When we first began discussing CAPOV, we expected a lot of confusion and pushback.

“This is brand awareness.”

“These are simply brand claims.”

I will discuss why they are both and have to work together over the next two articles and why Category Awareness with a Point of View is different than Category Awareness or Brand Awareness alone. How this works in this modern age is critical.

There’s no brand manager who is going to agree to spending against Category Awareness. But that is suddenly the name of the game. And you better do it with a point of view.

Why is this even a thing to discuss? An explosion of ads.

• Although there are not more TV or radio spots per hour, there are more channels.
• Although print subscribers are in decline, there are more platforms for reading things.
• Digital ad inventory is almost unlimited.
• Social platforms and video platforms deliver text, video and who knows what’s next.
• Not to mention in-store messaging.
• Platform cross selling (Customers who bought this also looked at that).
• Where is all this email coming from?

Our prospect consumers are simply overwhelmed by the number of messages they receive. But we have to make a dent. We have to get them to consider something.

The objective is to get them to consider that something interesting is going on in the category. And that something is your product.

In the 2019 Super Bowl, Bud Light aired an interesting series, a $20-million dollar wager to get consumers to consider the category from their point of view.

1. I was aware of beer but have no interest.
2. I was aware of the light beer category, but have no interest
3. I was not aware that Bud Light does not use corn syrup in their beer
4. I was not aware that other brands do use corn syrup in their beer
5. I became aware that something was happening in this category and it involves corn syrup, which I recall is an issue in other foods. Corn syrup = not good. Corn syrup in beer?

Before we can get the consumer to consider our brand, we have to get them to simply consider the category we are in… travel, banking, mustard, pet health. The modern customer is editing their exposure to marketing and as I’ve said previously, they don’t trust us anyway. So, to get them to pay attention, we have to open up the discussion much more broadly to the category level. And then we must provide our point of view (because, after all, we are paying for it.)

Category Awareness with a Point of View is our trigger, our first way to make a dent in the prospect’s thinking. It must engage, educated, provoke, enchant or SOMETHING to gain attention to the category and provide our (brand) point of view.

Historically, thinking has generally stopped here. But this is only where it begins. What happens next is changing everything we know.