One of the most important decisions a marketer can make is how to position her brand and align her organization around this positioning. In fact, a growing body of research shows that strong, distinctive brand associations create purchase predisposition, increase brand loyalty, help maintain a price premium, and allow organizations to weather recessions better.
Our award-winning and best-selling approach to compelling brand positioning development is based on 30 years of experience building brands successfully worldwide and the analysis of over 1200 case studies of effective brand building. Many client engagements and workshops have vetted it, and it is already being used by tens of thousands of marketers and strategists from around the world. It has also been covered extensively in podcasts and the press in the US, Europe, and Asia.
Here are seven ways you can learn about and experience my methodology:
1. The award-winning “Brand Positioning Workbook: A Simple How-To Guide To More Compelling Brand Positionings, Faster.”
The book is described as “hands down the best book on brand positioning since Ries & Trout introduced this concept (Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind)many years ago” by Mark Jenson, lecturer at the University of Minnesota. Jill Baskin, CMO @Hershey’s says “This book is packed with easy-to-follow exercises that guarantee a compelling brand positioning. Highly recommend”. It ranks 1st in organic search on Amazon, and enjoys a 4.4 star rating. It is available as Kindle, paperback and hard copy everywhere Amazon sells books around the world.
2. The best-selling Brand Positioning Method Cards.
These method cards are already used by thousands of marketers and strategists around the world and are described by an Amazon reviewer as “such a fabulous shortcut to better thinking, more winning ideas and proven approaches for developing and positioning novel products and services. I love these good-quality, well-sized cards with the concept and a “New Yorker style” illustration that’ll make you laugh (and reinforce the concept). These cards were a great purchase and will have a permanent home in my innovation toolkit. They’re already coming in handy for a variety of use cases”. The cards are a great complement to the book and enjoy a 4.7 stars review on Amazon.
3. Aha! Cards: The Indispensable Insight Generation Toolkit!
This set of method cards is designed to help you mine, uncover, and identify business, brand, and communication insights. This deck includes 49 proven successful exercises (one per card) to help you do so. One Amazon review states that” “Insights and problem statements are so fundamental to marketing strategy, but are often thorny concepts to digest. There’s a temptation to say ‘you’ll know it when you see it’, which is rather unhelpful. Ulli manages to articulate, simplify and inspire exactly how to think about problem statements and insights – and most importantly, to get you playing, experimenting and practicing with the cards, which is the missing piece to most ‘concept-education’ approaches. Bravo!” The cards are only available in the US. Outside the US, they are available in Kindle format.
4. “The Science and Craft of Brand Positioning” online course
The course builds on the book but adds valuable and useful content. Students can study the 15 modules at their own pace and become experts in brand positioning development within a few short weeks. “I just finished Ulli’s course and found it very informative and well presented. I am an experienced brand and marketing strategist yet still learned a huge amount. The content is very thorough and well-structured and includes many good examples that illustrate the theory. Ulli is very clear in his delivery, and each unit is nicely paced. I did the course over three days, but I would suggest other students take it at a slower pace to give them a chance to act on some of the lessons before moving on to the next unit – there is just so much good material in there. Whatever your level of brand positioning expertise, I highly recommend you take Ulli’s course“. Mark Simmons, brand strategist and author of Punk Marketing: Get Off Your Ass and Join the Revolution, and The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide.
5. Corporate In-house training.
Great for groups over 10 people, these one to two days sessions are very interactive and immersive and allow us to focus on your brands more specifically. The feedback sessions and discussions during those sessions add a layer of insight and depth no book or online course can match. As the Senior Director Consumer Insights & Strategy at an iconic American Brewery reported: “I had the privilege of participating in a two-day brand positioning workshop led by Ulli Appelbaum and it was one of the most effective, thought-provoking, educational and fun workshops I have attended in my career. Ulli has a gift for making complex material seem easy, allowing his audience to put learnings into practice almost immediately. After two short days we were made into stronger, more confident marketers – ready to sharpen our brand positioning! We hope to work with Ulli again soon and cannot recommend him and the First The Trousers enough”. Reach out for more information.
6. Brand Research & Strategy Consulting:
We are brand strategy craftsmen and experts. We work with CPG brands, software brands, and DTC and BtoB brands. We can help you uncover fresh insights and gain a fresh perspective on your brand(s) and category to unlock new growth opportunities. We can help you position or re-position your brand, whether you manage a start-up or a well-established one. We can help you identify the most promising consumer segment to position yourself against and help you define a competitive messaging strategy that will resonate with your customers. Our proven methodology combines analytical rigor with a creative problem mindset. We customize our approach, process, and resources to your needs and situation. The Senior Vice President of Marketing of a Container Security Solutions For DevSecOps company described working with us in those terms:” “As a start-up in a fast-moving market, Ulli helped us to quickly create a positioning and messaging strategy that was relevant to our buyers. His research and input allowed our marketing and sales teams to align around how to better position themselves, communicate with the market, and provide valuable feedback for our product direction. I highly recommend working with Ulli for your positioning and messaging strategy needs.” Reach out for an informal discovery chat.
7. Personal Coaching On All Things Brand Strategy
Sometimes, you don’t want or need to hire a consulting team but need to talk to someone impartial and with experience, get feedback on an idea or action plan, pressure test a thought or strategy, or seek inspiration and a fresh perspective on how to approach a task or marketing challenge. I recently coached a CMO client and his CEO via a series of one-hour calls to fine-tune and pressure test their brand’s positioning statement. His feedback: ” When it comes to crafting a winning brand strategy and positioning, Ulli is your go-to expert. He delves deep into market dynamics, consumer behavior, business strategies, and competitor analysis, seamlessly translating these insights into actionable marketing strategies. With Ulli, our team had the privilege of being guided by him in various positioning sessions he conducted with our leadership members, where he skillfully unearthed invaluable brand insights and helped us tighten our brand positioning.” Reach out for more information.
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