Page 78 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle

78 CHAPTER 4 INFLUENCING THE MESSY MIDDLE

And it’s also worth noting that established brands still exert quite a pull. Even
with a vastly superior proposition, half of mobile network service shoppers
still rejected Gem Mobile and opted for an inferior, less appealing proposition,
because it came from their favourite brand.

The comparison between these two verticals might indicate that broadband
provision in the UK, operating as it does on largely the same network
infrastructure, is more commoditised than mobile network provision. But
even with that being the case, over a quarter of shoppers rejected the

challenger and chose to stick with their tried-and-tested favourites.

And in both simulations, the second choice brands outperformed their
fictitious counterparts by a substantial margin when both were supercharged
to the same degree against the first choice.

But we weren’t just limited to comparing these two product types.
We created and tested fictional brands in each of our 31 categories. All of

the brands we invented loosely followed the conventions of their category,
with logos and typefaces derived from their real-world counterparts. And
yet, despite their surface plausibility, the fact remains that none of our
participants had any awareness or investment in any of these brands before
the moment they first encountered them. In terms of our marketing model,
their “exposure” level was zero.