Kevin Keller

Brand positioning tip #2: the competitive frame of reference

In Brand Positioning Tip #1, we covered 2 of the 4 key elements of successful brand positioning done the way Dr. Kevin Keller taught me: points of parity and points of difference. Today, I’d like to highlight the third key element of good brand positioning– understanding your competitive frame of reference.

Competitive frame of reference is a fancy way of saying “the market you compete in.”

This sounds pretty simple, huh? It can be… If you run a furniture store, your competitive frame of reference would probably be the furniture market. If you run a tattoo parlor, your competitive frame of reference would probably be the tattoo market.

Those are pretty cut and dry cases. But have you ever stopped and wondered to yourself, “exactly what market am I competing in?” and realized that you are really competing in a market that is not initially obvious? Or that you are actually competing in multiple markets? If either of these situations are true, you may discover you need to create points of parity and points of difference for each market where you compete.

Here is an common example of a less-than-obvious competitive frame of reference.

What market do you think Starbucks is in? The coffee market? Maybe. In the coffee market, Starbucks competes with grocery stores, fast food restaurants, other coffee shops, and home brewers. Tough market… they aren’t competitive in the coffee market on price, there are probably options that (arguably) taste better, maybe have shorter lines. It’s hard to believe that Starbucks would have grown as big as they are by simply competing in the existing coffee market.

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Brand positioning tip #1: points of parity and points of difference

In my recent post on the books behind Dark Matter Matters, I mentioned Dr. Kevin Keller from Dartmouth. Kevin is the author of Strategic Brand Management, which placed #3 on my list. But in addition to being an author and professor, Kevin is also a long time friend of Red Hat. He has helped us work through some of the most challenging corporate branding and positioning decisions we’ve faced over the past six or seven years.

I thought it might be nice to pass along some favorite lessons that I learned from Kevin over the years, many of which we have put into practice at Red Hat. In this post, we’ll cover 2 of the key elements behind good brand positioning: Points of Parity and Points of Difference.

If you need the primer on what positioning is all about, read my previous post here or go buy a copy of Jack Trout’s book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.

There’s a working definition of points of parity and points of difference in Wikipedia here, but I hope the explanation below will appeal more to average folk who aren’t as into the marketing-speak.

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The top 10 books behind Dark Matter Matters

Books are important to me. Growing up, almost every free wall in my parents’ house was lined with bookshelves, some of them stacked two deep.  I spent most of my pre- Red Hat career in book publishing, first working during college at The University of North Carolina Press. After college, I went to work for a literary agent named Rafe Sagalyn in Washington DC. Working for Rafe was a great experience because he built his reputation on big think/idea books and business books.

His first big book was the huge bestseller Megatrends by John Naisbitt back in the early 80s. When I was there, I personally got to work with, among others, Bill Strauss and Neil Howe on their great books about generational patterns in society (check out The Fourth Turning… very prophetic these days) and Don Peppers, author of some books back in the 90s like The 1:1 Future about relationship marketing that were the grandparents of today’s books on social media marketing.

I also got to play agent and author myself too. As an agent, I represented some of Tom Bodett’s work (yes, he is the Motel 6 guy, but was also a commentator on NPR) and sold a wonderful novel called The Frequency of Souls to FSG. As author, I helped Rafe write two “cutting edge” books about getting free and open access to government information (they have not aged well, I’m afraid).

Fast forwarding to today, Rafe actually was the agent for two recent big think books that I love, Authenticity and A Whole New Mind, so he is still making things happen.

After I left book publishing, reading became fun again. I read novels and travel literature for a while, nothing that made me think too much. But when I got to Red Hat, I relapsed and started reading the big think books like the ones I used to work on with Rafe. I thought it might be worth taking a few minutes to try to remember the books that have been the biggest influences on my thinking, and get them all down in one place, so here goes:

Top 10 Dark Matter Matters books

Without these ten books, Dark Matter might not even matter to me.

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