How to position a brand for success

By spending less to know more

Don't position the old fashioned way

You know those big brands, like Pepsi and Clorox, with all the money in the world to spend on brand positioning research and development? They've got a secret method for spending a lot less to learn a lot more before ever launching products on a mass scale. If you're a big brand trying to keep up or a small brand trying to make every penny count, come in close. This is how they do it.

It doesn't take a ton of time or money

Branding firms that charge upwards of $100k, $200k or even $500k and take six months to complete a positioning project don't want us to tell you this. There's absolutely no reason the process has to be long, laborious, complex or expensive. What's more, you don't have to end up with a tome of research to decipher, hoping to dig out the one simple truth about your brand – that intrinsic greatness.

With the right process run by the right agency, it's not a month in focus groups, not hundreds of thousands of dollars – it should be a half–day. And it'll work exactly the same.

Make it visual and you'll know where to go

Once your branding agency has established 3–4 ownable brand positioning platforms through their process (hopefully in far less time than the typical scenario), have them develop "preliminary advertising" to visually demonstrate each platform. This should take the form of print advertising campaigns.

As consumers, we're used to seeing and reacting to advertising. It's natural for us to immediately know whether an ad campaign nails it or completely misses. Use the same test for the new brand platforms you're considering with the people in your marketing department. It's too difficult to assess the accuracy of the positioning from only a bunch of words in a document.

Bringing the positioning to life through advertising is the clearest way to see its real–world application. In the ideal situation, the same people who develop the brand positioning should work on the preliminary advertising – keeping the strategy from being lost in translation between your branding firm and your advertising agency.

Preliminary creative goes a long way

At this point, you'll be in an advantageous spot. For far less money, you'll have your brand positioning – plus creative executions you can employ in a number of useful ways. We call the work "preliminary advertising" because it's meant to paint a clear picture for your internal marketing team. But that doesn't mean you can't take it public.

Focus group the ideas to measure one brand platform against another. Launch the ads into a test market for a true understanding of effectiveness. If you're planning to have an advertising agency execute the "actual" campaign, use the work to inspire their thinking after the handoff.

It's brand discovery plus compelling visual execution. And big companies are using it to spend far less to know far more in today's ultra–competitive environment. Want to talk about doing it for you? I'm here kreedy@leereedy.com.