26 Ways to Stand Out In Your Customer’s Mind with Ulli Appelbaum

Why Brand Positioning Matters More Than Ever

Louis: Yeah, you’re welcome. You can use that for free. So why do companies and marketers need brand positioning? What does it mean?

Ulli Appelbaum: Well, it basically guides all your activities from the product development to distribution strategy to communication to marketing. So it aligns the whole company behind sort of like an objective of what you want a brand to be. And I think it’s becoming even more important in today’s world. We all know social media has exploded. I hate this statement that consumers own the brand. I think that’s the worst thing a marketeer can do. I think if you don’t have a clear sense of who you are, what your position is in the market, which you described well at the beginning of this interview, and you have consumers starting to provide their own interpretation or critique or criticize you, then you’re basically just letting them fully determine and define what you are and what you should stand for. And that’s not a good business proposition. So positioning helps you guide yourself through this turbulent time, social media, and the culture we live in right now.

Louis: Yeah, there is this saying, I’ve heard that many times. It’s like at this stage in this day and age, it’s not about who your customers think you are, how people think you are, which I don’t disagree with, though, because brand is a perception. It doesn’t exist. In this great book called Sapience, the author, we forgot the name, but very good guy. Talk about this principle of brands that are just imaginary things that we all agree upon, very much like money that has a value because we all agree that it has value, but there’s nothing else. So it does, though, mean that for a successful brand positioning, people in their head must kind of agree with it. Right?

The Difference Between Positioning and Perception

Ulli Appelbaum: In a sense, 200% agree. And I think that’s the difference. The brand positioning, it’s an internal navigation tool. Right. And what the brand Perception is what you hope consumers will make out of it or what you think consumer will make out of it, which is, I think Jeff Bezos said that your brand position is what people say about you when you leave the room. Your position is almost who you are, your character, how you come across while you are in the room. And your brand perception is what happens and what people say when you leave the room, basically. But to be able to create that impression, you need to know who you are, what you stand for, what you’ll agree to do, what you will not agree to do, and these kind of things. The quote I was referring to is simply this other quote that is very much used in, in marketing over the last few years, which I hate completely, which is this notion of companies don’t own their brand, consumers do. And that’s basically that started with this whole co creation stuff and stuff like that. But it’s very misleading. There is some truth to it, but it’s also very misleading.

Louis: Correct me if I’m wrong. Let’s make sure that we are setting the record straight here. Because you’re saying brand positioning is an internal tool, but then you’re also saying that this is used to help people perceive your company, your products, your brand in a certain way. So it’s not really internal, it’s maybe the compass to go somewhere. But it feels like positioning and the perception are the same thing. They need to be aligned almost. Because I can come up with any shitty positioning. But if people don’t agree with it or don’t feel like this is the right thing, then it’s failed, right?

Ulli Appelbaum: 200%. So it needs to provide an inherent value that people want to engage with your brand. It needs to deliver something that people are actually looking for. And there needs to be a certain consistency between who you want to be and how consumers see you. Obviously. And that’s the whole game of marketing, trying to manage this consistency. What I mean with that is, is it goes beyond communication, right? So when you take the customer perspective for a second and you think about how are brands being perceived? How does someone form an opinion or a perception about something? It’s the personal experience with the brand or an objective. So you tell me there’s this great brand of yogurts, I try, it tastes like shit, I’m not going to buy it again. And 20 people can tell me it’s the greatest product out there, I’m still not going to buy it. It’s personal experience, it’s shared experiences. Which is what is it? My friends, my neighbor, My colleagues tell me I should buy as a camera, as a lawnmower, as a new snack, whatever it is. Then there is the marketing activities that are created by the brand, the website, the brand experiences created, the online experience, and all these kind of things. Elements help shape the perception a customer or consumer has about a brand, a product or a service. But what you can influence as the brand is what this experience is going to be like, what hopefully people will say about you, and what your marketing and look and feel will look like. And that is the part that is driven by the positioning segment. So it’s the sender versus the receiver. I can say something and hope that you understand what I meant. And the worst thing that can happen is that you misunderstand what I’m trying to say. And then you have a different brand perception than how I try to position my brand, if that makes sense.

Louis: So it’s ultimately kind of. It feels like it’s the intersection of those three things that you said, like my own personal experiences, what others are saying about it and the way they experience it and the actual way these companies market it. And the experiences are crafted. Because if I felt, I suppose if two of the three things are there, but not the third, it would fail in a sense, let’s say this brand of yogurt, I find it very good, but all of my friends and colleagues and family said it’s shit. I could change my mind. I could almost be influenced by them say, oh, yeah, actually, they all think it’s shit. Why am I eating it? Everybody’s mocking me or whatever. And even if the marketing of the company says it’s the best yogurt in the world, it tastes great, maybe your positioning will fail.

Ulli Appelbaum: I agree to some extent. Yes. I think the next dimension which you are adding here is the social component, right? So what kind of yogurt I have in my fridge, I don’t really care what my friends think about it. Now. If I go to a bar and drink a certain brand of liquor that everyone thinks is liquor for grandmas and you just like the flavor, then you are probably more likely going to step back and go back to a safer choice. There is also this social component, obviously,

Louis: about that in one sentence, because I think we are throwing a lot of keywords, buzzwords right now in one sentence, if you have to really put it simply, why does everyone listening to this podcast should care about brand positioning? Why does it matter so much?

Ulli Appelbaum: Because it’s really the North Star. I think that is going to guide all of a company’s activities to appeal to a specific consumer segment. That’s why it drives the initiatives. It needs to be appealing. Obviously it needs to resonate with a specific consumer segment. But again, the part that we often tend to forget is that it drives everything the company does.

Louis: Last question before we dive in into a step by step process. To use your positioning roulette, which I really love as a concept, and we’re going to pick an actual example of a company and try to position this company using the 26 cards that you have. The last question is what you just said sounds like what a good marketing strategy is. So what is the difference between a marketing strategy, which is about picking your North Star, where you want to go, where you don’t want to go, and brand positioning?

Ulli Appelbaum: Well, I think a positioning statement summarizes a good marketing strategy, but a marketing strategy, basically you would start with what are the key issues? What are the key problems you’re trying to solve? The marketing strategy takes it then a step further in implementing it, in bringing it to life. It’s really the what do we stand for and how are we going to bring it to life in the marketplace and with what specific consumers? So it is a core element of the marketing strategy.

Louis: Okay, great. Thanks for simplifying that.

Ulli Appelbaum: Yeah.

Louis: Now let’s get into the step by step. So our listeners really love this step, love the practicality of each episode and this is what we’re going to try to get into together. So briefly, if you have to talk about your solution, which is quite original, the positioning relate. What is it again?

The 10-Year Journey Behind Positioning Roulette

Ulli Appelbaum: So the observation, it’s based on an observation. And at the time I was working in Europe for a big international advertising agency for a couple of international clients. And I was working in different countries on different product categories. What I realized or what I stumbled upon was there are some mechanisms that seem to pop up on a regular basis. And let’s say one of these mechanism could be a brand in the US uses a country of origin, sort of like positioning platform to differentiate its brand in the U.S. but another brand in a completely different category, let’s say in the UK uses a similar country of origin territory to differentiate itself. Different category, different time zone, different geography. I started to see some of these patterns emerge and I asked myself the question, well, how many of these patterns can I actually identify? And so I started to look at hundreds and hundreds of case studies and literally I’m not an academic, I’m not a theoretical person, so I was literally reading the case study and say, oh, they’re highlighting Highlighting the ingredients to differentiate the position of their brand, or look at that, they tap into a consumer ritual and basically cataloged all these territories until I got tired of going through 1200 case studies and basically until I started to realize that I was always coming back to those same areas.

Louis: So let me continue right there because it’s interesting the story before we dive into. So where did you find the case studies? Those case studies, did you just Google them?

Ulli Appelbaum: No. There are some resources like warc.com, w a r c.com which is basically a content provider to the marketing and advertising industry. There are some other organization like Global FE Organization, which every year award the most effective marketing campaigns in either different countries or around the world. And the cool thing about them is there are case studies around that. So it’s all case studies that felt like, wow, they helped build a business over a period of time.

Louis: How long did it take you to compile all of that?

Ulli Appelbaum: Well, the insight I came across, literally before moving to the U.S. i moved in 2002. So we’re talking, what is it, like, 16 years? So 17 years. And then I got married, got children, all that stuff. But I started always being a collector of case studies and it literally maybe took me 10 years on and off to do that. So it’s not that I sat down on Monday morning and said, I’m going to read all the case studies until I get the model. It’s just over time. And what I started to do is I started to prototype the approach in my work when I had client workshops. I started to use it without calling it that way, but just to facilitate workshops and see what works and what doesn’t. Then five years ago, I decided to start my own business here in Minneapolis. And then it was this moment of, okay, I have this half baked cake. Either I’m leaving it behind and forget about it. But there was always this belief of, okay, I don’t want to know what would happen if I didn’t do it. So I decided, okay, now it’s my chance, let’s do it. So then it took me like I think three, four weeks to systemize everything to get it done.

Louis: So there you have it, folks. I mean, you can hear from my guest today how long it takes from creating a unique work of value, something that is truly remarkable. Ten years in the making, really. So that’s a good case study as well, to show to people that you need to show up every day, do something, test it in the field as you probably have done in your various agencies. You Work for, improved it over time. And now what you are going to share together, what you’re going to share with us is really the result of those 10 years of even more of sweat and effort. So let’s go about it. I think people can’t wait to hear all of those 26 cards. So I’m going to ask you to actually go through those 26 cards, basically the 26 options that companies can pick. And correct me if I’m wrong. The concept of your roulette is basically that you pick two or three to have a strong positioning, right?

Ulli Appelbaum: So the idea is you go through the whole set and we can walk through them. But then the way you go through them is you go through them either randomly just to keep your brains on its toes and be less predictable. Or what you can do is you take two or three of the cards and try to create force connections, if that makes sense.

Louis: No, it doesn’t. What do you mean?

The Three Pillars of Every Positioning Statement

Ulli Appelbaum: Let me step back for a second. So Indeed there are 26 cards, but they’re organized into three different categories. And the three categories represent the key, sort of like cornerstone of every positioning statement. It assumes that you know your consumer base and you have defined the consumers. But once you have that, you basically need to look at three things. One is what’s the frame of reference in which you position your brand from a consumer? So you have a soft drink, what is it? Is it a soft drink? Is it an energy drink? Is it a sports drink? Is it a juice? If it has fruits in it and stuff like that, Is it a thirst quencher? Those are all different categories in which you can frame it. In a sense, that’s number one. Number two is what I call the product story itself. There’s this agency, advertising agency, that has this claim, truth well told. And basically it’s the belief that every brand, every product, every service has an inherent story that differentiate it and that gives it its reason for being. So that’s the part about the product or the brand itself. And then the third pillar is really how do I decide to engage and connect with consumers? Do I want to focus on my hard core functional benefits? Do I want to connect with them emotionally? Do I want to tap into their deeper needs and emphasize the archetype, the type of relationship I’m trying to create with them? Or do I go more lofty and speak about a brand, purpose and these kind of things? And so you have these three elements, context, product and type of connections you want to have with your consumers. And that’s how the 26 cards are divided. So when I say you pick two or three cards, I mean you basically pick one card in each territory and try to combine them. And we can go through that, we can play around with that, right?

Louis: So let’s pick the example of this shitty yogurt company. Actually, just as a random example, let’s not name any company, but let’s say they are selling yogurt and it’s like their product is good, they know it’s good, but they struggle to position themselves in the market. They don’t, nobody really knows them. Or at least people can’t really define who they are. They don’t really occupy a distinct place in people’s mind and they want to sell to specific people. So this is the situation, right? And we are talking to you to understand how we can position ourselves better. So what do you do as the very first step? When do you introduce this roulette? Do you do any prep work before?

Discovery Process - Understanding Customer Behavior First

Ulli Appelbaum: So you do a series of prep work upfront and the way I usually work is you try to identify the key customer segments who would be the best target audience for this yogurt. There are various indicated data you can use to do that. If you don’t have the resources and the time to do your own segmentation study, you can look at the data that is available with the Siobird manufacturer and usually they have a lot of data already available. So I’d start there. Just try to understand who are the heavy users, who are the light users. Are there segments out there that buy yogurts or products similar to yogurts that we are not tapping into? So what are sort of like substitute behaviors I may want to tap into, but then I also look into it the sort of like more global trends, right? Or category and global trends. What are the big trends we see in yogurts? Is it like exotic flavors coming out? You know, when you look at Chobani, that has completely overhauled the the U.S. yogurt market in like what, less than 10 years or something like that. They came all of a sudden with this weird concept of Greek yogurt, which frankly what it is, it’s probiotic based yogurts, right? And I worked like 10 years ago with a big food manufacturer and they were trying to introduce probiotics. And the interesting thing is people rejected the notion of active bacteria that I put in my stomach. So I thought it was brilliant to position that Greek yogurt with a different texture as a way to get that proposition across. Those are the type of things I do. But then I’d also have a series of stakeholder interviews with the key players within the organization, and that’s obviously the marketing directors, the market research folks, the product innovation folks. To understand are there yogurt innovations in the pipeline, we need to take into account when positioning the brand, because the positioning is supposed to be valid for five, 10 years. I would talk to the sales force and what the feedback from the trade, for example, is and these kind of things. So I do this sort of like, I don’t want to say three, six, that I do an exhaustive discovery phase to try to understand what the key issues are.

Louis: It’s tough to avoid buzzwords, isn’t it?

Ulli Appelbaum: I know. And I hate buzzwords.

Louis: So I can’t believe we are talking about the yogurt industry in this episode. That’s how I love to improv subject. Because usually we come up with the shittiest example possible. I think a few episodes ago, we picked Crasson and how to sell Crasson to people. So. Yeah, but this is good. So you are mentioning those steps very, almost nonchalantly in a very easy way because it’s obvious to you because you’re an expert. And I do want to spend more time in the related set because I think this is. The 26 elements is very interesting. But please repeat the steps that you just mentioned. So the number one, number two, number three, number four.

Ulli Appelbaum: Yeah. So if I may go down one level, because it’s true, it is confusing, there’s a lot of things. But there’s always one guiding principle for me in everything I do, which is the way people behave or don’t behave. So that’s really the starting point of everything. How do people behave in a specific category in a specific market? And what that means is, do they buy a product? Do they buy a substitute product? Do they buy less of the same product? Those are all the sort of guiding elements you focus on. And then you ask why that is, why do they buy less of this type of yogurts in this case and more this type of yogurt? So to simplify it, it’s really, you look at the category itself. What are the competitors doing? How is my brand performance? Do I have a distribution issue? Or is there a new distribution channel that helps competitors? You start with the category, then you look at the broader category set, which is substitute products. Are there things I eat instead of yogurt? If you want to go a step above that, you look at the need states. What need state do I try to satisfy. I want to indulge. Well, you might as well indulge with a piece of ice cream. Maybe a yogurt is a great way to get the ice cream indulgence at a lower calorie. Making shit up here. But again, you change the frame of reference and then you understand, you go one level higher, which is basically the overall trends. It’s like, how is our society and culture evolving over time? And what kind of implication does that have for. For the product category I’m in?

Category Analysis and Substitute Behaviors

Louis: Okay, so if you’re listening to this podcast, let’s imagine a kind of magnifying glass where the very first thing you look at is your own category. So an example of a category. Let’s step away from the product, the yogurt example. Just briefly. And just briefly, can you explain, let’s say, am I understanding right? Maybe in the software industry, a CRM. The CRM would be a category of the software in software. So CRM, Customer relationship management. Another category could be email marketing software. All right, so you look at how people behave and don’t behave in this category. What is the number one in terms of market share? Number two, number three, and what are the trends within this market? Right.

Ulli Appelbaum: Is the category growing or not? Yes. Or is it shifting to a different platform, et cetera, et cetera?

Louis: Yes, exactly. So a few years ago we used to buy software using CDs, and after that it switched to online software and software as a service, and that shifted pretty fast. So that’s what you mean by shift as well. So you’re looking at category, and then you understand. What do you understand actually from this? Looking at just this particular thing, you just understand how people behave and don’t behave. Right.

Ulli Appelbaum: Well, what you understand is what is, what is successful and what isn’t. Right. The energy in the category. Who are the players? What is working and what is not working?

Louis: What is the energy? I like that. What is the energy in the category? That’s a good way to put it. Then when you zoom out a bit, then you talk about the entire software industry or the entire yogurt industry. You look at where it’s going, correct?

Ulli Appelbaum: And you would look at it and say, okay, big trends out there is artificial intelligence. How would that impact my CRM service and offering? Is that something I need to take into account? Or can I put that behind all these kind of things?

Louis: But then you talk about a very interesting concept, which is the substitute or alternatives to something. And this is also critical, I think a lot of marketers and people who Want to do marketing, don’t get this concept very easily because it takes a while to get used to. Your competitors are not necessarily companies sitting in the same category. In fact, it could be something completely different. You might be competing against. The alternative could be doing nothing. You might be competing against. If you’re trying to sell Excel as a software, you might be competing against pen and paper, you might be competing against a whiteboard. And that you find out by interviewing people, right? Or how do you find that out yourself?

Ulli Appelbaum: Well, you find that out at the core. You look at what need are people trying to satisfy. So if you take CRM software, this is probably a company or an organization that wants to communicate with a customer base that they have in their mailing list and stuff like that and interact with them on a regular basis at a low cost, so to say. The reason is they’re trying obviously to build their business. So what other solutions enable you to satisfy the similar need in today’s world? You can do it online, you can do it through social channels, you can do it through Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. So you start to have different channels that accommodate a similar need. But focusing on the need is what’s going to help you look for substitute or lack of substitute or no behavior whatsoever.

Louis: So in this example of this Greek yogurt, and actually, I like this idea of talking about this. So let’s say our company, our category is actually in the probiotic type of yogurt. So we sell a yogurt that actually makes you feel better, like helps your digestive system a bit. And it’s actually helping your. Your digestion and stuff like this, but it’s also good. So one of the need is the need to be healthier or try to fix your maybe digestive problems. That could be a very urgent problem that people will be seeking. But on the other hand, you don’t want to eat a shitty product that tastes awful. So a secondary need would be, I want to be healthy. I don’t want to have a lot of calories into it. I want my digestive system to feel good about it, but also want to enjoy the experience.

Ulli Appelbaum: Yeah, okay. And just to add one layer to that is that you want your digestive system to feel good. Why is that? Because it strengthens your immune system. That’s what the core of your digestive, that’s what drives your immune system. So you want to have a strong immune system. Why? Because, you know, don’t want to get sick. So, I mean, you can, you know, ladder up all the way up until you find something that is really interesting.

Louis: What I tend to do when I do this exercise is that I tend to fall into a rabbit hole of. I don’t know where to stop in the. Why? Because. Exactly. As you. Why are you eating probiotics? To help your digestive system. Why? Because it helps your immune system. Why? Because I want to feel better about myself. And then you just end up to the same thing. Why? Just because I want to be alive or like I want to be happy. Yeah. So where do you stop? Because let’s take this example of this yogurt company that we have. Where do we stop in the layers?

Ulli Appelbaum: Well, you stop in a position which appeals to customers the most and that differentiates you from your competitor. So that’s really where you stop. So you’re looking for. If everyone speaks about, I have fruit flavors, that delicious strawberry, blueberry, yada, yada yada, and it’s a great little indulgence, then a health message is already differentiating, per se. If there is a segment of consumers out there that cares for that, if no one gives a shit about health, no need to stop there either. That’s really as simple as that. That’s why I come back to the three pillars. The frame of reference, the relevance to the consumers and how you engage with them. And then what do you say about your product or your brand to stand out in that context with those people?

Louis: So let’s do it right now, because we’ve been talking about it for 30 minutes and listeners are waiting for this 26. So let’s take this example. We’re selling probiotic yogurt. Let’s talk through this roulette.

Ulli Appelbaum: So you can start wherever, right? So you can start with the context, the consumers or the product or the brand itself. So let’s start maybe with the product itself. And I do that on purpose because most marketing agencies hate to speak about the product and I love to speak about the product. They think that no one is interested, but I believe people are interested. So, for example, in the offering, you could romance the origin, where the brand or the product comes from. What do people associate with that and how can that be used to differentiate yourself?

The Product Story - 10 Ways to Romance Your Offering

Louis: So it would be founded in 1829 by two French people, blah, blah, blah. That would be a story.

Ulli Appelbaum: That would be the creation story. So what I’m talking about is the origin would be its partner, olive oil. It’s part of the Italian lifestyle and diet. And hey, how come Italians are so much healthier and have so much less cholesterol? Than everyone else. But country of origin could also be this campaign for the Fosters beer. This Australian for beer. What they did is they tapped into this whole culture of Australia and helped shape it to differentiate the brand. So these are like olive oil Italy lifestyle and beer from Australia with the nephews of Crocodile Dundee cracking jokes. Country of origin. Two very different positionings based on the same principle. That would be one. The second one is the one you just mentioned, which is the creation story. How did it all start? Why did it start? What’s interesting is, especially with companies that have been established for a long time, people even at the organization tend to forget why this company was initially started. But going back to the origin and trying to understand how do I translate that in a modern way. Romance. The way the product works is a third way to speak about it is what makes my product different from any other out there. Maybe it’s the way it works. I remember ketchup had a long time ago, this campaign on why the pour of the ketchup is so slow when you try to pour it out of the bottle. Why is it so slow? And that taps into another thing, which is the weakness of the product. It’s because it’s made with real tomatoes as opposed to fake shit. Celebrate the ingredients. That’s another big one. But that can also be an ingredient. Could be an engine. Whether it’s the hemi from Dodge. That could be an ingredient within the brand. It could be specific defining attributes. And that could be anything from an old campaign the brand had from the 60s to the latch on how the package opens. Anything that makes the brand stand out. Or it’s the brand that is strongly associated with American Fourth of July barbecue. I don’t know. I’m making.

Louis: So maybe Coca Cola and Santa.

Ulli Appelbaum: Correct. That’s exactly right. Yeah. Or it can also Simply be what McDonald’s did recently. The Archers. Right. The M in itself has become an attribute of the bread that you recognize immediately. It could be what I said earlier. The example with ketchup. Give a meaning to meaning to a brand’s weakness. This could be a medicine taste so crappy. Because that’s a side. That’s right. Those are all things you can do. Or you create a sense of scarcity or exclusivity. Ferrero Mon Cherie in Europe does that. Which is a chocolate with a cherry inside. And they only use Piedmont cherries. And I don’t know if they still do that. But at the time they literally stopped distribution. Distribution in the summer. And they twisted the story saying that we cannot guarantee the quality of our products, so we’re not going to sell it to you. What this creates is a sense of, oh my God, it’s so special. I’m sure going to go and buy some when they’re back in stores.

Louis: So have you gone through the full, all the product attributes yet or not? No, no, because I just want to make sure I’m asking the question at the right time.

Ulli Appelbaum: I have two more to go.

Louis: Two more to go. Let’s go.

Ulli Appelbaum: One is the torture test situation. What is the most extreme situation in which your product could be used? Or who is the most extreme person to use your product as a way to demonstrate how good it is? And the last one is simply let experts tell your story. Right. If I as a manufacturer can get independent research, independent experts tell you about the, that’s the old, from the 60s, like, you know, a dentist recommended. Now everyone laughs about this, but the concept is still the same. The experts have changed and the mechanism is still valid. But maybe it’s not going to be your dentist any longer.

Louis: But you live, sorry to cut you, but you live in the US so you understand how shitty it is right there in terms of the TV ads for, for medicines and stuff. And those companies, pharma companies use that extensively to say that your doctor recommends it or whatever, whoever recommends it. And it’s the shittiest thing, one of the shittiest marketing move I’ve ever seen because it really tricks people to use medicine they don’t need. But so going back to one thing, I found it fascinating because you’re able to summarize very interesting things. And I think if you’re listening to this podcast right now, you picture in your head every time, only mention one attribute, you can think of an example straight away that comes to mind. But the thing that I know people tend to do then is they look at all of those options and they feel like I think we should all use all of them. They’re all so interesting. Right? So how do you convince people to say as a ugort company, you cannot pick more than one or else your message is going to be diluted.

Choosing Ideas and Finding the Energy Signal

Ulli Appelbaum: So the way I do it is usually through workshops. And if you use the cards which you could buy on my website, what I would do is go through all these, and we just went through the 10 product related and write down all the, what I call hypotheses, what are the ideas that come to mind? Right. And what you’ll do typically is you’ll easily come up with 40 50, 60 ideas. And then you go through them the next day again and you realize that half of them are crap. And if you do that in the workshop, you sort of start to group them by themes. So you look at all the 60 ideas you had and you create like two or three or four buckets that all tap into a similar territory or where the different elements work well together. And then the way either large organizations do it is they sort of like develop positioning statement and then test them with consumers or test boards. But what I’ve learned is the level of energy in the group when discussing the ideas tells you is a great indicator on how excited people are about it. Even if they get scared a little bit or get nervous, their level energy goes up as opposed to, oh yeah, that yogurt tastes great and it’s made with good ingredients. Oh, that’s a safe positioning. No one is going to get excited

Louis: by that in my experience. I love what you’re mentioning energy again. But in my experience, the other thing that you just mentioned that seems to work is as soon as you feel people getting a bit nervous about certain ideas, I feel this is an indicator that this needs to be pursued. Because it means that if you feel nervous about this, probably all the entire market is feeling nervous about it. And you might want to give it a try then because it’s an opportunity to get outside of this comfort zone that is a bit too small.

Ulli Appelbaum: Absolutely. It’s when they get nervous about it or when they start to argue. When you start to have your group dividing into two or three sections. Yeah, we should do it. No, we can’t do this. Tension that is created and you know, something is happening here. If everyone agrees, yeah, it tastes great and it’s cheap. We all agree. High five. You know, it’s not going to get traction in the market either.

Louis: So we have this yogurt company. Let’s pick the creation story. Because I started to talk about it. Let’s say that it was founded by two French guys in 1829 and they just created this weird milk that was a bit denser than milk. And it just, just they kept eating this and they were so fucking healthy. And the entire village was really healthy. And yeah, so this is the exact recipe that they came up with 150 or whatever years before. So let’s use that as a product. I think it’s pretty cool. Now let’s go to the next one.

Context and Frame of Reference Strategies

Ulli Appelbaum: Okay. The next one would then be. Let’s take the context, the frame of reference which I mentioned earlier. And so as we talked about earlier, start immediately with your competitive set, but then you can look at the usage context. When and where do people eat your specific category or indulge in your specific category? Is it when coming home after a day of work, or is it a little snack during the day, or is it for breakfast? Whatever. What situation or usage occasion is your brand use? Is there a meaning associated with this usage occasion, or can you associate a meaning with that? That would be one. Another one which is close to that is tap into existing consumer rituals. We are full of rituals when we get ready in the morning, take our shower, brush our teeth, comb our hair. I don’t have any, but if I would. It’s more than simply going through a physical process, right? It’s getting mentally ready for the day, it’s organizing your thoughts. Or when you come home at night, you kick your shoes off. A consumer ritual with yogurts, for example, and I know that for a fact, is that people tend to take a smaller spoon to enjoy the yogurt longer, and they do that with Moussa Chocolat. They do that with any kind of treat, is reduce the size of your spoon so you get more out of it. Do you do that yourself? No, I don’t do that. I lick the pot, but I don’t do that. But a lot of people do that. And it’s a cue for, ooh, that must be particularly good if the person goes through the trouble of doing that. So can I associate that with my brand? Another bigger part which is very popular right now. It’s important, but I hate how it’s basically used for everything. It’s to be part of culture. So what are the big cultural trends that allow me to tap into, to position my brand?

Louis: THC fucked up recently about this, right?

Ulli Appelbaum: Yes.

Louis: They tried to run into this Black Lives Matters movement and all of that.

Ulli Appelbaum: That’s exactly right. It’s like, drink my sugared sparkling soda. To promote global diversity and racial understanding. It’s like, what the fuck? But everyone tends to gravitate towards that. Right. And it’s the easy short way. But in some cases, it can be extremely. An extremely powerful positioning device. It can be claiming the gold standard. And what I mean with that is every category has the ideal aspiration. So what is the perfect pasta brand or pasta dish? It’s probably the one made by a grandma somewhere in Tuscany on a farm. Everything has an ideal sort of situation people associate with it. Or it can be simply disrupt all the category conventions. What you do is you literally look at Your category, Look at the packaging convention, the messaging conventions, the distribution conventions, the consumer segment conventions. You list them all and then you literally go and say, how can I tap into a different category? How can I do things differently to stand out and differentiate myself? Sometimes you can resolve a category paradox. And what I mean with that is many categories, like electric vehicles, looks like shit. So there’s this basic paradox of, yeah, you can be environmentally conscious, but you’ll have to drive a shitty car and not get laid in the process or not impress your neighbor. Comes Tesla, resolves the car paradox. All of a sudden the electric car can compete with the biggest sports cars out there in terms of performance and speed and looks sexy as hell. So there’s a paradox that can be resolved. Are there specific barriers? People may be not using your category for very simple, obvious reasons, but if you don’t ask the questions, you’re not going to find it out. I don’t think I can find you in my neighborhood. Or I don’t think it’s going to address my specific problem, even though it does so. Understanding barriers. And then another thing is simply identify a brand enemy. So what is it? Is there like an enemy out there? And that can be a belief, that can be a cause, that can be a contrarian attitude that I can take a stand against that can say, the standards of beauty are defined by others. No, they’re defined by myself. My enemy is the stereotypes in media and advertising and culture and stuff. So those are, for example, the contextual trigger points that you can focus on.

Louis: And how do you pick them? Do you pick them the same way in the previous category?

Ulli Appelbaum: Yeah, you’d go through them and basically identify what ideas come to mind on how to position to this brand. So this leads again to these ideas that then you mix together. Or what you can do is you can say, you know what, Louis, let’s take tap into a consumer ritual and let’s romance the way the product works. Let’s force those two together and try to see what ideas we can come up with.

Louis: I’m speechless. It’s pretty good. It’s really in depth. And I’m trying my hardest to find other potential angles that you haven’t mentioned. But obviously you’ve gone through 1,300 case studies. It’s unlikely that I’m going to find anything. But what springs to mind again is, like you mentioned two things that to me, I like to do in parallel for product. I have a tendency to, as you might have noticed from this podcast, to pick an enemy. I Love to do that really early on, pick an enemy and go against it. And then easier to find a purpose than a vision for the brand. But then I also like to go over barriers and identify key barriers and say, well, this is also what you have, the reason why you might not buy from us or consider us. But here is the objection to those concerns or those barriers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this exercise doesn’t mean that you can’t use some of them or more than one per category. It only means that the way you will communicate that to your specific target market needs to be very simple. You can’t really go about communicating too many messages at once.

Ulli Appelbaum: No. So. And it’s sort of messaging platform per se. It can lead to a messaging platform. But the benefit of it is when you think about every single idea that I mentioned in the two categories we talked about, none of them is like, sort of like the magic lantern, right? They’re all basic tried and true success strategies. The difference is that you all have them in front of you and you can go through them way quicker. So you hear them and you say, oh, yeah, brand barrier is a great way to approach this. Or finding an enemy. If I ask you, Louis, what are all the positioning angles you can use to position a brand, you will probably be able to come up with 7, 8, 9, 10. As an experienced marketer, if you’re inexperienced, you will come up with maybe two or three. This allows you to look at it literally from 26%. So it really jogs your mind and your memory and allows you to go through the process quicker. It’s not magic, it’s just sound, tried and true. Jogging for your brain, basically.

Louis: All right, let’s go through the last category. And I know it’s a difficult exercise. I know it’s not easy to go through trying to see stuff, but it needs to be done. You started, you need to finish.

Ulli Appelbaum: Yeah. No, I love it. I love it. The last one is the rules of engagement, and I call it the rule of engagement because it’s really how do I connect with my customers? Right? So. So the most obvious one, which is like the old CPG thinking, is, what’s your benefit? Why should I buy your brand or use your service? What’s the benefit you provide? That can be a functional benefit, an emotional benefit, a social benefit, a psychological benefit. The next level, which is something that appeared in the marketing culture a little few years back, but that has been relevant for a long time, is how does your brand or your service or your product Appeal to the senses. And what does that trigger? It’s a pure sensory description of your experience, basically. Another one can be to purposefully dramatize the reward. You’re going to be successful if you use my product, but dramatize it in an exaggerated way so that it becomes appealing.

Rules of Engagement - How You Connect with Customers

Louis: So I’m thinking of Gatorades or links or what’s the name? Deodorant. Yeah. And they dramatize the outcome by making you feel, which is a very sexist way to put it. But as a man, if you put on this deodorant, you’ll have a sea of women coming to you because you smell nice. Right.

Ulli Appelbaum: And the need state for these horny teenagers is to be appealing for the ladies. Right. And in a completely over the top way they dramatize that. Then we talked earlier about a consumer ritual, but you can also create a brand ritual which is if you eat this product or drink this drink in this fashion, it’s going to taste better. And there are studies that basically show that if you ritualize that experience, you enhance the benefit of it. And that can be anything from like the Oreo cookie, you know, how you twist it open. Do you bite into it? You lick the side. It can be Stella Artois, the way you pour your beer, you know, Organis and all these kind of things. So they ritualize their experience and instead of saying, shit, I have to wait seven minutes for my beer. Why are they so slow? It’s like, no, they’re preparing the greatest beer experience for you through this ritual. It’s brilliant. But then you can go up a little bit and focus on shared values. So what are the values your brand has and your consumer have that allow you to bring together, that you can bring together through your offering? And then we have the one that is the other big buzzword in the category, which is the brand purpose. What’s my purpose? I think it’s a really valuable angle, but when you look at my methodology, it’s only one of 26 ways to look at it. The point you made earlier is very relevant too is when you do a brand purpose exercise, you basically ladder up to the emotional benefits you provide and you always end up with happiness. Ultimately, that’s the quest of happiness. Whether it’s toilet paper, yogurt or, or whatever product you want to choose. If you use a brand purpose approach, you’re always going to end up with happiness, which is ridiculous. When you see brand advertising out there that speaks about how, I don’t know, electric screwdriver is going to make you happy. You know where that comes from. It’s just bullshit. And I think there are better ways to do that. The third one is simply to take an archetype approach. And archetype are simply these constructs, these types that tap into specific needs. So this could be people in a category may have an explorer mindset, always discovering new things, or people in the category might need a brand they can go to for information, guidance and these kind of things. So that would be like a sage archetype. So if you identify an archetype that is relevant in your category, then you can sort of align your marketing activities and the way you position your brand with that archetype.

Louis: Wow.

Ulli Appelbaum: So we did the rules of engagement.

Louis: A lot of value. Thanks for doing this exercise. 26 ideas. It’s true, as you said, that it definitely springs a lot of ideas in my head right now. And I’m thinking of many ways I could use this. It’s brilliant. And it feels like those different elements could be tried and played together to do test campaigns as well. It’s like, what if we do those three together? How do people react and all of that? So that’s really strong. And I hope if you’re listening to this episode right now, that you got a lot of value out of this episode. Thank you so much once again for going through this step by step. My pleasure with me. So the last few questions I have for you are always the same as, you know, what do you think marketers should learn today that will help them in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years?

Ulli Appelbaum: I think that that’s what you’re seeing. Positioning, roulette, it’s not rocket science. Right. It’s a return to the basics. And that’s what I said earlier, is we live and it’s amplified in the marketing industry itself, is we tend to be distracted by the newest shiny object and we tend to run after it. What I’ve Learned in my 20 plus years is go back to people, their behavior and why they do it, and then try to understand how does the technology add value or does it add value? So come back to the core or to the essence, which is here’s a person you want to win over, convinced that your brand and product is the shit. That’s the thing you need to have. How are you going to do that? One thing I’ve learned is at I talked recently to a younger marketeer who had never heard of the concept of Net promoting Score. It’s like telling me you’ve never heard of the concept of brand positioning. And yet you are in marketing for 10 years. There is a very basic set of tools and understanding and learnings that gets lost. It’s more my hope for the marketing industry that we come back to that

Louis: maybe the answer to the next question will be related. What are the top three resources you would recommend listeners to read, to listen to, to watch outside of your book? The positioning roulette that people can find on Amazon and all of that, Right?

Ulli Appelbaum: Yeah, on Amazon and on my website. One book that was influential for me is by a gentleman called Robert. I think it’s Cialdini or Cialdini.

Louis: Cialdini.

Ulli Appelbaum: Yeah, Cialdini. And he wrote Influence. The psychology of influence. Brilliant application of psychological learnings out of psychological research on how we get influence. Very basic, very fundamental. That’s one thing. The second thing, it might be very surprising is fucking talk to people. I am the type of guy who I always chat up my taxi drivers or my Uber drivers or when I’m in the playground, watch my kids play, I talk to others. It’s like talk to people. Especially for strategists, it’s so easy and convenient to look at existing reports, do a Google search, do all these kind of things, talk to your neighbor and spend the time to listen. You learn so much, it’s mind blowing. And the second, it’s more a gentleman. It’s a guy called Mark Ritson. And Mark is. Do you know him?

Louis: This episode will be published after his episode will be published. He’s a brilliant, brilliant marketer. But please talk about him.

Ulli Appelbaum: No, what I like about him is actually I thought I’d recommend him to you, but you were like two steps ahead of me. Of course he’s a no bullshit contrarian, right? I love him and that’s what I love about it. It keeps you real, keeps you fresh. And if you research him, even on YouTube, he has been a couple of speeches that are going to sort of like brush your ego if you are all into this whole trendy marketing bullshit. But it’s a nice call to reality. So Mark is someone I discovered several months back and I’m just following him because it’s a breath of fresh air.

Louis: Yeah. And he has his way to talk about contrarian ideas that are quite like the big picture. But when you ask him and drill into specific step by steps, there’s no problem going into it. So the Mark Rickson episode is already live and I’m going to do a bad job at remembering exactly what we talked about, but I remember him going through a Very detailed way to pick exactly where your company should be in the marketplace based on very simple set of questions and surveys. A detailed survey sent to a broad spectrum of people. It was an amazing interview as well. So thanks for mentioning him because I feel like you have a few similar attributes, should I say?

Ulli Appelbaum: I wish.

Louis: So where can listeners connect with you, learn more from you?

Ulli Appelbaum: The best way is really through my website, Louis. It’s first the trousers dot com. So first the trousers, then the shoes is my company, but that was a little long as an earl, so I cut it down to first trousers. But there is a minus sign or a dash in between each word. So first the trousers.com and then you can also get the list I just wrote you. You have a free download of that list with those 26 questions. I encourage you obviously to go for the cards, but there you get a first look at those 26 territories and learn a lot from those.

Louis: Yeah. And sorry to cut you, but yes, I think as good people and listener, I know that my listeners are like, they are fantastic, always sending me a lot of emails and feedback and stuff. And so it’s so interesting to hear from them. I think a good thing to do is once when you have someone like Uli just going through his entire product or his entire book in front of us almost without any expectation in return, obviously expecting to sell his book, which is normal. But I think if you got value out of this episode right now, it’s only fair to give value back by getting the cards if you think that they would be useful to your company. And I mean that because it’s been an hour that we talked and I squeezed you and everything I could and you’ve been great.

Ulli Appelbaum: So once again, no, I appreciate that. I look at it, really, and I appreciate you saying that, but I look at it as really, it’s like cookbooks. It’s like a recipe. If Paul Bocuse makes an omelet, trust me, it’s going to be 10 times better than if I bake an omelet using his recipe. And I think experience, affinity and all these kinds of help make the tool better. But the tool is already going to take you three steps ahead of where you are today. Even the free list that you can download on my site is going to take you way further than where you are as a marketeer today.

Louis: Once again, thank you so much for your time.

Ulli Appelbaum: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Louis.

Louis: That’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com. and this is the moment where I tell you to subscribe to our email list. So before you leave and go to another podcast or listen to another episode, I don’t treat email list the way people usually treat their email list. I really treat that as a as a one to one conversation. So I’m going to send you very short personal emails every two weeks. I would say I’ll inform you of guests in advance, I’ll share with you my numbers and how many listens we get and I’ll also ask you for your feedback in terms of the questions we can ask future guests. And perhaps I can also have you on the show someday. So don’t be afraid to subscribe. I’m not going to spam you and you can always unsubscribe for sure if you wish. The second thing we need from you is your harsh and honest feedback. We know that this show is not perfect yet and we always can improve. So you can send us your email@feedbackveryone heightsmarketers.com Good or bad? Please feel free to send me an email and the last thing I like from you is that if you did like the episode, please share it to your friends, your colleagues or whoever might like it. And also please review it on itunes or another service that you might use to listen to your podcast. Because if you leave us five star review it means that more people will be likely to listen and we can spread the word world quicker. So thank you so much once again and au revoir. And that’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com thank you so much much for listening. I’m super super grateful. I’d love for you to consider subscribing to my daily newsletter Monday to Friday called Stand the Fuck Out Daily. I send very short, hopefully interesting, surprising, shocking, entertaining content to help you stand the out. It’s at everyone hatesmarketers.com you can subscribe for free and obviously unsubscribe whenever you want. I’m just gonna read a couple of emails that I got recently as a reply. Juma said, your content attacks the mind primarily, which is such a good thing because most of us are skilled at what we do, but we don’t have the courage to do it our way. Mark, who just subscribed couple days before, said, this is my first issue of your newsletter. Love it. Glad I subscribed. Brianna Said, I just realized this morning that my email habit is now to 1. Came through the list. 2. Select all unread industry email except yours. 3. Delete and don’t think twice. 4. Quickly scheme yours Amy said, Also loving the new content that’s coming from you. It feels really lovely. Candle Said, I like your writing a lot. It really resonate. There’s so much out there. It’s good to touch the authentic. And Chloe said, Where is the I love this email button? Brilliant. I hope you subscribe. You’ll be joining more than 14,000 subscribers at this stage, which is crazy. It’s the size of a small stadium. Anyway, thank you so much. See you on the other side.