By Oluwole Dada
We have worked through several of the structural failure factors that bring products to an early end. This includes cultural and taste mismatch, cost of production exposure, and the pricing mistakes that either price the consumer out of the market or gift the competitive advantage to a rival. Each of these, in its own way, is a failure of external alignment: the failure to match the product’s realities to the realities of the market it is entering. Today’s failure factor is different in character. It is not primarily about the numbers, or the consumer’s purchasing power, or the cost base. It is about identity.
Specifically, it is about the failure to give a product a compelling, distinctive, and defensible identity of its own. It is the failure to answer the question that every consumer, consciously or not, asks about every product they encounter: what makes this different from everything else on this shelf, and why should that difference matter to me? When a product cannot answer that question, it does not just struggle. It disappears. This is because the consumer’s attention is finite, the shelf is crowded, and a product that is indistinguishable from its neighbour has no mechanism for creating preference.
That reason is what we call product uniqueness. And its absence is one of the most reliable predictors of product failure in the consumer goods market. Let me address something that I see in organisations across markets and categories. When a competitor’s product is performing well, the organisation that is losing market share to it faces a tempting option: copy it. Reformulate to match it. Adjust the packaging to resemble it. Price to undercut it. All this may work in the immediate, but the result is always the disappearance of the product.
The global tablet market after the iPad’s 2010 launch offers one of the clearest large-scale examples of this failure. Within two years, more than 100 competing tablets entered the market, from both established technology companies and new entrants. Most followed the same formula: a rectangular touchscreen device, broadly similar specifications, a lower price, and the implied promise of an iPad-like experience at a fraction of the cost. Almost all failed commercially. They copied the hardware, but not the identity.
Consider Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Its uniqueness isn’t the tomato or a recipe competitors cannot copy. It’s the total experience Heinz has made ownable over more than 150 years: its thickness, distinctive bottle, slow pour, and familiar sweetness. Together, these cues have shaped what many consumers expect ketchup to be. Heinz does not merely compete in the category; it helps define it.
In the Nigerian market, Indomie has achieved something comparable in the instant noodles category. Indomie did not invent instant noodles. The category existed before it entered Nigeria, and numerous competitors have attempted to challenge its dominance since. What Indomie owns is an association so deeply embedded in the Nigerian consumer’s mind and in the minds of the children who grew up eating it. The brand name has effectively become the category name. Nigerian consumers do not always ask for instant noodles. They ask for Indomie, even when they are buying a competitor’s product. That is the commercial value of genuine product uniqueness: it makes your brand the category’s reference point rather than one of its entries.
Many product failures happen when successful brands abandon their identity to imitate rivals, surrendering the uniqueness that made them successful. A sharper example is Listerine’s late-1990s attempt to launch a milder mouthwash after research showed that its intense burning sensation discouraged some potential users. The logic was simple: soften the product, remove the barrier, and attract more consumers. However, the research missed a critical truth: for loyal users, the burn was not just discomfort; it was proof that the product worked. The milder variant made Listerine seem less effective, was withdrawn, and the brand returned to its original formula. The lesson was clear: Listerine’s uniqueness was the intense, clinical, and visibly effective sensation and was inseparable from the very attribute some consumers found challenging.
In closing, this is the lesson I want every leader at every level of an organisation to take from this instalment. If you are a department head, a line manager, a commercial director, a supply chain manager, every decision you make about a product is either building its uniqueness or diluting it. The quality control decision, the packaging specification, the raw material sourcing, the customer service protocol and the delivery reliability standard. All of these, in aggregate, are what the consumer experiences as the product’s identity. And when that identity is distinctive and consistently delivered, it becomes the most durable competitive advantage available.
Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.
