The battle for the mind: why brand positioning fails more often...

The battle for the mind: why brand positioning fails more often than it succeeds

Brand positioning - and sound brand positioning advice - is at the heart of every serious brand challenge, yet few disciplines are as contested. What is the difference between differentiation and distinctiveness? Is Byron Sharp right that differentiation is a myth, or do Trout & Ries miss the mark? And when does brand purpose become an empty posture? (Spoiler: more often than you'd like.) This analysis tackles those questions head-on.

What once began as a tactical method for standing out in a saturated advertising market has evolved into a complex discipline at the intersection of cognitive psychology, empirical marketing science, and sociological critique. From the pioneering days of Trout and Ries to the scientific revolution of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and the pragmatic synthesis of Mark Ritson: the central question is not only how brands conquer a place in the consumer's mind, but also what the legitimacy and broader societal implications are of that battle.

In this article

The theory: Origins of brand positioning · Brand identity vs positioning vs image · Differentiation vs distinctiveness · Ritson's bothism & the 60/40 rule

The practice: Communication & brand positioning · Static vs dynamic · Distinctive brand assets vs brand meaning · Psychology of brand choice · Brand purpose & capitalism

The cases: Seven brands, seven lessons · The future of brand positioning · Brand positioning advice from BR-ND People · FAQ

5 key takeaways

1. Differentiation (unique reason to buy) and distinctiveness (instant recognisability) are complementary; not rivals.
2. Invest heavily in distinctive brand assets (DBAs): colours, shapes, sounds that make the brand recognisable without thinking.
3. The 60/40 rule by Binet & Field: ~60% brand building, ~40% activation as a budget baseline.
4. Positioning is a derivative of identity and culture; not the starting point. BR-ND People's rule of thumb: 70/20/10.
5. Authentic purpose costs you something. If your brand promise never leads to a tough decision, it's marketing; not a principle.

The origins of brand positioning: from shelf space to headspace

Brand positioning is the strategic battle for a unique, defensible place in the consumer's mind; not on the shop shelf, but in the mental landscape of choices and associations. The roots? The late 1960s. The traditional 'hard sell' was buckling under a tidal wave of commercial messaging. Consumers went deaf to product claims. Something smarter had to emerge. In 1969, Jack Trout introduced the term in his groundbreaking article "Positioning is a game people play in today's me-too market place", published in the trade journal Industrial Marketing (Vol. 54, No. 6, June 1969, pp. 51-55). His fundamental insight was that the battle for the consumer did not take place on the shop shelf, but in the human mind. A smarter battlefield, and considerably cheaper than extra shelf space. Al Ries later joined as co-author; together they published the article series "The Positioning Era Cometh" in Advertising Age in 1972 and the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind in 1981 (Trout & Ries, 1969; Ries & Trout, 1981).

A game played inside the skull, not on the shelf

Trout and Ries argued that the human mind functions as a filtering mechanism to organise the chaos of an over-communicated society. They introduced the concept of the 'product ladder', whereby consumers rank a limited number of brands for each category. The strategic implication was that a brand didn't necessarily need to be 'better', but above all 'different' or 'first' in a specific mental category.

This early school of thought culminated in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (Ries & Trout, 1993), in which concepts such as the 'law of focus' were central: the most powerful concept in marketing is owning a single word or concept in the mind of the prospect. The failure of giants such as RCA and General Electric in the computer industry in the early 1970s served as empirical evidence for their thesis that even enormous resources cannot compensate for a poorly positioned brand trying to compete with an established leader like IBM. RCA's computer division suffered a loss of 250 million dollars; GE's computer division was taken over by Honeywell (Trout, 1971, Industrial Marketing).

From USP to strategic differentiation

Before the positioning era, Rosser Reeves, advertising pioneer at Ted Bates & Company, had already introduced the concept of the 'unique selling proposition' (USP) in the 1940s and 1950s, formally documented in his book Reality in Advertising (Reeves, 1961). The idea was that every brand should communicate a unique benefit that the competition could not offer. The USP marked the pinnacle of the product era, in which functional attributes were central.

In the decades following Trout and Ries, the focus shifted from merely 'being first' to 'being the best at something specific'. This led to the development of complex positioning grids and perceptual maps, on which brands were plotted against competitors based on attributes deemed relevant to the target audience.

Brand identity, positioning and image: marketing's most confused love triangle

The difference between brand identity, brand positioning, and brand image is one of the most misunderstood concepts in marketing: identity is who you are, positioning is how you deploy that in the market, and image is what the outside world makes of it. Ask three marketers to explain the difference and you'll get five answers, at least two involving a Venn diagram. Let's keep it simple.

Identity as internal foundation

Brand identity is the collection of characteristics the organisation defines and projects. It answers a deceptively simple question: "Who are we and what do we stand for?". (Spoiler: most leadership teams need three workshops and a heated dinner to agree.) The corporate identity model of Birkigt and Stadler (1986) describes this as the sum of four elements: the corporate personality, the actual behaviour of the organisation, communication, and symbolism. Identity is relatively stable and forms the authentic core of the brand (Birkigt, K. & Stadler, M.M., Corporate Identity, 1986).

Positioning as strategic interface

Positioning is the bridge between internal identity and the external market - the strategic translator that decides which parts of your story get told, to whom, and against which competitors. According to Kapferer (The New Strategic Brand Management, 2012) and Keller (Strategic Brand Management, 2013), it's the art of emphasising distinctive and motivating attributes in the light of the competition. The peer-reviewed framework of Park, Jaworski & MacInnis (1986) in the Journal of Marketing underpins this trilogy: brands consistently steer towards a functional, symbolic, or experiential need, and that brand-concept choice determines how identity translates into positioning and image. Less a science, more a poker game with your brand's best cards.

Image as external perception

Brand image is the ultimate result in the minds of stakeholders. It is the perception that arises in interaction with the environment and is influenced by experiences, stories, and reputation. Whereas the organisation attempts to control its identity and positioning, the image is determined by the market. Effective positioning minimises the gap between the desired identity and the actual image. And anyone who has ever been through a rebrand knows: that gap can be quite spectacular.

Differentiation vs distinctiveness: what's the difference?

Differentiation is offering a unique reason to buy; distinctiveness is making the brand instantly recognisable - two fundamentally different strategies that have divided marketing science for decades. At the start of the 21st century, a fundamental schism emerged in marketing science. On one side stands the traditional school (Ries, Trout, Kotler, Aaker) that views differentiation as the ultimate goal. On the other side stands the school of 'marketing science', led by Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, which largely dismisses differentiation as a myth and advocates for 'distinctiveness'.

The critique of Byron Sharp

In his influential work How Brands Grow (Sharp, 2010), Byron Sharp argues that most consumers do not perceive brands within a category as fundamentally different. Scientific research shows that the user bases of competing brands have virtually identical profiles. The traditional focus on narrow segmentation and specific brand loyalty is criticised by Sharp as ineffective.

Sharp built upon the law of 'double jeopardy' (a term that sounds like a Netflix thriller, but unfortunately concerns market share), originally discovered by Andrew Ehrenberg and colleagues in the 1960s and later systematically reaffirmed in Ehrenberg, Goodhardt & Barwise (1990) in the Journal of Marketing. This law states that brands with a smaller market share not only have fewer buyers, but that these buyers are also somewhat less loyal. Growth, according to Sharp, comes not from increasing loyalty or finding a unique niche, but from increasing physical and mental availability.

Differentiation versus distinctiveness: the difference in brief

The conflict revolves around the definitions of 'being different'.

• Differentiation = offering a unique functional or emotional reason to buy ("reason to buy"). Goal: convince the consumer.
• Distinctiveness = making the brand recognisable so that the consumer immediately identifies it ("looking like itself"). Goal: be recognised by the consumer.

Sharp argues that marketers should invest their energy in "meaningless distinctiveness". A brand should not try to claim a unique meaning, but should build unique 'distinctive brand assets' (DBAs); colours, logos, typefaces, sounds; that are anchored in the consumer's memory (Sharp, 2010; Romaniuk & Sharp, 2016).

The mathematical foundation: the NBD-Dirichlet model

The Ehrenberg-Bass school is based on the NBD-Dirichlet model of buying behaviour, originally developed by Goodhardt, Ehrenberg, and Chatfield (1984). This statistical model predicts with great accuracy how often consumers buy brands in a category. The conclusion: consumers are 'cognitive misers' who buy what they recognise and what's available, without thinking deeply about positioning. Which explains why nobody ever stands in the supermarket philosophising about the brand values of their fabric softener.

The model is, however, inherently static and has limitations in explaining dynamic market shifts, as acknowledged in later analyses (Scriven, Bound & Graham, 2017, Australasian Marketing Journal). In other words: it tells you what the market looks like, not how to set it in motion.

Mark Ritson's bothism and the 60/40 rule: a pragmatic synthesis

Between the academic trenches of the differentiation believers and the distinctiveness scientists, Mark Ritson has carved out a position he calls 'bothism'. Ritson argues that it is a "foolish battle" and that successful brands need both elements to grow (Ritson, 2023, Marketing Week).

The 'double D' strategy

According to Ritson, distinctiveness is essential for recognition and salience (coming to mind at the right moment), but differentiation is crucial for justifying a price premium. He points to brands such as Apple, which owe their enormous value to both an immediately recognisable design (distinctiveness) and a perceived superior experience and status (differentiation).

Ritson advocates for a radical simplification of positioning. He argues that most marketers 'mess up' their positioning by trying to claim too many attributes. (Sound familiar? If your positioning slide has more than three bullets, it's not a positioning; it's a wish list.) An effective positioning should, according to him, fit on a single slide and contain a maximum of three core attributes (Ritson, 2023, ADMA Global Forum).

The 60/40 rule of Binet and Field

No modern positioning discussion is complete without the research of Les Binet and Peter Field, published as The Long and the Short of It (Binet & Field, 2013, IPA) - arguably the most-cited and least-followed study in advertising. Based on an analysis of the IPA Databank, containing effectiveness data spanning more than 30 years, they found that the optimal balance for sustainable growth lies in a distribution of approximately 60% of the budget for brand building (long term, emotional, broad reach) and 40% for sales activation (short term, rational, focused on direct conversion). Positioning plays a role in both spheres: it provides direction for emotional brand building and offers the rational justification for activation. Binet emphasises that the 60/40 ratio is a baseline, not an iron law; the optimal distribution varies by category, brand size, and situation (Binet & Field, Effectiveness in Context, 2018).

Communication and brand positioning: from megaphone to group chat

If brand positioning is the message, then the communication medium has undergone a complete personality transplant.

The linear era: shout louder, repeat often

In the era of mass media (TV, radio, print), marketers worked according to linear models such as that of Lasswell (1948): "Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect?". This model, published in The Structure and Function of Communication in Society (in: Bryson (ed.), The Communication of Ideas, pp. 37-51, Harper & Row, 1948), provided a framework for the analysis of mass communication. The marketer had full control over the 'output'. Positioning in this context was a static message imprinted in the mind of the masses through repetition.

The interactive era: co-creation and dialogue

Social media flipped the script entirely. The balance of power shifted from the sender to the receiver - and the receiver now has a megaphone of their own. Consumers don't just react to the positioning; they co-create it through reviews, user-generated content (UGC), and public dialogue. A single viral post can do more for (or to) your brand than a quarter of carefully crafted messaging.

This has led to the rise of 'brand-centred entrepreneurship', where the visibility and authenticity of the brand dynamically evolve based on interaction with the community. Brands here function less as authoritative senders and more as storytellers and facilitators of communities.

The S-O-R dynamic: what happens between scroll and swipe

Psychologists Mehrabian and Russell (1974, An Approach to Environmental Psychology, MIT Press) gave us the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model. On social media, it plays out roughly like this:

• Stimuli: Trends, influencer cues, and ads so suspiciously well-targeted they feel less like marketing and more like surveillance. These are the triggers.
• Organism: Social media interaction forms the cognitive and emotional filter where the consumer processes information and assigns meaning. Less 'rational decision-maker', more 'gut-feeling curator'.
• Response: A purchase intention shaped less by product specs and more by social context and perceived brand authenticity. The algorithm brought you there; the brand has to make you stay.

Static vs dynamic positioning: standing still and sprinting

In modern practice, a tension arises between the need for consistency (static) and the demand for relevance (dynamic).

Static positioning: the bedrock of branding

Static positioning is the brand's bedrock: the unchanging messages and visual elements communicated over years through billboards, TV, and print. It's what makes your grandmother recognise Coca-Cola and your toddler point at the golden arches. For new brands, getting that first unmistakable association right is worth more than a thousand clever campaigns.

Dynamic positioning: the living conversation

Dynamic positioning uses real-time data and AI to serve a different message to every viewer. Headlines, images, and offers morph based on who you are, where you've been, and what the algorithm thinks you want next. The upside: hyper-relevance. The downside: if you change your story for every audience, at some point nobody knows what you actually stand for.

Distinctive brand assets vs brand meaning: pretty logo or powerful story?

Every brand positioning strategy eventually hits the same fork in the road: do you invest in distinctive brand assets (the recognisable form) or in substantive brand meaning (the content)?

The power of distinctive brand assets (DBAs)

DBAs are the non-verbal triggers that make a brand pop up in memory before the conscious mind gets involved. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's verdict is clear: these assets are more valuable in the long term than any positioning claim you could craft (Romaniuk, Building Distinctive Brand Assets, 2018). And unlike a clever tagline, they're legally defensible through trademark rights - try trademarking 'innovative solutions' and see how far you get. A powerful DBA such as the 'Tiffany Blue' box or the 'Intel chime' creates cognitive fluency: the consumer doesn't need to think, the brand is immediately recognised.

The necessity of substantive meaning

On the other hand, critics argue that a brand without substantive meaning is merely an "empty shell" - a pretty package with nothing inside worth paying for. Ritson puts it sharply: substantive meaning gives the consumer the "reason to choose". For brands with a premium price or a complex buying journey, a recognisable logo alone won't cut it; the substance has to justify the price tag. Nobody spends €3,000 on a laptop because they like the apple on the lid. (Well, almost nobody.)

The psychology of brand choice: why we choose what we choose

In the practice of brand management, too much value is often attached to the depth of the consumer relationship.

The 'cognitive miser' and the nonsense of Lovemarks

Byron Sharp challenges the "cult of differentiation" by characterising consumers as "indifferent cognitive misers". The idea that consumers enter into a deep, human-like relationship with brands; the so-called 'Lovemarks' theory of Kevin Roberts, former CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi (Roberts, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, 2004); does not survive empirical scrutiny. Academics point out that Roberts provides no methodology for creating a Lovemark and that the theory lacks scientific foundation (Sharp, 2010; Guedes & Lopes, 2013). For most brands, the choice is trivial; consumers buy what they know and what is available. Hoyer (1984) demonstrated empirically in the Journal of Consumer Research that shoppers spend on average less than thirteen seconds on everyday purchase decisions - the cognitive-miser hypothesis received its hard data foundation there. The "nonsense" of positioning lies in overly complex brand missions that are never perceived by the consumer.

The sense of mental shortcuts

The "sense" of positioning, however, lies in creating mental shortcuts (heuristics). With thousands of options, a sharp positioning helps the consumer reduce choice stress. Even if the differentiation is relatively small, it provides a framework for the consumer to rank brands. How that same mechanism plays out in B2B - where decisions are also primarily emotional - is explored in our article on why B2B buyers decide with emotion.

Brand purpose and capitalism: selling dreams or building futures?

Is positioning a cynical instrument of capitalism, or a catalyst for a better world?

The critical view: branding as a mechanism of accumulation

From a critical perspective, branding is inextricably linked with the need to increase consumption and production for the purpose of capital accumulation. Authors such as Naomi Klein (No Logo, 1999) and Adam Arvidsson (Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture, 2006) describe branding as a way to extract surplus value and manipulate consumers into consuming more in an "economy of abundance". It enables multinationals to organise production through complex supply chains while the brand is positioned as an aspirational label. Cynical? Perhaps. But not entirely wrong either.

The progressive view: brand activism and purpose

Opposite the criticism stands the rise of brand activism and brand purpose. Brands are increasingly taking positions on polarised societal themes such as climate change and inclusion. The line between authentic purpose and empty rhetoric is razor-thin - our piece on greenwashing vs. impact branding goes deeper into that. Mark Ritson points out, however, that "purpose" is only truly purpose when it costs the business something; "a principle is only a principle when it costs you money" (Ritson, Marketing Week, 2021). Peer-reviewed research by Gartenberg, Prat & Serafeim (2019) on a dataset of approximately 500,000 employee survey responses across hundreds of US firms shows that companies where purpose combines with clarity structurally outperform on profitability and equity returns.

Successful examples such as Patagonia show that a positioning with genuine purpose can be authentic and contribute to societal well-being. It enables consumers to support economies or worldviews through their purchasing behaviour.

The pitfall of 'woke capitalism'

The danger is painfully predictable: companies that wave the rainbow flag in June while their supply chain reads like a Dickens novel risk more than just bad PR. This is 'woke-washing' - and consumers, armed with Google and a healthy dose of scepticism, are getting alarmingly good at spotting it. Research confirms the intuition: authentic engagement can boost stock market value; performative activism destroys it.

Brand positioning in practice: seven brands, seven lessons

An analysis of real-world brand positioning examples - from Tony's Chocolonely to Kodak - illustrates the nuances of effective and destructive choices.

Success stories: when identity and culture determine the position

• Tony's Chocolonely: Didn't start with a positioning matrix, but with a mission: 100% slave-free chocolate. The unequal bar shape, the bold colours, and the activist tone are not deliberately created DBAs in the traditional sense - they are the logical consequence of an identity that is radically different. Tony's proves that when culture and story are authentic, the positioning sharpens itself. The recent controversy around the actual impact of their cocoa chain simultaneously shows how vulnerable a purpose brand becomes when promise and practice diverge (Changing Markets Foundation, 2024).
• Coolblue: In a category where price and assortment barely differentiate (electronics retail), Coolblue has conquered a position built almost entirely on culture and tone of voice. The delivery vans, the customer service with a smile, the internal language - it is not a positioning strategy on paper; it is an organisational culture that leaks outward. Notably, Coolblue's DBAs (the blue colour, the vans, the wordplay) did not come from a brand asset workshop, but grew organically from a consistently lived identity.
• Veja: The French sneaker brand that refused to advertise conventionally and instead invested in transparent supply chains and fair production. Veja spent zero euros on traditional advertising in its first ten years, while growing into one of the most recognisable sneaker brands in Europe. Their positioning is not communicated; it is visible in the product, the materials, and the radical transparency about costs and origins. Proof that a strong identity and culture have more positioning power than any media budget.

Cautionary tales: when positioning doesn't rest on identity

• HEMA: One of the most recognisable Dutch brands has been struggling with an identity crisis for years. The DBAs are strong (the smoked sausage, the tompouce pastry, the typeface), but the underlying identity has become diffuse after multiple ownership changes and strategic course corrections. Is HEMA a design brand? A budget brand? A food brand? The distinctiveness is there; the differentiation is getting lost. HEMA illustrates what happens when recognisable brand assets are in order, but the identity and culture behind them are no longer clear. The assets become empty shells.
• WeWork: Invested billions in positioning itself as a 'community company' and even a 'state of consciousness'. The problem was not the positioning itself, but that the internal culture - characterised by excessive spending, questionable leadership, and a toxic work environment - was diametrically opposed to the external narrative. When the S-1 filing in 2019 revealed the financial reality, the house of cards collapsed. WeWork is the ultimate proof that positioning without cultural foundation is not just ineffective, but destructive.
• Tropicana's redesign (2009): PepsiCo replaced Tropicana's iconic orange-with-straw packaging with a minimalist design. Within two months, sales dropped by 20%, a loss of approximately 30 million dollars. Consumers literally could not recognise the product on the shelf. It is one of the sharpest examples of what happens when you discard distinctive brand assets - even if the new design looks 'more modern'. PepsiCo reverted to the original within weeks (Zmuda, 2009, Advertising Age).
• Kodak: Didn't fail due to a lack of innovation (they had invented the digital camera as early as 1975), but due to the inability to detach the internal culture and identity from the analogue world. The positioning as 'Kodak moment' was iconic, but the organisational culture was so deeply rooted in film production that the digital shift was sabotaged from within. A positioning cannot survive when the culture behind it lives in a different era.

The future of brand positioning

The evolution of brand positioning reveals a movement from one-sided power to shared meaning. Although the early insights of Trout and Ries remain relevant, they have been supplemented by the data-driven laws of marketing science.

The modern marketer: part tightrope walker, part jazz musician

A successful positioning strategy requires mastery of opposites:

1. Consistency versus agility: Building unchanging DBAs while remaining relevant in social conversations.
2. Distinctiveness versus differentiation: Ensuring immediate recognition while also providing a relevant reason for purchase.
3. Profit versus purpose: Pursuing financial results through an authentic societal role.

Three frontiers worth watching

This analysis has focused on the established debate, but three emerging forces deserve mention. Category design - the school of thought championed by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson and colleagues in Play Bigger (2016) - argues that the most valuable brands don't position themselves within existing categories but create entirely new ones. Think Salesforce defining 'cloud CRM' or Airbnb inventing 'home-sharing'. When you design the category, you don't need to fight for position within it; you own it by default. It's the ultimate expression of Trout's original insight, taken to its logical extreme.

AI and algorithmic decision-making present a more existential question. As AI agents increasingly mediate consumer choices - from recommendation engines to autonomous purchasing - the concept of 'mental availability' takes on a new dimension. If a machine is choosing your toothpaste, does your brand need to live in a human mind at all, or in a training dataset? The brands that thrive will likely need to be optimised for both human recognition and algorithmic legibility - a dual challenge that neither Sharp nor Trout could have anticipated.

Finally, the non-Western perspective. Nearly every framework in this article originates from Anglo-Saxon marketing science. But the fastest-growing brands in the world - Shein, Temu, TikTok-native D2C brands - operate according to fundamentally different logics: speed over consistency, algorithmic virality over carefully crafted DBAs, and price disruption over brand premium. Whether these models are sustainable or a temporary arbitrage remains to be seen, but ignoring them is no longer an option for any serious positioning strategist.

Final reflection

Positioning - and the brand positioning advice that supports it - isn't a one-off exercise, but a living web of perceptions. Those wanting to understand how brand positioning and internal culture reinforce each other will find an additional framework in our piece on brand-led culture. And those who want to push on to what comes after positioning - the architecture of the entire portfolio - will want to read One brand, unless… the little green booklet on brand portfolio 2026. Now that algorithms have decentralised power, the essence has returned to basics: delivering a consistent and meaningful experience that helps the 'cognitive miser' choose. Be first, be different, or be indelibly recognisable. And if you can be all three: you know where to find us.

Brand positioning advice from BR-ND People: positioning is overrated

BR-ND People's vision on brand positioning: identity and culture are the foundation; positioning is a derivative - not the starting point. Let's be honest: positioning is overrated. Not unimportant - but overrated. In the consultancy world, 'positioning project' is one of the most sold products, and that is precisely the problem. Too many organisations invest months in perfecting a positioning matrix, only to discover that nobody internally knows what to do with it. The slides are beautiful. The behaviour doesn't change.

Our conviction at BR-ND People is that positioning is an outcome, not a starting point. The sequence we follow is deliberately different from the classical approach:

1. Start with identity. Not with the market, not with the competitor, but with the question: who are we really and what do we believe in? An attractive, authentic brand identity is the foundation on which everything rests. Without that foundation, every positioning is a façade that collapses at the first headwind.
2. Build culture. Organisational culture is the engine that converts identity into behaviour. A brand that doesn't internally live what it externally promises is positioning itself towards irrelevance - regardless of how sharp the proposition looks on paper. Culture is not an HR project; it is brand strategy.
3. Then positioning. When identity and culture are in order, positioning becomes almost self-evident. It is the translation of who you are into how you relate to the market. You need to do that sharply, absolutely - but it is a derivative, not an origin.

Where we wholeheartedly agree with the Ehrenberg-Bass school: invest heavily in distinctive brand assets. Recognisable colours, shapes, sounds, and visual codes that reflexively activate the right brand in the consumer's mind. DBAs are the connective tissue between identity and market; they make the brand findable without the consumer needing to think about your positioning promise.

The irony is that brands that truly have their culture and identity in order often effortlessly occupy a sharp position. Not because they spent months on a positioning workshop, but because they know who they are - and show it consistently. Positioning as a discipline isn't going away. But the obsession with it could do with being dialled down a notch.

Why 70/20/10? The evidence is in this article

The ratio isn't pulled from thin air. Look at the case studies above. Every success story - Tony's Chocolonely, Coolblue, Veja - follows the same pattern: none of them started with a positioning workshop. They started with a clear identity and a culture that lived it, breathed it, and bled it into every touchpoint. The positioning didn't need to be invented; it emerged as a natural byproduct of knowing who they were. Every cautionary tale - HEMA, WeWork, Kodak - follows the inverse: a positioning crafted in isolation from the culture, which collapsed the moment reality caught up with the narrative.

This pattern maps directly onto the academic literature. Sharp's research confirms that consumers respond to recognition, not to positioning claims - which is why 20% goes to distinctive brand assets. And Ritson himself argues that if your positioning doesn't fit on a single slide, you don't have one - which suggests the formulation is a small act of articulation, not a large act of creation. The heavy lifting is the identity and culture work that comes before it.

Most consultancies reverse this ratio. They open with the positioning question - 'How should we position ourselves in the market?' - and work backwards to identity. We've seen the results, time and again: beautifully crafted positioning decks that nobody in the organisation can translate into daily behaviour. The slides get applause in the boardroom and gather dust in the drawer. Our 70/20/10 reflects where the actual strategic work lives: in the unglamorous, sometimes uncomfortable process of figuring out who you really are, aligning the culture around it, and only then articulating how you show up in the market. If that last step is hard, the problem was never the positioning.

Client stories

Brand positioning in practice - see how these organisations found their strategic position:

• Danone: building a foundation of trust through deep listening
• TNO: uniting brilliant minds under one resonant story
• Santeon: transforming healthcare together as one national brand
• Nextview: from many voices to one shared heart
• ANWB Reizen: finding one heart in a family of travel brands
• Kalkman: fueling a dream from the heart
• Kyden: when three paths become one powerful force

Frequently asked questions about brand positioning and brand positioning advice

We already have a positioning, but nobody in the company can repeat it. What's going wrong?

That's not a communication problem; it's an identity problem. If employees can't articulate the positioning, chances are it was devised on the organisation rather than from within the organisation. An effective positioning is rooted in the culture and daily practice. If the team doesn't recognise the positioning as 'who we are', it has become a marketing slide rather than a compass. Our approach: go back to the identity. What are the stories employees themselves tell when they explain why they work here? That's where your real positioning lives.

Is positioning even still relevant in a world of algorithms and personalisation?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yes, but differently than twenty years ago. Algorithms increasingly determine which message reaches which consumer, causing the classic 'one message for all' positioning to lose its power. But precisely in a world of infinite variation, the core becomes more important: who are you as a brand, regardless of channel? Distinctive brand assets (colours, shapes, tone) become more relevant, not less - they are the only thing that remains recognisable when the message varies per person. The positioning formulation itself is less sacred; the identity and recognisability behind it are all the more so.

Our brand is too small for big campaigns. Does brand positioning still work?

Absolutely, but not in the way most marketing textbooks describe. Sharp's model of mental and physical availability is built on data from large FMCG brands. For smaller brands, the lever is different: invest in a sharp, recognisable identity that consistently comes to life in every touchpoint - from proposal to email signature to customer service. Small brands cannot afford inconsistency. That's precisely why culture as a strategic foundation is so powerful: it costs no media budget, but it does require discipline.

How long before a new positioning shows measurable results?

That depends on what you're measuring - and on your ability to resist the urge to panic after quarter one. Internal effects (employee engagement, communication consistency, recruitment power) are often visible within three to six months. External effects on brand awareness and preference typically require twelve to eighteen months of consistent execution. Brand equity effects on pricing power and market share? Two to three years minimum. The pitfall: changing course too early because results seem 'disappointing'. Consistency is the most underrated variable in brand strategy; impatience the most common cause of death.

What is the difference between differentiation and distinctiveness?

Differentiation means your brand offers a unique reason to buy - a substantive difference from competitors. Distinctiveness means your brand is immediately recognisable through visual or auditory elements (colours, logo, sound, tone of voice), without the consumer needing to think about it. Byron Sharp advocates distinctiveness as the primary growth strategy; Mark Ritson argues you need both. Our experience: you build distinctiveness through strong brand assets; differentiation emerges organically when identity and culture are in order.

What if our competitor says exactly the same thing as we do?

Then the positioning says too little about who you are and too much about the category. When two brands make the same claims, there is no differentiation - only a contest over who shouts loudest. The solution is not an even cleverer tagline, but an honest conversation about what truly makes your organisation unique. That rarely lies in the product (products are copyable), but in the culture, the people, and the way you work. No competitor can copy your culture.

We want to reposition, but we're afraid of losing existing customers. How do we approach that?

That fear is justified - and at the same time often the reason brands cling too long to an outdated position. The key is evolution, not revolution. Preserve the distinctive brand assets your customers recognise (colour, shape, tone), but gradually shift the substantive meaning. Tropicana showed what happens when you discard recognisability in one blow. Kodak showed what happens when you don't move at all. The balance lies in safeguarding your visual and cultural recognisability while renewing the story behind it.

When is brand purpose authentic and when is it a marketing trick?

The litmus test is simple: does your purpose cost you anything? If your brand promise never leads to a difficult decision - no revenue you leave on the table, no partnership you decline - then it's not purpose but a communication message. Authentic purpose is anchored in behaviour and policy, not in a campaign. It must be visible in your supply chain, your HR policies, and your financial choices. Not just in your annual report.

Should we position first and then build the culture, or the other way around?

The other way around. Positioning that isn't built on culture will inevitably be unmasked - by employees who don't recognise the story, by customers who don't experience the promise, by journalists who expose the gap. Start with the question of who you are (identity), translate that into how you work (culture), and only then articulate how you relate to the market (positioning). It's tempting to start with the outside, but the inside determines whether it holds.

Scientific sources

Grounding for this article; peer-reviewed academic research (Princeton, Stanford, Harvard Business School, Wharton, Columbia Business School, Oxford Saïd, HEC Paris, Dartmouth Tuck, USC Marshall, UT Austin McCombs, London Business School, Ehrenberg-Bass / University of South Australia) and applied research with primary data (IPA).

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Applied research with primary data

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Written by: Alexander Koene & Kim Cramer PhD