Positioning for Professionals - Exploding Myths Part 3

In the final part of Positioning for Professionals, Lorraine and Mark knock down the last five positioning myths: 11) All clients are good; 12) full-service exists; 13) focus is limiting; 14) more means more; and 15) the middle is safe. Find out why these myths are simply not true, and what you can do about it. Mark also laments the "expiration" of so many great brands who have lost their positioning way. 

Spend 30ish with the positioning duo as they discuss everything marketing, advertising, and positioning!

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is the exploding myth of positioning, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, how goes it?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Good. I feel like I'm exploding, right? With what? I have no idea.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, it looks like you're up at Bear Lake now.

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, we are at Bear Lake. We stayed an extra couple days. We had a painting marathon. I think I painted. Painted for four days. I was going to say something, use an expletive, but caught myself.

Mark Vandegrift
Very good. We don't want to be filtered by the podcast gods that are out there. 

Well, this is our part three of exploding myths from Positioning for Professionals from Tim Williams' book. And we have already covered myth one through ten in our part one and part two, and we'll go over those in a second. But before we do that, Lorraine, I have an observation for you.

So, you know that I've taught recently at local colleges and I do positioning training on a regular basis. And we've always used that positioning test that you created. And if you recall on the left side is a concept and on the right side is actually a category. And so, you know, example of that is overnight delivery for the concept. On the right hand side, the generic, if you will, we have things like search engine.

And what struck me recently was that our young people, when I teach, whether they're in college or just out of college, they're really losing connection to the positions of these companies that we almost have put in our hall of fame for positioning. And it strikes me that so many of these companies have lost the comprehension that every day a new audience member is born, and that they have to keep on keeping on. We always say branding is boring business, but they are losing their once easily identifiable positions with our younger groups. 

Let me give you an example. I just used overnight delivery. What do you think they answered today?

Lorraine Kessler
I don't know.

Mark Vandegrift
Amazon. Isn't that interesting? Instead of FedEx, of course. And, you know, we grew up with the fast talking salesmen when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight. And we knew exactly who owned overnight delivery. Of course, FedEx got away from that. And what's interesting to me about the answer of Amazon is how many things actually show up overnight with Amazon. Of all the Amazon you've ordered, how much show up overnight.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, 5%.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. So, if you asked me what they were aiming for, they'd probably want to say, well, we're really aiming for same day delivery because I think that's Jeff Bezos' goal. But I have things show up in three weeks or I've had things take two months. In fact, it shows up. I'm like, what did I order? And then I go, yeah, that was two months ago.

Lorraine Kessler
I'm so glad you said that.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. So, but, you know, rather than perceiving it as the largest online marketing, or online products, they perceive it as delivery because they, in absence of anything else, that's what comes to their mind. So, I think another one that we were talking about and it wasn't easily perceived was: the ultimate driving machine. And now there's one where they just did a Super Bowl commercial about the ultimate driving machine in BMW.

I guess give me your perspective on what is going wrong or do we need to just adjust? What, what do you think, Lorraine?

Lorraine Kessler
First, I think that test was connecting a concept, a positioning concept, to a brand, not a category, right? I think you said category.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, no, the left side is kind of what we would call the attribute or some of the other ways to differentiate versus the right side of it is actually the category. So like search engine or copier or one of those. So, if you remember the positioning test, left side was one thing.

Lorraine Kessler
Okay, but it's to come up with a brand. That's the idea to connect to whatever the concept is, whether it's a category or a position, a strategic position and a category if you're the leader and you're first, that is your position. 

So, I just want to make it simple. It's like, what does, what brand does this idea connect with? Right. 

Well, I think there's a couple things going on. One, we're old and these examples are old. I think, I think.

I think the mistake would be to throw out positioning, which is what people tend to do. They throw out the baby with the bathwater. Oh, positioning is irrelevant. It doesn't matter because I didn't know this. No, because there's still tons of people who buy BMWs today and most of them are boomers and older, right? Maybe some 45s and I haven't seen the demographics. I'm guessing.

But anybody who's really succeeding in life will look at BMW, who probably know it's called the ultimate driving machine. And you're teaching college students. So, you know, these audiences, the younger audiences have a different frame of reference. I bet you could say to them, first driver's service that's not a taxi. And they would probably say Uber. Or you could say first EV car. And they would probably say Tesla. Right? So I think our examples are bad, not positioned. 

Mark Vandegrift
Not that there might be a little outdated.

Lorraine Kessler
And they're outdated, not because the ideas are outdated necessarily, but because these brands have forgotten that the mind, the human mind, is built on amnesia. We're always moving stuff out of our mind every day that's not important. If you don't continue beating the drum of your position over decades and years, you're going to lose it. The mind is a very fickle and limited container, and it won't retain what's not useful. And that's partly part of self-preservation. 

So, these brands have either because they get new CMOs and new people who think, well, we've already said that, or people already think that about us, so we're going to find something new to say.

So, that's the to me that's where the failure happens and there's no reason why “the ultimate driving machine” shouldn't be hammered into… 

The new market in fact when they when BMW introduced the EV vehicle that they called it the first ultimate driving machine, that's EV so they did use it, but they're not doing it enough with enough saturation with enough constancy what we always talk about, constancy and consistency. 

So yes, positioning is still valuable. We should change our examples. And these companies should revisit their positions. And if they're still viable and important to a contingent audience, they should start banging the drum harder and harder and with more constancy and consistency.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, yep. Good. Well, let's get to our topic of the day, our exploding myths of positioning principles here. And again, this is from Positioning for Professionals by Tim Williams and some book notes that Lorraine has provided and the way that she organized them. So, we've covered 10 myths so far, Lorraine, and let me just summarize those for our listeners. Again, just go back parts one and two to get myths number one through four and five through ten, I believe. So number one was the better company product or service wins. That is a myth and we exploded that. 

Myth number two, my business is a commodity. Number three, competition is to blame for commoditization. Also not true. Myth number four, we're not a brand.

That's a quote that many use and is not true. Myth number five, bigger is better. So in other words, the bigger the company, the better you are. Not true. Myth number six, branding is only about advertising. And we spent quite a bit of time talking about how branding applies to business processes and many other facets of business. Myth number seven is that there are general markets.

Myth number eight, branding costs money. And we exploded that one with branding makes money. Myth number nine, all growth is good growth. And the busting on that was profitable growth is good growth. And the number 10 myth, efficiency is king. And we busted that with effectiveness is king. Efficiency is the 10 of diamonds. I think we landed on that one.

So, Lorraine, that's 10 myths and we have 11 through 15 to go yet. So, I'm going to let you start off, cause I've talked a lot. I'm going to let you start off with myth number 11.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, well, myth number 11 is that all clients are good clients, right? Not true.

Mark Vandegrift
We need to put our fingers in our client's ears right now because we have all good clients.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, if you're a bad client, you're probably, in my opinion, not good to your employees too. Okay. So, I think we'll find that there's a synergy there or correlation. 

So, what's a bad client? Well, one, a bad client for an agency or any professional services is someone you can't be profitable on. They inhibit the ability for you to be profitable with them. They either don't pay their bills, or they won't pay what you're fees are and what you deserve or argue about every bill that they get. These people, it's called opportunity lost. Every moment of time that you're paying your associates to spend time with these types of clients robs valuable time from good clients who understand the value they're getting and are paying for the value they're getting.

Often these clients, they get stuck sometimes in this buyer mentality where they think their job is to measure their success within their company or themselves as I'm a good buyer, I really push them down and I got a better price. Meanwhile, what we just talked about, effectiveness is lost. 

Now the worst part about an unprofitable client in my experience, is because there's usually so much wrangling over the cost for the value, et cetera, is you demotivate the entire agency or firm. No one wants to work on your business, and they don't feel good about working on your business and your marketing problems, which are huge and should be the focus, become very secondary or tertiary to just, you know, having to deal with you as an individual or as a firm. 

So, and we've heard some industries say, hey, well, we have them, at least they help us. Even if they pay 50%, they help us cover our overhead. I think that is the worst rationalization because as I just said, the emotional trauma you have exacted in your staff in dealing with this says, if you're a leader, we don't really respect you as an employee. We don't respect your value. 

So now you've now unknowingly participated in this devaluation of people and the talent that they bring and the motivation they want to bring to their job. So yes, there are bad clients, and you should weed them out and ask them either politely… 

I think one thing that Dick Maggiore always did, which I really thought was smart was make them say no to you. Stand your ground. Stand your ground on pricing. Stand your ground on whatever it is that you feel you're being backed to a wall where you can't do the best work for that client. And when you stand your ground, they make them say no to you.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. And you can look at law firms, accountants, even medical professionals. I think every one of them, they have their method for discovering and rooting out bad clients, but it's amazing how little number of times they actually will execute on that. And professional service firms are just notorious for accepting bad clients. And...

It's not that they can go to another firm and all of a sudden they become a good client. I think a bad client's a bad client. It's very nature. Just as much as we want to say that there are evil people in the world and not everybody's good. It's a mantra that Dick has always used, which is “a great agency takes a great client.” And that is when we shine, is when we have a great client. And conversely, clients love a great agency when we do great work for them, but it is a reflection of them to start with that they're great, that makes us great.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, and if you look at statistically, I think if you look at like 18% of Coca Cola's company customers, right, consume 80% of their products. I mean, you want to focus, you want your firm to focus on a best customer focus because there's a negative value when you have a bad client, not only the demoralization, but they can say bad things about you, right, which are only true in their experience because they're not operating from the same playbook that you're operating from.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, exactly. Good. Well, I think we busted that myth. 

Next is myth number 12: full service exists. Okay, we're going to explode that, full service does not exist. There's no such thing as full service. Now, that being said, this is really hard one for us. Lorraine, what do we call ourselves? {Full service agency.] Oh my goodness, we just, we fell into this trap. 

What's the real way that we should talk about ourselves? Integrated, right, integrated agency. And the challenge that we have is that full service agency is vernacular that's used very commonly. But what it really implies is a myth because there isn't a brand in any category that actually can fulfill every need. Now that doesn't stop a gazillion different firms from claiming it, but it goes back to trying to be all things to all people. 

If you even find like a highly specialized firm, they can't resist that temptation of saying, well, we can do it all. When in fact, if they would stay focused, they would be much better off. A lot of times what you'll see is full service terminology is accompanied by like wide range, full line, complete services all those types of generalities. And the problem is that specific cell generalities do not. So we've used the example of physicians, right? Do you wanna go to a family doctor generalist for your heart problem or to a cardiologist? And that's, you know, obviously if you had troubles with the IRS, do you wanna go to a full-service law firm or do you wanna go to a law firm that has expertise in tax law. 

So these kind of things are obvious. The specialist is really what wins. So we have a hard time with this one because full service applies to us, but we have a lot of services, but we are marketing specialists with a very tight focus on positioning. So executing on a specialty is really what we look at it as. And we're integrated from the standpoint of if we were just a PR firm, meaning not just, but if we were only a PR firm, our solution would always be PR. Or if we were only a web shop, our solution would always be web. We like to come at it looking at it as, here's your business problem. And we believe the following things will help you with this problem and achieve your goals.

It always starts with positioning. So we are positioning specialists that happen to have a lot of services and we don't go out and try to present ourselves as we have a full service agency. You can use us for anything. We want clients that come to us for positioning and that positioning strategy 

Lorraine Kessler
…and then we support it with a pretty complete or a good bench of disciplines. However, and I think this is, and I think we even say on our website page, full service your way, which isn't bad because it's actually kind of true, right? We're not choosing so much as the client, but we have to be careful of this whole full service trap, as you call it, because it can get really broad. 

Like for example, investor relations is a subset of PR. It’s extremely specialized. And what works there doesn't work in promotional PR. The whole strategy, the customers and the people you have to talk to. So when you say full service as if you can do investor relations and you can do promotional PR, it's just not true. And it's just not believable. So, it does weaken you. 

My dream model would be something that Marty Neumeyer talked about, that we are a brand agency that begins with positioning, with the right strategic focus, right? We focus not on the, we concentrate, we identify your problem, and then we find the right solution to solve that problem strategically from a message standpoint first, and then solutions in terms of how to target and go after the right target audience -- what media and what tools. I think that's brilliant.

Mark Vandegrift
Absolutely. Okay. Well, we exploded myth number 12. Let's go to myth number 13, Lorraine.

Lorraine Kessler
Okay, focus is limiting. You know, again, this is, you know, we want to be all things to all people. It is absolutely the opposite. And yet marketers fear focus for a lot of reasons. They think they're going to be giving up something. What they don't realize is what you can have is only what competition will let you have. So if you think you can have something and there's a, there's strong specialists who are doing that, you're not going to have that.

You just can't. So, it's not just what you want to do, it's what you can do, what the competition will allow you to do. And brands are not marketed to everyone. We've talked about this how many times. The real targeting isn't just, and I think this is one of the hardest thing to teach young people coming in, because when they hear target audience, they think demographics. They think, well, we're going after young men in high school, 18, to or 16 to 20, whatever, high school and starting college. And then they make the mistake of thinking all this demographic all thinks the same. They all value the same things. 

I mean, the focus truly is rather than demographically, we're after young men who really care a lot about looking good, smelling good and their appearance. Well, all of a sudden, my demographic could be 14 or my grandson 12 who wants a perm because that's the big thing now. I don't know if you've seen this. They do this perm with us. So instead my daughter dyed. You know how Italian he looks, right? His hair is blonde as blonde could be. Okay. 

So, it could be all of a sudden the demographic is now informed by the true target, which is psychographic. Who really cares a lot about it? And if that's who you're going after, then it's not all 12 year olds. It's not all 14 year olds. It's not all 16 year olds. It is the kids in this younger people who have this fashion mindset about maybe feeling better, smelling better, looking better, whatever. 

So, it does involve sacrifice, but it's a willing sacrifice. You know, I used to tell people, you know, when you decide to get married, hopefully you've sacrificed all the other dates you would have had with other women or men, right? And sometimes I get people looking at me like, really? I didn't really want to sacrifice that.

Mark Vandegrift
Critical. Very good. Exploded that myth. Okay. Myth number 14. We got two left here. This myth is more means more. Now I'm going to use my web hat. I'm going to put my web hat on. Okay. Because I think it's a great illustration. I'll give people a visual. Have you ever gone to a website where there's about 15 primary navigation? There's a hundred messages on the homepage and you as the visitor are supposed to figure out what you want because there's so many options, right? 

And what does that do? It just, yeah, you beg out. It's like, no thanks, I'm gonna go somewhere where I can easily pick out what you're trying to tell me. And having done information architecture now going on 20 plus years, the one struggle in most web kickoff sessions that we have, when they bring everybody in the room, everybody wants a piece of the real estate on that homepage. And it's like what you end up with is walking into a home where the first thing you walk into is a bathroom, the second thing you walk into is the master bedroom, the third thing is a closet, then you might walk into two more bathrooms and the kitchen might be on the back patio.

Now, my dad's an architect, so I know that he would never design something like that. But that's where these websites end up going because everybody feels that they have a priori, right, or the top level billing of an organization. And so functionally, everyone gets a piece of the real estate instead of what it should be, which is a very focused message because we aren't worried about buying more. We're worried about buying what we want. 

And so, when I think his principle here, more means more is a lot about, you know, being unfocused and all that. But it also has to do with this idea that your core product now, because we haven't differentiated, we're just going to add more features because competitor A offers these three, competitor B offers the next two, competitor C offers one, and all of a sudden you offer everything, but nothing's differentiated, right? 

So that's where on the homepage then all these things around the core, well, that needs to be on there, this needs to be on there, that needs to be on there, and it just gets so crazy messy that it's like opening up your Sunday circular and seeing all the coupons and looking at like what are you really looking for and that's really a challenge that goes back to, don't forget your core more.

Lorraine Kessler
Companies that want to put everything on a website, and all at a certain level, are doing business with themselves. They're, they're cowtowing to different departments, different voices, different people who think this is important. And forgotten in that is what is the customer really interested in, what's really important to the customer, and how does the customer prioritize what they want to find the user experience that they need in order to make a decision for your product. So that gets completely left out while you're just, you know, you're kind of head down listening to all these voices, and often they're sales voices.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. The other thing that happens is, okay, you have the core and then you add all these things. What do all these other things cost? More. Does the customer want to pay more? Never.

Lorraine Kessler
So you now, the second thing that happens by this doing business with yourself or the, I guess the extension of it is that you now have created in a world where clutter is a main problem. Advertising clutter … there's hyper competition, hyper communication hyper clutter, you're now creating your own clutter. And what it says to me as a consumer, because I just went to a website the other day, I'm trying to think what it was and it's not coming to mind. And they were hitting me with so many messages. 

I wanted to search their products. I could not, every time I went to search the products, I kept getting, I never got a list of products and they have a suite of products. I was so frustrated, but what that tells me is that customer, that client doesn't care about me as a customer. They don't know what I care about or what I need to make a decision. Therefore, that's a negative score in my mind. Like I jumped from them and I went somewhere else, right? So why create your own clutter?

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, that's a good way to explode that one. More is not more. Quit creating your own clutter.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, there's enough out there already -- don't add to that right?

Mark Vandegrift
Right. Okay. Myth number 15 is: the middle is safe. This is our last myth. Go ahead, Lorraine.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Hey, you know, it's interesting, but this is this one could be argued in some way, right? But when brands fall into a middle, they're not high end or low end. In other words, they're not offering me an affordable choice, maybe an affordable style at an affordable price like Target started with or high price like Nordstrom. You're here in Macy's land, you're here in JCPenney land. I don't know what you are anymore. You're not fish nor fowl. That is a really dangerous place to be. You better find another very concrete position to own and to be on. So the most powerful brands always find the edges at the bell curve, right? They always find a place to be there.

And I think that we're seeing, in terms of department stores over the years, and most of them are, so many of them are gone, is this is what they're doing. They don't know where to go. They're kind of stuck in this middle zone. 

I went to Macy's for the first time in, I don't know how long, to get a Mother's Day gift for my daughter. And I thought, well, I'll check Macy's out. Their whole vast, inventory is so middle focused. It's not either quality or high end, and it's not really affordable. But then upstairs, they do like a thing. I forget what they call it, but it's like Macy's Back Door or something. And it's supposed to be like, there used to be the place in New York, I mean, Chicago, I think it was called Feline's Basement. It's like a bargain barn up there. I was just totally confused. I walked out and thought, and they're doing it to themselves. So obviously they're having some troubles. 

When you're in the middle, you're going to have some trouble. It seems comfortable, but it can be absolutely the obvious if you don't have something very specific going for you. And I don't think it necessarily has to be high price/low price. It can be something else, but it just can't be trying to hit all levels at once.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, and circling back, remember I talked about overnight delivery as one of the categories that was no longer identifiable as FedEx. I think about UPS and FedEx, right? If not for companies like Amazon and all the online business that existed, where would UPS and FedEx be? I mean, what do they really stand for these days? They're like middleman for these stores that we want to get goods for.

And I mean, I think FedEx is better? I think more people think reliable when they think of FedEx, but I certainly don't have that when you absolutely positively has to be there overnight. And I think they've devolved into that kind of middle ground too.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, yeah. They started very focused and that's what catapulted them. And then they went back into all the business segments, the air, ground, whatever that they want to do. And it's dangerous territory to be in. I don't think FedEx is going to implode. I don't think UPS is, I think UPS is kind of brown and trusted and stays there. But what it does do, and this is important, is it creates an opening for a new competitor.

Because if you're trying to do that, someone can come in and they can pick off the edges and they can take a nice little chunk of profitable business away. So, for a new startup, it's kind of a, it's good to find someone in the middle and go at something they're not doing or focused on.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, very good. Well, that concludes part three of Exploding Myths from Positioning for Professionals. I want to thank you all who have joined us today, especially any new followers that we've had over the last few weeks. If you haven't liked or shared or subscribed, please subscribe and tell your friends about the Brand Shorthand Podcast. Until next time, have an amazing day.