Physics, Marketing, and Beer

by Neal on September 2, 2010

The laws of physics apply to many things and can even help your business.

Energy, mass, acceleration, and other physics concepts exist in the world of business.

I saw a TED video with Dan Cobley about physics and marketing the other day, and I have a masters degree in applied physics, so I thought I would cover some ideas in physics and their application to marketing.

One idea that Colby brought up was Newton’s Second Law.

Newton’s Second Law states that the force is equal to the mass multiplied by the acceleration.  The force and acceleration are both vectors which means they have a direction.  That’s what the little arrow symbol above the F and a stand for.  If you divide each side of the equation by mass, you get an equation that states the acceleration in terms of the force and mass.

So the acceleration, how fast something can change speed and direction, can be increased with a smaller mass.

A small company can change direction much faster than a large company.

It can respond to changes in the market more efficiently.

The small company doesn’t have to form a committee to make decisions or pass delegation through multiple layers of management.

The mack truck

cannot turn as quickly as a Ducati

A clear example of this can be seen with large companies trying to umbrella many products under one name.

The American beer Budweiser sells as

Budweiser, Bud Light, Bud Dry, Bud Ice, Bud Ice Light and more….

The brand name no longer stands for one particular type of beverage.

The better approach would have been to keep distinct names for different types of beer.

“Budweiser” is recognizable and gave a little bit of initial strength to each variation.

It takes a bit longer to establish awareness using unique names for the different types of products.

Unilever owns dove soap and lipton tea, they’re not calling them unilever soap and unilever tea since it would confuse consumers.

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