Less Is More - 3 Tips for Decisive Positioning

In his provocative Marketing Week article, "Copy KitKat on your quest for 'double D' marketing ," Dr. Mark Ritson asserts that most marketers fail due to lack of focus in Brand positioning. To build on Mark's work, I address the root causes of the lack of focus and offer 3 imperatives for getting to a decisive positioning that inspires iconic, growing, profitable Brands.

Mark Ritson: “Too Many Fucking Words / Nothing Sticks”

“There are too many fucking words jostling for attention. Brand essence has 4-5 sentences. Next to it is a set of values – usually innovation and integrity along with four or five more. A purpose about inspiring something. A brand personality with six traits. As the word count goes up, and more and more shit is thrown against the wall, none of it sticks.”

Mark praises KitKat as a Brand that has focused for decades on a simple – and not overly lofty – positioning. KitKat urges people to take a break from it all and enjoy some me time. KitKat has only one Brand belief: Breaks are good for you. There are countless snack-worthy Brands, but KitKat owns the break because of its single-minded focus.

“KitKat focuses more of its marketing on this one thing, for longer and with more creativity than all the others.”

Less Is More Brand Positioning: LPA’s 3 Tips

I agree wholeheartedly with Mark. Too many marketers think more is more. In reality, less is more. As a build on his perspective, I offer three imperatives that address root causes of the more is more trap.

1.????? Champion FOCUS with the 3-5 Rule. What are the 3-5 ideas that you most want associated with your Brand? If you woke buyers / users in the middle of the night and played free association, what would you want them to play back about your Brand? Mark's article should be required reading to give Brand Leaders / Teams religion on focus. Think about a Brand you love. What do you associate with that Brand? Likely 3-5 words will come to mind, no more. Invite your team to do the same. Help them internalize the power of focus.

2.????? Aim for Collaboration, NOT Consensus. At LPA, we’re big believers in co-creation of positioning with collaboration from a dozen or so stakeholders. Diverse inputs yield better ideas and bake-in support to fast track activation. The key to success, however, is the ability to hear and consider myriad ideas, but not feel obligated to put everyone’s words on the page. Success is collaboration, not consensus and not compromise. Consensus and compromise dilute and complicate.

Achieving the benefits of collaboration while avoiding consensus and compromise requires a “Disagree & Commit” expectation. People who disagree with a choice must commit to doing whatever they can to implement it. This Disagree & Commit approach is used by highly successful leaders including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos who believes that “Compromise, while low energy, is a really bad way of coming to agreement.”

3.???? Make DECISIVENESS a requirement. Historically, LPA has focused on 3Ds: Desirable to buyers, Differentiated / Distinctive vs. competition, and Deliverable. At the recommendation of LPA Team Member and positioning master, Patricia DiMichele, we’ve recently added a 4th criterion to our best practices: Decisive.

Pressure-tests for Decisiveness include:

The Problem: Templates or Choices?

The problem doesn't lie in the oft used positioning templates themselves, but rather in the choices – or lack thereof:

• Lack of focus within each element (e.g., personality with six different adjectives).
• Lack of sufficient cohesion across elements and no clear center of gravity.

Other enablers of focus include: choosing which category participants are – and aren’t – priorities for the brand, deeply understanding priority buyers / users, deeply understanding how your competitors are positioning themselves.

Call To Action

Take a hard look at your Brand positioning choices, especially on Brands that are under-performing.

• Are you “throwing so much shit against the wall that nothing sticks?”
• Or have you made hard choices about where you will focus?

LPA’s bullseye is Brand Strategy. We’ve delivered growth on over 50 Brands. If your brand strategy needs a re-think or a tune up, we’d like to help.