselves culturally? How are their approaches different from those of well-known brands? The author of this article shares new brand marketing methods from a cultural perspective, discussing the creation of differentiated culture, cultural differentiation tendencies, and unique cultural circles with case studies. This article is recommended for those who are interested in brand marketing and brand culture.

There is a question that always bothers me: There are so many well-known brands in the world, why are there always new brands emerging and occupying the market?

New brands do not have an advantage in terms of popularity, nor can they be recognized by consumers in a short period of time. Obviously, compared with well-known brands, they have a huge disadvantage. So why do new brands succeed and even surpass those long-standing well-known brands? This topic is of course quite large and cannot be explained in one article. In this article, I will only try to talk about how new brands break through this point and achieve success from a cultural perspective.

01 Cultural Positioning——Building a Differentiated Culture

In the 19th century, Prussia was at war with France, but because war was very expensive, the government needed a steady stream of funds.

At that time, a senior figure in the Prussian royal family contributed an idea: if they could make jewelry made of iron more attractive than jewelry made of gold, and replace the gold jewelry of the rich with iron ones, the government would have a lot of income.

According to this idea, the Prussian royal family did this: Princess Marianne called on all wealthy Prussian noble women to exchange their gold jewelry for common metals in 1813. In return, they would receive iron replicas of the gold jewelry they donated, with a seal on the replicas: "I exchange gold for iron."

After that, wearing and displaying iron jewelry on important social occasions was more of a way to show status than wearing gold jewelry. Because gold jewelry only proved that they were rich, while iron jewelry could prove that they were not only rich, but also generous and patriotic. As someone said at the time: "Iron jewelry has become the fashion of all patriotic women, which shows that they have made contributions to supporting the war of freedom.

It is obvious which is more valuable, iron or gold, but the Prussian royal family made iron jewelry into a symbol of patriotism and generosity, making it an object of fierce purchase by the rich and a commodity more valuable than gold.

Here, the Prussian royal family turned iron jewelry into a culture that represents glory. This culture occupied the minds of the rich and used this marketing method to make the rich pay for it.

I call this marketing strategy cultural positioning. The so-called cultural positioning is to attract fans of a certain differentiated culture by making the product a symbol of a certain differentiated culture, and then occupy a differentiated market.

For example, e-cigarettes, as a brand-new product, are not targeted at existing smokers. Instead, they appear on the streets as a “trendy brand” and are often seen with people wearing baseball bats and hip-hop-style clothes, and are often seen in the hands of young people playing skateboards and roller skating.

It is positioned as a trendy cultural product that attracts young people.

02 Humans have an innate tendency to make cultural distinctions

Cultural positioning comes from the human nature of loving comparison and being different from others. For the rich and the poor, having unique taste is the characteristic that distinguishes the rich from the poor, and for the educated and the uneducated, being proficient in elegant knowledge and technology is the characteristic that distinguishes the educated from the uneducated.

In his book Distinction, published in 1979, Bourdieu believed that each class has its own unique taste system: "Taste brings people and things together." Taste represents a kind of culture. This makes many people spend money on goods that do not belong to their class in order to keep up with the pace of high-end people.

In the book "Style" published in the 1980s, Paul Fussell explored the consumption and living habits of different classes. In the book, he pointed out the perceptions of consumption among people of different classes.

"People at the bottom like to believe that class is determined by how much wealth a person has; people in the middle admit that money is related to class differences, but a person's education and the type of work they do are equally important; people near the top believe that taste, values, lifestyle and behavior are indispensable criteria for judging class status, and do not consider money, occupation or education."

Douglas Holt, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of "Cultural Strategy", is one of the earliest scholars to systematically explain the important role of culture in brands. He calls brands with strong cultural symbolic meanings brand icons, which represent an identity myth that consumers use to resolve their identity desires and anxieties.

“For brands like Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Nike and Jack Daniel’s, consumers value their brand stories primarily for their identity value. As vehicles for self-expression, these brands are filled with stories that consumers find valuable in building their identities. Consumers flock to brands that embody the ideals they value and that help them express who they want to be.”

The key to cultural positioning lies not only in giving a product a special culture, but also in the ability of this culture to form a circle, a circle that outsiders yearn for.

03 Unique circles under cultural positioning

Consumers have a herd mentality, and most people are consciously or unconsciously looking for the circles they want to join. The tastes of these circles tend to be similar, and the brands they can accept are also limited. If some people's brand preferences are different from those of most other people, they will soon be expelled from this circle.

We always hope that there is a shortcut that can help us enter a circle, which will bring huge and most important benefits: security and success. This shortcut is to have a brand with certain cultural symbols. Once you own the products of these brands, you will get the key to enter the circle you want to enter.

For example, when you attend a party and find that everyone is carrying Prada bags, you will definitely want to hide the MK bag in the corner. When everyone is wearing Rolex watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, you will definitely pull down your cuffs to cover your DW watch. When someone drives a Ferrari to ask you out, you would rather take a taxi than drive your own Corolla.

In this situation, you will feel uneasy and feel like a failure.

On the contrary, when you wear the same brand of clothes and tie and watch as the person who is shining at the party, it will be easy for you to walk up to him, chat with him, and enter his circle.

Baudrillard said: "The difference in consumption lies not in the difference in the use value of the product, but in the difference in the symbol of the product... People never consume the product itself (use value), but always regard the product (from a broad perspective) as a symbol that can highlight you, or use it to allow you to join an ideal group, or as a group with a higher status to get rid of a group with a lower status."

In other words, if you want to enter a certain circle, you have to keep up with the cultural taste and consumption of this circle.

A friend of mine at Dewu once told me an example. In the early years, the people who speculated on shoes were actually a group of young high school students. High school students can only wear school uniforms during school, so they can't show their uniqueness. In terms of clothing, they can only show this through shoes. The more personalized the shoes are, the more they can show their uniqueness.

In this way, the student group is actually divided into at least two groups: those who wear trendy shoes and those who wear ordinary shoes. Students who wear trendy shoes naturally form a circle and look down on students who wear ordinary shoes. Students who wear ordinary shoes either spend money to buy trendy shoes to enter this circle, or they will feel like failures.

So, if your brand develops a certain culture, it creates an opportunity for them to identify themselves as part of that group.

04 The cultural positioning of Tesla and lululemon

There is no doubt that Tesla is a new brand in the automotive industry. Compared with other automotive brands with dozens or hundreds of years of history, Tesla's history is less than 20 years. However, it has quickly become the leader among automotive brands and has ascended to the throne of the largest automotive market value.

Tesla's success is not only due to its product advantages, but more importantly, it was positioned as a pure electric vehicle from the beginning, which opened up a new market and attracted a large number of people with the labels of "technology" and "environmental protection". It has created a brand culture - trendy, cool, minimalist and environmentally friendly.

Such a culture initially attracted a large number of newly wealthy people to become its clients, including cutting-edge executives in the financial and technology circles, well-known Hollywood actors who love environmental protection, etc. Its early typical clients included Lei Jun, Zhang Yiming, Leonardo, etc.

Culturally, before the Model 3 was built, Tesla made its owners part of a class of aspiring wealthy people and environmentally conscious trendsetters.

Tesla owners have also formed a circle. In China alone, there are Tesla car clubs in various places. Before the release of Model 3, Tesla car owners often held unofficial gatherings to share resources within the circle. In fact, to enter this circle, you only need to own a Tesla Model S or Model X.

Lululemon was founded in 1998. Compared with sports brands such as Adidas and Reebok, its history seems short, but it took only 22 years for its market value to exceed 40 billion US dollars. It took Adidas 68 years and Nike 46 years to achieve the same achievement. In July 2022, Lululemon's market value surpassed Adidas and became the second largest sportswear brand in the world by market value.

The success of lululemon has very clearly pinpointed one point in terms of cultural positioning - the rise of female consciousness.

Yoga has only been popular around the world for a short time, and initially there were no brands that made yoga clothes specifically for women. The only options for women were those that were made into smaller sizes of men's sportswear and changed to pink, which of course were not comfortable to wear.

In the late 1990s, more and more women graduated from college. They had a great job, their own apartment and pets, loved sports, travel, fashion, and were willing to pay for high quality.

Wilson saw this market segment and, in light of the rising consciousness of women, named this segment “Super Girls,” and the story of lululemon began.

In addition to its cultural positioning, lululemon has been extremely successful in its circle, hosting large gatherings for yoga and sports enthusiasts in major cities around the world to attract them to become lululemon's customers.

According to the article "Annual revenue of 4 billion US dollars from selling yoga clothes, a 10,000-word article interprets lululemon's growth history", lululemon has formed a community system of store educators, brand ambassadors, and consumers through circle marketing, which has attracted more and more customers.

In recent years, many people have worn lululemon yoga clothes as outerwear. These people have become more obvious representatives of the "women's rise" culture and are attracting more women to join this circle.

05 How do new brands surpass old brands?

Putting aside the products, at the cultural level, the leading brands initially created a culture, but as time goes by, social culture will gradually change, and the market will form new culture, fashion and consumption trends. At this time, if the new brand happens to grasp this point and determine its own differentiated cultural positioning, it will be able to attract more and more people to join its industry and surpass the old brand one day in the future.

【References】

Yum! Marketing

"Selling yoga clothes for an annual income of 4 billion US dollars, a 10,000-word article interpreting lululemon's growth process"

Author: Xunkong

WeChat public account: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (ID: xunkong2005)