The Question Most Brands Can't Answer
Why should someone choose you over the alternative?
Not why should someone want what you offer — why specifically you, rather than the next option in the category.
When I start brand strategy work with a new client, this is usually the first question I ask. And the answers fall into three categories:
Category 1: Features. "We're faster. We have more integrations. Our product has [specific capability] that competitors don't." Features matter, but they're easy to copy and hard to own exclusively. Feature-based positioning has a short shelf life.
Category 2: Credentials. "We've been in business for 25 years. We have 500 employees. We've worked with Fortune 500 companies." Credentials establish legitimacy but don't differentiate. Your 25 years don't solve the customer's problem.
Category 3: Vague claims. "We're the most innovative. We care more about our clients. We deliver results." These are the claims that every competitor makes. They're indistinguishable and therefore useless.
What I'm looking for, and what genuinely differentiated brands have, is something harder to articulate: a specific reason why this type of customer with this specific problem would be better served by this company than by anyone else in the market.
That's positioning. It's specific, defensible, and meaningful to the right customer.
Why Positioning Is Not a Tagline
The most common misunderstanding about positioning is that it's a communications problem — something you fix by finding the right words, the right tagline, the right "brand voice."
Positioning is a strategic problem. The communications are downstream of the strategy.
A well-positioned brand knows: which customers it serves (specifically, not broadly), what problem it solves for those customers (precisely, not generally), and why it solves that problem better than alternatives (defensibly, not aspirationally).
A poorly positioned brand has a tagline but not answers to those three questions.
When I worked with Häagen-Dazs on their digital strategy, the positioning question wasn't "what should we say about our ice cream?" It was "for whom is Häagen-Dazs the only choice, and what does that mean for which conversations we should be in?" The answers to those questions shaped the content strategy, the keyword targeting, the brand partnership approach — everything downstream.
The Positioning Framework
The framework I use is built around five questions. Answering them in sequence produces a positioning statement that's actually useful:
1. For whom? Who is the ideal customer for this brand, defined specifically enough that people who don't fit would self-select out? Not "businesses" or "adults who enjoy [category]" — but a specific description of the customer type, life stage, problem context, and decision-making mindset that makes this company the right choice.
2. In what context? When does the target customer most acutely experience the problem this company solves? What triggers the need? What alternatives do they consider? What would happen if no good solution existed?
3. What outcome? What specific, meaningful outcome does this company deliver? Not features — outcomes. The customer doesn't want an SEO audit. They want search revenue. The customer doesn't want a brand strategy document. They want to be the automatic choice in their category.
4. Why believably? What makes this company credible as the delivery vehicle for that outcome? Specific evidence: cases, credentials, mechanisms, proprietary advantages. This is the answer to "why should I believe you can deliver this?"
5. Against what alternative? What would the customer do if this company didn't exist? The relevant comparison set shapes how the value proposition needs to be stated. Against full-service agencies, X Network's positioning emphasizes depth of specialization. Against in-house teams, it emphasizes accumulated client diversity. The same underlying capability requires different positioning language depending on the competitive frame.
How to Run the Positioning Audit
Most established brands have positioning that evolved organically and has never been systematically examined. The audit process:
Step 1: Ask ten of your best clients why they chose you. Not "what do you like about working with us" — "why did you choose us instead of the alternatives?" The language clients use to describe their own decision is frequently more accurate and more useful than the language the internal team uses to describe themselves.
Step 2: Ask ten prospects who chose a competitor why they didn't choose you. This is harder to get but more valuable. The reasons you lose are clearer signals about positioning gaps than the reasons you win.
Step 3: Map the competitive landscape: what positions are already occupied in your market, and what's genuinely available? Positioning in a crowded space requires finding the specific territory that isn't already owned.
Step 4: Draft a positioning statement using the five-question framework. Test it against your best clients: does it describe why they chose you? If it doesn't, it's either not accurate or not specific enough.
Positioning for Abbott Laboratories and Apple Music
The challenge when working with major brands is that positioning questions are politically loaded. Everyone in the organization has an opinion about who the brand should be, and those opinions frequently conflict.
What I've found useful across brand engagements at the scale of Abbott or Apple Music: separate the descriptive positioning work (what is the brand's current position, as established by evidence) from the prescriptive positioning work (what should the position be, and why).
The descriptive work is less politically contentious because it's based on evidence — customer research, competitive analysis, search data, media analysis. It's harder to argue with what the data shows.
Once you've established the honest current position, the prescriptive work — which requires strategic decisions about where to move — has a shared evidence base that makes the conversation more productive.
The most common finding in brand positioning audits: the brand's positioning in the mind of existing customers is narrower and more specific than the organization believes it to be. The internal team sees the full breadth of the offering. Customers have slotted the brand into the specific niche where they personally encountered it.
This is often an asset, not a problem. Owning a specific position clearly is more valuable than broadly claiming multiple ones weakly.
Key Takeaways
- Positioning answers "why you, not them" for a specific customer with a specific problem — it's a strategy, not a tagline
- Feature-based and credential-based positioning are insufficient — both are easy to match and don't explain why a specific customer should choose you
- The five positioning questions: for whom, in what context, what outcome, why believably, against what alternative
- Audit through client interviews — the language clients use to describe their own decision is more accurate than internal brand language
- The descriptive audit precedes the prescriptive strategy — establish the honest current position before deciding where to move
- Owning a narrow position clearly is more valuable than weakly claiming a broad one — specificity creates real differentiation