Brand Positioning statements provide the most useful function of taking everything you know about your brand, everything that could be said about the consumer and making choices about what one target that you’ll serve and one brand promise you will stand behind. The key is to find a unique selling proposition for your brand. And yes, it has to be unique, but it may or may not have to be functionally unique. 
There is room to be emotionally unique. Map out everything your consumer wants–all the possible need states. Then map out all the benefits that you and your competitors can do better than anyone else–both functional and emotional zones. You want to find that intersecting zone where what you can do best matches up to a need state of the consumer. Then find a way to serve that need state to the best of your ability and transform it in an even bigger deal than first meets the eye. Avoid the intersecting zone where your competitor is better than you and please avoid that zone where you and your competition foolishly battle in an area that no one cares about. The battle ground (?) zone is where both you and your competition can satisfy at an equal rate. Get creative here, find ways to out-execute or better yet, find some emotional space that changes the game and makes you the clear winner. But equally, be careful in those space because you could get crushed.
There is room to be emotionally unique. Map out everything your consumer wants–all the possible need states. Then map out all the benefits that you and your competitors can do better than anyone else–both functional and emotional zones. You want to find that intersecting zone where what you can do best matches up to a need state of the consumer. Then find a way to serve that need state to the best of your ability and transform it in an even bigger deal than first meets the eye. Avoid the intersecting zone where your competitor is better than you and please avoid that zone where you and your competition foolishly battle in an area that no one cares about. The battle ground (?) zone is where both you and your competition can satisfy at an equal rate. Get creative here, find ways to out-execute or better yet, find some emotional space that changes the game and makes you the clear winner. But equally, be careful in those space because you could get crushed.A best in class positioning statement has four key elements: 1) target Market 2) definition of the market you play in 3) brand promise (emotional or rational benefit) and 4) the reason to belive that brand promise. The more focused your decisions, the more successful you will be: decide on one target, one promise and maybe one or two reasons to believe that help to directly back up your promise. But the target can’t be everyone 18-65, and you can’t throw your 8 best features at the wall and hopefully something sticks. And the reason to believe has to back up your promise, not be a whole new promise.
Everything starts and ends with the customer in mind. 
Beloved Brands know who their customer is and who is not. Spreading your limited resources across an entire population is cost prohibitive–low return on investment and low return on effort. While targeting everyone “just in case” might feel safe at first, it’s actually less safe because you never get to see the full impact. Realizing not everyone can like you is the first step to focusing all your attention on those that can love you. It becomes all about choices and you will be much more effective at convincing a segment of the population to choose your brand because of the assets and promise that you have that match up perfectly to what they want.
Beloved Brands know who their customer is and who is not. Spreading your limited resources across an entire population is cost prohibitive–low return on investment and low return on effort. While targeting everyone “just in case” might feel safe at first, it’s actually less safe because you never get to see the full impact. Realizing not everyone can like you is the first step to focusing all your attention on those that can love you. It becomes all about choices and you will be much more effective at convincing a segment of the population to choose your brand because of the assets and promise that you have that match up perfectly to what they want.To demonstrate knowledge of that target, defining consumer insights help to crystallize and bring to life the consumer you are targeting. The dictionary definition of the word Insight is “seeing below the surface”. Too many people think data, trends and facts are insights. Facts are merely on the surface—so they miss out on the depth–you need to bring those facts to life by going below the surface and transforming the facts into insights.
Insights can be sorted into three types: 1) Life Insights 2) Brand Insights and 3) Specific product or category Insights. Life Insights are a powerful way to connect with the consumer, where your brand fits into their life, and your relationship becomes much more powerful. Being able to twist the facts into real meaning about how the consumer feels, lives or behaves. It speaks to their emotions, their odd behaviours in key circumstances in life. To get deeper and deeper, keep asking yourself “so what does that mean for the consumer” until you have an “AHA moment”. Inspire yourself by thinking like Jerry Seinfeld: how would he see your consumer?
The next decision is the main benefit you want to focus on. From there, doing aCustomer Value Proposition (CVP) helps to organize your thinking. Hold a brainstorming session with everyone who works on the brand so you can get all of the consumer insights you have, matched up against the key features the brand offers. Once you get there, put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and see the brand from their eyes: start asking yourself over and over a
gain “so if I’m the consumer, what do I get from that?”. For instance, no consumer cares that a golf club gives them 5.7% more torque–that’s what you do. They do care that their drives go 10 yards farther–that’s what they get. They also care that they’ll feel more confident on the tee–that’s the emotion they feel from your brand. Some CVPs can end up very cluttered, but the more focused you can make it the easier it will be for you to choose which one you will stand behind, and which one benefit you’ll communicate. That’s right: JUST ONE BENEFIT!
gain “so if I’m the consumer, what do I get from that?”. For instance, no consumer cares that a golf club gives them 5.7% more torque–that’s what you do. They do care that their drives go 10 yards farther–that’s what they get. They also care that they’ll feel more confident on the tee–that’s the emotion they feel from your brand. Some CVPs can end up very cluttered, but the more focused you can make it the easier it will be for you to choose which one you will stand behind, and which one benefit you’ll communicate. That’s right: JUST ONE BENEFIT! Agencies use so many tricks to get it down to the ONE THING. And whatever works for them or you, the better. If it’s a postcard or a bumper sticker, “what would you say to get someone to marry you”….find your own way to think about one thing. My favourite seems to be the “SHOUT FROM THE MOUNTAIN”. It forces you to want to scream just ONE THING about your brand—keep it simple. You can’t scream a long sentence. And a third way to look at this is through a simple function, where the probability of success (P) is directly linked to the inverse of the numbers of messages (M) you have in your ad: P = 1 divided by 1 to the power of M. My guess is that if you find this last formula motivating, maybe marketing isn’t for you.
People tend to get stuck when trying to figure out the emotional benefits. I swear every brand out there thinks it is trusted, reliable and yet likeable. It seems that not only do consumers have a hard time expressing their emotions about a brand, but so do Brand Managers. Companies like Hotspex have mapped out all the emotional zones for consumers. Leverage this type of research and build your story around the emotions that best fit your consumer needs. Leveraging hotspex, I’ve mapped out 8 zones that are a cheat sheet for brand manager.
The eight emotional zones mapped above include
- I feel liked
- I want to be noticed
- I want to be free
- I feel optimistic
- I seek out knowledge
- I want to be in control
- I feel I can be myself
- I’d like to be comfortable
Within each of the 8 zones, you can find emotional words that closely align to the need state of the consumer and begin building the emotional benefits within your CVP.
Now the toughest part is to narrow down your benefit list to the 1 or 2 best choices. One consideration is where does your brand stand on the Love Curve. 
Consumers move along a curve going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to a Brand for Life. As a new brand into the market, you’re unknown and anInfrastructure type positioning where you talk about what you have would help to establish the brand. As you move towards Liking It, aProcess positioning about how you do what you do or a Product and Servicespositioning would fit. Moving beyond the Like It stage requires you to exhibit morePersonality type positioning of who you are or even taking that further to a Purposedriven positioning of why you do it. Finally, to move to the My Brand for Life, focusing on the Experience of the brand will help tighten that connection with consumers. There is no hard and fast rule though–I do believe you have to earn your emotional space with the consumer. But the spectrum becomes a judgement call on which positioning style you want to choose. The style can be one of the influencing factors around which benefit you will focus on–the degree of emotion you think you’ve earned with the consumer.
Consumers move along a curve going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to a Brand for Life. As a new brand into the market, you’re unknown and anInfrastructure type positioning where you talk about what you have would help to establish the brand. As you move towards Liking It, aProcess positioning about how you do what you do or a Product and Servicespositioning would fit. Moving beyond the Like It stage requires you to exhibit morePersonality type positioning of who you are or even taking that further to a Purposedriven positioning of why you do it. Finally, to move to the My Brand for Life, focusing on the Experience of the brand will help tighten that connection with consumers. There is no hard and fast rule though–I do believe you have to earn your emotional space with the consumer. But the spectrum becomes a judgement call on which positioning style you want to choose. The style can be one of the influencing factors around which benefit you will focus on–the degree of emotion you think you’ve earned with the consumer.
Looking at the example above for Listerine Mouthwash, the target is proactive preventers, who want to do everything for their mouth, and in fact everything for their overall health. That’s all about a consumer that wants control. The main benefit is confidence, but it has to be rooted in control emotions such as trust and respect. It needs to earn the trust by demonstrating reliability–having an authority figure like a dentist may help.The biggest thing you have to do is make tough decisions. Find the target of those you can get to love you, rather than trying to sell to everyone that might one day like you. Match up your benefits to the need states of the consumer. And leverage where you are on the Love Curve to determine how much emotion you are able to build into your Brand Positioning Statement.
Keep it simple, keep it focused and keep it unique.
