Marketing Profs

Many brands and companies today are constantly reinvigorating their businesses and positioning them for growth. There is a constant need to innovate, reinvigorate, update, recalibrate, or just simply fend off the competition in an effort to better explain "why buy me."

To move forward, companies and brands need to first take a look at their current brand positioning. But for a moment, even a brief moment, it would make sense to go back to the brand drawing board to answer the question, "Just what is brand positioning, anyway?"

Simply, brand positioning creates a specific place in the market for your brand and product offerings. It reaches a certain type of consumer or customer and delivers benefits that meet the needs of key target groups and users. The actual approach of a company or brand's positioning in the marketplace is determined based on how it communicates the benefits and product attributes to consumers and users. As a result, the brand positioning of a company and/or product seeks to further distance itself from competitors based on a host of items, but most notably five key issues including price, quality, product attributes, its distribution, and usage occasions

As companies and brands today look to brand repositioning, they first have to ask, "What are the reasons to reposition my brand?" The answer might be declining sales, loss of consumer/user base, stagnant product benefits, or the competition, including such issues as increased technology and new features.

After having identified the reasons for pursuing a Brand Repositioning, you might now ask yourself, "What do I do?"

A four-phased brand repositioning approach will help guide you through this process and allow your company and brand group to best calibrate based on timing, budget, and resources to get the job done.

Phase I—Determining the Current Status of the Brand

The purpose of this phase is to understand the company and brand, including exploring key issues, opportunities, and challenges. The reason is to obtain a clear snapshot of the company and brand in present terms, which will offer a clear insight to opportunity identification and assessment.

Understanding the brand includes reviewing the complete history of the company and brand, including its current brand positioning, the original positioning, how it has evolved—and, most important, what the company and brand stands for today. Key questions to ask and answer:

• What differentiates our company and brand from the competition?
• What are the equity drivers of the company and brand?
• What are the historical ways to communicate the company and brand equity to consumers and customers alike?

As we dive deeper into the current status of the company and brand, we also need to get a clear understanding of the company and brand, including a review of the current brand customer. Key questions to ask and answer: