Brand Positioning

The cheapest brands are "positioned" at the unreachable shelf

The specific niche in which the brand defines itself as occupying in the competitive environment. Positioning addresses differentiating brand attributes, user benefits and target segments, singly or in combination.

The distinctive position that a brand adopts in its competitive environment to ensure that individuals in its target market can tell the brand apart from others. Positioning involves the careful manipulation of every element of the communication mix.

What a Brand is & What a Brand is Not

A brand differentiates products and services that appear similar in features, attributes and possibly even benefits. What makes Surf Excel better than Ariel? What makes Tapal better than Lipton? It is all the power of branding. A brand is nothing but a single concept or an idea in the minds of the consumers. The stronger the perception the stronger would be the brand.

A brand is not a tagline like “Connecting people”

A brand is not a symbol like that of a blue maple of Telenor
A brand is not a shape that of Coke bottle
A brand is not a spokesperson like Imran Khan for Shaukat Khaum
A brand is not sound like Mobilink’s latest advertising campaign jingle – “Hum Bolain Mohabbat Ki Zabaan”

A brand is not an actual product or service like Rose Petal tissues or Air Blue.

A tagline, symbol, shape, spokesperson, sound and an actual product or service all help bring the brand to life and into consumers’ streams of consciousness but in reality, they are simply well-executed marketing and selling tactics.

Misconception about Brand & Branding

Branding is a relatively new concept which was developed in the 1980s. The concept was adopted much later by the companies in Pakistan. It was initiated by the multi-national companies in the country. Despite a lapse of almost two decades, many business executives and even marketers are either unfamiliar with or lack the precise understanding of what a brand is and what exactly is branding. Simply giving a product or a service a name or a logo does not make it a brand. Chambers dictionary defines a brand as a mark burnt into the skin of an animal. However, simply imprinting a mark or labeling a good or a service does not make a product or a service a brand.

A Brand is Born

A brand is an intangible but a critical component of what a company stands for.

A consumer does not generally have a relationship with a product or a service. However, he or she may have a relationship with a brand. In part, a brand is a set of promises. It implies trust, consistency and a defined set of expectations.

The strongest brand in the world owns a place in the minds of the consumers and when it is mentioned, almost everyone thinks of the same associations. Examples: Herbal Essence helps attain organic pleasure; Head & Shoulders shampoo helps clear dandruff; Fair & Lovely helps enhance beauty and achieve a fairer complexion. Conversely, certain words connect the consumers back to the brand. Example: one-quarter moisturizing cream leads one to think of Dove; aiming a higher name in stardom would make one think of Lux since it is positioned as brining out stars in its consumers.

Birth of the Branding Concept

Branding is a rather new concept: a single, seemingly innocuous idea conceived by the strategists Al Ries and his wife, Laura Al Ries in the mid-1980s. They believed that successful companies produced brands instead of products, that is, brands were intangible and existed only in the minds of the consumers