Category: Positioning
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The ingredient nobody’s checking
In 2021, a global professional services firm spent $14 million on a brand transformation. New visual identity. New messaging architecture. New brand guidelines distributed across 47 offices. They commissioned research before the launch. Prompted awareness was strong. Sentiment scores came back positive. The positioning statement (something about trusted expertise and human-centred outcomes) tested well in…
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Positionmaxxing
The positioning industry has a positioning problem, and it’s costing you more than you think. A post on X recently stopped me cold. @Kpaxs wrote: “When you understand a system too well, you start optimizing for the system rather than for reality. You know what success looks like, so you pursue success-shaped things. You know what your…
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The Bifurcation Problem
Why consumer-loved companies lose their identity on the way to IPO. The moment a beloved product hires a “B2B CMO,” a clock starts ticking. Not toward growth but fracture. Not visibly or immediately. But the fracture is there, and it widens. There’s a pattern hiding in plain sight. The products people love most, the ones…
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How to fix your ‘brand’ in 1 day
Note before we begin: Dan Koe’s article “How to Fix Your Entire Life in 1 Day” got 90 million views on X. When I read it, I understood why. Also, some envy ensued. LOL! Dan’s core thesis is that you aren’t where you want to be because you aren’t the person who would be there.…
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The “Brand Positioning” Problem: Why Two Words Reveal a Fundamental Misunderstanding
The Tell Two words that reveal you don’t understand positioning: “brand positioning.” This isn’t pedantry. It’s diagnostic. The phrase inverts causality, conflates two distinct phenomena, and reveals a conceptual confusion that has cost companies billions in misdirected strategy work. When someone says “brand positioning,” they’re typically doing one of three things: using one word to…
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Zoom’s S-1: The Gap Between What You Prove and What You Claim
How Positioning Language Shapes Market Valuation — And What Zoom Left on the Table An S-1 isn’t just a legal document. It’s a positioning claim to capital markets. It’s where you tell investors what mental territory you own, and they decide what that ownership is worth. Your product tells one story. Your metrics tell another.…
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How do I create a position?
The position you think you have isn’t the position you actually own Most companies have it backwards. They sit in conference rooms crafting positioning statements, testing taglines, building messaging frameworks. They hire agencies to help them “craft their positioning.” They run workshops to align on “brand positioning.” Then they wonder why nothing sticks. The problem isn’t…
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Position Is Not an Opinion: The Neuroscience of What Actually Happens in Your Customer’s Brain
Most positioning conversations happen in conference rooms. Executives debate. Consultants facilitate. Post-its accumulate. Everyone leaves with an opinion about what the company’s position should be. Here’s the problem: position isn’t an opinion. Position isn’t what you decide in a workshop. It isn’t what you write on a slide. It isn’t what your leadership team agrees…
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Why “Just Do It” Actually Works: The Neuroscience of Positioning Done Right
Three words. Coined the night before a presentation. Inspired by a convicted murderer’s last words before a firing squad. “Just Do It” shouldn’t have worked. And yet, it’s become one of the most recognized phrases in commercial history. Nike’s market share jumped from 18% to 43% in the decade following its 1988 launch. The tagline…
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Brand, Reputation, and Health Are Not Strategies
They’re outcomes. And confusing the two is why most attempts to “build” them fail. This isn’t a semantic distinction. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of causality that costs companies billions, undermines personal credibility, and leads people to buy gym memberships they’ll never use. The pattern is identical across all three domains: Health is what happens after…
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Why Companies Buy Software They Can’t Use
The $1.2 Billion Question Nobody’s Asking Microsoft says 70% of Fortune 500 companies bought Copilot. Salesforce announced $1.2 billion in AI revenue. By any measure, these companies are crushing it. But here’s what doesn’t make sense: Salesforce’s CEO admitted in October that “the speed of innovation is far exceeding the speed of customer adoption.” Translation:…
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Why the best positions are never stated
Explicitly Implicit, Implicitly Explicit. The Burj Khalifa doesn’t say “we own eminence.” You feel it when you stand next to it. You feel it on the skyline. You feel it when someone mentions they went there. The position is implicit. Eminence is experienced, not claimed. And that’s precisely why it works. The positioning paradox Here’s…