Alongside category design, messaging, storytelling, and thought leadership, positioning is where your company claims its strategic seat within the market’s mental map—and, when engineered deliberately, this seat is one competitors cannot easily take.
Ferrari’s recent introduction of the Luce, its first fully electric four-door model, has sparked exactly the kind of controversy one might expect from an iconic brand. Just as the Jaguar rebrand did, and many others before it.
Visual communication is now one of the primary ways buyers judge credibility, understand value, compare options, and decide whether a brand deserves attention.
Each year, research firms such as CB Insights analyze why both startups and new products from mature companies fail. On average, about 80 percent of VC-backed startups fail (and those are the best of the startup world), and somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of new products launched by mature companies also fail. Invariably, the primary reason for failure is “no market need.”
Never confuse the customer. Once, at an advertising agency meeting with our IHG client, one of the agencies admitted that their commercials for Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express were confusing. The stated benefits for both brands in the ads seemed too similar. When asked what the agency’s solution would be, the answer was, “More money behind the advertising.” Of course.
