From Positioning to Framing
Published 1/8/2013
Author: David Aaker
Author Biography
David Aaker is vice chairman of San Francisco-based marketing consultancy Prophet and author of Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant.
Summary
Positioning your brand represents the short-term communication objectives, what it is you want to communicate, enhance or reinforce about your current brand. It is about your brand and how it differs from and is better than other brands. Jaguar is differentiated, in part, around design. Dove provides moisturizing. 3M offers innovation. Whole Foods Market has sustainable seafood. Framing has a bigger agenda.
Framing really does two things. First, it defines a subcategory (or sometimes a category) and in doing so, it often suggests why that subcategory should be preferred over others. So Jaguar defines a subcategory of cars with superior design, Dove a subcategory of products that deliver moisturizing and so on. The defining characteristic is put forward as a “must have” so that to be relevant, a competitor brand needs to have an answer to the “must have.” A brand is selected not because it is preferred, but because the subcategory is preferred and it is the most relevant (or the only relevant) brand in the subcategory.
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