Positioning or Taking a Position?
Most companies confuse the two.
Positioning is what the marketing team writes in a workshop. A line about what you do, who you do it for, why you’re different. Usually true-ish. Usually forgettable. It lives on a slide. Gets quoted in the first thirty seconds of a pitch. Meh
Taking a position is different. It’s the moment a company stops trying to be palatable to everyone and commits to something. Not a line. A logic. The kind of thing that shapes who you hire, what you turn down, how you price.
What you’re willing to lose.
The difference shows up when things get hard. A slow month. A tempting brief that doesn’t quite fit. A client who’s happy to pay but wants something you’re not built for. A new product shipped chasing a flimsy trend.
Positioning bends.
A real position holds, because it’s not a communications choice.
It’s an operating choice.
The companies that are genuinely distinct, the ones that attract the right clients, repel the wrong ones, generate real word of mouth fuelled by their service and product intrinsics. They’ve built a coherent operating logic underneath everything. The words and pictures are downstream of that.
This is what we’re working with at The Sharpened. I may also be writing a book about it ; ) … stay tuned