1. 4/21/2013
What position should I advertise?
Should I
Advertise?
AD 442
Advertising Management
Was It
Effective?
Who Do I
Target?
Boğaziçi University, Spring 2012/13
Positioning
How Do I Use
Creative?
How Do I Use
Insight?
Hüseyin S. Karaca
How Do I
Select Media?
How Do I
Position?
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The positioning triangle
Fundamentals of brand positioning
Category
• Report five elements
–
–
–
–
–
A target
A frame of reference (FOR)
Points of difference (POD)
Reason to believe
Brand personality
Frame of Reference
What is the goal in
using the brand?
Reason to believe
• Volvo’s positioning statement might read:
For people with families (target),
Volvo is the family car (frame of reference)
that offers the best balance in safety and durability (points of difference)
because Volvo has a history of intelligent design (reason to believe).
Volvo is family-oriented, genuine, and old-fashioned (brand personality).
Brand A
Your Brand
(Personality)
Points of Difference
Brand B
Competitor’s Brand
How does the brand dominate
competition in achieving the goal?
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Reason to Believe
4
Frame of reference
Representing the frame of reference:
Category association
• What is frame of reference?
• Most obvious FOR is the category in which the brand holds
membership
– A strategic tool that specifies the goal achieved by a brand
– Suggests the brand’s competitive set and points of difference that
might be appropriate
• A brand often competes with members of another category that achieve
the same goal
• When presenting a brand’s position to consumers present the
frame of reference first
• Choose a FOR that
– Need to know what goal can be achieved by using the brand before
they can assess how the brand dominates the alternatives
– For established brands FOR and POD can be presented together
• How is frame of reference established?
– Offers the largest consumption opportunity
– Allows for strong point of difference
• When should a specific category be used to communicate the frame of
reference and when should a more general goal be used?
– Depends on what consumers know about the brand
– Small brands that have limited business often try to use a limited frame
– Category association
– Exemplar
– Points of parity
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2. 4/21/2013
Representing the frame of reference:
Exemplar
Representing the frame of reference:
Points of parity
• A member of the category in which the brand
holds membership that consumers associate
with a specific benefit
• Characteristics shared by alternatives that
achieve a particular goal
• Provides efficient means of communicating a
specific goal
• Describes in detail the goal that might be
achieved if a brand were purchased
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Using FOR to design competitive
advertising strategy
Points of difference
• Making a POD a point of parity
• Should be a benefit that
– Alert consumers to the fact that your brand possesses the
competitors’ point of difference, in effect making it a point of parity
– When category demand is not growing could be used to steal share
from competitors
– Sets the brand apart from competition
– Is perceived by consumers as a compelling reason
to use the category
• Making a frame a POD
– A brand can sometimes affiliate itself with another category, and by
doing so make that FOR the brand’s POD
• Reframing
– Once a FOR is established, it is difficult to change
– Only exception occurs when the brand is the first entrant in a
category
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• Commonly used POD in positioning and
advertising a brand
–
–
–
–
–
Attributes
Image
Emotion
Value
Category essence
Points of difference:
Attributes
Points of difference:
Image
• In most categories attribute POD serve as the most
powerful means of promoting rapid brand growth
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• Focuses on who uses the brand and in what
context
– Ingredients, country of origin, brand heritage
• IKEA promotes its furniture by showing the
types of people who find its products attractive
• Leading brands feature the benefit that drives
category demand, second leading brand selects a
niche, third leading brand promotes lower price
• Nike employs professional athletes
• Not sustainable as unique features are easily
imitable
– Brands often prefer to compete on some basis other
than attributes because they are easier to sustain in the
long run
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• Fragrance brands typically employ celebrities
• Some brands use both image and features
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3. 4/21/2013
Points of difference:
Emotion
Points of difference:
Value (Multiple POD)
• Show the emotional benefits derived from using the
brand
• Effective communication dictates that only a single POD
be presented as persuasion requires substantial
amplification
• The advantage of image and emotion POD
• One situation where it is important to present multiple
benefits is when the brand position pertains to value
– It is more difficult for the competition to respond
– They cannot simply imitate a feature in the next
generation of the product
– They have to invest time and money in advertising
Value =
• The disadvantage of image and emotion POD
– They are often not verifiable as functional differences to
consumers, and thus require advertising to build and
maintain
Quality (Physical + Psychological)
Cost (Price + Time)
– Quality: functional qualities or emotional/psychological
qualities experienced in using the product
– Cost: price of the product and time required to use the
product
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What if there are no POD?
Owning category essence
Orchestrating the selection of
attributes and benefits
• In most cases brands do not have a POD in relation to
competition
• Important to consider how attributes and
benefits used to specify the FOR and POD are
related to each other
• Use category essence as a POD
– Using consumer insight about the category to differentiate
• Assumption is that if a brand demonstrates an
understanding of consumers’ problems, it is the solution
• When positively correlated consumers readily
accept that the brand has these features
• When negatively correlated consumers are
difficult to convince
• Strategy of last resort as is easy to be emulated by
competitors
– One way to deal is to explain they are in fact
positively correlated
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Brand personality
How to evaluate a brand’s position?
DONE Framework
• Strategist usually represent their brands as having a
personality
• The adequacy of a brand position can be evaluated
against four criteria (DONE)
• Often involves adopting an archetype for the brand
– Metaphors that are intended to capture the essence of
the brand
– Examples:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Magician (Apple)
Outlaw (Harley Davidson)
Lover (Haagen-Dazs)
Ruler (American Express)
Creator (Lego)
Sage (Google)
Explorer (Starbucks)
– Does the brand offer benefits that are desired by consumers?
(attributes, image, emotion, category essence)
– Can the position be owned? (consideration of whether the
brand has a POD given the FOR with which it is associated)
– Is the brand’s position navigable? (can it be steered in a
manner so that the brand delivers on its promise?)
– Is the brand’s position likely to endure over time?
D
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Benefit
Desired?
O
Position
can be
Owned?
N
Navigate
to
brand’s
promise?
E
Will the
position
Endure?
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