Quick Briefs Positioning

March 2006

The term 'brand positioning' owes its origin to Al Ries and Jack Trout, and a 1972 article in Advertising Age, later expanded into a book (1). They define positioning as follows: 'Positioning starts with a product But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.' More succinct is the concept of 'owning a word in the mind of the consumer' (13) - though this is an ambition it may be hard to achieve. The objective of positioning, as set out by Ries and Trout, is to find a short, sharp, distinctive route through the communications jungle: an easy way into the customer's mind, and they put heavy emphasis on the need to be the first to establish a particular positioning. (They also show that, if a competitor has established a positioning, the challenger can succeed by re-positioning the leader.) Subsequent analysis suggests that there are two sides to positioning: the process of positioning a brand (what the brand owner tries to do with it) and its actual (eventual) positioning in the mind of the consumer. Ideally, of course, the two coincide, at least in their essentials (11). But, just as Ries and Trout argue that positioning should come from an analysis of consumers and their relationship to brand and market (see, for example, 2, 3, 17), so it is true that success or failure lies in what consumers make of the result. The basic characteristics of a good positioning have by now become almost a clich: it should be distinctive, competitive, appealing and relevant. As always, the problem in a crowded market is to identify a distinctive niche that is large enough and important enough to consumers to support a brand. Ries and Trout talk at length about niches, and point out that it is inherently dangerous to believe that your brand can transcend niches and occupy a broad market space even if it is there already - though Barwise and Meehan take an interesting contrarian view (7). As marketers have increasingly accepted the importance of emotions in brand relationships, they have come to specify that a strong positioning should have both rational and emotional components (24, 26), and that the emotional part may well be dominant (22). The idea that positionings need to be even more complex than this raises considerable difficulties, though a case has been made that brands should be positioned to appeal to three different levels consumers' brains (18).

Why should we need positioning?

The need for positioning has arisen because of the intensified nature of competition and the essential parity of performance that characterises the brands in most competitive markets. This is succinctly described, for example, by Broadbent: 'The brand's positioning in the market determines the consumer benefit, rather than the product attributes determining the consumer benefit' (19). Quite simply, in most markets, product (or service) performance to a good, or even high, standard is merely a condition for being in contention at all. What this means, in practice, is that both marketers and their agencies need to have a clear idea of how the brand is positioned - or of how they wish to alter the positioning - in order to develop communications strategies: the positioning of the brand is thus a key initial input into

both marketing and communications planning. The positioning should underpin the entire commercial philosophy and behaviour of the brand, and this is especially important for service brands - as, for example, for Avis's 'We're only #2, so we try harder' positioning in the 1970s and, more recently, Barclay's re-positioning as 'the money experts', embodied in the proposition 'No-one knows more about money than Barclays' (28).

Finding a positioning
Positioning depends initially on research that analyses consumer attitudes and brand imagery in the market concerned (4). Almost invariably, it will require some kind of segmentation (6) plus the development of some form of mapping exercise - defining the 'physical' and/or emotional (3) position of the brands in the market, in order to identify suitable spaces into which the subject brand may be located or relocated. These maps are likely to be based on statistical techniques such as correspondence analysis (2), while individual brands may be described by 'spidergrams' (14). Examples of the sort of map models that can do this are numerous: for example, (3, 14). Given the way most such models are structured, the stronger brand positionings are those towards the edge of the 'maps', rather than those in the centre, which are typically bland and undifferentiated - but may well be where you find very large, established brands, which are typically very broadly positioned, if only by their history. Positioning can be viewed in much the same way as segmentation: brands may be differentiated for positioning purposes by Sherrington's 'Five Ws': what, who, why, when, where (16) - though of these, only specifically 'why', a benefit question, would be accepted by some marketers as being the core of positioning. As Ries and Trout lay down, positioning has to be consumer led. One implication of this is that positionings for global brands may need to be country-specific (20, 21). As Lee and Hall state, 'global brands face an enormous dilemma between stressing the "globalness" of their core brand values and localising them ' (20). Segar and Brehm show how this can operate for a global car brand, where their specific positioning model for the brand carries substantially different weightings between, say, the US and Japan (15). Positionings are normally inherent in the relationship (actual or potential) between the consumer and the brand itself. A less usual example is that of Saatchi & Saatchi's work for Norwich Union (27), where the key to communicating the positioning had to be found in 'borrowed interest': the central positioning concept of protection was communicated through the use of a cause-related promotional programme linking NU to the St John Ambulance emergency medical service. Systematic ways of identifying or developing positionings have been pro- posed, but have met with little general acceptance - Ries and Trout have not suggested any general approach, for example. There are steps towards a more systematic methodology to be found in, for example, Jean-Marie Dru's Disruption (9), and Adam Morgan's Eating the Big Fish (10), the latter being specifically concerned with so-called 'challenger' brands, for which Morgan prescribes what he calls a 'lighthouse' positioning. A more specifically research-based technique is that put forward by Valentine (5), who advances the importance of 'notness', a concept derived from semiotics, as a key way of helping to define what a brand actually is (3, 29).

Formulating a positioning
Positionings offer a wide variety of possible formulations, and it is clear that - at least - ad agencies and marketers take a rather different approach to them. Thus, Davies (8) says firmly that a positioning statement should be written in the form 'Brand X is the (product category descriptor) that (fits a specific position).' Examples include, for example: Marriott Hotels - 'The only quality-tier hotel for business travellers that has the distinctive Marriott culture -

consistently friendly, responsive and efficient service'; and Pepperidge Farm's Goldfish brand: 'Goldfish (is the snack brand that) recognises that moms need to feed their kids snacks and provides a solution that keeps theirs snacking kids happy without giving moms the stress of worrying about serving junky snacks to their children' (24). By contrast, Davidson (12) states that a 'brand positioning statement' should be 'no more than one sheet of paper', and cover a series of headings, as follows: Market description Target audience Brand discriminator Core consumer proposition Brand differentiators Brand personality Agencies' positioning statements, by contrast, are typically much closer to advertising slogans or propositions. Thus, Tiger Beer becomes 'the premium Asian beer for people curious to know the unknown side of contemporary Asia' (29); Just Juice presented itself as 'an everyday indulgence from a happy and fun land where fruit is in glorious abundance' (25); and Canon, for a corporate brand, arrived at 'Canon helps people by making advanced technology usable' (23).

Conclusions
Positioning is a powerful tool, both for understanding where your brand currently stands and for determining where it should go for the best advantage. Although the concept is over 25 years old, it is still being developed; and, like many of the creative aspects of marketing, there is no standard, stereotyped way of going about it. As communications become more complex and integrated, its importance continues to increase. Perhaps the key is to recognise that it is a creative process and that it needs to be approached as such.

Further Reading
Core reading 1.* A Ries and J Trout: Positioning: the battle for your mind. McGraw-Hill, 1981, revised 1986. 2. A Stein and U Ellinghaus: Influence of brand positioning on the strengths of premium automotive brands. ESOMAR, March 2002. 3. R Woods: Creating the emotional map for brands. MRS Conference, 2004. Research processes 4.* K Baker: 'Multivariate analysis of survey data' in McDonald and Vangelder (eds): ESOMAR Handbook of market and opinion research. ESOMAR, 1998. 5. V Valentine: Demystifying semiotics, some key questions answered. MRS Conference, 2002. 6. R White: (Best Practice) Segmentation. Admap 469, February 2006. Positioning strategy 7. P Barwise and S Meehan: Simply better: delivering what matters most. Market Leader 27, Winter 2004. 8.* S Davies: Brand asset management. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco/John Wiley, 2000. 9.* J-M Dru: Disruption, John Wiley, 1997. 10.*A Morgan: Eating the big fish. John Wiley/Adweek, 1999. Developing a positioning 11. A Biel: The brandscape - converting brand image into equity. Admap, October 1991. 12.*H Davidson: Even more offensive marketing. Penguin, 1997. 13. J Gejervall and M Persson: The Libresse/Nana case 1990-93. Learnings from building a Eurobrand, ESOMAR, 1996. 14. C Merkel and J Deetlefs: Sense to sensuality. ESOMAR, March 2002. 15. A Segar and H-G Brehm: One global Mercedes-Benz language. ESOMAR, 2000. 16. M Sherrington: Market segmentation really is cool. Market Leader 1, Spring 1998.

17. G Shields: Meeting the need for actionable consumer insight - the Scottish Courage perspective. MRS Conference, 2001. 18. J Wilson: Whole-brain branding. Admap 431, September 2002. International considerations 19. K Broadbent: A buyer's perspective. The changing face of the market in Asia Pacific. ESOMAR, 1996. 20. G Lee and N Hall: Does your brand hit the consumer's hot button? ESOMAR, March 2004. 21. C Ollivier-Lamarque, I Herbert and M Carpentier: Brand identity management in the context of global brands. ESOMAR, October 2001. Case studies 22. D Amers: Standard Life. IPA Scottish awards, 2001. 23. M Bass, D Fidoten and P Lebenson: Creating unified positioning and communications for the Canon brand. ARF Workshop, October 2000. 24. G Breig: From Goldfish to Goldmine. The Advertiser, October 2002. 25. Colenso BBDO: A taste of the tropics. CAANZ Awards, 2003. 26. Colenso BBDO: We understand. CAANZ Awards, 2004. 27. CMawdsley: Norwich Union. IPA Effectiveness Awards 1998. 28. R Morgan: Barclays - putting your money where your mouth is. APG Awards, 2003. 29. O Taylor: Tiger beer - drinking a brand, not a beer. APG Awards, 2004.

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