Brand position: What's yours?

When you look at your sector and your competitors, where do you position yourself? Are you at the top end, targeting the customers with high expectations and budgets to match? Are you at the bottom end, with the customers looking for a cheap deal? Or do you sit in the middle, hoping to catch everything else?

The question of positioning is an interesting one, and it's a topic that came up during our last brand seminar, in January. We had the usual interesting mix of organisations join us for the evening, from a start-up in their first 12 months of business, to one company close to celebrating 25 years of trading. There were not-for-profits, manufacturers and professional service firms. A variety of backgrounds, but one purpose: to understand what their brand can do for their organisation.

We were discussing customers, and the importance of identifying who they are, and what it is they're looking for from you. One of the guests gave an example of their experience as a customer, and the poor service they had received, at Primark. Their point was that it wouldn't take a lot to improve customer service at Primark, and with a profit of £340m, they can afford to invest in it! The response from another guest was: if you can make a profit of £340m with poor service, why change?

And this is where the question of positioning comes in. It doesn't really matter where you position your business, as long as you can make a profit. The Primark model is fairly crude: Low quality product, low quality service, low cost, but massive profits. A successful business model. Their brand proposition is value. Customers know what to expect. If they want higher quality - and higher prices - they'll go somewhere else.

So what lesson can we learn from Primark?
• Choose where you want to position your business.
• Be clear about who that positioning will appeal to.
• Use your brand to engage that audience.
And if you get it right, you'll make a healthy profit too!

If you would like to unlock the value of your brand and join us at one of our free seminars, you can book a place here. It would be good to meet you.

Like Minds. Brand lesson #1: Focus

Last week saw the Like Minds Autumn 2010 conference take place in Exeter again. It was another great event. There was great debate, discussion and insight. Lots to take away. But I just want to share a few things that caught my attention. A few lessons that businesses can apply to their brand and brand strategy.

Brand lesson #1: Focus on your customers
In a busy environment focus can be a real challenge, and this was the point that stood out for me in the keynote presentation on Friday afternoon from Karren Brooks. She described the scenario of going into a meeting with a client, and the importance of being fully focused on what you need to achieve. But in that scenario you're competing with whatever else is going on in your clients head; the phone call they have just had, their next appointment, domestic issues... the list is endless.

If you look at virtually any business, they face exactly the same challenge: competing for their customers head-space. So how do you do it? In the final keynote on Friday, Robin Wight (@RobinWightUK), told us that, on average, we are bombarded by 3000 messages every day. With so much competition, how do you get your audience to listen to you?

Well, this is where 'focus' comes in. There are two things you need to focus on: Who are your audience? and What do they want to hear?

Who are your audience?
The answer to this isn't 'everyone' or 'anyone'. Or 'businesses' or 'consumers'. It should be a very specific description. If it's a business you might specify size, sector, turnover, location, age etc. For a consumer it might be age, gender, location, income, profession, the car they drive, the newspaper they read. The people you want to focus on are those that are most valuable to you. So take a look at your existing customers and figure out who they are.

What do they want to hear?
Now that you know who you want to talk to, you can work out what they want to hear. That last bit's important: What they want to hear. It's very different from: What you want to tell them. Your audience is only interested in services or products that will provide some benefit for them. Not benefit for other people - benefit for them. So you need to have a very clear understanding of what benefit your products or services provide. And they're not interested in what you do, just in how it benefits them. Your audience is very self-centred. Very focused. So you need to be too.

And the reason why? The more focused you are on who your audience are and what they want to hear, the more easily you will be able to sell to them. That should save you time and money, and give you a better return on your investment.

So, if you want to develop your focus, take a look at your brand. Brand is all about focus. Focus on your business, your audience and your relationship with them.

If you'd like to take a look at your brand, you might be interested in one of our free seminars.

So what works for you? What brand or company manages to get your attention? And how do they do it? Let me know, I'd be really interested to find out.

Olympic gold? Or a false start?

Wenlock and Mandeville - the mascots for the 2012 Olympics - have been unveiled to the world, and the Press has passed judgement. From a professional perspective it's surely a great honour to create a piece of history, with such a wide audience - but is that the problem? How can you create something that billions of people will like (especially the 50 million in the UK have contributed to the cost with their taxes)?



Well, there are some interesting comparisons to make. Look at Nike, Apple or even The Simpsons. Niche products, mass appeal, global brands. If you have a quality product, you can achieve mass appeal. It is possible... but can you apply those lessons to the Olympics? I don't know.

High profile projects like this, with all the associated internal politics that go with them, aren't generally renowned for great design (just take a look at the logo for the impending World Cup). So why not? Surely they can attract the best talent that the country has to offer? What's the problem?



I think the problem's simple - in one sense - and no different from any other design project. Who is your audience? Who are you trying to engage with? If you're a global event, you've got a global audience, with all the cultural conflicts and confusion that comes with that. You're committing the cardinal sin of any kind of communication strategy: trying to keep everyone happy. It won't work. It never will.

My obvious response would be; don't try and appeal to everyone. Do something different. Focus. Create something unique. But then I remembered the logo for the 2012 Olympics, which tried to achieve just that. They wanted to appeal to youth, so they used a visual language which the target audience could relate to... but they still got slated.




But what does this mean for YOUR business? What can you learn from the Olympics? I think the lesson here is; you can't make everybody happy, so don't try to. Identify the profile of your ideal customer - the one who brings the most money into your business - and focus on making them happy. Take time to understand what they need, then give it to them. Consistently. That's the way to achieve long-term success.

So what do you think? What are the lessons that Wenlock and Mandeville can teach us? What do you need to do to achieve mass appeal? And should you try?

If you've got questions about what your brand can do for your business, we'd be really interested to have a chat. Call us on 01392 248107 or email jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk