The 4Cs (Clarity, Credibility, Consistency, Competitiveness) is most often used in marketing communications and was created by David Jobber and John Fahy in their book ‘Foundations of Marketing’ (2009). Once a business has segmented its marketing and identified the target audience, the next stage is to position the business. To successfully achieve this, the 4Cs is a useful tool to create a positioning statement or to build an online value proposition.
The 4Cs are designed to help you think about your value proposition.
To understand how this works in practice, I’ve looked at four well-known companies and what’s interesting is that their slogans all meet the rules of Clarity, Credibility and Consistency. The Competitiveness element is less clear. And I am not sure how you would convey competitiveness with luxury brands.
Some UK supermarkets do address the Competitiveness element, for example: Morrisons’ slogan is ‘Love it cheaper’ and Sainsbury’s slogan is ‘Live well for less'. It seems when the competitiveness element is included, it’s about price, although it could also be about performance in B2B firms such as technology. Competitiveness is also about levels of customer service, such as Avis’s slogan (until 2012) ‘We try harder’.
For more discussion of how digital marketing models can inform marketing, download our free guide from Annmarie Hanlon. You can also read this case study showing three integrated marketing campaign examples.
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By Annmarie Hanlon
Dr Annmarie Hanlon is a Chartered Marketer and an Associate Professor in Digital and AI Marketing at UCL within the Global Business School for Health. Previously she was the Course Director of MSc Marketing and Leadership at Cranfield University. She is an experienced academic with a strong teaching portfolio in digital marketing. Before joining academia, she worked in consultancy for 25 years. As an early adopter of technology and ‘online marketing’ she has led digital strategy and planning projects across Europe, in sectors including healthcare and IT, legal and financial, software and manufacturing. Annmarie has written several SAGE textbooks including Digital Marketing, Digital Business and The Digital Marketing Planner. She is co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Digital Marketing, and The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Marketing. Her textbooks are adopted in nearly 30 countries by over 100 universities and are the leading textbooks in SAGE’s digital topic collections.
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