Market space – to own or to rent?

It’s a million dollar question, isn’t it? Do I buy the house and incur the costs of maintenance plus a bond plus the risk of return, or do I rent a house and let someone else worry about the aforementioned issues? There’s an argument for both, although when it comes to houses, one needs to think long term and not short term because over time property has proven to be a significantly good investment. It also depends on what your needs are and what your long term plans include.

Increase value

If you own, however, you are the boss, you decide how the house should look and where you want to invest your hard-earned money - maybe a pool, maybe a Garden & Home-style landscaped garden that Keith Kirsten would be proud of, maybe a jacuzzi or maybe a kids playground. All of this when considered for installation by the owner is with the thought of increasing the value of the home.

When you rent however, why would you do all of that investment when the landlord will benefit and the return is always short term? As it is, when you rent, you mostly get treated like a second class citizen and so rented houses generally fall into a vicious circle of the landlord not investing too much in the property and the tenant not investing too much in the upkeep of the property, due to not receiving the return.

What does all this have to do with marketing? Lots actually. I want you to think about your brand and the market space you occupy in the market. Do you own it or do you rent it?

Kicker

To make it easier, let’s think about BMW and its positioning around sheer driving pleasure. It has worked so hard to own this space that other players have had to find other space to work in because BMW owns this area. Here’s the kicker: when you drive a BMW, it delivers sheer driving pleasure every time!

I don’t own a BMW at present, just for the record.

Toyota owned, at one point in time, the quality aspect. Remember “Everything keeps going right”? Well, it gave that up and moved to “Lead the Way”. Don’t know why and personally I think it gave up space it owned to play somewhere else. Time will tell as to whether it made the right move. I think it should have stayed where it was and leveraged that.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think that brands need to move or shift over a certain period of time, but the time periods should be on a long term generational basis, not on the whimsical view of brand managers and marketing directors who are trying to define their own career space within the company. Not unless they have been called into to do a serious “fix it up” job, should any brand people be allowed to fiddle with brand intrinsics for at least the first 18 months. Good rule, this.

Confused

Let’s think about the space “Summer”.

Well, we have Vodacom, MTN, 5fm and numerous others all communicating “Summer” and trying to own that space. When the space gets too crowded, the messages get cluttered and no one really owns it so… get off the bus and find some new area to own - maybe “Holidays”, maybe “family vacations”. As a consumer/shopper, I am confused about who owns what and a whole lot of money is being wasted trying to convince me that you all own it.

Think about Red Bull, the brand that gives you wings. It works so hard at owning extreme energy that not one of its competitors even comes close to its space. Because of this highly focused market space ownership strategy, it can command a healthy premium. And because of this it is able to sell more stuff to more people, more often, for a higher price, to quote Sergio Zyman, the Aya cola of marketing!

The point is that if you have clearly defined the space you want to own and taken the decision that you REALLY want to own it, then you must invest and invest BIG in order to define the ownership to the market in which I include consumers, shoppers, customers and competitors. Have you done the exercise across all these players and defined how you communicate ownership to them?

Seriously defined

Coca Cola owns “refreshment” and have seriously, seriously defined its ownership of this market space. So much so that Pepsi had to move to a different market space to define itself to the market.

Here’s a good example. Remember Fresca, the soft drink? Its original positioning was “Nothing tastes like Fresca” with the zany, colourful character Larry who used to demonstrate how “nothing” was all about Fresca. You had to think a little laterally about Fresca to understand the nothing positioning but one amazing thing happened with the brand. Anytime that anyone used the term Fresca or said the word “nothing” it was followed by, using the specific tone and accent of Larry, “Nothing tastes like Fresca”.

It had its own urban legend life and occupied a special place. There were so many marketing avenues to play with this brand; it was funky, irreverent and owned a very defined space. It was on a par with the Budweisser “Whassssup” phrase that I see is still used today.

Then along came a new Fresca brand manager who changed the whole positioning to… wait for it… “Freshy Fruity Fresca”, a tongue twister of note and all based on the simplistic view of the old strategy that you cannot own “nothing” and the intrinsics were not understood by consumers.

Already players

And so the brand died, not because of what the brand manager thought was the problem but because it moved into space where there were already a number of players trying to establish dominance and it could not own anything in the new space. Sad, really, as it was a great tasting drink with a great proposition and market space in which to play.

And so my advice to marketers is this.

1. Seek to own not to rent market space. If you can’t own a space, then move on or realise that at some point you are just renting and will be evicted. Think ownership and think seriously.
   
2. When planning ownership, take a long term view.
   
3. Know that you are going to have to constantly invest to ensure your market space grows in value.
   
4. Be prepared to fight off potential market space grabbers. Ensure that you understand your space in minute details and make sure there are no gaps in the space that they could exploit. Do you know who the market space grabbers could be in your industry sector?
   
5. Tell your consumers, shoppers and cabout the space you own. Tell them well and tell them often through as many relevant channels as possible.
   
6. Be consistent about what you tell them and be absolutely focused about getting the message across in the right tone, format, style and manner every single time.
   
7. This is critical. Makes sure you can live up to the promise of the space you own; in other words don’t own the zero defect space [quality] and deliver a 10% failure rate.