Three Questions You Need to Ask About Your Brand

Reflection Paper on “Three questions you need to ask about your brand.”

Traditionally brands have been positioned primarily concentrating on what sets them apart or distinguishes them, i.e. their unique selling point. For example, tide by whitening powder, BMW by superior handling. These are distinguishing features that customers associate with the brand in question. However, effective brand positioning is not about distinguishing but also about points of parity with other products. There are three questions you need to ask yourself about your brand in order to ensure effective brand positioning:

• Have we established a brand? This dictates the type of association that will function as points of parity and points of difference. These are features that work as reference point for your brand. For example, coca cola, iced tea, sports drinks are all thirst quenching drinks.

• Are leveraging our points of parity? Once you have established your initial frame of reference, it is important to ensure that consumers perceive your product as a credible and legitimate player within that frame.

• Are the points of differences compelling? Strong, favorable, unique points of differences within the same frame of reference is important for band positioning. While points of difference is not the only factor influencing a brand positioning but it cannot be ignored as well. Apart from differentiation, the desirability to consumers and deliverability by the company is to be considered as well.

However, there are possible pitfalls to brand positioning which are to be taken into account while positioning a brand. These include things like trying to build brand awareness before clearly positioning a brand, investing heavily in points of differences that can be easily copied, promoting attributes that customers do not really care about and so on. Lastly, another challenge is to make sure the brand