THREAD: Been thinking about positioning recently, I think the problem people have with it is not recognising it's a tool for focus. It doesn't have to be "a position to own" because we're beyond that... really. It's about taking -any- stance because so many businesses take all.

What I mean by this is the generic "We stand for integrity, innovation and creative" statements by 90% of businesses. Which really means they just want to fit in, rather than standing out (distinctiveness)

A good example of a position (focus) is something like this:

We've found compared to our competitors, most people value our speed of service. So we will weave that feedback into our advertising and marketing. Because clearly, people value it.

That's not an academic form of "positioning" but a realistic, simple one.

The error is often in positioning in a way everyone else does, the other extreme is believing you own a position outright. Hence why, positioning properly, in my view of practicality... is about feeding in customer views, and using those positives to build into comms.

In most cases, it's "what is your business... in your opinion" rather than "what is your business... in your customer's opinion" good marketing really just turns these around. Outside to inside, not inside to outside.

Now, big brands and academia have these massive battles over positioning... distinctive vs differentiation (snore) but the reality is they all have a place, and all kind of blend in together. It's up to good marketers to decipher how those concepts are used practically.