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Accomplished Justice versus Visible Justice

Published in LaZOOZ - Strategy, Marketing and Innovation Newsletter, Issue 39, By Ari Manor, CEO, ZOOZ

What is more important - that a product’s usefulness is obvious and clear, or that it exists?

If you ask developers and engineers, they tend to answer that it is more important that justice is accomplished. Meaning that the unique properties attributed to the product will actually exist in practice, and that they will be far superior to those of competing products. However, experienced marketing professionals know that what is truly important is that justice is visible. Meaning, that the unique properties attributed to a product are tangible, and that the customer can easily identify and understand them, even by quickly glancing at the product.

 Customers tend to believe what they see, and not what is actually done.

Two examples from research that we conducted with hot dog companies demonstrated this: : 

• Believe what you see: We put two large pots full of cooked hot dogs at a certain city square. One pot had “hot dogs from the refrigerator” written on it, and on the second pot had “hot dogs from the freezer” on it. We let passerbys taste one hot dog from each pot. Some of them first tasted from the “fridge” pot, and others first tasted form the “freezer” pot. We asked a simple question “What tastes better?” The answer was unanimous – hot dogs from the fridge. Behind the scenes, all the hot dogs (in both pots) were actually from the fridge. There was no real difference between them. The sign (what you see) influenced people’s taste buds…
• Disbelief in what you do: We asked hundreds of people – “How long can you keep a closed package of hot dogs in your fridge at home before it must be thrown away?” The most common answer that we got was “two weeks”. Actually, hot dogs are always sealed in a vacuum pack, which protects them from bacterial growth. Therefore, they can be safely kept for up to 3 months in the fridge (and 3 additional months in the store fridge). Hot dog packages have been visibly stamped with expiry dates for years, but hordes of customers ignore it. They prefer to treat the hot dogs as real meat, and not to believe the manufacturers.

Fortunately, there are many benefits that are easy to demonstrate, and therefore also easier to sell. For example, it is easy to show that a car is sporty using a variety of stereotypical characteristics: the color red, convertible roof, relatively large hood. In contrast, other benefits are difficult to demonstrate. For example, it is much more difficult to show that a car is completely rust resistant. In such cases, even if justice is accomplished (the chassis is made of special rust-resistant metal), it is very difficult to persuade customers that the benefit truly exists. When justice is visible, it is easy to convince customers to prefer a specific product to another. And when justice is only accomplished (but not visible), a much larger marketing budget is required (often too large) to persuade the customers. Therefore, and especially with shelf products (that are sold by a salesperson), it is better to focus on presenting innovations and benefits that are easily visible.

The right amount in numerous cases is 80% visible justice, and only 20% accomplished justice. In other words, a product whose advantages are evident and tangible, even if in reality it is only slightly better. For example, a red sports car with a wide hood, but with a 2,200 cc engine (only slightly larger than a “regular” engine), will probably sell well. In contrast, a car that looks like a regular family car but that has a 3,000 cc engine (much larger) will probably not sell well, and result in losses.
 

In summary, the next time that you are developing a new product or creating a new marketing and differentiation strategy for an existing product line – try to focus on presenting a tangible advantage, one that the customers will easily understand and internalize. Later you will have to promise that the tangible advantage over the competitors is also real, because you do not want to be caught as charlatans. Still, allocate reasonable budgets to accomplished justice and aim to be slightly better than the competitors in practice (but in an area that competitors will have difficulty closing the small gap that you created). The advantage in practice, the accomplished justice, especially if it is a consumer good, is apparently less important than what the Development Department tells you.

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