5 Signs Your Brand's Positioning Is the Bottleneck

Positioning problems rarely announce themselves. They show up disguised as a packaging problem, a distribution problem, a pricing problem, or even a product problem. Brands can spend a year and a lot of cash fixing the symptom while the underlying problem stays exactly where it was.

This is especially common with consumer brands. A product isn't moving, so the team changes the package. Distribution isn't growing, so the team adds another retailer. Margins are getting squeezed, so the team adjusts the price. None of those decisions are wrong on their face, but they can be expensive ways to avoid a more fundamental question: are we positioned to be chosen?