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Scary brand lessons from Confused.com

August 26th 2010

Stuart Crow

Stuart has been at Marketecture since day one, charming clients with his latest marketing obsession and unique sense of humour. One of the Directors of the agency and founding partners, Stuart can usually be found surfing the 'next big' wave, with a passion for digital, metrics and emerging marketing technologies. A true left-brain thinker, Stuart's primary focus is on finding new clients that we aspire to work with, and helping current clients to inspire new ways of thinking. Stuart's only achilles heel is admin (or rather, lack of).

Confused.com has just announced a 35% plunge in earnings for the first two quarters of 2010. It has now lost its market leadership position.

So who has grabbed their precious market share?

GoCompare.com and Comparethemarket.com

Think GoCompare. Think fat and slightly annoying opera singer.

Think ComparetheMarket. Think meercat.
Think Confused.com. Think... think.. erm sorry but nothing registers.

So what’s the context for b2b brands? Simples.

If you don’t give your market a brand idea then they will either ignore you, or create one for you anyway. Brand positioning doesn’t happen in marketing meetings it happens in the mind of the consumer.

Playing safe with a b2b brand proposition is now ironically the least safe option. When you say pretty much the same things as everyone else, then it is a huge risk not to say it differently.

The meerkat and opera singer are saying the same thing. But in a new way.
Confused.com was saying the same thing. But in the defacto industry standard.

“Industry leading”, “Solutions led”, “Added value services” and “Strategically aligned” are not brand ideas that will get anyone excited anytime soon.

The ‘Geek Squad’ is one of the fastest growing IT support companies in the US. Is it any coincidence that they convey a brand idea every time they mention their company name?

It will be very interesting to chart safe brand positioning and falling market share over the next couple of years.

“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”
Bananarama 1983 (Popstars and Soothsayers)