Rik Riezebos - Positioning the Brand: An Inside-Out Approach

POSITIONING THE BRAND

Positioning is hot. Not only in the realm of consumer goods manufacturers, but also for other companies, institutions, governments and even individual people. An explosion of good-quality products on the market and targeted media and advertising campaigns has led to increasing interest from organizations as to how to strategically position their brand.

Up to now, only a few books on positioning have been published. Positioning the Brand picks up the gauntlet with an approach based on two fundamental choices: first, the book is written from the perspective of the brand manager, and has therefore been shaped as a practical roadmap. Second, it advocates a new stance on positioning, teaching the reader to look from the inside-out, instead of adopting the usual outside-in methodology. This inside-out approach starts with an analysis of corporate identity, enabling better fulfilment of external positioning and ensuring internal support.

This book is intended for future managers, marketing professionals and communication professionals responsible for the commercial success and reputation of a brand. It has a practical set up, reinforced by engaging examples, and will enable the reader to individually complete a positioning process.

Rik Riezebos is the Managing Director of EURIB/European Institute for Brand Management, the Netherlands, and is the Managing Consultant of Brand Capital, the Netherlands.

Jaap van der Grinten is Lecturer and Research Fellow at Inholland University, the Netherlands.

POSITIONING THE BRAND

An inside-out approach

Rik Riezebos and

Jaap van der Grinten

First published 2012

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2012 Rik Riezebos and Jaap van der Grinten

The rights of Rik Riezebos and Jaap van der Grinten to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Riezebos, H. J., 1960.

Positioning the brand: an inside-out approach/Rik Riezebos and Jaap van der Grinten.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

HF5415.15.R544 2011

658.827 dc22 2011013949

ISBN: 978-0-415-66518-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-66519-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-80248-9 (ebk)

Figure design by Marc van Gijn

About the Authors

Dr Rik Riezebos (1960) has been Managing Director of EURIB, the European Institute for Brand Management, since 2002 and is managing consultant at Brand Capital. He studied economic psychology at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, followed by a doctorate in General Management from RSM Erasmus University Rotterdam. He went on to join the teaching staff at this faculty in the role of assistant and associate professor in Marketing Communication and Brand Management (19912001). In addition to that role, he also held the part-time position of Strategy Director at TBWA/ARA Advertising Agency Consultancy in Rotterdam (19982001). Rik Riezebos is the author of the standard work Brand Management (2003), which is also available in its original Dutch version and in Chinese.

Jaap van der Grinten MA (1968) teaches brand management, marketing and corporate communication at Inholland University of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam, and is a research fellow at CBRD, the centre for applied research in Cross-media, Brand, Reputation and Design Management, at Inholland. Jaap van der Grinten majored in economics at the University of Groningen, where he later completed the Brand Management postdoc course. After his studies, he held marketing and marketing communication positions at Philips and LOral. He has previously published the book Mind the Gap (2004; 2nd edition 2010), a roadmap for identity and image management (in Dutch).

Positioning Roadmap

Preface

Positioning is a brand management tool that has been attracting increasing levels of interest in recent years. This technique used to be deployed only by providers of consumer goods, but we are now seeing virtually every single company putting serious thought into its brand positioning. Service providers, business-to-business companies, retailers or non-profit organizations, intensive competition is driving all of them to consider raising their market profile. Even small and medium-sized enterprises are turning to brand positioning techniques to help them stand out.

Although positioning is enjoying great popularity in practice, there is still a significant lack of theoretical grounding. In our search for literature on the subject we only encountered a few books. And we also ran up against a second omission: the rare literature on positioning that we did find invariably stresses the choice of a differentiating position in the mind of the target group as the core of positioning. This approach neglects the underlying internal management process that goes into coming up with a positioning that matches the companys identity and circumstances. In this book we have chosen to describe positioning from the perspective of the choice process that a manager has to go through. Our adage is that positioning is all about making choices: choices about what aspects of your product or organization you want to present to the outside world and which ones you want to emphasize less or perhaps even conceal; choices about who you want as the target group for your brand, and how you want to make your brand meaningful to that target group; and even choices about whom you will consider your competitors, and how your brand can be differentiated from other brands.

This book is set up as a roadmap that provides brand managers with guidance in the making of choices as part of the positioning process. Along the way, we will sometimes take a side-road to go into certain subjects in greater depth to further clarify the context of the steps brand managers have to take. And we would, of course, welcome any comments!

Rik Riezebos and Jaap van der Grinten

Rotterdam/Amstelveen, February 2011

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