The thermal performance of buildings is a hot topic these days, as building codes are quickly demanding the highest performance levels.
ISO Clip is a cladding attachment that connects a rainscreen system to the interior structure of a building, creating a thermal “break” between the two.
Its design reduces thermal transfer through the “building envelope”.The ISO Clip product team, then, in marketing communications very naturally wanted to extoll their product’s contribution to high-performance building envelope design.
As part of determining a communications plan for the product, I did a positioning analysis and produced a 3D perceptual map showing ISO Clip relative to its competitors and their various attributes. This revealed that while thermal performance was a prerequisite for entry into consideration by architects and specifiers, it was not an attribute that ISO Clip could convincingly own. At least two other products could lay unassailable claim to the thermal performance crown, with almost everyone else, including ISO Clip, coming a close second.
From the product benefits of ease of installation and adjustability, I climbed one rung up the benefit ladder to the customer benefit that appeals to all architects: complete design freedom. ISO Clip is versatile enough to work on walls of any depth or design, freeing architects and their contractors of the need to specify and source different clips for different design applications.
ISO Clip, however, had a strong claim to attributes of ease of installation and adjustability, by virtue of its unique design. These had the potential to be owned attributes.
Our marketing communications therefore used thermal performance as a trojan horse of sorts to introduce ease of installation and adjustability as important features to be considered in specifying a thermal clip.
