BJ Bueno

In a world where products and services often seem interchangeable, the true competitive advantage lies not in what you sell, but in how you make your customers feel. Emotional connections—the bedrock of Cult Branding—are what transform a transactional relationship into a loyal, enduring one.

For CEOs navigating the complexities of modern business, the message is clear: 

Customers don’t just buy products; they invest in relationships that resonate with their identity, values, and aspirations. 

Here’s why emotional connections are the ultimate differentiator for brands today.

From Satisfaction to Devotion

Many businesses aim for customer satisfaction, but satisfaction is just the baseline. A satisfied customer may return, but an emotionally connected customer will champion your brand. According to research from Forrester, loyal customers are five times more likely to repurchase and four times more likely to refer your brand to others.

Consider Apple’s approach. Apple doesn’t sell devices; it sells a lifestyle and a sense of belonging to an innovative and exclusive community. From its minimalist design ethos to its iconic keynote events, Apple taps into its customers’ desire for simplicity, innovation, and status. The result? An industry-leading 90% customer retention rate for the iPhone.

Emotional Triggers That Drive Loyalty

Brands that build strong emotional connections understand and leverage key emotional triggers:

1. Belonging: Cult brands create a sense of “we” among their customers. For instance, Harley-Davidson’s Harley Owners Group (HOG) provides a community where like-minded enthusiasts connect over shared values of freedom and adventure.
2. Identity: Customers align with brands that reflect their self-image. Patagonia’s commitment to environmental sustainability attracts eco-conscious consumers who see the brand as an extension of their values.
3. Purpose: Brands that stand for something larger than profit inspire deeper loyalty. Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign resonates with customers by celebrating perseverance and achievement, creating an emotional connection far beyond athletic gear.

The CEO’s Role in Forging Connections

As the leader of your organization, you set the tone for the emotional connection your brand creates. This involves:

• Aligning Brand Purpose: Ensure that your brand’s purpose resonates with both your employees and customers. Purpose-driven brands grow faster and foster stronger loyalty.
• Modeling Core Values: Live your brand’s values consistently. Authenticity from the top builds trust across all touchpoints.
• Creating a Shared Vision: Rally your team and customers around a shared vision of what the brand stands for and where it’s headed.

Actionable Steps to Build Emotional Connections

To bring emotional connections to life, CEOs can implement these practical strategies:

1. Personalize the Customer Experience: Use data to deliver tailored experiences that make customers feel understood and valued. Companies like Amazon and Netflix excel at this, driving loyalty through personalized recommendations.
2. Foster Community: Build platforms where customers can interact with each other and the brand. Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference is a masterclass in turning customers into advocates by blending education and connection.
3. Celebrate Rituals and Traditions: Create unique rituals that reinforce customer bonds with your brand. For example, Starbucks’ seasonal drinks, like the Pumpkin Spice Latte, are eagerly anticipated traditions that drive engagement.
4. Measure Emotional Engagement: Track emotional metrics such as NPS, advocacy rates, and community participation to gauge the strength of your brand’s connections.

The Bottom Line

In a crowded marketplace, it’s easy for brands to get lost in the noise. Emotional connections cut through the clutter and anchor customers to your brand. By prioritizing identity, belonging, and purpose, CEOs can unlock the true potential of their organizations and foster loyalty that stands the test of time.

The question isn’t whether your brand can afford to focus on emotional connections; it’s whether you can afford not to.

Are you ready to transform your brand’s relationships into lasting emotional bonds? Let’s take the next step together.

What is Brand Positioning?

Put simply, brand positioning is the process of positioning your brand in the minds of your customers. Brand positioning is also referred to as a positioning strategy, brand strategy, or brand positioning statement.

Popularized in Al Ries and Jack Trout’s bestselling Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, the idea is to identify and attempt to “own” a marketing niche for a brand, product, or service using various strategies including pricing, promotions, distribution, packaging, and competition. The goal is to create a unique impression in the customer’s mind so that the customer associates something specific and desirable with your brand that is distinct from the rest of the marketplace.

Ries and Trout define positioning as “an organized system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances.”

Brand positioning occurs whether or not a company is proactive in developing a position, however, if management takes an intelligent, forward-looking approach, it can positively influence its brand positioning in the eyes of its target customers.

Positioning Statements versus Taglines

Brand positioning statements are often confused with company taglines or slogans. Positioning statements are for internal use. These statements guide the marketing and operating decisions of your business. A positioning statement helps you make key decisions that affect your customer’s perception of your brand.

A tagline is an external statement used in your marketing efforts. Insights from your positioning statement can be turned into a tagline, but it is important to distinguish between the two. (See examples of brand positioning statements and taglines below.)

7-Step Brand Positioning Strategy Process

To create a positioning strategy, you must first identify your brand’s uniqueness and determine what differentiates you from your competition.

There are 7 key steps to effectively clarify your positioning in the marketplace:

1. Determine how your brand is currently positioning itself
2. Identify your direct competitors
3. Understand how each competitor is positioning their brand
4. Compare your positioning to your competitors to identify your uniqueness
5. Develop a distinct and value-based positioning idea
6. Craft a brand positioning statement (see below)
7. Test the efficacy of your brand positioning statement (see 15 criteria below)

What is a Brand Positioning Statement?

A positioning statement is a one or two-sentence declaration that communicates your brand’s unique value to your customers in relation to your main competitors.

In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore offers one way of formulating a positioning statement: For (target customer) who (statement of the need or opportunity), the (product name) is a (product category) that (statement of key benefit; also called a compelling reason to believe). Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (statement of primary differentiation). However, we provide a more simplified structure for formulating a Brand Positioning Statement in the following section.

How to Create a Brand Positioning Statement

There are four essential elements of a best-in-class positioning statement:

1. Target Customer: What is a concise summary of the attitudinal and demographic description of the target group of customers your brand is attempting to appeal to and attract?
2. Market Definition: What category is your brand competing in and in what context does your brand have relevance to your customers?
3. Brand Promise: What is the most compelling (emotional/rational) benefit to your target customers that your brand can own relative to your competition?
4. Reason to Believe: What is the most compelling evidence that your brand delivers on its brand promise?

After thoughtfully answering these four questions, you can craft your positioning statement:

For [target customers], [company name] is the [market definition] that delivers [brand promise] because only [company name] is [reason to believe].

Two Examples of Positioning Statements

Amazon.com used the following positioning statement in 2001 (when it almost exclusively sold books):

For World Wide Web users who enjoy books, Amazon.com is a retail bookseller that provides instant access to over 1.1 million books. Unlike traditional book retailers, Amazon.com provides a combination of extraordinary convenience, low prices, and comprehensive selection.

Zipcar.com used the following positioning statement when it established its business was founded in 2000:

To urban-dwelling, educated techno-savvy consumers, when you use Zipcar car-sharing service instead of owning a car, you save money while reducing your carbon footprint.

12 Examples of Taglines

Once you have a strong brand positioning statement you can create a tagline or slogan that helps establish the position you’re looking to own. Here are 15 examples:

Mercedes-Benz: The Best or Nothing

BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine

Wharton Business School: The World’s First Business School

Miller Lite: Great Taste, Less Filling

State Farm: Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

L’Oreal: Because We’re Worth It

Walmart: Save Money. Live Better

Nike: Just Do It

Coca-Cola: Real Magic

Target: Expect more. Pay less.

Volvo: For life.

Home Depot: How Doers Get More Done

15 Criteria for Evaluating Your Brand Positioning Strategy

An intelligent and well-crafted positioning statement is a powerful tool for bringing focus and clarity to your marketing strategies, advertising campaigns, and promotional tactics. If used properly, this statement can help you make effective decisions to help differentiate your brand, attract your target customers, and win market share from your competition.

Here are 15 criteria for checking your brand positioning:

1. Does it differentiate your brand?
2. Does it match customer perceptions of your brand?
3. Does it enable growth?
4. Does it identify your brand’s unique value to your customers?
5. Does it produce a clear picture in your mind that’s different from your competitors?
6. Is it focused on your core customers?
7. Is it memorable and motivating?
8. Is it consistent in all areas of your business?
9. Is it easy to understand?
10. Is it difficult to copy?
11. Is it positioned for long-term success?
12. Is your brand promise believable and credible?
13. Can your brand own it?
14. Will it withstand counterattacks from your competitors?
15. Will it help you make more effective marketing and branding decisions?

Repositioning Positioning

The unfortunate reality is that no marketer has the power to position anything in the customer’s mind, which is the core promise of positioning. The notion that positions are created by marketers has to die. Each customer has their own idea of what you are.

Positioning is not something you do, but rather, is the result of your customer’s perception of what you do. Positioning is not something we can create in a vacuum—the act of positioning is a co-authored experience with the customers.

Behind your positioning statement or tagline is your intention—how you desire your business to be represented to customers. Once the real role of positioning is understood, having a tagline or a positioning statement can be useful by clarifying your brand’s essence within your organization.

By examining the essence of what you are and comparing it with what your customers want, the doors open to building a business with a strong positioning in the mind of the customer. Why? Great brands merge their passion with their positioning into one statement that captures the essence of both.

Integrating Your Brand Positioning in Your Customer’s Mind

To position your brand in your customer’s minds, you must start from within your business. Every member of your organization that touches the customer has to be the perfect expression of your position. And, since everyone touches the customer in some way, everyone should be the best expression of your position.

Now comes the hard part: Put up everything that represents your brand on a wall. List all your brand’s touchpoints—every point of interaction with your customer.  With a critical, yet intuitive eye, ask:

• How can I more fluidly communicate my brand’s desired position?
• Does every touchpoint look, say, and feel like the brand I want my customers to perceive?

Many marketers don’t have the clarity and conviction to follow through on their words. Without certainty, you default to the status quo. Turn everything you do into an expression of your desired positioning and you can create something special. This takes courage; to actively position your brand means you have to stand for something. Only then are you truly on your way to owning your very own position in the minds of your customers.

Onward!

What is a Go To Market Strategy?

How does your business connect with its customers? How do you deliver your unique value to your target customers? How do you go from the initial connection with a potential customer to fulfilling your brand promise?

The answer to these vital questions defines your go-to-market strategy.

Your go-to-market strategy combines all of the key elements that drive your business: sales, marketing, distribution, pricing, brand development, competitive analysis, and consumer insights.

It provides a strategic action plan that clarifies how to reach your target customers and better compete in your marketplace.

Go-to-market strategies can be applied to new product launches and existing products and services.

Benefits of a Go To Market Strategy

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy has numerous benefits. It helps your business:

• Reduce time to market
• Reduce costs associated with failed product launches
• Increase ability to adapt to change
• Manage innovation challenges
• Ensure effective customer experience
• Ensure regulatory compliance
• Ensure a successful product launch
• Avoid the wrong path
• Establish a path for growth
• Clarifies plan and direction for all

Developing a comprehensive GTM strategy is an investment in time and resources, but it can help illuminate and ensure a viable path to market success.

What’s Inside Your GTM Strategy?

The goal of a GTM strategy is to improve key business outcomes. This is mainly accomplished by aligning with the evolving needs of your customers.

To create an effective GTM strategy for your business, you want to create a detailed plan with the following six ingredients:

1. Markets: What markets do you want to pursue?
2. Customers: Who are you selling to? Who is your target customer?
3. Channels: Where do your target customers buy? Where will you promote your products?
4. Product (or Offering): What product/service are you selling? And what unique value do you offer to each target customer group?
5. Price: How much will you charge for your products for each customer group?
6. Positioning: What is your unique value or primary differentiation? How will you connect to what matters to your target customers and position your brand?

If you can concisely and effectively answer these six questions, you’ll be in the position to formulate a winning GTM strategy.

An Example from Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines is recognized as one of the most innovative and trendsetting companies in the cutthroat industry of commercial aviation.

Southwest was so innovative that many larger airlines and airports tried to prevent the company from getting off the ground in the early 1970’s.

Instead of using the traditional “hub and spoke” flight routing system employed by most major airlines, Southwest opted for a “Point to Point” system.

Most airlines have “hubs” in particular major cities where most flights connect (think of a hub on a wheel with many spokes coming out of the center). Southwest’s Point to Point system takes passengers from one to another without using any hubs.

Only about 20 percent of Southwest’s passengers are connecting passengers—the vast majority are local—making the point-to-point system more effective for their target customers.

This is just one example of how Southwest’s go-to-market strategy helps the airline stay on top and deliver what its markets want most.

Before You Begin

GTM strategies, like any corporate strategy, are a matter of asking the right questions (and in the right order).

As a business leader, it is helpful to play the role of “strategic coach” and run through the following questions with your executive team:

1. Where are you now? What is the current state of affairs in your business? Take inventory of your current business position and the current climate in your marketplace.
2. Where do you want to go? What is the desired end picture of this new initiative? Define your ultimate vision.
3. What has to happen to get you to your end picture? What strategic options are available to you? Determine the best solution paths to realizing your vision.

The main distinction between an overall corporate strategy and a GTM strategy is that the latter has a greater emphasis on connecting with your customers: sales, marketing, branding, distribution, customer touchpoints, and so on.

How Long Will Your GTM Strategy Take to Execute?

A comprehensive GTM strategy that includes a detailed analysis of your target markets, customer segments, budget requirements, offers, and positioning can take several weeks (or longer) to formulate.

Successful implementation of a new GTM strategy can take 12 to 36 months.

It is important to keep in mind that a GTM strategy is a long-term approach to building profitability, decreasing customer acquisition costs, and enhancing the customer experience.

Key Objectives of Your GTM Strategy

Your GTM strategy has several strategic objectives including to:

• Create awareness of your offering
• Convert your initial customers
• Maximize your market share by encroaching on your competitors, entering new markets, and increasing customer engagement
• Defend your present market share against competitors
• Reinforce your brand position
• Reduce cost and maximize profitability

As an integral strategy for your long-term business success, let’s take a look at the seven key steps for developing your strategy.

Seven Steps to Creating a GTM Strategy

Here are the seven vital steps to formulating your strategy:

Step 1: Define Your Target Markets

No product is appropriate for every market. Clarifying your ideal target markets is a vital element in formulating your GTM strategy.

Factors might include demographics, psychographics, ethnographics, drivers of need, buyer personas, online/offline, and geography.

Remember you can’t profitably pursue every market so you want to determine where you can most effectively differentiate your brand and attract the most profitable customers who resonate with your offering.

Force yourself to sacrifice and focus on what matters most.

Start by brainstorming a master list of all possible markets you could pursue. Then, determine how you will assess each market opportunity. You may use metrics like market size, growth trends, ability to compete, barriers to entry, and the economics of each market.

Consider:

• Which markets have the biggest and most urgent pain?
• Where are there gaps in the market?
• Which markets are most aligned with your corporate strategy?
• Which markets best match your core competencies?
• Which markets can you most easily reach?
• Which markets have the largest market size and least competition?

Next, assess each market for accessibility, alignment, and overall opportunity. Do what you can to test or validate each market opportunity with key stakeholders.

Review feedback from current and prospective clients as well as employees on the front line. Review trend data from available sources. Try using customer surveys and external focus groups.

Finally, prioritize your market opportunities and refine them on an ongoing basis.

Ultimately, your best opportunities will also attract your competitors, so defining your target markets is insufficient in itself.

You will still need to differentiate your offer and position your brand. But at least now you will have the confidence that you’re fishing where your fish are.

Step 2: Define Your Target Customer

Management guru Peter Drucker reminds us, “The purpose of business is to create a customer.”

The driving force behind this step is developing customer intelligence. You want to become masterful at generating actionable consumer insights through web surveys, focus groups, one-on-one in-depth interviews, in-store interactions, and more.

Here’s a list of questions that require thoughtful deliberation:

• Who is your business especially for? Who are your Brand Lovers? That is, who will be your most profitable customers?
• What human needs are you trying to satisfy in your target customers?
• What internal tensions are you attempting to resolve?
• What problems are you trying to solve?
• What is the ideal experience you’re trying to create for your target customers?
• What are the emotions you want your Brand Lovers to experience when they interact with you?

Your goal is to understand who your customers are, how they behave, and what they experience. The better consumer insights you have, the better chances you have for executing an effective GTM strategy.

Step 3: Define Your Brand Positioning

Brand positioning is the process of positioning your brand in the minds of your customers. If management takes an intelligent, forward-looking approach, it can positively influence its brand’s position in the eyes of its target customers.

We’ve outlined how to create a brand positioning statement here.

Step 4: Define Your Offering

Now define your product or the product’s unique value proposition. Understanding your product’s key features and benefits is the first step. Then you must understand exactly how your product connects with your customers: the context of their use, the solutions it solves, and the benefits they derive.

Here are some key questions to bring clarity to your offering:

• What needs or tensions do your target customers need solving?
• Which features in your offering best address these needs?
• How will customers use it?
• What are the important attributes or benefits of your offering?
• How is your offering differentiated in the marketplace?

To help determine the product’s unique value proposition, put yourself in your target customer’s perspective when you think about presenting your company’s offering. Consider:

• What do you want your customers to think?
• What do you want them to feel?
• What do you want them to believe?
• What do you want them to remember?

The better insights you have about your customers, the more effective you can be at defining your offering. This means you need to get to know your customers, to obsess about your customers.

Talk to them, listen to them, and get to know them. This step will also help you create more effective marketing messages later on.

Step 5: Define Your Channels

You link your offering to your customers through channels. Channels might include a retail store, the Internet, a customer service call center, a face-to-face salesperson, a trade show, a seminar, or a direct partner.

Amazon.com’s primary channel is its website. Walmart’s primary channel is its retail chain. BWM’s primary channel is its dealerships. LL Bean’s primary channels are its catalogs, call center, and website. AT&T’s channels include its authorized dealers (partners), independent retail stores, and website.

Your goal isn’t just to identify your channels, but to ensure that each channel is as seamlessly integrated with each other as possible.

Customers should have a consistent brand experience no matter what channel or touch point through which they interact with you.

The key questions in your channel analysis are:

• Where do you reach your target customers?
• Where do your target customers buy?
• Where will you promote your products?
• What is the right distribution model?
• How do you develop the right distribution channels?
• Does the channel fit your offering?
• How does your offering fit with your target markets and channels?
• How would customers desire to interact with you?
• What level of interaction do your target customers require?
• Can you create a competitive advantage?

You want to make sure your offering fits your channel. For example, it is difficult to sell complex services or certain high-priced products over the web.

Step 6: Build Your Budget Model

Once you’ve defined your channels, you’re ready to build a budget model. Here you’ll want to define your product pricing and estimate costs associated with your GTM strategy.

To develop your pricing model, consider:

• What is the value you are offering to your target customers?
• Are there existing price expectations?
• How do you price your product relative to your competitors?
• Is there a way to create a competitive advantage with your pricing model?

Channel economics is an important to consider. For example, most airlines, like JetBlue, charge a $25 booking fee when you book a flight over the phone while charging no fees for online booking. There’s little variable cost for web transactions, but call center representatives are expensive.

Your goal might be to develop a revenue model based on anticipated market penetration, average transaction size, number of transactions, and so on.

Consider:

• Based on your market definitions (step 1), what are your primary goals for market share penetration?
• What are your estimated margins over the next one-, two-, and three-year horizon, factoring in startup and ongoing expenses?
• What are the human resources requirements for the first year of execution?

To help mitigate risk, it is advisable to identify the economic, competitive, and internal risks associated with executing this strategy. Outline the biggest risks that may affect your ability to reach your goals and develop strategies to address how to overcome them.

Step 7: Define Your Marketing Strategy

Now it’s time to put all of the pieces of this massive puzzle together. You’re going to want to develop a unique marketing strategy for each target market you’ve identified in Step 1.

Your marketing mix will be determined by your strategy in each market. Starting with your brand positioning, your goal is to create competitive advantages for your product offering.

To develop your marketing tactics, consider:

• How do you reach the economic buyers and influencers of your target markets?
• What messages will motivate them to consider and purchase?

Keep in mind that your marketing objectives and strategy might change throughout the product lifecycle so be ready to adapt.

Be sure to measure and track your key performance metrics on a weekly and monthly basis so you can make adjustments to your strategies, investments, and human resources.

Now It’s Your Turn

As Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

An effective GTM strategy is based on the art of delighting your customers and surprising your competitors. Consider how hard Apple used to work to keep the plans of their new iPhone secret until “the right moment” to go to market with their new product.

Once you are in the process of rolling out your strategy you won’t have time to plan as you’ll be more reactive due to your deadline pressures. Thoughtfully and thoroughly walking through these vital steps gives your organization the greatest chance of success.

Contact us to discuss how you can better prepare for what’s ahead. We can help you identify ways for your organization to tap into the power of cult branding, create value, and ultimately thrust your performance.

Best of luck in your go-to-market journey!

As a leader, navigating the evolving landscape of advertising can be a daunting task. 

The recent findings from the Profit Ability 2 study offer critical insights into how advertising remains a profitable growth driver, albeit with nuances shaped by sector, scale, efficiency, and time. 

Let’s dive into the key takeaways and strategies to harness these insights effectively.

Key Insights from the Profit Ability 2 Study

1. Advertising Drives Profit, but Profitability Varies by Sector
   Advertising is undeniably a critical lever for business growth. However, profitability is not uniform. For instance, sectors like Automotive show a strong ROI, especially for Linear TV, while FMCG sees low short-term returns but gains through long-term payback.
2. The Three Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness
   • Scale: Larger budgets often deliver greater absolute returns, but diminishing returns can cap efficiency.
   • Efficiency: The ratio of cost to payback highlights how well investments translate into profit.
   • Time: Advertising effects vary across immediate, carryover (up to 13 weeks), and sustained (over years).
3. Channel Effectiveness Varies Significantly
   The analysis demonstrates that Linear TV dominates in terms of scale and long-term ROI, while channels like Generic PPC shine for short-term gains. Emerging formats like BVOD are also punching above their weight in certain sectors.
4. Evolving Media Consumption Trends
   The rise of streaming, privacy-driven data policies, and post-pandemic shifts in consumer behavior necessitate recalibrating your advertising strategy.

Strategies to Turn Insights into Action

1. Tailor Your Advertising Mix by Sector and Objective
   • For sectors with high immediate ROI potential, such as Retail, prioritize channels like Generic PPC and Paid Social.
   • For sectors like Automotive, invest heavily in Linear TV for both short- and long-term gains.
2. Balance Scale and Efficiency
   • Assess your current spending against the saturation points identified in the study. Over-investing in a channel with diminishing returns can erode efficiency.
   • Use econometric models to identify the optimal spend levels per channel.
3. Leverage Both Short- and Long-Term Effects
   • Allocate a portion of your budget to channels with high adstock rates (Linear TV and BVOD) to benefit from their sustained effects.
   • Simultaneously, invest in performance-driven media like Generic PPC for immediate revenue impact.
4. Integrate Insights into Boardroom Discussions
   The study highlights the gap between marketing teams and boardrooms. Bridge this divide by presenting ROI metrics that align with financial KPIs, emphasizing advertising’s contribution to incremental profit and long-term brand value.
5. Stay Agile in Response to Media Trends
   • Monitor shifts in media consumption, such as increasing streaming penetration or evolving privacy laws, to stay ahead of the curve.
   • Explore innovative formats like branded content and in-feed social media ads to engage with newer audiences.

Understanding the intricacies of advertising’s impact on your bottom line is the first step. The next is creating a tailored strategy that ensures your investments deliver maximum returns.

Let me help you craft a powerful advertising strategy for 2025 that aligns with your business objectives. With over 24 years of experience guiding brands like Harley-Davidson and Coca-Cola, I specialize in building strategies that not only drive profit but also foster deeper customer connections.

Reach out today, and let’s transform your advertising into a growth engine for the future. Together, we’ll ensure your brand remains ahead of the competition in this ever-evolving landscape.