The AI-Powered Positioning Framework For Your Brand, Re‑Brand, or Product Launch
30-Minute Positioning System Lead Magnet
According to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, 95% of new product ideas fail each year. The primary reason for failure is often a lack of understanding of customer needs and an unclear market fit, which is a core component of a brand's positioning. This means that most brands don't fail due to bad products or people; they fail because of unclear positioning.
Let that sink in. Nearly three-quarters of brand "failures" have nothing to do with product quality, team talent, or potential. They fail because they never nailed the one thing that matters most: what makes them meaningfully different in the minds of the people they serve.
What happens when a brand gets positioning wrong, and what happens when they get it right? The answer lies in these two stories:
Picture this: J.C. Penney, a legacy retailer, was facing declining sales and desperately needed a new strategy. Their response? Throw a massive amount of money at the problem. They hired Apple retail executive Ron Johnson as their new CEO, and he brought in multiple consulting firms and agencies. The rebranding included a new logo, complete store overhauls with "shops within shops," and the elimination of sales and coupons for "everyday low pricing."
The result? A positioning so generic it could belong to any department store. Johnson famously said, "We didn't test at Apple," when asked about market research, and the entire rebranding launched without customer testing. It was a catastrophic outcome. Sales dropped 25% in the first year, and the stock price plummeted from $42 to below $6. Customer confusion was so severe that many actively sought out old merchandise with the previous branding. J.C. Penney spent nearly a billion dollars to become less clear about who they were.
Now, consider this: In 2009, Domino's was haemorrhaging customers and was ranked dead last in pizza taste surveys. Customer feedback was overwhelmingly negative, with many stating that their pizza "tastes like cardboard." They were in the same position as J.C. Penney, facing a dire threat of disruption. But their approach was radically different.
Instead of hiring consultants, CEO J. Patrick Doyle gathered his leadership team and asked one simple question: "What is our real differentiator?" In a matter of weeks, they uncovered their truth. They realised their strength wasn't just in making pizza, but in getting hot, fresh pizza to customers faster and more reliably than anyone else. Their new positioning became brutally honest: "We make better pizza than we used to, and we'll get it to you hot and fast."
The impact was immediate. The "Pizza Turnaround" campaign launched within 30 days of the decision, and sales increased dramatically in the first quarter. Their stock price soared by over 5,000% in the following decade, and they eventually overtook Pizza Hut as the world's largest pizza chain.
J.C. Penney believed positioning was about finding the perfect words—they chased poetry when they needed plain truth. Domino's understood that positioning isn’t creative writing; it’s archaeology. You’re not inventing something new; you’re uncovering something that’s already there, buried under layers of assumptions and market misconceptions.
Traditional positioning work takes 6-12 months, largely because consultants need to justify their existence. They overcomplicate to mystify. They turn clarity into a luxury good available only to those who can afford hefty fees and endless timelines.
Here's what those consultants fear you'll discover: the best positioning happens fast. Not because it’s superficial, but because the truth doesn’t need time to be true. It needs the right questions, in the right order, with the right tools, to reveal what you’re too close to see.