This presentation discusses great advertising just doesn't "happen". It comes from full understanding of your target audience and developing the right messaging that exploits your strategic competitive advantage. The right positioning will help develop a brand that's memorable with consumers. It also shows real live examples of successful branding applications. Rick Steinbrenner - The Global Brand Guy (Note: this presentation includes three you tube videos which shows execution of the presented brands positioning. In order to view the videos, you need to do three things. 1) Must have a live internet connection while viewing 2) Download the presentation 3) Then view the presentation in slide show and enable the content when the security alert for macros and active X comes up - this may or may not happen depending on your computers settings.)

1. Effective Advertising Is No Accident!!
Branding/Positioning in
Communication Strategies
Rick Steinbrenner

2. Advertising Is Not Only Fragmented, But Also Expensive
Consumers used to watch only three TV networks, read magazines, listened to local radio stations.
Now there are 900 channels in broadcast TV plus 90 million on YouTube, spending almost ½ trillion
dollars globally – lots of clutter.
Consumers “had” to watch commercials; now DVR technology has made “zapping” easy.
Consumer viewing/reading is now fragmented due to varying work schedules and other life activities.
The Internet is/has replacing/replaced traditional print mediums like newspapers and magazines.
The average cost to produce a TV commercial today ranges anywhere from $300M to over $1MM+
The minimum media weight threshold starts today at $5MM+/year to have any appreciable
marketplace impact.
- Nielsen, Ad Age, Media Associates

3. 8 Barriers To Great Advertising
1. Agencies & manufacturers “think” they know what constitutes effective advertising copy – they
“guess”.
2. Sales performance will tell if the advertising is working or not – too many other variables.
3. Agencies really don’t want to copy test their creative “babies”.
4. Agency creative folks can have big EGO’s and not open to constructive criticism.
5. Look at competitive advertising – “assumption is they know what they are doing”.
6. Lack of strategy driven by poor positioning or extending brands into categories they shouldn’t go.
7. Manufacturer ineptness due to either processes, policies, impatience, arrogance, risk aversion, etc.
8. Poorly designed advertising copy testing and/or over reliance on one or two metric measures.
- Jerry M. Thomas

4. It All Starts With A Great Brand
But what is a brand?
Branding is not….. Branding is…..
Great advertising Is about their consumer/customer needs
Consumer awareness About solving their problems
Promotions or pricing Product relevancy
Marketplace distribution Product differentiation vs. competition
and/or other adjacent alternatives?
Slogans or taglines Creating marketplace character
Features or good/better/best Long lasting and memorable
• It’s all about differentiation
• The brand has to be relevant in the consumer’s mind
• If done correctly, you’re building up brand equity – as important as any item on the balance sheet

5. Your Brand Starts With The Right Positioning
Your brand must have a sustainable competitive advantage:
a) Need to identify your “SCA” so a focused positioning can be developed.
b) Translate the competitive advantage into a positioning statement and your ultimately your
brand character/DNA
What is a sustainable competitive advantage/positioning?
In short, it’s something that:
 You exclusively have
 Your competition doesn’t (or don’t realize they have it)
 Your customers/employers want it

6. What Exactly Is Positioning?
It’s psychological bond you want to create with your consumer/customer/employer.
Competitors
Marketplace Identify
“Need Gaps”
Address
Features/Benefits
Barriers
“Positioning is not as much what you do to the product as what you do to the mind”.
- Trout & Ries, “Fathers of Positioning”
“A particular subjective consumer/customer meaning that a company tries to build into the product idea”.
- Phil Kotler, “Father of Marketing”
“People don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems”.
- Ted Levitt, Competitive Strategy - HBS
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7. Why Is Positioning Important?
 Product positioning is as real as any physical feature or attribute!!
 It’s the cornerstone of the marketing/brand strategy and precedes all other strategies
 It should not be changed often. Change only if the environment/product changes

8. Positioning Statement Template
To target market, X is the brand of
frame of reference that benefit/point
of difference.
Support/Reasons Why:
 #1
 #2
 #3 etc.

9. What is A Target Market?
 Those consumer/customers having highest predeposition to buy your product.
 Can be defined a number of ways:
 Demographically (age, income, education, sex, segments)
 Psychographically (meaning personalities, values, lifestyles)
 Behaviorally (meaning how they behave)
 Attitudinally (meaning how they think)
 Examples include:
Men, 18-24 years old
 People who are fanatics about taking care of their cars
 People who go to sporting events
 Conservative vs. liberal
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10. What Is A Frame Of Reference?
 The frame of reference is either a category or a consumer/customer based solution to
THEIR problems.
 These include either direct category users or acceptable alternatives.
Direct Product Categories Adjacent Categories/Substitutes
Carbonated Soft Drinks All Other Soft Drinks
Table Saw Circular Saw/Hand Saws
Irons Dry Cleaners
Accountants, CPA’s Financial Software
A frame of reference usually has barriers to entry by competitors
- Cathode ray tube TV sets don’t have clear, sharp images
- Accountant usually needs CPA certification
 It has to reflect how the consumer/customer sees the world vs. how the manufacturer,
retailer or employee does.
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11. What Is A Benefit/Point of Difference?
It is the single-minded, ownable product claim or promise to the
marketplace.
Examples:
 Cuts hair drying time
 Gets the job done faster
 Coke is the real thing
 You offer something very few others have
 Point of differences need to address the frame of reference.
 Need to make it meaningful to the consumer/customer/employer so you can own it.
 It can also be a non-rational/emotional point of difference. Not all claims have to be product
or attribute based.
- GE: “Brings good things to life”
- Gillette: “The best shave a man can get”
- Candidates: Creative problem solver
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12. What Are Support/Reason’s Why?
 The product based reason to believe the claim (e.g. the substantiation).
 Ideally, this would be unique to the product and ownable.
- Cuts hair drying time by 50%
- Cuts installation time by 50% vs. other conventional methods
- No other product tastes like Coke (i.e. the “real” thing)
- Developed and launched 20 new products
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13. Actual Positioning Statement
To women and men with busy lives, the Black
& Decker line of small household products
offers a better way of doing things because it
provides smart, innovative solutions for your
home.

14. Corporate Branding Process
Analytical Framework
Marketplace
Analysis
Define Develop
Identify
Core Brand
Brand
Brand Equity
Potential
DNA Bridges
Hunting Grounds
Who are we? What can we be? Where can we live? How do we get there?

15. Product Branding Strategies
Understanding How It Works
The Hierarchy of Branding…..
What the consumer/customer buys….defines the business(es) the company is in…..
What
What the consumers REALLY Buy Defines the
Business
The Benefit of What They Sell What the Products
Provide
What They Sell The Products/Services
The Company The Brand/Sub-Brand Name

16. Successful Examples
of Branding Applications

17. What the consumers REALLY Buy
Happiness
The Benefit of What They Sell Refreshment
What They Sell
Soft Drinks
The Company

18. Happiness Machine

19. Eliminates
What the consumers REALLY Buy Speed Bumps of
Daily Living
The Benefit of What They Sell Better Way of Doing Things
(Innovation Solutions)
What They Sell Power Tools & Home Products Solutions
The Company

20. Scumbuster Cordless Wet Scrubber – “Splish Splash”

21. What the consumers REALLY Buy Miracles
of Science
Better Way Of Doing
The Benefit of What They Sell Things (Innovation
Solutions)
What They Sell Residential, Agricultural & Automotive
Products
The Company

22. “Trunk Crew” – Featuring 4-Time NASCAR Champion – Jeff Gordon

23. Summary
1. Great advertising just doesn’t happen…it’s a result of carefully researched and thought out brand
positioning.
2. Positioning is all about differentiation and uniqueness vs. your competitors and will build up brand
equity.
3. At the core a brand must have a strategic competitive advantage:
 You exclusively have
 Your competition doesn’t (or don’t realize they have it)
 Your customers/employers want it
4. Be sure to take the time to help validate your creative with consumers…it will save you money in
the long run.
5. A new brand will be harder to establish awareness since there is no prior marketplace equity.
6. Using an existing brand on a new product is more cost effective, but one must be careful of not over-
extending the brand.
7. Remember, the clearer and simpler the positioning, the easier it will be to break through the clutter
and become memorable.