A different way to look at the age old debate - new word for me is product positioning. An interesting post on how brand and product positioning are different and how to look at it. At this point, I won't be making this distinction in daily work, but a good framework to latch onto under certain circumstances.
I don’t blame you if you think product and brand positioning are very different things. We’ve been taught this for decades. I have a contrarian view. I define positioning as an organic process where the participants in a market make sense of the various companies and products on offer. To invoke Ries and Trout, positioning happens in the prospect's mind. If you look at it that way, “brand” is just one more way for people to make sense of the stuff they might buy. Whatever preconceived notions people have about certain companies (i.e., “brands”) inform their preconceived notions about the products those companies offer. So, product positioning and brand positioning are closely related. People know Apple makes expensive, minimalist, high-performing, beautiful hardware encased in matte-finished aluminum. When Apple rolls out a new product, these broadly held perceptions help market participants to position it. Brands help position products. Most tech companies start their life with a single product. In those cases, the product is the brand is the product. The brand question is often a surprise that pops up when a company launches its second product. …and all of a sudden you’re having a confusing conversation about your purpose, values, brand personality, etc. What if “branding” was just a series of coordinated actions you take to teach the market what to expect from your products? If you look at it that way, the whole thing gets less fraught. I often take it down to two simple definitions. ONE: EXPECTATION “When people think of our brand, they will expect ___________________.” TWO: DISTINCTION “We will stand out by ___________________.” When you define these, challenge yourself to come up with durable, simple, answers that you can use to build baseline market perceptions that make it easier for you to position your current and future products. That’s harder than you might think. But it’s how the biggest brands build strong, durable competitive positions for their products.
