Although the billions of mental connections we can make are both cheap and plentiful, when we buy brand 'x' instead of 'y', it often boils down to only one or two 'things'.
So, when product parity exists, an alien visitor would be most surprised to see a Homo sapien homexecutis travel an extra 10 km to buy a tub of margarine for 10c less. Oh, the power of a single-minded positioning.
Kotler defines brand positioning as an act "of designing the company's offer and image so that it occupies a distinct and valued place in the target customer's mind".
But what Kotler's definition lacks, is this principle: "umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu". Roughly translated from Nguni... "I am because you are, you are because we are," or "A person is a person through other people".
The above introduces a crucial aspect of positioning - that it is relative. You cannot be avant-garde if you have nothing to be avant about. Someone can only be old-fashioned relative to existing fashion. Covering the 100 meters in 10.5 secs at the Olympics is agonisingly slow, even though it is a feat few of us will achieve in our lives.
So, adding some African wisdom, we can adapt Kotler's definition to read: 'Positioning is an act of designing the company's offer and image so that it occupies a distinct and valued place in the target customer's mind, relative to other things'.
That's why positioning is such a dynamic activity - we often reposition annually - simply because 'other things' change. There's no point testing a new car shape if the consumer is going to compare it to what they know now, as opposed to what will be in the market then. Cameras today have to be positioned relative to cellphones, and the tablestakes in the latter category change dramatically month to month (you don't have polyphonic?!).
The challenge, however, is to make the positioning, as Kotler says, 'distinct and valued'. Although the Coke/New Coke debacle is well chronicled, Pepsi had their own positioning fiasco with Pepsi One. It was launched in 1998 with a first-year budget of $100 million, targeted at young men who did not like the taste of diet colas (the artificial sweetener in Pepsi One was Ace-K, as opposed to the funny-tasting aspertame). The design team spent 37 000 hours designing a can, nowhere on which could be found a clear description of what was inside - diet cola. Pepsi's Phil Marineau said it best: "Consumers did not understand why Pepsi One was different from other diet drinks". It certainly was a drink in a class of its own - and that was the problem.
Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu...
