THE DISCIPLINE OF BRAND POSITIONING

The process of branding is of the head AND the heart, both a “left-brained” and “right-brained” activity. In your branding efforts, you should listen to what your consumers (and potential consumers) have to say about your brand and your category. Discover their hopes, their dreams, and their fears as it relates to your brand and your offering. This is usually a right-brained (heart) activity.

But there is also a discipline to developing a brand. When I was a Brand Manager at Miracle-Gro, I had the extreme good fortune to have been taught by Richard D. Czerniawski and Michael W. Maloney, co-authors of the book Creating Brand Loyalty: The Management of Power Positioning and Really Great Advertising and Competitive Positioning: Best Practices For Creating Brand Loyalty. They teach the process of brand positioning, the discipline of carving out a brand’s unique place in a consumer’s world. They put forth a framework for developing the brand positioning statement that I have followed throughout my entire career. While every brand is unique and the thought process I use has evolved over the years, the basic structure is so simple and so sound that I still use it to great effect today. If you can articulate a brand’s positioning statement within this context, you understand your brand. And if you understand your brand, you can communicate it more clearly.

The basic framework is this:

To (target audience), (my brand) is the brand of (competitive arena) that provides (key benefits) because (reason to believe).

Simple, right? Sure!

But usually simple is hard. Each of these parenthetical areas needs to be thoroughly researched and understood in order to get to the heart of a brand’s positioning. It works for product branding, corporate branding and personal branding. No matter what type of brand you are managing, think about your own brand within this context; what does your positioning statement look like?

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