Is it really a paradigm shift?
As Christmas approaches and diaries fill with end-of-year meetings, it’s hard not to notice how often the same phrases crop up. Everyone plays meeting bingo every now and again, mentally ticking off familiar expressions as they appear — something Richard Stone, managing director of STEM PR agency Stone Junction, has seen often enough to question whether we always use them correctly.
Sometimes, though, those words we use in meetings can be useful, providing we use them correctly. Paradigm shift is a great example.
Coined originally by American philosopher and physicist Thomas Kuhn to mean a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline, it’s amongst the most abused terms in the world of marketing.
Essentially, Kuhn argued that most scientific work is done inside a paradigm, or prevailing framework of thinking and practice. When a new theory makes the old work incompatible, a paradigm shift has occurred.
When he originally created and popularised the concept in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962, Kuhn suggested that the process might contain several phases. These were ‘normal science’, ‘extraordinary research’, ‘adoption of a new paradigm’ and the ‘aftermath of a scientific revolution’.
In contrast, Industry 4.0, for instance, while an important idea, was a series of incremental changes in the way industry approached the technologies we now think of as populating the smart factory.
Crucially, Kuhn argued that for a new paradigm to replace an old one, it must be better. For example, the world being a globe is a clearly better theory than the world being flat. Mobile phones provide an obviously better way of communicating while on the move than fixed-line phone boxes and pagers. Cars are better than a horse and cart.
One might argue that collaborative robots are a clearly better way of creating an environment where humans and robots can work together on the same application. Similarly, the switch from knowledge-based to data-driven AI could be defined as a paradigm switch.
Just imagine their smug faces
Apart from providing you with the ammunition you need to tell your marketing manager that switching from email marketing to social media automation isn’t actually a paradigm shift, how does this help?
Well, in a marketing context, it’s important to understand the difference between an important change and a paradigm shift, and an incremental change and a paradigm shift. Recognising these things will change the way you seek to position a technology, product or service against the background of its competition.
Tone, position and tactic
When you attempt to position something that doesn’t represent a true paradigm shift as if it does, you create a scenario where, in the mind of your audience, the subject of your marketing is positioned incorrectly.
Let’s say you are launching a new inverter. It has loads of cool new features that really pop, but it’s basically just a new inverter. Attempting to position it as something else — as a paradigm shift in the market — will result in your customers not thinking about it when they want to buy an inverter.
If you launch an inverter, you want your customers to think, for argument’s sake, WEG, Rockwell, Siemens… and you. You have positioned yourself in the correct context.
You can play this positioning game in any sector. Industrial robots? KUKA, Universal and Shibaura maybe. Bearings? SKF, FAG and NSK. Soft drinks? Coke, Pepsi and Tango. It’s fun, right?
Your product will never end up positioned in this way if you promote it as a paradigm shift. However, if it truly is a paradigm shift, promoting it as such gives you access to an entirely new market — something I’ve discussed at length before in these blogs.
So, next time you sit down for a festive game of Stone Junction meeting bingo, spare a thought for the humble paradigm shift and its potential usefulness — or not — in your campaign.
Oh, and do have a very merry Christmas.
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