The Art of Conditional Positioning

Experts on brand positioning, including Al Ries and Jack Trout who coined the term, advocate positioning a brand in clear, unambiguous terms.

Absolute positioning was sound strategy when younger consumers ruled markets because their cognitive processes favor the certainty inherent in black-and-white statements.

However, beginning around the mid-30s, our minds begin processing information more in context-sensitive “shades of gray” and less in the context-insensitive absolutist cognitive style of younger minds.

A developmental psychologist friend once conducted an experiment in which college students and older subjects filled out a survey that called for graded answers, such as “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree.” Older respondents often bogged down on a question because they wanted to answer, “It depends.” The students were unconcerned about context.

Now that the cognitive processing styles of most adults in the marketplace reflect greater context sensitivity than younger adults do, marketers should be bringing the art of conditional positioning more into play.

A conditionally positioned brand projects human values rather than product or company claimed characteristics, leaving consumers to infer product or company characteristics from the values either projects.

Two key differences between absolute and conditional positioning:

1.Absolute positioning generally is product centric while conditional positioning is generally consumer centric.

2. Absolute positioning aims to generate uniform perceptions of a brand while conditional positioning allows diverse perceptions of a brand.

An example of unambiguous (absolutist) product centered positioning is BMW’s “The ultimate driving machine.” Volkswagen’s “Driver’ wanted” is ambiguous (conditional) and consumer centered. HP’s “Solutions for the adaptive enterprise” is unambiguous and product centered while Microsoft’s “ “Your potential. Our Passion” is ambiguous and consumer centered.Conditional positioning deserves greater attention from marketers because older consumers generally depend more on themselves to determine the value of a brand than on values espoused by a copywriter.

Lately we’ve been hearing much about how consumers own brands, a recognition of the subjective roots of brand loyalty. That being so, it makes good sense to help consumers define a brand in personal terms, something that conditional positioning makes possible.

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I hope you have enjoyed this series about the broad cognitive shift among consumers from a strong objective perspective to a strong subjective perspective. I also hope that you’ve gained useful insights in this shift presents us with. I’d appreciate some ratings from you – “strongly agree to strongly disagree” is fine!

Comments

[Tom Asacker]

Hi David:

I strongly agree, although it depends. ;-)

Ries and Trout wrote that positioning is about "manipulat(ing) what's already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist."

Is conditional positioning about retieing one big connection in the mind regarding marketing and advertising? One which says: enough b.s. about your stuff. Tell me about what you are doing for me and saying about me and my life experience?

[David Wolfe]

Tom,

Yes. Oh, by the way, your product needs to perform as you claim and I expect, but you don't get brownie points for doing the expected. You've got to enrich my life by delightfully surprising me -- by doing something that makes me feel special. Otherwise you're just another huckster after my money willing to scarifice chances of earning my loyalty because I will go where I can get the most for the least cost in the absence of a superior customer experience.

[Dave Young]

I hate surveys for just that very reason. I am especially frustrated filling out evaluation forms for seminars and meetings where you get to rate someone on a 1 to 5 scale on about 20 different subjects. I always feel that if I give somebody a low score, I owe them an explanation so they have a chance to improve.
Keep up the great work!