• by David Gutting , Op-Ed Contributor, November 13, 2017

People who manage brands need to end their obsession with positioning strategy because it’s working against their most important goal: growth. 

When Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote their landmark book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, in 1969, it was a breakthrough concept, mainly for its simplicity. It was a pragmatic tool, ideal for growing brands in a clear, orderly manner. At the heart of it all was differentiation. If brands could differentiate themselves on one big thing, they could win the mindshare battle. The concept was a reflection of the Isaiah Berlin essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” and its well-known claim: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Brands in the middle of the 20th century prospered when they behaved like hedgehogs. But in the second decade of the 21st century there was a shift, and the winners are now foxes. There are three big reasons why: brands differentiate poorly, relevance and availability are of greater importance, and foxlike brands are beating the hedgehogs. 

Differentiation

A sure sign that traditional positioning is a weak strategy is that so many brands are poorly differentiated. The center aisle of the grocery store is home to brands built on the pillars of mindshare positioning, but many of them are languishing today because consumers can’t tell them apart. 

But they see differentiation in upstart brands with unique personalities and distinct experiences. Take a walk down the beer aisle and look at the shelf space taken over by quirky craft beers. They are not nearly as well “positioned” as Bud Light or Coors, but they offer unique and interesting taste experiences that consumers love. 

Think about the modern giants of branding—Google, Amazon, Apple, and Starbucks. Try writing a classic positioning statement for any one of them. Sure, you could come up with something—but nothing that captures the multi-layered, broad front attacks that each of these unleashes on competitors. 

Relevance and availability

In recent years there’s been a growing body of literature debunking positioning, with thoughtful critics suggesting that brand relevance and brand availability are more important. 

David Aaker, a renowned traditional brand strategist, argued in Brand Relevance that differentiation—and with it classic positioning—was of dubious value. Instead, brands needed to battle for relevance by inventing new categories and subcategories that made them more useful—i.e., more relevant—to consumers. 

Douglas Holt and Douglas Cameron, in Cultural Strategy and in numerous essays and case studies, also call for relevance—cultural relevance in particular. They reject “mindshare marketing,” viewing it as an ineffective way to influence consumer behavior.

In their view, consumers aren’t mind managers—they’re cultural participants in a world that they shape to their own liking. Their case study of Nike’s rise in the 1980s shows how the brand used cultural forces such as the “solo combat warrior” to create an innovative narrative, rebelling against the conservative ideologies of the day. This approach made it culturally relevant to a huge and diverse consumer audience. 

Byron Sharp, author of How Brands Grow, takes on positioning with hard-to-refute data. He shows that consumers are promiscuous in their brand choices and that they seldom see differentiation among them. For Sharp, it’s not about mindshare or culture. It’s about availability, both mental and physical. Two things matter—brands need to be top of mind and easy to get. The small nuances of positioning don’t matter and aren’t noticed. 

The devious, foxlike brand

Amazon broke every rule of classic positioning as it rose to prominence. It started as an online bookseller. But then it became a device maker, a Hollywood production company, a cloud service provider, and a grocer. 

It’s the ultimate fox—and it’s wreaking havoc on its competitors. It’s hard to copy because you don’t know what it’s going to do next. It’s true that Amazon has a hidden “North Star”—customer obsession. But that’s hardly mindshare positioning—that’s behavior.

It’s not alone. Google, Facebook, even a great old icon like Ball Canning come to market with a broad set of offerings.

That’s what it takes to compete these days—the planning and cunning of a fox. Building strategies on relevance and availability—and then disguising them so competitors can’t copy you—is no easy task. Positioning has an alluring simplicity about it. But it’s the call of a Siren. 

Foxes await.