"It is not the position, but the disposition."
In Chapter 4 of my new book, A Clear Eye for Branding (which, by the way, is finally released), I say that positioning is passe:
"We're living in a marketplace driven by creativity and innovation. The concept of branding is a much more dynamic idea. Standing still and trying to persuade people with clever advertising and image-building campaigns is a self-centered waste of time and money."
And now author Nick Wreden of Fusion Brand fame has chimed in with "The Death of 'Positioning' & The Birth of Brand Wikification:
"Positioning" is dead, and McDonald's has just put up the tombstone. But what is really interesting for branding is what is taking its place.
The signs of "positioning's" demise are everywhere. The number of branding failures, many based on "positioning," exceeds 90%, according to the consultancies Ernst & Young and McKinsey & Co. McDonald's, the premier mass market branding giant, announced that it has abandoned positioning. Says Larry Light, McDonald's chief global marketing officer: "Identifying one brand position, communicating it in a repetitive manner is old-fashioned, out of date, out of touch." Even more bluntly, Light highlights "the end of brand positioning as we know it," calling it "marketing suicide." Even a top executive at advertising giant Leo Burnett is willing to stand before his CEO peers and admit, "the old ways of marketing are not working any more."
Read Nick's insightful post: click here.
Posted May 27, 2005
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the king is dead, long live the king
or: why i hate brand talk (reprise)
in 1992 the german sociologist gerhard schulze had his book “die erlebnisgesellschaft” (= the experience-society) published. http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3593348438/qid=1117211251/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/302-5610218-4664857
this book came as quite a shock to the academical community of european sociologists and philosophers: “now he has sold us to the business-world… this book is so brilliant and so crystal clear, now all the idiotic marketing people with their show talk and poorly cut suits will come and want to use us for their mediocre purposes…”
but really, nobody came…
in the history of sociology a german publication had rarely been clearer, more practically utilitarian and based more on empirical research at the same time. yet the marketing world had no time to read (700 pages, o.k.). they did their fancy talk… yes, yes, we have to position ourselves… did you read al ries… groundbreaking…
… for anybody vaguely familiar with both schulze’s and ries’ publication, ries’ “positioning” was nothing but a poor laugh, a nice but helpless try…
what schulze said was more or less the following:
our individualized society is constituting and reproducing itself via the surface of culture. people find orientation through reading the surface of culture, they generate meaning and find direction through the surface of culture. it is far less your religion, your father’s job, your gender or your color of skin, that determines your identity in our individualized society – no, it is how you yourself live in it and create individual meaning.
how do you for example find out if something is something for you or easier not for you … you feel and say: hey this is not for me, this is for the guys who also like soccer and wear brand xyz….
what you do is, you build aesthetical clusters, everybody has those and everybody uses them most of the time… but to be honest, we humans are not as stupid as this, we do not stay at the surface… we scan the surface, but we READ what is underneath, we read the MOTIVES and MOTIVATIONS, we read patterns of AFFINITY and AVERSION which constitute and reproduce personality/milieus/society.
what schulze does, is he structures a seemingly unstructured society in a very simple way, by actually using scenarios of different empirical prototypes of people and reconstructs their view into society. he uses their perspectives and shows us, how they create (individual/collective) meaning.
as said above, meaning is created on the surface, it is read on the surface and societies reproduce themselves via surface information.
everybody scans markets, everybody creates meaning – ok, not everybody scans every corner of every market, mot only know that there is some people in a different corner of society, who buy different products, use different sex practices, give their children different names… for reasons that one rather not would want to know. yet one knows they exist. yet one knows that these groups have a complete different set of motivations – a different structure of patterns of affinity and aversion - and these patterns show on the surface…. if someone for example would be avers to risk he might probably have a preference for a certain kind of job, car and music and
he would hate a certain type of women, which others love…
the wonderful thing is, that when you work with the schulze-theory, you can build up a very simple four-field-matrix to reconstruct methods of individual orientation in society or markets. What you do is: you gather surface information (pictures, what ever) match them with sociological data that explains motivation/aversion/affinity, you build clusters and explain them through scenarios.
it is basically the same stuff that wreden calls "wikification" (!!!!!!!!!!!!)
this “new” positioning (not al ries old idea, to be honest, he made it half the way there) is about positioning IN a set of cultural values.
not about ignorantly positioning yourself AS s.th. and expecting others to follow.
positioning still is a great name for it.
but please: positioning IN…!
positioning (IN) is a wonderful and precise word... wikifiwhatever... is quite the oposite.
can anybody tell me why is should use it?
Posted by: jens | May 27, 2005 at 01:45 PM
Please visit my response to "The death of Brand Positioning" here:
http://www.synthesiscreative.com/blog.php?view=post&poid=114
Posted by: Bruce DeBoer | May 30, 2005 at 05:13 PM
"Positioning" may be dead. I don't know. I am not in Marketing. But as a process guy, I am thinking that the tasks and strategies associated with positioning must either go away completely, be re-aligned under something not called positioning or be morphed into something slightly or totally different. Can someone explain this to me like they are talking to a 10 year old?
Jens might address this in his/her comments, but my attention span is too short tonight. And there is something about comments that run longer than the original post that leaves a bitter taste in my mind.
Posted by: Troy Worman | May 30, 2005 at 09:59 PM
troy, as i see it: "old" positioning was discussed as "comanies create meaning". create your message, loud and clear and expect others to follow. - "positioning AS" s.th.
with "wikification" wreden refers to the fact that meaning is not (only) created by the speaker, but by the audience (as they say in systems theory: i know what i have said when i hear the replies...)
... "new" positioning has to take this into account. it actually has to build its strategy on that.
or, following the thoughts of gerhard schulze: look at how meaning is created in society and consciously create projection boards with your brand. make your message accessible. position yourself IN a market (= on the surface of market = in the market culture).
the nature of so called "classics" is a good example to explain what i mean. give me a true "classic" - something, or someone everybody can relate to (also for very different reasons)... JAMES BOND for example. some audience relates to JAMES because he is such a polite next door neighbour guy, some relate to 007 because he has got the license to kill and makes use of it, some because of his british humour, some because of his excessive consumption of the opposite sex... different motivations, same result = ticket sales. spiderman is the same thing. alessi too (some buy it primarily because it is expensive, some because the products are designed by cultural icons that they have read everything about, some buy it because it is arty and creative, some because these little things look so cute). completely different motivations, same result.
"positioning IN" means knowing the motivations that structure the cultures of markets and making use of them.
...
btw. troy, jens is the nordic form of james:)
Posted by: jens | May 31, 2005 at 06:18 AM
ps. definition of market cultures as used above: the cultures of markets are not structured by "what companies proclaim". they are structured by how consumers create meaning. how they give meaning to things. how they set up the context of use. how they set up the context of integrating a certain brand into their lives - or excluding (!) it.
it is about how they interpret a brand's promise as contribution to their individual pursuit of happiness.
Posted by: jens | May 31, 2005 at 06:44 AM