I am going to start with a prediction, namely – if your brand is positioned in the same way that it was this time last year, you might need to change. Just think about where we’ve come from over the past 12 months or so…

+ despite ‘greenshoot’ talk, the economy is still a complete and utter mess

+ companies are reporting reduced profits…with all of the implications involved

+ consumers are threatening to permanently buy less stuff, including yours

+ competitors are in varying degrees of hurt – some have already given up

+ your own business is likely feeling the pinch – in case you hadn’t noticed!!

Put all of these factors together and what we have is an entirely new and different marketplace. A marketplace where many brands are misaligned and where only the strongest brands will survive…and strength in this context means well positioned with clarity and focus.

It is one thing to try and explain the reasons why many brands have become de-positioned, it is another to understand why so many companies appear to have been so reluctant to act. The strange thing is that the signals are often there for us to see…let me explain using inspiration from Jeff Foxworthy:

- if your category has been seriously disrupted (think insurance, financial services, luxury hotels, smartphones), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if one of your leading competitors goes belly-up (think Circuit City, Linens ‘n Things) or emerges successfully from bankruptcy (think GM, Bally Fitness), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if your category experiences a major merger or acquisition (think search Yahoo!/Microsoft, think system computing Oracle+Sun or media Thompson Reuters), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if your competitors are offering better value in these recessionary times (think Wal Mart, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if your competitors have recently launched groundbreaking new products (think iPhone Apps, Kindle 2, Zyrtec, Greenworks), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if your customer base is moving on (think Starbucks, Harley Davidson, Newsweek), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if the attitudes and behavior of your consumers is changing (think boomers, think sustainability, think frugal), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if you are a business that has taken a bullish approach to growth (think General Mills, Hasbro, Hyundai), then you might need to reposition your brand

- if your core consumer can no longer afford you (think Mercedes, Nordstrom, Vera Wang), you might need to reposition your brand

There is nothing in this list that is particularly surprising and I, for one, am hoping that the destruction of $13 trillion of consumer wealth, coupled with what looks to be a profound and permanent change in consumer behavior, will be the catalyst over the coming months for a resurgence in positioning. Why? Because it’s arguably the most important strategic work that any marketer does and it would be invigorating to witness more time and money being devoted to this task rather than being poured into the executional pit that many of us seem addicted to.

At the end of the day, there are a large number of brands that are not achieving their true potential – either because they are insufficiently different or because they are just not optimally positioned. We’d like to change this. We sit today at a major inflection point where almost everything in our marketplace over the past 12-18 months has moved on – what a wonderful opportunity to reassess our priorities and to make positioning the number one task for brand success.

Now that would get the “reset economy” restarted.

Simon Williams