What are some great examples of bold — yet tasteful — competitive positioning you've seen in the market? How can companies straddle the line without turning it into a game of finger-pointing?

My favorite example is Adidas video which shoes that yes, a runner can sprint through the desert in Nike shoes -- but a camera man with 50 additional pounds of equipment and wearing Adidas can keep up with him. It strikes the balance between saying, we respect your product and - ours is as good or better. Really clear value, clever approach, not so dimishing as to take away from the credibility or respect associated with Adidas' brand.  Companies can absolutely straddle the line. It's about solv ...Read More

This is a great question! I must admit, the recently resurfaced Coke vs. Pepsi ad with the young boy standing on two coke cans to purchase Pepsi is pretty entertaining. However, it was banned. I call this out because it highlights that there is a need to really think through not only how you develop competitive positioning, but how that positioning gets translated into messaging and marketing strategies. While these campaigns may be a bit older; I find they still provide a good north star for co ...Read More

The market is littered with really bad examples of competitive messaging, unfortunately. They usually make their case on technical details that are irrelevant to the prospective customer.  The best competitive positioning doesn't mention competition. After all, why give them air time? Rather, it uses competitive insights to guide positioning strategy -- and the positioning strategy, in turn, guides salient messaging that is relevant to your customers.  Make the messaging about the problems they ...Read More

I will answer this question the total opposite way that you asked it based on something I saw this morning. I was making my son a bagel with cream cheese. The cream cheese had a logo saying "Our cows saw NOOOOO to ABCDE hormone". I am not here to comment on anything to do with farming. What struck me is right next to the logo, in LARGER FONT, was a warning saying "there is no evidence ABCDE hormone has any negative impact".  I was kind of taken aback. What is the point of anchoring on this diffe ...Read More

The easiest way to differentiate yourself is to have a really innovative product and solid marketing to back it up. My favorite example right now is a Klaviyo customer, Magic Spoon. They make low carb/keto diets for people on a diet but wish they weren't. On their website, they even have a tagline "Hold on to the dream." (The dream of eating sugary cereals guilt free.) They have lots of fun cereal flavors you'd associate with your childhood but they're grain free, low carb, etc. For a certain ma ...Read More

Great question! Two that come to mind: Slack vs. Email: I've always like how Slack positioned themself vs email as an overall category (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQsA2oiD_xA). They didn’t directly attack email vendors by name but instead hit on highly relatable pain points for anyone who's ever worked via email and highlighted the strengths of their platform. Zoom: Zoom's "Video conferencing that doesn't suck" campaign is a great one (https://www.zoom.com/en/blog/video-conferencing-that-do ...Read More

A few come to mind for me: Notion vs Confluence (Atlassian) & Google docs Notion has positioned itself as a modern, flexible, all-in-one workspace, subtly making Confluence and Google Docs look bloated and fragmented. Instead of directly attacking competitors, Notion uses clean, minimalist messaging like “One tool for your whole team” and “Goodbye, messy docs”, suggesting that traditional document tools create inefficiency. Their UI showcases elegant simplicity, while legacy competitors feel ...Read More

Competitive positioning should not be “seen” in the market. The positioning is meant to be an internal guidepost for your own company. However, your marketing team may want to leverage your competitive positioning to create competitive takeout campaigns. Here are a few excellent examples of that:    Competitive landing pages that target competitor customers. These landing pages are highly targeted, with high quality content. They should articulate your value and differentiator. Bonus points for ...Read More