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In marketing terminology, positioning (brand positioning or product positioning) refers to establishing a distinctive image for a branded product in relation to competing brands. Related concepts include: brand re-positioning (changing the perceived image of a brand); brand equity (the value attributed to a well-known brand name); brand loyalty (a consistent consumer preference for and/or purchase of the same branded product); brand personification (distinctive 'personality-type' features ascribed by consumers to various brands).
The association of particular meanings with brands makes branding susceptible to semiotic analysis. In structuralist semiotics, Saussure emphasised the relational identity of signs. A semiotic system depends on the differences between signs. What matters in 'positioning' a product is not the relationship of advertising signifiers to real-world referents, but the differentiation of each sign from the others to which it is related. We consider elsewhere the case of cars as a semiotic system.
Anderson comments that 'most of the advertising created over the past fifty years has been devoted to... the creation of brand imagery' (Anderson 2000: 280). Brand images are not based on inherent product differences but on associations with particular values or meanings (Myers 1999). Advertisers strive to associate the brand with 'a celebrity, an issue, an interest, a stance, something that people empathise with' (Anderson 2000: 286). A good example of a product which has no distinctive colour, aroma or taste is vodka. The only way in which a consumer can tell one brand from another is by advertising style and packaging. What differences do brands such as Smirnoff and Absolut represent for you?
Major supermarket chains produce 'own-label' products at lower prices than virtually identical products branded by 'big name' producers. Thanks to heavy advertising, customers often choose to purchase the more expensive branded versions. 'Blind tastes of products habitually demonstrate that... more people will prefer the taste of a bowl of cereal when they are told it is Kellogg's than when its provenance is unknown. Their judgement of taste has been manipulated by brand imagery' (Anderson 2000: 47). In the UK, Coca-Cola took legal action against the Sainsbury's supermarket chain when Sainsbury's cans were designed to closely resemble Coca-Cola's cans. 'The value of a brand is prized well beyond function... The Bic company, virtually synonymous with the ubiquitous biro, and which also made cheap lighters and razors, saw a magnificent opportunity. In 1987 it launched a range of scents almost identical to the leading brands, marketing them in plain glass phials at a fraction of the price. What the company failed to recognise until the product range failed was that what consumers were buying was not a smelly liquid but imagery' (Anderson 2000, 30).
Advertising researchers often ask consumers in focus groups 'If Brand X were to come to life, what sort of person would it be?' Heavy exposure to the packaging and advertising of the product makes this task quite easy for many people. Brands are widely perceived as having distinctive 'personalities' (see Williams 2000). Consider two or more major competing brands of a particular product (e.g. Coca-Cola and Pepsi or Nike, Reebok and Adidas) and consider how their 'personalities' differ. This feature is thought to facilitate emotional identification with brands by consumers. Establishing such personalities is an expensive, long-term enterprise.
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In a room in Seattle, chairs are arranged informally in a circle, and a group of women, strangers to each other, are talking about cars. Behind a one-way mirror, a planning director from Weiden and Kennedy, the Portland advertising agency, is looking on, trying to find out something they can use about the image of their client, Subaru, in relation to those of competing brands. The discussion is being led by a facilitator, Lisa, who has the women playing a game. They are given a brand name, and they give a description of the stereotype of the owner of that brand. Then the others have to guess the brand.
Helen, the chatty one, responded. 'Sounds like me. Sounds like Honda.' And it was. Cheri went next. 'Great family car. Outdoor activities. People who insist on buying American. Bigger people. People who go camping. Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Middle-aged. Financially secure.' The answer came back severally: Ford vans. Helen took a turn. She looked at her card and launched into a stereotype. 'They're outdoorsy. They're interested in fuel economy. They're athletic - they like to ski and bicycle. They could be a teacher or an engineer.' This time, Cheri leapt in with the answer. 'That's easy. Subaru. That's the person they target in the ads.' The story is from Randall Rothenberg's (1994) fascinating account of the Subaru campaign from start to finish. This particular exercise may seem like an after-dinner entertainment at a rather dull party, rather than research. But they are finding something - not just that these women know the stereotypes created in the ads, but they know they are stereotypes, created in ads. Source: Greg Myers (1999): Ad Worlds. London: Arnold, p. 151
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Anderson (2000: 31-2) suggests that the following personalities for cars produced by various manufacturers would be widely recognised:
| Rolls-Royce | Ostentatious
| Mercedes-Benz
| Prosperous
| Volvo
| Safe and sane
| Jaguar
| Assuredly British
| Ferrari
| Sexy
| Porsche
| Pushy
| Mini
| Cheeky
| Volkswagen
| Reliable
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Anderson notes that the brand images of the majority of cars produced for the mass markets (by makers such as Ford, Peugeot, Renault, Rover and Vauxhall) are not so clearly distinguished. What are the brand images of various cars in Greece?
'The Swedish manufacturer Saab, which had built a slick, sturdy image on its aircraft association, must have discovered that consumers felt it was a bit staid, like the Volvo. In 1999 it launched a campaign featuring bizarre images, such as a pregnant athletics competitor, to make the point that Saab was "Not what you expect". If even manufacturers of motor cars, which do, after all, differ from one another in design and performance, are forced to resort to such vaporous distinctions, you can imagine the challenge confronting most other products, which come in similar jars, bottles or boxes. Rarely is there a perceptible functional distinction; brand choice depends entirely on subjective criteria' (Anderson 2000: 32).
Brands can also be repositioned, sometimes quite dramatically. Marlboro cigarettes - now associated with rugged masculinity - were first marketed as being for women. Thirty years of ads in the UK helped to reshape the image of lager - from being a 'woman's drink' in the 1960s to 'a real lad's drink' in the 1990s. Brand images also need to be continually kept up-to-date with the cultural climate. Consumers are not adequately conceptualised as passive 'victims' of advertising - they also use advertising as a rich store of imagery which is raided by adolescents as markers of identity in a process which has been described as 'bricolage'.
Some product brands can be identified in large part by their distinctive colour. In the UK in 1996, Pepsi-Cola spent £330 million on 'Project Blue' - changing their cans from red, white and blue to just blue. The strategy included the repainting of Concorde and printing an issue of the tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror on blue paper. Benson & Hedges (cigarettes) are associated with gold (the colour of the packet) and thus with status. In the case of cigarettes, this is partly a response to legislation limiting the ways in which the product could be advertised, but the minimalism of the strategy makes it subtle, flexible and more globally marketable. The conventional wisdom is that branding must be singular and consistent. The problem with Web advertising is that the Web is a global medium, and a sharply-focused brand image does not translate easily from one culture to another.
Looking solely at the websites of the producers of particular brands, what distinguishing features can be discerned? Choose products for which most people would agree about the main competing brands.
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