Brand Diagnosis

Most stalled brands are solving the wrong problem.

They pour marketing money on a branding problem. Or brand money on a marketing problem. Then wonder why nothing moves.

Episode 11 of Position to Win is about telling the two apart.

Diagnose before you spend.

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So imagine you're walking into the hospital, and you tell the doctor what to do. You say, I need my nose smaller, I need more cells, so give me plastic surgery. Then the doctor nods, walks you over, says, Alright, lay down on the table and cuts you open. No question, no diagnosis, no scans, no more history or further explanation. You name the procedure, and that's the procedure you get. And boom, the plastic surgery starts. Well, nobody would accept that. You know, you would basically run out of the building. You would hesitate, be like, no, no, no, no. But that's the way that most companies end up treating their brand. The thing that you walked in certain that you needed might not actually be the thing that you need. And the risk is big. Your health is on the line, your life is on the line. You need a proper diagnosis. However, this is exactly how most companies treat their brand. A founder walks in knowing exactly what they want. We need a rebrand, we need a new name, we need to redo the website, we need to redo our looks and feel. And they already say, you know, hey, look, the numbers are low, we're not feeling this anymore. And they provide a diagnosis and a procedure, and the numbers are low, and the treatment is decided before anyone's asked and diagnosed what's actually wrong. And there's plenty of people in this industry that will happily lay you down on the table and cut you open because that's where the money is. Surgery is where the money is. And the biggest packages get pitched every single time. Whether or not any diagnosers have actually found what the real problems are, what the real solution is. The patient's goal is to name the pain. And the doctor's goal is to name the problem, not the other way around. I'm Jean-Luc, welcome to positioning to win. There are two types of brands, the ones that accept their positioning in the market and the ones that challenge it. And this show is for the challengers and the founders and CMOs who are responsible for making that change happen. So today we're going to talk about brand diagnosis. Let's start with the symptoms, the thing that makes you pick up the phone, the main pain point. Maybe the company has outgrown their own image. What you look like now belongs to the company that you no longer are. Maybe you know that the company should be playing at a higher level than what you're currently playing at. That you're bigger than what you present yourself to be and you're better than what you present yourself to be. Maybe the market sees the old version and you're really actually a market leader, but nobody would see that. Or maybe nobody remembers you. You never come to mind when the moment counts when people are in need. Maybe the numbers are simply down and nobody can agree on why. Maybe the market has moved on and you did not. Or maybe, like many of us are, are concerned that the market will move on and that you won't. Now the last one is where there's panic and and it's worth really slowing down. So think about alcohol for a second. Every headline for the past three years said the same thing. And it said that the next generation is walking away and no longer drinking alcohol. But what's often missed is that a few years ago, well, what happened? Well, an entire generation of people turned 21 inside their apartments. The bars and the nightclubs were closed down due to COVID. And the first legal drinks are moments and bars of celebrations, the rite of passage into being an adult. And those people never had the experience of having their first drink when they turned 21 at the bars or at the nightclubs. And so those habits were never really formed. Those habits were never really created. So those numbers morphed, and people start seeing, oh, okay, maybe people aren't drinking alcohol anymore. So when the numbers arrive, Gallup has America drinking at its lowest levels for about 90 years. And the biggest drop of those stats is ages under 35 years old. Now imagine you're an alcohol brand and you're seeing these stats, and this doesn't really feel like a small data point. It looks like an obituary. It looks like a death sentence. It looks like, okay, your time is up. So oftentimes the industry starts moving. Brands sold the same characters for centuries and after centuries and suddenly asking whether or not that character still has a future. And then other data points come in and complicate the whole story. And some of it says that the participation is recovering, that people are building new habits where alcohol is coming back. And some of it says that the decline is real and it's still happening. Or some of it suggests that people just simply turned 21 in their apartments when the bars were shut and the habits were never really built. So will the following generation continue the path? Or will the data bounce back? In this short period of time where one age group did not build the same drinking habits, is this a short-term issue? A period of time where one group of people did not build the same drinking habits as the other? Will everyone bounce back? And then I'm not gonna pretend that I know the answer, right? This data is still being formed and shaped, and people are building new habits every day. But there's some part of the discussion that people are missing, and that's really not so much what the product is, is what it will what does it do? What does alcohol do? Alcohol does not really sell so much for the product itself. It's not really a hammer they are buying, it's a nail on the wall that's being hanged for the painting, right? And so, what does alcohol do for the generation? What does alcohol do for people? Well, alcohol is a social lubricant, it provides a social format that talks to peers and to strangers and it helps people connect with each other that they wouldn't otherwise do. And so, for many people, alcohol has historically performed a social job and it creates a format of gathering, relaxing, talking to other people. And so the deeper need for social connection is really not disappearing regardless of whatever stats is happening, even if the product that people use to serve that function needs to change. If anything, there's more opportunities there. Somebody needs to serve this function, and that's worth thinking about because it is a different conclusion than the one that panic produces. A panic says that every category is dying and everything is changing. But one of the easiest ways to predict a future is not to think about well, what will happen, but actually think, well, what's not going to happen? What's not going to change? What are the things that people are still going to want, right? Instead of thinking about, okay, well, what's this unknown and how is this all gonna pivot? Well, what are the people still always going to need? People are always gonna want to connect with each other. If something is a problem, a problem can be solved. If it cannot be solved, it's not a problem, it's the reality. Okay. So every problem, there's an opportunity in disguise, right? That opportunity in disguise has a solution. Sometimes that answer is a new brand standing next to the old one, targeting a new positioning. Now you see similar things happening right now in other industries. Companies are repositioning with what AI will do in the industry. Many people are saying that AI is taking all the jobs or industries are gonna be disappearing, etc. etc. Now, every industrial revolution so far has created more jobs than it took. Nobody really knows yet what's going to follow now, but plenty of companies are rebuilding themselves as if as if this has already been decided. And so far, the projectory and the numbers seem to be positive, however, trends could still evolve. So we certainty is really not diagnosis, so we need to dig a little bit deeper. There is an entire industry that's moving in incomplete information. The same thing happens in buildings every day inside small businesses. For smaller money and for less excuses. Something feels wrong, and the most expensive fix is often the one that gets named first. It's usually the ones that win. The ones that are visible, the ones that most often talk to. A rebrand is visible, it has a kickoff, it has a timeline, it has a reveal and a budget that the board understands. Everyone can see it's happening. A positioning problem is harder to point at at all. And a product problem is politically really uncomfortable. Somebody in the building fought for that product. And the final product is scattered across four teams and nobody owns the whole thing at once. So how do we solve it? Sometimes a rebrand is exactly right and it's exactly what we need. But the concern is that somebody is describing a feeling rather than actually having a goal in place or numbers in place that they're trying to reach or trying to solve for. So what ends up happening is that product teams offer prefer the diagnosis to be marketing, while marketing often prefers the diagnosis to be a brand problem. And then the leadership team prefers a diagnosis to be a visual problem. Now, changing the identity is easier than changing the whole company and what it's operating and what it's doing and what the services are and what the services aren't. The brand positioning tends to be a higher level of friction than just the brand looks and feel. On a natural human behavior, people tend to support the thing that involves the least amount of change in their own department. So whatever is the least uh the least forward path of friction. So then companies buy the treatment that is the easiest to commission, while the actual cause keeps hurting the growth or limiting the growth. And more often than not, there was never really a written goal. So nobody agreed on what the better would look like. There was never really a number or a behavior move that was trying to be achieved. So then nothing gets measured against what the intentions of what was supposed to change happen. So there wasn't really a set benchmark. And when the numbers did, so if the numbers do move, then there's nowhere to tell if the fix is a coincidence or if it was an objective being accomplished. Because the goal's not clear, it's not stated. So if someone wrote one line of the goal, the number or the behavior that they're trying to change, and they put it somewhere in public or that's shared across the company, maybe it's digitally or something like that, then everything else becomes easier. You put that goal in that general team space, people can revisit in six months and say, oh, okay, is this actually happening or is it not? And are these objectives being met? Otherwise, you finish the project and the brand looks different, but you have little to no idea whether the business is actually better or not. Take American Cancer Society, for example. They had poor recall, stagnant fundraising support, and they rebranded around a clear mission. And afterward, after they stayed that goal, the in-app donations grew by 34%. And the total money raised went up. So they had the goal and the goal got accomplished. And the goodness about this is that a number that you hit gives you a fact. Otherwise, every result ends up an opinion on okay, well, why did this happen? Where did this come from? Is this just a coincidence? What caused it? So now thinking about brand diagnosis as an example, how do you find where the problem actually lives? So if you have nobody to talk to, that's a marketing problem. If you are talking to people and you cannot convert them, that's a sales issue. If they do not know you or if they do not trust you, well then that's a branding problem. Where the sales process stops can tell you why and what's happening. A staled sale could be the product, but it could also be the positioning of the whole brand, or it could be the pitch in itself, the unique value proposition. Now, the most important questions for any company is does it sell, right? Is this actually working? Do I have go product to market fit? Am I can I can I make my first dollar? And then you build from there. You build trust, you're getting known and being able to speak to a wider audience and marketing, etc. So typically the calls can break down into three core buckets. You have the product, marketing, and the brand. Inside the brand includes the positioning, etc., etc. A product problem means that people understand the offer, they experience it, and they still do not want it. This is called product to market fit. A marketing problem usually has the specificity of the channel. So if one channel slips and the other still holds, or one social channel, one campaign works, but the other still working, then that segment is not converting, but ever but something else is. One page creates friction, or one email is not working, that's generally a marketing problem. You can point to where the performance has changed in a specific audience, specific group, etc. etc. This is a general marketing problem. Now, if you have the similar thing and that problem starts repeating across channels and it's creating throughout, it's company wide, it's brand wide. Well, this is a branding problem. So in essence, if people buy and they do not come back, that is a product problem. If people understand you and they pick somebody else, that's a brand positioning problem. If people cannot tell what you do or understand it, that's also a branding problem. It's a branding communication problem. If people never hear of you, that's a marketing and distribution problem. Ask three of your customers what your company actually does and why they actually picked you. If one says that you are the affordable option, and one says that you are the one that picks up the phone, and one says that you handle complicated jobs that nobody else will take, well, those are three good answers, but those are three different companies. And that's really an undefined brand experience, right? That's a sign that you have a branding experience problem. Now listen to your own sales staff and you lift listen to the calls back and back. If one rep opens up with pricing and the other talks about the team, or one opens up about the technology mo, none of them are doing really a bad job. They just are inventing a new argument on the spot, and that's because nobody provided them with clear guidance to do something otherwise. And so that's something that's solved at the brand level, at the brand positioning level. So, how do you know where does this evidence live? Um, where am I going to look? Well, if you aren't tracking this, you should. This should be in the call recordings and the loss deal notes, you know, the questions that come up in every single demo, the sales team would know this. This should be tracked if it's not already. You want to get on top of this. Go through what you already have and see if you have the data, and if not, set up tracking tools to get there. Now, if the website sounds interchangeable to your competition and every campaign has to be has to reinvent the argument because there's no defined brand positioning, you may be known and not known for anything particular. Here's what makes a distinction difficult. Brands and markets do not live in separate dashboards, they live together. A weak brand can show up dressed as a marketing problem. Right? We can have similar things. You could have lower conversion, higher acquisition cost, you could be in the positioning where you need to do more discounting or where price can be an issue for conversion. You need to do more explaining before anyone understands why you matter. If every sale needs more proof points and a longer explanation to get the same yes, the problem may be upstream from the campaign and upstream from just marketing as a general and could be a brand problem, especially if it's happening across channels. However, it runs the other way too. A broken language pages, exhausted creative, the wrong audience, but channels whose economics have changed. So any of those can suppress performance without changing one thing the market believes about your company. So if you have one bad number, that can prove very little. Look at the pattern. Where is this happening? What do you see? If the problem moves when you move something or change something, then that's often a marketing thing. It's uh it could be channel or segment or campaign, or maybe it's at the funnel stage. You need to investigate the marketing. After testing and experiment, it if the same problem occurs, every channel and change you make, investigate the brand and see if this isn't a brand issue, which it sounds like what it is. Marketing helps move demand through the tunnel. Brands create familiarity and just the general preference and the general preference for the users. A good brand will create a pool that is already there before the campaign even begins. So you're not starting from ground zero. Now, these problems oftentimes coexist and they're not always in isolation. So this is a starting point rather than a verdict. And you always want to go back to check what the product was happening at the product level. If the customers understand it, try it, and still walk away. A new identity is not going to solve for this. It's, you know, it's not gonna fix it. Marketing problems tend to concentrate in specific areas, and brain problems tend to repeat. So picture a service company. Leaderships say that the problem is awareness. We are not known. We need more people to know we exist. So they end up buying more traffic, you get more people to arrive, the sales books, more calls. But prospects keep asking the same question. Why should we choose you instead of the three other firms that appear to be doing the same thing? That is not necessarily an awareness problem, even though the leadership thought it was. More traffic doesn't solve the unresolved reason to choose. It sends more people into the same confusion. The decision underneath the traffic is a thing that needs to be solved first. Now, let's say the evidence points to the brand. So the question to ask next would be what does a company actually stand for? And whether anyone of the outside of the building or outside of the company can actually perceive it. If every company develops a character through what it builds over time, who it rewards, who it refuses, what it promises, and what it actually delivers, you can use an archetype to help build that character throughout. The label matters far less than whether the coherent pattern exists and builds a whole unique brand experience overall. That character can show up in three different ways. You have express, suppressed, and distorted. So let's dive in a little bit more into that. It's super simple. Expressed is what the brand says and what the brand does when those two things match. Suppressed is when something distinctive and unique about the brand is not being expressed. The generic language that the brand is using is hiding. It's right, the value unique value proposition is not being showed, the clear positioning is not being showed, the brand personality is not being showed, this is being suppressed. Distorted is when the company performs a character on the outside that is different than what it supports on the inside, or its own behavior does not support the character that is being displayed on the outside. Oftentimes you see this as an internal branding issue. You'll see employees writing bad reviews about the companies that they had in expectations when they applied to a job that didn't match the same expectation. So let's make this practical through a few examples. You decide whether the brand is expressed, suppressed, or distorted. So if a company promises speed, but the onboarding takes three weeks, is this expressed, suppressed, or distorted? A company is saying more than it is willing or able to deliver. Expressed, suppressed, or distorted. A company describes itself as putting people first, and its career page is full about language, about trust and balance and growth and giving employees a voice. But the people write reviews and they describe burnout. There's high turnover, and the leadership punishes when people disagree with them. So the same complaints keep on showing up, right? In employee surveys, in exit interviews, and public reviews, right? You see this everywhere. Is this expressed, suppressed, or distorted? Well, both of those examples are distorted. The employer branding is making a promise, and the employee experience contradicts that promise. One negative review does not diagnose a whole culture, but when this same gap shows up again and again and again across reviews, retentions, feedbacks, and different leaderships, the pattern matters. And the company is teaching its own employees that the public brand is a performance and it's not real. And the the careers page is public. The reviews page are public. The experience behind them is not. And that's the line. One version of this reads that you that you can run from the outside, and the other has to go inside the building and what's experienced internally. So now let's reverse this. A company that gives employees unusual autonomy and people stay for years, and the leadership promotes from within and shares information openly and protects a team from things that could go wrong. But the career page says, join a fast-paced company of innovative problem solvers. Is this expressed, suppressed, or distorted? Well, this is suppressed, right? The culture may genuinely be distinctive. It may have more than what they're actually expressing because the language is burying that actual uniqueness and the unique value proposition. And then the same brand, it's using verbiage that everybody else is using. And finally, as a last example, a company that makes a clear promise and it consistently behaves in a way that supports that promise. And the customers describe the company the way that promise is, and it's using the same language externally and internally as this expressed, oppressed, or distorted. Well, obviously, we have an express company. We have a very healthy company there. Every touch point is being reinforced by the same expectation. Now, every company expresses a character, and few have named it, directed, or made it unmistakably theirs. So the simplest way to analyze and to diagnose a brand is to compare what it says it does to what it actually does. What shows up in the campaigns, what shows up on the website, on social media, inside presentation, inside the intercomputer, inside the daily voice, does it match with what's internal, right? Does the offer and the product and the buying process match the unique brand positioning? Does the customer experience resonate with it as well? What about the employment experience? Everything that happens after the sale. If you say more than you do, you have a trust problem. If you do more than what you say, you have a visibility problem. If you say what you do, then you are expressed and you have full integration of your brand. It is at its full health level. Now you can run an outside version of this on yourself on the brandarchetypes.com. It takes a few questions, but then you end up seeking and diving more into the deep surfaces, right? Where does a brand get expressed from? Well, you have campaigns, you have the website. The website includes the career pages, you have the daily social voice, the offer, right? That's tied to the unique value proposition. And then you have the sales and service and the experience that the customers are having. Each one of these asks three things, right? Is it express, suppressed, or distorted? Does it clearly express what makes the company different? Does the experience support the promise? And could a competitor say the exact same thing? So mark mark each surface. Is it expressed, suppressed, or distorted? The patterns matter more over time than just a single thing. If it's just a single thing that's happening, then you can address it. Now, if you have if you're strong on the inside and you're quiet on the outside, that's a visibility problem, right? Suppression. Loud on the outside contradicts what's on the inside, that is a trust problem, could be a distortion problem. Nothing coherent anywhere is across the business, and that is probably a brand positioning problem in its core. If every surface is clear, credible, and consistent, and performs and performance is still weak, you need to stop blaming the brand. Investigate the pricing, the distribution, the product, or the funnel. The brand may be doing its job, and while the actual problem lives really somewhere else. So here's the method in order. So first find where the problem is. Is this a product problem, a marketing problem, or a brand? If it is a brand, find the character and what the brand has actually committed to being and test out what's actually happening, what it sounds like, what it feels like, how it's expressed, who it's for and who it is not for. And then you compare with what the company says with what the company does and decide whether the brand is expressed, suppressed, or distorted. And what was really never clear in the first place. So if there's a few of these channels, well, which one do you focus on first? And my advice is always fix the one that's the closest tied to the revenue. Where is the revenue coming from? And use that one and leverage that in importance. Because that's a gap that's costing you and it's costing you the fastest. There's a famous expression that says if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. And this is similar that if a doctor who knows how to do procedures or surgery will always find a reason to use it. And this is a caution, a cautionary tale to realize that diagnosis is super important. You need to analyze problem at its source, otherwise, you could be wasting energy that doesn't produce the fruit or produce the numbers or the move or the impact that you're trying to reach. So, next episode, we will be talking about what the market cannot place. We will discuss repositioning and whether or not the company should reposition and when it should repositioning, and why repositioning may be the highest leverage move a brand can make, who has done it successfully, and who did not, and most of all, why? So, thanks for listening and we'll talk soon.