Next Level Positioning

Understanding the future and your role in it is huge in brand strategy – but so tempting to overlook as it doesn’t obviously relate to your short term needs.

I’m not talking about global change, I’m talking about unlocking a future that your people dream of. You can position yourself any which way, but the ultimate positioning is to give your people the belief and permission they need to get to the next level. To be synonymous with their next level.

The Neuromatrix

I recently learned from Blindsight, a marketing/branding book by Johnson and Gurman, that we don’t experience the world as it is, rather we experience an internally produced model of the world which is influenced by beliefs.

This is the reason why placebos work, and why we only think Coke tastes better when we know it’s Coke. Brands can alter beliefs and so alter subjective reality itself. Not overnight, but it happens all the time.

As individuals, we all have goals we aim for and obstacles that stand in our way. Sometimes, those obstacles are internal: limiting beliefs. If you think you can’t climb over a rock on the road, you won’t try. It’s these kinds of beliefs brands have the power to change. If the brand hints at new possibilities, the people would identify the brand as a solution to their internal obstacle. The person tries, realises the brand promise about them and their limitation was right, and identifies the brand with their own success.

That must be the ultimate form of positioning. However such a function of brand would probably need to be built up over time to have greater effect. Sometimes when consciously fed information, it’s not learned as deeply as piecing the information together ourselves. The best stories happen in our own head, peiced together by clues and intuitions – so should such a deep level change in belief.