In spirit of the holidays we thought that it would be nice to give something back to our readers-In addition to our 12 Days of Positioning blog series …
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As busy marketers, we often quickly define our competitive set as the products or services that fall in our product's class. If you have been reading our Positioning Tips you already know to look outside of the products that are explicitly in the class to determine those that are part of the consideration set for your customers.
Generally, there are two approaches to identifying the competitive frame …
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In 1962, Avis CEO Robert Townsend was desperate to find a way to make his ailing company profitable. The story goes that he spoke to employees to try and figure out how to “right the ship” and with the help of their ad agency, DDB, they penned the now famous and iconic tagline “We try harder”. At the time, it’s pretty certain that neither Townsend, DDB, nor Paula Green …
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As we began thinking about the content for this tip we were looking to address the differences between a strongly positioned brand such as Dove Soap and one such as Apple. We can all identify the perceptions that these two brands hold with their customers, but we also recognize that each exists on a different plane …
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If you are a marketer or brand manager, the idea of purposefully creating a brand probably seems obvious. An intuitive, almost second nature function required to successfully compete in today's environment. However, for every Intel and Lexus with a well crafted and executed brand strategy, there are dozens of brands that have developed deep connections with customers accidently …
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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