Good positioning makes challenger brand marketing work

Why positioning is not a fill-in-the-blank template

The fix for brand marketing that misfires is positioning, but not the fill-in-the-blank template style that is so common. A template produces a sentence. Good positioning produces a unique space your brand can own, the idea at the center of how challenger brands position to beat the market leader.

There are three reasons good positioning makes brand marketing more effective.

1. It unlocks the unique value a challenger can deliver.
2. It helps challengers get famous with a simple and contagious story about the company.
3. It provides a broader palette of emotions to work with.

Positioning defines value relative to the competition

Most purpose and product campaigns ignore the competition. Good positioning acknowledges it. That is what lets positioning define the unique value a brand can deliver relative to that competition, rather than in a vacuum.

That value can be functional or intangible, and it can often be manufactured out of thin air. Hertz was the number one car rental company, with the largest fleet and the most locations across the country. Avis could not win on size, so it framed a service play with a simple story about an underdog that everyone could relate to. The full numbers behind that turnaround are in how repositioning turned Avis around.

Positioning gives challengers a contagious company story

Future customers do not read feature lists. Good positioning helps a brand speak to them broadly and specifically at the same time, by framing a long set of features and benefits into a simple and entertaining story about the company.

When that story is told with wit and charm, future customers take notice. All the major airlines were boring. Braniff Airlines decided to position itself as the funnest way to fly. That single idea did the work that a list of routes, fares and cabin features could not.

Good positioning turns a long list of features and benefits into one simple, contagious story about the company, and that story is what future customers remember.

Positioning widens the emotional range of brand marketing

Purpose campaigns tend to evoke one emotion. Product campaigns tend to evoke none. Good positioning opens up creative possibilities in two ways.

1. It allows your brand to behave in different ways, which gives it a personality.
2. It lets you evoke the range of emotions best suited to your context and category.

T-Mobile was number four in its market and did not have the network coverage or speed to compete with the leaders. The only play it could make was to blow up the rules and channel consumer frustration.

How positioning compares with purpose and product campaigns

Set positioning against the two failures it replaces and the difference is visible on every line.

1. Message. Purpose-led campaigns are bland because the message sits too high on the benefit ladder. Product-led campaigns are bland because it sits too low. Good positioning unlocks the unique value a brand can deliver.
2. Audience. Purpose overshoots the market with macro themes such as global peace and social justice. Product undershoots it with specifics only relevant to those already in the category. Good positioning helps challengers get famous with future customers through a simple and contagious company story.
3. Response. Purpose evokes the wrong emotion. Product evokes no emotion. Good positioning broadens creative possibilities with a wider palette of emotions.

Why purpose and product campaigns fail in the first place is set out in why purpose-led brand campaigns fail.

What repositioning does to price effects

The biggest commercial benefit of positioning shows up in profit. The IPA Databank measured the share of campaigns that produced very long price effects, meaning effects on profit and price sensitivity, by the strategy behind them.

1. Continue with an existing range: 3% of campaigns.
2. Launch a new sub-brand: 7% of campaigns.
3. Reposition the brand: 10% of campaigns.

Source: Effectiveness in Context, IPA Databank of 497 for-profit and 121 not-for-profit cases submitted between 1998 and 2016, The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising UK.

Read the three figures as a ladder. Launching a new sub-brand more than doubles the rate of continuing with an existing range. Repositioning the whole brand beats both, at more than three times the rate of standing still.

Brands that reposition for growth are more than three times as likely to produce very long price effects as brands that carry on with their existing range.

Where good positioning starts

All three reasons depend on a challenger choosing where to compete. A positioning that accepts the leader's terms gives up the unique value, the story and the emotional range in one move. The alternative is to fight where you can come first, by creating a new subcategory around your strengths. Once the space is defined, the work turns to expressing it, which is covered in dramatizing your differences.

Adapted from How challengers can position for growth, a Creative Business Company whitepaper.