Brand positioning and differentiation
Positioning is worth
only as much as the idea
and the evidence behind it
What this work gives you is not only confidence in what your brand should communicate, but the absence of any doubt about why that is so.
It ends in a brand book that brings the findings, the decisions, the reasoning behind them and the recommendations into a single system.
From assumptions about the brand to facts your positioning can stand on
Inside a company there are almost always several convincing accounts of what sets the brand apart. The market does not always support any of them. So we test which grounds for uniqueness can actually exist.
What positioning is built from
Product scenarios may not be enough to build positioning on
More often than not they are not enough, and we have to work out which values, motives and forms of self-identification stand behind the choice. To keep the answer from turning into invention, we gather facts from several sources: we study the competition, the audience and customers' experience.
Unclaimed value territories are rarely visible without an analysis of the competitive field
Competitors' visual and verbal language, their range, prices, user feedback and how they show up in digital channels let us map the competitive field and answer which value territories are already taken, where brands compete head-on, which solutions have become the industry norm and which actually help a brand stand apart.
Depending on what is available, we use desk research, analysis of communications and of brands' digital footprint, and expert interviews.
Positioning takes account of market shifts and category trends
We analyse changes in the category, the cultural context, new consumption scenarios, adjacent markets and the factors that could shift how the brand is perceived in the near future.
Archetype theory reveals the patterns in a competitive field and describes the brand's future character
Knowledge about a competitive field is easiest to organise within frameworks everyone knows. For positioning and differentiation we almost always use archetype theory: it is well established and reasonably detailed. It shows why competitors speak the visual and verbal language they do, exposes the strong and weak sides of their communication, and outlines the territories still free.
If your brand is already on the market, archetype theory helps connect its history with possible directions of growth.
When a new brand is being created, archetype theory leads to the name, the logo and the visual language by first describing the character the brand will have.
What people need is the most important and most laborious question — which is why methodology matters most here
This is where the methodological options are widest: from in-depth interviews, focus groups and expert interviews, through analysis of user-generated content, to quantitative survey data that can be collected and analysed in a number of ways.
The greatest reliability, of course, lies in quantitative surveys of the target audience: a sample and mathematics in the analysis give firm ground for a decision.
In quantitative work we hold to two principles:
1 — sufficiency over excess: apply what will demonstrably be enough
2 — realism of the instrument: questions, wording and stimulus materials come as close as possible to a real brand choice situation.
We discuss the possibilities and limits of the proposed methods up front
Every choice of method carries advantages and drawbacks. Discussing them openly at the proposal stage is a standard we always keep to.
The design of a project is determined by what information is missing for the decision — and by the conditions you work in: if a method is out of reach because of time or budget, we propose alternatives.
Setting the collected facts against each other, in dialogue, is what builds the structure of a brand
We compare the results and assemble the value territory, the grounds for differentiation, the principles of communication and the directions for growth.
This calls for continuous professional dialogue inside the team. Marketing, research and analytical expertise test the strategy from different angles before you ever see our material.
But your opinion, your intuition, your voice, your questions and your criticism are the most valuable part of the work we do for you.
The work ends in a brand book
It records the logic of the positioning, the value territory, the grounds for differentiation, the particulars of the target audience and the recommendations for communication.
It gives the marketing team, designers, copywriters and branding and communications agencies something to build on when they develop the identity, the communication strategy and advertising campaigns.