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Mod 3 - Brand Strategy

Defining Market Position

Problem

We need to learn to answer how different your client’s company is from their competitors.

We’ll cover:

What is positioning

How to do it

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What is positioning?

📚 [Mod 03.04] Brand Strategy Recommended Reads

📚 [Mod 03.04] Brand Strategy Recommended Reads

Name

Author

Module

Start With Why

Simon Sinek

Positioning

Al Ries and Jack Trout

Zag

Martin Marty Neumeier

There are no rows in this table

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People have a lot of options, but they usually only remember one or up to three top brands in a specific category. For example, Coca-cola and Pepsi. So instead of competing with the top beverage drinks, we can create a new category of “Energy Drinks” and try to position ourselves in that market as the top one or two brands of choice. for instance, Red Bull and Monster.

Are you the first in your category? If not create a new sub-category!

Market Sub-category examples:

Fair trade coffee

Healthy snacks

Plant based meat

Designer Positioning Sub-category Ideas:

Designer in Tel-Aviv

Full stack Designer

Bi-lingual Designer

Ethical Designer

Affordable Designer

Luxury Designer

Design Partner

It takes work to establish a new category, so it’s best to find an empty space in an existing category for your client.

How do we do this?

Step 1: Understand the market

Who else is competing directly?

What are some indirect alternatives?

What is the category referred to by the market?

Step 2: Understand Differentiation

Are they better? How?

Are they different? How?

Step 3: Clarify what is the positioning you can win

You can do this with the client but you can also consolidate the information by yourself

This is a creative process, please take time to digest and process all of the information

Simple businesses might not need these inputs.

Sometimes a competitive advantage paragraph can be enough.

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Exercise 1: The Onliness Statement

📚 Recommended Read:

Zag by Martin Marty Neumeier

(More Recommended Reads here)

Structure

Our company is...

The only __________________________ (category)

that __________________________ (differentiation characteristic)

for __________________________ (customer)

in __________________________ (market geography)

who __________________________ (customer needs statement)

during __________________________ . (underlying trend)

Examples:

Harley Davidson is...

[What] the only motorcycle manufacturer

[How] that makes big, loud motorcycles

[Who] for macho guys (and “macho wannabes”)

[Where] mostly in United States

[Why] who want to join a gang of cowboys

[When] in an era of declining personal freedom

Amazing Sleep App is...

[What] the ONLY sleep tracking app

[How] that provides automatic statistic updates in the morning

[Who] to the busy millennial

[Where] worldwide

[Why] looking to obtain better sleep

[When] in an era of digital automation

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Exercise 2: The Perception Map

Place your client’s brand and their competitors in a Quality x Price chart.

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And you can also change the dimensions, in these cases we have a Performance x Aggressive Design chart and an Economic Class x Usage/Style chart.

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Important: Make sure you are choosing dimensions that your clients (or personas) care about.

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Summary

We want to know how the brand is different

Ideally we’d like to find a ladder/category/sub-category in which they can be No. 1

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