An Expression of Value
Most people rush to think of value in terms of price and quality. Those terms go hand-in-hand, moving on an incremental scale from low cost, low quality all the way up to high cost, high quality. Many products work in the middle of the scale …
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Better Briefs
While this tip may get a lot more interest if we evaluate the pros and cons of female and male beach bodies and their importance in underwear promotion, we’re talking about the far less exciting, but more financially important, topic of how brand teams communicate with their agencies
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Dead Reckoning
Boats and brands are more similar than you might imagine. They are both faced with navigational challenges, forced to weather storms, and unable to guide themselves. As a boat needs a good crew to succeed, so too does a brand.
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Categories, Ladders, and Leaders
Not long ago I read with great interest an article by David Aaker in which Mr. Aaker discussed the strategic differences between preference-based marketing and relevance-based marketing. The idea behind these two strategic directions and their potential impact on brand success is anything but trivial.
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Can You Be The Next “Challenge Brand"?
No one can argue with the success of Southwest Airlines. When you first look at this brand it is easy to tag it with the label of discount carrier, but upon closer inspection, Southwest is so much more than that.
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Not All Customers Have The Same Value
One of the most difficult questions a brand manager needs to answer when considering how to position their product is “who should the target customer be?” On the surface this seems like a pretty simple question, but in reality it is far more difficult to answer
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Do Multiple Segments Require Different Positionings?
When we meet and work with brand teams all over the world, we are asked this question more frequently than any other. “We have different customers, should we create a product position for each of these groups?”
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Break Through Positioning Requires You To Break Out Of A Rut
We work with many brand teams that have unique positioning and strategic challenges, but one of the most common problems is that they cannot break away from the familiar ground they have covered before. They are looking for a way to bring some new thinking to their brand …
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Positioning for Market Expansion
When it comes to positioning or re-positioning a Brand, traditional marketing practices often tell us to find the right place for our product within the traditional confines of the current market. Well, what if we told you that you have a choice …
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Inadequate Positioning
In a survey of over 300 top marketing executives from Fortune 500 companies, the Marketing Leadership Council found that the most serious mistake made by marketing teams when launching new products was inadequate positioning: A failure to clearly define a target customer and a desired perception for their brand in the market versus their competition.
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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?
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Commoditizing Product Categories
The greatest problem we see across many therapeutic categories is the relative “sameness” of product positioning. It is this “sameness” that creates the strategic issue that most brand managers struggle to overcome, the commoditization of products within competitive categories.
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A Brief on Global Positioning
“If we are developing a brand position across multiple countries and across multiple customers, should there be only one brand position?”
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Positioning During Economic Doldrums
For months now we have been inundated with talk about business failures, bank bailouts, slowing sales, and the scale of the current recession. What is clear to everyone is that the economy has slowed, that people are losing their jobs and are cutting back on spending. No industry or category has been spared.
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Positioning Validation
While other Positioning Tips have dealt with the best practices for developing brand positioning, this tip will focus on the importance of market research in assessing brand positioning and validating new positioning opportunities.
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Presidential Campaign Underscored the Importance of Research and Positioning Simplicity and Consistency
Good positioning, of course, successfully differentiates a product—or a candidate—from the competition. Good positioning should be simple, with the core benefit of the product/candidate focused on a single idea.
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Strong Emotions Help Build Powerful Brands, in the Consumer and Political Worlds Alike
By focusing on the essence of what the product is and does, the marketer may fail to nurture the budding emotional relationship between the customer and the brand. One sneaker may be as sturdily built and as objectively stylish as any Nike shoe; but Nike designs footwear that resonates deeply on an emotional level with consumers, with thoughts of Michael Jordan and game-winning jump shots, and with pleasure taken in dressing for a lifestyle defined by physical activity.
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Keystone Analysis
If your team is typical of most, it is likely that you have dozens of research reports, market analyses, competitive reviews, strategic plans, etc. littering the shelves. Many of these items have a few strategic gems hidden in the countless pages of information. Like many teams, some of these gems are relegated to folk law status, handed down from team member to team member. Often times no one is truly sure where the information came from in the first place.
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