When to Consider Brand Repositioning
There are four reasons why you would consider repositioning your brand:
- Pursuing a new audience – This is all about relevancy. Your market has/is ageing (aren’t we all), and there is a need to migrate generations. Maybe there are new segments where your existing positioning simply doesn’t resonate. The big challenge with this level of change is to capture new growth without losing existing customers unexpectedly.
- Significant gains can be made through becoming relevant to your competitor’s customers. The key is understanding how the market (those who buy) sees your category. Often it’s more about tweaking the positioning and strengthening the brand assets and engagement.
- Adapting to competitive forces – Competitors may have launched a product/service that’s just better than what your brand offers or worse, will potentially make your product obsolete. It could also be that their branding campaign is superior to yours. In these cases, brand repositioning might help your product find an alternative selling point versus your competitors.
- Market leaders benefit from category growth. New category customers will always preference the brands with the strongest presence. Smaller brands benefit from stealing (or borrowing) market share from others.
- Changes in attitudes – Be that from Government policies, political conditions or a raft of other factors; for example, the surge of environmental awareness due to climate change that has led to a green revolution.
- Attitude changes manifest slowly. So there is time to plan and evolve.
- Internal changes – Changes in corporate priorities can influence your brand portfolio and the need to adopt a new position. Acquisition of other assets and products could also come into play.
Repositioning brands can be high risk. If done poorly, the sales decline accelerates as a result of losing more of the existing customer base. But, done well, the results can be exciting.
There are two principles to follow: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, coupled with, do nothing and nothing will change. While this may seem obvious, the first step in making a change is to diagnose the real issues accurately. A effective diagnosis is always based on data and evidence – data and the evidence comes from what those in the market (the people who buy) say and do, and is tailored to a business’s specific situation.
For AMBA, we’d start with a thorough review of your brand. We’d review your brand assets and how they are codified, we’d review the sales data and plot customers to profile the current consumer base. Using this data we would determine where growth is likely to come from plus we’d map your competitors on multiple levels. We’d look online, offline, instore and in the field. The business case for change should always be evidence-based.
Whatever the reason behind making a change, there are straight-forward steps to evaluating the issues formulating the plan to move the brand forward. Humans have a tremendous desire for predictability. We can use that to our advantage.
Positioning is about relevancy, sales are the goal and happy customers the primary objective.
Positioning is just one part of a giant 3D marketing puzzle. It’s complex. Talk with us and let us guide you on how to fit the pieces together to create a true competitive advantage.
AMBA is a marketing agency that maximises the impact of brand in advertising. We’re based in Australia but connect with people everywhere. We consult on strategy, using your data to understand your customer’s experience and execute campaigns that deliver strong commercial results. – Find out more.
