Brand Positioning Module 5.

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Hello brand managers and welcome to module five, Brand Positioning, a key, perhaps pivotal concept within the
overall brand management approach. In today's module, we're going to first of all
remind ourselves about what positioning means. We covered it in the mini MBA to marketing. There's a lot
more to say and it's certainly more advanced, but let's remind ourselves first of all that positioning is
fundamentally the intention. Then we're going to look at the current and
an ongoing discussion about differentiation and what it means and what it doesn't mean and what it is because
positioning is tied inextricably with the concept of differentiating your brand
versus competitors. Having done that, we're going to again look at that two-speed approach. Remember we
talked about the long and the short of it and how it impacts in module four on targeting
and how we might go after mass and target segments within the same plan. Well, in this module and for this
context, we're going to look at the two-speed approach. We're going to look at the two-speed concept of
positioning. The implication of a two-speed approach, as you'll see, is two slightly
different approaches to positioning, all within the same brand plan and all working for the same brand. And so
we'll start by looking at the long of it, which is brand positioning. And from that
brand positioning section, we'll also look at the idea of repositioning an existing brand. Having covered those
topics, we then move to the shorter product positioning and we look at how we do that.
And finally, we wrap up, of course, with your brand of Moon. No surprise, your challenge this week will be
positioning Moon. So we'll talk about those templates that you have to complete at the end of the module. Let's
start, though, by going back to the very beginning. Remember in module one, we were very clear to locate
branding in the center of our target customer's head. Brands literally exist in the mindset of the customer. We
can control all the other parts, but we can't control fundamentals.
that we call consumer based brand equity. And furthermore, if you remember, we broke down that idea of brand
equity into its two constituent components. First, this idea of brand
awareness, salience, do you know the brand exists? Does it come to mind? And then if that salience has been
achieved, what we call the brand image, the series of associations that are
conjured up in the consciousness of the consumer when they think about that brand. For this particular module,
I'd like us to focus on brand image, that does not mean at any point,
we're going to forget about the importance of awareness, it's probably more important for many brands and
many brand plans than the concept of brand image. But let's assume for one moment, we've created that
salience, and the brand does exist in the mind
of the target. The question then becomes, what do they associate with the brand? And that's the perfect way to
think about positioning. Because ultimately, what we're positioning is, is the intended brand image. Let me say
that
again. All brand positioning is, is hopefully, ideally, the image that the consumer will eventually have for my
brand. If you think about what we said in module three, the starting point
for brand diagnosis was going to that consumer and trying to understand what the brand image was. That's the
starting point for positioning. That's the clay that we have to understand before we start doing the molding
process of positioning.
And as we'll see a little bit later in one of our further modules, when we look in module nine at tactics, we're
going to use our positioning to drive tactics to hopefully change and improve the
brand image in the mind of the consumer later on. So you can see this role and the centrality of positioning in
directing a lot of the brand management activity. But most important for this module
at the starting point, always think about positioning very simply, very purely as the intended brand image. The
positioning is what we want to stand for. The image is the reality right now of what we
stand for. On occasion, these two line up almost perfectly, but usually this is an eternal cycle of trying to get
them as close together as possible. But see brand positioning at the outset
of this module as the intended brand image. That's important because too many brand managers hear the word
positioning and go off into the world of brand positioning. And that's what we're going to do. Brand books,
brand keyholes, brand circles, brand triangles, brand this,
brand that. And we get this enormous ocean of concepts and theories and layer upon layer, because too many
brand managers think that positioning is an end in itself. That the point of positioning is to have an amazing
PowerPoint deck, is to create this really amazing brand book, is to have this impressive triangle. That's not
correct. Again, the point of positioning, the ultimate purpose of it is brand image. And so it's very helpful again,
if you can come back to that target consumer that you're going after and think for a moment of his or her brain
sitting there and imagine in a very simplistic way that you have perhaps three brain cells in that
brain that you can exist within. The consumer is very busy. They have many more important things in your
brand to worry about. So I'm going to give you three brain cells on top of brand image, and then I'm going to
give you three brain cells on top of brand image. awareness that you can inject something into that consumer
and that's what they'll
think about your brand. So there they are, one, two, three. That's the playing field you've got to work with. Very
limited. Now, the next question is, if you had three brain cells, what would you drop into them,
if you could drop anything into them about your brand. If there were three words or phrases or associations,
what would they be? What would be the ideal mix that would have the best overall impact upon this consumer
in terms of their brand?
of driving their behavior, their preferences, their purchasing. Write those three things down, whatever they may
be. It's A, B, C. There, that's your brand positioning. It really is that simple.
And don't ever lose that simplicity. What do I want the consumer to think when they think about my brand?
Yeah. And I'm giving you three brain cells here. That might be too much or too little.
It's probably around the right number. What are the two or three or four things you want the consumer to
associate with your brand? Write them down. And that is brand positioning. Of course, that simple definition of
positioning as the intended brand image
depends on first accepting that different brands can have different images in terms of consumer perceptions.
That might seem obvious, but for the last 50 years, we've been debating and changing
the definitions of differentiation. The debate began, with the great advertising executive, Rossa Reeves. Reeves,
who headed up the Ted Bates agency, invented the concept of the USP, the unique selling proposition. And he
was extremely clear
about the three parts that went into a successful USP. Part one, each successful advertisement must make a
proposition to the consumer. Part two, that proposition must be one that the competition
either cannot or does not offer. Part three, the consumer must make a proposition to the consumer. It must be
unique, either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
And part three, the proposition must be so strong that it can move
the mass millions and pull over new customers to your product. The key word in that definition is obviously
unique. Reeves was making it extraordinarily clear that to be successful,
brands had to find a unique benefit or feature that the competition could not or would not offer. One of his great
examples from the 1960s was M&Ms, and the concept that this was a chocolate that would melt in your mouth
and not in your hand. The debate on
differentiation then moved forward into the 70s with Reese and Trout, who invented the concept of positioning.
Reese and Trout were much more circumspect about whether a unique source of
differentiation was truly possible. But they did believe, in fact, they founded most of their work around, the idea
that a source of differentiation could be achieved by owning a particular association in the
mind of the customer. It might not be uniquely yours, but you were making it yours by owning it and heavily
associating it with your brand. They wrote in the 1970s, a company can become
incredibly successful if it can find a way to own a word in the mind of the prospect. Not a complicated word, not
an invented one. The simple words are best. Words taken right out of the dictionary.
For Reese and Trout, for example, one of the great exemplars of positioning in the 70s was FedEx, and their
ability to own the word overnight in the mind of the target consumers.
Now jump forward to modern day marketing theory and the dark Lord of penetration Professor Byron Sharpe.
Sharpe has been very critical of the concept of differentiation. He believes it's been
overstated and oversold. marketing textbooks for half a century and he claims when you actually look at the
evidence examples of real image-based differentiation are extraordinarily rare instead sharp posits
that differentiation does exist but only at very low and frankly mundane levels is the brand available today is it
in my size do i know it exists this is the practical limit of differentiation
according to professor byron sharp in one of his papers he writes we are not concluding that differentiation does
not exist but that it is weaker and less important than is generally
assumed brands within a category do not vary markedly in their degree of differentiation perceived or otherwise
in contrast the other significant thinker at the moment on the concept
of positioning is the idea that Sinek is part of the growing movement behind Brand Purpose, and Sinek argues,
in contrast to Professor Sharpe, that actually positioning a brand is a deep and extraordinarily complex
affair. He argues in one of his recent talks, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you
do simply proves what you believe.
For Sinek and the advocates of Brand Purpose, it's more about why than about what. And as we enter the 2020s,
that leaves us in a rather conflicted and difficult place
when it comes to differentiation. Either you believe in Brand Purpose and the idea that brands are
extraordinarily different in terms of their image and perceptions versus competitors, or you question
differentiation
existing beyond the very superficial. So, let's look at some practical, simple points. My own personal and
professional view is that differentiation is possible, and one brand can have a different perceived image from
another.
I certainly side with Professor Sharpe and believe that we have oversold and under-theorized the concept of
differentiation to a generation of marketers. It's not as easy as the textbooks would have you believe.
But nonetheless, differentiation is possible. But what's the difference? Well, it's only possible at a relative level.
And when I say relative, I mean relative at three different levels. First, differentiation is only possible relative to
brand awareness.
We've oversold the concept of brand image and undersold the concept of brand awareness. It's crucial that we
first achieve awareness, and without it, the idea of differentiation is essentially impossible.
Second. I also mean relative to the brand. Individual brands are a big part of the competition. Despite what Rosa
Reeves and to some degree, Reese and Trout have told us in the past, I don't think it's possible to have a unique
association or attribute or even to own a
particular word in the mind of the consumer. This is simply not practical. But I do believe it's possible for you to
have a stronger association than the competitors in your category.
So not unique. But much more strongly associated with your brand than a competitor. to brand. And finally, I
believe that you must also look at differentiation relative to the other
words or associations you're attempting to position upon. It's not a case of individual, separate associations or
attributes. When you position a brand, you make choices,
and you combine those choices of four or five different associations together, and in the permutations, in the
combinations of those four or five associations,
relatively speaking, we achieve something that stands out and is different from the competitive set. That's my
point of view. One of the challenges that you face at the end of this course isn't just
defining what you mean by a brand, but also thinking about this differentiation discussion and forming your
own point of view. Where do you think differentiation does and doesn't exist? Without establishing a point of
view on that, it's very hard to go forward and position your
brand properly. Remember back in module four, when we broke up the brand plan, and we talked about the long
and the short of it, and we talked about a two-speed brand plan. That had major implications
for how we do targeting. It also has, no surprise, major implications, therefore, for how we do positioning too.
We have now essentially two challenges when it comes to positioning.
For the long of it, we are now looking at a single brand position. This is obviously focused on the master brand.
This is aimed at all buyers. Go back to module four. This is every single
customer in the category. This is more likely to be an emotional, high-level set of associations that we're trying
to position upon, and it's going to endure. Unless something goes horribly wrong,
we should be holding on to this brand position for many, many years. In contrast, we've also got the short-term
brand position. We've got the short-term brand position. We've got the short-term brand position. In the short of
it, we're now talking about product positioning, and there could
be more than one product with more than one position. Here, we're going to go after very specific target
segments, and again, there might be multiple target segments that we're going after. There may well be emotion
here, but we're also going to lean much more heavily now on persuasion,
on making a rational, strong argument in favor of our particular product to our particular target segment. And
finally, we might be looking at a product that we're going to position on a particular target segment. And finally,
we might well be doing four or five of these different product
positions, and they may be lasting for one or two months, or for 12 months, they might come in and come out.
There's a much quicker movement and change going on as we lay down many different product positions to
achieve our financial goals. This is the long and the short of it,
and it has major implications for how we do positioning. To begin with, let's look at this top one and the idea of
brand positioning. In 1980,
the Swiss entrepreneur and business executive Carlo Crocco launched a fascinating new watch brand. Crocco
had a strong personal interest in everything to do with diving and the ocean,
and no surprise, those interests played out in the new brand he created. He called his new watch brand Hublot,
the French word for porthole. And in these first initial designs, as you can see, there was a very clear maritime
influence. The actual face of the watch,
looks very nautical, like the window on a ship. You'll also note something else here. Although these were very
expensive watches at the time, perhaps costing between 15 and 20,000 euros,
they combined 24 karat gold with black rubber straps. Today, it's more common to see luxury watches with
rubber straps, but back in the 1980s, it was unheard of. Time passed and Crocco built
a relatively successful, but niche, luxury watch brand. By the time we reached 2004, revenues were hovering
around 20, 22 million euros per year. At that point, Crocco wanted to step back. And so he sold a minority share
of the
brand to a man called Jean-Claude Biver. If you know anything about watches, you'll know the name Biver.
Jean-Claude is the man that made Omega into the brand that it is today. He's a legendary
watchmaking figure. And for whatever reason, Mr. Biver, the man who made the brand, was the man who Biver
saw something special in Hublot. He bought into the brand and became its CEO in 2004. Biver
was certain there was magic in the Hublot brand. But as you're about to see, he had to work out where that
magic was coming from. And in order to do that, he had to work out what was the position
of the Hublot brand. Hublot came out with a product in 1980, a product that was based on an innovation. To
introduce rubber as a strap. It seems very common today, but rubber in 1980 was a real
courageous move. It was even a provocation. People said, hey, on a gold watch? Rubber? Because people didn't
know rubber comes from a tree. Rubber is natural. Rubber is very comfortable.
It's very flexible. And rubber is very resistant. And it's waterproof. So finally, its ideas were, watch. And then
Hublot could not evolve. They stayed on a product. And I said, we are not a
product. We have a message first. We have a concept. And the concept is fusion. Why? Because in 1980, when
we put gold together with rubber, we created a fusion. Because gold and rubber never
come together. They were together. Only one time in life, during the Big Bang, then everything was in one. And
then rubber go, it went away and said, okay, I go now on my tree. And gold said, okay, I go and rest in South
Africa under the earth. And since then, they never met. Till people take them and connect them. So I said,
Hublot made a fusion. And fusion must be our message, must be our philosophy, must be our
religion. And once we have this religion clear and its name fusion, then we can develop further products that
don't necessarily need rubber anymore, because fusion goes further away than
just rubber. It can be carbon, it can be ceramic, whatever. And so I was capable to free Hublot from the product
and give Hublot
a message. 19 from that message new products were born and the product that was born in july 2005 i named it
big bang not because it's a funny name not because it's a strong name not because it's the only name
that has no translation that every country every language pronounced the same i named it big bang because
rubber and gold originally were just together in the big bang and later in vivlo
so big bang is a very normal name for that product because it explains finally what we are unfortunately not all
of us are as talented or as brilliant as mr b there i've certainly never
worked with anyone with that kind of innate skill around brands and marketing but there's an important lesson
for all of us which is you can look as a first-person port of call, at the history, at the origins, at the founders, at
the backstory of the brand
to inform your decisions about what the brand position should be. But for most of us, we need more than that to
come up with positioning. So there's the qualitative shortlist that we can
also use that came out of your research phase that can inform tremendously the decisions on brand positioning.
And why stop there? We've also got that lovely quantitative data that you've collected. That tells you not only
where you're strong in terms of brand perceptions, not only
which of these brand perceptions you have relative strength versus competitors, but it also tells you which one
of them or which ones of them are most important in driving customer perceptions and
behavior. That's a vital input perhaps into brand positioning. And this is also the realm where perceptual maps
can be particularly useful. Looking at how your brand is perceived by the whole market
versus the competitor brand. little stands can give you a very clear line of sight into what you do and don't want
to hang your hat upon. And fundamentally, you can apply the 3c's analysis at this phase of the
positioning journey. You're looking for things that your customers want, that you can deliver better than or
different from the competition and that applies at this level of brand positioning.
Ultimately, let's go back to what we said at the start of the module. Let's assume your target customer knows
you exist. And let's assume your brand image as people who buy from brands is very positive with the kind of
you have three brain cells for your brand inside their head. What would you have them think about
your brand? Write it down. There you go. There's the brand positioning. In the case of Mr. Biver and Hublot,
there was the decision to focus on essentially a single concept, this idea of fusion.
But the way in which he chose to articulate it was using what Hublot called brand DNA. And in fact, a single
gene within that DNA, which they call the art of fusion. That's an interesting choice
because aside from deciding this brand is all about fusion, Hublot also had to decide the concept or approach
they would use to articulate it. And for whatever reason, they went with this
concept of DNA. While it's crucial to choose the right associations to position your brand on, it's equally
important to choose the right mode of articulation to ensure that whatever
your vision is, it's the right mode of articulation. And so, if you're going to is for the brand, it is communicated
and shared around the organization. All too often, I encounter brand managers that do have an innate sense of
what they want the brand to stand for. But because they haven't articulated it, explicated it, communicated it,
the rest of the organization can't follow that vision. That lack of articulation becomes problematic, particularly
as an organization grows. As the company gets bigger, the need for
clarity and the need for articulation to keep the organization focused on positioning the brand in the correct way
gets bigger and bigger. And as the brand ages, without a clear articulation
of the position, there's a terrible danger that it begins to drift from where it really should be positioned. The
ultimate test for me of positioning when I talk to a brand manager
is asking them very clearly what the brand positioning is, and hopefully, getting a very clear and explicated
answer. And then walking next door to the sales team and seeing if I get the same response from them.
Articulation is crucial.
One of the greatest leaders I've had the honor of working with is Jean-Andre Ruggio, who until recently was the
CEO at Benefit Cosmetics in San Francisco. Jean-Andre has transformed Benefit from a relatively small niche
player into one of the biggest and most
impressive beauty brands in the world. And he's been a great partner with Benefit Cosmetics of Jean-André's
success was first of all developing a clear idea of what his brand positioning was, which he calls brand DNA,
but even more importantly, articulating it and using
that articulation to drive his organization forward. He said to me once, the most important thing is to make sure
you put your DNA onto a piece of paper in a very simple, easy, visual way.
We actually did that and we really talked about it all the time. Any meeting we had around the world, I would
carry these little cards in my pocket with the six pictures of the DNA of benefit and I'd put them on the table
every time. I would talk about the DNA and ask people about the DNA
and as this progressed, our people naturally began to take that DNA and put it everywhere. The lesson from
Jean-André should be clear. It's no good having a DNA if you haven't articulated it,
but it's no good having a DNA if you haven't articulated it. You have to be able to articulate it, share it, and then
use it to drive all aspects of the team forward. You will only make a small fraction of the decisions that your
brand has to take. You can't control everything. So even if you have a very clear, intrinsic understanding of
brand
position, it's not good enough. As Jean-André demonstrates here, you have to write it down. You have to share it
with the rest of the organization. You have to animate it and you have to engage it so that it can drive the team
forward. And that's what he said.
The company forward. In Benefit's case, the articulation they chose was six genes to form the Benefit brand
DNA. These genes are confidential and only for internal sources, which I understand.
But look at the form of articulation that Jean-André chose. He opted for these six phrases or words that together
capture the DNA, the spirit, the position of Benefit Cosmetics.
In terms of the options, there are hundreds of potential variations on how you articulate your brand position. I'm
not saying any of these following examples are particularly brilliant or effective,
but they illustrate nicely some of the choices. In the case of Staples, for example, the company went with a
brand promise. We make buying office products easy.
The Virgin Group, in contrast, has a famous set of six brand values. Nike has a number of different brands. They
have a number of different brands. They have a number of different brands. methods of articulating its brand but
one of the most influential is the brand purpose of the
company we're committed to creating a better more sustainable future for our people planet and communities
through the power of sport pampers as one of the leading p g brands has a very clear
brand ideal pampers exist to help mothers care for their babies healthy happy development in contrast subway
uses a brand belief believing that the only way to eat is fresh when it's made in front
of you by real people in a place that you want to visit perhaps the most famous brand positioning of the last 20
years is the brand vision adopted by dove we believe beauty should be a source
of confidence and not anxiety that's why we're here to help women everywhere develop a positive relationship
with the way they look helping them raise their self-esteem and realize that their full potential ultimately it's up
to you as a brand manager not only to pick what you're
positioning the brand around but also the method by which you articulate that positioning my own personal
preference is to use this concept of brand dna hublot and usually only has one gene
the art of fusion but most of the brands i've worked with over the years and i've positioned many billion dollar
brands have adopted the brand dna approach and they have three or four or sometimes five different genes the
other one is the brand dna approach and the other one is the brand
associations that combine together to form the identity of the brand. But the decision is up to you. And the
reality is there are many different approaches. I would suggest you look at the
culture of the company. I would suggest you look at the nature of the challenge, the desire of the team in order
to work out the best approach. The reality is, and the dirty secret of all of this is,
frankly, the name doesn't matter. Call it brand DNA, call them brand values, call it a brand vision, and drop
those different concepts into a statement. It doesn't really matter. Call it magic moonbeams. At the end of the
day, what do you want the brand to stand for? And choose the
best way of expressing that to have the most impact. The other question you also face inevitably isn't what's the
best way to do it, but how many different ways of articulating my brand will I
combine together? Again, my preference is just to use DNA. So wherever I can with clients, I try to get them to
have that one concept for the issue of positioning. But that's rare. And usually you find that organizations
combine more than one
approach to articulation. Perhaps there's a brand position along with brand values. Perhaps there's brand purpose
and brand essence. Again, to some degree, that's not a harmful thing, and you choose
the right approach that fits the organization. But the call out here is be careful, because over time as you add
more and more, you're going to end up with a brand that's not going to fit the organization. So if you add more
and more and more concepts, you end up with something like this. This is what
you must fight against. It looks great on PowerPoint. We've got an essence, and we've got personality, and we've
got core values, and we've got key attributes. This makes the brand manager feel great, because he or she has 50
different words, and that must be 10 times better than
having five words, right? Well, no. In reality, this is far too much. And the danger of having too many concepts,
whatever you want to call them, is that they're not going to fit the brand. And the reason this is in fact very hard
is they begin to clog up the positioning potential
of a brand. In the dream world, you have one single intention. Whatever you call it, perhaps you have to have
two. But as you add more different concepts, and approaches, and layers to the onion, the effectiveness and
potential of that positioning withers away to almost nothing. I like to say to
clients that for every association you add to the positioning of your brand, the chances of it actually impacting a
consumer usually halve. tightness. Less is certainly more. And the worst brand positioning I've ever seen in a
career
that's taken me all over the world is certainly the work of MetLife around 10 years ago. Let me share with you
what truly bad brand positioning looks like. MetLife is a fine company, and I'm sure its marketing team were
only trying to do a good job, but this is the monster that they built.
So MetLife started with a brand positioning statement. No big problem there. And they added then a series of
brand values, people count, integrity, innovation, and so on. For me, that's
kind of at the limit of what you can get away with, but they were still going. Next, they added some core
attributes at the center of their brand positioning. And then someone else said, well, if you have core attributes, I
think you need secondary attributes around the edge. And on top of the
secondary attributes, we need a long-term goal to focus everyone. And on top of the long-term goal, we need
some kind of theme that draws it all together. Next, we probably need an online brand center
that will help our befuddled staff to understand what all of these different concepts and layers and triangles
actually mean. And finally, the nail in the coffin, the dreaded brand glossary, a list of all the different concepts
and what they all mean and how they join together and layer upon
layer to create the overall brand. Again, come back to the core point about brand positioning, it's the intention. It
needs to be kept simple. What is the purpose of the MetLife brand position or any company's brand
position? It's that when someone that works with MetLife, let's say a sales rep, has to do something which
involves reaching out and interacting with customers, they know the brand position, and it drives the way that
they behave. Now, imagine being a MetLife sales rep and then having
gone through that brand positioning work. Where on earth would you even start? You wouldn't. You'd make
something up or you'd do nothing. You'd just do something. You'd do something. You'd do something. You'd do
nothing and be generic. In these situations, putting more and more into your positioning results in less actual
impact. You can laugh and smile as I do when I see Mr. Bivere
talking about fusion in that animated way, but don't mistake his enigmatic personality for the genius within and
the focus of coming up with that single tight concept of fusion. Just one word,
really, to position the Hublot brand upon. In 2004, as we said, Hublot was probably directing about $25 million
in revenues each year. It's hard to say now because Hublot is part of a much bigger luxury group, LVMH, but
the best estimates I can
get suggest that in 2019, Hublot did €700 million in revenue and operating margins no one else can even dream
of. The power of tightness, of focus, of less being more should be clear from the Hublot story.
And the other advantage of the Hublot brand position is that the concept of fusion at first sight doesn't
necessarily make a lot of sense in the watch category. It's only when you get to know Hublot and what makes it
special that it begins to make sense. In contrast, when you look at a brand
that hasn't been managed properly and you look at its brand position, you invariably discover five of what I call
the usual suspects. These are the recurring concepts that appear in every
log standard branded by numbers approach to positioning, and they are innovation, respect, integrity, excellence,
collaboration. Take some of these words. Take integrity, for example. When is
there ever an occasion that you would behave without integrity? So why waste one of your words saying it? And
then there is the core concept of innovation. When has any customer ever bought
anything based on the the idea of innovation. It's a wonderful corporate advantage, but it shouldn't be something
that you position upon. If you went home this evening and discovered your partner had bought a new toaster
and you said, why did you buy that one? And he or she said, because it was the most innovative one, you would
be deeply troubled. Innovation is a wonderful corporate advantage, but a useless
thing to position upon. Beware the usual suspects. They always suggest you're in the presence of poor brand
management. Enough about what bad brand positioning looks like. Let's look at what
success looks like. Let me share with you one of my own case studies. Typically, I can't do that because
obviously positioning is super confidential. But in the case of Sephora, I can talk
about the brand positioning because it's on their website and in the public realm. About 10 years ago, I was
invited to work in Paris with the leadership team at Sephora to position this
amazing brand. I was invited to work in Paris with the leadership team at Sephora to position this amazing
brand. Sephora has been around since 1969, but was a very special period emerging. They had a new, very
talented CEO, and he wanted to unite all the different country teams around
a single global brand position. And the headwinds of the beauty category suggested that this was going to be an
amazingly potentially successful time for Sephora. So it was a hugely important
job when we met in Paris to begin the work on the brand. So the first decision we made was, what is the format?
What is the articulation of the brand position that we're going to use?
We went with brand DNA. Again, it's my favorite. I've seen it work the best. And I worked with the team to
explain how it would look and shared with them other examples from other big brands that I'd worked on. So
the idea of DNA is we're going to find these three or four different associations,
which will combine together to form the brand position. But that wasn't the only approach we used. We also
used this concept of brand position. So we're going to find these three or four different codes. We'll talk much
more about brand codes in module six, but they were the two methods that we
were going to work on in order to complete the overall work on the Sephora brand. Next, we had to then
identify, so what is the brand position? And no surprise, go back to module three, we used
extensive market research. We talked to the founder. We studied the history of the company. We looked at
qualitative and quantitative data. We asked long-term employees to talk with us about what was working and
what wasn't. And gradually we built a picture of the brand.
And we were able to make a decision, which was Sephora at its core had four clear genes that formed the DNA,
the brand position of Sephora. The first one, amazing beauty selection,
both in width and in depth. Sephora had an astonishing selection of products. The next one was freedom to
experience. In the eighties and nineties, trying to buy a new product, buying beauty products in a department
store is like being in a jail. You often can't touch the
product. Sephora is all about transgression and being able to touch, smell, and use the products freely. Next,
Sephora is a fun place to learn. We have incredibly well-trained staff members who
know everything. That could be boring. So we make it a fun experience to learn about the latest beauty trends
and to help service our clients. And finally, a disruptive spirit. From the beginning,
from 1969, there's been a lot of talk about how we can change the way we look at our products. And in an
element of a maverick, a disruptive spirit at the heart of Sephora, it continues to keep breaking and remaking the
beauty category. This is the DNA of Sephora. Now, a couple of points.
Again, back to my differentiation, relative differentiation arguments earlier. It would be a shame to look at this
in isolation from the codes and from the amazing amount of work that Sephora does to stay salient and to
generate brand awareness among the target market.
So first, this is relative to the awareness that Sephora has. Second, I don't believe that Sephora, as wonderful as
it is, could count any of these four values as being unique to them. There
are other beauty retailers that also have amazing beauty selections. My point is, these were already strengths of
Sephora. And because we're positioning on them, we've made them stronger over the last decade. We believe
that in most markets, Sephora has a much stronger association for these things,
than the competitor brands. And finally, you cannot look at one of these four associations separate from the
other three. Think of literally a million different words we could have chosen to
describe the Sephora brand. We very specifically picked these four concepts. And when we combine them
together, the combination, the permutation of them together produces Sephora. And we know
that it's worked. It comes across. In consumer brand tracking, it's driven a lot of the sales success of the
organization, and the company itself is driven on keeping delivering these concepts. Huge investments,
for example, in Sephora University to ensure that Sephora remains a place where its sales associates are
incredibly well-trained and incredibly knowledgeable about the category. This, and I would say it because I
partly did it, is what good brand positioning looks like.
So far in this module, we're guilty of looking at what I would call virgin brands, either new brands or brands like
Sephora, which have never formally identified and articulated a position before. While that's common, it's
equally likely
as a brand manager that you've inherited a brand with an existing position, which you now want to change. The
main message of this course is to engage in brand management. Keep the existing
position of the brand, don't change your logo or identity, and essentially manage things and increase the
performance of your brand. But there are situations where you do, for whatever reason,
decide you have to change things. The classic place where brand managers go to when they want to change the
brand that they're in charge of is towards repositioning. As the name suggests,
when you reposition a brand, you don't change the name or identity of it, but you seek to alter the positioning
and the way the brand is perceived by the market. The best case study of repositioning is probably the story of
Staples.
Originally, Staples was positioned on two key attributes, offering the widest range and the lowest prices when it
came to buying office products. As a result of that very strong position,
it essentially wiped out all of the small independent office stores that couldn't compete with those low prices and
those wide ranges. And by the turn of the century in America, at least, there were only three brands left
standing, Staples, Office Depot, and Office
World, who were all interestingly positioned in exactly the same way. We all have the widest ranges and we all
have the lowest prices. But the problem was in order to compete with each other,
these three big retailers began to drop their prices so low and so competitively, that some of the Staples stores
actually began to lose money. And even more concerningly,
store managers around the Staples network became increasingly aware of what they called the discount card
moment. You would get a customer coming into Staples spending three or four hundred dollars on a wide array
of office products and spending maybe an hour shopping there,
and at the end, as they bought all of their products, they would hand over a discount card for Office Depot or
Office World. They just spent an hour inside Staples, and they hadn't realized it. Essentially, the point of
differentiation that Staples once had
had been erased and eroding to the point of becoming a point of parity. Staples was essentially just red wide
ranges and low prices right? The other competitors in the category. And so Staples
began as we approach the start of the 21st Century to review what their options were. Interestingly, they had a
very strong piece of music while Staples penalized it. Last month, it was 去 of brand diagnosis. So the perceptual
maps confirmed everything that they thought to be
the problem. On the PMAP, you can see that Office Depot, Staples, and Office World were all perceived very
similar and all around the idea of having things in stock and having wide ranges and low
prices. But as you can see over in the top left corner of this slide, this concept or association of being easy,
quick, efficient was not owned by anyone. That was an interesting insight because
the Staples team also had other data, correlation data, which showed that when you look at the correlations to
purchase, what was correlated with buying from Staples, yes, wide selections
were important, but the second biggest driver was actually how easy it was to do business with a particular
retailer. So here was the opportunity. All the brands were perceived to have the widest selection and the lowest
prices,
but none of them were seen to be easy. And so armed with this diagnosis, it was time for a new strategy. And
that new strategy centered on a completely new brand position, Staples. We make
buying office products easy. From position and from strategy, we move to tactics. And Staples provided a
masterclass in how to execute on brand positioning.
First, there was a change in the actual corporate slogan. Staples, that was easy, is added to the bottom. Next, the
introduction brilliantly of an easy button, a pure manifestation of the new brand
position, a button you press when things are too complicated, but make life easier for you. And to go with the
easy button and this new positioning, a brilliant new suite of advertising campaigns that pushed and promoted
the idea to everyone in the market,
that Staples made life easier. Here's one of a series of ads that were produced over the last 15 years to
communicate clearly the Staples brand position that we are essentially easy.
This is more than my easy button. It's my save so much we can finally get new office chairs button. It's my save
so much we can bring back the morning donuts button. Hooray! It's my save so much my boss will be a turner.
Now save big with Staples dollar deals. Staples, that was easy. It's a great ad, but it's a beautiful illustration of
how to communicate a brand position in advertising form and Staples weren't done there. There was also a
brilliant annual competition
called the Staples Invention Quest. Schoolchildren, inventors were all challenged to produce an office chair that
made life easier for consumers. Staples would then buy the rights to the product and sell it
inside their stores. Famously one year it was won by an inventor who created a padlock where the correct
combination spelled out a word and was therefore easier to remember. The PR value of
that was tremendous in helping communicate the brand position of Staples. But my favor of all the tactical
things that Staples did in order to communicate this brand position,
is one of the most simple but revolutionary. As the Staples marketing team began to look at the different stores
in their network they observed, they observed the same thing. Essentially, all the best-selling products, the
highest-selling
SKUs were right at the back of the store. That's standard generic retail practice. It's the reason that Milk is in the
back of the supermarket. You have to go all the way to the back of the store
to get the essentials and hopefully you buy other crap on the way over there inside. there and on the way back.
When the marketing team at Staples challenged the retail team and said, look, that's not easy. Let's bring all the
best-selling SKUs to the front of the store.
The retail team said, you can't do that. One of the rules of retail is best-selling SKUs at the back. The marketing
team said, no, we're going to make everything easier. And that includes breaking the rules of retail, bring the
best-selling SKUs to the front. I think it's a combination of
masterful tactics to deliver on a very clever, very simple pointy brand position. There are several reasons why
repositioning is usually embarked upon by a brand. First, there's frankly
just the commercial failure with the current position. It's not working. As we see with Staples, there's the issue
where a point of differentiation that's worked for many years, for whatever reason, runs out of runway and stops
having that power and becomes a point of parity.
But the most common, And the most dangerous reason why brands embark on repositioning is because the
brand managers involved and in charge of the brand are arrogant and they have a naivety when it comes to
brand
management. Too often we see impatient brand managers who think they're more important than the brand that
they manage, and they've decided to move a brand from here to there or from there to here. This is a very
dangerous mistake.
There are occasions, as Staple shows you, when repositioning is the right thing to do, because the current
position just doesn't work. But be very careful. In my estimation, nine times out of ten, when a brand tries to
reposition itself, it's a
mistake. And it's a very important observation that most of the time when brands want to reposition, they should
actually be doing something very different instead. That's something else is actually what we call brand
revitalization.
When you commit to a brand revitalization, you're not changing the position. You're not changing the
positioning of the brand. You're actually changing the way the brand expresses itself in the contemporary
market, but based on the unchanging position that the brand has always held.
It's easy to forget some 70 years later just what a huge impact Christian Dior had on the whole world of fashion.
When he launched his empire in Paris in 1947, he had what one critic called the Big Bang,
the big post-war impact. It started fashion working again after so many years of austerity. And it's also easy to
forget just how provocative and dangerous Dior's fashions were back then.
This photograph below is in arguably one of the most famous in the history of fashion. It shows a young model
wearing a Dior gown in 1947 for a photo shoot in the Pigalle district in
Paris. Suddenly, two old Parisian women who were enraged by this beautiful scarlet gown, were forced to take
off the gown and all of the material contained within it, stepped forward and ripped the gown from the young
model and leave her naked in the street.
It seems a strange reaction to our eyes today, but you have to remember this is 1947, the period known as Apres
Guerre in France. The city is just now recovering from the Nazi occupation.
And the sight of this young model with this incredibly expensive and glamorous gown was a gigantic
provocation to the idea of fashion. It was the first time that Dior's fashion was taken from the eyes of most
Parisians back then. And in fact, Dior's fashions are astonishingly different from what was taking place in the
drab late 1940s. Even if you have no fashion background at all, this image of the Talieu bar with its very tight
waist looks as if it was taken in the 1960s, and yet it comes from 1947.
Dior was ultimately about femininity and glamour. But because he was so modern, because he was so
glamorous, he was also provocative. And as one American critic put it at the time, he was the Big Bang.
He was the start of fashion after the terrible period of the 1940s and World War II. This is what made Dior so
special. Unfortunately, Mr. Dior dies relatively early in 1957, and he leaves his empire to an incredibly
young Yves Saint Laurent. There is no sadder photograph in the history of fashion than the sight of a young
Yves in the back of Monsieur Dior's maison at his funeral, clearly upset and depressed because
his mentor is dead. But also, I recognize those hunched shoulders. He realizes that very soon he will have to take
over the empire of Christian Dior, and he is 21 years old. Too young to achieve what is expected of him, and not
surprisingly, he lasts only three
years. Next comes Marc Bohan, who takes over and runs the brand for almost 30 years, an incredible couturier
who spans these three decades of design. And then we get to Gianfranco Ferre, who runs the brand during the
90s.
These are all talented designers, but if you look at the dresses they were making across this period, you spot a
concerning pattern. Each of the gowns designed by each of these great couturiers looks very similar.
In style and design to the original work of Monsieur Dior. At first sight, it would appear that the house was
being consistent with the brand. But of course, we encounter now the paradox of time.
What was once provocative and glamorous to the eyes of a woman in 1947, if it's repeated and copied and
repeated again, begins not to look provocative anymore.
But it starts to look classic. Starts to look traditional. Starts to look the very opposite of what it once was. And
we glimpse a very important secret of brands that you only see when you look at
them across a long period of time. In order to remain true to a brand, you must actually change the tactics, the
execution and the products as the years pass by. In 1997, the House of Dior was again faced with the challenge
of choosing.
A new couturier, a new creative director, and in a great scandal that occupied the headlines of every fashion
magazine, they selected John Galliano. There was huge scandal because, as the editors said, yes, Galliano is
glamorous and yes,
he understands femininity, but he is too radical. He is too provocative. He is not classic or traditional enough to
manage the House of Dior. But of course, what the House of Dior finally realized was that in order to
be true to the position of Dior, one must first revitalize the house. You must go back to the origin, to the period
when the brand was most strong, and study it carefully.
Not to copy the styles and product and tactics, but to distill what was the magic of the brand and the man
himself back then. Having identified that, having worked out what made the brand special back then, we
can jump forward and ask the question. And what do those words mean to you? What do those values, what do
those associations, what does that position demand of the brand today? And barely three years into his reign as
creative director, Galliano, sure enough, caused an
enormous sensation. He created a runway collection inspired, in his words, by the homeless people of Paris.
Named Hobo Chic by the media, it caused an enormous sensation among fashion journalists.
Set against the current trend of fashion, Galliano's brand is a new trend. Since the fashion of 1947 and the
original designs of Monsieur Dior, the hobo chic look is very different. And yet that's the point. In order to be
glamorous and feminine, but also provocative to the eyes of a woman in
1997, demands a very different look and style to one that would have had the same effect on the eyes of a
woman 50 years earlier. In order to be consistent. The Hobo Chic.
to change. There are a number of recurring reasons why brands are ripe for revitalization. Time and time again,
you see the same patterns playing out in brands that have become dusty
and in need of a brand revitalization. The first one is, although at one point innovation and risk were an engine
that created great success, that success has led to the company being more
conservative, and there's less innovation and less risk taking place, and the company is gradually heading
backwards. Another reason, the company has not articulated its position
clearly, and when you don't have a clear brand position, what happens is you tend to hang on to the existing
tactics, and over 5, 10, 15 years, those same consistent tactics actually begin to
age the brand itself. One of the advantages of articulating a brand position is that it's not just about the brand
itself, it's about the brand itself. It spurs the marketing team to keep thinking each year, what does this position
ask of me for the year ahead? It keeps the brand fresh. Next, another signal is an aging client base.
We become connected to a particular segment of the market, and we follow them through the demographic
decades, and eventually, if we're not careful, to the grave. We've essentially followed a customer and aged with
them, and not kept revitalizing and rejuvenating the marketplace.
And be careful here. Words like iconic, classic, traditional become heavily associated with the brand. That
sounds great at first thought. Isn't it wonderful to be an iconic brand? But beware, icons are incredible,
but they're also put on walls and worshiped. They're not consumed, they're not enjoyed, they're not alive. So, as
we learn from the Dior story, there are really three steps to a successful revitalization. Stage one, go back to
history.
Go back to a time when the brand was vibrant and when it was arguably at its best and most successful. Next,
distill and identify the DNA, the values, the spirit of the brand.
What made the brand successful back then? Try and identify it with a clarity and with a series of simple, but
very effective and correct identified words. Then finally, take that definition from
the past. Bring 也們
to the modern day and ask that question if this is what we stood for when we were our most successful if this is
the core to our brand what do these words demand of us for the year ahead
it doesn't mean copying the tactics of the past quite the opposite it means asking the question what does our
brand position now demand of us for the time that comes next remember as well that
when you study brands like dior where they've been left to get dusty and then are triumphantly revitalized you're
also seeing something which is frankly still a failure the strongest brands are the ones that are never left to drift
and get dusty in the first place bmw for example
is a great example of a brand that for the last 40 years has constantly annually revitalized itself so it's never lost
step with the marketplace the ultimate examples of brand revitalization
are the ones where the brand never got dusty in the first place and finally there's the big daddy of them all when
we do rebranding we are completely transforming the branding question coming up not only with a brand new
set of values to create a completely
radical position but also changing the name and logo of the company as well and here there are many
frightening examples of how rebranding usually not always but often goes horrendously
wrong who can forget that formidable moment when the consulting firm pwc rebranded itself as monday only
for the partners to revolt and for it to return back to
its pwc form and perhaps most famously in the uk when the royal mail decided to let go of 300 years of heritage
and salience and to rebrand itself as consignia again only for a few brief months
before quickly and i think advisably returning back to being the royal mail there are two big problems with
rebranding first the media only has one story it wants to tell and tell again
which is the story about how you spent millions on what is apparently a superficial and rather pathetically
cosmetic change to your organization and second there's some kind of curse associated
with rebranding where more often than not your new name your new logo your new web address has some kind
of negative association there are dozens of cases here but my favorite one of all time is when ey famously
rebranded itself from ernston young to ey with
this spanky new logo and unfortunately unbeknownst to that almost perfectly replicated the logo of a very
famous very tasteful very soft core gay porno magazine in europe it's one of many
examples of where things can go horribly wrong when you change your logo and change your position so again
my core message is for the most part your job as a brand manager shouldn't involve trying to change the
positioning or identity of the company there are great risks and challenges
associated with these changes 80 of the time perhaps more just concentrate on managing the brand you've got
but if you really feel like a change is necessary the first place to look is
revitalization i wouldn't suggest immediately changing the position of the brand it's far more more likely that the
brand has just got dusty and the position is fine. It's the execution of the position that has lost its way.
So most of the time when brand managers are seeking a change, they should find it in the concept and challenge
of revitalization. Occasionally, however, there are special conditions when you genuinely do need to consider
repositioning.
The existing positioning has lost its cut through. It's not commercially successful. There may be a genuine case
for changing the positioning of the brand. Take care here. We use the word repositioning a lot, but in reality,
there are very few cases like
staples where success eventually follows. Nonetheless, it should be on your dashboard, but see it as a very rare
and occasional strategy. And finally, there's rebranding. Follow my own lead here.
I've never involved myself with the rebranding ever because there is no upside. It's a very rare thing. If you look
at the successful cases in rebranding, Accenture, Diageo, they're known as successes because nothing negative
happened.
Literally no upside. So stay away from rebranding. Let someone else handle that one and focus on the other
challenges of brand management. So far in this module, we've only looked at the long of it and at brand
positioning.
Remember that with a two speed brand plan, we've also got to now change our focus and look at the short of it.
In these instances, we're going to embark upon product positioning. We're going to go after particular target
segments.
Our focus is obviously the product and persuading consumers that this is the right one for them. And remember
now that rather than this enduring multi-year focus, we're going to have many of these positions going on at the
same time,
and we're going to be more entrepreneurial. The big question for product positioning is where can I go and make
money this year with my targeting and positioning? So we're going to go after the product positioning. With that
in mind, the best way to do product positioning
is using the classic standard positioning statement format. Positioning statements have been with us for 50 years,
but in recent years, it's become rather a lost art to complete a positioning statement well.
So forgive me if you already know this, but let's just take two minutes and go through how to write a proper
positioning statement. It is a key part of being a successful brand manager. There are essentially four parts to the
positioning statement. The first part is all about the customer. The name of the target segment has to be there,
and usually that includes also a short, tight portrait, the amalgam of the qual and the quant data, which tells a
short story of a single
customer who exemplifies this particular target segment. Writing portraits is really very straightforward. We're
capturing and synthesizing all the data together, and we're fundamentally trying to answer several key questions.
First of all, tell us who they are and use some demographics or situational variables to explain exactly the
identity of this target. Next, what do they currently do in the category?
Describe their behavior. Follow that with their current attitudes, what they think. Be realistic about how this
particular target conceives the world and the particular brands and category.
Next, from that, we must focus on their particular drivers. What turns them on? What do they want? That
includes what they want from the category, but be broader than that. Generally speaking, what are the things that
this particular
person is looking for in life, in their particular interactions or generally day to day? Let's link this to their overall
wants. And finally, don't forget barriers. We're targeting them for a reason.
They're probably not doing what we want. So what are the barriers, perceptual, physical or whatever else they
might be, that are stopping them from doing? What we want them to do. Type, no more than four or five
sentence description can capture a segment very powerfully.
Building from that, we get to the what. Now, this is a constant source of error. The what is not the benefit. The
what is the thing that I want to sell to you. The what is the product.
It might be the brand. It might be the different way of doing things. Not the benefit of it, the thing I'm trying to
convince you to believe in, to consider, to buy, to rebuy. The physical, the intangible, the thing I'm trying to sell
you.
Now, that sounds an obvious point, right? It's the product. And in many cases it is the product. But in other
cases, it might make more sense to promote the brand generally or to promote a particular aspect or a way of
thinking about the overall
category. Be open to different what's. You'll be surprised how many times. It's not the actual product itself that
you want to position, but some other aspect of the decision making. Followed from that, we get to versus.
Very important here not to define this as the competition. Sure, from our point of view, it is the competitive set.
But we're writing this positioning statement from the point of view of the target customer. So rather than seeing
them from the company's point of view as the
competitors, spin it around 180 degrees. And suddenly it becomes clear these aren't competitors. These are, in
fact, alternatives. What are the other options that this particular target segment could embark
upon other than the one we're trying to persuade them to buy from us? And again, you must be broad here.
Sometimes it's the competitor brands. Sometimes it's a completely different category. Sometimes it's just not
doing something that you want them to do.
There's a whole wide range of alternatives when you see it from the customer point of view that we might be
trying to position against. And again, remember that because we've gone after a target segment, we have a
particular group of customers
who have a particular set of needs, the same applies to the versus. It's very hard to position it against everything
in the category. But the good news about targeting a segment is if you delve into that data,
you can have a very clear look and see who is buying and also what the alternatives might be inside a segment
that customers are different. And more often than not, so are the alternatives that they're considering.
And remember here, you've got some help, empirical help from that questionnaire that we built earlier in the
course. During that questionnaire, you actually ask the consumer for their consideration set.
That's great because you find out whether or not they're considering our brand. But now it pays twice because it
also gives you for each customer and the overall segment the actual customer based definition of what the other
alternatives are.
And finally, you get to the end. You get to the core point of the positioning statement, the is. What are we going
to position upon? And the answer to the is question sits in the questions above.
Here you want to use the three C's approach. You want to ask yourself very carefully, first of all, what does this
customer want? Well, you've already written it down. It's there in the portrait. This is what's important to the
customer.
Next, you have to ask yourself, who is the competition that we have to beat? Well, again, you've already written
that down in the versus box. And finally, you've got to think about what our companies see, what our strengths
are.
You've also written that down in the what box. You've already done a three C's analysis, and all you have to do
is work through these different answers to get to the is at the bottom of the positioning statement.
Remember, what you're fundamentally looking for with product positioning is something the customer wants.
But we can deliver better than or different from the competition named above.
That's it. It sounds simple in theory. It's extraordinarily hard in practice. Find some things that the customer
wants that we can deliver different than or better than the competition, and we're going to win in the
marketplace.
Now, how many words, concepts, phrases you put into the is box is up to you. There's a temptation usually to
throw the kitchen sink at this and try and find 10 or 15 arguments.
That's not the right way to do. This in many cases, finding a single clear benefit that passes a three C's test and
putting everything upon that can in many cases be the most successful approach.
Perhaps it's two different benefits combined together. But the point is, like everything else, make choices and
keep it tight. Again, you have some extra help here so you can run a three C's analysis. But again, don't forget
you did that loyalist research as part of your qualitative.
There's a sort of backdoor into finding a good positioning answer, and the back door is sit down with loyalists
and get them to articulate for you why they buy the brand and why they like it. More often than not, that's an
equally good resource as going
through a full formal three C's analysis, and if the loyalists tell you a couple of things that you pull out of the
three C's, that triangulated answer is almost certainly the right thing to put into the is box.
A final reminder as well, don't forget the benefit ladder. Ultimately, there are three main rungs in the benefit
ladder. We can talk about features in that is box only 12 weeks long. We can talk about benefits benchmarked
against the world's best MBA programs,
or we can talk about emotions, giving you confidence to be a better senior marketer. In theory, all of them work.
But again, if we can get higher up the ladder, there's more value. There's less price sensitivity.
There's more strength in climbing higher up the ladder. For example, when we positioned the mini MBA in
marketing, originally, we went with two things, confidence, it makes marketers more confident
and performance, it will improve your ability to perform as a marketer. Now, that was our choice. We could
have just focused on one of those and maybe just said confidence. Or another approach would be we could say
confidence and also mention that it's
benchmarked against other MBA programs, making that the reason to believe. I feel confident in my marketing
skills because my training comes from a program benchmarked against the top MBA programs. It's up to you.
But be careful and be choiceful in the is you use at the bottom. Again, come back to the customer's brain, come
back to the three brain cells and come back to the two or three things you want to get them to think about your
product when they think about your product. So does that make sense? I'm not convinced. Let me give you a
test, and it's a test I use with one of my clients at Westpac, one of the big banks down in Australia. And we use it
on marketers just to make
sure they understand how to complete a positioning statement. So let's do it together for these last five minutes
of the class. You ready? I'm going to give you a portrait. You're going to have to fill out a very simple
positioning statement.
OK, grab a pen and a piece of paper. I'm going to give you 30 seconds for each of the positioning questions.
You ready? OK, first, here's the target segment we're going after. It's me. Mark Ritson, short portrait.
Mark Ritson is a 48 year old professional who runs his own small consulting firm generating two million dollars
plus each year, he is incredibly busy and feels guilty about the time he does not spend
with his young family, he has his everyday banking, so checking and savings with Westpac, as well as a
mortgage and all of his credit cards. So I'm a Westpac customer. OK, now you're the Westpac marketing
director.
Let's fill out this positioning challenge. Let's start with the what. OK, you can see my portrait there. You've got
to find things to market to me. Let's start with the what. You've got 30 seconds. Have a think about banking.
Have a think about my income. Let's start with working out the correct what. Let's begin. You have 30 seconds.
You should be writing something down here, by the way.

OK.

I'm saying 30 seconds, but I might just give you 20. OK. Right. You should have written something like this.
Westpac Private Banking. So as someone with a two million dollar plus income, I'm more than qualified for
private banking,
which is where you get special treatment and someone you can call. You don't have to go into a branch
anymore. So if you're a good financial services marketer, you've got a very good private bank. I'm obviously
already loyal to the bank. What you should be doing is elevating me
up to private bank where I pay a lot more money for the services. I get a service, but I get a special level of
service. So the right answer is Westpac Private Banking. You could have gone with life insurance and other
stuff, but this is the best choice.
The point is, it's a thing. It's a product. It's not a benefit. OK. That's the key point. All right. Let's move on.
Versus. If I'm going to try and sell this customer this product, what is the versus?
Again, 30 seconds. Have a think and get the right answer. Off you go. Should be writing something down. It
shouldn't be obvious. Who is the competition here? OK. All right.
Here we go. The right answer, if you're going to try and sell me private banking based on my portrait, is
continuing with regular, everyday banking or worse to that effect here.
I'm not looking at switching. It isn't another bank. What I what the competition or the alternative is from the
customer's point of view is not elevating myself to private banking and staying with regular banking
services. In this case, that's the alternative. And finally, let's do a three C's. You ready? Full 30 seconds. Now
look at the portrait. Look at private banking. All the benefits of having a dedicated bank and all of that. Look at
the competition and find me one or two things that I want
that this product will deliver better than the current alternative. Go to try and get to ten seconds.
OK, let's take a look. You should have got the following. Start with the feature of sort of the low end benefit,
reducing the amount of time you spend on finances. OK, so having private bankers reduces the amount of time
you have to spend working
on finances and then the emotional benefit at the top of the ladder. Obvious, but you should have written it down
so you can spend more time with your family. Now, classically, this is not how banks sell you private banking
because they're
not as smart. They sell you on all these other product features. But in reality, if someone came to me with this
offer and did that offer and no one has yet, you know what? I'd sign up tomorrow. The point is, that's the final
acid test of a positioning statement.
And I'm serious here. Step back. Look at the thing. Does that is at the bottom look like it's going to do the job on
the customer at the top? If your immediate reaction is they're all going to sign up for this,
it definitely works. That's the right positioning. If it doesn't seem to fit, there's a hole at the top and there's a
solution at the bottom. If it doesn't seem to fill that hole, then don't go forward with it and work harder.
Sweat positioning statements. They do get better over time. It should be a slam dunk. Whenever I've seen
positioning work in the real world, we step back from it and go, this is going to work if you don't have that
feeling.
Work harder, dig deeper, try again. And don't be afraid again to reverse out of some products that frankly, you
just don't have a positioning that makes sense. So remember that we'll have many
of these positioning statements. Brand positioning is a singular thing for the whole brand, but product
positioning, there will be many of these aimed at different products or at different segments for the same
product. And remember, finally, how the long and the short fit together.
We've separated them out in this module, but in reality, the two work together on the same target market.
Remember, it's the long and the short. We've got the brand values. We've got the, for want of a better metaphor,
the brand positioning for the heavy bombing going on where we're hitting everyone with what we stand for and
what the brand is. But we've also got much tighter targeted product positioning going on at the same
time, and it's not quite this simple, but you can think about brand values operating at the top of the funnel for the
most part and then product positioning taking over at the bottom. The two are working together in order to
generate short term
sales and much longer term success. Key lessons from module five positioning. First, keep in your head
throughout this process and when you work on positioning that all the positioning ultimately is, is the intention,
the intended brand image.
Next, the long of it. Think about the long enduring brand position as something we're aiming at the whole
marketplace for many, many years. Third, linked to that, the shorter targeted multiple product positionings
written
in that product positioning format. Four, a number of rebranding opportunities you have, you can consider
revitalization, perhaps repositioning, and with great care, rebranding.
And finally, this concept of differentiation is a huge debate within marketing at the moment. There are many
people who will argue with data that all brands are perceived the same. You need to take a point of view as a
senior brand manager on how you feel about differentiation.
You know, I sit on the topic, but you must form your own opinion. Well, marketer, I hope it's all making sense.
We've got some positioning work to do this week when it comes to the moon brands. Let's look at the challenges
in your brand plan for this part of the mini MBA.
So cast your mind back to last week and you've hopefully by now made some targeting choices. You might have
gone after the mass market, for example, and decided that you're just going to target everyone. That's one of the
options, right?
Well, now, if you target the mass market, you need to complete your brand position because brand positioning is
basically positioning to everyone. We'll cover the brand code section next week.
So your challenge this week is to think about what I would call brand DNA or whatever you want to call it, what
is the core soul of the brand? What do I want to communicate to everyone in the market about what my brand
stands for?
Now, the format you use to do that is up to you. You could do it as a series of important words that captures the
positioning, kind of like a DNA or brand values approach, or you can do it as a more
defined statement that lays out the brand in a sentence or maybe two. So it's really more of a mission. There's no
right or wrong way here. Whatever you want to communicate internally, what the brand stands
for is completely acceptable. It's up to you. Now, that's what you want to do in terms of targeting the mass
market. But if you believe in two speed targeting, you're probably going to target at least one of the segments as
well.
For each of those segments, you're going to need to do two things. Each segment needs a product position aimed
at a specific segment. And later on in a few weeks, we'll need objectives aimed specifically at those target
segments as well.
So let's talk just about the product positioning challenge, because this week, if you target the mass, you need to
do that brand positioning. But for every target segment, as you can see here, you also need to do some product
positioning as well.
So the product positioning template is very straightforward and looks a lot like some of the examples we used in
the module. So start with the what. Remember, the what is not the benefit, right?
The what here is the thing that I'm selling. Yes, it's Moon. And maybe you want to position it as being
something about Moon, or maybe you want to position a specific feature or a specific element of Moon.
What is it you want to draw attention to when you talk to, in this case, pros? What is it you're trying to sell? The
versus, again, from a market oriented point of view, is the alternatives that that target, the pros, is considering.
Again, think carefully here. Look at your research. The competition is not necessarily the same from segment to
segment. It may not even be a brand in some cases. So who are we positioning against?
And finally, the is is open to you. The thing that comes out of the three Cs, and I would do a three Cs analysis
here. It could be a word. It could be a phrase. It could be an attribute. It could be an association. It's the thing
you want to communicate to the customer.
And as you can see, I've given you three lines here for up to three distinct words or phrases or attributes. You
don't need to use all three. Maybe you can be tighter and use just two or one.
But what do you want to communicate to the target about Moon versus the competitors? This, in a nutshell, is at
the heart of the positioning.
And remember what we said in the module. Take a step back at the end of it and just make sure when you look
at that segment, in this case, the pros, and if you could make this case to them, is it super attractive?
Would it pull them in? Is it almost impossible for them not to buy Moon as a result? That's the kind of success
you're looking for. And if it isn't, tweak it and squeeze it, work it a little bit harder.
Okay, so there's your challenges for positioning. We need an overall brand position, brand DNA for everyone.
And then for each of the segments you've decided to target, we need one of these product positions completed as
well.
Good luck. Positioning is very important, as you know. Now let's cover the readings. Okay, Module 5's library
brand positioning. Next to your notes is the classic business school reading on brand positioning.
Dry, slightly boring. But again, if we're going to benchmark the mini MBA against the MBA programs at
Wharton or Stanford, this is the reading that they're getting. This is the reading I want you to get as well.
So for optional material, lots of stuff this week, so I want you to be especially choiceful about what you do and
don't consume. We start with a couple of my columns. Repositioning Burberry goes into detail about the
attempts to reposition the great British luxury brand.
And Revitalizing Tiffany does the same, but this time looking at it from a revitalization point of view. I asked
the Australian lecturer Jeff Fripp to share with us some of his expertise in perceptual mapping.
There's two things from Jeff. That might be useful. The first is a lecture on perceptual mapping. You'll see that
down below under the watch perceptual mapping lecture. And you'll see above it the perceptual mapping lecture
slides.
The lecture slides give you all the material Jeff uses in his lecture. And importantly, on the final page of those
slides, if you click on the link on the PDF, it will open up the Excel file,
which allows you to build your own perceptual maps. So there's a real kit there. That enables you to do your
own perceptual mapping if that's attractive. Next is a really important series of articles from me. The Kit Kat
and Double D positioning column is a recent one and gets into
detail on managing differentiation and distinctiveness together. Next is another article for me that completes the
triptych of repositioning, revitalizing and now rebranding, looking at Elon Musk's attempts to rebrand Twitter to
X.
Next up is another one of my Effie case videos, and this one's probably the most popular in the series. Over the
years, Apple have submitted several times for Effie Awards, and I've been able to use those submissions to give
you a very rare
insight into how Apple actually do position their brand. In this case, the ten minute video case takes us through
the story of how Steve Jobs returned to Apple and resurrected the brand with brilliant positioning clarity.
Finally, I'm a huge fan of Cadbury. And the work that's been done on that brand over the last ten years is a
lovely podcast that talks about that process of how Cadbury remembered what it was all about and revitalized
the brand beautifully for the 21st century.
Finally, down below a reminder, there's a weekly podcast where I summarize lots of this in an hour or less.
That's the end of module five. See you next week.