Ted's Take

Historically there has been a lot made about “positioning” in marketing and about the importance of a very succinct and easy to understand positioning for a company to be successful but, ironically, the most successful Web 2.0 companies don’t have it. In fact they have vague positions in the market. They have “optionality” on where they want to grow and seem to be thriving. Here is what I mean in a couple of obvious examples:

So is Google a….

• Search provider?
• A software company?
• A technology company?
• A CPC company?
• An advertising company?
• A media company?
• A web services company?
• A developer platform?
• A web operating system company?
• An artificial intelligence big algorithm in the sky?

Is it and can it be all of the above? They seem to be doing a pretty good job of it and the only positioning line I can think of about Google is “Do no evil.” They don’t have a position and they are the zero sum winners as far as I can tell.

Amazon is it…

• The e-commerce company?
• A shopping portal?
• The one click shopping and no shipping charges provider?
• The e-commerce platform provider?
• The Wal-Mart of cyberspace?
• A cloud computing company?
• The “I know what you need to buy” recommendations company?
• A communications company that connects buyers and sellers together?

 All I ever remember as Amazon’s positioning was the original “World’s Biggest Book Store.”

My point: In the new world order, positioning may not be as important as it once was and may actually hurt a brand in that while expensive to build a brand’s position, it is even harder and MORE expensive to reposition a brand. Just think about it.