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Summarized by:

Find Us: +62 858-8046-7071 madebyrootan www.rootan.co rootancreative Rootan Creative

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A brand is a customer's understanding of a

product, services, or company. It's not what you say it
is, but what they say about. People want a
trustworthy brand in a pool of infinite choices. Thus,
in this very cluttered world, you need more than
differentiation, you need radical differentiation and
remember the rule: when everyone zigs, then zag.

A brand should not only make a differentiation

to fit with the market, but a radical differentiation to
find a whole new market space you can own, lead,
and defend, thereby delivering long term profit over
decades rather than months. To deploy radical
differentiation, your brand need to master this 4
discipline which are :

1. Finding your zag

2. Designing your zag
3. Building your zag
4. Renewing your zag

In this summary we will only cover from finding your

zag to building your zag, which is critical for small
startups and medium enterprises.
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1. Finding your ZAG

The first discipline is finding your zag, what’s different
about your company. which means that you need to
find your own space in the market.

These 4 categories below help you to know where

your brand is at this moment.

GOOD

Good Good
but not different and different

Not good Different

and not different but not good

DIFFERENT

The goal is to make something good and be

different. First you need to make sure that your
offering is good. This offering is something your
customer first considers when looking at your
product, such as quality, price, style etc. If your
offering is not good, you won’t make it in the end.

However, offering something good is not enough.

You have to present something different.
Something ‘fresh’ or ‘radical’ or ‘crazy’ or ‘weird’.
Identify what makes you different from your
competitors. This should give you a general idea of
what you will be doing in the next step
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2. Designing your ZAG

Now is time to design and build your zag. This process
contains 17 checkpoints that will walk you through
from finding your essence to managing brand
portfolio, the zag way.

Checkpoint 1 Who Are you?

This is about where the spirit of your company comes from.
Look inside and ask yourself, who are you? Where does
your passion lie? What gets you up in the morning?
Identifying those reasons help your company have strong
fuels to go further.

Checkpoint 2 What do you do?

Clarify what business you're in, your core purpose, and for
what. Have a clear sense of who you are and why you're
doing what you do. Your purpose should be beyond making
profits. It should be something meaningful for people
outside your organization. Define your purpose with a
simple yet meaningful statement, less than 12 words. For
example, Disney stands to make people happy, and what’s
yours?

Checkpoint 3 What’s your vision?

Your vision is derived from your purpose. This is an
“illustration of the future” that leads to your commitment.
You should define the concrete vision before continuing to
the next checkpoint. A true vision helps your company
achieve clearly defined goals.

Checkpoint 4 What wave are you riding?

Since high performance brands always find their

differentiation and focus powered by trends, your brand
should also be in line with today's trend in society. You
should determine what trends could boost your brand
performance. Observe your local social dynamics, find
trends that fit your brand and will help you to communicate
with your audiences. Some examples of trends are
sustainability, organic, authenticity, etc.
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Checkpoint 5 Who shares the brandscape?

Look at your category, who is the leading brand? Is there a

chance for you to be the leading brand in your category?
Your biggest chance to be a leading brand is to be the first
in the category or to be the most popular among
consumers. But the most certain way is to be the first mover
and be the most popular to hold your place. The formula
could be simplified as

first mover + popularity = brand leader.

Therefore, think of a way to be the first choice of your

customer, or become the first mover in a new category.

Checkpoint 6 What makes you the “only”?

The whole point of zag is radical differentiation, which

means you have to be the only one. Answer this:

our brand is the only ____ (insert your categories) that

_____ (your differentiation).

The more detailed version is :

our brand is the only ____ (what) that _____ (how) for ____
(who) in____ (where) who wants/need to____ (why) in this
time of _____(when).

Defining your oneliness statement helps you filter out

future decisions and stick to your core focus.

Checkpoint 7 What should you add or substract?

Zag is about looking at what your competitors do, then do

something not only different, but radically different.
However, think twice about adding elements to your
brand. If you’re going to add some element that brings you
to another competition, you may end up wasting energy
and confusing your customer.

An example would be Luxury car brand Cadillac when they

choose to make bicycles. They choose short term business
profits at the expense of confusing their customer. Align
your business strategy to your customer experiences. Even
though some business opportunities look very lucrative, it
may not be the best decision for your brand in the long run.
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Checkpoint 8 Who loves you?

Every brand is built by a community. This community is a

self sustainable ecosystem where everyone has a role to
play. Management nurtures employees to serve customers
better, which then will attract investors to support the
management. Partners and suppliers succeed by helping
the brand succeed. Brands exist within a community and
the community benefits from the brand. So, pay attention
to the people who love you.

Checkpoint 9 Who’s the enemy?

Know your competitors. This is important because you can't

please everyone. Pick the biggest competitor and stay
true to your radical differentiation. Sometimes your
biggest competitor is not exactly a competing company,
rather, an old way of doing things. So be mindful of that.

Checkpoint 10 What do they call you?

The most valuable asset is your name, to differentiate your

brand from competitors. Think about the one name that is
easy to remember and be specific. Your brand name
should be brief, appropriate, easy to spell, satisfying to
pronounce, suitable for brandplay, and legally defensible.

Checkpoint 11 How do you explain yourself?

Your “trueline” is derived from your onliness statement. It’s

something your competitors can’t claim. The simplest form
of explanation about your brand that your customer might
say to their friends and relatives. An example is if I were to
explain Disneyland to my friends, I would say Disneyland is
the world’s favorite amusement park. The key to crafting
your trueline is to focus on a single proposition. Find your
truline from the customer perspective that tells the
different truth about your brand.
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Checkpoint 12 How do you spread the word?

This step is to unpack the meaning hidden in your truline

and deploy it across a series of your touchpoints where
people interact with your brand. Determine what kind of
voice you want to use across all touchpoints. Each of your
touchpoints ranging from social media, website, billboards,
packaging, etc. should have one voice that’s consistent
across all touch points. The idea of zag is to differentiate,
you have to be consistent to that, and when you align all
your marketing and communications with the zag, you win.

Checkpoint 13 how do people engage with you?

Look at your competitors, see how they sell what they sell.
Now map your value proposition and find a different way to
deliver that to your customer. The idea is to avoid
competitive areas and win in touchpoints where you are
unopposed. Forget about best practice, it is a common
practice. And common practice will never add up to zag.
The main objective here is to compete where you can win.

Checkpoint 14 What do they experience?

Without a good execution, strategy is only a plan -- an

intention, and when executed poorly, this leads to bad
customer experience. To provide a good customer
experience you have to map your customer journey, then
identify what touchpoints need the most attention, and
influence what happens there. The key is to craft those
experiences to create meaning and value to your brand.

Checkpoint 15 How do you earn their loyalty?

You can’t buy loyalty. Discount coupons don't work because

other brands can offer the same thing. Which is why brand
loyalty has to be earned by something specific that only
you can do, and it has to be mutual, meaning that you have
to be loyal to your customer for them to reciprocate. You
can’t ask customers to be loyal spending money on you,
that doesn’t make sense. Instead, you have to show them
that you are loyal in whatever you do, and that you are
worthy of their loyalty.
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Checkpoint 16 How do you extend your success?

After you have already reached success, it’s time to extend

your brand and build a brand portfolio. Generally, there are
2 ways of extending your brand: house of brands and
branded house. House of brands is like P&G where every
brand is on its own. Branded house is like Revlon where the
brand Revlon stands for many product lines. Both strategies
have their own advantages and disadvantages, it’s up to the
company which one to choose.

Checkpoint 17 how do you protect your portfolio?

When you have a growing number of brands, you will face

some difficulties namely: contagion, confusion,
contradiction, and complexity.

Contagion is where negative perception spreads from one

brand to another. In this context, growing as a house of
brands might be better than a branded house because it
separates the brand.

Confusion is where customers have too many choices

within a brand, this is also more common in branded
houses, so be mindful when adding products or offerings.

Contradiction is where a brand is perceived differently

across different cultural backgrounds, you might want to
build a separate brand for each culture. And,

complexity is where building your brand portfolio has

become too complicated and doesn’t support your zag
anymore. In this case, you have to subtract and let go of
your sub brands.

These 17 checkpoints should give you a clear perspective on

building a zag that differentiates your brand from the rest.

To Be Continued
 2 Volume - 1

ZAG: Number One Strategy of

High-Performance Brands
by Marty Numeiner

Summarized by:

Created in 14 October 2020

Find Us: +62 858-8046-7071 madebyrootan www.rootan.co rootancreative Rootan Creative