How to win · From Module 5 · 6 min read · By Aneek Ahmed
Here is a number that should change how you write your next brief. Ehrenberg-Bass research finds that consumers detect true differentiation — an attribute no competitor has — in only about 10% of cases. Yet roughly three-quarters of brand strategy briefs still ask the agency to go and find one. We are hunting for a unicorn nine times out of ten, and calling the failure "positioning."
This is the belief-shift at the centre of Module 5. Of every topic in the curriculum, positioning is the one most teams think they already understand — and the one they most often confuse with the tagline, the logo, or whatever came out of an offsite. So let's be exact: positioning is a strategic decision about what your brand stands for in the mind of the customer you chose in the previous module. It is not what you say. It is the filter through which every decision the brand makes gets judged.
Distinctiveness beats difference
If real differentiation is rare, what actually does the work? The evidence — Romaniuk and Sharp, How Brands Grow Part 2 — points to distinctiveness, not difference. You rarely own an attribute no one else has. What you can own is a clear, consistent meaning and a set of distinctive assets that make you easy to recognise and easy to buy. Positioning is the decision that sets that meaning; everything downstream — product, price, communication, channel — is either consistent with it or it isn't.
A position you can't say no with isn't a position. If it doesn't rule some things out, it isn't filtering anything.
This is Module 5 of the programme
Positioning follows Segmentation & Targeting in the "How to Win" bucket. Start with Module 1, free, and see how the course connects them.
The proof: Dove, held for twenty years
The module's primary case is Dove — not because of one famous campaign, but because of what it did not do. Dove settled on a position about real beauty and self-esteem, and then held it through two decades and three separate waves of category disruption. It didn't chase every trend or rewrite its meaning each time a new agency arrived. The position acted as a filter: ideas that fit were made; ideas that didn't were declined. That discipline — consistency over cleverness — is why the brand compounded rather than reset every few years.
Contrast that with the service example the module uses, Singapore Airlines. "The Singapore Girl" and the relentless service standard aren't a slogan bolted on at the end; they are a position expressed in recruitment, training, cabin design and every touchpoint. The line is the smallest part. The filter is the point.
The test for your own brand
Module 5 asks participants a simple, uncomfortable question: if a competitor adopted your positioning statement tomorrow, would anyone notice? If not, you have a description, not a position. And a second one: in the last year, what did your brand say no to because it didn't fit? If the honest answer is "nothing," your positioning isn't doing its only job.
Stop briefing for a difference that consumers can't perceive. Decide what you stand for, build the distinctive assets that make it recognisable, and then use it to filter every decision. That's positioning as strategy — not as a line at the bottom of the ad.
Build a position that actually filters
Module 5, Positioning, is part of the full CPD UK Accredited certification. Start with Module 1 free.
Sources drawn from Module 5 of the Certified Strategic Marketer®: Romaniuk & Sharp, How Brands Grow Part 2 (2015); Sharp, How Brands Grow (2010); Dove and Singapore Airlines positioning cases as taught in the module.
A CPD UK Accredited strategic marketing certification by The Outwit Company. Real marketing science, made learnable.
