Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

DEFINING AND MANAGING THE CATEGORY OR SUBCATEGORY 243
Kiss, a simple packaging innovation, provided a subcategory that
Hershey enjoyed for decades.
Appealing Aesthetic Design
An offering can break away from a functional tradition and create
a category or subcategory based on aesthetics, providing substantial
self - expressive and emotional benefits. Jaguar has long
pursued this strategy and is somewhat unique among competi tors
that look all too similar, as if they all use the same wind tunnel
and ended up with identical car shapes. W Hotels have a
unique look and feel (which extends to its rooms) that appeals to
fashion - forward travelers. The translucent Apple iMac showed
that even computers could have design flair, and the Apple product
stream that ensued showed that design could be an ongoing
value proposition. Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying, “ Design
is the soul of a manmade creation. ” 3 Ugly and distinctive can also
work. The lovable Volkswagen Beetle became a part of the pop
culture, developed a cult - like following, and sold over twenty -
one million cars from the mid - 1950s to the mid - 1970s.
Pursuing a design option requires the fi rm to really have a
passion for design and to support a home for a creative design
team. Creating such a culture and infrastructure is a key to success
for fi rms like Jaguar, W Hotels, and Apple, as well as other
such design - driven fi rms as Disney and Ralph Lauren. Because
achieving a home for design can be diffi cult, another route is to
create an alliance with a design fi rm or associations with independent
designers, which allows access to best - of - breed designers
when needed. Outsourcing is not easy to manage but it can
succeed with proper management.
Making the design credible and visible is another challenge.
The used of branded personality designers allowed Target to
break through its utilitarian image and create a subcategory of
discount stores with designer lines of clothing and other items.
The well - known designer Isaac Mizrahi in 2004 launched an