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The central problem of this paper has been to construct a simple mechanism of choice that would suffice for the behavior of an organism confronted with multiple goals. Since the organism, like those of the real world, has neither the senses nor the wits to discover an "optimal" path — even assuming the concept of optimal to be clearly defined — we are concerned only with finding a choice mechanism that will lead it to pursue, a "satisficing" path, a path that will permit satisfaction at some specified level of all of its needs.What does this mean for brands? Well, first and foremost it means that people are spending way less time thinking about your brand than you hope they are. In most situations brands are a means to an end: A way to ease the burden of choice we all face in our everyday lives. This doesn't mean that marketing doesn't matter in the decision-making process, just that we should generally assume people are spending way less time thinking about our brands than we like to think they are. But I think there's something much more interesting for marketing strategy at play here. (Please bear with me as I work through some thoughts out loud.) Satisficing says two important things about how people make purchase decisions: First, they ensure that whatever they're buying clears the threshold and second that they sacrifice excess utility for ease of purchase. (As an aside, I always wondered why it was "suffice" instead of "sacrifice".) If that's true (which I think it is), than you could argue there are only two true strategies for marketing a product: You either have to move the bar or you have to make your brand the easiest to buy. Let's take those one at a time. How do you move the bar? Well, there's not one bar, so let's start there. But to be a mass product the bar represents the minimum set of requirements for a category of products. For toothpaste that's pretty much price (around ~$3), taste (minty for most), and distribution (do they have it at Walgreens/CVS/Walmart/Costco or wherever it is you buy your toothpaste). For cars, where there are multiple categories, the first thing you have to do is narrow down your choices based on use case (compact, SUV, truck) and then price (cheap, regular, luxury). After you choose a category (say luxury SUV), there are a specific set of requirements that make up the threshold. (Four wheel drive? Leather seats? Sorry ... not in the market for a luxury SUV, but hopefully you get my drift.) If your product can't hit that threshold for whatever reason you're in trouble. Either you've got to change your product to break the bar, switch categories, or you've got to attempt to move the threshold. Take airlines: You could argue Southwest (and Ryanair before it) moved the threshold down by pulling hard on the price lever. They said you don't have to pay a lot for air travel, but to move the price down we've got to remove a bunch of the requirements that the category typically has like reserved seats, free baggage, and even flying into major airports (for Ryanair at least). On the other side, when JetBlue launched 20 years ago, they moved the bar up by saying every plane should have cable TV and tasty snacks. While it seems like both of these moved the bar different directions (and, to be fair, that's how I presented them), they actually both had the same effect: They raised the bar and made their competition unbuyable for some portion of the population. While Southwest did away with some of the luxuries of air travel, they raised the bar by saying a flight must be less than this amount. JetBlue, on the other hand, decided to play an experience game instead of a price game, but the outcome was the same in that they made their competition unbuyable to a specific target. The competition is left with the same set of choices: Rejigger their product or move the threshold, thereby making themselves buyable again. One of my favorite current illustrations of this problem is Airbnb. They did such a great job differentiating themselves and their product that they made themselves unbuyable for business travelers. The threshold for most folks traveling for business is basically the opposite of what Airbnb markets: I want the same room in every city, with coffee in the same place, and most of all I don't want to have to talk to anyone about my life when I arrive bleary-eyed at 1:30 in the morning with a meeting the next day at 7am. If you look at what Airbnb is trying to do with their Work product it's basically to change their product by highlighting listings that meet these basic threshold requirements (automatic entry, fast wifi, working space if I remember correctly). The next step, of course, is to convince the world that those things actually constitute the bar. So that's the first marketing strategy: Find a way to move the threshold and make your competition less/un-buyable. In essence this is category definition/re-definition work. Onto the second strategy ... How do you make yourself easiest to buy? What about for situations where you can't /don't want to move the bar? This is where you have to make yourself the easiest to buy. The most obvious way to do this is to ensure you've got distribution in places people are and/or spend a ton of money on advertising and put yourself in the front of a shopper's mind when they're walking down the toothpaste aisle. This is basically the definition of physical and mental availability from Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow. But are there other ways to make yourself the most buyable that aren't about mass reach and also don't constitute moving the bar? (Again, competing on price, I would argue, is about moving the bar, not making yourself easier to buy.) I think the answer is pretty much no. Obviously there's stuff like naming and packaging, but changing those can also have the opposite effect (see: Tropicana, 2009). There's an interesting argument that some of these new ecommerce plays across every industry is about making things more buyable, but I'd actually argue getting a mattress delivered in a box or new razors at your door every month are the definition of moving the bar in an attempt to make your category competition unbuyable. So what's the conclusion? Well, as usual, I'm thinking out loud and not totally sure. One of the interesting questions this raises is whether I'm thinking of things too zero-sum, but while we know consumers try lots of brands in a category, it's safe to assume any single purchase is almost always zero-sum. The other question is whether you can/should be doing both of these things at once? Should you be using your reach to try and move the bar. I think the answer to this is almost definitely yes. You should either be using your reach to move the bar or make yourself the easiest to buy and you should be very clear about which outcome you're trying to drive. Of course, that raises the obvious question of whether you could use marketing to try and raise the bar while at the same time making yourself easier to buy and I think the answer is probably yes, but I'm not sure yet. One thing it does clearly suggest is that it's critical that everyone has a sober eye on the threshold requirements and an understanding of whether your product currently meets them or not. Another is that you shouldn't try to persuade someone rationally if it isn't towards the end of raising the bar of the category. Anyway, fun to write some of this out and would appreciate any feedback. Comments are open and I'm @heyitsnoah on Twitter or you can find me via my contact form.