In 1898 the first car advertisement appeared, in Scientific American, headlined ‘Dispense With A Horse’. An odd way to describe a car today, however, back then there was no shared model of an automobile. There was a model of a horse and cart – hence, ‘Dispense With A Horse’ = A horse and cart, without the horse. Movies describe themselves in a similar way sometimes: Forrest Gump meets Predator; All The President’s Men meets Mr Bean; etc.

Modern day car adverts have no such ‘horse’ problem. They rely on a common understanding of the entire category of ‘car’ (Transport > subset personal > subset car > subset sports > subset hot hatch), what they are (Peugeot 205, Citroen Saxo, etc.), and what they mean (freedom, pollution, convenience, safety, speed, excitement, etc.) in order to play off a line such as the more modern Peugeot ad, ‘If You Want Something Sensible Buy An Anorak’.

Thus evermore in our consumer world the gossamer thin differences between products are spotlighted and jingled to life; Coke Zero versus Diet Coke; Cavity reducing versus teeth whitening toothpaste (which interestingly, also play into arguments that are consistent with a consumer’s regulatory focus) – a Zeno’s Paradox of marketing.

New brands and startups

This is very interesting when thinking about new brands, and especially startups – are they ‘dispense with a horse’, or ‘If You Want Something Sensible Buy An Anorak’?

You can see how that would affect how to position the product or service. For instance, promoting a zero alcohol beer to non-alcohol drinkers will be more anorak than horse, in that non-drinkers have a model of the world that doesn’t involve drinking in which non-alcohol beer can fit (BBQ, evening at home, etc.). Promoting to heavy alcohol drinkers will be much harder – they have little-to-no model of the world in which alcohol-tasting but alcohol-free would to fit. They ‘d need full scaffolding to tray and stand up a model quickly (where, who with, how, why to drink alcohol-free).

Horse or anorak? That’s how we approach a product or service.

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