Positioning : A Battle for Credibility?

When the book “Positioning : The Battle For Your Mind” was launched in the 80’s, authors Jack Trout and Al Ries were quick to market their “new” concept and the arrival of the “positioning era.” Positioning is about managing where a brand sits in consumers’ minds. It’s about defining a brand’s expertise and values so as to be distinct among many competitors.

All fine and well at Marketing 101 level, but not something I’d take to graduate school. Positioning is a fundamental truth, but is far too simplistic as a cure-all for all marketing ills. I recall being terribly agitated while reading it, and here’s why.

One, they had promoted themselves as the authors of a “new” idea, when in fact many others before them had put the same discipline into practice. Advertisers and marketers had long known the importance of articulating a clear brand imagery. They just did not give what they did a fancy name like ‘positioning.’

Second, Trout and Ries over-played the importance of a brand name’s relevance. They used Newsweek as an example of a better name than Time, because “News” and “weekly” was a clearer product descriptor.

Trouble is, at the point of my reading, Time was doing better than Newsweek. The notion just looked lame to me then, and more so now, when many seemingling random names such as Google, Yahoo and Skype are doing well.

Third was their caution that when a brand steps outside its expertise, it is likely to fail. Levi’s failed in shirts because Levi’s stood for jeans, they said. Xerox stumbled in its foray into computers because Xerox was long-positioned as a copier.

Hey, if that’s true, how come Panasonic is known for television, air-conditioners, rice-cookers, toasters and fridges? In fact, in Japan, (where it is still known as National), it sells everthing from kitchen sinks to tiles. I think it was at this point I tossed the book out the window, which is probably why I can’t find it anymore on my shelves.

Trout and Ries produced a lot of American brands as evidence of their theory. But they failed to explain the success of many Asian and European brands in crossing product boundaries.

Nokia, as one example, started as a paper company. They then moved into tyres and shoes before evolving into the world’s largest maker of handphones. Rolls-Royce isn’t just a luxury car, but a maker of jet turbine engines.

Many Japanese and Korean brands contradict the argument for positioning. How is Canon, a camera brand, equally adept at copiers and business equipment? How is Samsung both a construction and electronics company? How did Yamaha, a maker of musical instruments, get into the business of motorcycles and ski-mobiles? ? Indeed, what is 3 tuning forks as a logo doing on a racing bike? Nothing could be more different than a piano and a motorcycle.

I later found solace in the book, Business The Richard Branson Way : “Branson is critical of the traditional Western view of branding. He likens Virgin’s approach to that of some Japanese companies.”

No surprise, coming from the man who took the Virgin name from music to an airline, railway, wines, car rental and radio station.

Says Branson “They think brands only relate to products and that there is limited amount of stretch. They forget that no-one has a problem playing on a Yamaha piano, having ridden a Yamaha bike the same day, or listening to a Mitsubishi stereo in a Mitsubishi car, driving past a Mitsubishi bank.”

Brand Bromo

Mount Bromo is an active volcano in East Java. I first saw a picture of it some ten years ago. It’s one of the images that sears permanently in your mind, because unless your mother is from Mars, it’s like nothing you’d ever seen. There is an eerie out-of-this-worldness about this serrated giant of a cone spouting sinister puffs of sulphur.

So last year, when a friend suggested a trip, I was on the plane in two minutes clutching my toothbrush and barf-bag. Flying into Surabaya, my imagination ran wild. I thought of Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings, and wondered if director Peter Jackson had ever considered the moon-like landscape of Mt Bromo as a set.

All this fantasy and my lunch went out the window in the six-hour taxi ride from Surabaya to Mt Bromo. The traffic is leagues more terrifying than any volcano. For to get to this lunar landscape, you must first endure the lunatics on Java’s roads. Only in the deft hands of true third-world drivers, can a 2-lane road become a six-lane highway. I was clutching the hand of God.

By sheer miracle, we arrived with limbs intact. I was as pale as the under-belly of a dead fish when I staggered out the cab. But my jaws dropped to my ankles at my first sight of Mt Bromo. The picture did not lie. It looked just like the photograph I saw ten years ago. This was no photoshop job. I was over the moon. No, actually, I was on the moon. The caldera is ten kilometres across, and in it, are five baby volcanoes, the most celebrated of which is Mr Bromo.

The people who live here are the Tenggerese, and they speak a Majapahit dialect. There are some 30 villages, and they get about on horseback and Land Cruisers. The hottest of days is a dry skin-peeling heat ; on the coldest nights the mercury dips to 12C.

So what has this to do with branding? Well, if branding is about connecting with the mind and the heart, then Mr Bromo certainly delivers. It is distinctive and stands apart in its imagery and its reality, both to natives and curious tourists. And like all decent brands, it promises a unique experience, and serves it up in heaps.

Strong brands also have the advantage of an aura. There is almost a superstitious level of belief in them. And superstition is what Bromo has lots of. In the annual Kasada festival, thousands converge to offer all manner of animal sacrifice. Devotees toss chickens and entire cows into the gaping mouth of this volcano to appease the spirits.

Superstition isn’t just some ancient thing found in exotic places. It’s pretty much alive in modern societies, though in very different forms. Our Mt Bromos come in the shape of stores, superstars and sports. Lines of people flocking to the launch of a new software or game, is not all that different from thousands of Tenggerese making their pilgrimage up Mt Bromo.

At the bottom of it, our behaviour is driven by the belief in the choices we make.