Positioning Your Brand in the Mind of the Consumer

It is becoming obvious that advertising is entering a new era where Strategic Brand positioning supported by outstanding creativity is the key to success. There is virtually an information overload, whether of news, entertainment or branding. To conquer a significant mind-space of its target audience in this over communicated world, a product must create a distinct position in the consumer's mind. As a result, brand positioning has become the buzzword of marketing people today, and it is needed for that coveted mindshare.

Positioning has changed the way the advertising game is being played. The basic approach is not creating something drastically new and different but modifying what is already there in the mind. And to be able to link the connections that already exist.

In the era of brand positioning, it is not enough to invent or discover something new. It may not even be necessary to do so. However, you must be the first to get into the prospect’s mind. One of such success stories is IBM. Many people may not know, IBM didn’t invent the computers. But IBM was the first company to build a computer position in the mind of the prospect.

Positioning is how you place your offerings in the prospect’s mind. But it has to be realistic. There are countless brands today and we are over communicated all the time right from early morning newspapers to hoarding boards that we come across on the road to television commercials which appears between our favorite episodes in the evening. In this scenario, it is always challenging to construct a message which is simple and sharp to the point. And at the same time, we should concentrate on the prospect’s perception and expectations rather than concentrating on our own product. Therefore, it is essential to communicate the solution which your product solves rather than the product itself and occupy certain attribute which has emotional or rational connect with your brand.

It is thus imperative that a brand must be able to create a certain position in the consumer’s mind. And to create such a distinct position you must be able to map your own strengths and weaknesses versus your competitor‘s brand positioning in the marketplace.

It’s been more than 25 years since marketing guru duo Al Ries and Jack Trout published their marketing classic and introduced the concept of positioning which has acquired the stature of the “Bible” for successive generations of advertising professionals like me.

The Positioning Risks

It is too sad to see many companies still embarking on marketing and advertising activities as if the competitor’s position did not exist at all. They advertise their products and brands in a vacuum and are disappointed when their messages fail to bring them the desired results. For them, perhaps the easiest way to get into the mind of the prospect is be there first and not give any reason not to switch to any other product. Obviously, the harder way is not being the first!

Because of the hustle and bustle of the products and promotions, a good product or even a good plan and a creative commercial without the right positioning and connect can no longer ensure success in the market place. The average consumer is not rational, he is emotional. And advertisements are supposed to respect their emotions and connect emotionally.

A good advertisement amplifies the consumers’ expectations about your product. But the message should somehow link to the prior information and knowledge of your product and the domain that the consumers have. The positioning of your products in the mind is in the form of a ladder, where each product and its communication occupy a particular step. To establish your position, you need to dislodge the position occupied by the competitor. The new information shall relate to the old. So in that sense, you need to understand your competitor’s position enormously.

Five quick steps towards brand positioning are:

Identify your direct competitors
Map how each of these competitors are positioning their offerings i.e., cheapest, premium, largest or No.1 etc
Compare your own proposition with these competitors to identify differentiation
Develop a distinctive positioning concept for your brand
And finally communicate your value proposition across all touch points in the consistent manner

Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of your current and potential customers.

Engaged Your Consumer

When you engage your consumer you build goodwill and ultimately you become a destination for them. Consumer engagement is a primary driver of business success today. It shows that fully engaged consumers buy more, stay with you longer, and are more profitable to retain than creating new customers. Hence, you should always look for opportunities to engage your consumers.

Business Driven Creative Ideas

Every business is fighting every second to get its share of noise in the marketplace. These new playing grounds demand that brands create constant engagement and lasting connections with their consumers. The best way to build those connections is to bring to life an idea so powerful that it is capable of persuading consumers to actively pursue a relationship with the brand, not vice versa.

Nepal is in the state of positive evolution with the youth full of aspiration

Not just because, a nation has an ambition to progress faster after over two decades of turmoil and many landmark changes that encompasses last few years. But, because of its youth force with a majority of population with median age of 23 years, and whose aspirations are higher than the national growth rate.

All Marketers are Storyteller

Make no mistake. There is a whole new way of doing marketing. Marketers must now, going forward, abandon any attempt to communicate nothing but the facts, and must instead focus on what people believe and then work to tell them stories from their brand perspectives that add to their perspectives. It’s a fundamental shift in the paradigm of how ideas spread. Either you are going to tell stories that spread, or you will become irrelevant to them. It is significant to note here that the stories must highlight the key brand promise and uphold the brand personality to make it yield the desired result. For example, a story of a healthcare brand cannot be comic and that for a children’s brand cannot be too serious. They must also uphold the promises of the brands they are depicting.

Nepal is in the state of positive evolution with the youth full of aspiration

#Nepalisation - the only way ahead

The much discussed clean-feed policy has been effectively implemented since 23 October 2020 with most foreign channels now either beaming without advertisements in-between or have been on halt till they are technically able to telecast without advertisements. As per the television signal distributors, many of these foreign channels are already preparing to be back soon without advertising in-between once that becomes technically feasible.

Clean feed policy in Nepal - a blessing in disguise for Indian brands

We just celebrated National Paddy Day, the festival also named Ropain Diwas, DhanDiwas, and Ashadh Pandra, celebrated on 15th of Ashadh (usually end of June or early July) annually to increase rice production. It’s a national event where people across socio-economic strata join hands and celebrate in unison.

A New Improved Advertising Dawn in Nepal

Brands like Asian Paints, Dabur, Tata, Maruti, Bajaj, Himalaya, Britannia, Parle, Saffola or Set Wet, in recent times, have become household names in Nepal. Consumers started trusting Indian brands more also because of the advertising spillover that they got from Indian GEC channels like Star, Zee, Sony, Colors and others that are being beamed into the country over the period of time. For the last few decades, these channels beamed the same India feed to all its immediate neighboring countries, including Nepal, which meant that advertising content which was meant and produced for the Indian market was also being viewed in our part of the world.

Positioning Your Brand in the Mind of the Consumer

Ujaya Shakya

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