Positioning & Brand

a good competitive analysis is like a map of the land you’re trying to travel through: Where are the easy paths? Where’s the rough going? How can we get from here to there, and what will help us make our way? After all, the more you know about where you’re traveling, the better decisions you can make when you get there.

a simple, reductive truth: your brand is just a person, talking to other people, about something you’re both interested in.

Branding makes up all the spoken and unspoken signals about who you serve, how you operate, and how you’re different from everything else out there. All together, that’s the brand.

I like to think of brand marketing as branding gone outbound, involving outward-facing campaigns that drive conversation and action so that the audience better recognizes the product and understands its identity.

Branding is often associated with logos and guidelines—visuals, tone, and style—but really it’s a holistic concept that encompasses a company’s public facing element

You have a brand (e.g. perceptions, associations, a reputation) whether you’re building it with intention or not.

Let’s define (brand, branding, and brand marketing):

1. Everything about your business that a prospect or customer sees makes up your branding. You actively control this.


2. How you choose to get that “everything” to the prospect or customer is your brand marketing. You actively control this.


3. Everything a prospect or customer thinks about you is your bra

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Think of narratives as a layering process:

1. Start with your value propositions to clarify what makes your brand unique.


2. Map these to relevant CEPs to anchor your messaging in real buying situations.


3. Use consistent themes and stories to build memory links that stick.