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.
This article is part of Branding Strategy Insider’s newsletter. You can sign up here to get thought pieces like this sent to your inbox.
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’ minds. 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.
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.
Accelerate Your Job Search With Marketing’s Most Advanced AI Career Coach
We won’t devote space here to examining 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…
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 purchases, and deliver a receptive audience for the trial of innovations. That said, trust can only be earned. Here’s a six-point checklist to help you think about trust:
- Values and beliefs – a higher purpose brand that has a belief system beyond transactional considerations is immediately trustworthy
- Consistency – when the experience with your brand across all points of contact is reinforced through repeat performances, you earn trust
- Keeping promises (walking the walk) – when earning trust, efforts to demonstrate dependability through actions and behaviors are more powerful than words
- Social proof – validation and verification of your competence through the testimonials of real people is powerful affirmation of trustworthiness
- 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
- Help rather than hype – If you truly care about your customer’s well-being 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 are the formula for rising above the competition and driving 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.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Robert Wheatley, CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency.
At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define and articulate what makes them competitive and valuable. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education
Post Views: 63
