GET ON WITH IT

Anybody else noticed Chat GPT or Claude starting to get a bit exasperated with them?

Like many brand strategists, I’m often guilty of overthinking things, particularly when it comes to a positioning.

As I endlessly circle back around the direction and the wording, more than a hint of impatience can creep into my LLM of choice.

“That’s it!” “Now we’re cooking!” “Perfect!” “You’ve got it!” “Done?”

Once even: “Does this feel right? Or are you going to keep second-guessing yourself?”

Rude.

Never has this been more in evidence than when thinking about my own positioning.

It did need work. ‘Moving people closer to brands’ served me well for well over a decade. I still believe brands have to make an emotional connection.

‘Moments of closeness’ was my response to the salience tsunami. Mental availability may be an outcome rather than a strategy, a probability, but it has still been a reality check for marketeers.

And then last year, as the marketing pendulum swung away from qualitative research - maybe for good - I realised my future lay firmly in brand positioning.

Of course, that’s a choice. It’s also an ever-more-crowded category. Clients have many options when it comes to getting help on brand strategy, including now a vast army of freelancers.

So if ever there was an example of having to be ‘meaningfully different’, this is one.

I did feel there were plenty of companies looking for more than someone telling them to increase their brand’s mental and physical availability.

I also have a feeling that the easy-to-mind, easy-to-find shortcuts are actually short-circuits. They drain marketeers and their brands of power, speeding their descent into tactics.

But the first place to look for meaningful difference is in the product. And as someone said to me just before Christmas, “needs are your thing, aren’t they?”

Well, they are. They always have been, since before Closer to Brands. People’s brand choices are driven by their deeper needs. And deciding which need to focus on, for me, is the key decision.

In the last 20 years I’ve also built around a hundred Need Maps for clients. I know strictly I should call them implicit goals, working pre-consciously, expected reward minus expected pain. But I reckon I’m stuck with deeper needs.

It also separates me from the threat of shallow thinking, which AI will usher in if we’re not careful. Quicker doesn’t necessarily mean better.

So yes, I have basically driven ChatGPT and Claude mad over the past year. I had this idea at the end of 2024 that my positioning should be ‘deeper needs make stronger brands’.

Initially, to be honest, I liked the rhythm of the line. It sounded like ‘graded grains make finer flour’, the old Homepride strapline

I went through every word individually, as you do. Changed them, changed them back.

I knew it captured what made me different in brand positioning. But the outcome is a stronger brand, not a research debrief or a strategy model.

And strength leads to conviction. Hopefully that’s what it would give clients as they seek to drive their brand forward with their consumers and within their company.

So that’s it.

DEEPER NEEDS MAKE STRONGER BRANDS. Benefit and belief. In caps.

Time now for action.

Can’t wait to see what Claude thinks of this.