Paws for Thought

The ADAMS Blog

Positioning Strategy

Branding for Investor Relations | Thursday, October 15th, 2009

An organization’s brand is extremely important when reaching out to the investment community. However, branding and positioning are often overlooked with this audience. To gain investors, an organization must present a compelling story or brand that will lead to sales of products or services. This story must;

Align the personality, education, and experience of an organization’s [...]

Positioning Research: Set yourself up for success | Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

When positioning a brand, a product, or a service, it is important to consider the elements that effect the way a brand will be viewed in the marketplace. Positioning research is crucial to a successful positioning strategy and begins with looking into the marketplace to discover where the brand, product or service fits in.
Positioning research [...]

Selling a commodity makes branding strategy even more crucial | Thursday, August 13th, 2009

When selling a commodity, whether it be insurance, lumber, or apples, branding strategy is more important then ever. Most times, when consumers are making a commodity-based purchase, they are looking at price, convenience, and not much else. How do you shine above the overcrowded marketplace of businesses willing to undercut you to gain a customer? [...]

Emerge from the recession as a marketplace leader | Friday, August 7th, 2009

The recession has been bad for just about everyone. For some it has meant slowing sales and for others it has meant an end to a business. As the economy moves forward and we recover, how do we do business in a new and different marketplace?
For those businesses that have weathered the storm, there is [...]

Tactics for effective positioning strategy | Thursday, July 9th, 2009

When it is time to position products and services, organizations often do not know where to begin. The most obvious starting point is  the branding strategy, but once the new product or service has been aligned with the brand, is there a logical next step?
Consider the audience and how the product or service will serve [...]

General Motors: the comeback begins with the brand | Friday, June 5th, 2009

General Motors needs to focus as much on repositioning their brand as they need to rescue themselves from bankruptcy. GM has become a company of disparate brands. The apparent rationale behind the brand structure appears to be an attempt to cover all possible markets. This please all mentality has resulted in General Motors failing to [...]

Branding strategy: the big picture | Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Rebranding. Today I read of a firm completing their rebranding. Did the firm actually rebrand or did they hire a graphic designer to change the logo and graphic styling? The look is not the brand. A brand is an organization’s promise to its marketplace. Did this company completely transform their business when developing a new [...]

Effective communication—unique selling proposition | Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

When it comes to branding, often the message and the delivery get confused. The message is singular—the brand’s unique selling proposition. In other words, what the brand has to offer its marketplace and how it differs from the competition. The delivery is multi-fold. A combination of where, when, why and to whom the message is [...]

Overcoming corporate-speak | Friday, May 8th, 2009

Sometimes calling an apple, “an apple” is one of the hardest milestones for a company to meet. After all, the Granny Smith/Macintosh/Red Delicious hybrid (commonly referred to as the “GSMR Delish”) is indeed just an apple to hungry consumers. It may be the best tasting and crunchiest apple, but to its audience it is still [...]

Does an inverse relationship exist between brand awareness and commoditization? | Friday, April 17th, 2009

Over the last ten years, we’ve witnessed a heightened awareness of brands, driving companies to create stronger brands in order to compete. This awareness has spread from the consumer brands famously developed by the likes of Proctor and Gamble to the previously marketing adverse fields of business consulting, accounting, health care and law.
But with this [...]