brand positioning
TRANSCRIPT
Ajilal
Brand
Positioning
A concept so simple,
people have difficulty understanding
how powerful it is!
What…
• Positioning is owning a piece of consumer’s mind
• Positioning is not what you do to a product
– It’s what you do to the mind of the prospect
• You position the product in the prospect’s mind
– ‘It’s incorrect to call it Product Positioning’ – Ries & Trout
Examples
• Colgate is Protection
• Lux is Glamour
• Pond’s DFT is Confidence
• Axe is Sexual Attraction
• Gillette is Quality
Why…
The assault on our mind…
• The media explosion
• The product explosion
• The advertising explosion
• So little message gets through that you ignore the
sender and concentrate on the receiver
How…
• The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to
be first
– Xerox, Kodak, Polaroid, Sun TV, The Hindu, F&L
• If you didn’t get into the mind of your prospect
first, then you have a positioning problem
– Better to be first than be best
• In the positioning era, you must, however, be
first to get into the prospect’s mind
How…
• The basic approach is not to create something new or different, but manipulate what’s already in the mind
• To find a unique position, you must ignore conventional logic
• Conventional logic says you find concept inside product– Not true; look inside prospect’s mind
• You won’t find an uncola idea inside 7-up; you find it inside cola drinker’s head
‘You concentrate
on the perceptions of the prospect, not
the reality of the product’- Al Ries & Jack Trout
‘It’s difficult to change behaviour, but
easy to work with it’- Paco Underhill
What you need…
• Understand the role of words and how they affect
people
– Turtle vs. Lexus
• Be careful of change
– Disney
• Need vision
– Long term / Not on technology or fad
What you need…
• Courage
– To slug it out when others watch and wait
• Objectivity
– You need a backboard / a springboard
• Simplicity
– Not complicated or convoluted
What you need…
• Subtlety– Unique position and appeal that’s not narrow
• Willingness to sacrifice– The case of Nyquil
– Rexona wooing male and female
• Patience– Geographical roll out / Demographic /
Chronological
• Global outlook– Taj Mahal tea
Guidelines
• Start by looking not at the product but at the position in the market that you wish to occupy, in relation to competition
• Think about how the brand will answer the main consumer questions– What will it do for me that others will not?
– Why should I believe you?
• Try to keep it short and make every word count and be as specific as possible– Vagueness opens the way to confused
executions
Guidelines
• Keep the positioning up-do-date
– Give as careful consideration to change as you
did to the original statement
• Look for a Key Insight!
– An ‘Accepted Consumer Belief’
What is key insight?
• Key Insight is ‘seeing below the surface’ / ‘seeing inside the consumer’
• Insight expresses the totality of all that we know from seeing inside the consumer
• An insight is a single aspect of this that we use to gain competitive advantage
• By identifying a specific way…– That the brand can either solve a problem or
– Create an opportunity for the consumer
Key Insight
‘I wish to get married
to a handsome prince’
Key Insight
‘Fragrance of my current talc does not last long
and I miss opportunities to enjoy life’
Key Insight
‘Soap leaves my skin
feeling dry and tight’
More on key insight…
• It will require two separate thoughts to be
related to each other in a new and fresh way
• Insight will generally be enduring
• Often the process will lead to several
insights
• The one to use is the one that offers to be
the source of greatest competitive
advantage
More on key insight…
• No need for insight to change if you have
identified the higher-order needs of consumers
• Keep asking ‘why’ to find the real need behind the
obvious insight
• Remember, the insight is always the basis for a
brand’s positioning
How to find one?
• What are the ways in which the category / brand can improve someone’s life?
• What are the conflicting needs that people face and that the brand can solve?
• How important is it that the product delivers? Who will notice?
• What is standard of excellence in the category?
• With every answer you get, you need to probe deeper:– ‘Why is that?’
The 3C’s of positioning
• Be Crystal clear
• Be Consumer-based
– Be relevant and credible to the consumer
– Write in consumer language and from consumer’s view point
• Be Competitive
– Be distinctive
– Focus on building brand elements into powerful discriminator
– Be persuasive
– Be sustainable
And then…
• The brand name!
• The name is the first point of contact between the
message and the mind
• ‘The brand name is a knife that cuts the mind to
let the brand message inside’
– Ries & Trout
Guidelines
• It’s not the goodness or badness of the
name in an aesthetic sense that determines
effectiveness
– It’s the appropriateness of the same
• Name begins the positioning process, tells
the prospect what the product’s major
benefit is
– Fair & Lovely
– Close Up
– Krack
– Head & Shoulders
– Vaseline Intensive Care Body Lotion
Checklist: Brand name
• Should be simple
• Should be acceptable in all key languages
• Should be appropriate when geographically spread
• Should be amenable for easy registration