At Fluid, we believe that a well-defined brand positioning is the cornerstone of any successful brand. A strong positioning ensures that your brand resonates with the right audience and stands out in a competitive marketplace.
Brand positioning involves more than just logos and slogans; it’s about defining the unique place your brand holds in the minds of consumers. Our strategic approach ensures that every aspect of your brand—from messaging to visual language—is aligned with your business goals and audience expectations.
Distinctive Brand Assets and Brand Touchpoints
At Fluid, we recognise the importance of Distinctive Brand Assets—the visual and verbal elements that make your brand instantly recognisable. These assets include logos, colour palettes, typography, packaging, tone of voice, and even customer interactions. Our goal is to ensure that these assets are applied consistently across all brand touchpoints, from packaging to advertising to digital platforms. This consistency helps build mental availability, ensuring your brand is top-of-mind when consumers are making purchase decisions.
By combining insights from market research, competitor analysis, and audience behaviours, we create a positioning strategy that reflects the core values of your brand and resonates with your target audience.
Fluid’s Strategic Brand Positioning Methodologies
We offer two primary methodologies for brand positioning, each of which has various strengths depending on the client’s circumstances:
1. Kotler STP Methodology
The Kotler Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP) methodology is a widely recognised approach to brand positioning. It involves:
- Audience Segmentation: We begin by segmenting your audience based on behaviours, demographics, and psychographics, ensuring that we understand their unique needs.
- Targeting: Once segments are identified, we focus on the most profitable groups, crafting messaging and positioning that resonates with these key audiences.
- Brand Positioning: We position your brand by answering crucial questions: Is this what your audience wants? Is it distinct from or better than competitors? Can your brand deliver on these promises?
Through this process, we ensure that your brand’s customer value proposition (CVP) is clearly defined and communicated effectively to your target market.
2. Market-Based Assets Framework
This framework focuses on building mental and physical availability, which are key to brand success according to Ehrenberg-Bass Institute principles. It includes:
- Mental Availability: We assess how often and easily your brand comes to mind for consumers through distinctive brand assets, top-of-mind awareness, and effective category entry points.
- Physical Availability: We ensure your brand is accessible, with the right distribution strategy, market penetration, and share of voice in key markets.
This approach is ideal for brands looking to enhance their market penetration and ensure that they are not only recognised but also easily available to consumers at the point of purchase.
Fluid’s Brand Positioning Pyramid: Your Brand on a Page
To distill your brand’s core attributes, we develop a Brand Positioning Pyramid, which puts all the key elements of your brand on a single page. This pyramid includes:
- Target Audience: Who you are speaking to.
- Audience Needs: The unique needs and desires of your target segments.
- Product Offering: What you provide to fulfill those needs.
- Brand Personality and Values: The tone, style, and values that define how your brand speaks and behaves.
- Value Proposition: The unique benefit your brand offers that distinguishes you from competitors.
- Brand Essence: A distilled, concise statement that encapsulates the heart of your brand. This becomes the foundation for all branding decisions, from messaging to campaigns to logo design.
The Brand Positioning Pyramid acts as a blueprint for all your brand’s marketing and communication efforts, ensuring consistency and strategic alignment.
Tone of Voice and Messaging
As a direct outcome of brand positioning, Fluid helps you define a tone of voice and messaging framework that aligns with your audience’s expectations and your brand’s personality. This includes:
- Developing consistent messaging that speaks directly to your target audience’s needs and preferences.
- Creating a tone of voice that reflects your brand’s values and resonates with your audience, whether formal, casual, friendly, or authoritative.
These messaging guidelines ensure that every interaction with your audience—whether through ads, social media, or customer service—reinforces your brand positioning and helps build a stronger connection with your audience.
Proven Impact: Fluid’s Brand Positioning Success Stories
Our brand positioning process has driven measurable success for a range of clients. For example:
- We helped Kardinia Park reposition itself as a premier sports and entertainment facility, attracting international events and expanding its market beyond athletics.
- We worked with are-able to shift its brand perception from employment services to broader community support, enhancing its appeal to a wider audience.
- For Herd & Grace, we crafted a luxury brand story, positioning them as a premium meat supplier in the U.S. market by emphasising quality and exclusivity.
- We helped PureHarvest reposition their brand to highlight their commitment to sustainability, ensuring they stayed relevant in the growing health food sector.
Customer Value Proposition (CVP) Development
One of the key deliverables in our brand positioning service is the creation of a Customer Value Proposition (CVP). We start with Geoffrey Moore’s CVP format as the basis, but modify it to suit your brand’s specific needs. Once developed, we distill the CVP into a brand essence, a short and powerful statement that captures the heart of your brand and serves as a reference for all branding and marketing activities.
Your brand essence serves as the foundation for everything—from your tagline to your campaigns to your distribution strategy—ensuring your brand remains cohesive and relevant across all touchpoints.
At Fluid, our brand positioning service is designed to help you define your brand’s unique place in the market and create meaningful connections with your target audience. Whether you’re looking to reposition an existing brand or launch a new one, our data-driven approach ensures that your brand is not only memorable but also aligned with your audience’s needs and expectations.