we always think that brand is most important than category and customer always buy from brand perspective, the brand they admire.But this is not like that, tactfully this is totally vice verse. First customer always identifies their need which always comes into a category then after this they think about the brand so ultimately category comes first and brand second.
A brand is like the tip of an iceberg. How big and how deep the iceberg is will determine how powerful the brand is.
The iceberg is the category. If it melts, the brand will melt too.
The objective of a marketing program is not to build a brand, but to dominate a category. Red Bull dominates the energy-drink category. Starbucks dominates the high-end coffee category. Google dominates the search category. The Body Shop dominates the natural-cosmetics category. Whole Foods dominates the organic-food category. BlackBerry dominates the wireless-email category.
It shouldn’t. Big companies are busy burnishing their brands while entrepreneurs are looking for ways to dominate new categories. Big companies think brands. Entrepreneurs think categories.
Brands are important, but they have value only to the extent they stand for categories. Take Coca-Cola, once the world’s most valuable brand, according to Inter brand. But the value of the Coca-Cola brand has been steadily falling. It was worth $83.8 billion in 1999. Today it’s worth only $79.2 billion. Why is the value of the Coke brand falling?
The Coke brand is dropping in value because the cola category is losing its share of the soft-drink market. A brand is only valuable to the extent it stands for a category.
Someday your brand’s iceberg might start to melt. So what. You can always look around for a new iceberg to dominate. With a new brand name, of course.
“THAT’S THE MAGIC OF CATEGORY”
Outlook360 