A straightforward, safe approach to the market is when a business makes no change to customer needs. People buy a lot of cheap shoes, so we find a factory in China that makes cheap shoes, and we figure out how to rank high in Google, done. That's the bottom of the positioning pyramid.
At the top of the pyramid, there is the really difficult approach of changing humans at the root. To get past stereotypes and change what people need altogether.
This is how Mohammed (pbuh) turned the course of history. This is where people like Nelson Mandela and Gandy transformed people.
Companies like Apple used to operate and market this way too. In 1977, when computers were expensive and low-performing, Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." In the same era, Steve Jobs said: "This will change: Computers will be essential in most homes." And Apple did change what people need from a computer altogether.
The position in the middle is neither so challenging to assume nor so generic and cowardly—a position where we leverage people's existing needs but change how they satisfy those needs. Or we invite them to reconsider their existing solution because we can provide another one that's faster, more efficient, more convenient, etc.
Amazon has changed how people shop online for good, and Microsoft has changed how people use PCs.
When you decide to make no change, you choose to sell to everyone and compete with countless low-impact, low-margin competitors. Anyone can come to where you stand on the positioning grid and offer something a little cheaper or a little faster than yours. That's a very frustrating position at the bottom of the pyramid where most businesses are fighting to get noticed by clients.
To build a brand that makes you proud, you must move up in the positioning pyramid.
The top of the pyramid is a tempting dream about changing customers' worldviews. It demands the necessary insights and technology and resources and role models and processes to get under people's skin and change them deeply.
In the middle, businesses have the chance to change how people get what they want (find a hole, fill it)—a real change at a significantly lower cost that, at the same time, gets past the nonsense competition at the bottom.
Worth mentioning that, at the top and in the middle, it would be much easier, meaningful, and efficient to find a small enough group (a minimum viable audience) and make change for people who already seek it.
Bottom or higher, there's a fight for you—a struggle to survive at the bottom; or the difficult (and proud) act of figuring out what change will position you away from the crowd.
Only in the top two-thirds will people believe that you are the right answer for them. This's where you can make something that you are proud of.
