Brand positioning isn’t about sacrifice, it’s about opportunity.

Much of the work we do for our clients each day is in helping both emerging and well-established brands find meaning in who they are, and what makes them special in the marketplace. It’s tricky, because in an effort to keep from turning down business, many companies attempt to be all things to all people — the thought of saying one might turn down a certain type of customer is damn-near blasphemy.

This can be especially true in a startup environment, or in the case of a company where growth may have hit the skids. It becomes easy — perhaps natural — to begin looking for multiple sources of income, and inadvertently doing more harm than good by losing focus. Who do you serve? What do you offer them? Why is it special? Answers to these questions helps in finding the difference in the signals versus the noise.

When working with brands, we try and solve for a single-minded proposition (or, SMP) that everything we say or do is about. It’s the ultimate reason to be excited, the thing that makes us who we are, and it typically follows a format like this: because we have [fill in the blank] you get [fill in the blank]. The goal is to distill everything you stand for down into this simple phrase — and it’s not easy. Once this has been established, then we can start to ladder “reasons to believe” (or, RTBs) back to the SMP, and customize them based on each discrete target audience.

Doing this is never easy, but when done correctly, can lead to a powerful messaging platform with the ability to make a demonstrable difference in the work the brand does, and inform everything from advertising to web experience to email marketing efforts.

Looking for support helping your business stand out? Drop me a line.