Positioning: The Real Battle for the Consumers’ Mind

Your brand’s goal to be relevant and memorable...

Imagine for a minute the experience consumers encounter when grocery shopping. As they enter a store or navigate online, in any given category people will contend with similar product stories and formulations or ingredient claims alongside similar product packaging. Given the continued proliferation of brands, flavors and forms It can be a bit of a blur, perhaps bordering on confusing.

Most of the brand messaging they see will be analytical and based on assertions of “better-ness” in the form of ingredient comparisons, quality assertions or claims of formulation and taste superiority. What’s missing is the type of beneficial distinctiveness that sets a brand far enough apart that such comparisons become moot.?

Moreover, we know that consumer actions and decisions to buy are governed by the brain’s Limbic System, a part of our physiology that is influenced through emotion and not rational messages. Humans are not hard-wired to function as fact-based decision-making machines. It’s always heart-over-head. Surprising to be sure because we all like to think of ourselves as rationally informed beings. In reality, preferences are influenced by how people feel in the presence of your brand.

• The battle for market share, sales velocity and sustainable business results resides in the six inches of grey matter between both ears of your brand’s core and prospective customer base. Your real marketplace challenge is how to secure and maintain mental real estate.

However, many brands are preoccupied with trumpeting their product features and benefits. Ultimately your business success will be proportional to how greatly (or not) your brand matters to its intended audience. Mattering is an outcome of occupying a unique and positive frame inside your consumers’ mind. When your brand is distinctively positioned with users in a relevant way, you can secure a place in the brain that continuously emerges to reinforce brand preference and purchase.

Take the best positioned brand in the beer industry. Much to the chagrin of all other large beer manufacturers, Corona is in a class by itself having honed and invested in its association with beach, surf, sun and vacation-in-a-bottle vibes. Even the lime ritual helps fortify the mental associations of wanting to relax in that sunny beach locale while enjoying a cold bottle of Corona. Notice the brand never talks about its liquid, brewing credentials or quality of ingredients. It’s an emotional proposition and distinctively owned by Corona as a desirable lifestyle image association. This is positioning at its finest in a business where brands routinely fly over this important work by running a clever ad campaign featuring a catchy slogan.

Nike doesn’t sell running shoes. It’s an emotional and aspirational brand. One that inspires passion and commitment to athletic endeavor and achievement. ‘Just Do It’ is a more than memorable call to action. It’s a state of mind and purpose. It works to plant a positive association in the consumer’s mind by surfacing their quest for self-improvement. The predominant voice of Nike’s brand is decidedly not about running shoe design and engineering, advanced materials or other product feature details. Nike owns the emotional context around a powerful desire for personal achievement.

• Do you see where this is going when you rise above self-promoting product features and focus on the consumer and their lives and how you can operate as an enabler of their hopes and dreams. Suddenly you find yourself in rarified territory exploring a path to uniquely position your brand in a more powerful way – creating a meaningful correlation that can take root in the consumer’s brain.

Far too many brands don’t labor at this. Instead, they focus squarely on themselves -- through a circular story about product bona fides and feature advantages. It’s important to consider that consumers no longer buy products. A purchase is now a flag and symbol of what they believe in, their values and who they are. Want to have a deeper relationship with your core users? Then imbue your brand with deeper meaning. Give them something larger than themselves to embrace and advocate for.

• By doing so you open an incredibly important strategic examination of how to create a memorable, sticky brand position. Consumers are naturally drawn to a brand with a higher purpose and belief system that aligns with their own.

Just be careful not to conflate a strong brand position with an advertising campaign. Creating emotional context around your brand and its “why” is a more demanding exercise. We refer to it as curating your Brand Stand -- a decisive view about why your brand exists and its human-relevant purpose. It will serve as an anchor for every business decision coming after it, the value you create and how you do what you do.

We won’t devote space here to examine all the prescriptive details around brand positioning discovery. Perhaps the most important guidance we can offer is embracing uniqueness and differentiation --especially important in business categories where sameness (most of them) is a systemic problem.

A good place to start…

1.???? “We are the only brand that delivers _____________.” What does the consumer get from you that they can’t get anywhere else? This is one of the toughest questions your brand will face. Remember it’s easy to fall into a trap of focusing on a trivial distinction that won’t deliver a genuine path to differentiation.

2.???? What are your core customers’ beliefs and lifestyle aspirations? How can you further support and enable their hopes and dreams as your brand’s superpower? Suddenly you are marketing something more vital to them than the table stakes expectation of a well-designed and produced product.

Positioning is most effective when trust breaks out

Trust is essential to unlocking the business value of a unique brand positioning. Trusted brands retain loyalty, motivate repeat purchase and deliver a receptive audience for trial of new innovations. That said trust can only be earned. Here’s a six-point checklist to help you think about trust:

1.???? Values and beliefs – a higher purpose brand that has a belief system beyond transactional considerations is immediately trustworthy

2.???? Consistency – when the experience with your brand across all points of contact is reinforced through repeat performances, you earn trust

3.???? Keeping promises (walking the walk) – when earning trust, efforts to demonstrate dependability through actions and behaviors is more powerful than words

4.???? Social proof – validation and verification of your competence through the testimonials of real people is powerful affirmation of trustworthiness

5.???? Transparency – another form of validation is taking consumers behind the corporate curtain for an unfiltered look at what you do and how you do it. Showing extraordinary openness is? characteristic of a trusted brand

6.???? Help rather than hype – If you truly care about your customer’s wellbeing and success, you will operate unselfishly as an enabler of their lifestyle goals and wishes, earning their trust along the way

A uniquely positioned and trusted brand is your organization’s most powerful business building asset. Your devotion and energy to creating emotional connectivity and trustworthiness is the formula for rising above the competition to drive sustainable, profitable growth. Positioning creates a memorable place in the brain while trust seals the deal. Together they deliver a formidable and powerful business building platform.

If this conversation has you thinking about how to optimize and strengthen your brand position and trust building efforts, use the link below to ask questions, make comments and explore ideas.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond.?Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

?

?