Many marketers are rethinking their brand’s positioning because competitive pressures, new channels, and changing customer needs have eroded their brands’ positions of strength. However, increased marketing expenditures to reposition brands often fail to produce any improvements in either overall image or market share. Our experience has shown that companies should focus on achievable rather than apparitional positioning, and that three steps can help ensure success –
Ensure relevance to a customer’s frame of reference.
- Be fully aware of the brand’s “frame of reference” so that a repositioning strategy will resonate with customers.
- Look at a combination of customers’ attitudes and the situations in which the brand is used to obtain the most powerful customer insights.
Secure the customer’s “permission” for the positioning.
- Recognize that permission amounts to a reasonable and logical extension of the brand in the customer’s eyes.
- Leverage a brand’s unique emotional benefits to carry customers from their current brand perception to the intended one.
Deliver on the brand’s new promise.
- Identify the pathway of performance “signals” that will convince customers of the new brand positioning.
- Develop product/service programs to ensure consistent performance on these signals.
- Track and assess performance against customer signals prior to launching the new positioning.
- Adopt an “interim positioning” to establish brand credibility and performance.
An array of factors is requiring marketers today to rethink their brand positioning. Changing customer needs are often eroding the brand’s established position. At the same time, increasing competitive pressures created by new entrants and product innovations, and the proliferation of new channels and promotional campaigns, are driving marketers back to the drawing board.
Why do these well-intentioned efforts turn into marketing failures? While there are many causes, companies often fail to focus on achievable brand positioning rather than apparitional brand positioning. Too often, their efforts target an ambitious goal that outstrips the actual ability of the brand to deliver on what it has promised to customers. Or the goal is too far from customers’ current brand perception to be a realistic brand objective. For example –
- More recently, United Airlines’ Rising campaign attempted to position the brand as the most passenger centric airline, with a clear understanding of customer problems and the solutions needed to x them. The campaign had the effect of raising expectations, which were quickly debated, however, by the brand’s inability to deliver against the promises made as part of its bold new positioning platform. Consequently, United was forced to change its central brand message – no longer emphasizing Rising.
- Many high-tech businesses have recently repositioned themselves as e-business brands. However, little effort was made by these brands to clearly differentiate themselves from one another, despite the millions of dollars spent on elaborate marketing programs. The net effect, according to our research, has been to sow confusion in the minds of customers, rather than to forge strong brand identities.
These examples underscore the imperative to pursue a brand positioning that is eminently achievable, not just attractive. Based on our experience, three steps can help ensure that they make this distinction – 1) ensuring relevance to a customer’s frame of reference; 2) securing the customer’s “permission” for positioning; and 3) making sure that the brand delivers on its promise.
Be Relevant to the Customer’s Frame of Reference When repositioning a brand, it’s essential for marketers to capture not just the emotional and physical needs of the customer, but the dynamics of the situation in which those needs occur. We refer to this as the customer’s “frame of reference.” For example, while Rasna and Tang are thirst- quenching drinks, consumers tend to think of them in the broader context of sports, exercise, and physical activity.
Being fully aware of the frame of reference for a brand can help ensure that its repositioning strategy will resonate with customers. But the frame of reference is usually a combination of both customers’ attitudes and the situations in which the brand is used. As a result, we typically and the most powerful customer insights and segmentation come from looking at a combination of these factors.
- In some categories, customers’ broader attitudes are the dominant factor. How customers think about pet-related brands, for example, can be seen in the context of how they treat their own pets – whether they view them as family members, best friends/companions, or in a less personal way. If customers view pets as family members, the optimal message for the brand will appeal to such human qualities as nurturing and pampering. This “family member” orientation or frame of reference may help support a brand extension to a full range of pet services, such as grooming and accessories.
- Other customer needs are not as consistent, but better understood within the context of specific situations or sub- categories. In the era of airline travel, for example, the customer’s frame of reference may be a function of the type of trip they are taking. The customer who is used to traveling within the S. in cramped coach-class conditions, for example, will have a much different set of needs and expectations than the traveler who is used to ying to international destinations with all the comforts of rest class service.
As a result, in most instances the frame of reference is built upon a combination of both of the above attitudinal and situational forces. For example, while consumers may generally have a health-conscious attitude about the foods they eat, on certain “special” occasions they may allow themselves to become more indulgent, creating what we call a “need state.”