The Prussian military strategist, General Carl Von Clausewitz, once said: “No army wanting to cross a wide river would cross only half of it first.”
His point was simple. Once the decision was made to cross the river, the objective was to get to the other side. No ifs, ands or buts…and certainly no dawdling or halting along the way. Stragglers to be shot. Perhaps on most occasions that would be the viable military strategy, but when it comes to repositioning a brand, it could just as likely be a formula for failure. The key determinant in that formula resides in the word “wide”. Here’s why:
Many marketers have been schooled in and have employed the tool of “mapping” to affirm the competitive landscape based on a range of important, leveragable variables (which could be attributes, benefits or even values). Here’s where each competitor stands, here’s where we stand, and here’s what the customer or prospect considers the ideal position to be. The end game, of course, is to develop a strategy through which to reposition the brand closer (or more preferably, closest) to the ideal position. Sounds good. Can be good. Can be disastrous, as well.
The latter is because of that wide river. Or what James Engel and Roger Blackwell refer to in their book, Consumer Behavior, as the “latitude of acceptance”. Their point is that an individual prospect has a position for the brand already affixed in his/her mind, and thus is forced to reconsider when exposed to a position which differs along a scale of belief. The range of positions along that scale is called the latitude of acceptance. If the latitude is exceeded, if the river is too wide, the message is not accepted. Often regardless of the marketing dollars thrown against the effort. Colloquially, it’s the “can’t get there from here” concept. With an outcome that will likely be not just a stand still but a setback for the brand.
One solution, however, is to cross half the river, settle in and take a new, less-dissonant-to-existing-beliefs, position. In other words, don’t stretch the latitude of acceptance, but operate within it by making moderate moves on the belief scale strengthened by marketing and performance. It’s the difference between “I can’t believe that” and “makes sense to me”. Thus a new belief position is created, leaving a shorter distance to the other side of the river. With the next “makes sense to me” move much more likely to result in landfall.
Makes sense, right? But how often has the siren’s call of aspiration caused an otherwise astute marketer to set out across a wide river and never reach the other side. And then be surprised, because “we were already in that quadrant. It shouldn’t have been that hard to for the prospect to believe we’d made it to best corner.”. Another reminder that the playing of marketing war games is much different than the real thing.
Next up: Von Clausewitz and Line Extensions
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