Lean Branding

Chapter 10. Brand Reposition

We discussed building a brand story in Chapter 3 and measured how each of this story’s elements played in favor of reaching our conversion goals in Chapter 7. This chapter is all about looking at ways to successfully modify this initial story to reflect what is going on in the marketplace once your product is out there. In a way, repositioning is just adjusting your initial position to the space that you’ve actually come to occupy in your customers’ eyes.

As I’ve discussed throughout the book, we live in an era of brand cocreation. We are not singing solo here. As much as we’d like to, there is no way of controlling our brand’s real position because it is a result of consumers’ perceptions. Nevertheless, we can exert some influence by communicating a brand story that resonates well with our audience. Resonance, the idea that brand messages must connect with consumers’ aspirations, was the central topic of Chapter 7. Put simply: your brand’s positioning is a result of a negotiation between the message you’re sending forth and the way the market interprets that message.

Think about it: a company that sells drinks can invest as many advertising dollars as it wants to position its products as healthy. If a news outlet or competitor comes out with solid research that the drink is not as healthy as previously thought, this brand will be forced to adjust its story to agree with that reality.

Now consider an ecommerce site that starts out positioning itself as ...