Positioning in POSITIONING

What’s your approach to brand strategy?

Are you more vision or purpose?

Target the whole market or a segment of it?

Category entry or brand exit?

Assets to make the brand come to mind or to trigger associations?

Personality traits or archetypes?

If I look back at the last five brand strategy projects I’ve worked on, I can see five themes for me (and I do love a bit of structural symmetry).

First up, it’s been vision first. Leadership teams seem to engage best with “where do you want to be in the future?”

Sometimes, it’s good to build in the mission, “how are we going to achieve that goal?” But no one seems interested in purpose any more. That’s not to say ESG isn’t still important. It’s just secondary.

Second, I’m ‘target broad to a common need’. There’s a strong argument for reach, the 95/5 rule and all that. Segmentation also has a role to play, particularly with individual products.

Best of all, though, in my view, is positioning to a common need. If you want it to be motivating, that is.

And probably not a category driver, unless you’re lucky and that slot is still free. Every time for me, of late, it’s been the deeper need, the white space on the Need Map. Maybe I’m biased.

Third, lead people to the occasion. Category Entry Points are basically a renaming of the 5 W’s  - Who? What? When? Where? Why?

But people do like a bit of guidance. Morning or evening? In or out of home? Buying or selling? Even if, in reality, it’s bound to be a bit of both.

Fourth, assets that trigger associations. I mean yes, of course you want your brand to come to mind. But why stop there?

And will your brand come to mind if there’s no connection? We remember what we want to remember.

So it’s not about advertising that gets attention or generates an emotional response, not yet. It’s about marketing that meets an emotional need.

While we’re on it, functional AND emotional benefits. Up AND down the ladder. Great products, great brands.

And fifth and finally, a bit of nuance around personality. A shortlist of traits.

Because, as the text book says, archetypes are "universal, inherited patterns of thought and behaviour that manifest as recurring symbols and motifs in the collective unconscious, influencing human behaviour and personality". They aren't people.

So pick a single archetype for your brand if you're happy for it to be one-dimensional. if you want 2- or even 3-D, you need some contrast and even conflict. Like with people.

Anyway, put it all together and you have my positioning in positioning, in a nutshell.

I don’t suppose this could be of any benefit to you?