What is positioning? Its meaning is neither in creating an original product (today, anything can be easily reproduced and repeated), nor in reducing costs (someone will give a price even lower than yours anyway). The terms “price positioning”, “product positioning in the market”, etc., are notions from a slightly different opera. – are concepts from a slightly “different field”.
The original meaning of positioning was to find a worthyplace in the consumer’s mind, or, in other words, a position. Position is an already established stereotype, and human stereotypes are one of the most stable things in the world.
Attack of the clones
According to the Federal Institute of Patent Property, the number of registered trademarks in Russia has long since passed 30,000. Not impressive? Then let’s get more specific. In the USA, for example, just over 50 trademarks of mineral and drinking water are sold, while in Russia there are over 500. I must say, and in the U.S. used to be much more brands of water. Everything in this world repeats itself…In urban supermarkets in the countries of Northern Europe you will find a maximum of 5-6 brands of water, or even less, but in the average St. Petersburg supermarket sells (for some reason still sells) 20-30 brands of water, and sometimes more.
Therefore, it is not surprising that there is a clearly visible trend – brands become similar to each other to the point of confusion. What is the difference between the water brands “Arkhyz” and “Novoterskaya”, “Smirnovskaya” and “Slavyanovskaya”? And what is the difference between “Ya” and “Rich” juices?
How expensive a place is in the consumer’s mind is shown by situations when someone says: “Well, how can it be? After all, our product is better than our competitors by all accounts, and it costs less, but they still buy more from the competitor”. So, this means that the competitor’s product is better, since the consumer thinks so.
“The consumer is always right” is a very true saying, not only in terms of service regulations. It is another confirmation that you don’t own your brand, at least not completely. Yes, you own the production, the product and its brand name. But a brand is not a trademark, it’s what defines your position in the mind of the consumer.In other words, positioning is what the consumer thinks of your product, if, by your luck, he remembers it at all.
Differentiate or die
Advertising is one of the most complex forms of communication, and one of the least trustworthy from the consumer’s point of view. For the most part, advertising is unwelcome and unloved. And in some cases, unbearable.
The first cries that “advertising doesn’t work anymore” were heard in the second half of the 80s. At that time, advertising began to “run out of steam” after the implementation of all kinds of advertising strategies, but could not return to the unique selling proposition (USP) Rosser Reeves, because it was believed for some reason that the USP should be based only on the technical characteristics of the product and rational benefits.
The concept of positioning has changed advertising.The concept is so simple that some people don’t even realize how effective it is. In its time, it literally turned the world of marketing and advertising upside down and changed the rules of the modern advertising game. It is commonly believed that the concept of positioning was “born” in 1972, although in fact it happened earlier.
Positioning isnot something that a manufacturer does with his product, but rather itis an operation on the minds of potentialcustomers. The product is positioned in the minds of customers. And as long as there is a “battle for minds” in the competitive struggle, the battlefield is not so much the store shelf as the consumer’s consciousness.
The extreme complexity of changing human consciousness has become one of the most important tenets of positioning. But it is this principle that marketers most often violate. Trying to influence the minds of their customers, companies throw away millions of dollars every day.
Historical background
The concept of the Unique Selling Propositionwas proposed by Rosser Reeves, chairman of the board of directors of the Bates advertising agency. He described it in detail in his 1961 bestseller “Reality in Advertising”. The essence of CBP is to find some characteristic of the product that can interest the consumer and make it a brand attribute. One of the most striking realizations of the idea of TSS allowed cigarettes “Lucky Strike” to become a global brand: “Tobacco browned” (“It’s roasted”). It doesn’t matter that tobacco is browned in any cigarette – it matters who said it first. It is very important to realize that the CBP is unpatentable due to a rare combination of contradictions: CBP cannot be legally patented and does not need to be legally patented.
Ingenious simplicity
In our hyper-communicative society, the best way to convey the desired information to the recipient is through super simple messages. In order for a message to penetrate deep into the human consciousness, it is necessary to “sharpen” it. You have to cut out all the ambiguities, simplify it, and then, if you want it to remain in the minds of consumers for a long time, simplify it again.
If you’re trying to convey the benefits of a product or service, get ready to turn it inside out. Look for the solution to your problem not within the product or even within yourself. Look for it in the mind of the person you are addressing.
The concept of positioning with an ultra-simple message has been further developed in the form of the theory of “owning one concept”. Volvo owns “safety”. BMW has “driver’s car”, Eldorado has “low prices”, and Blend-a-med toothpaste has “tooth decay”. Once you get a concept in people’s minds, you either use it to its full potential or lose your niche.
Today we are inundated with information from television screens, buried under piles of papers. Books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, the Internet – each new media does not supplant any of the previous ones. Who reads, watches or listens to all this flow of communications!? Traffic jams are forming on the brain highways. Engines are overheating. There is a finite limit to rational perception. According to research, crowning the human neck “container” volume of one liter is able to accommodate advertising to the amount of no more than 25 dollars a year. And how much are trying to cram into it?!?!?
In an average supermarket, there are about 40,000 different products or brands. Compare this to the vocabulary of the “average” person, which is only eight thousand words…..
Even in the best case, it is extremely difficult to communicate in an over-communicative society. There are times when it is better to avoid them altogether. At least until you are ready for long-term positioning, because you won’t have a second opportunity to make a first impression.
Gold of victory and bronze of defeat
The easiest way to get into a person’s mind is to be first.The validity of this statement is demonstrated by answering a few simple questions. Who was the first man in space? – Yuri Gagarin. Not everyone remembers that the second was German Titov. Few people will say which Valentina Tereshkova went into space. But she is widely known as the first female cosmonaut. The highest mountain in the world is Everest in the Himalayas. What is the name of the second highest mountain?
The first person, the first love, the first company, they are all concepts that have taken up “rooms” in our minds – and it is very difficult to evict them. Kodak in photography, IBM in computers, Xerox in copying… If you want your company to be loved, realize that you have to get into people’s minds first. Loyalty in a supermarket is achieved the same way fidelity is achieved in a marriage. You show up first and then give no reason to switch. And that’s it.
But what if you’re not Polaroid or Coca Cola? What if someone has been in the minds of your potential customers before?
The hard way into the consumer’s mind is to be second.But to be second is to be nothing. Think again, can’t you be first in at least something? “If you can’t be first in a category, then create a new category and be first in it” is one of the most important positioning ideas.
But, in positioning, strategies have been developed for second, third, and even two hundred and third numbers. The second is quite capable of succeeding. Here are those who once encroached on the laurels of the leaders: Blend-a-med vs. Colgate, Fuji vs. Kodak, Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola. The most serious problems are in numbers three and four.
As the president of a major U.S. consumer goods company remarked, “Try to count on your fingers the successful national brands that have emerged in the last two years. You won’t need your little finger anymore.
It’s not that no one has tried. The shelves of every department store are littered with “halfway successful brands.” The producers of these “me too”-products flatter themselves with the hope that they will be able to launch a wonderful advertising campaign that will elevate their offspring to the “high society”. They’re laden with coupons, discounts, promotional posters. But profits are hard to come by, and the “wonderful” advertising campaign, even if it comes to fruition, fails to put the brand on the right track.What to do?
Maneuvers and blunders
“If you want to succeed, don’t ignore your competitors’ positions. And don’t discount your own,” argued marketing strategists Al Rice and Jack Trout, the “cogs” of positioning. In today’s markets, your competitors’ positions are no less important than your own. In some cases, they are even more important.
The classic positioning maneuver is a position “against” someone or something. If a company is not first in every way, then it must be the first to take position #2. That’s not an easy task either.
Example from practice.In the USA, the leader of car rental services is Hertz (by the way, they were the very first in this market). Avis has taken a position “against the leader”: “Avis is the #2 car rental company. Why choose us? We try harder than others.” Under “others” is a transparent allusion to Hertz.
Another prime example: the way to the hearts of 7-Up soft drink buyers. “Coca-Cola” and “Pepsi” are the most popular American soft drinks. “7-Up is not a cola,” – this positioning correlated the lemon drink with those who managed to firmly establish themselves in the minds of buyers. Thanks to the creative positioning strategy, the sales volume of “7-Up” increased dramatically.
But if only everything were so simple! The main condition for effective positioning is consistency, the ability to maintain the positions once chosen year after year. Very often, after a company makes a successful positioning move, it falls into the so-called trap of the three P’s: “Forgetting Why Succeeds”.
It must be said that “frontal” claims of leadership tend not to work, especially if leadership is in question. Samsung’s ad for camcorders suggests: “Be a leader.” This approach seems unreasonable because most consumers who use video believe that Sony is the leader here. As a result, Samsung advertises its worst competitor, because many people, hearing the word “leader” in relation to video equipment, willingly or unwillingly roll in their heads question-answer: “Who is the leader in video equipment? Oh, yes, of course, Sony. When you think of the competitor’s brand, you may end up watching Samsung commercials….
That sweet word “victory”
Some companies have managed to find a viable position in the neighborhood of the market leaders. However, most firms do not want to remain in a secondary role forever.
At the same time, practice shows that the first brand that has been fixed in people’s minds gets on average twice as much market share (in the long term) as brand No. 2, and four times as much as brand No. 3. And this attitude usually cannot be changed in any way. Of the 25 American brand leaders in various product categories in 1923, only three (!) lost their positions by 2000.
Virtually all material advantages go to the leader.In the absence of really serious reasons to change their choice when making a second purchase, consumers prefer a “familiar” manufacturer. And stores are much more willing to buy products from the leaders. Everywhere you look, the leading brand has advantages.
Question: Where does a 400-pound gorilla sleep? Answer: wherever he wants. A leader has the right to do whatever he wants. In the short term, he’s virtually invulnerable. Inertia is enough to maintain speed. An old wrestling expression: when on top, you can’t lie on your shoulder blades. General Motors Corporation, Procter & Gamble and all the other leaders never care about this year or next year. They are interested in the future. What will happen in five years? And ten years from now? The only problem in the short term may be the government.
Many experts underestimate the primacy factor. They tend to attribute the success of large leading companies to “marketing acumen” rather than the hard work of planning, forecasting and positioning.
What to do if you’re not No. 1
What is good for the leader is not always good for the followers. The policy of imitating the leader is effective only in those rare cases when the No. 1 company is not fast enough to take the first position. It is not enough to be better than the competitor. The attack must be carried out in the period of market development, before the leader has time to ensure its superiority. Accompanied by an active advertising campaign and sales promotion activities. And with the best name (more on that later).
But, more often than not, the opposite happens. The copycat company loses valuable time to modify the product. Then the product is brought to the market, but it is advertised more weakly than the leader’s product. On top of that, the product is given a common corporate name, as this is the fastest way to “grab” a “piece” of the market for it. In other words, it turns out that the company falls into all the traps of our over-communicative society at once.
So how do you find an open spot in the consumer’s mind?William Benton, founder of a major advertising agency, responds to this in this way: “I will look for weaknesses in the business organization of great corporations.” Look for the gap and fill it.
There are several strategies for finding empty seats
The empty space is the size
For many years, Detroit manufacturers produced ever-lower and longer cars. Each model year, the cars were even more elongated and more attractive in appearance. And then along comes Volkswagen’s Beetle. Short, fat and ugly.
If the Beetle were promoted in the traditional way, its creators would have to minimize its cons and maximize its pros. “Let’s get a fashion photographer to ‘make’ the car look better than it really is. Then let’s look at it all from a reliability standpoint.” That’s what the standard strategy is. But in this case, the “blank spot” was size. It’s not that there weren’t other compact cars on the market when the Beetle was introduced. There were, but they didn’t take care to reserve a mental position!
Space – high price
Opportunities for relatively high-value products are available in many product categories – whether it’s luxury goods or down-to-earth foodstuffs like flour, salt and sugar. Price can be an advantage, especially if you are the first to fill the highest price niche in a product category. Some brands have a product idea based almost entirely on high price. “There is only one ‘Joy,’ the most expensive perfume in the world,” he says. “Invest in Piaget, the world’s most expensive watch.”
Very often positioning is confused with greed. But setting high prices is not the way to get rich. To succeed, you must: be the first (1) to take a high price position (2) and credibly justify the price in a category where consumers are receptive to expensive brands (3). Otherwise, your high price will scare away potential customers.
Further: high prices should be set directly in advertising, not already in the stores. Price – high or low – is as much an attribute of a product as all its other characteristics. In advertising, the brand should be clearly positioned in a certain price category.
Space – low price
The opposite direction of high price can also be a very profitable course. Low cost is often the best face for new products that are not known to consumers (like a cell phone memory copier). The person thinks, “If it doesn’t work, I don’t have much to lose”. High prices are more appropriate for mature, well-known products. Especially those that often have to be repaired (watches, cars, etc.).
Generic (“nameless”) food brands appearing on department store shelves are an attempt to take advantage of low price gaps. However, frequent discounts and sales organized by retailers have negated major opportunities in this direction.
Other gaps
One of the “voids”is the gender of the consumer. Marlboro was the first nationwide cigarette brand to clearly develop a masculine image. That’s why Marlboro sales are at an all-time high. Calvin Klein jeans are another excellent example of gender positioning. A product can be targeted at children (toothpaste, chocolate), a time of day (beverage, medicine), or anything else.
Victim of production
A very common mistake is when unoccupied positions begin to be sought not in the minds of buyers, but in the factories of the company. An example that has already become a classic is Ford’s “Edsel” model. The loud laughter, under which it left the market, did not allow most observers to understand the essence of the fiasco. In a nutshell, the Edsel was a perfect example of internal positioning. Its emergence allowed Ford Corporation to fill the hole created between the Ford and Mercury models on the one hand and the Lincoln on the other. Within the confines of the company’s factories, the strategy was wildly successful, but in the open marketplace it was no good. The new model simply had no place in a category already overcrowded with cars with plenty of chrome parts at moderate prices.
Positioning is not a game for simpletons.If you fail to find an opening in the minds of consumers, even a great manufacturing discovery can fail. “Miller Clear, the first colorless beer, was no more successful than Crystal Pepsi, the first cola as clear as spring water. Beer should be light brown, cola should be reddish brown. Heinz is trying to release green ketchup, even though it’s supposed to be red.
By trying to change colors, you are challenging deeply ingrained associations. You shouldn’t. They are too deep. The average person is willing to tolerate being told something unknown to him (that’s why “news” is an effective method of advertising). But he does not tolerate being told he is wrong. Changing consciousness is the path to advertising disaster.
Who was everything has become nothing
The biggest mistakemany companies make is trying to be everything to everyone. “High quality. “Full range. Good service. Low prices.” This is the trap of generality. Instead of asking yourself, “who are we trying to attract?” – try asking yourself: “who shouldn’t use our brand?”. Most firms’ strategies don’t exclude anyone. In politics, for example, taking an intransigent position on all issues at once is tantamount to suicide. To win in today’s competitive environment, you need to attract supporters, to win your niche in the market. Even if you have to sacrifice something.
Only those who are already in power or have a significant market share can afford to make the mistake of generality. But it will ruin someone who starts from scratch.
Linear expansion trap
Linear expansion– for those who are inadvertently unaware – is when a new, unknown product is released under the name of an existing product. There are many things on the side of linear expansion. These are economic factors, acceptance by merchants and consumers, lower advertising costs, high profits, good corporate image, etc. All in all, trivial logic is on the side of linear extensions. The truth, unfortunately, is not.
Do the namesCamaro, Cavalier, Corvette, Impala, Lumina, Malibu, Metro, Monte Carlo and Prizm mean anything to you? Car models, aren’t they? Wouldn’t it surprise you if these are all model names of Chevrolet (a division of General Motors Corporation)? The result of this confusion has been to relegate Chevrolet to second place in the American auto industry (after Ford).
What is the mistake of brand line extension proponents? Expansion is the end result of clear, calculated thinking in a turn-of-the-century way. For example: “We made Pantene Pro-V shampoo, a great product that has gained a significant share of the shampoo market. When our customers see Pantene Pro-V hairspray, they will know that it came from a company that makes a popular shampoo.
From the perspective of the potential buyer, the linear extension contradicts the position of the generic brand because it “blurs” its clearly delineated mental position boundaries. In a sense, linear extension tells the customer that Pantene Pro-V is nothing more than a brand name. It shatters the illusion that “Pantene Pro-V” is the best kind of shampoo. That it is specifically a shampoo and not just the name of a range of products.
We must not forget that the concept of leadership has a crucial hidden force – leadership is close to specialization. If you are going to buy a particular product, you are more likely to prefer to get it from a narrow specialist: a computer – in a computer store, shoes – in a shoe store. And if you are looking for good sports shoes, you will go not to a shoe store and not to a department store, but to a specialized sports store, or, most likely, to a branded store of one of the recognized “specialists” in sports shoes and clothing: Nike, Adidas or Reebok.
One reason for the enduring popularity of linear extensions is some of their short-term advantages. Because a linear name is related to the original name, it causes an instant flash of understanding. “Oh yes, Coca-Cola Lite!”. It also causes an instant boost in sales, which go well at first. For the first six months, while the market is filling up, the prospects are rosy. The epiphany comes later.
Read, think, summarize.
We remind you thatprofessional creation of a brand, as well as the development of its promotion and positioning strategy. positioningyou can order in KOLORO branding agency. We wish you success!
