The P's of marketing are well known. According to the basic theory, which went from 4 to 6 then to 7Ps, there are various headings to pay attention to for good product design. Nowadays, a new item seems to have been added to this list: SENSITIVITY. The determining effect of social sensitivities on brand preferences is increasing day by day.
Those working in the marketing world know very well that briefs usually start like this;
- Let's launch a seasonal product,
- Let there be two variants suitable for women and men,
- Let's create attractive options for men and women by playing with product features,
- Since it will be a product in the upper price segment, let's find a concept (niche) product promise where we will keep the production amount limited,
- Let's arrange its distribution in accordance with the niche and high-priced character of the product,
- Let's make product communication suitable for the young, high-income, urban audience we target.
I guess this introduction will bring many questions and objections to mind. Often, we don't even have this much information about the product in the first step. Or we don't have data on how the market will respond to such a product. Many marketing employees are very used to walking in the dark without a flashlight in such situations. Especially if they have a checklist similar to the one above, it is never a problem for them to develop a product by checking these items step by step. They quickly get carried away by the unbearable lightness of checking themselves off and start dreaming of the pleasure of seeing the product they designed in the hands of the consumer. But things are usually more complicated than they seem.
Category DNA and Risks
First of all, the category where a new product will be made is almost never a complete freedom zone. The works done in that category before, the decision-maker profile that has owned that category, are now almost engraved in the DNA of the field that category belongs to, and trying to play with this brings great risks. There have been countless experiences of playing this game badly.
For example; the kitchenware category is traditionally a category where women are the purchasing decision-makers. Of course, while gender equality has increased its reputation and effectiveness in the eyes of society historically, serious changes have been seen in this attitude, but when microwave ovens first came out, targeting young men living alone and positioning microwave ovens in the electronics sections of stores resulted in a great failure. Because the product categorically belongs to the kitchenware department and playing with this did not give positive results.
On the other hand, expanding the category by expanding traditional gender patterns can also be a good idea. European beer brands entering the US market by targeting women is a good example of this. But despite this positive example, one should not forget the reality of the category; the beer category is a masculine world. This is different from saying beer is a man's drink. Of course, both women and men drink beer. But what I saw in dozens of female focus groups I attended was that women who drink beer actually wanted to enter the masculine world unique to the product during the beer ritual. In other words, the demand of women who drink beer from beer brands is never the feminine aura of the makeup materials world. The only demand of women who drink beer from brands that want to appeal to them is to feel that those who want to fictionalize the beer world and bring new breaths to it think about/care about them during this creative effort.
Balance Between Ideal and Real
Perhaps the most difficult thing for a marketer is to extract both moral and commercial truth from the contradiction between the ideal and the real (actual). Although raising children independent of gender roles is a rising trend today and a guarantee of our beautiful days in the future, when we look at products in the children's world, it is still striking that there is a sharp use of color codes in products appealing to girls and boys. Many brands prefer to adapt to this instead of fighting it. For example, a legendary children's egg brand, which did not use such a color code at the beginning, started packaging products with pink and blue color codes with a controversial decision and achieved serious commercial success.
This is the most difficult task for marketing professionals: to be able to make healthy decisions that will lead them to the right business results within these different experiences. The first requirement for making these decisions is to be able to add your own perception of the world, your foresight, and your intellect to your work. In other words, not seeing a product as boxes to be filled by checking next to the product features written in the list above. We must add a deep understanding of the society we live in to our work at every step we take. When we proceed without doing this, we cannot foresee that a niche product may not actually remain that niche, or that the product features/name/color code we use for women/men may trigger different sensitivities in society. In other words, we must catch a magical balance between the characteristics of the category the product belongs to, the dynamics of the changing world, and the expectations of society.
The Case of "Cheeky Sally" and "Lad Henry"
In cases where this balance is not achieved, we are faced with disasters that affect the image of the brand that released the problematic product holistically, not just a process that results in the failure of the new product. In a case that has been talked about a lot recently, we witnessed a social media lynching and boycott campaign due to the adjectives used in seasonal, niche products named "Cheeky Sally" (Zilli Sally) and "Lad Henry" (Delikanlı Henry).
- So why?
- Can those who carry out and support this lynching claim that they do not use any of these and similar adjectives in their daily lives?
- Did the fact that these products were actually quite expensive, seasonally limited production, niche products found only in selected open points affect the scope of the lynching?
- In short; was a storm actually created in a teacup, or should what happened be perceived as a sign of the changing world?
Because even the most perfect product cannot be successful without understanding the changing needs of the consumer, following their sensitivities, and placing this at the center of the product idea during the product development process. Who will hold a beer that you positioned in the upper price segment, launched with a limited distribution strategy, and designed as a niche product? What are the living habits of the profile that will have access to this beer, what is on their agenda, which political/social view are they close to? If a product is released without thinking about it properly just because it tastes good, its packaging is cool, or it is in circulation with this name elsewhere in the world without really taking a close interest in all these, catastrophic results will be inevitable.
It does not matter what the performance of those who started, carried out, or participated in the lynching regarding gender equality in their own lives is. The fact that they do not show similar sensitivity in their own lives does not make them insincere or hypocritical. Social changes take time and are irreversible. While a wave of change whose fuse has been ignited is advanced by its pioneers, its followers also move in a process of constant reorganization and alignment according to pioneer characters.
Corporate Culture and Change
So how do things work on the side of brands that prepare products for a society in change? If you are not very lucky, it is not possible to find "pioneers of change" characters in the brand development teams you work in. Teams that try to shoulder the burden of daily work, usually numerically insufficient, can only turn the wheel in the plaza bells they live in and can spare time for their families and themselves in the time left over from overtime. In this rush, issues such as being able to follow "social change waves", not only following them but also internalizing them and succeeding in looking at the issues they will encounter from this window are not on the agenda. Even if they have been educated in the best schools, they sometimes cannot see the time bomb standing in front of their eyes because their relationship with the field of basic sciences is weak and they did not take this formation in time and practice critical thinking skills.
However, those giant corporate structures also have a precaution against all these impossibilities. They have equipped their teams, who they foresee will make mistakes, with armies of consultants. These armies, who have ideas even though they have no responsibility, cannot show a significant presence in small and medium-sized decisions taken in daily life because they are chasing "signature works".
Are there really no people in these teams who can prevent such mistakes? Of course there are. But these people are usually the ones who cause discomfort with their existence. They slow down processes with their contradictory ideas, they criticize a decision agreed upon after long discussions unexpectedly at the last moment. What they say sounds like words from another world to others. In the looks directed at them, a subtext of "Is he talking about Switzerland?" is always read, but actually Switzerland is not that far away. Ideas thought to be unreachable are only as close as typing twitter into the web browser. In the end, these people are either pacified or parted ways with.
Because we have no tolerance for delay, slowing down, or different ideas. The only goal is to put another check on the work list in front of us. We don't think much about where we add ourselves to that list.
Everything is changing very fast. The social and political sphere is stripping away most of its traditional meanings and starting to occupy a larger place in daily life. Even if it is not ideological partisanship in the known sense, all areas are becoming increasingly politicized in line with people's search for meaning. The world of brands has to sit right at the focus of this phenomenon, let alone avoid it.
Consumer expectation creates a strong demand for brands to serve the "consumer's search for meaning". The only way to meet this demand is to invest in people. The questioning, investigative, and up-to-date activists that the new world needs should breathe their own essence into the spirit of brands in environments where they work in conditions suitable for creative and critical thinking, and re-establish them as pioneer images of society.
It is a fact that we need courageous employees whose conditions have been improved, whose equipment in the field of basic sciences has been increased in order to prevent such major communication and brand positioning accidents. However, for this formula to work, corporate culture needs to discover the intricate structure of daily life with the political sphere and act by taking responsibility accordingly. Let's not forget, no matter what field we produce in today, every brand basically creates a product concept that touches the consumer's search for meaning. Those who fail to do this are heavily punished by society.
