Build a Breakthrough Brand with a Clear Competitive Positioning with Denise Lee Yohn

Hi, and welcome to today's Biznology Digital Marketing Webinar. I'm Mike Moran, founder of the Biznology Blog and a senior strategist at Converseon, a leading social consultancy. I'm also co-author of Search Engine Marketing Inc., sole author of Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules, and a former IBM Distinguished Engineer. Today you'll be hearing from brand building expert, speaker, and author Denise Lee Yohn, who will present Build a Breakthrough Brand with a Clear Competitive Positioning. But before we start, we need to recognize our sponsors. BarnRaisers, a full-service digital and social media solutions company that builds brands using proven relationship principles and ROI. MENG, Marketing Executive Networking Group, New Jersey Chapter. We aren't just about networking to land a great job. We're about staying current to grow in our careers. Unison, the unagency, your secret weapon in the noisy world of 21st century brand communications. And we're also sponsored by Denise Leaon, author of the book What Great Brands Do: The 7 Brand Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest. As we wait for more attendees to join, let me review the format of our webinar. Our Biznology webinars last just 30 minutes, so you can easily fit them into your busy schedule. We record each webinar and we'll email you that link later this week. During our speaker's presentation, you can use GoToWebinar to ask a question. That orange arrow that you see on the screen opens and closes your controls. If you have a question, simply type it into the box labeled Questions at any time during the event and press the Send button. I'll select a few questions at the end of our webinar and pose them to Denise. While we're waiting for a few last attendees to join, I'd like to remind you that the Biznology newsletter and blog are available for free at biznology.com. So if you're not already a subscriber, we hope you'll sign up now. Thanks again to you for spending 30 minutes with us. We know how valuable your time is, so let's introduce today's speaker. Blending a fresh perspective, 25 years of experience working with world-class brands including Sony and Frito-Lay, and a talent for inspiring audiences, Denise Lee Yohn is a leading authority on building and positioning exceptional brands. Denise is the author of What Great Brands Do: The 7 Brand Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest. So if you've ever struggled with how to position your brand so it stands out from the competition and stands up to competitive threats, this is the webinar for you. Denise, take it away.

Thank you, Mike, for that terrific introduction. It's great to be speaking with all of you today. The only thing— other thing you need to know about me other than what Mike has told you is that I love brands. And I've had the privilege of working on some of the world's greatest brands, including these that you see on your screen. So what I'm going to share with you today is based on my work with these brands and my research and analysis of many others. Today we are going to talk about competitive brand positioning. But before I walk you through how to develop one, we need to set the context. A competitive brand positioning is part of a brand platform. What is a brand platform? Well, like a political platform— and just by the way, today is a special election in San Diego, so politics have very much been on my mind— a brand platform outlines what the brand stands for and what it is trying to accomplish, just like a political candidate. It's a strategy that articulates why customers should choose your brand and explains how the brand differs from others. And a brand platform is comprised of 2 elements: brand identity, which explains what the brand is, the key defining values and attributes of the brand; and the competitive positioning, which explains how the brand compares to other options. And these 2 elements are integrated and work synergistically like yin and yang. The brand identity focuses and aligns everything that you do from product development to marketing to your visual strategy to distribution, etc. And your competitive brand positioning reveals who you are competing with, who you steal share from, and indicates how you might go about doing that. And just to be clear, competitive brand positioning is not a value proposition. A value proposition is tied to a specific offering and explains what a customer gets for what it costs. A competitive brand position is also not a tagline or a message. It's a strategy. Like all other strategies, it's used internally and can be translated by a copywriter into target-appropriate language for external use. And also, a competitive brand position is not unchanging in the sense that over time, as your competitive landscape and your customers change, you'll need to revisit your brand positioning. The other half of your brand platform, the brand identity, is more evergreen. And perhaps one day I can do another webinar on how to clarify your brand identity. But for now, let's get into how to develop a competitive brand positioning. The framework that I use is something that may look very familiar to you. It goes like this: For X, we are the A who does B because C. X being your target customer, A being your competitive frame of reference, B is your differentiating benefit that you deliver, and C reasons to believe that you deliver that benefit. As I said, this framework is something that's probably familiar to you, and it's actually quite simple, but it's really how you use the framework that makes the difference. I believe that strategy is about making choices, and so it's It's really important that you carefully choose what you are going to put in each one of those boxes. So that is what we are going to talk about today starting with the target customer, who your brand is for. Your target is a discrete, distinct group of people or type of person that you want to be engaged with your brand. Many brands define their target by age, or gender, or life stage, but it is not really that informative to classify people by demos anymore. An 18-year-old male in California might have a lot more in common with a 40-year-old woman living in South Carolina than he might have with another 18-year-old male living in his same geographic area. So, we want to define our target by something other than these traditional measures. I've also seen other companies define their target by purchase behavior or by their economic value, like heavy users or online buyers. But those really don't clarify who actually these people are. And how you can engage with them. By designating a target, you are saying that you want to prioritize your resources, meaning your advertising dollars, your sales calls, your customer service, etc., on these folks. Now, that's not to say that everyone else isn't important. The issue is that you just can't satisfy everyone. And the truth is that some people are more valuable to your business than others. So you want to define a discrete target. This also means that you're not going to turn away people who aren't in your target or treat them poorly, but you are going to design your brand experience with your target in mind. And finally, remember that people who are buying you now may not be the most profitable, or the most attractive, or the most sustainable customers for the future. So, you want to make sure you're articulating the customer you want, not necessarily the customer that you have. My clients have the most success when they define their target based on their needs state, which is a combination of the purchasing attitude of their customers with their purchase occasion. So, for consumer products, for example, a purchasing attitude would be something like, I'm— the person's very design conscious, or price sensitive, or really wants innovative products. And then the purchase occasion may vary from, like, an impulse purchase to a gift to an indulgence purchase to a routine or a habit. Needs-based segmentation allows for the fact that most individuals have more than one demand driver for products that they're interested in. One of my clients is a national fast food chain. And defining their target by demos, like adults 18 to 54, really wouldn't help them design their brand experiences in a differentiated way. But identifying target segments on the basis of their needs state would. They have a target that is the don't have to think about it, quick bite when I'm on the go segment. They have another segment that's about socializing with friends and family, or another segment of craving a particular menu item. You want to select the segments for your target customers based on a series of criteria, including whether it fits with your brand values and attributes, sales, both current and potential sales, So growth potential needs to be factored in there. And also, you need to make sure that your target segments are reachable through media and marketing efforts. They need to display specific attitudes and behaviors that give you clues how you would use media or communication to actually reach them and engage with them. So that is your target X. Now we are going to move to your competitive frame of reference. This is the mental file folder that you want your target to put your brand in. And this is actually the most critical choice in your framework. If you define your competitive frame of reference too narrowly, you won't appeal broadly enough to generate the volume you need for sustainable business. But if you define it too broadly, you probably end up having to position on category benefits instead of your specific brand differentiation. Here's what I mean. Coke, its competitive frame of reference could be soft drinks, so Pepsi, Mountain Dew, etc. But it could be broader, beverages, juices, and sparkling water, for example. Or its frame of reference could be treats, anything from like a coffee or even maybe an ice cream. I suggest that you look beyond your competitive set. And even your category to base your choice of your competitive frame of reference on the primary motivations of your target customer. The best way for me to explain this is an example. If you were Hertz, you might think of your competitive set within, you know, kind of the shortlist that your customers use, and you might put Avis and Budget on your list of competitors, since your customers seem to be trading off your brand with those other brands. If you broaden your frame of reference to your category, you might include other rental car companies. But if you were to base your frame of reference on your target's motivation, convenient alternative transportation, you might realize that startups like Zipcar and Car2Go are also your competitors to some degree. So, when deciding what your competitive frame of reference should be, Start by thinking outside in. Start with your customer, not inside out where you'd be starting with your product. Also, consider what life stage your brand or product is in. If you're just starting out, you might define your frame of reference more narrowly since your primary challenge is simply getting people to choose you over other existing options. Later in the life stage of your product, you might define your frame more broadly in order to take on new areas of growth. And you want to decide your frame of reference in conjunction with choosing your differentiating benefit. These 2 choices are very related. The choice you make with one will shape the choice you make with the other. So let's go on and move to that D, your differentiating benefit that you offer. This is where you consider the one benefit that you want to position your brand on. It needs to be strong, something that you as a brand have mastery over. It needs to be unique, something that you do better or differently from others. And it should be emotional. Humans are emotional beings and make purchase decisions based on how they feel. So again, I want to make sure that I'm emphasizing this is a benefit, not an attribute that you're positioning on. Guaranteed overnight delivery service is an attribute, but confidence that your customer's package will get there is a benefit. Whole grain is an attribute. Feeling fuller and not being hungry is a benefit. 99% uptime is an attribute. Helping your customers serve their customers reliably is a benefit. So, again, you want a strong, unique emotional benefit. A common way to identify your differentiation is using a perceptual map of the competitive landscape. You know, you form X and Y axes based on category attributes. Plot your competitors on the map, and then identify the area that you want your brand to occupy. Again, a pretty standard exercise. But the way that you use the map really makes a difference. If you use the map in an expected way, you'll get an expected, and therefore a fairly weak and meaningless positioning. So for example, for a snack food company I worked with, the more expected or common XY values might have been like price. Low price, high price, sweet versus salty, or maybe would use like kids versus adult snacks, or individual versus shareable snacks. But through anthropologically based research, we actually identified novel but important dimensions of purchase influence, including emotional satisfaction. How people felt and whether they were satisfied when eating a snack. And so we actually made our axes healthy choices versus less healthy choices and emotional well-being versus physical fulfillment. And by doing this, we really broke clear of the boundaries of traditional snack food categories. And these new dimensions of our map helped us see a far wider range of competitive product categories than we ever would have considered if we'd only been looking at price or taste. And it really helped us identify how we needed to position our brand relative to those competitors. Great. So, you want to really think carefully about the axes that you choose to define your differentiated benefit. And then, once you've determined your differentiating benefit, you need to give customers some substantiation that they can see, touch, feel, or understand to make your claim credible. Here are 9 sources of credibility. It can be a special technology you have, a patent, a performance claim, maybe the efficacy of your product, or the specific ingredients that are in your product, endorsements by celebrities or credible users, awards that your brand or your product might have gotten, any specific company programs that really demonstrate your commitment to this differentiation, or your heritage. You want to use several of these— you want to draw on several of these sources of credibility to come up with your reasons to believe. Remember, today your claims must stand up to the scrutiny of consumers who are very savvy and who are equipped with the tools and access to be able to verify the claims that you make. So you can't just expect people to believe you when you say that you are differentiated You need to show them. So that's the competitive brand positioning framework. And I thought it might be helpful to go over a few examples so you can see how it comes together. We have previously talked about Zipcar. So this is what I would believe the Zipcar competitive brand positioning to be. To urban-dwelling, educated, techno-savvy consumers, that being their target customer, Zipcar car-sharing service is the alternative to owning a car. So, that's their competitive frame of reference. That makes it easy to save money while reducing your carbon footprint. That's a differentiating benefit that Zipcar delivers. And the reasons to believe, they have their Zipcard that you carry around in your wallet that unlocks any car, and a mobile app you can use to identify where the cars are. The prices that you pay for Zipcar include gas and insurance, and it turns out that the members who use Zipcar drove 5,500 miles or less per year. So, those are all reasons to believe that Zipcar makes it easy to save money while reducing your footprint. So, that's one example. Another example is from Jamba Juice. The fast food smoothie chain. Here's their competitive positioning. For everyone who chooses to do something good for themselves, Jamba Juice is the convenient place for great-tasting, healthy products that energizes the way you live and feel. Because we're considerate, or I should say they are considerate of what you put in your body, For example, their smoothies are made with real whole fruit and 100% fruit juice. They make it enjoyable to be healthy. They have friendly employees and a fun brand experience. And they help create healthier communities through their National GenUse Foundation Town Hall Program. So you can see that Jamba Juice is saying that, hey, we're not just competing with smoothies, other smoothie chains. We are actually competing with many other places that offer you great-tasting healthy products. But the differentiation that we provide is something that is highly emotional. We really energize the way you live and feel. The last example I will show you doesn't fit the framework, but it is for an athletic footwear brand that goes like this: Only we design performance solutions that fit athletes who are confident in themselves and are driven to achieve. So, if you look at it, their target is athletes who are confident in themselves and are driven to achieve. The frame of reference are performance solutions. The differentiating benefit is that they really fit. And if you know the backstory to this brand, they're talking not only about the physical fit, but the kind of emotional and status fit. And then I didn't list all the reasons to believe here, but it included things like the company's founding as a medical product that helps people with their feet problems. So, again, you don't have to necessarily stay with the specific framework, but you want to make sure that all of those elements are in the competitor brand positioning. The last thing that I promised to cover is how to differentiate. And the reason why I just wanted to spend a few minutes specifically on this topic is that humans are genetically hardwired to notice Differences are often what attract people to your brand in the first place. Great brands are powered by strong and clear differentiation. So I just want to give you 3 thought starters on how you can differentiate your brand. And again, this may be something that we can come back and talk about later. The first way to differentiate is to be first. When you are first to market, meaning when you are first to create a demand and then fill it, your brand achieves a strong differentiating advantage of a market leadership position. And that can be real or perceived. That's why everyone knows the Apple iPad. But very few people have ever heard of the BlackBerry PlayBook, or the Google Honeycomb, or the Motorola XOOM, even though when those products came out, some experts said that they were superior. That's because creating this perception of first to market was so important, and Apple was able to do that. First to market can mean being the first brand in a given geographic area. But most often, it's being first based on a new type of offering, or new product, new service, new experience. And when you promote your brand as the first, your competitors are challenged, because they need to make moves that don't seem to be outdated, predictable, or imitating you. So figure out if there's a way that you can be first. Second, to differentiate, consider owning an attribute. There's a world of attributes for differentiation. Big, small, fast, fun, easy, surprising, safe, soft, etc. Your goal should be to identify a brand attribute that no one else is talking about, or one that constitutes a serious weakness for your main competitor. And then adopt that attribute as the defining one for your brand. Not long ago— I'm sorry, very long ago, sorry— Target decided to use design to differentiate its brand from Walmart, which was all about low prices, knowing that Walmart's obsession with low prices kind of precluded them from ever competing on design. So Target said design is a thing that we want to own. And if you look at everything they do, design seems to influence all of that. When you own an attribute, it requires you to overdeliver on it and communicate it at every touchpoint so people associate that attribute with your brand. And when you do that, people are more likely to remember you and have that specific reason to consider you. The last way to differentiate is to specialize, meaning specialize in a target market. This may be the most effective means to differentiate your brand and to avoid kind of chasing customers, but really decide who your brand is for. So for example, Carl's Jr. is a fast food chain out here on the West Coast, and they are all about appealing to young people. Guys, and their ads show these beautiful celebrities like Paris Hilton seductively eating hamburgers. Their target is very clear and distinct from, for example, McDonald's target, which is all about families. When you design your business to appeal specifically to a type of customer, you become known as an expert for that market, and people who are in that market naturally gravitate to you because they're they see you as being more relevant and different and for them. So that's the competitive brand positioning framework. I have some recommended resources that I wanted to offer to you all, but I thought I would offer up if there are any questions that we want to take. I know I gave you a lot of information, but I would be happy to answer anything now. Mike, do we have any questions?

Thanks, Denise. I'm sure our attendees have a much stronger idea of how to build a breakthrough brand, but you didn't answer every question. I've got several teed up from our audience, and I'd like to remind our audience that it's not too late to ask your own question by typing it into the questions box in your GoToWebinar controls. But before we get to those questions, I'd like to show you the slide on the Biznology Jumpstart Yeah.

Well, here, actually, Mike, let me go ahead and just finish up then. I'm sorry we didn't talk about the order of this. I did just want to share with the listeners that I do recommend 3 recommended resources that will teach you more about competitive brand positioning. One is a great article from the Harvard Business Review by Kevin Keller and his colleagues called 3 Questions That You Need to Ask About Your Brand. There is also a great book by David Aaker who is to me the brand strategy. And his latest book Brand Relevance really helps you think about competitive positioning. And then shameless plug for my book coming out in January. It is called What Great Brands Do. And I have a whole chapter about this as well as more details about how to develop competitive positioning. So I encourage you to look at those resources. So, okay, Mike, here we go. Here's your slide— our slide about the training that we have.

So I'd like to remind you that the Biznology team provides jumpstart workshops for corporations who want to apply what they learn directly to their own business and have their team create a plan for executive approval right in the workshop. Denise and I teach the brand marketing course and we'll be there to guide you and help you persuade that executive to say yes. Go to biznology.com/training for more information on all of our offerings. So we're about to start firing questions at Denise, but we need to thank our sponsors once again. BarnRaisers, a full-service digital and social media solutions company that builds brands using proven relationship principles and ROI. Meng, the Marketing Executive Networking Group, New Jersey chapter. We aren't just about networking to land a great job, we're about staying Current to Grow in Our Careers. Unison: The Unagency, Your Secret Weapon in the Noisy World of 21st Century Brand Communications. And our own Denise Lee Yohn, author of the book What Great Brands Can Do: The 7 Brand Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest. Now on to your questions. If you're in a commoditized market, what tips can you suggest?

You know, I think that in some cases practically every market is commoditized or moving in that direction. So, I think the need to differentiate and the approach to differentiation remains the same regardless of what market you're in. You obviously can use price as a key differentiator and really work on your operational efficiency in order to drive your costs down so you can offer those lower prices. But I would encourage you to think about other ways to differentiate that may be more sustainable, because price is one of those sticky or difficult ways to differentiate, because someone can always undercut you. So, you want to be identifying other ways to think about your business and what you offer to customers that may be different. And it doesn't have to be something that is so grandiose and all-encompassing. It may be, as I said, a specific attribute that you have that differentiates your product from something else. And you can really create a perception that that attribute is important, and then therefore your product That's great, Denise.

The next question is, if you differentiate on attribute, can you claim an attribute if you're the first, even if it might not be extremely unique?

Yes and no. So, you know, going back to the fast food example, you know, I think there are a lot of better burger chains out there. And so, you could say that they, like, let's say Five Guys, was one of the first main large chains to claim the attribute of having a better quality burger. And they've done a great job of growing exponentially and quickly based on that attribute. But you can start seeing that there are many other competitors that are giving Five Guys a run for their money, like a Smashburger or like the Counter. And so, it's works to some extent, but it's only sustainable if you can continue to outdeliver your competitors. So going back to the Target example, I think the reason why Target continues to own the design attribute is they're always pushing the envelope and raising the bar in terms of delivering design. So they're always working with new designers, trying new partnerships, even their new partnership with Feed with Lauren Lauren Bush, Lauren, Lauren, is very much kind of pushing the envelope in terms of design. And so it's difficult, but if you can continue to push it, you may be able to sustain it.

Terrific. Time for one last quick question. Can you provide a few more examples of purchasing attitudes?

Yes. Okay. So, in let's say a B2B context, an attitude might be that I want the, you know, kind of lowest cost provider. I want the most, you know, experienced and most reputable provider. A purchasing attitude may be that I want a provider that's going to be very innovative and bring me new solutions. Another attitude may be that I want someone that— a provider that adheres to industry standards and kind of knows all of the regulations and requirements for the type of service that I'm looking for. So, attitudes tend to be strongly associated with then the brand attribute that you would ultimately position your brand on. But they can— are really a range of different needs or desires that your customer may have.

Terrific, Denise. That's all the time we have for today, everybody. Thank you, Denise, for these great ideas, and thanks especially to our audience for your participation and your questions. If any of you had questions that we didn't have time to answer, you can email your questions to Eileen, E-I-L-E-E-N-E, at mikemorangroup.com, and she'll be sure to get them to Denise for the answer. Later this week, we'll send you all a link to the recording of this webinar to listen to again and to share with others. We also invite you to mark your calendars for our next Biznology webinar, Is Your Company Ready for Social Business? with Andrea Goldberg, scheduled for 11:00 AM US Eastern Time on January 24th. We hope to see you all back here then. Bye, everybody.

Bye.