Episode 5: Positioning

THIS EPISODE: POSITIONING IS POWER

We're getting into the really fascinating, juicy stuff today.

If you've listened to our previous episodes, you've heard us talk about the brand wheel, which is the process model that we use for building a successful brand. In the last episode, we started in the very center of the wheel, with the brand core, and then the brand drivers are the themes right around that.

You can check out the brand wheel at brandfrontlines.com. For a visual reference, if you want to see it. Today, we're moving out to the third level occupied by the three P’s: promise, personality and positioning.

Each one of those P's deserves and has its own upcoming episode. And we're going to start with the positioning. It really was a cornerstone concept that kind of laid the groundwork for modern brand marketing. There was a book that came out very influential. I still recommend reading it today, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, by Al Ries and Jack Trout. So some people think that maybe you don't need it, maybe it's not as important as it was. But we use it, we believe in it, we have found it to be very helpful with the brands that we build.

We're going to talk about what positioning is, how to find your point of differentiation, what to do if you don't have a significant difference from the other players in your field, and how to lead clients through the process of finding positioning that harmonizes with the rest of your brand identity. But first, Eric, what are you working on?

Eric: Today I spent a fair chunk of the morning pulling together some recommendations, some takeaways, from a couple of training sessions. I was reminded of something, though, really fundamental, when I was putting this together. And that's the absolute importance of in many businesses, many industries, of having great case studies, and also really good testimonials. And I'm always surprised at how relatively weak they are. They seem to be boring, like there just a chore, like ‘Let's crank out the case studies.’ People just grab a testimonial and instead of really investing in them, they're sort of handed off. For the power that they have the ability to really pique interest and demonstrate how you deliver value… They're so important, so take a look at your case studies if you use case studies; and take a look at your testimonials and see how you can dial them up.

ARE YOU SLEEPING ON CASE STUDIES & TESTIMONIALS?

Marissa: How do you get a case study that really zings?

Eric: I don't know if they ever really zing completely. Maybe you can create some catchy headlines. Yu don't want them to be too long. You want to really clearly identify the problem that the client had, the business problem, and then the pain that was behind that problem. Hopefully people who come to that case study can relate to that. Beyond that you don't need to tell a whole lot about the client, just enough to flush out that. And then get into the solution. An hour Of course making sure that the big ideas there, so you might say it's really basic: it's problem/solution. But framing that problem is critical.

Marissa: I read a lot that are sort of narrative. They follow a chronological time timeline, like ‘We met the client They came to us with this problem.’ That's a first draft.

Eric: If you're finding yourself in process, you're probably lost. The other thing about testimonials and I think a lot of bigger clients get this, but some big or not, think of a testimonial as somebody saying ‘Really love working with you, you’re so great, miss you guys.’ We look at them as as way to underscore key points that you want people to understand better about what you're offering. So If you had five testimonials and you want to underscore five different value propositions, make sure each testimonial is geared to each one. The other thing is keeping them brief, almost like on a movie poster, so a short phrase, a sentence or two.

Marissa: Yeah and like college or a book jacket blurb— write it for them. Or at least tell them, “This is what I think is really interesting and valuable what what we did together.” That makes it easier for them because if they want to write you a testimonial, they want it to be good for you. They're doing it for you, for your purposes.

Eric: Yeah, they're they usually happy to let you. What we have found is everybody is almost always happy to give you a testimonial, if their company allows it. And there are many companies that don’t. You to lead the way, so put it in your words and they'll change it. We assume that we'll be doing that. So that was my morning. What about you? What did you do today?

SOMETIMES BRAND STRATEGY IS BUSINESS STRATEGY (OR LIFE COACHING)

Marissa: Well I’m in an interesting moment with one of my clients. They’re a nonprofit and we've been working on building their audience through a podcast and much more robust communications and content than they've had in many years. I've been working directly with their Director and through this uptick in and passion and communication and engagement, she realized that she's ready to move on. , she's like “I've been saying that this is what I want and we're doing it, it's working and I’m still not into it. So we are working on bringing in a new director. I’ll probably continue my relationship with the organization, but It's one of those moments where marketing work can lead to kind of PR work at times and oftentimes, especially if you have a good trust with the client can lead to business strategy and, sure, even coaching at times.

Eric: This is a deep topic but It if we're working on an organization’s brand's ability to communicate and offer and what it takes to communicate isn't just technical skill, it's kind of like growth, right? You're helping something that's having a hard time expressing itself to express itself better. That growth isn't being articulate, it’s realizing all kinds of things to move onward and in the case of your client, growing entirely into a new idea about what she wants for herself and what she wants for the business.

Marissa: Yes, interesting day, but on to positioning.

WHAT IS POSITIONING?

Eric: Every time I think about positioning, I have a terrible image. I see these explorers landing on a shore and then sticking their flags in and claiming it. That is very out of step with the times but it's a mental image that you're staking your claim in the marketplace. So formally, we’d say positioning is a brand’s defining point of difference that you've distilled down to a single idea or single expression. A good one is going to be one that no other brand can really claim with anywhere near the same level of credibility that you can. So in a way you could say positioning is an answer to the question: Where do I stand?

Marissa: We talked last episode about core, which is the field that you're in and so positioning further defines where you stand in that field.

Eric: Right. When you're doing your core work, you’re not so concerned about etching that point of difference. You’re still trying to figure out who you play amongst. Positioning is the next step. And often you might start with brand themes that we’ve talked about and ask yourself which of those my clients find most valuable, are the best to deliver, and seem most interesting. What is most worthwhile, most in line with our strategy, most in line with what we're offering? And start to look at it from that standpoint. Good positioning work always involves looking at the core competition and seeing how they've positioned themselves. It's all relative. There's a kind of culture, there's a kind of leader or team I've encountered from time to time, not very often but, where their point of view is, “Look I don't need to look at competition as long as I'm really clear about what I think I'm really, really strong at; and I support that fully and I message the hell out of that in a really intelligent, strategic way. It really doesn't matter what the other people are relative to us.” That kind of aggressive attitude might get you somewhere but we've seen cases where people have done that and they're all excited about where they're going and then there's already somebody else out there who's offering that, already occupying that same position.

Marissa: I offer competitive analysis on a lot of things, not just positioning— like maybe for a tagline or just what other people saying in the space and almost all of my clients off the top are just not that Interested. They don't think it's going to be that worthwhile, they think they already know it, they already know the space, and they've already kind of done the work in their head. And it always leads to really interesting conversation. Just giving them something to bang against gets really juicy information from the client.

Eric: The other thing is for me personally, I'm a brand junkie. I view them as stories, I’m serious about that. So just like if you're a screenwriter, you're going to be really interested in movies, that's how I feel about the brand world. I want to know what's going on. For me it's not just business, it's also kind of entertainment. I find brands very entertaining. So, remembering where we are in the Brand Wheel, we’re close to the center. And these things are things that we as brand builders want to have in our playbook, but they're not enough necessarily ideas that we're going to present as such right to the audience. Positioning is something for the internal folks to know. The goal is not to say “This is how we're different!" which sounds like a really lame way to convey just about anything. But to know what the idea is that you'd like for people to have. Then work to create that. Example: In Detroit, we're working back in 2006 or 2007 on the tourism and economic development brand for Detroit, which is work that's ongoing, That's what brought us to Detroit, where we spend a lot of time. And and the positioning that we land on was: Detroit is where cool comes from. It was a really useful position. It served us well. But I was deathly afraid as I was sharing this with its very large group of stakeholders and decision makers that it would become a public facing. The most uncool thing you could do in the world is say “Hey, we're where cool comes from.” It was a powerful idea. So that's a real clear cutting sample of the bright line you want to draw most of the time between keeping it inside and knowing that this is a tool and idea we want to create a public-facing message about.

GETTING INTO THE RIGHT POSITION

Marissa: So Let's talk about getting clients to positioning.

Eric: The competitive work kind of triangulates. What people are sharing with you about their strengths and what you're perceiving and what they've been communicating will lead you to a pretty clear idea. You can come forth and say “This is directionally where we think this is going. This seems like a solid position.” And then you can have a conversation around it. Now that may or may not be where you end up. But it's just going to get you on that path. And I'd say that most of the time that's how it goes. There's probably one out of five times where there are a number of possibilities and it’s not really clear to the client what their dominant strength is. They're good at a lot of things. So, in situations like that we might create three scenarios, let's say, that at all represent different paths that they can go down and then we review each of those, trying to figure out which one is the strongest and also which one resonates with them the most. Usually in a situation like that there are pros and cons, there’s often a temptation to want shove two together, the old Frankenstein's monster problem. We resist that. We're pretty adamant about that.You've got to choose. You've got to lead with something and that's really the cornerstone strategy. You don't want to be a little bit of this and a little bit of that. You just can't do that.

Marissa: So walk me through an example of a scenario.

Eric: Thinking back on Some work we did for WebMD Health Services a few years back, they had a number of competitors. It was an early player in health services but now there were a number of other companies that were nipping at their heels. I remember the term ankle-biters coming up a bit. In the early market the WebMD health services was able to kind of have a leadership position and the ankle-biters were facing going after little pieces of that business that they could get really good at and have these niche positions. We’re looking at that problem trying to work it out with them and we realized that there's some classic places that you could occupy in that space. Let's say everybody really wants to be known for delivering the best results. If you have a weight loss program, you want to be kthe ones that categorically will deliver the results. People will flock to you. People try to do that but often the promises are not fulfilled. So we tried to go one step back. What are some of the other things that in the health services space you can position around: having the the best experts, the deepest bench of experts, the most seasoned experts. You could be coming out with new service with new ways of tracking results, continuously doing this kind of thing. And that might be a way to go or you could position around the easiest, most convenient and most satisfying feeling experience So those are all viable positionings around the idea of having results and engagement to get results. So we explored all those with WebMD Health Services I'm not going to tell you where we netted out but we looked at pros and cons on all of those, looked at a large body of competitors and systematically looking at those possibilities—which ones were the strongest and which ones had challenges, we arrived at a solid place.

Marissa: So once you get through through the process and you feellLike you've landed on the correct positioning statement and the team is on board, then you run through a stress test.

A STRESS TEST FOR POSITIONING

Eric: We have to validate why we think it's the one and and there's a stress test that we have. That's a great term for it. A simple test to know: 1) Is this credible? 2) Is it ownable? 3) Is it defensible?

In the more crowded spaces it’s obviously harder to find a good, meaningful, relevant positioning and there are times when It's extremely hard to do and then you have to look at maybe my personality is going to have to work a little harder here but it's still worth doing this exercise to understand where your strengths are relative to the competition. Even if you're in a super super crowded space and you can't possibly know what all the competitors are doing, you can still position yourself relatively speaking.

Marissa: So let's talk what happens if You don't really land anywhere on a positioning.

Eric: Yeah tough, tough situation and actually we're dealing with that right now. So we're doing some work for one of the Big Four, used to be called the Big Four Accounting Firms, now Big Four professional services firms. These are big companies, they have hundreds of thousands of employees. They have very diversified services and yet you can look at the fine print and say this one's a little stronger in this area this one's a little stronger in that area but by and large customers go to them for the all their services. So what's the story there? What's the difference? It's really quite challenging. I would say we're not positioning the same way. We're saying “Okay look relatively speaking we're really strong in this area. We can tell a really good story, so we're gonna just outstory the competition. We're gonna figure, even if they're strong in certain areas where they're not messaging it, where they're not conveying it as strongly, even if it's there, we’re going to flood the zone with content. Create a little bit louder signal In this area where we know we're strong.”

Marissa: So in that case, do you just leave a blank space on the brand platform?

HARMONIZING POSITIONINGS WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF THE ORGANIZATION

Eric: We would say rather than a positioning, this is the story. The line that we're going to run with and we're gonna pursue this ala positioning, meaning we're going to stay at it for a long time. We're going to stay focused on it, so It becomes the thing that people think about even if the other folks really do have it so it's a it's kind of a softer way of going about it. Obviously when you're talking about these very big, very well diversified firm, that idea is going to be a very broad idea. If you're talking about large organizations that have multiple service lines, multiple product offers, they may all have positionings of their own. As an example I was doing some work for The City of Calgary and we're positioning this City of Calgary among all other cities in Canada that one might visit or or launch a business in and so on. Basically we're looking at Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, etc. but also we're looking at Calgary's positioning relative to Albert because Alberta is Calgary’s province. And so if we have a positioning for Calgary and It runs counter to Alberta's overall positioning, you’ve got to think about that. Ideally what we're talking about specifically Calgary but it kind of supports what Alberta is all about And then more broadly speaking we want to look at Canada. So positions kind of becomes like this exercise if you get into it and it’s these little Russian dolls. There may be positionings around specific products that you have too.

Marissa: We talked about how the the inner parts of the Brand Wheel are things that are not what everyone sees but slso the inner parts of the Brand Wheel don't change that much, so this is still in that kind of core of things that don't shift that often.

Eric: That’s very true I also thought something else about how to position for companies like the Big Four. They have a lot of really senior people who are kind of brands in their own right. They've built practices and they're known within certain circles. And so one way of positioning is to look at your people and say “I'm going to position them." They position certain teams, not obviously, or at least you're not going to broadcast to the world. But In certain marketing contexts what you would go with is that level of expertise. The other thing is letting personality do more of the work of differentiating. So if you find yourself in a place where you’re really kind of at par with your competition, look at how you can be a little bit more provocative, a little bit more Interesting, turn heads.

Marissa: I think especially now In the social media age, there's people communicating at such a rapid pace for their brands are communicating so your personality makes a big impact and having consistency with that.

Eric: There are a lot of situations where the personality is kind of the leader that's setting you up to be different and social media universes are great examples of that.

Marissa: If you're communicating with your audience every single day on Instagram, you're not going to be hitting your positioning every time you communicate. That would be weird and obtuse, maybe in some very oblique way, but your personality is is a big part of how people are experiencing your brand.

POSITIONING FOR THE PERSONAL BRAND

Marissa: Are there any other troubleshooting situations In positioning?

Eric: This could take us into another world but one the things that's really interesting to me is positioning when you're talking about your personal brand right which is a lot of what you're seeing on social media. I think it's really in Interesting that as we have the rise of personal brands and we have A lot of people who we can love and follow their stories. The idea of a superpower is something that's come into my mind the past few years and thinking about what your superpower is is kind of like a positioning-like thing right so positioning your niche. So if one wanted to start thinking about how they're different, how they stand out in whatever the topic areas they're in right might be to think about what the superpowers that you have and then kind of build on that.

Marissa: I see a lot have advice for people building their personal brand, if it's being built in real time on social media, like what are the things that you want want to just be talking about all the time? That you're naturally going to be drawn to and want to obsess over enough to share with your audience?

Eric: I totally agree with that. Our friend Sean once asked me “Okay look I just want to know the lazy persons guide to brand building. What’s the first thing that I should do?” and I thought “Just be interesting.” If you think about the things that you're interested in, the things you can explain or share in an interesting way—you’ve probably done a lot to position your yourself even if you haven't really thought it through. I think when you're talking about personal brands, the connection between your passion and and your point of view is really close. I think that you always want to try convey passion In a culture in an organization but where you're going to see it at it's most primal and it’s most intense is in the realm of individuals who are really getting into some something that they feel deeply about so yeah I'm going to think about what my superpower is.

Marissa: I think that's why we're here. So that's positioning, that's the first of the three P’s. Next episode we're going to talk about personality, which we've kind of touched on today a bit but we’ll go much deeper into that. Thanks for listening. If you're finding this useful, please rate and review us where you're listening and check us out On branfrontlines.com where you can see the Brand Wheel and other resources. Also be sure to follow us on Instagram @brand_frontlines where we we have weekly discussions about how you can take these tools and ideas for you your own success.

Eric: See you on the brand frontlines.