Joah Santos

Get back to the basics! What is your companies purpose or vision in the world and how does that apply to today? If you are not attracting new customers then you lost focus or your vision is not broad enough. Example: The fact Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful but someone else beat them to AI is ludicrous. The CEO deserves to be let go. Of course when AI was being spoken about in 2016, Google should have had the largest and best AI team to —- make the world’s information useful as their mission stated. They lost their adaptability because they lost focus on the vision.

One way I can tell when the new positioning is working is when people say I love (BRAND NAME). If you go to YouTube right now and look at old Adidas ads, you will see positive comments such as "this marketing department deserves a raise" or "I love this ad". Many see this as positive but it's not. It's akin to telling a doctor how you love the joke he told. It's doesn't help you love your doctors medical skills, you now just think he is funny as well. These types of comments do not increase brand equity. Now, go look at Nike commercials, I bet you will find many I Love Nike comments. This gives you brand equity and most likely with your target market. Become meaningful, the rest are just vanity metrics.

Do you know why you love your wife or husband? The one key to love is the fact this person knows how to lift you up or motivate you when you are down. We are not all the same, some need nurturing when we are down and others need a "kick in the pants". The idea of getting to know the target is to provide extra added value, beyond the product, so much so that they love you for it. Example, when Nike tells the story of how Ronaldo had a rough upbringing and he just kept focusing on his talent until he was successful, this helps low income kids see a path to success. These kids love Nike for it because it helps them solve a pain point they have and then gives them a nudge, Just do it!

It's hard to say where you start with positioning a brand. I've positioned brands over the past 25 years and it rarely starts the same. Example, Dove started with target market and so did AirBnb while other brands like Corona started with the functional benefit to the consumer. Positioning is more like a 5 peice puzzle. The target, functional benefit, emotional benefit, social benefit and Archetype (values) all need alignment. Only then can you brands unique POV (Purpose, Objective & Vision) in the world. If Nike wasn't a coach archetype, that made a faster shoe, that taught low income kids on how to be successful by showing them examples of how low income kids (CR7, Serena, LeBron) made it, then Nike would not be the brand it is today.

When great leaders succeed, they should go from being a coach to being a hype man. A coach gives a player everything he needs to succeed. A hype man gives him the recognition and motivation to keep going once the player is succeeding.