Most people like to give their opinion about things.

 Me too.

That’s why I recently took a call from a lady representing a market research company in Toronto.  As I am in the field, I never turn down receiving a survey when asked.

She was conducting a survey on behalf of TD Bank; a very well known bank here in Toronto and the one I personally use; hence, I specifically was called.  We call this type of survey a “loyalty survey”.

So I sat back and went through the process.

From the onset, she was noticeably nervous; in fact, I perceived her goal was to quickly get through all the questions before I hung up on her…

I wasn’t rude, I had no attitude towards this, I am quite happy with TD as a bank so I patiently answered her questions one at a time.

Now aside from her nervousness, I made note of her company’s methodology. Most notably, all the questions were: “Rate this from 1-10 with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the best…”

I am a believer of any survey is better than no survey or any data is better than none; however, after about 10 minutes of rating things, I honestly “shut out” and wasn’t really participating in the questions.

You see anyone can ask questions, but they have to be worded in such a way so as to get your answers and keep the person at least somewhat interested and involved.

Surveying is a game of communication. You have to be comfortable in asking your questions and you have to know how to create proper questions that elicit communication back.

After I shut out as mentioned above, I had still another 10 or more minutes of questions.  Admittedly, my attention drifted off and there was no one home for the last 10-15 minutes, so did she really get my true answers? Was I really involved in a good communication process at this point?  The answer is no.

As I like this banking facility, I starting giving 7 and 8 answers (out of 10) “on automatic” for the remainder of the questions.  I am sure TD paid quite a fee for these surveys.

________

Recently I looked through some competitor market research websites to see if there was anything of interest in 2012 on their sites.  One immediate observation I made was how some companies spent a lot of time trying to technologically woo you with the complex names for their methods or show off their sophisticated premises. One even mentioned how they used “out of the box” methods.

Bottom line though is that surveying is a communication process of asking proper questions, by a trained person who is excellent on the phone and/ or in person, and acquiring answers by the person being surveyed.

The interest is invoked by the surveyor and from proper wording of the questions. You can have the best computers, phone systems, SKYPE, 100’s of staff in cubicles, whatever… the above in bold is what it is all about. That’s our methodology.

Another methodology we employ:

At On Target Research we will ask, for the most part, Open Ended questions.

Example of an open ended question:

“What did you like most about The Super Bowl?”

Example closed ended question:

“Please select from the following choices…”

In most cases, the answer to the opened ended question is much more valuable as it is exactly what the person thinks in his own words and it gets them involved; hence, we have some communication happening.

On Target conducts their surveys on the phone or in person employing only trained phone surveyors with good communication skills.

Getting “research” from the internet, published several years ago is old news. Even last years’ news is old, the way the markets are currently.

People’s buying habits and thoughts on products and services change all the time. You need to re-ask your questions and stay in tune with the minds of your ever changing clients and markets.

Well, I hope that answers Our Approach for you!

By the way, at On Target Research we have even taken it a step further: all our staff have completed extensive communication courses, after all that’s what it’s all about.

 Thanks,

Louie

On Target Research Canada

416-219-0905

www.ontargetresearch.ca

Market Research: The systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing of data with respect to a particular market, where market refers to a specific customer group in a specific geographic area.

Marketing Research: The function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information–information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.

If you are like me, your eyes probably glazed over when trying to digest each of these definitions. Yet understanding the meaning and difference is key, especially if you are a small business preparing to make an investment to gather quality information to confirm your product’s viability and how to reach a target customer. So let’s simplify:

Market research is, quite simply, research into a specific market for a specific product. The over-riding question that is answered in detail is: “Is there a type of customer in this geography that will buy my product?” Market research establishes whether the answer is yes or no, and also looks at the spending habits of the target customer as well as analyze your competition (among other things). Market research shows whether a connection is possible between the product and the customer.

Marketing research is about researching the marketing process that will make that connection. What is the product’s message that will appeal to the target customer? What are the avenues of communication (traditional advertising, internet marketing, events etc) to let your future customer know that your business and your product exist? And, what will make your product stand out from your competitors?

Market research establishes whether a specific product will meet a customer need. Marketing research shows the best ways to make the customer aware of the product and why they need it. Both types or research are necessary to support your success in delivering your product to market.

To find out more on how OnTarget’s market research and marketing research can help your business, contact Louie Pateropoulos at 416 219 0905 or email me.

The two most common methods of collecting customer data are market surveys and focus groups.

Market Surveys

Market surveys are one-on-one, usually phone-based and anonymous. Each survey participant is a datapoint. With a population sample that best represents your customer base, you have greater confidence in the information as an accurate representation of client opinion.

Follow up is easier and candid responses to questions are more common. The answers gathered are better for analysis. Also, surveys allow you to track market opinion changes over time, leading to more insight into your business strategy.

Focus Groups

Focus groups tend to be a smaller sample size and act as a collective sharing of opinion with a different dynamic – information is shared in a group setting and is not anonymous.  Focus groups can be a good way to get discussion and brainstorming going and can help uncover ideas or issues that could have been missed otherwise. Other than that, it’s usually more difficult to convince people to voice an opinion when they are part of a group.

Which is Better?

If you want to get a feel for what people think of different business strategies or you want to solicit new ideas, focus groups can be useful.  When it comes to stronger information, market surveys are the better option. Your sample size is greater, participants tend to be more open with their opinions, and the data you collect is easier to analyze.

To learn more on how customer surveys can help your business, call me – Louie Pateropoulos at 416 219 0905 or email me.

Advertising techniques used can include mobile messaging, email, interactive consumer websites, online display ads, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, and outdoor advertising.

Direct marketing emphasizes a focus on the customer, data, and measurement and is characterized by:

• Message are addressed directly to members of a target market. Addressability can be email addresses, mobile phone numbers, fax numbers and postal addresses.
• A specific “call to action.” – The message may ask the prospect to call a free phone number or click on a link to a website.
• An emphasis on trackable, measurable responses from prospects.

Direct marketing is practiced by businesses of all sizes — from the smallest start-up to the Fortune 500. A well-executed direct advertising campaign can prove a positive return on investment by showing how many potential customers responded to a clear call-to-action.

Direct mail marketing is attractive to many marketers because its positive results can be measured directly. If 1,000-piece mail campaign results in 100 responses to the promotion, one could say with confidence that campaign led directly to 10% response rate.

For marketing initiatives with a web-based call-to-action, the Internet has made it easier for marketing managers to measure the results of a campaign. This is often achieved by using a specific website landing page directly relating to the promotional material. The call to action will ask the prospect to visit the landing page. The effectiveness of the campaign can be measured by taking the number of promotional messages distributed (e.g., 1,000) and dividing it by the number of responses (people visiting the unique website page).

While many recognize the financial benefits of targeted campaigns, some direct marketing efforts using particular media can often generate poor quality leads, either due to poor messaging strategy or because of poorly compiled contact databases. This problem impacts marketers and consumers alike, as advertisers don’t like wasting money on communicating with prospects not interested in their products or services.

This means that, prior to embarking on any direct marketing campaign, knowing your target customer, and what message will be effective, is key. And the best way to uncover those is through a marketing survey.

To learn more on how customer surveys can help your business, call me – Louie Pateropoulos at 416 219 0905 or email me.

“Why do research?  We already have the best product on the market.”

Response: Says who?  Being responsible for the sale of a product is not the same as understanding why someone buys a product.  In fact, one of the markers of excellent marketing managers is that they never assume to know what the customer wants.  Marketers want – and need – to know why a customer buys, and they engage market research to get this information.  Equally important, they do all this before going to market.  Failure to take this step almost always means that you won’t present, or position, your product correctly, and that means leads and sales will drop.

It doesn’t even matter if your product truly is the best.  What matters is how your customer sees the product – and the only way to get that information is by conducting a thorough market research survey.

“The Boss knows what’s best – that’s why he is the Boss.”

Response: The owners/operators of small businesses have to be confident and aggressive to be among the very few that succeed.  However, this success can also breed over-confidence and a belief that the boss knows everything.  You may even hear the boss say he or she built the business and therefore knows what the market wants.  Market studies are put down as a waste of funds and, worse yet, marketing suggestions from others are rejected, even if these individuals are actually closer to the customer than the boss.

It’s true that marketing decisions based on executive intuition work occasionally, but it’s only a matter of time before there is a bad decision that has significant – and perhaps – fatal consequences for the company.

“The only thing that matters is price. Our customers don’t care about anything else.”

Response: No, they don’t.  If customers only cared about price, every store would be a discount centre – and every car would be a small vehicle with inferior design, performance and comfort.   Even a little research reveals that many issues other than price influence purchase decisions.  You need to not only understand these issues, but also how they rank in the customer’s mind.  Many marketing campaigns fail simply because the issues most important to the customer were “buried” or ignored entirely.

“We Know Who Our Competitors Are”

Response: Most marketers can easily rattle off a list of their competitors.   While the length of this list shows strong knowledge of the market, what is more important is who is not on the list.  Companies not viewed as competitors are potentially the biggest threat to a company, especially for companies operating in a rapidly evolving market.  At the very least, the marketer should have two lists – current competitors and potential competitors.  The list for potential competitors should be heavily weighted with companies that are outside the current industry.  In this way, the marketer broadens the universe of potential influencers in their market.  Better still, the marketer will likely gain insights and ideas for new products, new markets and new channels for communication.

To find out more on how OnTarget’s market research can help your business, contact Louie Pateropoulos at 416 219 0905 or email me.

In the winter of 1991, like many here in America, I sat glued to CNN’s coverage of the historic toppling of the statue of infamous founder of the KGB in Dershinky circle near the Kremlin. Little did I know or suspect that 6 months later I would be delivering a seminar to 200 Russian businessmen in Moscow on the use of market research and surveys in developing positioning and branding strategies for advertising, marketing and public relations campaigns.

As it turned out there was a member of the Russian Government in the audience–a Lt. Colonel from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs–the Russian National police. He approached me after my talk, told me how much he had enjoyed it and asked if I would meet with his superior at the Ministry the following day. I looked at my wife, who was with me at the time. She gave me the “Hey, why not?” smile” and we agreed.

And so, the next morning she and I and the Colonel stood in front of the Ministry Headquarters (a huge yellow and white cement structure) awaiting security clearance. Finally uniformed guards came out. They ushered us down long, dark, cement corridors, up four flights of stairs (the elevator was broken) and into the office of Colonel Stanislav Pylov, the Director of Personnel for the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. This man was in charge of the welfare of a million Russian police (they are all federal police in Russia).

We were introduced and made small talk while we nibbled on cookies and sipped a hardy Russian tea. Finally I said “Colonel Pylov, I came to Moscow with some other American businessmen to help open up a business college here how can I help you?”

He got right to the point. “We had 356 policeman killed in the line of duty last year. We must improve the public’s opinion of the police. Can the survey technology you use help us do that?”

I said that it could. With that Pylov broke into a huge smile and stood up. He said that this was the beginning of a new relationship between Russia and America and went to a closet and brought out a beautiful wooden clock and gave it to my wife. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. My imagination ran wild–World Peace; Reagan, Gorbachev, On Target Research!

As it turned out, this was the beginning of a series of seminars and workshops I did for the Ministry over the next year on the use of surveys in public relations efforts. Bear in mind that these guys had a SERIOUS PR problem. They had been beating people over the head with night sticks as the primary communication line with the public for 70 years, and now wanted to improve their image. The first thing of course was a major program in personal communication by the police and it went from there.

But that is not the point of the story. Because of this initial relationship with the Ministry, I made several trips to Russia in the ensuing years. On one occasion I had been invited to speak to a large group of Russian bankers on the use of market research and surveys in advertising and PR campaigns. And as a matter of pure coincidence, a day or two before I was scheduled to leave, USA TODAY ran a 16 page color supplement that was essentially a large advertisement placed by a number of Russian businesses and banks soliciting (desperately needed) US deposits and investment dollars.

As I read the ads, particularly those placed by the banks, I was astounded. I don’t know how many millions of rubles the various companies shelled out for this ad but it had to have been plenty. Just converting rubles to US dollars was, in itself, a Herculean task in those days to say nothing of actually coming up with the money. The crime was that someone had sold these companies this expensive ad space and they didn’t have a clue how to advertise or position themselves–not a clue.

This is not a sob story about how these poor Russian bankers got taken advantage of–it is a marketing point. Here was a golden opportunity for these Russian banks to position themselves in the minds of American businessmen in a manner that might attract hard currency deposits and they did just the opposite.

One bank, positioned itself as “The Youngest Central Bank in the former Soviet Union”. Excuse me, banks are not suppose to be young (and thus) inexperienced and even if they are that is not something one would promote. Banks are supposed to be stable, secure, safe. This comes with longevity, consistency, permanency. This bank could just have well taken out an ad that said, “If you want to take a chance that we will still be here next month, open an account”.

Another bank showed a picture of a lighthouse and positioned itself as a beacon in a storm of financial uncertainty. Well, the beacon part was not bad, clever in fact. But both the graphics and the copy focused on the storm of financial uncertainty. From the viewpoint of an American businessman, beacon or no, why would I even head into that storm when the weather over here was quite pleasant, thank you?

The reason businessmen from Western countries were interested in Russia in the early 90s was OPPORTUNITY. Proper surveys would have found this and a sharp bank who knew its market research would have found what image represented opportunity to this public and so positioned itself as the Gateway to Russian Opportunity or the like. But this kind of market research was about as understandable as Martian to Russian bankers at that time.

You see a communications campaign without a positioning strategy is (to continue the metaphor) like a ship without a rudder. Moreover, this lack of understanding of how to position oneself is not the sole province of our new “comrades” in marketing. Indeed, I am constantly amazed at the enormous sums of advertising and PR dollars that are poured into media campaigns by individuals and companies large and small here in America that have no positioning whatsoever. They may not be as self defeating as “The Newest Bank in the former Soviet Union”, but many lack any positioning strategy at all–the most crucial element of any communications campaign.

I recently talked to a corporate marketing director of a huge international technology company. He had very little idea of the most basic positioning concepts, where they came from or how to use them.
What is Product Positioning?

And so this situation begs the question, What is positioning? Where did it come from? And how do you “do” it?

It all started with a couple of guys named Trout and Reis. Beginning in 1969 and then into the early 70s, these two young marketing geniuses, Jack Trout and Al Ries, wrote, spoke and disseminated to the advertising and PR world about a new concept in communications called positioning. Until then, agencies had primarily been basing their media campaigns on internally conceived benefits of the client’s product.

These campaigns may have been creative, they said, but they would simply no longer get the job done in what had become a heavily over communicated society. There were too many products, being pushed by too many advertising dollars on too many media lines and the prospect’s head was just too full of everyone’s noise for the old kind of advertising to get through and make any kind of impact.

The game had changed, said the boys. If you wanted to reach your prospect, the focus of your campaign could no longer be based on internally conceived benefits,- what management thought was cool -, the target was now the mind of the prospect. You had to focus on the perceptions of the prospect. You had to find a place in the mind of your public in which to put your product.

This was positioning.

Trout and Reis described positioning as follows:

“… positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position (place) the product in the mind of the prospect.”

The way you do that is to tie the product or service to something that is already in the mind. In so doing, you are able to instantly communicate to an audience about something about which they had previously been unfamiliar.

Indeed, business management expert, L Ron Hubbard later researched and wrote about the philosophic basis of positioning and what made it work.

THE UNFAMILIAR IS RAPIDLY INTRODUCED OR COMMUNICATED BY COMPARING IT TO A FAMILIAR.

“Joe knows nothing about practice boxing gloves and there are none there to show him and he will be fairly satisfied if he is given a familiar object, pillows, to compare them to.

And

“Positioning takes advantage of the fact that one can compare the thing he is trying to get the other person to understand with desirable or undesirable objects.”

This technique lets you cut through the noise of the competition and all the other communication messages your audience is being pounded with daily.

This is done by screenwriters and others in Hollywood all the time. It is how they pitch scripts and story ideas. This was humorously depicted in the Robert Altman film of some years ago called THE PLAYER. Periodically during the film they would cut to some screenwriter pitching a story idea to a producer or studio exec.

“Okay, Okay it’s like Patton but in outer space.”

My daughter, who is a budding film producer in town, recently got a script she likes and is shopping it around.

“What’s the story? What’s it like?” I ask.

“Oh, it’s kind of a female Sling Blade, ” says she.

Now this may or may not be the stuff of huge movie grosses or even critical acclaim, we’ll leave that to Roger Ebert. But, having seen Sling Blade, I instantly had the concept of the movie. It was related to something in my mind. Something with which I was familiar.

A friend is telling me about a great new book he is reading. “What’s it like?” I ask.

“It’s a Tom Clancy like story from the viewpoint of Russia’s ‘new’ KGB.”

Okay, I’ve got a concept of the book.

This, of course, is also is woof and warp of politics.

The person is a “Reagan Republican”, a “Kennedy Democrat”.

Or you can position something as better or worse than what is in the mind. She’s to the left of Karl Marx, slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, richer than Rockefeller.

The Easy Way to Position a Product

The easy way to position a product is to get into the mind first. The first product into the mind will usually dominate the category and be very difficult to dislodge. Coke in COLAs. Bayer in aspirin. Disney in theme parks. Kleenex in tissues. Philadelphia in cream cheese. Webster in dictionaries. Pitney Bowes in postage metering. And Gillette in razor blades to name a few. These guys got into the mind first and their product itself becomes the icon of the category. As such, they are very difficult to dislodge as the leader.

In the old days you never even mentioned the competition. But again, positioning requires that you relate the product or issue to something that is already in the prospect’s mind–something with which they are familiar–and one way to do that is relate your product to the leader.

The most famous of the early positioning campaigns of this nature was the “against” position taken by Avis against Hertz. They wisely didn’t try to take Hertz head on, they said

“Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder.”

Avis had lost money for 13 years in a row until they acknowledged that they were number 2 and as such would try harder. A masterful position. And they started making money immediately.

Trying to take the leader head on usually results in marketing suicide. When no less a company than RCA announced that they were going to take on IBM in computers in the 1970s, Robert Sarnoff said that he expected it would take them a year to get to be #2 in the computer industry. A year and $250 million dollars later RCA walked away with its tail between it legs.

Why? IBM had the computer position in the minds of the public. IBM meant computers. RCA meant radio, TV, records–they had the communication position in the public’s mind.
What If You’re Not First?

What if you’re not Disney or Gillette or CNN? Is there a way to take market share from a leader? The Avis example demonstrates that there is, and that is by finding a position that is available in the mind of your public.

“To find a unique position, what you must do is look inside the prospect’s mind. You won’t find an ‘uncola’ idea inside a 7-Up can. You find it inside the cola drinker’s head.” Said Trout and Reis.

Here are some unique positions, which carved out handsome market share for the products or services that were being marketed into categories already full of products.

VW took an immensely successful “small and ugly position” in the late 60s and early 70s (which you may have noticed, they have recently returned to after trying unsuccessfully to move out of the small position. VW means small car).

Virginia Slims created a distinguishing “gender position” in the cigarette market.

Budget Rent a Car has a “low cost or economy position” in rental cars; Circuit City has this position in retail electronics, Motel 6 has it in hospitality.

At the other end of the price spectrum, a few brands with a “top-of-the-line/luxury position” are; Rolls Royce in automobiles, Ritz Carlton or the Four Seasons in hospitality, Chivas Regal in scotch, and Sax Fifth Avenue in retail, Tiffanies in Jewelry, Mont Blanc in pens.

Head and Shoulders took a huge bite out of the shampoo market with the “anti dandruff” position.

The NASDQ has the technology position among stock exchanges.

Locations have positions (places in the mind). Entertainment = Hollywood; Family vacation = Orlando; Casinos and entertainment = Las Vegas (but a long standing and aggressive PR effort is working to change that position to a more family-oriented vacation destination).

So do people. Who do you think of when I say “Interest rates”? “Golf”? “Ice Hockey”? “Cuba”? To most, these names will instantly conjure up–Alan Greenspan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretsky and Fidel Castro (sounds like a Manhattan law firm–Greenspan, Woods, Gretsky & Castro.)

But most products and services don’t have that kind of instant name recognition and are competing in or being introduced into very highly competitive marketing environments. More competitive by far than when Trout and Reis first wrote about the need for positioning. Indeed, a recent report published in Iconocast notes that by 2005 internet users will be besieged with 3,000 advertising messages every single day–about 1,000 on line and 2,000 off line. Assuming 16 hours a day of ears and eyeballs, that’s 3 ads a minute ALL DAY LONG. This gives one some idea of the challenge of finding a unique position for a product or service and then getting it communicated.

It takes the average person ¼ of a second to decide whether or not they are going to read your message or throw it in the trash (or turn the page). An ad must communicate instantly. If you look at an ad and don’t get a communication right now the advertiser has missed the boat. That doesn’t mean that at some point some people might not read it, but the large majority will pass it by and your marketing and advertising dollars will have been wasted or at the very least provide you with a meager return.

Narrowing the Focus

One of the ways to facilitate a strong position is accomplished by doing the opposite of what most marketers want to do. Most sales and marketing staff want to try to be all things to all people. This may provide some short-term benefit, but it clearly weakens the brand and the position in the long run. You strengthen your brand by narrowing your focus.

Some examples from Al Reis’ 22 Immutable Laws of Branding make the point.

Chevrolet used to be the number one selling car in America. It had a “reliable and reasonably priced” position. In 1986 they sold 1,718,839 cars. But expanding their line and trying to be all things to all people undermined the power of the brand. Chevys are all over the spectrum today with countless sub-brands and now they sell less than a million cars a year. They have fallen to second place behind Ford.

In 1988 American Express offered a few credit cards and had the position as the prestige credit card and 27 percent of the market. Then it expanded its product line–a senior card, student card, membership miles card, Optima card, Optima Rewards card, Optima True Grace card, and the Purchasing card–and on it went. Today American Express has 18% of the market.

In the mid 90s, Levi Strauss had 31 percent of the blue jean market. Then, in an effort to appeal to a wider market, they introduced a number different styles and options–baggy, zippered, wide-leg and so on. Today they have 19 percent of the market.

Now what happens when the focus is narrowed?

Delicatessen shops have a history of selling “everything”. Fred DeLuca narrowed the focus to one type of sandwich–submarine. Subway has grown to be a huge success–the eighth largest fast-food chain in America with 13,000 units worldwide.

“Coffee shops” used to have extensive food menus; Starbucks narrowed the focus to coffee.

The Children’s Supermart used to sell all kinds of children’s furniture and toys. They wanted to grow. They narrowed their focus and changed their name. Toys R Us now sells 20% of the toys in the US.

Other examples of this kind of focused positioning include; The Gap = everyday causal clothing, Home Depot = home supplies, Victoria’s Secret = ladies’ lingerie, PetsMart = pet supplies, Blockbuster Video = video rentals, Foot Locker= athletic shoes, Office Depot = office supplies.

Product Positioning Surveys

Finding an exact position for a product or service is done by conducting surveys of a company’s customers and prospects. Fortunately, L Ron Hubbard’s research of the subject lead him to develop highly precise survey techniques that enable one to find a position for a product or service that will communicate instantly to a particular public–a wonderful tool for those of us who are in the business of communicating to people about products, services and ideas.

Positioning lets you create a place for your product in the mind of your prospect. Without it, your marketing, advertising and Public Relations dollars are at risk. With it, the sky’s the limit.

Positioning is a technique that is most commonly associated with marketing, advertising and public relations. But as you can see, it also works in literature.

It lets you paint a Kodak moment in the recipient’s mind. It does this by using what is already in there.

Positioning is a way to communicate that which is unfamiliar to the recipient by tying it to something that is already in his mind.

While not everyone is familiar with beehive hairdos or knows the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, for those that do, the images are instant.

Whether it was called that or not, positioning has been used for millennia. In ancient Rome, senators would eloquently position their opponents with the known evils of the day. As Gods and Goddesses were believed to oversee much of Roman life, it is no surprise that Faus, the Goddess of fraud and deception, would be a go-to positioning favorite – just as ACORN will inherit that mantle today.

Some of this has become tired and hackneyed. Democrats are big government, tax-and-spend liberals. Republicans favor the rich and privileged. Yawn.

But it has never stopped being an effective political tool. Positioning won the election for Barack Obama. Yes, he can deliver a speech like Martin Luther King, but it was positioning that did it. George Bush was one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. All the Obama campaign had to do was to position John McCain with George Bush.

McCain is Bush II.

And “Change” was change from Bush.

That slogan gushed from the Obama campaign like a broken water main and the McCain campaign drowned in it despite being thrown a last minute life preserver adorned with the sexiest smile in the history of American politics.

Advertising agencies often take the easy route – they position their client’s products with celebrities. Everyone from Robert De Niro to Ellen Degeneres will not leave home without their American Express card while Angelina Jolie, Elton John, and Martha Stewart all “Got Milk.”

But not everyone can afford to have Tiger Woods wear a cap with their logo on it. (Tiger’s latest endorsement deal with Nike is a reputed $100 million for 5 years. Dude.)

However, the more creative marketing pros step outside of the world of celebrity endorsements. And the good ones use positioning. Here’s a couple of examples.

All you can see is one arm of Spiderman which is limp on the floor and protruding through the open door of the adjoining room. Spiderman is down, perhaps dead. You can’t see all of him, but it is Spiderman for sure. In the lower right hand corner of the ad is a picture of a can of Raid.

The positioning of course is instant. Everybody knows Spidey. The three films have grossed $2,496,346,518 worldwide. Still, there is a judgment call here because Raid has positioned itself with killing one of the most popular Superheroes on the planet.

My view? While the creative guys might have come up with some other iconic bug, this ad communicates. I like it.

Here’s another one: the shot is the interior of a Burger King. You can see the back of a man ordering from the clerk behind the counter. But it isn’t just any man. It is Ronald McDonald in an overcoat trying unsuccessfully to disguise himself while he orders from his chief competitor.

The ad communicates instantly. It positions Burger King above Mc Donald’s at a glance
.

Both of these ads get the message across without a word of copy. Positioning.

If you are selling a product or service into a market that has competitors – few or many – you have a positioning problem. How do you get your product to stand out so that when your prospective customers think about buying a widget, they instantly think of yours?

It’s fascinating to position a new product. Done right, the clouds part, angels sing and sales soar.

A friend of mine contacted me. He wanted to sell pay phone systems to the correctional industry – pay phones for inmate use. (Regrettably) it’s a multi-billion dollar industry.

He had been selling for another company and now wanted to start his own firm. Several of the major telecom companies were players in this market – competitors with Godzilla-sized marketing budgets. What to do?

First, we conducted surveys of the actual buyers of inmate phone systems, the people who signed the purchase orders – the sheriffs and wardens. We found that the attribute they most wanted of a pay phone system was that it be indestructible.

Makes sense from the warden’s point of view. When the phone systems go down, tension spreads, fights break out, the media wallows in the violence and the warden starts having nightmares about losing his pension. So, yeah, indestructible inmate phone systems.

One could end right here, but we wouldn’t have the instant communication that positioning brings.

So we took the next step and conducted a second survey to position the phone system. What, we asked this public, symbolized indestructible?

The answer was “A tank.”

Now we can position.

This information went to the marketing department who created the graphics for all of the promotional material and also coordinated the public relations message. Our client then rolled out the campaign for the inmate TANK PHONE. Articles ran in the correctional industry magazines singing the praises of the new Tank Phone that was virtually indestructible. Ads in these magazines and marketing brochures all pushed the position with pictures of the phone system next to a rugged World War II tank.

The result?

From a dead start, this company went from $0 to $30 million a year in three years and became the largest independent provider of inmate phone systems in the United States.

Cool, eh?

What did they have to say about the positioning strategy?

“From a financial analysis of our company, we discovered that On Target Research saved our firm over $300,000…. To say that we are ‘happy clients’ is an understatement.”

RC, President.

The commercial is short: On Target Research has been helping clients with their positioning and branding strategies for more than twenty years. If you think a positioning program, or even a consultation about your marketing might help your business, call us directly – 416-238-9988.

Kerry Osborne, Ph.D., Vice President, Systems & Information
NUSIGN Outdoor Media