Most of the money spent on brands is lost not through ugly drawings but through deciding the wrong thing to draw: buying item by item when the problem is a system, speaking to everyone when one thing must be chosen to be remembered for, naming a new product before deciding how the names will stand together. This chapter discusses those decisions, and how to check whether a strategic statement actually does work or merely decorates the brief.
Quick read: the core statement, when it comes up, and the test to take home. Full read also opens the reasoning, the limits and the sources. Each principle comes before its practices, so the numbers do not run in sequence.
You may buy piecemeal in money and timing, never in rules: every touchpoint must follow one set of rules decided before the first item.
When it comes upWhen a business commissions a logo this year, a website next year, packaging the year after, each from a different supplier; when quotations are requested and compared item by item. A touchpoint here is any place a customer meets the brand: signage, packaging, website, quotation template, uniforms, messages.
Resolution
You may buy piecemeal in money and timing, never in rules. Any item can be made at any time, as long as every item follows the same set of rules decided before the first one (6.01).
Full reasoning
Two goods pulling against each other
Buying piecemeal follows cash flow, lets each item go to the best specialist for that item, and avoids committing a large sum before you are sure. Buying as a system makes the items add up to one recognition, not five versions of the same business.
Why it holds
Recognition builds only from what is repeated the same way (0.4). Whoever makes a single item has to infer the rules from that item alone: the colour adjusted slightly to suit screens, the lettering switched to a heavier style for packaging, the clear space around the logo shrunk to fit the sign. Each decision is reasonable on the spot; added up, the business has many versions of itself. The first item, usually the logo, is also optimised for the approval sheet, because its designer does not know it will have to live at profile-picture size, on embroidered fabric or on a lightbox. The cost of buying piecemeal appears on no quotation; it shows up in the effort of fitting items together, usually done by someone outside the craft, and in the bill for realigning everything a few years later.
When it fails
A new business testing the market, not yet knowing which touchpoints it will live on, can reasonably make one minimal item, as long as it is clearly marked as temporary and the cost of redoing it is counted in advance (6.06). A business that already has solid rules and a standards keeper (11.04) commissioning items one by one under those rules is operating correctly, not buying the wrong unit. If items already exist without rules, decide the rules now, starting from the item in use; later items follow those rules.
What it costs
Time and part of the budget must go into deciding rules before there is a first item to use; each item loses the freedom to take a style from the inspiration of whoever makes it.
Sources
Jenni Romaniuk, Building Distinctive Brand Assets, Oxford University Press, 2018
Draw the map of touchpoints and the links between them before requesting or preparing quotations, to see which item pulls in which.
When it comes upBefore the business goes out for quotations, or when it holds several separate quotations and does not know how to compare them.
A test to take home
(1) List every place a customer meets the business in a year, along the journey: hearing about it, searching online, visiting the outlet, the marketplace store, the business account on Zalo (Zalo OA); receiving a quotation, buying, using, calling for help or warranty, recommending it to others. (2) For each touchpoint fill three boxes: who produces it day to day, with what tool, how many times a year customers see it (an order of magnitude is enough). (3) Link two touchpoints when one borrows rules from the other: website colours borrowed from packaging, the quotation template borrowing lettering from the capability profile, the sign borrowing the logo lockup. (4) The box with the most links is where rules must be decided first; an item meant to be bought separately that sits exactly there is the wrong unit to buy separately (4.01). Pass: every line in the quotation points to a box on the map, and the map shows which boxes nobody is responsible for. Fail: the quotation has items not on the map, or the map has touchpoints customers meet daily that no line touches.
Position narrowly in meaning, not narrowly in buyers: choose one thing to be remembered for, then still sell to anyone who needs that thing.
When it comes upWhen writing the positioning statement, and when the owner fears that speaking narrowly will lose customers.
Resolution
Narrow in meaning, not narrow in who is sold to, nor in buying occasions. Choose one thing to attach to memory and drop the others from what you say, while still selling to anyone who needs that thing; salience brings the brand into memory, and the promise filters which entry points are worth winning.
Full reasoning
Two goods pulling against each other
Speaking broadly pushes nobody away, which is very real for a small business that needs every order; research on brand growth also shows brands grow mainly by gaining more buyers, including light buyers, not through a narrow loyal group. That school goes further: buyers rarely see brands as different, salience beats differentiation, and Romaniuk asks brands to connect with many category entry points, the moments when people start thinking about buying (7.11). Speaking narrowly gets the brand remembered for one thing.
Why it holds
Buyers pay very little attention and forget very quickly (0.2), so each brand keeps only a few associations in their heads. A sentence listing quality, reputation, good prices and dedication is a sentence the whole category says, so it attaches to nobody in particular. Strategy is valuable because it demands trade-offs: a position that makes the business give up nothing can be copied by a competitor at no cost. At the drawing board, a positioning that gives up nothing does concrete harm: it gives the designer no criterion for ruling out any direction (4.08, 5.01), so choosing a direction falls back on taste.
When it fails
In essential categories with little functional difference, buyers choose mainly by familiarity and ease of purchase; there the positioning statement is still needed but carries less than quick recognition does (1.02, 2.02). A business that does not yet know who its real customers are is guessing when it chooses what to give up; ask customers first (1.06), choose afterwards.
What it costs
Losing some customers who feel they do not belong to what is being said; turning down opportunities that drift from the positioning; the owner has to live with the feeling of leaving money on the table.
Sources
Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, McGraw-Hill, 1981
Michael E. Porter, What Is Strategy?, Harvard Business Review, 1996
Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, Oxford University Press, 2010
Jenni Romaniuk, Better Brand Health: Measures and Metrics for a How Brands Grow World, Oxford University Press, 2023
Write the positioning as one sentence with a "not" clause, and that clause must rule out something the business is reluctant to give up.
When it comes upWhen a draft positioning exists, before translating it into a design direction.
A test to take home
(1) Write to the template: [name] is for [whom], to be remembered for [one thing], not [what is deliberately given up]. The template adapts Geoffrey Moore's positioning statement with its comparison to competitors (1991) and Marty Neumeier's only-we statement (2006); the steps below examine the not clause. (2) Examine the not clause: a clause that gives up something nobody wants (not poor quality, not cheating customers) is fake. A real clause gives up something competitors do well, or a group of customers the business already has to some extent. (3) Give the sentence to the decider (3.02) and ask: if a large order falling exactly within the not clause arrived tomorrow, would the business take it? If they would take it without thinking, the sentence is not yet believed; revise it, or state which exceptions are allowed. (4) Give the sentence to a front-line seller. Pass: they can name a type of customer or job they would decline or redirect because of it. Fail: nobody can, meaning the sentence changes no behaviour.
Sources
Sources
Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm, HarperBusiness, 1991
Marty Neumeier, Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands, New Riders, 2006
Every adjective in a strategic statement must forbid at least one design choice; a word that forbids nothing is decoration.
When it comes upWhen turning a positioning statement, brand personality or messaging framework into a brief for designers.
A test to take home
(1) Underline each adjective in the strategic statement: premium, approachable, youthful, trustworthy. (2) For each word, write at least one thing the designer may not do because of it, concrete enough for a third person to check. A hypothetical example: approachable forbids addressing people as valued customer on social media; premium forbids printing promotional stickers on the front of the pack. (3) Any word for which no prohibition can be written is removed from the statement or replaced by a more concrete word. (4) Gather the prohibitions on one page, hand it to the designer with the brief, and have the decider confirm it alongside the criteria (3.05). Pass: put two different design directions side by side, and someone outside the craft holding the page of prohibitions can point out which direction breaks the rules. Fail: both directions are praised as on strategy.
Sources
Sources
Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, Crown Business, 2011
Put a competitor's name into your own positioning statement; if it is still true, the statement describes the category and has not yet positioned the business.
When it comes upWhen reviewing the positioning statement, the slogan, the introduction on the website and in the capability profile.
A test to take home
The name-swap test is a common tool of the craft, not anyone's own; two parts below are what Sinh Vũ adds: step (4) and the note on entry-ticket sentences. (1) Choose three competitors customers often weigh against you; this list is for internal use only, not for publication. (2) Replace your name with each competitor's in the positioning statement, slogan and introduction. (3) Ask someone in the industry: is this sentence false for them? (4) Strike the words that make the sentence true for everyone, such as quality, reputation, dedication, leading, then read what remains. Pass: at least one clause remains that is false for competitors, or that they would not dare claim. Fail: the sentence is true for all three. Note: a sentence true for the whole category may still need to be said, because it tells customers which category you belong to (the entry ticket in 2.01), but do not call it positioning and do not let it occupy the most valuable spot on the page.
Brand architecture must be decided before the second product; by the tenth product it is no longer a decision but a clean-up.
When it comes upWhen a business is about to launch a new product line, open a branch or start a second line of business. Brand architecture is how the names and marks within one business stand together: one master name for everything, a master name endorsing sub-names, or a separate brand for each product.
Resolution
Decide the rule before the second product, and give it a built-in exception door with clear conditions for opening it, for example a product sold to a completely different customer group, or one carrying risks that could drag the master name down.
Full reasoning
Two goods pulling against each other
Deciding each product as it is born is flexible, fits that product's market, and avoids being bound by a rule set before anything was known. Having a rule early makes each new name add to the same asset instead of splitting it.
Why it holds
Products born before there is a rule get named by circumstance: after the person in charge, the sales channel, a promotion. Once a name is printed on packaging, hung on a sign or filed for registration, changing it costs money and recognition, so each added product makes rearranging more expensive than the last. Aaker and Joachimsthaler's brand relationship spectrum shows that each position on the spectrum has its own benefits and costs: sharing the master name lets a new product borrow existing trust, but one failed product drags down the whole family; separate names isolate risk, but each name must build recognition from scratch. Deciding at the second product is cheapest because there are only two things to arrange and neither has put down roots.
When it fails
A business selling a single product with no expansion plans does not yet need a full architecture; one note saying that when a second product arrives it will be decided by the three questions in 4.07 is enough. When acquiring a brand that already has a name, the rule must take that asset into account rather than forcing it into the old frame. In a family business the master name also carries the family's honour (3.03), so the question of dragging it down weighs more than a calculation. Registering a trademark for a new name requires advice from an intellectual property specialist.
What it costs
Losing the freedom to name each product on inspiration; sometimes a new product must carry a less attractive name because of the rule; a meeting spent deciding something at a time when nobody feels the need.
Sources
David A. Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler, The Brand Relationship Spectrum: The Key to the Brand Architecture Challenge, California Management Review, 2000
A new product takes the master name, an endorsed name, or its own name: answer three questions about trust, risk and building capacity before naming it.
When it comes upWhen naming a new product, product line, branch or business line.
A test to take home
The three questions below adapt Aaker and Joachimsthaler's questions for choosing brand architecture (Brand Leadership, 2000): does the master name contribute to the new product, is a separate name needed, can the business afford to build a new name. What Sinh Vũ adds is how to read the result in small and medium businesses. (1) Trust: does the master name help this product sell, meaning the same customer group and the same quality promise? If the master name makes new customers doubtful, for example a name tied to budget goods while the new product is priced high, lean towards a separate name. (2) Risk: if this product fails or causes a scandal, can the master name withstand it? High risk means keeping distance. (3) Building capacity: does the business have the money and people to build recognition for a new name from scratch, at every touchpoint, over many years? If not, use the master name or an endorsed name. Reading the result: when all three questions point the same way, the decision is made; when two disagree, in a small or medium business question (3) usually wins, because resources are limited (0.5). Write the answer and the reasons on a one-page architecture rule. Pass: a third person reading that page can name the next product without asking the owner. Fail: every new product starts the meeting over from scratch. For a new name intended for trademark registration, search and consult a specialist before printing.
Sources
Sources
David A. Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler, Brand Leadership, Free Press, 2000
