Brand positioning is often misunderstood as a wording task. You look for the one sentence that fits on a slide and consider the work done. For me, brand positioning is something else: the conscious decision about what a brand should stand for in people’s minds, and above all, what it should not stand for. Sharpening it in most cases does not mean adding something, but leaving something out.
That sounds like an exercise for the strategy workshop, but it is one of the most consequential leadership questions in marketing. Every campaign, every product, every collaboration either pays into the positioning or dilutes it. Whoever has no clear position decides anew every time, and mostly according to the mood of the day. That costs money, time and in the end recognisability.
- Brand positioning is the decision about what a brand stands for and what it does not.
- A position is sharp enough when it helps to say no in everyday work.
- In fashion, seasonal logic, trends and many stakeholders put the position under constant pressure.
- A clear position shifts discussions from taste to fit.
- The core stays stable, the expression may evolve.
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What brand positioning really is
The common definition of positioning is surprisingly sober: an offer works out its strengths so that it stands out clearly and positively from others in the perception of the target group. Two words in this sentence carry the whole weight. “Perception” means that the position does not arise in the company, but in the minds of the people outside. And “stands out” means that it is always relative. A brand positioning that could apply just as well to three competitors is not one.
I therefore like to distinguish between what a brand says about itself and what people would say about it if you asked them. The gap in between is the real assignment. A good brand positioning does not describe a wished for state, but an attainable place that the brand can earn through its behaviour.
In my view this always includes three things: a clearly defined target group, a need that this target group actually has, and a reason why this particular brand fulfils it better than others. If one of them is missing, the result is either arbitrariness or mere assertion. You notice both in a brand faster than you think.
Sharpening in this sense means condensing the three elements until they force decisions. A positioning is sharp enough when it helps to say no in everyday work. If it can justify every project, it is too broad.
Why brand positioning is harder in fashion
In fashion there are forces that put clear brand positioning under constant pressure. Seasonal logic demands new stories, new colours, new occasions several times a year. Whoever is not careful tells a slightly different brand with every collection. Successful houses in particular sometimes drift slowly away from their core in this way, without anyone having made a conscious decision.
In addition, fashion lives strongly from trends. Trends are seductive because they promise attention and sales in the short term. But a brand that follows every trend becomes interchangeable. The real art lies in translating trends through one’s own attitude instead of simply adopting them.
And finally, in fashion there are many voices that shape the brand: product development, sales, retail partners, visual merchandising, digital channels. Each of these voices has legitimate interests. Without a shared idea of what the brand stands for, each pulls in a slightly different direction. The sum of these small deviations often weighs more than any single wrong decision.
My impression is that many fashion brands do not suffer from wrong positioning, but from positioning that is not binding enough. It is in the brand manual, but it decides nothing. A positioning without consequences is kindly acknowledged by everyone involved and then forgotten.
At Breuninger I developed the brand and marketing strategy across the whole funnel, from brand campaigns to performance activation. A central goal was to strengthen the premium positioning. The most important lesson: a premium position is not decided in the image campaign, but in the inconspicuous places. In the imagery of an ad, in the tone of a newsletter, in the question of how often and how loudly prices are talked about. A position only becomes binding when it also applies where hardly anyone in the company looks closely.
What sharpened brand positioning means for a brand
A sharpened brand positioning first changes the quality of discussions. Instead of taste, people talk about fit. The question is then no longer whether an idea is liked, but whether it strengthens the position. That noticeably relieves teams, because there is a common criterion everyone can refer to.
It also changes product work. When it is clear what a brand stands for, it becomes visible which parts of the assortment carry this position and which merely tag along. That does not mean everything peripheral has to disappear. But there is a conscious decision about which products tell the story and which complement it. Pricing strategy then also follows a logic that fits the position.
In communication, a clear position shows above all in consistency. A brand does not have to say everything in every campaign. It only has to be recognisably the same every time. Over years this creates something no single measure can buy: familiarity. How to translate such an attitude into language I have described elsewhere on the topic of brand voice.
Not least, sharp brand positioning changes the relationship with retail and partners. Whoever can say clearly what their own brand stands for can also explain why certain spaces, collaborations or discount campaigns do not fit. That is uncomfortable, but it protects the brand in the long term.
What I would do differently
If I had to sharpen a brand positioning anew today, I would put less time into the wording and more time into the testing. I would hold the existing statements against the actual behaviour of the brand: what do the latest campaigns show, what does the assortment say, how does the brand appear in retail? This inventory often tells more honestly where a brand stands than any workshop.
I would also involve the people who later have to live the position earlier. A positioning that is only understood in marketing stays there. Sales, product and management must not only know it, but consider it right themselves. That does not succeed through presentations, but through working together on real decisions.
And I would get used to a short brand core test that needs only a few questions. The first one also plays a role in my article on brand management: what would be missing if this brand no longer existed tomorrow? Three more follow. What would we never want to stand for? Which decision of the last season could a competitor have made in exactly the same way? And would our customers describe the brand with the same words as we do? If the answers remain vague, the brand positioning is not yet sharp enough.
I am unsure about the question of the right pace. A brand needs constancy, but markets change. I believe that the core of a positioning should remain stable for many years, while its expression may evolve. Where exactly the line between core and expression lies cannot be answered in general. That remains a leadership decision that has to be made again and again.