December 15, 2008
Strategizing with the CEOs
What's Your Positioning Altitude?

Last week we were invited by KACE CEO Rob Meinhardt to speak at a High-Growth CEO Forum –an expert-led, invitation-only group of CEOs that meets quarterly to brainstorm, solve problems and exchange ideas.

After introductions, we sat down to a cozy dinner at the Warwick Hotel in San Francisco to get to know each other and talk about positioning. Ellie asked each CEO to tell the group in 10 words or less what is their business and what makes them unique. For extra credit, they could give metrics to back up what makes them unique. Rob was the only one who met the challenge, telling the group that KACE’s KBOX is a systems management appliance that saves users time and their companies money. Mind you, it was a bit of a cheat since KACE got themselves ZOOMed last year, but we didn’t complain.

The reason the others couldn’t meet the challenge is what we call “positioning altitude.” Either the thinking was at too high an altitude and thus generalized (ie, “we do customer service”) or too low and granular (endless details about features and functions). Our rule of thumb for Positioning Altitude is that it should be high enough so everyone can see it, but low enough that it doesn’t go crashing into interminable digression.

To back up our point, we prepped by surveying CEOs on what they see as their role in strategic positioning. That, we found, boiled down to four key points:

You can download the full report in PDF form here (it’s not too long, and has some amusing pictures), so go for it, we say. And as ever, please let us know what you think.




October 20, 2008
Positioning Research, Done Properly
Or how to find answers that aren’t boring

What is the best way to do positioning? At ZOOM, we’ve found that people tend to favor one of two approaches. On one extreme, a bunch of smart people gather in a room and brainstorm until they come up with the answer.  At the other extreme, you conduct a bunch of research and derive an answer from the data.  For our part, we’ve found the brainstorm option lacks staying power and the research option lacks creativity and invention, so we opt to seek a balance between the two.

Here are some best practices we’ve learned about doing positioning research right:

Focus on the future
When a company is working on positioning, it’s usually because their current hill isn’t working for some reason: it takes too long to explain, or a competitor is receiving all the attention, or the market has shifted underneath it. The new positioning needs take into account what the new hill could be, not what it is today.  Traditional research is very good at describing the current state of how the market positions your company today, but it rarely suggest the potential for what the future could hold. 

It’s often quite easy to figure out what hill a company owns without doing research. Dell, for example, owns the PC hill. Google owns search, and Cisco, networking. Market research can back this up, or establish it in less-obvious situations. But it does not suggest opportunities to expand a company’s hill.

At the other extreme, a brainstorming session can unleash possibilities for the future.  Freeing yourself from structures and constraints can lead to breakthroughs that you can’t get any other way. But no matter how good an idea is, it needs to be linked to the present reality, and fit in the current context of a company.

The obvious solution is to combine these approaches. First, brainstorm and come up with a list of creative ideas. Then do research to see which of these ideas resonate with the target market, and are possible within a company’s framework. Questions should focus on what could be, rather than simply what is. Which ideas generate the most excitement, and why?

Returning to the Dell and Google examples, what hill could Dell own?  Could they move beyond the PC to the data center applying supply chain efficiency to simplify IT? Could Google move beyond search to cloud computing or Internet application software?  The best way to find out is to focus on the future – to ask the market to imagine the future with you and find out which answer is most valid and valuable.  Positioning research frees you to explore those untapped opportunities and uncover what’s possible.

Link the Message to the Messenger
What we’re about to say flies in the face of traditional research, but it’s important to link the message you’re testing to the company that owns the message.  Traditional research can be more like testing ideas in a laboratory – sterile and disconnected from the messenger.  Researchers argue that that is the purest way to gauge genuine feedback on a message. 

We believe you can’t separate the message from the messenger.  Context always exerts an influence, and sometimes it defines the meaning of the message. Consider, for example, the following messages as said by different messengers.

For example, consider the following messages from different messengers:

• “We’re committed to open standards,” said by Microsoft or Red Hat
• “We need more green women,” said by Trekkies or Al Gore
• “That’s putting lipstick on a pig,” said by Barack Obama or Sarah Palin
• “We put customer service first,” said by Nordstrom or United Airlines

Each of these messages takes on an entirely different meaning depending on who’s saying it. That’s why, when testing your ideas, be sure to let the participants know the company that’s saying the message. This way, you’ll not only know whether or not the message works, but more importantly, whether it has credibility from the messenger. 

Focus on Answers, not Data
It is often the case that our clients ask us to use their existing data as a prelude, or even a substitute, for conducting our own research. While this research is sometimes useful, it is all too often not focused on specific issues of positioning, and never answers the bigger questions of potential positioning.

We will always review this research and it almost always provides some useful data, but not necessarily any answers. To get answers you must be willing to look for openings, possibilities, and opportunities beyond the numbers.  Come to the table with creative ideas to test, but be willing to accept new ideas that come up during the research.

For example, working with Aspect Communications as they transitioned from a call center to a contact center, our research found the customers’ biggest challenge was training their operators to deal with email instead of the phone. So Aspect purchased a training company to mitigate  that opportunity. 

PlaceWare (which has since been acquired by Microsoft), pioneered web-based virtual meeting software. Their market research focused on how their software was better, but our research indicated that the best way for them to make an ROI case was to show how web-based virtual meetings could cut business travel expenses.

Remember, the research should be viewed as a tool to reach an answer, to find an opening, not the end game.

On a final note, we think positioning research is fun, really!  Do the creative brainstorming first, and then use research to test those ideas.  During the testing, let the participant know who’s saying the message to make sure the messenger has credibility.  Make sure the research is structured to deliver answers, not just data. 

And one final thought – instead of presenting your results with bar charts, pie charts and Gantt charts – consider using some cartoons to engage your audience.