How to position a brand

Positioning is less about “what are we?” and more about “who are we for, and what are we not?” It’s a choice. A brand that won’t make it tries to speak to everyone at once, in every channel and every tone, and ends up speaking to no one in particular.

Why it’s hard

Choosing one thing means giving up another. Lines like “affordable and premium”, “young and corporate” or “modern yet traditional” feel safe. But a customer reading them still can’t tell what the brand actually is.

A good positioning line is short. It leaves something out. Someone reading it can tell straight away whether the brand is for them.

Where to look

Positioning comes out of research, not a flash of inspiration. We look in four places.

The audience. Who the brand is for and how those people behave. What do they care about, what do they look at when deciding, where do they meet the brand?

The sector and competitors. Who else is in the same space and what they’re saying. In a market where everyone uses the same words, a new brand using those words disappears.

How the brand talks today. Its current voice, and what’s strong and weak about it.

Existing assets. The logo, the colours, the typeface, the name. Which ones still work, and which ones clash with where the brand wants to go?

Where those four overlap, look for an empty space: somewhere the brand is credible and nobody else has claimed yet.

Getting it down to one line

At the end of the research, it helps to boil the positioning down to a short sentence or a few words. That line doesn’t have to appear in an ad. Its job is to be the yardstick for every decision that follows.

Misho is a good example. It’s an interior styling and gifting atelier, and it calls its philosophy Organic Minimalism. The brand is positioned as a design-led, premium alternative in ceremony and event décor. Its identity system started from those two words.

How position shows up in design

Once the position is clear, visual decisions have a direction. In Misho’s system, the monogram, a palette named after materials (Aegean Soil, Wet Wood, Raw Linen and Sea Salt), the gift boxes and the embossed, letterpress stationery all speak the same language.

You can make good work without a position. It just might not look like it came from one brand when you put it side by side.

A few questions to test yours

• Can you describe your brand in one sentence without naming your sector?
• Is that sentence also true of your nearest competitor? If it is, you don’t have a position yet.
• Does the sentence leave anything out?
• If you asked three people on your team, would they say the same sentence?

If the answers are clear, most of the positioning is done and the design can lean on it. If they aren’t, the next logo or campaign will try to fill that gap, and probably won’t manage it.

Positioning is part of our brand strategy service. We wrote about strategy more broadly in What is brand strategy.