Brand Positioning
How do successful brands create effective brand positioning?
Brand positioning statements succinctly and quickly describe a brand's purpose and aesthetic — and how it effectively fills a particular need of the company's target market. Unlike a mission statement or a vision statement, a brand positioning statement is an internal tool that aligns marketing efforts with the brand and value proposition.
Well-designed brand positioning statements help crystallize what makes your brand uniquely distinctive, ensuring that you create real, lasting connections with your target(s). Listening to your customers can inform how to position your brand through surveys, data analyzation, and social listening through media. This allows you to curate and understand your consumer and the voice your brand needs to emulate.
Red Lobster, for example, achieved this by leveraging partnerships as a way to position itself with its loyal fanbase. As explained in an ANA event recap from the 2025 Masters of Marketing Conference, Flavor Flav "without officially partnering with the franchise yet declared on X that he was going to help the brand. He announced it was "Crabfest" and posted photos having ordered the entire menu. The brand then partnered with Flavor Flav to create a signature menu. Value increased as the brand experience became more of a sense of community."
Nichole Robillard, CMO at Red Lobster, noted that "it's not enough to just be out there combing the social conversation but to understand what people are saying about your brand. Your fans need to know that you're listening, that their ideas and their opinions matter, that you hear them and they have a voice. And that's really been important for us as we've been able to build a community out of."
Further, Todd Kaplan, CMO of North America at Kraft Heinz, stressed at ANA's 2025 Masters of Marketing Conference that consistency is key to brand positioning and building, stating, "Consistency is the thing that strengthens your equity. And you need to reinforce your core equities to keep that memory structure fresh in a consumer's mind."
Below are best practices, examples, and tools.
Best Practices
- 15 Brand Positioning Examples to Refine Your Branding Strategy. HubSpot, March 2025.
Some brands have become so iconic that their names replace generic terms. Band-Aid instead of bandage, Kleenex instead of tissue — it's the ultimate example of successful branding. But how do you build a brand positioning strategy that sticks? This speaks to the experts to find out and shares their insights. It also includes practical framework to help you position your brand in your ideal market. - Crafting the Perfect Brand Positioning Statement. Harvard Business School Online, October 2024.
Writing a brand positioning statement is critical to creating a successful marketing strategy. Beyond clarifying and focusing your marketing efforts, it helps ensure your strategy and messaging align with your brand's goals. Simply creating your brand positioning statement can enhance insights into consumer preferences and behavior and spotlight how to attract and retain customers. It can also provide a benchmark for measuring success. - 12 Brand Positioning Statement Examples and Why They Work. Brafton, May 2024.
What does your brand positioning statement say about you? Is your brand motivational like Nike, environmentally focused like Patagonia or a trend-setter like Outdoor Voices? Strong brand positioning gives your target audience a solid idea of who your brand is and why they should choose you over your competitors. Brafton compiled some brand positioning statement examples that will do just that. - 12 Positioning Statement Examples and How to Write Your Own. Zendesk, December 2023.
Building a great product isn't enough to stand out in the market. What you need is a compelling message—one that speaks to your audience and is unique to your brand. How do you make sure you're telling the same story to every customer across every touchpoint? One key tactic is writing a positioning statement. How do you write a positioning statement? Get inspiration here with 12 of the best positioning statement examples. - The Ultimate Guide to Brand Positioning Strategy. Adobe, November 2023.
Brand positioning is a brand management strategy you use to control how your business is viewed by consumers — in other words, how it's positioned in your customer's minds. Your positioning strategy is what sets your brand apart from the rest and helps build brand awareness. Effective brand positioning creates associations in consumers' minds. In this article, learn how you can craft your own brand positioning strategy that helps you stand out and control how you're perceived in the minds of members of your target audience.
Examples
- Mott's Spokesapples Stir Up the Sauce Market with a 42 Percent Sales Surge. ANA, September 2025.
Mott's faced a critical brand awareness challenge: Despite offering convenient pouch packaging, 75 percent of its users didn't know it existed. With competitors flooding the market and consumer habits shifting, Mott's and its in-house agency launched a bold, integrated campaign to reclaim its position as the apple authority. The campaign — centered around the message "Let's Keep It Simple. Let's Keep It Real. Let's Keep It Mott's" — featured sassy spokesapples, platform-specific content, and a manifesto that celebrated real apples over "imposter-ples." The result was a dramatic turnaround: 42 percent sales growth, 23 percent increase in new category buyers, and the highest share growth in brand history.
- How Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Made Its New Brand Positioning Stick With 5,000 Remote Employees. ANA, September 2025.
After collaborating with Siegel+Gale to create a revised positioning and brand identity, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina needed to get its 5,000 employees — all of whom worked from home — to embrace the change and understand how their own work connected to the company's brand. - How This Texas Bank Refreshed Its Brand. ANA, September 2025.
With its brand refresh, Frost Bank sought to foreground its people-first attitude. - Labcorp Uses a Multi-Channel Campaign to Stand Out in the B2B Marketplace. ANA, July 2025.
Labcorp utilized a multi-channel campaign strategy to position itself in the pharmaceutical marketplace after a recent rebrand and divisional spinoff. - Authentic Energy Leadership Beyond Greenwashing. ANA, July 2025.
LS Power partnered with Prophecy to transform from a fragmented organization into a unified, modern energy leader by embracing its authentic mission: "solving complex energy problems to improve the world." Rather than relying on greenwashing, LS Power owned its full-spectrum energy expertise with confidence. The rebrand included a dynamic logo symbolizing an infinite loop of problem-solving, bold orange branding, and integrated marketing vehicles that positioned LS Power as honest leaders tackling real energy transition challenges, resulting in 84 percent logo favorability and enhanced employee engagement. - How This Brand Positioned its Foundation as the Solution for V-Day Hickeys. ANA, May 2025.
Cover FX made a dramatic return to the beauty market with Hickey Magic. Inspired by post-Valentine's Day search spikes for "how to cover a hickey," the campaign enlisted 17 top influencers to showcase Total Cover Cream Foundation's impressive performance, positioning it as the go-to solution for flawless skin.
- How Toyota Highlighted Its Brand Position with Paralympics Sponsorship. ANA, September 2024.
To help reposition its brand from a vehicle company to a mobility company, Toyota created "Start Your Impossible," a campaign designed to share the stories and sponsorships at Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc., highlighted various pieces of creative developed as part of Toyota's Paralympics sponsorship and meant to support its updated brand position.
Podcasts
- Creating Real Human Connection. ANA, January 2022.
Inspiring people to connect in a more meaningful way is core to the marketing and branding efforts at Cox Communications, the largest private telecom company in the U.S. Behind the work of Gaston Vaneri, SVP of brand, Cox is bringing people closer together to build a better future through broadband applications and services. In this episode of Beyond Profit, a podcast of the ANA Center for Brand Purpose, Gaston joins host Ken Beaulieu to discuss Cox's brand positioning and how it's bringing people closer and changing the reputation of the telecom industry.
Tools
- Positioning Statement Worksheet Quick Win. ANA/Demand Metric.
A strong positioning statement is the foundation of great messaging but crafting one requires precision. Without a structured approach, teams often default to vague, generic language that fails to differentiate. Using a proven formula, this worksheet helps teams build a clear, compelling, and customer-focused positioning statement.
- Positioning Statement Worksheet. ANA/Demand Metric.
This worksheet will help you define a positioning statement that describes your product, defines its differentiation, and how you can create value for customers.
Training
- Positioning Your Brand to Win (Half Day). ANA.
Poor positioning kills brands. Defining a truly unique and compelling positioning is the most critical foundation for creating a strong brand. Whether you are positioning an existing brand or launching a new one, this workshop offers several strategies for positioning, along with a framework that will help you to consistently position your brand to win.
Taught by a seasoned brand strategist with both emerging brand and Fortune 500 experience, this workshop teaches you a step-by-step method along with a wide range of relevant case studies and fresh thinking to help you craft compelling positioning.
Contact training@ana.net for more information.
- Brand Building with Positioning and Activation (Half Day). ANA.
To build differentiated brand positioning and to drive effective activation, your brand needs to have a disciplined process around competitive analysis, brand analysis, and decision journey mapping. Without these disciplines, your brand equity may erode, falling victim to misaligned and ineffective marketing, poor marketing ROI, internal obstacles, and misunderstandings.
This workshop will help you to build brand assets that align with your customers' needs and that will help establish a unique and ownable position in the marketplace. It breaks down the key components of brand building in a way that will engage you, build your knowledge, and reveal practical insights and initiatives that you can use to build your brand and bottom line. The workshop concludes with lessons learned on how to effectively put these insights into motion with best practices and examples on how to activate your brand experience.
To register for this course, contact training@ana.net.
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Source
"Brand Positioning." ANA, 2025.