There Is No BRAND Without Competition
Human; Even in the first stage of their journey to reach the mother's womb, they start life with competition. Life forms when the strongest and most competitive cell crosses distances and multiplies in the egg. That is to say, competition starts before we take shape in the womb of our mother.
In fact, even though we are not aware of it, there is competition in every aspect of life. The best, the strongest, or the wisest survive. Of course, the knowledge necessary for survival and the scientific knowledge shouldn’ t be confused with one another. Therefore, a person begins life with competition and in life they develop, change, live and die with competition. Such that, even for sleep and awakeness, there is competition between two sundial sensitive hormones. When one wins we sleep, and when the other wins we wake up. In other words, competition is the cornerstone of change, development and life.
If we come back to our topic; the same rules which are a part of life, work in the marketing of goods, services and products. While consumers with limited opportunities compete to consume the goods, products or services that are suitable for their budget or that are the most promising, product or service manufacturers also enter into a tough struggle to be the choice of these target audiences.
Professionals like me, work to make the producers of goods, products or services preferable in this relentless competitive environment. Although few in number in Turkey, Marketing and Brand experts know very well that the wars of choice and consumption take place in the minds of the consumers, and they try to influence the subconscious level of consumer preferences in this regard as much as possible. The main work done here is the process of constructing one of the shortcuts the brain uses in life.
Don’t worry, we are not builders. We just name the process like that. Because the human brain, the consumer’s mind is our main research and study subject. In this field which covers a social branch, we create a preference shortcut based on how the brain performs processes such as learning, attention, and memory coding. Because the brain gets tired of constantly making decisions or researching amongs similar options and its capacity isn’t suitable for this. As professionals, we create a buy button that will save time by facilitating the brain's work and that will direct its decision making power to different areas by making a quick, autonomous choice. In the business world and on consumer level, it's called the Brand.
Our brain stores similar but different looking stimuli in the same region. Studies have shown that physical pain and social pain are felt by the same region. The brain loves and cares so much about the buy button which saves time and makes it easier to enjoy; if it is created in accordance with its working principles, it would keep it in a spectacular place. Research on the consumer’s mind and brain systems indicates that brands are stored in the same brain region where religious feelings are stored. It has proven that if the brand is created in harmony with subconscious systems, it can be as strong as a religious belief and it will take a tremendous effort to destroy it. Of course this is not easy. It is impossible in ignorant hands.
Even though people born and live with competition as a result of natural life, they try to get rid of competition and its returns. They love to monopolize and destroy company diversity, to eliminate competitors and win effortlessly and to employ those from their faction or clique instead of those who know the business. Thus, they want to reach the mindset of whatever we produce by getting rid of the trouble of constantly increasing the production quality and meeting human needs better. Instead of competing in the market, they try to monopolize with the help of the state, even fail to do so and go bankrupt. They expect Marketing and Branding, which is a social science, from engineers, they try to sell goods to certain interest groups with concessions at the end of the day, with market share increase, account and stock lies. They see the advertisement as a product promotion and waste money mistaking graphic designers or sign makers as advertisers. Of course, what happens here happens to the country's economy, unemployed people, and hard working employees who are waiting for something better for consumption.
The economic welfare of a country depends to a great extent on how marketing science is used, how it is competed in domestic and world markets, its power to create a brand and gain a place in the minds of consumers. You can confirm this by looking at the world's largest global companies in the world's largest economy. All of this has been possible with the meticulous protection of the competition law, which is the most fundamental law in this great country, and the investments made in marketing science. If you want to see their meticulousness about the competition, I recommend you look at the Google and Microsoft events.
Without competition,marketing and without marketing, there would be no brand established in the mind of the consumer. And the rest…
Mustafa SOLMAZ
Communication, Press and Brand Consultant