Strategic brand positioning to improve marketing planning

In order to create effective, impactful marketing plans, you need to:

- on the one hand, have a clear idea of the trends and issues going on in the market that have implications for your business,

- and on the other hand, have a clear understanding of where you want your brand to be positioned in the market to best take advantage of, or minimise the impact of, those global trends and issues.

Let me just say at the outset, that this is not rocket science. However, in the everyday mad, rushed world of marketing, we often take shortcuts, which can lead to not fully thinking through an important process clearly. By taking shortcuts, we sometimes even make the overall process longer, as we make mistakes and get distracted and then have to retrace our steps to get it right. And so if we get these two wrong, its going to be impossible to create effective plans if we aren’t even setting the right criteria and issues to address to begin with.

A good example of a brand that...