Building Blocks

How to generate positioning ideas!

Building Blocks
Thinking inside the box for a change

Attribute Benefit

Role Territory Attitude

 Two applications of one tool

A means to generate positioning hypotheses

Mapping competitive advertising

 Attribute Benefit

Attribute
Role Territory Attitude

The focus of communication is on highlighting a particular

feature or ingredient of the product
No. of ATMs, speed of a car, length of a toilet roll

Ads frequently emphasize a feature by exaggerating it

The key is to clearly link the feature with the brand

The mint with a hole

Attributes are also typically what marketers can most

easily relate to about their products
 Attribute Benefit

Benefit
Role Territory Attitude

The focus here is on communicating the benefit

of a products use

The benefit is the way the product affects you / your life
Saves you time, makes you thinner, makes you fairer

Benefits can be rational or emotional

The key is to make consumers clearly associate the

benefit with the brand
 Attribute Benefit

Role
Role Territory Attitude

The emphasis is on defining the brand purpose, its reason

for being, the role it wishes to play in our lives

This is often what we call corporate advertising

Roles may emanate from the companys mission

statement, the founders vision or the founding principles

Advertising attempts to distinguish the brand by

suggesting it has a unique role to play in our lives
GE - We bring good things to life
PHILLIPS - Lets make things better
 Attribute Benefit

Territory
Role Territory Attitude

The communication emphasis here is on the world where

the brand originates or lives

This may be a real physical location (e.g. French wine) or

a made-up, metaphorical world, time or place where
certain sights, attitudes or behavior are commonplace
(e.g. Marlboro Country)

Territories can often be simple:

Colours, sounds, time of day etc. (e.g. After Eight)

And often complex as well:

Emotions or even a state-of-mind (e.g. Fosters)
 Attribute Benefit

Attitude
Role Territory Attitude

A brand, company or user attitude

Attitude campaigns often try to create empathy by

highlighting an attitude that the brand and target audience
may hold in common
NIKE - Just do it.

Advertising is often rooted in another block and has a

strong attitude-laden tone of voice
LYCRA - Has It.
 Recap

Attribute
A specific attribute or feature

Benefit
Consumer perception of a benefit arising from use

Role
Purpose for a brands existence, its reason for being

Territory
A space where the brand lives, physical or metaphorical

Attitude
Focus on brand or user attitude
Using the boxes to generate positioning ideas

Start with a positioning idea using any of the boxes

See what the other boxes throw up

Find ways to re-express the idea using the other boxes

Attribute Benefit

Role Territory Attitude

 Questions to ask yourself

Attribute
What attributes/virtues have not yet been expressed?
In what ways can they be expressed differently?
What happens if you exaggerate them massively?

Benefit
What other benefits does/could the brand deliver?
Rational vs. emotional?
What benefits would you explain to a child?
 Questions to ask yourself

Role
What role does the brand wish to play in peoples lives?
What happens if you exaggerate this?
What does it add to its users lives?
What does it have to do in order to play this role?
What did the founders of the company have in mind?
 Questions to ask yourself

Territory
What territory is available to the brand?
What places, times, occasions, activities, moods is
the brand associated with?

Attitude
What user perceptions / attitudes can the brand tap into?
What attitude does the brand have about what it does?
What could the brand say about the person using it?
 Key Learning

Its easy to generate multiple positioning ideas

The blocks are particularly useful when tangible

differences are absent

Forces us to push into new spaces

Worry less about where the propositions map out and

more about generating more ideas than you ever could
 Exercise 1 - The Yellow Pages

The Brief
The Yellow Pages is the ultimate source of shopping
information for your city / local area

The Task
Re-express the attribute above through the blocks
to create more possibilities for the brand

Use the list of questions to help you

Generate as many options as possible in each block
The Yellow Pages

Attribute Benefit

Comprehensive
local shopping
information

Role Territory Attitude

The Yellow Pages

Attribute Benefit

Gratification in a
Comprehensive five minute radius
local shopping
information The world at your
fingertips

Yellow
Making life simpler/
Shop smarter
easier The world re-arranged
alphabetically

Role Territory Attitude

 Exercise 2 - Ariel

The Brief
When you wash your clothes with Ariel, it prevents
colours from fading

The Task
Re-express the benefit above through the blocks
to create more possibilities for the brand

Use the list of questions to help you

Generate as many options as possible in each block
Ariel

Attribute Benefit

Prevents colours
from fading

Role Territory Attitude

Ariel

Attribute Benefit

New ColourFastTM Prevents colours

technology from fading

A world of bright, Colour your world

Making life brighter/ vibrant colour
more exciting Some people stand
A faded world out in a faded world

Role Territory Attitude

 Exercise 3 Sony Playstation 4

The Brief
The new Sony Playstation 4 offers a revolutionary
3D gaming experience
However, market intelligence tells us that the new X Box 360
Surround will launch at the same time with the same feature

The Task
Re-express the attribute above through the blocks
to create more possibilities for the brand and help
it hit the market with a strong differentiated positioning
Sony Playstation 4

Attribute Benefit

3D Gaming Be there

Live every experience

Blurring the line
Lifes more fun in
between reality and Whos playing?
the playstation the Sony World
Watch your back

Role Territory Attitude

 Building Blocks
can also map competitive communication

The same framework can be used to understand and map

competitive communication

This is particularly helpful to understand where your own

advertising will fit into the category as a whole

It can also help to define empty competitive space that

may offer greater cut-through and differentiation
Mapping competitive communication

Attribute Benefit

Role Territory Attitude

Keeping in mind what we know of banks,
how would you map the category?

Attribute Benefit

Role Territory Attitude

 Keeping in mind what you know of banks,
how would you map the category?

Benefit Role
DEUTSCHE
ICICI Achieve your dreams ICICI
Hum Hain Na Hum Hain Na
Kotak CITIBANK HSBC
You can do better
Easier Life Sound Advisor.
SBI Kotak SBI
Max ATMs Investments Surprisingly SBI
DEUTSCHE DEUTSCHE
Db Financial Services Passion to perform
HSBC
HSBC
Attribute
Wealth Management
Territory AttitudeDifferent people
Different views.
 Benefits of the technique

A new / more constructive way to chat about ideas

See what others have done - free R&D

See what they havent done (yet)

empty competitive space

Understand how advertising in the category is working