Winning Positions

I spent ten years creating brand strategies for big brands.

My clients included multinational brands, million-follower influencers, and even politicians.

Here’s how you win in branding: learn how to create meaning.

Contrast, spectrums, and binaries are the building blocks of meaning.

What’s light without dark?

What’s blue without red and yellow?

What’s yes without no?

Master brand builders use this insight to introduce new ideas. They take what’s in their customers’ minds and relate their new ideas to it.

This technique is technically called positioning.

For example, if you have an affinity for the military, a good brand builder might use it to sell you coffee, as Black Rifle Coffee does.

The secret is to find the associations customers have with certain products and then create a contrasting position.

Consider the differences between Starbucks and Dunkin’, Gucci and Coach, or Mac and Windows. 

Now, consider newer brands like Blue Bottle, Tom Ford, or Chrome OS. 

Blue Bottle brews a more specialty coffee than Starbucks.

Tom Ford is an American luxury designer, not French or Italian like Chanel or Gucci.

ChromeOS is a web based operating system as opposed to a local system used by Windows and Mac.

Without the counterpart that you are already familiar with, it would be hard to accept the new idea because our natural tendency is to reject totally new things. It has something to do with fear and survival but I digress.

Without a significant and valuable difference from the competition, your product will not stand out as something worth trying.

Creating, highlighting, and maintaining the standout differences that win and keep customers is the strategic practice of branding.

So how do you create a winning position?

First, study the competition and the meaningful themes they use.

Second, identify the most contrasting elements in your own brand’s identity.

Third, conquer that contrasting position visually and strategically.

You want to choose a contrasting element that makes your business uniquely valuable.