Brand Mix

Last week, I reported on the work of Alexander Chernev who has been trying to determine whether a narrow, specialized positioning where a product focuses on one feature works better than an all-in-one solution.

His main conclusion is that consumers tend to devalue the perceived performance of features if they are bundled together compared to a product with just one feature (unless the bundled products are priced higher).

Today, I listened to a story on Marketplace about healthcare which has parallels. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, family doctors aren't getting the funding or the respect that they ought to from the National Institutes of Health.

In his commentary, Robert Martensen says that this is wrong. He makes the case for family doctors by comparing Pierre, S.D., where there are only a few medical specialists with Boca Raton in Florida which is chock full of them. Turns out that people live longer in Pierre. Martensen thinks it's because family doctors play a critical role in integrating and coordinating health care which specialists simply can't. As he says of the specialists: "Because their focus is narrow but deep, few of them, however well meaning, are likely to have the big picture about you."

Bringing this back to the world of marketing, is this the challenge that integrated marketers have vs. specialists? They may have the potential to provide the best solution because they can develop a coordinated plan across multiple disciplines but they don't get the respect they deserve vs. a specialist who offers just one solution/approach.