Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

Positioning Statements - Existing Product

Posted by Anonymous on 5/26/2004 at 12:14 PM ET 125 Points
I am new to product management and I have to create a positioning statement for an existing product - our company never really had a marketing department before so these products did not go through the normal channels when introduced several years ago...I know we are working backwards, but I need to know how long a positioning statement should be and what it should consist of to be effective. Any help that you can provide will be sincerely appreciated.

(By the way...we are a communications company selling integrated phone service.)
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  • Posted by Blaine Wilkerson on 5/26/2004 at 12:25 PM Accepted
    You are welcome! You may try searching this site along with:

    www.brandchannel.com

    and

    https://searchengineformarketers.com

    Good Luck!
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 5/27/2004 at 1:44 PM Accepted
    The short form of your positioning statement should be no longer than a PARAGRAPH. If needed you can also have a longer form. The key to market positioning is positioning relative to your competitors in a given market segment. Therefore the statement should make it clear WHERE your company is positioned relative to its competitors. I prefer a number if it’s possible, usually based on gross sales. For example, we’re NUMBER TWO in the xyz communications segment, but numbers don’t always work. Check out the excerpt below and a link to an article I recently wrote.

    ...The objective is not to fit your brand into as many territories as possible. Rather, it's to market your brand to the territory where it has the best chance to maintain ownership over the long haul. Does this mean you might have to give up on chasing some outer territories to own your best core one? Yes, successful branding is about narrowing focus to win, not expanding beyond resources and diluting brand power.

    The marketer starts by quantifying a territorial claim. Quantifying territorial claims is at the heart of the theories espoused by Reese & Trout (R&T;) in the early eighties. To illustrate, R&T wrote, "An important early success in the positioning era was the famous Avis campaign". Here R&T provided a ladder hierarchy model with the first rung reserved for the first brand territorial claim. In the Avis story the ladder represents the rental car market as a category. Hertz owned the first territory, or top rung on the ladder. In 1962, Avis claimed the number two territory or second rung with its slogan, "We're number two, we try harder". It was the first time a company had declared itself as number two... https://www.schraff.com/adv/helpdesk/brand_is.php
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