The Importance of Having an Ownable Positioning
Whether your organization is a startup or has a long history, ensuring you have a brand positioning that is distinctive, ownable, actionable and relevant to the stakeholders critical to your organization’s success is critical in today’s competitive world.
Along with a keen understanding of a company’s customer segments, a strong brand positioning should serve as a company’s guide to what is on brand and what is not – a filter if you will – for planning and execution. This positioning, combined with a clearly crafted visual identity toolkit, lexicon, house style and narrative will enable an organization or product to consistently show up in the world in a way that is connected, clean and clear. One of the best examples across the spectrum – from brand positioning to product design to packaging to in-store design and marketing – is done by Apple.
People want to know what companies they do business with stand for and to feel they are good stewards – to their loyal customers, employees, communities, industries, and planet.
What is your brand promise? What does your organization stand for? What can people expect from you? Are your employees living the brand manifesto every day?
Do you know the state of your brand’s health? Have you checked with stakeholders important to you lately to see what they think of you and how you are doing? Does it match with how you see your organization and where it is headed? Or is there a disconnect? Do those who can define your success or failure see you as better than the competition? What do they think you could do better? Make do they think makes you special or better than the competition? Do you see your organization as innovative and a trailblazer, while employees or customers do not?
Packaging up the “secret sauce” of an organization – the unique DNA – with a higher purpose should serve as a rallying cry for all employees and others engaged in carrying out an organization’s mission. This manifesto should be at a high enough level that everyone can feel an emotional connection to it and it can serve as the backbone to the company’s mission, vision and values, as well as directly tie to the corporate narrative and key messages that executives and employers share with the world.
It is not uncommon for companies decades in the making to need a better position or a repositioning to stay competitive.
The ideal process includes:
- An audit of internal and external stakeholders
- A review of the competition and what it is saying/standing for
- A review of company business goals, mission & vision, key messages, or other documents that put definition around the company and its purpose
- A review of any other research the company has on awareness, reputation, or attitudes toward the company, its leadership, or products
- A written positioning: brand story, brand characteristics, key messages
- Sharing this positioning or repositioning with leadership to get feedback and make edits so that every executive involved from audit to reveal feels invested and supported