Brand Core · Brand Positioning · Module
Frame of reference
What the customer compares the brand with — the category they file it under, which is frequently not the one the organisation would choose.
The idea
How it works
Being better only means something once the comparison is settled. Organisations routinely assert a difference against a category the buyer does not have in mind, which produces an argument nobody is listening to.
The frame is discoverable by asking what someone would have done if your brand did not exist. The answer names the category as they hold it, which is usually broader and less flattering than the industry definition.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Ask what they would do instead
The alternative they name is the frame. It is frequently a different category, or nothing at all.
- 02
Establish the frame before the difference
A difference argued inside the wrong frame is invisible. Order matters here more than anywhere else in positioning.
- 03
Note the entry points
Which situations make someone think of the category at all is what determines whether the brand is retrieved.
- 04
Change frame only with evidence
Reframing is the most expensive move in positioning and the most frequently attempted for internal reasons.
One level in
The components of frame of reference
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Ask what they would have done if you did not exist. The answer is the frame, whatever the industry calls it.
The other modules in brand positioning
Points of difference
What the brand is meant to be believed better at, held alongside the parity points it has to be credibly adequate on to be considered at all.
LearnThe positioning statement
The internal sentence that fixes the position: for whom, in what frame, what difference, on what basis — written for the organisation rather than for the market.
LearnBrand architecture
How brands relate to one another where there is more than one — what carries the master brand, what stands alone, and what the customer is expected to connect.
Learn