01

There Is No Best, Only The Best Positioned

It's no secret, I love competition. However, competitive thinking isn't always about attacking your competition. It's about existing so well for the right customer, that buyers don't see "you versus others", they only see "you plus themselves".

How do you position your brand for the most customer wins? It's both easier and harder than you think. The average consumer remembers less than 7 brands in a single category. Consumers don’t have a sortable excel sheet floating in their head of the top brands based on certain metrics. Nope.

Instead, people remember the brands that emotionally and logically connect with them. You're not doing any favors by trying to be the best. You can win more often by being positioned as the best brand for the right customer's needs. Be competitive with the values, drive, passion, and advantages that you already own.

Your positioning is the core element here. One of the most crucial steps to understanding your positioning in the market is how well your audience responds to your chosen niche. There are two things that form the basis for harnessing your competitive edge.

The first is often inherent to the brand. It's been a driving force since day one: your unique purpose. If you believe in helping a certain audience, or relentlessly pursuing a product niche, or even exploring the positive force of nature with others: harness it. It's surprisingly easy to form incredible connections with buyers when the things they care about are also things you make a focus.

Secondly, like any entrenched war zone, there are defensible territories that naturally form in the market. When a competitor utilizes their personal beliefs to hold a niche, they leave other areas open. You can reposition your strategy to consume a new market advantage by following your purpose into a new slice of the market.

This is not easy. Positioning strategy doesn't provide step-by-step instructions. It's more about predictive thinking, experimentation, and planning.

It's crucial not just to aim for being perceived as "the best". Strategically position yourself as an irreplaceable brand worth customers' love and loyalty. Amazing brands can happily thrive on their values alone. But leading brands know they have opportunity when others move slow and play safe.

02

Use What Already Drives You

You've probably heard the golden rule of being authentic. Most people devalue the concept into a silly gimmick about being true to yourself. But what does that mean for a corporate entity with hundreds, or even tens of thousands of employees?

How do you actually be authentic to a business as a collection of competitive ideals - and more importantly - the customers that choose to believe in you? After all, the concept of growing by providing value is literally an underlying force behind every business. The longer you stay in business, the more people you can help, and more deeply. Customers get that.

The secret isn't to try and satisfy each and every person to the point you dilute yourself and stand for nothing. This isn't to say that you can't have a product or service that works for everyone.

Brands are built on alignment - a bond of cause and belief. When you have a passion that drives your business. When you are aligned to the needs and buying behavior of your audience, you effectively remove competition from your market and build a niche that stands for something more than comparison - you stand for a cause.

Authenticity is a crucial element for the survival of any brand, especially for large corporations with a massive workforce. As the business landscape changes, driven by technological advances, regulatory shifts, and evolving consumer preferences, brands face a constant risk of losing alignment with their customer base.

Authentic alignment acts as a form of brand security, ensuring that the essence of the brand remains intact and recognizable.

In a large organization with hundreds or even tens of thousands of employees, maintaining a consistent and authentic brand message is no small feat. It requires an iron-clad system that forges every aspect of the business, from operations to communications, from secretaries to executives.

Authenticity cannot be an afterthought. Your alignment to an audience has to be at the core of the company's ethos, deeply embedded in its strategies and policies. Remember, people don't buy the product, they buy the solution. They buy the company and its promise to create a positive change.

03

Your Brand Gets Weaker Every Day

One of my favorite pieces of advice that absolutely blindsides literally every company. The harsh reality is that your brand risks losing its relevance every day.

This stark truth can blindside many companies, as they watch their once successful campaigns lose impact over time. The most iconic brands have navigated this challenge by evolving alongside their audience, recognizing the need for flexibility and staying relevant to their ever-changing needs.

Envision a race car speeding around the track, the driver and machine in seamless unity. The alignment is impeccable, each maneuver executed with precision. However, over time, the tires wear thin, the engine ages, and the driver’s focus can falter. It's a gradual process, not a sudden failure, mirroring how brands can slowly lose sync with their market.

The race track is ever-changing - new turns emerge, surfaces alter, and rivals speed ahead with innovative tactics. The strategies that once led to victories no longer suffice. This evolving landscape calls for brands to be flexible, adapting their approach to stay ahead.

The most successful drivers, much like effective brands, are actively engaged in the race. They're constantly fine-tuning their strategy, aware of the slightest changes in performance.

By paying close attention to feedback - each rattle and squeal - they make informed adjustments. This constant recalibration, an integral part of staying relevant, ensures sustained alignment with the road ahead.

Your brand is the driver, your audience and the market are your race car. The feedback you receive is a language of its own. Every piece of customer feedback, every market trend is a crucial signal, guiding you to adapt and realign.

Ignoring these signals widens the gap between your brand and its audience. Just as a race car drifts from its optimal performance, a brand can drift from the needs and wants of its customers - a process that is often silent but swift.

The winning brands understand that maintaining a connection with their audience requires more than passive observation; it demands active engagement and co-creation. These brands don’t just talk; they listen, learn, and evolve.

They embrace the shifts in consumer behavior and market trends as opportunities to grow with their audience. It’s about embracing flexibility to adapt strategies and ensuring relevancy by aligning with current customer desires and expectations.

This race is continuous, and the terrain is always shifting. It’s not enough to set a course and hope for the best; a brand must navigate, adapt, and co-evolve with its audience.

The brands that succeed are those that view every change, every new challenge as a chance to deepen their connection with their audience and solidify their market position. In this race, the winners are those who understand that growth is a journey of constant adaptation and embody the very process of participating and winning together.

04

Your Customers Are A Spectrum

My biggest complaint comes from the worst, most generic advice thrown around. Marketing coaches love to talk about: "the first step to growth is understanding your ideal customer" - as if they are a single person.

That’s like playing a chess match with only one piece because it's your favorite.Ignoring the behaviors of a collective audience actually prevents businesses from making effective product development, organizational planning, and marketing growth decisions. Ultimately, you limit all marketing and growth efforts into weaker, less impactful campaigns.

This is what I call my “Empty Crowd Scenario”. If you are given the presitigous ability to stand on a stage in front of a massive crowd, and all you can reference is your one single core customer, you’re playing a game of "Where's Waldo", not branding.

How hard is it to find that one exact customer you understand? That doesn't make your marketing exact, it makes your brand weak. You can't survive on hunting a single customer every time.

Your brand’s customers are a spectrum - a bell curve. You have a few of your best customers on the left, the bulk of your average customers in the middle, and a slice of what I call "non-brand customers" on the right. Each and every brand's bell curve is different, and that means who shapes an ideal customer could be only 20% of the customers in a market, or the top 80%.

Your brand should reward a certain audience for choosing you, and reward another audience for NOT choosing you and picking your competitor instead. Dress shoes brands don't care when you go and buy running shoes from another brand.

This also brings us to a massive strategy my team and I employ on building logical competitive goals. For example, most shoe brands are not trying to be the “next shoe brand”, they are trying to be the best of their niche inside the shoe industry.

You have to deeply understand what that market looks like before delving into it. Not just the opportunity, but the demand. Will customers pay for this? Does it solve a need they truly have? And does it solve that need largely enough to be excited for?

The world is natively seeking to fill small, precise challenges but it makes product launches tricky with 85% of new products failing on market launch due to poor customer understanding and market segmentation.

Do more than know your customer, know your market. Know which customer buys, which buys sometimes, and which won't buy. Use that data to leverage your goals.

05

Brutal Accuracy With A Singular Offer

Consumers have more choices than ever, and they can do more research than ever before. The world's most successful brands stand out through a remarkable strategy: brutal simplicity.

This approach is not about offering less; it’s about a singular offering with such clarity, cohesion, and focus that the entire brand becomes synonymous with one core offer.

The essence of my brutal simplicity approach is rooted in the power of a single, compelling idea. The top brands understand that complexity can dilute their message, leading to consumer confusion and indecision.

Instead, they focus on one key proposition or product that encapsulates their brand essence. This singularity of focus makes their offer not just memorable but almost indisputable in the minds of their target audience.

Imagine a brand that’s known for just one thing, but it does that one thing exceptionally well. This focus creates a powerful brand position that appeals when compared to brands that don't stand for anything. Customers know exactly what they're getting, and there’s no confusion about what the brand stands for. This clarity is a beacon that draws in consumers, guiding them directly to what they need and want.

World-leading brands leverage brutal simplicity as a strategic tool. They strip away the unnecessary, leaving only what’s essential. This approach is not just about having a single product; it’s about having a unified message, a clear value proposition, and a focused customer experience.

Whether it’s a distinctive product design, a unique service model, or an innovative technology, these brands reduce their entire essence into one compelling offer.

Consider the tech giants known for their flagship products, the fast-food chains identified by a signature burger, or the fashion labels synonymous with a particular style. A restaurant doesn't need to sell only one thing. But being known for their speed and efficiency allows all their products to survive under a single, resonate promise.

These brands have achieved not just market leadership but also cultural significance by simplifying their offer to the core. They teach us that in the complexity of the market, simplicity isn’t just a design principle; it’s a strategic imperative.

For emerging brands looking to make their mark, embracing brutal simplicity can be transformative. It's about identifying what you do best and honing in on it relentlessly. This focus can elevate a brand from being a choice among many to being the definitive choice in its category.

The best brands don’t just offer products or services; they offer clarity and certainty in a world overwhelmed with choices. This focus is the beacon that guides customers, ensuring that the brand remains not just relevant but dominant in its market.

06

Defending The Top Of The Mountain

Imagine picking an item up off a shelf and debating if it fits you. Now imagine doing research on a life-changing service or product and looking for which reflect and empowers your life. Differentiation isn't just a strategy; it's the cornerstone of intentional relevancy.

At the heart of every successful brand is a ruthless differentiation strategy. Again, this isn’t about fighting direct competitors, it’s about carving out a unique space in the consumer's mind that they own. Ownership is the key phrase I want you to remember.

Think of how some brands have become synonymous with the categories they operate in. That’s differentiation. Owning a unique, compelling, difference that deeply resonates with your target audience.

The future belongs to brands that dare to differentiate. The journey to a market leader is lined with the milestones of effective differentiation. The brands that master this predictive science don't just survive; they thrive and scale new heights.

In a marketplace where consumers are bombarded with choices, differentiation offers your brand a competitive edge. It’s about standing out, not just in terms of what you offer, but how you offer it. Differentiation is the magic that turns first-time buyers into loyal customers and loyal customers into advocates.

They harness the power of being unique, turning it into a competitive weapon. This is how brands transform from players in the market to leaders of the pack.

Differentiation crosses the boundaries of the entire brand. It reaches the market and informs competitors about their ability to move in the market. It also diffused across the brand into every aspect of its operations.

From innovative product features to exceptional customer experiences, differentiation is the thread that weaves through the entire fabric of a brand.

When customers interact with your brand, they aren't just purchasing a product or service; they're engaging in an experience that’s distinctively yours.

As we look ahead, the brands that will dominate have also bought a secondary, hidden perk. They will be the trendsetters, the pioneers. They are also ones who get to rewrite the rules of the game.

Imagine standing on the peak of a mountain and putting a wall around it. It’s easy to tip off the peak, but if you balance your position well - nobody can come for you.

The power of differentiation is undeniable. It's a strategic imperative for any brand that wants to not just compete but lead and redefine the market.

07

The Brand To Branding Cycle™

I saved my favorite - the single most impactful strategy - for last. The utility and practice of Branding has changed dramatically in such a short time. While it's easy to look at organizations such as Nike and Apple as the most successful practitioners of branding, the strategy has only seen the spotlight since I got started in market strategy almost a decade ago working in the business accelerator days.

Historically, the concept of Branding was largely seen as a superficial utility for matching design initiatives to a Brand's statement. It's so much more. The brands that invest in their positioning are the ones that lead.

When working to build and launch startups, it was my duty to scale new companies quickly and with accurate strategy. This means we needed a powerful, intuitive, and deeper mechanic - a method of attaching market due diligence to a sort of operational codex - that new organizations could unite their positioning, design, and marketing behind.

It took me years to uncover this bond between business and buyer - and this is the result. I created the The Brand To Branding Cycle™ as a simple, digestable, and repeatable model to measure the strategic actions of navigating the market.

In short, individual customers (whether they buy or not) form a collective set of expectations about your organization. They shape your brand. It's your duty to watch and curate those expectations through perceptions given to the market. A continuous measurement loop that changes the game from watching on the sidelines to active management.

The tough truth is that most organizations don't have branding. They have a brand, and that's only because a brand is formed from your very first customer and updated by every customer that follows. These customers collectively drive demands about your business.

It takes a regular system of measurement to watch and adapt your strategy with this new information through your branding. This allows you to precisely shape perceptions of your market to increase your value.

Brand positioning is not something that you set and forget. It's something that you need to be constantly measuring and managing.

The market is constantly changing, so it's important to make sure that your brand positioning is always relevant. By measuring your brand positioning, you can identify any areas where you need to make changes in order to stay ahead of the competition.

When your brand positioning is clear and consistent, it helps to create a positive customer experience. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Lastly, a strong brand positioning can help to attract new customers and increase sales. By measuring your brand positioning, you can identify any areas where you can improve your marketing and sales efforts.

If you want your brand to be one of the top brands in the world, you need to be proactive about measuring and managing your brand positioning. By doing so, you can ensure that your brand is always clear, concise, memorable, and relevant.

Conscious management makes this cycle faster and sharper. The more quickly and intelligently you can measure buyer expectations through your strategy and visual/verbal design, the faster you can move your brand into a realm of it's own.