“Differentiate or die” is probably a familiar mantra to all; and there’s a well-established albeit less pithy corollary – don’t sell the category, sell your brand.  After all, given the overcrowded nature of most categories, the hope of success for most brands rests on their ability to stand out from their numerous competitors.  And promoting the category usually only benefits the market leader.

That’s why the most common marketing challenge is communicating a brand’s differentiation.  But there are instances where differentiation is not the primary issue — and in many of these cases, it’s the relevance of the category itself which marketing must establish.

I’m thinking there are at least three business situations in which marketing should focus on increasing a brand’s relevance first, and differentiating the brand second.

seeking more mass appeal for niche brands

When a company aspires to broaden its appeal beyond a narrow target audience, the brand’s relevance to the broader audience must be established.

For example, many health, fitness, and wellness brands enjoy a strong and loyal core customer base.  People who have a disciplined exercise regimen are likely to know and love brands of sport-specific apparel, fitness clubs, and nutritional supplements.  So they’re likely to respond to communications intended to position a brand as an expert in its field or a particular aspect of the category.

But most brands in these categories aren’t even on the radar screens of the majority of U.S. adults who live primarily sedentary lives.  In fact in some recent proprietary research I conducted among a general audience, many health/fitness/wellness brands performed strongly on perceived expertise in their category but were much weaker when it came to being a “brand for me” (see chart below.)

As such, marketing for these brands shouldn’t be about a brand’s superior performance on the things the narrow target audience cares about – e.g., unique product formulations, expert endorsements, etc.  Instead marketing should be focused on explaining the benefits of the category and connecting those benefits to primary drivers of the mass market.

I recognize that not every niche brand wants to go mainstream – but those which are serious about growing exponentially will most likely have to.  They can’t expect mass-market consumers to just “get” their brand, much less their category.

introducing “new to the world” innovations

Many innovations introduce new features, form factors, delivery mechanisms, etc. which capitalize on existing demand.  When marketing these innovations, companies explain how the new product or service improves upon – and importantly, how it differs from — existing options.

However, new products and services which are truly “new to the world” have no such foundation of existing consumer relevance.  Often these innovations are developments people could not have even imagined previously — completely new ways of doing, thinking, experiencing, even living.

Innovations in technology tend to fall into this category.  When the integrated iPod/iTunes solution initially launched years ago, the marketing brief was simply to tell people what had become possible in music listening.  The ability to seamlessly download songs and store thousands of them “in your pocket” was a compelling proposition in itself – messages about the uniqueness of Apple’s brand would have been superfluous.

Listening to music is a relatively universal consumer want/need and so, for Apple, the relevance of its solution was pretty easy to establish.  Other innovations, however, are based on less salient drivers — so companies must generate perceptions of relevance by communicating a compelling vision of the category. People must see themselves in the story of the innovation before they will care and can appreciate what makes the particular brand unique.

addressing changed consumers’ needs

In some cases, a brand has lost appeal because people no longer perceive the category it trades in to be relevant.  Perhaps consumer values have shifted – or their lifestyles have changed – or new technologies have rendered the category practically obsolete.

The viability of some retailers is being threatened in this way.  The Internet has given people direct access to products they previously relied on retailers to make available to them – and in many cases, consumers can access even more products than they used to through retailers.   So retailers which previously touted their unique or exclusive access to certain merchandise are finding such claims no longer true, nor differentiating.

The best way for retailers to combat this is not necessarily to try to regain the upper hand on access.  Instead, retailers may need to re-establish the importance of the physical store in the shopping experience. By promoting the sights, sounds, smells, and tactile elements – especially the human contact – of the store shopping experience in general, companies can make shopping in retail stores more relevant to today’s experience-seeking consumers.

Ultimately relevance is accomplished by weaving your brand into the fabric of consumers’ everyday lives. Brands addressing the above business challenges shouldn’t take it for granted – are there others you can think of?  Please let me know.

Haagen Dazs just added a new line — Five — it’s billed as “All-natural ice cream crafted with only five ingredients for incredibly pure, balanced flavor… and surprisingly less fat!“

The move is brilliant!  and I love the name — crisp and simple!

They’re tapping to the sizable segment of people who define healthy food in terms of wholesomeness and natural ingredients — which reinforces something I wrote about last year in the CMO Council‘s Marketing Magnified — that is, healthy isn’t just about counting calories and fat.  There are numerous and widely-differing health and wellness mindsets among consumers, and smart marketers understand and navigate through them to identify the right target and positioning for their brand.

What do Lindsay Lohan,

the universal remote,

and the Bush administration

have in common?

They are all examples of things that could have been great but have ended up not living up to their potential.

Many brands have also turned out to be phenomenal disappointments.  The list of brands that fall into the category of wasted potential is longer than the list of Lohan’s missteps — and the reasons behind brand disappointments are as confounding as why someone never developed a universal remote that people could actually use.

But, for this, the inaugural post in a series of brands that have failed to live up to their potential, I’ll offer up a single example — GNC.  Yep, the brand of those 1500-square foot strip mall stores that sell vitamins, supplements, and sport nutrition products.

It’s no secret that demand for products that support a healthy lifestyle has skyrocketed in recent years — global nutrition is now a $228 billion industry.  And GNC Corporation, the company behind the GNC brand, says it’s “dedicated to helping consumers Live Well.”

But, what does GNC stand for?  I mean, I know the letters stand for General Nutrition Center, but what does the brand stand for?  The company has over 4800 retail locations in the U.S. alone, and yet the brand doesn’t seem to offer anything differentiating or compelling.  The shopping experience is unmemorable, the little advertising and promotion they do is generic, and other than a private label product line that offers common products at a discount, their product assortment lacks uniqueness.

It seems drugstores and warehouse clubs have taken over the mainstream vitamin market and Whole Foods has become the outlet of choice for specialty health and wellness products.  Even grocery stores now carry more power bars and protein drink mixes than my local GNC.

This has left GNC without a reason for being.  And it’s such a shame because the company has the history, focus, and distribution to be a great brand.

I’ve invited brand experts to contribute their thoughts on other brands that have failed to live up to their potential.  In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from luminaries like:

Jonathan Salem-Baskin (author of Branding Only Works on Cattle, the “dim bulb” blog, and Ad Age column),

John Moore (former Whole Foods and Starbucks marketer and now of Brand Autopsy fame),

Tom Fishburne (Brand Camp cartoonist and UK Managing Director for method products),

and others.

I’m so looking forward to learning from — and commiserating with — these folks about brands that could be really great.  I’m sure there will be lessons for all of us to learn.  Please check back next Monday for the next in this series on brand disappointments (I’ll still post other stuff during the week.)