Achieving objectivity in positioning and branding projects

Many stakeholders, high involvement: positioning and branding projects can be challenging - generated via Midjourney

Writing this article reminds me in nostalgic horror of the many times in rebranding-, refinement-, brand development-, positioning projects, in which initially well-structured and logical approaches got cast away by personal opinions and try-to-look-objective debates, that were clearly pushing individual preferences through the backdoor. 

It´s a phenomenon, that you can, you must count on in these highly emotionally charged projects, which usually involve multiple high-level yet convincing stakeholders, prepared to fight for “their baby”. Most likely, you won´t erase 100% subjectivity from the project but aiming for its minimal impact is worth the effort and will drive project outcomes directly. 

When we´re looking at the benefits of leaving personal preferences and taste behind and aiming for a max. objective approach, there must be a mutual understanding from all parties involved that goals of the project are: 

• Creating an improved brand perception, a better understanding of the brand´s identity among relevant audiences (which are usually the (potential) customers). Reasons requiring an improved brand perception can be e.g., a shift in positioning of the brand, a change in the company’s structure/ products or strong competition. 

and/or 

• Optimizing the functional usage of the brand (e.g. cheaper/ better brand management, adapting for digital space, legal issues). 

Tasking stakeholders to aim for mentioned goals with the development and execution of the brands heart surgery, the patients’ chances for a healthy, long life are significant higher, compared to a task force blurred in vision by the poison of subjective taste and a different agenda for the projects purpose. 

Bad practice: rebranding Twitter to X: 

• The reason for the painful rebranding from Twitter to X was the acquisition by Elon Musk, who has a think with X (SpaceX, his sons name, paypal previously was X.com). Officially the cause for change was to create a vessel for a Wechat-like super app. Many months later X is still mostly like Twitter and there are no signs of significant product changes. 

• The cognitive shortcut and (positive) associations that Twitter´s brand already provided to the world, got cut off. The value of the tossed away brand was estimated $ 4bn. (source: Forbes). 

• The new brand yet didn’t provide any advantages or benefits for users. The operational implementation was abrupt and confusing and beyond that, it’s still lacking acceptance: Media and users are still referring to Twitter talking about the platform. 

Having the right reasons/ goals for rebranding/ positioning (whatever change) steadily in mind, you can start moving into a direction with aligning methods and decision-making. 

But how to implement that mindset among stakeholders, who don’t necessarily have a marketing background or eventually have created the previous branding (“that has been so successful over the last 20 years…”) and are (most critical) higher up on the career ladder?  ..Warning: It probably won´t work without countless reminders to hold on aligned principals and goals but here are some foundations, that were essential to me sailing project-ships through tough weathers, ultimately leading to successful projects and brands:   

… This was just the intro of my article on how to archive objectivity in positioning and branding projects. If you are curious about eight hands on guidelines to ease your project, sign up to my monthly newsletter :)