Ten Ways to Successfully Position Your Brand in Overcrowded Markets

Today, brand managers are increasingly at a loss about how to differentiate their brands. In most product and service categories, every unique and purchase motivating position has been claimed by one or more brands. Product and service categories have matured, brand research has gotten sophisticated and competitors have successfully filled all of the brand positioning niches. So what is a brand manager to do to discover a new unique and compelling brand position?

Here are some ideas:

1. Identify, create and own a new "category of one." The Strong National Museum of Play did this by repositioning its brand from a children's museum to the only museum of play. 
2. Through qualitative research, discover one or more compromises all of the brands in the category are making with their consumers and then design a business model and brand to overcome these compromises. CarMax did this vis-a-vis traditional used car dealerships and Uber did this vis-a-vis traditional taxicab companies. 
3. Choose a valued benefit that has never been a part of the category. Apple did this with the introduction of smartphone apps. Southwest Airlines did this by owning "fun."
4. Add an element to the brand that no other competitor in the category has added. Opaque did this. It introduced the concept of dining in the dark. 
5. Make an outrageous version of a traditional product. Check out Loudmouth Golf for wild clothes. 
6. Combine two or more products into one or two or more functions into one product. Victorinox Swiss Army was one of the first to do this with its knives. 
7. Focus on a niche market or on one market segment. Orvis and lululemon do this, as does Lane Bryant. 
8. Create a character that gives the brand a distinctive personality. Kellogg's Tony the Tiger was one of the first, but GEICO's gecko,  Progressive Insurance's Flo and Jamie and Pistachio's elephant, Ernie are also examples of this. 
9. Go left when everyone else is going right. Naomi Klein did this with her No Logo book when everyone else was writing about the power of brands.
10. Use a new material or technology that no one else is using. SmartSolve has created environmentally friendly dissolving paper, pouches, labels, thread, tape and adhesive. 

What do all of these approaches have in common? Out-of-the-box thinking.  None of these brands would have become what they became if their managers had applied linear or incremental thinking. 

If you are interested in this topic, here are some other blog posts that might be of interest to you:

• Branding in Highly Competitive Categories
• Differentiating on the Unexpected
• 50 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand
• 6 Powerful Ways to Differentiate Your Brand
• Sources of Brand Differentiation
• Creating "Category of One" Brands
• Creating "Category of One" Brands
• Breaking Customer Compromises
• Branding Water
• Just for Fun - The Loudmouth Brand

By the way, the Interceptor vehicle pictured above is a car, boat, plane and helicopter all in one, applying idea #6 above.

Hollow Brands

We had an interesting conversation on brands at this morning's coffee klatch. An unusual topic for us, we talked about men's clothing brands. It is clear from that conversation that consumers have gotten quite savvy about brands. One person who had previously been very brand conscious shared that a well-known upscale clothing brand had disappointed him on several occasions. When asked why, he said their $92 dress shirts last a year at best before they start to fray and fall apart. When he went back to the retail outlet to voice his concern, he was treated as if he was a persona non grata. When asked by his fellow coffee klatch members, he confirmed that the brand's shirts were not more stylish or fashion forward than any other brand's shirts and apparently their quality level was at or below that of other brands. So why then was he paying a premium for that brand of shirts? He indicated that wearing that brand of shirt had made him feel successful until he discovered its quality flaws. He no longer buys that brand of shirt because now it makes him feel like a sucker. 

On the other hand, we talked about brands whose quality and customer satisfaction guarantees are solid. One that we all agreed was rock solid is The North Face. One guy told the story of sending back a ten year old winter jacket whose zipper had broken. The North Face opted to give him a brand new jacket at no charge rather than replace the zipper. Another person recounted a similar story. I then told my The North Face story. I have three pair of The North Face cargo pants. The oldest pair has lasted 25 years so far. But the story gets better than that. That pair of pants had caught fire about fifteen years ago when a white gas camp stove exploded as I was lighting it in the Canadian back country. The lit fuel sprayed all over the pants and I had to roll on the ground to put the fire out. There is still not a hole or frayed thread in that pair of pants. 

So what is the point that I am trying to make? While strong brands can convey status or other self-expressive benefits, ultimately if they are not stylistically superior to other brands or more durable than other brands or of a higher quality than other brands, consumers eventually figure it out and they can go from brand advocates to brand detractors. 

Based on this morning's coffee klatch discussion, I have decided that I will stick with the North Face and Orvis brands of men's clothes (among many others) and avoid the unnamed brand of clothing (initials - B.B.).