Digital Marketing Models: 4Cs for marketing communications

How to use the 4Cs to refine your value proposition

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.

What are the 4Cs?

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.