What's Your Positioning Horoscope?

If you're like most people, at some point you've taken a minute to read the horoscope section in a newspaper or magazine. Did you ever notice that whichever one you read, you can find a way to apply it to your own personal situation?

Unfortunately for a lot of pharmaceutical and biotech Brands, positioning is the same way. It's not really unique…the positioning statement that applies to a product can also work for one or more of its competitors. Here are a few key questions you can ask to help determine if your Brand is suffering from a "horoscope positioning:"

• Is your positioning unique? That is, does it say something about your Brand that others cannot or, at worst, do not proclaim?
  
  
• Regardless of the format you used to build the anatomy of a positioning statement, can you plug your competitor's names into it and does it still work for them?
  
  
• Do you have to add words to make it exclusive to your Brand, thereby diluting the focus of the original intention?

The truth is horoscopes and positioning statements do have something in common—they are typically meant to appeal to large groups of people. But that's where the similarity stops. Whereas horoscopes apply to millions under one sign, a positioning statement must apply to only one product. If not, it's surely not a good "sign" of things to come.

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