The Law of Attributes - Law #14 under the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
“For every attribute there is an opposite, effective attribute”. The Law of Exclusivity dictates you must find attribute of your own and that attribute may just be the opposite of the leader.
As mentioned above on the intro tag line, The law of exclusivity has been about one owning an exclusive attribute. Similarly, The Law of Opposites states that this attribute can be even better if it is the opposite to that of the leader. In most of the cases, the opposite attribute of the competitor is often open as none would want to take-on the leader head-on. We also need to understand that there will always be critics in the market who will have a stand which is opposite to that of the majority. This can be a good starting point to positioning yourself opposite to the leader and this move will automatically draw more attention from all corners. This move will also give an option for the critics to prove their point and therefore one can gain their instant loyalty and a good starting customer base to start with. This customer base once acquired can be gradually expanded and increased to the next level with a consistent and effective marketing cohesion on the path to success.
‘Easier said than done’ truly holds good for the above theory but is definitely not a myth to shy away from. We have seen instances in the past where a new brand suddenly comes up with a unique identification in the market even if it is a complete opposite of what the market leader is going with. People always like change and therefore a timely and well calculated move from the competitor can grasp this condition to claw away a good chunk of the leader’s market share. Digital media has made this more effective compared to the earlier days. Today, one can start working on collecting data from the market and using analytical tools to come up with good sensible market intelligence with which, one can manage to build an effective strategy to deviate the customer loyalty enjoyed by the leader.
Data availability has been the strength of Digital Marketing unlike any other form of media. The data analytics capabilities are evolving and growing at a very fast pace. We today have tools that will derive sentimental statistics of consumers from the social media platforms in just a click of the button. We can retrieve and evaluate data on any relevant third party websites to an extent that can be used to derive meaningful insights into the consumer behaviour we all know. These insights can be further used to come up with valid and effective marketing strategies that can tweak the consumer mentality to swing towards the side intended.
Data analytics combined with the effective strategic implementation of marketing efforts with a two prong approach is a lethal dose to the market leader to ignore. The two prong approach where on one side we rely on data retrieved thus far to build a plan to take on the leader and the other is the dipstick approach where we keep a high vigil on the data movements on the effectiveness of the implemented marketing plan so as to tweak it in real time as necessary so as to ensure we reach the final objective as initially intended. Digital Media has therefore made the Law of Attributes more effective to manage than the earlier days.
