Positioning Guide 9

A product benefit is not a brand benefit.

A product benefit is what your product does.  When you talk about product benefits to end-users, they have to mentally translate the product benefit into what internal want/need the product benefit satisfies.  If you work in a given product or service category, you are more involved with and knowledgeable about your product or service than your target customer.  For you, the translation from product benefit to satisfied internal want/need seems to be an easy bridge to build.  However, you’re asking your target customer to do mental work in building that bridge, and your target customer doesn’t want to work.  Your product/service category and your brand isn’t important enough to your target customers warrant the mental work that it takes to build bridges in their minds.

As an example, an automobile manufacturer whose brand is associated with safety/security says that their car’s four wheel drive will give you “better traction when the going gets tough” thinking that the target customer will translate that product benefit into satisfaction of the internal want/need for security.  However, target customers think “better traction” is good, but will fail to translate the product benefit into the satisfaction of their safety/security wants/needs.

Let’s assume that the message “better traction” in this example registers with your target customers.  If a marketing researcher were to probe what “better traction” means to the target customers, I believe that the target customers would respond with something generic, such as, “I can keep going.”  In other words, the car is giving them the product benefit that they expect from a car – transportation or mobility.  This is the generic benefit of the product category and doesn’t differentiate the brand from other automotive brands. 

Too many marketers fall into the product benefit trap of more, better, bigger, faster.  They know that a given product attribute is important to their target consumers so they perform rigorous product testing against their competitors’ products.  They want to substantiate a claim of more or better or bigger or faster.  Their competitors are doing exactly the same thing.  One marketer will claim 20% more, the next will claim 15% faster, etc.  Who does the target consumer believe when presented with conflicting claims?  No one. 

We call our brand benefit a unique brand benefit.  If your messaging is claiming more, better, bigger, faster, your benefit isn’t unique.  You’re claiming the same thing as your competitors; you’re just claiming more, better, bigger, faster of the same thing.

Positioning Guide 8

In consumer marketing, your brand’s unique brand benefit should specify how your brand will satisfy the internal wants/needs of your target customer.

If you will recall Maslow’s Hierarchy from the “What is Marketing?” portion of this blog, we used the hierarchy as a concept for understanding consumers’ wants/needs.  If we use Maslow’s Hierarchy and Colgate Total as examples, Colgate Total promises to deliver the benefit of total protection.  We all want to be protected, and one might think that this unique brand benefit satisfies a portion of the safety wants/needs of Colgate Total’s target customers.  But the target customer for family toothpaste is Mom, and Mom wants to protect her family.  Protection of family is probably a social need.  The unique brand benefit of total protection satisfies a portion of the target customers’ social wants/needs.  Total protection is the value that Colgate Total promises to deliver to its target customers.

In the sports drink category, Gatorade through its historical marketing investments with winning teams and winning athletes has established itself as the brand for winners.  The need to be a winner is an ego want/need.  The value that Gatorade delivers to its target customers is that Gatorade will make them a winner.

Gatorade is an excellent example of brand positioning.  Not only has does it own the motivating benefit in the product category, the ownership of “winning” blocks other competitors in the category. That is, since Gatorade is the brand of winners, who buys the other brands in the category?  Losers!

Positioning Guide 7

A brand should stand for one, and only one, unique brand benefit.

This game rule was expressed by Ries and Trout, but it was understood even before the concept of brand positioning was widely accepted.  The master of 1950’s hard-sell advertising was Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates agency.  Reeves advocated the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP (Rosser Reeves, Reality in Advertising (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961).  His classic television work for Anacin, Listerine, Colgate toothpaste, and Dwight D. Eisenhower presidential campaign continuously repeated the USP for those brands.  Today, advertising people continue to speak of the USP; however, marketing people refer to their brand’s unique brand benefit.  USP -- unique brand benefit, same thing.

Double Benefit Positioning --Sometimes marketers take multiple product attributes or product benefits and wrap them together into a single unique brand benefit or USP.  In almost all beverage categories, the top-of-mind response to the question, “Why do you drink that beverage?” is “I like the taste.”  Moreover, most beverage categories are 80/20 categories. That is, the 20% of the market who are heavy users consume 80% of the category volume.  Soft drinks, dairy products, bottle water, and beer all follow this pattern.  Ask beer drinkers why they drink beer, and they invariably respond that they like the taste.  Miller Lite was a fast follower in the reduced calorie beer category.  The innovator of reduced calorie beer was Tromer’s Red Letter which was introduced in the 1960’s.  The problem with reduced calorie beer was that the category is a male dominated category.  Heavy beer drinkers tend to be men.  A reduced calorie label provokes imagery of a beer for women in the minds of the heavy beer drinking male.  In 1973, to overcome this girly imagery of reduced calorie beer, Miller introduced Lite using male sports celebrities. With the classic themeline, “tastes great/less filling,” Miller Lite established itself as “everything you always wanted in a beer – and less.”  Take the two product attributes, tastes great and less filling, combine them, and they equal one proposition that is very important to heavy beer drinkers … they can drink more of it.

Multiple Benefit Positioning -- Another example of wrapping multiple attributes into a single unique brand benefit is Colgate Total toothpaste.  The largest segment in the toothpaste category consists of mothers who want protection, an internal want/need, for their families.  For 50 years Proctor & Gamble dominated the category in the U.S. with its Crest.  Crest was the first brand with fluoride and the endorsement of the American Dental Association.  It promised cavity protection which was exactly the benefit that mothers wanted; they wanted to protect their families.  Then Colgate introduced its Colgate Total brand which contains an antibacterial ingredient, Triclosan, in addition to fluoride.  Triclosan prevents gingivitis, plaque, tartar, and bad breath; while the fluoride prevents cavities.  Colgate Total promises mothers one unique brand benefit, Total Protection.  While Crest offers mothers protection, Colgate Total offers them total protection.  Which do you think mothers would buy?  Colgate Total gained the number one spot in the toothpaste category in the U.S. 

More recently Crest has responded with its Crest Pro Health brand extension which contains stannous fluoride and sodium hexametaphosphate.  The claims for Crest Pro Health are very similar to those for Colgate Total.  It’s too early to say which brand will be the longer term leader in the category.

Stretching the Brand Position -- Some European marketers tend to stretch their brands much further than do most U.S. marketers.  As an example, in the U.S. Mercedes-Benz is known for its well engineered luxury cars.  If one probes Mercedes-Benz owners, the brand attributes of well engineered and luxury probably translate to unique brand benefits of prestige and/or comfort.  The U.S. product offering consists of sedans, coupes, convertibles, roadsters, SUVs, and wagons.  In Europe, there are additional offerings: at the low priced end in their consumer products, the A and B classes; and for businesses, a complete line of commercial vehicles.  Mercedes Benz USA has not included these models in their product offering as they know that they would tend to erode the luxury image of the brand among Americans.

Positioning Guides 5 & 6

Positioning Guide #5:  If consumers are familiar with a brand, they have probably positioned it in their minds according to what’s important to them.

If end-users are familiar with a brand, they have probably already “positioned” it in their minds according to what’s important to them.  Ask almost any man if Secret deodorant is a brand that they would use, and the response will be, “No, it’s for women.”  Most men are familiar with the brand, and they have positioned it according to what’s important to them … it’s not for me.

Qualitative marketing researchers sometimes have a respondent use projection to understand how they have positioned a brand in their mind.  Rather than ask respondents what they think of a given brand, the researcher asks respondents to describe the buyer/user of that brand.  In cases where the brand is well positioned in the respondents’ minds, they are able to describe that buyer/user in great deal including appearance, occupation, personality, and lifestyle.

Positioning Guide #6:  The marketing activity of positioning is an attempt to influence the natural consumer process of positioning brands in their mind.

The process of positioning brands in one’s mind is a natural process.  We marketers tap into this natural process.  We attempt to influence the process.  We determine what motivates our target customers to purchase in our product category, and then we attempt to stake our ownership of this motivating benefit.  Through all the elements of the marketing mix, we attempt to convince target end-users that our brand this motivating benefit.  Do this consistently over a long period of time, and eventually target end-users will position your brand in their minds as the solution to their wants/needs.

Positioning Guides 3 & 4

Positioning Guide #3:    All trade is conducted in the human mind. Leo Burnett, 1956

Positioning Guide #4:    Brand positioning takes place in the minds of your target customers.  Al Ries & Jack Trout, 1981

Before Al Ries and Jack Trout popularized the concept of brand positioning, Leo Burnett -- founder of the famous Chicago-based advertising agency -- recognized that leading brands enjoy a bigger and healthier share of the target customer’s mind.  He summarized the cause of this phenomenon with the ground rule that “all trade is conducted in the human mind.” 

We often think of customers purchasing at a given retail outlet.  This line of thought was reinforced by Jerry McCarthy  in his Basic Marketing text [William D. Perreault Jr., E. Jerome McCarthy, and Joseph P. Cannon, Basic Marketing, 17th edition (New York:  McGraw-Hill/Irwin), 2008].  In that text he gave the concept of the marketing mix a new name, the 4Ps.  He reduced the channels of distribution element of the marketing mix was to the “P” word of “Place.”  The actual purchase may take place at a retail outlet or “place”, but it takes place in the mind of the customer.

Building upon the work of Leo Burnett and others, Al Ries and Jack Trout popularized the concept of brand positioning in a series of articles published in Advertising Age and in their now-classic book on brand positioning. [Al Ries & Jack Trout, Positioning:  The Battle for Your Mind (New York: McGraw-Hill), 2000.]  Philip Kotler has said of this book:  “Positioning is a revolutionary idea precisely because it cuts across the other four P’s. It informs each of the P’s and adds consistency to them.  Ever since the 1972 series Advertising Age articles on the subject by the two authors of this book, the discipline of marketing has never been the same.”  And my own thanks to Ries and Trout who inspired many of the positioning guides in this blog.

Postioning Guides 1 & 2

Positioning Guide #1:   In developing your brand’s positioning, constrain yourself to a one page document using language that everyone who works on the brand will understand. 

Positioning Guide #2:  In writing your brand’s summary positioning statement, don’t deviate from this form:  “To (your target market), (your brand) is the brand of (category definition) that (unique brand benefit) because (benefit supports).”

It’s not good enough to have your brand’s position defined in your mind; the brand’s positioning needs to be in a clear written form.  To assist you in this effort, templates for consumer brand positioning and business to business brand positioning are available.  The brand positioning templates for consumer marketing and business to business marketing differ slightly because the motivations of the consumer and business target customers differ.  Consumers are motivated by the need to satisfy internal wants/needs whereas businesses are economically motivated.  Since differing wants/needs are the basis of distinct market segments, the target market descriptions for consumer marketing and business to business marketing will differ; and the two templates accommodate these differences.

The brand position is the last step in marketing strategy development: segmentation, targeting, and positioning.  It is the brand positioning document that will guide you in the development of tactical marketing mix elements: product and services, marketing communications, distribution, and pricing.

The brand positioning template should be completed in language that is understandable to everyone who works on the brand from research and development people to advertising agency personnel.

Constrain yourself to one page although type as small as 10 point font is acceptable.  Many marketers, immersed in their products, feel constrained by the simple form of a summary brand positioning sentence.  They feel the need to elaborate.  They want to be all things good.  Don’t fall into this trap.  Follow the format of the summary sentence.  Failure to do so will result in you confusing yourself and everyone who reads the brand positioning document as to what is your brand’s unique brand benefit and what are the benefit supports.