PERCEPTION DOESN’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOUR MODELS OR FRAMEWORKS

Disclaimer: I stole this post and hook idea from Dale W. Harrison. I’m a huge fan. Please take a look at Dale’s article first. Also, I did get his blessing before writing this.)

The need to understand fundamental positioning is quite new to many marketers. Twenty years ago (when I was starting), you could go through an entire career treating positioning as tactical messaging and frameworks.

But, thankfully during my formative years, Suraja Kishore stepped in and taught me the fundamentals of positioning and later, big thanks to Ambar Mehrotra for deepening my understanding of it (including countless others).

Even today, you can go through a full marketing program and never understand that positioning is about owning territory in your mind, not just about a market fit.

So, it shouldn’t be shocking that marketing people struggle with understanding how positioning actually works. Even people who style themselves as positioning experts are seldom better equipped to grasp its fundamental nature.

I talk about positioning to bring rigour to how minds form associations and own territory. This works because the psychological meaning of position doesn’t depend on “what market you’re in,” and we don’t get to have our own personal frameworks about how minds work.

When it comes to positioning, there are only TWO realities.

Either you own territory in minds… or you don’t.
There’s no in-between here!

Just like mathematical equations have one clear meaning, positioning has one fundamental truth: what you ARE in minds.

Based on my disagreements and debates on Linkedin, I’ve probably heard the following absurdities over 50 times in the last month:

๐Ÿ‘‰ “B2B positioning is different”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “Early stage needs different positioning”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “Our market needs tactical positioning”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “We position ourselves as better than [competitor]”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “Our positioning covers 15 different use cases”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “We have separate product and brand positioning”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “We’ll grow into our position over time”

This isn’t just coming from marketing people but just as often from the positioning “experts” who are in charge of strategy.

Just as concerning are people confusing:

  • Position (what you fundamentally are)
  • Messaging (how you express it)
  • Go-to-market (how you execute it)

It’s like confusing:

  • Gravity (fundamental force)
  • Measuring gravity (tools to understand it)
  • Using gravity (applications in different contexts)

Changing your messaging or GTM strategy doesn’t change your position, just like changing how you measure or use gravity doesn’t change how gravity works.

Even worse is the delusional trend of fragmenting positioning into arbitrary divisions:

  • “Brand positioning”
  • “Product positioning”
  • “Market positioning”
  • “Category positioning”

This is like saying gravity works differently for:

  • “Brand gravity”
  • “Product gravity”
  • “Market gravity”
  • “Category gravity”

The mind doesn’t create separate boxes for how it perceives your brand versus your product. Mental territory doesn’t care about your organizational silos.

Tesla doesn’t have different positions for their brand (future) and products (cars). They ARE the future of transportation. This drives everything.

Yet I hear absurdities like:
๐Ÿ‘‰ “Our brand position is innovation, but our product position is reliability.”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “We need different positions for different divisions.”
๐Ÿ‘‰ “Our market position is different from our category position.”

This fragmentation doesn’t just miss the point โ€” it actively destroys the power of true positioning. Seriously, WTF?

Another issue is people who randomly decided that positioning means different things in different contexts, even when the laws of perception have been consistent since humans evolved.

Some try to convince people that positioning should change based on the company stage or market context, sowing ridiculous levels of confusion for absolutely no reason.

It’s like HubSpot trying to redefine fundamental metrics but with the added danger of misunderstanding how human minds work.

In serious professions like physics or psychology, no one gets to have their personal opinion on how gravity or perception works, and no one gets to randomly invent new rules for how minds form associations.

If doctors had “personal opinions” about diagnosis definitions or engineers invented their own terms for momentum, we’d have chaos. Yet, in positioning, everyone thinks they can redefine fundamental laws of perception.

If businesses want to work with positioning, they must follow the same rules of perception that govern all human minds.

We can have discussions around how to express position, but we don’t get to substitute “frameworks” and “tactics” for fundamental truth.

Just as mathematics doesn’t care about your feelings, perception doesn’t care about your features. The laws of how minds form associations work whether you understand them or not. Otherwise, we have businesses trying to own territory they fundamentally aren’t!

Don’t just take my word for it.

For those interested in understanding positioning as a fundamental force rather than frameworks, start with “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout โ€” not because everything in it is right, but because it first identified positioning as what you do to the mind of the prospect. Follow this with “Play Bigger,” which shows how category kings own mental territory through clarity of identity rather than tactics.

Complement these with Rory Sutherland’s “Alchemy” to understand how perception creates value regardless of features and Byron Sharp’s “How Brands Grow” for empirical evidence of how mental availability drives business success.

Avoid any resources that fragment positioning into different types or suggest it changes by market context. Just as you wouldn’t read books claiming gravity works differently for different objects, avoid positioning advice that contradicts the fundamental laws of perception.

The market proves what works. Tesla’s valuation, Red Bull’s empire, and Volvo’s decades of premium pricing show the power of owning territory in minds through fundamental identity rather than frameworks.

Here is a deep dive into books and resources to get you started.


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