Does your brand pass the three hurdle test?
Your brand is the perception customers have of your business. It’s what people say about your company/products when you’re not in the room and is not something that you can cultivate overnight.
If you get brand right it can lead to enormous growth, but it does require investment to get there, in both time and money. It requires a company to go all in, consistently. Not just the marketing team, the entire organisation. From customer service, to product teams, to operations, to marketing, to the c-suite. Yes some functions play larger roles than others, but for branding to be effective it needs to be holistic – brought to life from the inside out.
Therefore, it is imperative that you know your brand strategy has strength, and longevity. You need to have a degree of certainty that you are putting your limited capital and energy behind a winning horse. Although it is impossible to understand with 100% certainty if your brand strategy will deliver as expected, according to Scott Galloway of NYU, the three hurdle test is a great tool we can use to stress test the positioning.
So what are the three hurdles that every brand strategy needs to overcome?
1 – IS IT RELEVANT?
Does anyone actually care? Is there a big enough market for what you’re selling and how you are positioning your brand? This one seems quite obvious but sometimes we can get so caught up in what we do that we don’t actually research to find out if there is a strong market for our idea. In fact, the number one reason why startups fail is no market need. Something also for established businesses to consider when diversifying into new products and services.
If you are unsure if you pass this test, think about your marketing and sales. Is it a hard sell? Are you having to throw a lot of money into marketing whilst gaining little traction? Are potential customers hard to progress through the buying cycle?
2 – IS IT DIFFERENTIATED?
Do you stand out from your competitors? And are you different in a way that your customers actually care about? Are you distinctive in the marketplace?
This hurdle competes with the relevant hurdle. Often, low differentiation means a large potential audience but an offering that isn’t very relevant. And high differentiation means a small potential audience but a highly relevant offering. Therefore we need to balance these two and find the point of differentiation that is still relevant to a large enough group of people to allow for brand growth.
To do this we need to ensure that we are differentiating ourselves on a point that is valued. For example, there is no point in differentiating a car brand based on the colour of the hubcaps if what your primary audience is looking for is a reliable, cost effective car.
3 – IS IT SUSTAINABLE?
Can you defend your brand strategy or is it easy to replicate? A brand strategy that is easy to copy is ineffective. As soon as you experience growth based on your strategy, your competitors will immediately pivot to copy what you are doing and you will lose your hard earned market share. Additionally it is a lot more cost effective to be the second mover, so your competitors will be able to undercut you on price.
Examples of sustainable strategies include: ongoing innovation, ideally where competitors need to follow in your footsteps rather than springboard off your innovation. Even better is when you can patent your innovations to prevent competition from copying. Another strategy is customer involvement, some brands can organise a community around the brand such as Lego. Lego launched Lego Ideas, a now thriving product ideation community where Lego fans can submit and choose which products they see on the shelves. These are but a few examples of sustainable strategies but the list is endless if you are creative enough.
THE THREE HURDLES IN ACTION: APPLE
Apple is a great example of a strong brand strategy, in fact branding was one of Steve Jobs’ greatest strengths. Apple have recently pivoted their brand strategy to focus on privacy. Apple are now pushing the message that privacy is a fundamental human right. Apple state that all of their products are designed to protect your privacy and give you control over your information.
How do we know that this is a great strategy? It passes all of the three hurdles:
- Is it relevant? Yes, as the digital age picks up and moves into second gear, digital privacy has become a bigger and bigger concern of the general public. Scandals such as the Cambridge Analytica leak and the claims that Google and Facebook abuse their customer’s data have also become more prevalent, leading to users moving off platforms such as Whatsapp towards more secure platforms like Telegraph.
- Is it differentiated? Yes, Apple are the only big tech company to focus on privacy in a big way. Their major competitors such as Google, Samsung, and Facebook haven’t opted to put their eggs in this basket.
- Is it sustainable? Yes. Apple have been very strategic in pinning their brand strategy on a value proposition that their competitors can’t copy. Google and Facebook’s business strategies are based on collecting as much data as possible and selling that data to the highest bidder. In short, if Apple’s competitors decided to focus on privacy they wouldn’t have a viable business model.
But, the three hurdles don’t stop at overarching brand strategy. They should be used at every step along the brand building process. Whenever engaging in decisions or activities that affect our brand we should ask ourselves, does this pass the three hurdle test? An example of this is how Apple has started rolling out their privacy positioning to their products. Safari for example now has a widget designated to privacy that communicates to users which companies have access to their data.
Therefore a business that can overcome the three hurdles and execute on their brand well will become visible, be perceived as authentic and credible and can inhibit competitors from gaining traction. All factors that drive up perceived quality. Something that can be used to drive strong growth.
So, does your brand pass the three hurdle test? If the answer is no, perhaps you need to do a deep dive and see what other value propositions do pass the three hurdle test and can be incorporated into your brand strategy. Often the answers are there, it’s just about articulating them.
P.S. If you would like help identifying a customer value proposition that passes all three hurdles, book in your free strategy session with a Tiny Hunter Strategist.
Written by: Isaac Brealey
Published: July 27, 2021