Developing a brand positioning statement
A BRAND POSITIONING STATEMENT IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL FOR A MARKETER. It’s the blueprint for your brand and it guides your brand identity, communications and new product development.
Most marketers and entrepreneurs will need to create a brand positioning statement at some point - usually at the early stages of a brand or when you are repositioning a brand for growth. This probably should have been my very first post since it’s that important, but here it is - how to develop a brand positioning statement. I’ll make one admission - none of this is new information. This information has been around for many years and taught by business schools and leading companies. I’m hoping to present it in a way that makes it clear to anyone who needs a refresher course in developing a brand positioning statement, or to anyone who is considering developing one for their brand.
A brand positioning statement starts with the Consumer and an Insight about the Consumer. Before writing your brand positioning statement, you must first understand your consumer and what drives her. Then write a Consumer Sketch like the one I describe in a previous post. Strong brands know their consumer inside and out. If you don’t know much about your consumer, then I suggest you go and do some foundational research to find out what makes her tick. Then follow these steps to develop a brand positioning statement:
1. Identify your Insight
An insight is a deep and penetrating truth about the consumer that is both meaningful to her life and one that your brand can help fulfill. See my post called ‘Branding Starts Here: The Insight’ to learn more. The insight is what your brand will be built upon. The insight is what your brand will uniquely address with its brand promises. For example, I mentioned Dove in the post and the Insight: “Real women know that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes and looks.” This is the foundation for the Dove brand and one that drives all their marketing communication. Articulating a compelling insight for your consumer will help drive your brand’s messaging.
2. Develop the Brand Promise
A brand promise is the single most compelling and competitive reason for the target consumer to choose the brand. This is what makes your brand stand out from other related brands. This is also called the brand positioning – although I look at all the elements of the brand (all of the seven steps outlined here) as part of a brand positioning statement. For Dove, the brand might articulate its brand promise as, “Dove is the beauty brand that lets your real self shine through." They have probably articulated it much more eloquently than I have. But the notion is that Dove understands that real beauty goes beyond a woman’s looks. Real beauty is not physical – and you can’t find it in beauty magazines. There is not one ideal of beauty as depicted in the media. Real beauty is skin deep and multi-dimensional. Use your brand promise to stay true to your brand and to drive your brand communications and innovation. If Dove, for example, started making fake eyelashes, I’d really question if Dove is staying true to its brand promise.
3. Highlight the Benefits
The differentiating functional and emotional benefits that motivate engagement are directly related to your brand promise. Benefits highlight the things that would engage a consumer in your brand. These benefits are both functional and emotional. A functional benefit might be an attribute of your product while an emotional benefit might be a feeling that your brand evokes. Nike, for example, might have a functional benefit of “smartly engineered shoes built for performance” and an emotional benefit of “empowering athletes to reach their greatest potential.” A functional benefit for Dove might be “technologically advanced beauty care products” while a emotional benefit would be “helps women express their real selves and their real beauty.”
4. Articulate the Reasons to Believe
Reasons to believe are proof that the brand has to substantiate the positioning. It’s the support points for the benefits. These support points can be things like: the founders, the creative communities supporting the group, number of years in business, and location - to name a few. For brands with products, it could be things like: a manufacturing process, a claim, and a technology advantage. Reasons to believe help substantiate your product benefits. For Dove, the brand might say that their expertise in skincare and hair care is a reason to believe that their products are technologically advanced. They could also say that their advertising and their Campaign for Real Beauty substantiates their emotional benefit of helping women express their real beauty. Reasons to believe is the evidence to the consumer that your brand’s benefits are, in fact, true.
5. Come up with an Essence
A brand essence is the brand’s positioning distilled into one clear, defining thought. It’s the brand’s DNA. It’s what the brand is about - expressed in three words or less. Dove’s would simply be ‘Real Beauty.’ Apple’s essence might be ‘Ingenuity.’ Nike’s is probably its tagline: ‘Just Do it.’ Ask yourself: What’s the one thing that captures the essence of your brand? The essence of a brand is probably the single most important word on your brand positioning statement, but it’s also the hardest one to come up with. If you’ve developed a strong brand positioning statement, it will become clear with a little thinking, creativity, and collaboration.
6. Develop your Brand’s Character
This is the brand’s personality or voice in the market. As I mentioned in my post on Brand Character, a brand has a distinct way of acting in the world. The most memorable brands today have a unique way of speaking and a consistent voice. Dove’s voice is empathic yet empowering, it’s realistic and illuminating. Dove does not shy away from conversations about the unfair demands that the fashion and media industry have placed on women. Apple’s brand character is simple, beautiful and thoughtful. Every product, including the packaging it comes in, is perfectly designed with the user in mind. Think about what your brand’s personality traits would be and hold true to your brand’s unique voice.
7. List out your Brand Values
Every strong brand has values that it will fight for, which makes them stand out from other brands in their category. What will your brand fight for or against? If your brand doesn’t have a cause that it takes up, then perhaps your brand positioning isn’t as strong as it could be. Method fights for Conscious Cleaning and it fights against Dirty. In my post on Hello Kitty, I mentioned its strong brand values: Hello Kitty fights for friendship and she fights against arguments. Dove fights against the unrealistic ideals that modern women face (and it really does) and it fights for women embracing their unique strengths.
The 7 elements listed above are the essential building blocks to any brand positioning statement. Most consumer-oriented companies have their own version of the brand positioning that have various names – from brand keys to brand compasses, from brand pyramids to brand wheels. You can lay out the elements of the brand positioning statement in whatever way you’d like – perhaps using iconography that resonates for your brand. When I worked at Unilever, I saw a brand positioning statement for Ben & Jerry’s that was in the shape of an ice cream cone, and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. No matter how you lay out your brand positioning on the piece of paper – what matters most is the content. Does it ring true for your consumer and for your brand?
Once you have everything written, look at it again and make sure it all holds together. Debate it, share it with colleagues, hold it upside down. Articulating your brand positioning will help you see your brand’s strengths in new ways. Use it to guide communications with your consumers and to help steer your innovation efforts. Remember – your brand positioning statement is the single most important tool that you can have as a marketer. So if you haven’t yet done this exercise for your brand, please do it. And have fun with it!
