Editor's note: Based in Portland, Ore., Roger A. Straus is vice president/account manager for The Blackstone Group, a Chicago research firm.

We all speak of "positioning." It's not only a ubiquitous marketing concept, but one that inherently links marketing practice to primary research. Any number of marketing gurus have announced the death of positioning, but, like the Energizer Bunny, the darn thing keeps on ticking - and for good reason, namely that the concept and the marketing strategies and tactics it implies make practical sense. In this article, I would like to review the concept of positioning, describe some of the conventional positioning research approaches and suggest ways in which both the concept and the associated research are evolving to even better meet the needs of 21st-century marketers.

A spatial metaphor

First we need to pin down exactly what it is we are talking about. The very term positioning seems to make intuitive sense. Where does the brand fit relative to the competition, literally? Positioning seems to imply a spatial metaphor, locating a brand or product within the marketplace, perhaps on a perceptual map. This kind of thinking further implies that positioning is somehow inherent, a more-or-less rational (perhaps even mechanical) function of the product's characteristics relative to those of the competition.

Back in 1982, Al Ries and Jack Trout published their book, Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, which placed an entirely different spin on the concept. They argued - very effectively, I would say - that a brand or product's positioning is not inherent in its qualities or attributes but, rather, represents the place that it fits in the target customer's mind. As researcher Marc Julius liked to put it, if you trip a customer and whisper the brand's name, whatever passes through his or her mind before s/he hits the ground is the product's positioning - for that individual. Think of the Energizer Bunny. What does that long-standing icon say about the Energizer battery brand? What does it communicate to the target audience?

The whole point of positioning research is to a) identify the optimal positioning for the brand (i.e., product, company, etc.) and b) provide actionable insights into how the client can get that brand positioning into customers' minds. Actually, there's another critical factor to consider: If you don't position your offering proactively, the marketplace (each individual within it, including your competitors) will position it themselves. Do the Energizer folks want their brand to be positioned as just another expensive alkaline battery?

Offers the best fit

The concept of rational positioning is based on the specific differentiating attributes of an offering. It is essentially based on the economist's rational choice model or paradigm. The underlying assumption is that, among relevant competitors, we choose the product or service that offers the best fit relative to our perceived needs and wants. We determine this through a kind of mental calculation in which one adds up all the positives, subtracts the negatives and then chooses the offering with the highest score. This way of thinking about choice and decision-making has become so deeply embedded in our business culture that it seems to make intuitive sense (although we rarely break it open as I just did).

In my experience within the health care/pharmaceutical and related markets, a qualitative positioning process largely based on Ries and Trout's pioneering approach aims to evoke what I like to call a positioning story for a client's offering. While there appear to be as many twists and variations on this method as there are agencies and researchers, the core approach is fairly consistent. Most of us employ individual depth interviews in which we ask the subject to help us put together the most compelling and differentiating positioning statement they can from elements provided - usually cards or lists.

There are typically three parts to the process.

Part one is identifying the positioning headline or theme, such as (going back to our Energizer Bunny example) "the longest-lasting battery" or "the battery you can trust for even the most critical applications." This is often considered the positioning in and of itself. The phrase or statement that will ultimately be selected represents the meaning for the product, brand, company or other offering that the marketer seeks to drive into the minds of prospective customers.

Part two involves clarifying the key supports or reasons to believe - evidence that make the positioning believable or compelling. These may be as simple as differentiating features or as complex comparative data tables, a description of the active mechanism, underlying science or technology, etc. Whether or not the supports would ever be included in an actual promotional message, by letting the subject explicitly build the case for the offering, one works with - rather than against - the desire to be seen as a rational, self-determined decision maker. Respondents, professionals especially, are likely to reject positioning statements without explicit support as manipulative, disingenuous, even insulting and use comments like "Madison Avenue" or "marketing hype" to describe them.

In part three one identifies the key - hopefully unique - benefits of the offering. As any informed marketer knows, there is an important difference between a feature and a benefit. A feature is an attribute or characteristic of the offering. A benefit is what that means for the customer, end user, etc. I like to describe this as the "So what?" of the offering: "You have this or that feature - so what? What's in it for me?" To prompt preferential purchase, trial or use, you want to link that behavior to a benefit - to give them a reason why it's in their best interest to do so. Even when promotional messages don't include product features or other supports, they almost always mention or refer to a benefit. For example, "Your electronic devices will run for longer than they would with any other battery" or "You won't unexpectedly run out of power."

Commonly, we give the respondent a set of messages or message elements and ask them to select from them. These are normally prepared by an advertising agency, sometimes by the brand team. Key design features include making each statement as clear and distinct from any other statement as possible, preferentially avoiding ad-speak or anything that may be reacted to as hype. This is not advertising copy; rather, we want subjects to respond to the ideas, not the phrasing. Later on, the promotional team can wordsmith this material to their satisfaction.

Some prefer to present each headline with appropriate supports and benefit statements in a single step. If the client wishes to decide on the optimal positioning through a quantitative approach, if only to test the outcomes from qualitative research, such a "block" method is arguably the simplest, most elegant and definitive way to go. Of course, one might alternatively employ more sophisticated types of advanced analytics, such as discrete-choice or conjoint techniques, to accomplish the same end.

Non-rational levels

The great majority of marketers stop with rational positioning and, from there, go on to construct advertisements and other promotional tactics designed to communicate that positioning to the market. I would argue, however, that human beings respond and react at non-rational as well as rational levels. Whether you want to talk about the unconscious, right-brain function or just feelings, we don't operate like computers or other machines, just processing the data. There is general agreement among social and behavioral scientists - with the primary exception of rational-choice theorists - that affect, the experience of feelings and emotions, is an integral factor in how we interact with our world.

Brands and products and companies conjure up feelings. They are associated with non-rational responses, some physical (gut feelings, tensions and so forth) and some better described as emotional. The technical definition of emotion, however, is complex and controversial. I suggest focusing at a more common-sense level on the affective dimension of feelings. Think about that cute Energizer Bunny, or the sense of safety and prudent parenting we've been programmed to associate with a Volvo, or how people get so excited about their iPads. The feelings these iconic brands trigger are not due to the thing itself - its rational characteristics. They are instead the result of how these offerings have been emotionally positioned.

The purpose of affective positioning is twofold. First, to program the market to associate one's offering with emotions that fit the overall brand strategy. The second is literally to make the brand feel more desirable, more like the ideal or best-in-class offering of its type than its competitors. I call this gut positioning. You want the customer to feel about your offering in a way that channels their behavior as you desire in a way that seems only natural - spontaneous or automatic - as if it were a matter of stimulus-response reaction. You want to define an emotional meaning for your brand or offering.

The means for doing this are far less well-defined than those for rational positioning. Generally, marketers and marketing researchers employ some form of projective technique. These range from tried-and-true personification methods (such as, "If you were at a party and X walked into the room, what actor or actress/animal/object would it be?") to methods where one asks the respondent to sort through a deck of images to choose the one that most feels like the offering. By then probing why they made the choices they did, you can gain insight into the underlying feelings.

These examples are normally focused on affective profiling, determining what an offering currently means to people in terms of associated feelings and emotions. Marketing research can also be directed prescriptively to build an affective positioning strategy for the offering. Some methods are already widely used for this purpose, such as laddering, in which one asks what is important about some aspect of an offering and then asks "Why do you say that?" and keeps drilling down to the underlying needs, fears and desires. From there, the analyst can infer the emotional associations that can make an offering seem to fill the underlying emotional wishes behind those whys.

We can adapt most projective methods for proactive affective positioning by expanding their focus to competitors and/or the optimum offering of its type. By obtaining the emotional profile of the client's offering and that of these competing ones, then thoroughly probing to understand the meaning of each to the respondent, one has at least three points that allow you to identify where the client's offering lies both in and of itself, with relation to its competition and to the optimal offering that would come closest to meeting the respondent's needs and desires. The analyst can then recommend where to place the product in that emotional space in order to make it feel like the best choice, identify which aspects to highlight or strengthen (any current positives or feelings that would make it seem more like the ideal) and which to mute or downplay (any negatives or areas where the competition is stronger).

From there, one can make recommendations regarding the kinds of imagery, colors, words and other copy to create the optimal emotional tone to be used in everything from talking about the offering through advertising, packaging, Web sites and other media - what and how to communicate, as well as what to avoid. By establishing the optimal emotional positioning for the client's offering, one can guide the marketer with respect to how to implement their rational positioning. Understanding the tone and words to use and how to tell the brand's story can communicate the desired rational positioning and establish non-rational associations that enhance the positioning by reinforcing the desired take-away and creating a gut feeling that the offering is really and truly what the customer seeks and wants (without ever having to come out and say it or apply any kind of force to drive that message home).

Relates to the offering

The least-developed dimension of positioning is what I call the relational: how the customer and/or end user relates to the offering in the sense of, what is their relationship with it? Is it (or should it be) a friend, a helper, an ally or a boss, a superior, a pal or a colleague, like family, a loved one, a mere acquaintance, something close, something distant, a superhero who does it for the customer, a servant or slave, a teacher or a pet, a tool, an assistant, something admired, something taken for granted? Where does it fit in the customer's life and world? And, more than that, how does it fit?

I know, I'm a sociologist. I'm trained to consider the social and the structural aspects of relationships and connections. I think about these things. When I've been involved with branding projects, I've seen time and again that this dimension of relationship can make a critical, valuable difference. First, it gives you another level of insight into how the customer relates to the offering that neither rational nor emotional positioning tells you. In fact, the literature commonly portrays emotion as a reaction to one's perceived relationship to a triggering object, person or event. Furthermore, just as for affective positioning, by comparing the relationship of the offering with that of competitors and the ideal, one can address how best to define the brand, product or company's offering with respect to how it relates to the customer or end user.

I have, for example, employed guided daydreaming exercises in which one has the subject picture the offering as a character. In a variation of traditional projective exercises I've guided the respondent to be like a young child and pretend that s/he is scripting, directing or watching an imaginary cartoon, movie or play. S/he then is asked to imagine that the offering walks on stage, and I ask what character would that offering be? I then have the subject fill in seemingly-trivial details - what does it look like, what is it wearing, where does it live, what does it do for a living, what does it do for fun? By filling in the details in this way, the character becomes more real to him or her. Then I can pounce and ask about the respondent's relationship with that character, how they might socialize (or not), things they might do together and so forth.

I have found this particular technique quite difficult to teach other moderators, since the type of interviewing involved shifts away from the typical question-and-answer format to a more intensive mode, similar to a psychiatric session or, actually, to what one does when working with hypnosis and visualization. However, it can yield fascinating and valuable insights. For example, I was working with a novel anticoagulant drug in early development. A late-middle-aged orthopedic surgeon I was interviewing spontaneously envisioned the new product as a gorgeous, intelligent young woman in a bikini, sitting perfectly poised in a canoe, paddling flawlessly, effortlessly gliding across the water. He suddenly blurted, "She's my second wife - oh, um, I didn't mean it like that, I'm happily married to my first wife ... I don't know why I said that."

What he was really telling me was that he would abandon his old reliable drug for the new product, which he viewed as almost perfect - something he'd "marry." On the other hand, several respondents pictured the new product as a powerful, muscle-bound superhero who would barge in and do the job for them, and they expressed a sense of discomfort, that they didn't want anything that powerful and independent. They wanted something they could work with, not something that would take over and do it for them.

Other projective techniques can similarly be adapted to get at the subject's desired relationship with the client's offering. By getting at this social or relational dimension between the customer, the client's offering and that of competitors and/or the ideal, the analyst can provide further direction regarding how to position the brand, product or company in relation to the customer. Technically, we want to mine the metaphors the subject comes up with about her or his relationship to provide insight into the visual and verbal metaphors to employ in promotional communication and also the kinds of words, images, layouts and so forth that would help to foster the optimal (imagined or felt) relationship with that offering, one which will differentiate it from the competition and make the offering seem more like the ideal. These insights cannot easily be derived from either rational positioning or emotional positioning.

Expanded approach

What I am suggesting, then, is a new, expanded approach to product, brand and company positioning that I am calling Positioning3.

By using appropriate market research techniques, one can elicit an offering's current or natural positioning in each of three dimensions - rational, affective and relational - and also both its optimal positioning in each. Furthermore, the analyst can then evaluate how best they can and should be integrated into a three-dimensional approach to defining the meaning of the client's offering in the minds of prospective customers, decision makers and end users. The benefit of doing this is that, as marketers, we can do a much more effective job of defining the situation with regard to brands, products and companies to help channel market behavior.