What is Product Positioning?

Good question and I’m sure everyone has a slightly different take on this. From my perspective: 

Positioning = How you solve customers needs and sit in relation to the wider competitive market 

Messaging = How you bring your positioning to life in market 

I like to think of messaging as the tactical way that your positioning comes to life. Your positioning is your foundation and the messaging is the particular angle you’ll take when launching a campaign. Messaging will be used to creatively bring your product's position in market to life. 

I’m so glad you asked this, because it’s actually one of my favorite topics to get on the soapbox about! :)

I think April Dunford defined positioning best when she wrote, “positioning describes the specific market you intend to win and why you are uniquely qualified to win it.”

I'll add my two cents which is that strong positioning means identifying and deeply understanding the most strategic target audience(s) you want to acquire, and picking out a place in their mind where you are the clear winner. All your marketing actions are then designed to successfully achieve that position in that target audience’s mind, influencing them to consider and adopt your product.

Positioning shapes the brand strategy, pricing, naming, product roadmap, partnerships strategy, marketing/advertising campaigns, and more. Which means that positioning is the lynchpin of marketing strategy. If you have weak positioning, even the best marketing execution in the world won’t be successful.

So if positioning is the strategy, messaging is the execution. It’s how you articulate and communicate your positioning, bringing it to life in a way that resonates with the target audience. The focus is on the language — how you describe your unique position in the market, phrasing it in a way that:

• Clearly articulates your unique differentiation
• Uses language that the target audience easily understands and/or uses themselves
• Makes the prospect think or feel positively towards the product/company

This is a big question! I’m assuming we’re talking about new product positioning vs re-positioning an existing product. If you’re working on a mature product, it will be very difficult to change the position of that product in the market.

For a new product, I would research and consider the following perspectives:

• Company vision, narrative, and category - What is the vision for the company? What’s the narrative? Is there a category you’re trying to create or win? How does this product fit into the story of the business?
• Product-market fit - What does the product actually do? What are its key features? What are the use cases? Who is it for? Are the personas known? What does this product do that is 10x better than the next best alternative?
• Competitive positioning - What are the competing products in the space? What are these competing products good at? Is there white space where your product can wedge itself into the market?
• Adjacent offerings and services - Does this product interact with an existing suite of products? Does it come with professional services?
• Ecosystem - How does this product engage partners within your ecosystem? Why should your partners care?

Once you’e done this research, it’s time to put on your Geoffrey Moore hat and build a few 2x2s where you choose the x-axis (key benefit) and y-axis (key differentiation) such that your product is farthest in the upper right corner vs the competition. By this point you should have a pretty good sense of how you might position the product. Draft up some positioning statements and start testing them with sales, with customers, and with analysts.

I like to keep these simple, and just use a single value proposition slide. Especially when it’s for an executive team.

Here are the basic things to include:

• Who is our audience? (customer segment)
• What challenges do they face? (what is the need and the cost of not meeting that need?)
• What is our solution? (a description of your offering)
• How do we solve their problem? (Solution/benefit statement)
• What makes us unique? (Your top 3-5 core differentiators)

Alternatively, if you want something more creative/involved, I recommend also creating a brand narrative/brand anthem doc - a story that follows a “hero's journey” format.

Here's what I like to put into a positioning doc: 

1. What market are we in ? How big is this market (TAM)? What's our serviceable obtainable market (SOM) ?

2. What does the competitve landscape look like? 

2. Who are our customers? (buyer personas)

3. What challenges do they face? (key pain points) 

4. What is our solution? (description of your offering)

5. How do we solve their problems? (solution/benefit statement) 

6. What makes us unique (differentiators) 

From what it sounds like you'll need a positioning doc and a Go-to-market plan which will also incude your marketing and sales plan ( marketing mix, channel partnerships, sales plays etc). 

There are a number of templates available online. My first recommendation is to confirm your CMO's expecation - it's rare for a CMO to *not* have a favorite format for this. 

However, if they are truly asking you to build something up from scratch, there are a few basic elements you need:

• Target audience. Who you are trying to reach. This is both persona (multiple) and firmographic
• Problem and solution. What the customer's core problem is, and how your product/solution addresses it, uniquely
• Positioning statement. This is the core of the document. Two sentences. One that that describes the problem and solution, and for whom (per the above). And a second that starts with "Unlike," that defines your unique selling proposition (USP)
• A message house or framework that identifies the 3-5 key pillars of how you want to deliver the message to this specific audience. This normally looks like a table with a column for each pillar and detail for each. 

That's it. If pressed, you should be able to fit the entire thing on a single slide. You're not defining copy, you're not going deep on features or capabilities. What's the simplest, most differentiating way you can talk about your solution to a specific audience. 

More on that Positioning Statement

There are a number of different models for a positioning statement, but the one I like best is based on Geoffrey Moore's classic "Crossing the Chasm." 

For (target customer)

who (statement of the need or opportunity),

(product name) is a (product category)

that (statement of key benefit — that is, compelling reason to buy).

Unlike (primary competitive alternative),

our product (statement of primary differentiation).

It's a little bit like marketing haiku. It's intentionally rigid and short to really focus your attention on what matters. And it doesn't have to be perfect. You'll iterate on this continuously over the life of your product. 

Positioning is an internal artifact. Messaging is externally facing and brings this positioning to life in various contexts.  I have usually found it very helpful to have a positioning and messaging evergreen document that is dated and encapsulates the following: 1) the positioning for the company/product 2) how to talk about the positioning for the company/product in 25, 50 and 100 words as it might appear at the bottom of a press release for examples 3) any relevant messaging pillars and themes that help enable other stakeholders and agencies on how to bring the messaging to different contexts (web page copy, social copy etc).  

But from what you’re asking about “how to go to market with a particular segment” that sounds more like a GTM strategy that typically I organize by Goal, Strategy, Tactics, Dependencies, Timelines in a Google Doc and then translate the tactics to a spreadsheet of activities, owners, links to artifacts and dependencies to track progress against execution.

Congratulations on getting tapped to write a positioning doc!

Before diving in, I'd do your research:

-Do you already have company-wide or product-wide positioning? If so, do you have hypotheses on how this segment will differ?

-Do you have customers in this segment already? If so, put together a short list of reps, CSMs, and customers you want to interview to validate or disprove these hypotheses

Once you've done this, you can start diving into a doc. I would worry less about the template versus ensuring you can clearly articulate the answers for a few key questions:

• Who is this segment? Not just in relation to your product...what do they really care about? What are they motivated by? What does success look like for them?

• What are their core blockers? What stops them from achieving their goals?

• How are the unique value props your product offers? Be honest about which blockers it can help tackle, and which it cannot. No one likes marketing that says "we do everything for everyone!"

Then, layer in a competitive element - who are all your competitors (direct, indirect, "doing nothing", etc). How is your solution different than everything else in the market?

Once you've documented this, try going back to as many internal and external experts as you can - is it landing? Positioning is a living and breathing document, so as you roll it out (in emails, ads etc) make sure you are tracking results and setting a regular cadence (say, quarterly) to revisit and revise it.

It's a good idea to start with overall product positioning and messaging ("P&M") as a foundation for general or evergreen marketing channels and campaigns. Channel owners can then leverage the guidance to craft channel-specific messaging tailored for each channel and audience that ladders up to the product P&M. 

For feature launches, however, I treat new features (or bundles of features), as separate, thematic launches and develop separate P&Ms to lean into the most relevant customer pain points and benefits and to provide more granular, feature-level messaging. These feature P&Ms, however, all ladder up to the overall product P&M because they are part of the product. Since you have multiple feature-rich products, it sounds like this approach may also work well for you.

Finally, since your team is small, but your mandate is broad, I suggest creating and maintaining an easy-to-digest messaging map from the product to the feature level. We recently did a similar exercise, and it really pays off. Your team and internal partners will thank you, and this will go a long way in driving internal alignment and ensuring a consistent, compelling customer experience. 

Love this question. You want to make sure that you are always telling a story. Storybrand is a great template that I often use. It has 7 elements

A hero

Has a challenge

They meet a guide

Who gives them a plan

Calls them to action

Helps the avoid failure

They succeed in the end

Your overall product or platform should be telling this story above. Any new product launches should map back to this story, but add additional value to customers. You can use the "Three Whys" to help guide you too. Why anything, Why your platform, Why now. 

Your goal as a PMM is not to sell product, it's to help customers solve problems better than other solutions. The product is just the means to an end :)

I think there's a few different aspects of this:

1. Alignment -- There needs to be alignment between your feature and overall product positioning and messaging. If you are sprinting towards a major launch of a notable feature then it should focus on how that capability naturally solves key challenges in the market for prospective buyers. That said, launch and core product positioning shouldn't be different (for the same product line). A launch is an opportunity to drive momentum -- and you can use different messaging to do that, but the positioning should stay the same.

2. Positioning vs. Messaging -- This is talked about all the time in Product Marketing circles. I do view them as different, and positioning is an internal resource that frames the market, the buyer, and where your solution fits. Whereas messaging is the external-facing output of positioning -- it's what prospects will read in a blog post, or on your product page. 

3. Timing/Goal -- It goes without saying that we all have a limited amount of time each day, and the vast majority of PMMs I speak with have a million priorities. So timing, and what your short (and long) term goals are play a factor in this too.

While it's tangential to your question, looking at this through a hierarchy I think makes sense:

1. Company Positioning: This should be the highest level of messaging for the overall company/brand. There should be at least 3 stories that tie up to this: brand narrative, financial narrative, executive leadership narrative.

2. Platform Positioning: I use the term "Platform" here because, especially in most software or SaaS companies there are multiple product lines that tie-up to the overall platform. If this is the case for your company, there should be distinct platform positioning.

3. Product Positioning: This is for overall product lines. During my time at HubSpot, this would have been Marketing Hub, or CMS Hub, as an example. 

4. Product Launches: Again, this shouldn't change overall product positioning (unless it's an all-new product of course), but it can be a timely message in the market.

For at least the first 3, and really all of them, I recommend putting them on a central resource available to the company like Confluence/Guru/GDrive/Etc. By doing so that hierarchy is clear and all customer-facing teams have an easy way to get talk tracks, and supporting assets they need.

Positioning is the precursor to messaging. 

If you don't know who your product is for, what it's good for and how it's different from other products in its space, then it will be very hard to come up with viable messaging. 

Put another way, positioning is the primitive, typically expressed as an internal statement (see question above re: Geoffrey Moore's framework), whereas messaging is a set of derivative assets, typically copy and value statements that help suit the needs of different channels and media (web, print, social, video, on-site activations, etc)

I'd describe positioning as how we want to be perceived in the market, and messaging as the customer-facing language that proves it. But in practice, I've rarely (if ever) had this specific conversation at Momentive outside of PMM: it tends to be pretty marketing-centric. What I've learned from internal stakeholders is that what's most important to them is to be able to look at a messaging document and know what's internal framework vs. something they can use in external-facing materials, so we tend to mark things clearly in those terms when putting a new messaging resource together.

One thing I've seen work is positioning "positioning" as business strategy or a business plan versus marketing "words" we want people to think about and use.

Positioning is the company's strategy — based on research and expertise — for who we're going after (e.g., sales teams) with what category of product (scheduling automation) to solve what problems or address what jobs to be done (qualify, route, and schedule meetings via the marketing website) to achieve a business outcomes (shorten the sales cycle, improve the customer experience in the buying process, generate more eager leads, etc.). Unlike the competition, you can self-serve and launch our product for this in 30 minutes — versus weeks with technical help.

The positioning is the company's strategy for winning. It's not just marketing stuff on a page.

Sure, marketing will do things to tell this story, but the whole company will also rally around the strategy. Product will continue to differentiate us from the competition with better UX, new features, and integrations. Sales will prioritize sales-team buyers. CS will help support and track the business outcomes our customers got excited about.

Messaging, on the other hand, are the words we will all use to talk about the offering, benefits, differentiation, etc. when engaging with customers, creating ads, writing emails, drafting sales scripts, and so on.

Product marketing is often defined as the people who position the products, but I think it's as equally important (especially as you grow bigger) that Product Marketing is also the most cross functional role in marketing. Creating alignment, securing buy-in, and building momentum around a launch is just as important (if not more) as any positioning work you've done. After all what good is a great narrative if no-one put it to use? If you want to ace this there are two things you need to do really well.

1) Leadership buy-in - You need product and marketing and sales leadership to be pretty aligned and give the project the top down support it needs. The best way to do this is to build some sort of prioritization device, that helps select the one or two biggest priorities a quarter.

2) A great roadshow. I love to build a strong narrative and get in front of people and pitching it. The key to getting buy in is usually sharing lots of information and the resources other teams need to execute easy. It also helps if you get them really excited about the launch. I do this by building and perfecting my pitch deck and then going to team meetings across marketing and sales.

Ah, a tricky one! There are a few things that you can do, starting with a core team that you trust to participate in the fluidity that is message development. Typically, this is a small group that can speak to all the core concepts that you need to discuss in detail. At Okta, this was our product management and product marketing team plus a couple of ‘super AE/SEs’ to provide field input.

Once a baseline message has been developed, then it’s best to iterate quickly via testing. For example, we use PulseQA quite a bit to get IT/security feedback on our messaging. Or 1:1 interviews of key reps and customers. You need a couple dozen data points to ensure you’re identifying all the core themes of feedback.

THEN, you’re ready to socialize with the other stakeholders. But you’re coming armed to that conversation with customer/field infused data vs. your opinion.

Two words: customer stories! Product Marketers need to make sure that everyone is united in telling the same story about our product and its value. I always think of it like internal selling. And just like in the field, one of the most compelling ways to convince people is to use customer proof points to validate your position. Whenever I am enabling teams on positioning, I try to incorporate a customer story that revoleves around a few key points:

• What challenges was the customer trying to solve?
• Why did they choose our solution over competitors?
• What quantifiable benefits have they seen after using our product?

That last bit is the most important. When you can use numbers to help validate product positioning, you give people something to get behind. It can be a talking point for sales, or the basis of a great marketing campaign. Let the customers and data tell the story, and alignment will follow.

This is arguably the hardest part of positioning. In my experience, it has to start before you really start drafting positioning and as you're doing research. 

First, talk with a few folks from your sales and CS teams and get a sense of any pain points they're hearing in the market. Gaining early buy-in from Sales will pave the path to making adoption a whole lot easier once positing is written.

Next, once you have positioning drafted get feedback from the same group of individuals from Sales and CS. Ideally you can start to have one or two people even start to test early messaging in calls -- and if you have a technology like Gong or Chorus then you can get direct feedback.

As you go through the positioning approval process there should be executives involved, and there should be buy-in from them to help push adoption.

Lastly, you can drive accountability by rolling out new positioning and enablement assets with a quiz. Getting all leaders bought-in ahead of time will mean they can help make it a priority across their teams, which will ultimately drive adoption.

I know that sounds like a lot, but believe me, it's way easier to start with cross-functional involvement early versus trying to get everyone on-board late in the process and you're up against a deadline.

Competitive posititioning is a core element of product positioning. The primary architecture of brand and product-level positioning comes down to this:

• Audience: Who are you primarily building for and marketing to? 
• Pain/Enemy: What is their biggest pain point or problem?
• Solution: How do you address this problem?
• Differentiation: What makes your approach to solving this problem different and better?
• Urgency: Why is now an important right time to address this issue?

Competitive positioning lives under that differentiation bullet and it's the why behind your whole brand. The sharper and more defensible that is the better. You should not tackle specific competitors in the positioning doc, but you can broadly categorize them. For example, "Unlike clunky enterprise platforms, our platform is built for the way people work today."

When your company only has one product, the product positioning is the company positioning. The next growth phase would be a portfolio of products. Say we are are the professional services cloud with one product for accountants another for consultants another for lawyers and finally one for bankers. Here the value offered by the product can differ to the value of the company or brand in other words. the idea should be 1+1+1+1=5. Finally, when you have multiple portfolios the issue becomes more one of what impact are you having on your community irrespective of your portfolio or product

Ideally you are not basing your overall positioning based solely on how your competitors position themselves. That said, you (or more likely sales) will inevitably be asked for comparisons. The best approach to this is to have a solid set of unique value propositions (UVPs) for your company - these can be product related or include other things like services only you offer or industries you specialize in. Once you have these UVPs agreed on, then you can start to create some competitive positioning materials that relate to these UVPs. But the UVPs should come first.

One framework I've found helpful especially for sales is the MUD framework - what is meaningful, unique and defensible. Your UVPs can then be placed side by side with some competitive positioning in the defensible column. The MUD framework can go into your battlecards or a cheat sheet or whatever else you use to train sales on how to position against competitors. That way the company will be able to talk about your UVPs but also have talking points on how to position those against competitors.

Some key documents that my teams have implemented for competitive positioning are starting with data gathering on points such as: key value props, feature set, target customers, pricing, strengths, customer perception. Partnering with brand and demand gen teams on creative campaign insights and media spend are also helpful to coordinate on. These inputs can then be inputs into frameworks like SWOT matrixes and battlecards for Sales/AM teams or internal one sheeters that can be good alignment collateral across product and marketing.  

- Market Map: Overall visual landscape of our competition. Where does everyone play, where are they moving?

- Battlecards: Tells Sales/CS what to say when delivering competitive positioning to customers.

- Product deep dives: Visual packages for Product teams to help them determine where our opportunities are. 

There are a few documents that I maintain over time:

1. Competitor product releases for the Product team (updated monthly)
2. Competitive battlecards for the Sales team (updated as needed)
3. Win/Loss reporting (updated quarterly-to-semi annually)

Each of these docs helps a specific audience within the company and make sure that they have the knowledge they need to make decisions.

When we do competitive positioning, we try to take a holistic approach, examining companies across numerous areas.

1. We put together a general overview focused on their overall positioning and messaging from their website.
2. We dive a little deeper to look at specific product features and the company’s size to better gauge their offerings and available resources.
3. We also look at their social surfaces, pricing, top clients and existing customers.
4. We also dive into their press, both good and bad, to gauge how they’re viewed publicly and what the overall sentiment is toward them. 

The most important thing here, no matter what the approach, is to have one source of truth, one destination where people can get this information – this way, everyone is on the same page and can easily access the latest findings.

We’ve used Google Docs to merge this information together, but it can be useful to create an internal website or similar destination as well.

I think there are a couple of different docs that I would use, depending on the audience (internal, external) and the competitor (are you ahead, behind)

INTERNAL resources

• Feature comparisons
• "Killer" features that set you apart
• Common objections
• Loaded discovery questions (I love these, questions your reps can use to purposefully attack a weakness)
• Switch stories
• Deal win stories (these are different than switch stories. Dive into how the rep positioned to overcome competitive objections)
• Pricing comparisons

EXTERNAL

To be honest, I started writing this response with the internal vs external lens. I was always taught to take the high road when marketing externally. Your first call deck and messaging should be LOADED with differentiated features and benefits. Picking a fight publically isn't always the best idea. Better to get your reps fired up to bring the fight to each deal.

The only exception is external customer testimonials. We do password protected customer interviews that we can share as references. Customers are much more likely to be blunt and honest when it is a gated asset. 

It really depends on the current understanding of that competitive positioning within my sales team. I usually work with Sales Enablement or frontline Sales Managers to create a bill of materials that would help inform the team on competitive positioning. 

Usually this includes but it varies on who I'm tryin to enable (Account executives, leadership, customer success, technical sales engineers, etc..)

• Competitive battlecards
• Why we win/why we lose messaging + customer stories
• Product differentiation deep dive (in partnership with a Sales/Solutions Engineer)
• A competitive training session hosted by the enablement team

The key with sharing information with the sales team is always around "how much do they need to know right now and what is actually actionable?" Think framing building collateral and education around those two dimensions is helpful in focusing on the right things in the short, medium and long term. As a PMM, you don't want to get in the business of being just a service organization, especially with competitive work. You want to be seen as a consultant/advisor helping the sales team focusing on real signals vs. the noise in the market. 

For distribution, I usually leverage tools like Highspot, Slack and Loom. 

I've seen this done a number of different ways. Typically we have dedicated time with the field to train them on the positioning. You can get buy-in from the head of sales and enablement (if you have one) to schedule a standalone session that you run to help train the field on the positioning. 

If your company already has a standing enablement session (e.g., a monthly sales training time slot), you can use that time, or dedicate a portion of the agenda to this in a Sales All-Hands. 

I've also seen internal email newsletters for sharing key updates or assets with the field. I'd encourage some kind of internal sales wiki where all of this information can live so that once you share the initial positioning, the team knows where they can go to access relevant documents when they need them. At my former company, we used go/links to make it easy to remember where to find the sales wiki and competitive intelligence info. 

Keep it simple and practical. We use a simple battle card format to pull together the most essential details you need at your fingertips to enable competitive conversations. We host it on Seismic so it is easy to search for keywords and find the battle cards. We also do specific training sessions for tier 1 and tier 2 competitors (described above). I’ve also used slack channels to create a conversation around competition and tackle fringe situations effectively with group input. Again, those people on the frontlines are often the best source of insights.

In the traditional B2B Tech world, my experience has been that you need several ways to disseminate your competitive positioning:

• Sales battle cards for your field sales teams and channel partners easily reference;

• Training sessions to go over key competitive differentiation and review your value prop;

• Self-service short videos where you go over competitors and how you win;

• Create a dedicated competitive channel in Slack or MS Teams where field teams can come for information and ask questions;

• Regular enablement sessions where you give field teams a refresher on your competitive positioning;

• Share via email, Slack/Teams, new competitive win stories highlighting customer quotes that reinforce your positioning.

I use a standard product marketing brief for launches that includes competitive positioning. I'll include a section for where we win along with key value props and differentiators. Another way I do this is via regular team enablement syncs, dedicated slack channels, and guru cards. The key is making sure the content is visible, searchable, and referenceable in centralized place that sales uses.

It depends on the competitive dynamics in your market. Are you the market leader or a new emerging alternative? What are the important buying factors in your market and with your buyers? Is price a primary buying consideration (hint: it often is not unless you make it that way)? It's always important to understand how direct competitors and/or alternatives are tackling pricing. You need to determine what your differentiated value is and how you want your brand represented in your market. 

Are you the premium, high quality fully featured solution? Do your customers and the market see you that way? Then you can charge a premium price relative to your competitive alternatives (and understand that you'll be more successful with customers where this matters to them).  

Are you the new market entrant that needs to steal share from encumbants. You might not have 100% of the features as the other guy, but you deliver the 80/20 of what customers are looking for at a much lower price. You won't be able to win every customer that needs all the bells and whistles, but you'll win deals where customers just need - 'good enough'. 

If you focus on pricing to the value that you deliver and can demonstrably show that customers achieve 5-10X more in value than they spend on your solution, then don't focus too much on what your competitors are doing price wise. It's not good for you or your market.

Your pricing inherently reflects the value of your products, and since competitive comparisons will inevitably come up in deals, you have to translate all your competitive research and market understanding into a compelling set of content and enablement for your Sales team so they can sell the "value"/better position your priducts throughout the life of your deal. If this happens primarily when pricing is being discussed, I'd argue that it's a much harder to successfully navigate.

Positioning (which by definition is competitive positioning since it carves out a place in the market where you are the clear winner) is your strategy. It defines who you're for and how you'll win.  As a result, not only pricing and packaging but your marketing strategy, product roadmap, partnership strategy, etc are designed to deliver on that position.

The truth is most pricing problems aren't pricing problems. In fact, they are rarely pricing problems.

They are just the causal impact of poorly understood and/or communicated positioning of a product leading to a lack of conviction and a whole host of downstream issues.

Pricing cannot be set without the Positioning being clearly thought through.pricing is intimately connected to Positioning. 

Knowing the positioning will help you answer the following questions:

1. Is your product a 'tool/widget,' or is it a 'platform'?
2. Is it a vitamin or a painkiller?
3. How is it uniquely different compared to available alternatives?

And based on your answers to these questions is how you will create the packages and pricing in context of your product's positioning.

They go hand in hand. You need to keep a pulse on your competitors pricing & packaging so that you can adjust or create promos/spiffs to support your sales team when needed. That said, you don't buld your pricing & packaging process based on the competition. You should undersand the market - conjoin anaylsis, willingness to pay, price elasticity, value metrics your buyers assign your product and capabilities that are seen as table stakes versus a broad or niche value driver.

You should use this market data (buyers, customers, competitors etc) and your short term business goals to determine your monetization strategy. This strategy will be your north star - letting you say no to any recommendations that don't align to your strategy vs evaluating those that do. 

Packaging is a strategic job. Pricing is more about the math, margins, etc. But they way you bundle aka package your products, has tremendous implications to how your customers perceive your product and evaluate you as a partner. Most buyers want transparency and simplicity.

My biggest learning is that you should make your packaging -- from how you present it on your website to your order form, as simple and clear as possible. That will help you build trust with your buyers/customers and differentiate from the competition (especially those that have tons of add-on/sneaky pricing). 

An example that stands out to me was Steve Jobs’ manifesto on Flash and its security problems. What was fascinating about it was actually Adobe’s response to it. They bought full-page ads in newspapers around the world, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that said “We Love Apple.” I remember thinking it was a bold but weak response, and Flash’s reign ended shortly after. I feel that was an example of not pushing back hard enough, actually.

My favorite example is Adidas video which shoes that yes, a runner can sprint through the desert in Nike shoes -- but a camera man with 50 additional pounds of equipment and wearing Adidas can keep up with him. It strikes the balance between saying, we respect your product and - ours is as good or better. Really clear value, clever approach, not so dimishing as to take away from the credibility or respect associated with Adidas' brand. 

Companies can absolutely straddle the line. It's about solving a new problem, solving a problem differently, and disrupting the status quo. The way to do this is focus on the benefit / new value you are delivering rather than simply tearing down a competitor. We offer extended value (strong) vs. they're not as good as you think they are (weak). There's a new way to think about this (stronger) vs. they're thinking about it wrong (weaker). The Bounty ad in the above blog also does a great job of this - no specific paper towel brand is the problem, any brand that isn't using Bounty technology is. Compelling stuff!

The market is littered with really bad examples of competitive messaging, unfortunately. They usually make their case on technical details that are irrelevant to the prospective customer. 

The best competitive positioning doesn't mention competition. After all, why give them air time? Rather, it uses competitive insights to guide positioning strategy -- and the positioning strategy, in turn, guides salient messaging that is relevant to your customers. 

Make the messaging about the problems they have and the unique ways you solve them. And if you do want to integrate your competitors in your messaging to show clearer differentiation, be careful to not pick fights or alienate customers. Again, make the messaging about something that is relevant to the audience and that you do better. 

My favorite example of this is an oldie but goodie. Rental car company Avis was in second place in its market category but scored its customers loved Avis' customer service. So, Avis launched the 'We Try Harder' advertising campaign as a sneaky way to tout its strength (and, note, they did this without mentioning competition by name).

The easiest way to differentiate yourself is to have a really innovative product and solid marketing to back it up. My favorite example right now is a Klaviyo customer, Magic Spoon. They make low carb/keto diets for people on a diet but wish they weren't. On their website, they even have a tagline "Hold on to the dream." (The dream of eating sugary cereals guilt free.) They have lots of fun cereal flavors you'd associate with your childhood but they're grain free, low carb, etc. For a certain market, their differentiation just hits home with such clarity because it fills a need in such a unique way. Many people love cereal and many people are on keto diets=perfect example of strong differentiation in a niche market. You can find a competitive matrix on their website that compares them to some of the most popular cereal plans across attributes like how much sugar, protein, and carbs.

This is a throw back but on the tech side the Apple "I'm a mac, I'm a PC" ads are a perfect example of this. Apple used actors to portray their mac as their target customer (young, laid back) and pc as how they wanted their competitor viewed (old, old fashioned, not that smart). The dialogue is basically an illustration of Apple's key differentiators. For example, in one ad PC sneezes and Apple asks him if he's ok. PC says "no, I've got that virus that's going around." It's a charming way of pointing out that PC's were more prone to viruses than macs.