Positioning & Messaging
Proper positioning of a brand is essential for achieving marketplace success. Equally essential is effectively conveying a brand's positioning in marketing communications.
ConStat has found that research to determine both positioning and messaging is all too often combined for budgetary reasons or for expediency. We believe, however, that these should be separate endeavors, with brand positioning determined well before any resources are devoted to developing and evaluating messages intended to convey the brand's positioning.
Whether conducting qualitative or quantitative research, ConStat seeks to discern the salient elements that determine a brand's positioning. These include:
- The higher-order brand constructs (or values) used in positioning the "global" strengths of a brand;
- The product benefits, emotional and cognitive, used to differentiate a brand from its competitors, and;
- The product features that describe how a product works or represent the elements a potential buyer would find attractive.
Only after a brand's positioning is determined should alternative messages communicating the intended positioning be written and assessed, typically through quantitative research. While ConStat has utilized numerous approaches, both qualitative and quantitative, to evaluate these messages, we believe that, regardless of the approach, three measures are critical to evaluating any message's potential. These include:
- Believability, or whether the message is considered credible;
- Uniqueness, or whether other brands could say the same thing, and;
- Alignment, or whether the message reflects the intended positioning.
ConStat aims to incorporate these three measures in any message development research we conduct. The final research design, however, is ultimately determined by the specific needs of our client.