The boardroom gleams. PowerPoints flash. Consultants promise the moon. Yet somewhere between the third rebrand and the fifth strategic pivot, something fundamental gets lost—the very essence of what makes a company tick. Like a chef who forgets whether they’re running a taqueria or a steakhouse, organizations hemorrhage resources chasing identities that were never theirs to claim. The question isn’t whether your company has DNA; it’s whether you’ve bothered to decode it.
The Three-Body Problem: Understanding Corporate Genetics
Every living organism on Earth operates according to genetic instructions coded into its DNA. Companies, despite their incorporation papers and org charts, function identically. Strip away the venture capital and the LinkedIn profiles, and three fundamental organizational types emerge: Mothers, Mechanics, and Missionaries. This isn’t management theory dressed in metaphor—it’s the biological blueprint that determines whether your positioning strategy will flourish or flounder.
Customer-oriented companies, the Mothers of the business world, win through relationships and experiences. Their success metrics revolve around retention, satisfaction, and loyalty. Every decision—from hiring to resource allocation—flows from a singular question: What does the customer need? Zappos trains customer service representatives for up to seven weeks, then offers them a month’s salary to quit if the culture doesn’t fit. Nordstrom accepts returns on clearly used merchandise without blinking. These aren’t customer service tactics; they’re genetic expressions of an organism fundamentally oriented toward nurturing relationships.
The Container Store positions itself as “the only national retailer solely devoted to” storage and organization solutions, explicitly stating their goal to “help provide order to an increasingly chaotic world.” This isn’t brand positioning—it’s DNA talking. When the company discusses helping customers “save time, save space, and improve the quality of their lives,” every word echoes the Mother’s fundamental orientation toward caregiving.
Product-oriented companies, the Mechanics, measure success through market dominance and technological superiority. These organizations channel resources into building superior products and capturing market share. Microsoft, Oracle, Intel—their press releases trumpet technological advancement, product launches, and feature updates. The metrics obsessively track market share, category primacy, and benchmark leadership. Walmart and McDonald’s exemplify Mechanic DNA outside technology, focused on delivering maximum volume to maximum people at optimal efficiency.
Synaptics Incorporated, holder of over 1,900 patents with 70 percent of its 1,850 employees working in technology, engineering, and product design, embodies Mechanic identity. The company continuously innovates its touchpad technology, developing palm rejection algorithms that eliminate accidental selection—improvements users only notice when absent. This relentless iteration to incrementally improve existing products defines the Features Mechanic genotype. As the CEO noted, competitors might opt for something faster or cheaper, but miss what’s truly important: user experience built on product excellence.
Concept-oriented companies, the Missionaries, exist to spark movements and change behavior on massive scales. These organizations measure success by market disruption and altered human patterns. Apple’s innovation under Steve Jobs delivered groundbreaking, life-altering change. FedEx revolutionized overnight delivery. Salesforce launched customer relationship management into the cloud with its “No Software” positioning. Starbucks created the “Third Place” between work and home.
The distinguishing factor isn’t being first to market—it’s changing behavioral course. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad weren’t first in their categories, but they fundamentally altered how society functions. OpenGov, with its mission to “power more effective and accountable government” through cloud-based performance management technology, exemplifies Missionary DNA in the government technology sector. The company exists not merely to sell software but to transform how democracy functions at the local level through better data-driven decision making.
The Genotype Layer: Finding Your Strategic Direction
DNA type establishes fundamental identity, but genotype determines strategic direction. Each DNA type expresses itself through two possible strategic paths, creating six distinct positioning territories in the business landscape.
Customer Experience Mothers differentiate through connection quality. Disney doesn’t merely operate theme parks—it orchestrates magical experiences where single Mickey Mouse appearances, character-consistent autographs, and underground employee tunnels maintain fantasy immersion. Facebook, despite privacy controversies, delivers exceptional experience to its true customers: advertisers who receive unprecedented targeting data and service quality. The common thread runs through every customer touchpoint, creating experiences that transcend mere product delivery.
Customer Segmentation Mothers win by serving specific market slices with laser focus. Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, Ferrari, Maserati, IKEA, Forever 21—each caters to distinct demographics with unique preferences. Nike dominates by serving the “authentic athlete segment”—aspirational athletes who may never compete professionally but feel authentic in their trail-running shoes. Red Bull sells to extreme athletes, real or imagined. Burger King promises “Have It Your Way” customization while McDonald’s serves standardized fare. The differentiation lies not in what you sell, but in precisely identifying who craves it.
Product Value Mechanics emphasize the “more for less” equation. Walmart’s “Save Money. Live Better.” positioning captures this perfectly. McDonald’s efficiency-focused “Billions Served” campaign (later shifted to “Billions Heard”) demonstrates Value Mechanic thinking. But value doesn’t mean cheap—Surf Air offers private aviation perks without full private jet expense, creating value through accessible luxury rather than rock-bottom pricing. Zenefits positions as “the #1 all-in-one HR platform for small business,” emphasizing value delivery by eliminating thousands of administrative hours.
Product Features Mechanics obsessively introduce new capabilities. Samsung, LG, KitchenAid constantly release models with incremental improvements—four-door refrigerators, smart home integration, enhanced connectivity. Microsoft typifies Features Mechanics, eternally rolling out updates, new products, next-generation features. Competitors become feature sets to acquire—Skype, Yammer, Lync absorbed as expanded capabilities rather than separate entities. When Features Mechanics consider customer service, the response directs users toward FAQ databases rather than human interaction.
Next Big Thing Missionaries create or popularize categories that reshape industries. Salesforce redefined software as cloud-delivered service. Amazon Web Services revolutionized IT outsourcing. Squarespace democratized web publishing. Marketo automated marketing. Each identified white space and claimed ownership before competition understood the territory existed. Retrotope, advancing a revolutionary unified theory of aging and degeneration, positions itself to fundamentally alter pharmaceutical approaches to disease treatment. The company’s disease-modifying therapy uses chemically stabilized forms of essential nutrients to “fireproof” cells against degeneration—a horizontal approach that contradicts precision medicine’s dominant paradigm but promises to treat multiple conditions through common mechanisms.
Cult of Personality Missionaries build movements around charismatic leaders or products that inspire devotion. Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Marc Benioff—their personal magnetism becomes inseparable from company identity. Jobs didn’t just create products; he pulled people into his reality distortion field, convincing them to accomplish impossible feats through sheer force of personality. Branson transformed Virgin into a lifestyle brand where using his services confers coolness by association. When products themselves generate cult followings—Philz Coffee’s pour-over method and “better people’s day” mission, Tiffany’s iconic blue box—the effect mirrors charismatic leadership in creating emotional attachment that transcends rational product evaluation.
The Positioning Imperative: Why Most Marketing Fails
A SurveyMonkey panel revealed that among 100 North American CEOs, fewer than one-third felt their recent brand strategy work had been even somewhat effective. The failure rate exceeds two-thirds. Primary reasons include institutional resistance to change, implementation confusion, competing strategic ideas, and business strategy evolution immediately post-brand work completion. Translation: companies invest millions in beautiful presentations that gather dust because they skipped the foundational work of DNA-based positioning.
The typical branding agency starts with look and feel—logos, color palettes, typography, design elements. These firms traffic in emotional currency: “Just Do It,” “Tomorrow Starts Here,” “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” The taglines sound magnificent in presentations, but clients discover they don’t fit. The disconnect stems from approaching marketing as pure yang—emotional expression divorced from logical yin foundation. Without strategic positioning grounding the emotional appeal, even brilliant creative work fails to gain organizational traction.
One Pacific Northwest technology company sought differentiation in a noisy B2B market after hiring a branding firm for logo and website development. When brought in later for messaging work, the positioning exercise revealed the company’s true DNA and competitive differentiator. The management team, including the initially skeptical CEO, recognized the positioning enabled them to make compelling arguments for customer choice. The tragic irony? The recently developed logo and website didn’t match the company’s actual DNA—they reflected an identity that didn’t belong to the organization. Had positioning preceded branding, the visual identity would have aligned with genetic reality.
Message architecture provides the framework for consistent communication, containing positioning statements, elevator stories, value propositions, brand archetypes, personality attributes, and narrative elements. Politicians master this—staying “on message” means using language that reflects position on issues through consistent sound bites, phrases, and proof points. The Marketing Rule of 7, developed in 1930s Hollywood, holds that prospects must hear messages at least seven times before taking action. Given today’s information cacophony across social media, internet, television, radio, billboards, and notifications, seven exposures barely register. Yet companies possess unprecedented channel access—owned (websites, blogs, newsletters, social media), earned (PR and analyst relations), and paid (advertising and direct marketing)—to inject positioning messages into market consciousness.
The message must function as virus, replicating precisely across every vehicle. Just as biological viruses maintain genetic consistency while spreading through ecosystems, positioning messages must look and sound identical across all communication touchpoints. Change the message only when market conditions shift dramatically or messaging fails to resonate—never because internal teams grow bored with repetition. Customers absorb positioning far slower than creators tire of delivering it.
The Alignment Challenge: Turning Canoes Into Lasers
Digital Equipment Corporation cofounder Ken Olsen described companies as battleships—mighty war machines that at the waterline reveal themselves as hundred thousand canoes paddling in different directions, with paddlers banging into each other. What CEO wants this chaos? Yet misalignment plagues organizations when leadership teams lack shared understanding of company identity and market position.
C-suite alignment emerges as the critical success factor. When leadership agrees on direction and messaging spreads throughout the organization, companies move like schools of fish or function like lasers—formerly weak light beams aligned into concentrated energy. The original Macintosh team embodied this alignment. Conversely, Yahoo’s billion users couldn’t overcome the company’s inability to pinpoint role and relevance through countless leadership iterations and reorganizations. Now merged with AOL as Oath under Verizon ownership, the identity confusion persists. Is it advertising platform, content provider, search engine, mobile platform? Without clear positioning, even dominant market presence and massive resources prove insufficient.
The DNA test provides the diagnostic tool for establishing alignment. Twelve questions assess company behavior across customer focus, innovation style, pricing strategy, resource allocation, cultural fit, organizational structure, leadership reputation, project prioritization, value proposition validation, and brand definition. Predominantly “a” answers indicate Mother DNA. Predominantly “b” answers signal Mechanic identity. Predominantly “c” responses reveal Missionary orientation. The test forces leadership teams to confront differences in perception about fundamental company identity—differences that translate into strategic misalignment and wasted resources.
BuildingConnected, a construction bid management software company, initially focused on branding needs—website and product video. The leadership quickly recognized the importance of pinning down strategic position and go-to-market strategy first. During the DNA exercise, most executives initially saw the company as Missionary, though the product manager pushed for Mechanic. The shocking discovery? Overwhelmingly Mother DNA, driven by CEO personality and customer-focused behavior. When a customer called with vendor concerns during a positioning meeting, the CEO immediately interrupted discussions to personally call the Texas client. The entire team dropped everything to address one customer’s minor issue—textbook Mother behavior. The turning point came during brand archetype exploration when, after discussion leaned toward “Hero” archetype fighting against bad software, the CEO laid down “Caregiver” and “Lover” cards. Initial laughter gave way to recognition that the company fights for customers rather than against competitors, helping people adopt technology in their own time rather than forcing change.
Twitter exemplifies alignment failure. The company experienced massive executive brain drain with growing data suggesting trajectory toward irrelevance. Relevance is fundamentally a positioning question. With billion-user base and seemingly endless opportunity, Twitter’s inability to articulate role and relevance resulted in countless reorganizations and leadership changes without resolving fundamental identity confusion.
The Five Alignment Benefits: From Chaos to Concentration
Energy Efficiency: When all company parts focus on a single point where role and relevance are paramount, the entire entity moves in that direction faster using less energy. Cisco provides the exemplar. Shortly after John Chambers became CEO in the mid-1990s, he sought to elevate the company beyond selling hubs and routers, engaging all employees in increasing corporate valuation. Recognizing the emerging internet would revolutionize communications, Cisco positioned itself as the plumbing making the internet hum. The “Cisco and the Internet Economy” thought leadership platform commissioned University of Texas to quantify internet opportunity. The resulting “Internet Economy Study” was published widely, positioning Chambers alongside Intel’s Andy Grove (hardware) and Microsoft’s Bill Gates (software) as the third leg representing internet infrastructure. Press adopted “the Internet Economy” phrase and coined “WinTelCo” to reference all three companies. Result? Cisco connected forever to the internet, Chambers joined the tech industry CEO pantheon, company valuation climbed from $1.2 billion in 1995 to $43 billion in 1997, and employees united to create products making the internet economy reliant on Cisco. Great product plus visionary CEO plus compelling narrative equals world-class brand.
Resource Preservation: People and investment resources represent companies’ most important assets. Deploying those resources for growth should be priority one. Providing direction for that deployment seems simple but proves extraordinarily difficult in organizations with numerous people and departments. Even small companies struggle when lacking vision and mission to point everyone in the right direction—when struggling to answer “Who are we?” and “Why do we matter?” Positioning provides the alignment making those answers possible.
Focused Attention: Success requires group focus on particular outcomes, whether software company, sports team, or wolf pack. Each individual may have specific jobs, but all share common focus. When functioning properly, every member knows what the group tries to accomplish and aligns with that accomplishment. Software company launches successful product, team wins, wolves eat. Lacking focus, disaster ensues.
Buy-In and Adoption: Getting synchronized rowers requires involving them in the positioning process. No matter how solid positioning is, without buy-in no one adopts it. Positioning proves worthless unless people use it—another reason every C-suite member must participate in positioning exercises. CFOs must be involved because when executing on the financial side, they must understand and commit to desired outcomes. Commitment intensifies when executives participated in formulating plans, when their fingerprints cover every page. The Hector Ruiz Principle—60 percent agreement, 100 percent buy-in—enables disparate executive groups to introduce ideas, coalesce around good ones, and decide on direction while eliminating groupthink, indecision, and excessive consensus building.
Coalescence: New clients invariably want to be all things to all people. Products or services can never achieve this. They can, however, be something to someone. The sooner C-suites coalesce around that something and embrace it, the stronger company motivation and overall alignment become. Every person brings different skill sets, and like sports teams, venture success or failure depends significantly on how well leaders work together and connect to one another—whether they operate in synergy and coalesce around their North Star.
The Six Cs Framework: Mapping Market Position
While genetic type represents the single biggest positioning factor, DNA alone doesn’t determine optimal market position. The Six Cs framework provides comprehensive assessment: Core (company DNA), Category (market grouping), Community (stakeholders and their needs), Competition (alternatives and rivals), Context (trends and forces shaping markets), and Criteria (positioning requirements).
Category decisions carry profound implications. Creating new categories proves expensive, time-consuming, and often unsuccessful (flying cars in the twentieth century crashed more than they flew, though twenty-first-century prospects improve). Disrupting from within known categories to create subcategories offers alternatives. The beverage industry alone contains countless subcategories: sodas, diet sodas, caffeine-free sodas, fizzy drinks, juice drinks, vitamin water, light beer, craft beer. Vehicle categories include SUVs, minivans, pickup trucks, tiny cars, hybrids, electric vehicles. Subcategory creation often targets consumer needs people don’t know they have until offered—Chrysler’s fuel-efficient family vehicle with car-like handling, passenger capacity, sports equipment space, and sliding door created the minivan, saving Chrysler from extinction. Later innovation added sliding doors on both sides. Adaptations and features derive from homework about customer pain points and purchase motivation.
Amazon redefined IT outsourcing with Amazon Web Services. Squarespace made web publishing do-it-yourself. Marketo popularized marketing automation software. Etsy created personal, creative marketplace within online shopping. Sitecore, known for content management software, wanted leadership in “customer experience management” category. Research showed the undefined category generated confusion. Conversation with senior technical staff revealed everything Sitecore does gives clients ability to personalize content to individuals—context marketing. Rather than establishing presence in undefined category, Sitecore became context marketing leader, grabbing a phrase already generating industry buzz that no one had settled on or owned. The company now leads context marketing by claiming terminology already in use within existing categories.
Community encompasses customers and influencers. Knowing customer identity—new moms, neurosurgeons, network engineers—proves insufficient. Understanding why they care, why offerings matter to them, how they learn about solutions, who influences buying decisions, and what other actors appear in buying cycles all prove essential. Some innovations transform so fundamentally that potential customers or influencers can’t articulate needs—nobody knew sliding doors would make minivans popular with parents or that one-touch online car service would create massive Uber market. Nonetheless, customers speak distinct languages, driven by specific motivations and influenced by various factors requiring consideration during positioning.
Identifying influence circles demands detective work. Product reviews, press coverage, blogosphere, social media, analyst reports represent typical influence sources, but industries feature additional influencers. Healthcare includes doctors, chiropractors, nurses, insurance companies. Sporting goods involve athletes and fan bases. Security encompasses academics, consultants, cybersecurity experts, government officials. Discovering and marketing to influencers alongside potential customers amplifies positioning effectiveness. Snap-on, manufacturing high-end tools, diagnostics, equipment, software, and service solutions, concentrates marketing on mechanics and building professionals plus publications they read. Sending Snap-on trucks to job sites full of mechanics and building professionals enables both brand reinforcement and on-spot sales. Purchased tools get shown to coworkers, creating ripple effects and additional sales. Brilliant marketing strategy reinforces brand, creates ripple effects, sells products—all because the company understands customers and their influences. Snap-on doesn’t chase weekend hammer-and-wrench users; professional mechanics and builders aspire to professional tools and actively seek Snap-on brands.
Competition analysis requires both XY axes diagrams and petal diagrams. XY diagrams compare companies across customer-critical considerations: price, ease of use, solution completeness, integration ability. Placing competitors within diagrams reveals white spaces available to own while showing who surrounds and threatens to crowd out position. Repeating exercises with remaining considerations identifies white spaces for all relevant factors, illuminating spots where products can slide in and take ownership. The petal diagram forces examination from distinct viewpoints, useful for start-ups and companies creating or expanding markets. Aspects include competitor language, competitor DNA, brands to align with or compete against, drawing adjacent market segments as necessary. This analysis leads to breakthrough understanding, applicable beyond C-suite throughout departments for customer needs prediction, executive hiring evaluation, and more.
Context requires capitalizing on trends influencing customer beliefs, behaviors, and language. Jeff Bezos adapted mainstream book buying to emerging online commerce. Nike pushed beyond basic sports gear to dominate athleisure trends. Uber implemented one-button car service maximizing mobile technology reliance. Falling back on “We’re the Uber of…” or “We’re the Facebook of…” or “We’re the Apple of…” templates can work for venture capital, which understands Uber success, knows models are hot, and recognizes broad applicability. For customers, oversimplification may thwart marketing efforts. Context considerations extend beyond technology: artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, social media, virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, consumer healthcare, localization, cybersecurity, analytics. Outside technology: globalization, millennial culture, microfinancing, angel investing, organization movements, cocktail trends. Positioning statements must be relevant and resonate within contexts where they’ll be used for marketing and sales.
Criteria represents agreed-upon parameters that positioning statements must accomplish. After examining other Cs, teams compile five to seven factors for positioning statements to achieve, providing checklist confirming nail-hitting accuracy. A retail company appealing to millennials might include hipness, 24/7 accessibility, value-based offers, sustainability, philanthropy. Each C-suite member articulates individual truth, then groups agree collectively. Better articulation and alignment on Criteria ahead of time facilitates arriving at positioning teams collectively trust and embrace. Decide on Criteria expecting to hit about 75 percent in final positioning statements—never all things to all people. Pick most important criteria and shoot for simplicity over inclusion.
When DNA Changes: Genetic Engineering in Practice
Most companies continue for generations in DNA rubber-stamp mode. Oracle appears happily, solidly Mechanic, content developing and marketing integrated cloud applications and platform services for the foreseeable future, acquiring fellow Mechanics. Companies like Nike, Wall Street Journal, Nordstrom, Etsy, Disney remain devoted Mothers, always catering to customer needs with no signs of changing focus. When Walt Disney planned Disneyland, he didn’t rush adding more features than other amusement parks—he asked larger questions about providing visitors magical customer experiences.
But what if Disney suddenly focused on rides, food, parking at customer experience expense? Such attention shifts would indicate DNA shifting from Mother to Mechanic. Though uncommon, companies can choose altering genetic makeup. Amazon started as Missionary with remnants remaining, but genetic change is underway. The company evolved from store selling one product at time to full-fledged ecosystem, expanding retailing platforms to build multibillion-dollar web services streams. Over years Amazon morphed into Mother dedicated to ensuring customers get exactly what they want quickly. This required companywide strategy shifts in hiring, training, compensating employees, structuring, measuring success—all in true Mother form, radically improving existing service. Amazon’s 2009 Zappos purchase, renowned for excellent customer service, reveals strategy. Rather than overhauling Amazon internally, CEO Jeff Bezos determined the easiest way achieving customer-first mindset was acquiring a company that wrote the book on it. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh told Wall Street Journal that Amazon implemented certain Zappos practices throughout larger organization, including paying new employees in select departments to quit after weeks if finding poor company fit.
Google, now Alphabet, drove DNA change from Mechanic to Missionary. Once dedicated exclusively to search, the company expanded focus to Next Big Things—biotech, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, self-driving cars. The DNA switch was purposeful. In 2014 Financial Times interview, cofounder Larry Page declared the company was “looking to take on more things of significant impact to people” and aiming to “do that at bigger scale.” He admitted the company had outgrown its original mission statement about organizing the world’s information. Given company evolution, the big question became “How do we use all these resources we have and have a much more positive impact on the world?”—clearly moonshot mentality prompting stretching beyond earliest ambitions.
Another DNA change aspect: as result of search and web advertising dominance, Alphabet now possesses staggering cash reserves to pour into whatever research and development it fancies. Having abundant resources means giving really smart people millions of dollars simply to play with interesting ideas until promising notions emerge (or don’t). The overflowing coffers ensure plenty of money supporting ideas from concept to production.
This leads to critical point about genetic engineering: beyond basic logistics, restructuring companies requires significant time, effort, and money. Nobody remakes companies, particularly established ones, by fiat alone. It’s not overnight CEO decisions announced next day. DNA overhauls involve myriad hurdles. Say a quarter-century-established Mechanic wants becoming Mother, shifting from product orientation to customer satisfaction. Sounds great theoretically, but thousands of hurdles block the way, beginning with entrenched habits and procedures. Many old-school Mechanics don’t know their customers because they’ve spent decades selling through distribution channels. Distribution-channel people know customer likes, dislikes, needs, and wants—not the Mechanic itself. Since Mothers must know customers inside and out, companies must work overtime wrestling relationships back, likely by changing sales structures from distribution to direct models. That transition takes time, know-how, and money—not simple “go left instead of right” announcements. Sales forces require overhauling. Different people need hiring, different training, different compensation. Success gets measured according to new standards. Everything requires reconsidering and revamping from ground up.
Expanding this scenario across every department reveals how daunting and expensive challenges become. For most companies, operations of this magnitude overwhelm, and patients die on tables. Changing DNA requires rewiring companies in nearly every way. Successful rewiring of product-oriented companies almost always entails killing products—actions typically antithetical to Mechanic mindsets (though Google never appeared shy about retiring products). Generally, worst proposals to engineer groups suggest pulling plugs on babies. Engineers at every level, including product managers and C-suite members, do almost anything keeping pet creations alive. Engineering organisms at company hearts simply refuse shutdowns, and troubled but beloved products routinely get life support when euthanasia seems appropriate.
Nonetheless, even without Alphabet or Amazon asset backing, DNA changes remain possible. Wolfgang Puck, originally passionate chef and restaurateur devoted to gratifying customer palates individually (textbook Mother definition), built culinary empire over thirty-plus years composed of restaurants, high-end kitchenware, and commercial foods—becoming Mechanic dedicated to product first. As he wrote, success always meant focusing on product first, money second, whether soup cans, frying pans, or restaurants. He may see himself focusing on product first, but truthfully, as young chef he focused on building loyal customer communities necessary before building product lines with market credibility able to sell themselves from airport stands.
Transitions ease when initiated by leaders with personalities big enough inspiring people moving from deeply entrenched, likely comfortable places to elsewhere. This explains why Cult of Personality leaders help during purposeful DNA changes. Even better when Cult of Personality leaders also founded companies, able to imbue switches with additional urgency. Being Cult of Personality leader and founder grants licenses to kill. Employees who followed leaders before will more likely follow again even when transitioning ground grows increasingly shaky.
The Case Studies: DNA in Action
Tile, the Bluetooth tracker company behind small square devices helping users find lost items, discovered its Mother DNA through positioning exercises. CEO Mike Farley got ideas after watching his wife, notorious for misplacing items, agonize over losing family heirlooms. Everyone loses stuff—keys, phones, bags, bikes. The company raised $2.6 million in 2013 crowdfunding campaigns, record amounts for Selfstarter, far exceeding $20,000 targets and significantly beyond $200,000 from Silicon Valley accelerator Tandem Capital where Tile was incubated. By 2017, sales exceeded ten million Tiles locating two million items daily in over 200 countries.
Though thrilled by response, Tile was frustrated by competitors clogging space and wanted better differentiation, broadcasting user-friendly features. Most importantly, the company was eager communicating ability to enhance lives and provide better lifestyles. Positioning and DNA exercises revealed Tile’s opportunity wasn’t being rationally driven hardware product company but emotionally driven software services company offering customers peace of mind. Though management initially thought the company was customer-focused (despite marketing itself as Value Mechanic highlighting superior platform simplifying data access), DNA and genotype tests quickly showed the team the company was actually Missionary whose primary goal was delivering revolutionary change through better government.
BuildingConnected, construction bid management software company, faced perception as regional player not ready for prime time despite working with top builders including Turner Construction Company, McCarthy Building Companies, Webcor Builders, and Skanska USA. The company wanted reaching finite universes of general contractors—thousands of people in dozens of markets—getting companies to points where scale becomes inevitable. Though initially focused on branding needs, leadership quickly recognized importance of pinning down precise strategic positions and go-to-market strategies before focusing on creative brand expression.
The DNA exercise proved particularly eye-opening, with most executives initially seeing companies as Missionaries though product managers pushed hard for Mechanic. Teams were shocked discovering actual Mother identities—overwhelmingly so, largely because of CEO personalities and concerns. When customers called with concerns during positioning meetings, everyone dropped everything to attend to problems. CEOs jumped up immediately calling clients. The positioning teams observed entire teams interrupting meetings running off to deal with single customers having minor issues—textbook Mother behavior revealing true colors though taking time accepting and embracing. Last things most wanted were being customer companies—”Mother” didn’t seem fitting images.
Eventually they embraced it. Turning points came during brand archetype discussions when, after much discussion leaning toward “Hero” archetypes fighting against bad software for change on behalf of clients, CEOs laid down “Caregiver” and “Lover” cards. Initial laughter gave way to recognition that companies fight for customers more than anything—looking for best solutions ensuring happiness. The feedback was all about great customer service, great experience. Companies run products talking about user experience, not asking how hitting different price tiers or product-oriented questions. Once getting that, recognizing truly caring about customers and user experiences more than anything on product sides became clear. Without product suites, companies have cohesive solutions.
Addepar, cloud-based platform for global wealth and investment management markets, enables financial and wealth managers being more agile and transparent with clients including family offices, registered investment advisors, foundations, endowments, global advisories, banks, financial services firms, and wirehouses. The company launched in 2009 after 2008 financial crisis demonstrating large investors with complex portfolios had far less understanding of actual holdings and exposures than they thought. The positioning exercise revealed Addepar was Mechanic. Though Missionary certainly makes up more than a few DNA strands, it became clear the firm is driven predominantly by engineering and technology with customer experience reliant on ability providing superior products simplifying sophisticated portfolio access for investors and advisors, giving real-time investment information access—not customer service.
Approximately half of Addepar’s 250 employees are engineers or data scientists. Among those 250 employees, just four are salespeople. Most customers discover Addepar via word-of-mouth referrals—another Mechanic status indication. Bottom line: companies win in marketplaces through better products with better performance than status quo. What really changed conversations was ideas of being futures of something already existing. Addepar could create new categories for financial investing, but wealth management industries were crowded enough. Not to mention introducing something “new” to traditional industries unlikely winning strategies. Just as with publishing industries late to digital revolutions, change comes slowly to finance sectors, and not everyone in wealth management is ready embracing big data approaches.
Smart investors are ready, however, and if companies are futures of something—anything, doesn’t matter which industries—forward-thinking people focused on that something will want talking. This led to conclusions that highlighting Addepar’s ability bringing something new to wealth management software realms—ability supplying valuable insights previously unavailable to markets—was very things securing positions as industry futures. Today’s appeal: “Addepar is the first investment management platform that easily handles all of your assets, connecting your financial goals and objectives with real world actionable insights.” Tomorrow’s promise: “Explore the new operating system for our financial world.” Articulating broad product visions working today and into futures is what Mechanics like doing. And for these Mechanics, product-laden positioning statements do just that.
The Implementation Reality: From Architecture to Activation
Positioning activation represents the critical phase where message architecture transforms into market resonance. This isn’t simply adjusting marketing communication or updating websites. It’s not just changing boilerplate press releases or creating new PowerPoint slides or novel visual identities. Activating positioning requires injecting positioning and key messages into all communication vehicles, ensuring internal and external audiences receive precise, frequent doses. It means preparing team members understanding how roles connect to new strategy articulations and what they must do supporting it.
Treat positioning like product launches. Well-executed, holistically designed launches prepare companies to market and support new positioning, prime markets to understand and embrace new positioning then reach those markets, and protect existing customers and relationships with them. High-priority targets are obvious: websites, sales materials, lobby signs, packaging wording. But holistic thinking required brings positioning to life, considering both internal and external audiences, points where they intersect, and distribution channels used reaching them.
Internal factors consist of company alignment and culture, sales enablement, delivery, and support—mastering owned and paid distribution channels. External factors encompass company public faces, marketing and PR, customer reactions—mastering earned distribution channels. The connective tissue between internal and external is alignment: strategy and positioning alignment within C-suites and message alignment throughout companies and out into markets. This alignment, along with consistency and message frequency, offers greatest growth advantages because it forces all company parts rowing in one direction all times.
Energy efficiency emerges as first obvious benefit. When all company parts focus on single points where role and relevance are paramount, entire entities can move in those directions faster using less energy. So many companies spin wheels deploying time and money in multiple directions when clear positions and brands could provide all guidance needed avoiding that. Resource preservation comes next. People and investment resources represent companies’ most important assets. Deploying those resources for growth should be job number one. Providing direction for that deployment seems simple enough but proves extraordinarily difficult in companies with numerous people and departments. Even small companies have issues with this—financial goals, development deadlines, marketing activities, sales calls. At first glance, how hard can it be? Very difficult if, at highest levels, people don’t have visions and missions pointing them in right directions and struggle answering “Who are we?” and “Why do we matter?” Positioning provides alignment making answering these questions possible.
Focused attention represents third benefit. Success is most likely when groups—software companies, sports teams, wolf packs—focus on particular outcomes. Each individual may have specific jobs, but all have common focuses. If companies, teams, or packs work as they should, every member knows what groups try accomplishing and align with those accomplishments. Software companies launch successful products, teams win, wolves eat. But if focus is lacking, disaster ensues.
Buy-in and adoption come fourth. Getting rowers synchronized entails involving them in positioning processes. No matter how solid positions are, without buy-in no one adopts them. And positioning is worthless unless people use it—yet another reason every C-suite member must be involved in positioning processes and beyond. CFOs must be involved with marketing because when times come for CFOs to start executing on financial sides of equations, they must not only understand desired outcomes but also be committed to them. And commitment is much more likely from people involved in formulating plans, whose fingerprints are all over them. The only ways assuring C-suite (and thus companywide) buy-in and adoption are including everyone in processes—consistency being key.
Coalescence rounds out the five benefits. New clients invariably want being all things to all people. Products or services can never be all things to all people. They can, however, be something to someone, and sooner C-suites coalesce around that something and embrace it, stronger company senses of motivation and overall alignment will be. Every person brings different skill sets to tables, and just as with sports teams, success or failure of any ventures depend in great parts on how well those leaders work together and how connected they are to one another—whether they work in synergy and coalesce around whatever their North Stars are.
The practical execution requires several phases. First, train employees in small groups—in person if possible—with small slide sets reinforcing messages. Best people doing training are senior, credible, good communicators. Keys here are using these sessions as opportunities inspiring workforces carrying messages forward. Start sessions asking group members if they’ve ever found themselves on airplanes having to answer “Where do you work?” and “What does your company do?” Everyone’s been there, and many, especially in technology, end up spitting out whole lots of words that don’t seem meaning anything. New company narratives change all that, and they have roles playing evangelizing new narratives—companies need their help.
Read narratives created. Reading is anathema to seasoned presenters, but for these particular purposes reading proves effective. These are companies’ new stories, and using proper tone of voice and word inflection is critical to communication. Presentations themselves are why, in addition to illustrating narratives through slides, facing audiences and working hard being animated matters. Going through and explaining different message architecture elements so audiences can understand what each one is, why written that way, and how ultimately fitting into overall narratives comes next. Finally, critical outlining everyone’s roles telling stories—giving each person tools doing so. Small and portable “brand books” work well for this—not only stories of companies but also their stories.
Swag helps a lot. People like free stuff. T-shirts always hit big with tech companies (though make sure they’re high quality so people wear them). But hats, mugs, screen savers, wristbands, drink bottles are great as well. Pick portions of stories reprinting on various swag items and you’ve got permanent reminders of new narratives. And if dissemination is done with some flare—accompanied by funny videos—you can show employees new narratives are cool. Goals are getting everyone talking about them—and using them—exactly ways they were written.
Beyond training employees, ensure various departments throughout companies not only use narratives but also make departmental decisions with new narratives in mind. This is especially critical for marketing and communications—all communications must be infused with narratives. Don’t forget about HR. Every bit of recruiting and onboarding collateral must reflect new narratives. You want attracting potential hires with messages and immediately making evangelists out of new employees. Senior leadership teams should be conversing in narratives at all meetings and creating strategies and plans taking them into consideration. It’s everyone’s jobs making narratives languages of choice for companies.
Finally, don’t forget about sales teams. These are people closest to customers, and so their abilities telling new stories are critical. They should have stories down pat and be able connecting them to individual products and services they sell. Connective tissues must be built bridging corporate visions articulated in narratives and specific product points. Because teams will need help with this, make sure building cohesive stories for each product and each vertical market, each translated into sales enablement tools and made easily accessible.
Taking narratives to markets comes next. How do you get outside worlds taking notice? It’s all in mastery of distribution channels. Marketing has responsibility for owned, earned, and paid message dissemination channels, and every scrap of language must contain viruses. That means websites, blogs, social media, brochures, sales enablement materials, press releases, advertisements, direct marketing and email campaigns, speeches, white papers, trade show booths, and signage—everything.
Tools are critical here. Marketing teams need creating content blocks based on narratives that can be infused easily into each and every one of these channels. Blocks needed for every conceivable application—some will be 140-character tweets, others will be longer blocks that are white-paper-worthy. Phrases and paragraphs needed, signs and slogans needed. In short, libraries of content that have been injected with viruses are required.
Goals of all these blocks, of course, are activation. Objectives are building as large digital footprints as budgets allow by using content marketing tactics. Small companies with small budgets will have to rely primarily on owned channels—thanks to internet, dozens of these exist: websites, blogs, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, podcasts, speeches, customer communications, newsletters. Also include earned channels: public relations, analyst relations, investor relations. Make sure every press release and advisory, not to mention pitch, meeting, press conference, contains language. Infuse it into all analyst briefings. Get messaging into earnings calls. Put it everywhere and get everyone saying same things. In addition, if having budgets for agency support, ensure everything they create has viruses. Last but not least, master paid channels. All direct, field, and partner marketing should contain narratives. Make sure any advertising of any kinds includes messaging too. Bigger budgets are, more able to blanket markets with stories.
It should take about three months infecting all channels and building digital footprints. And of course, bigger digital footprints are better. Using one of many analytics tools available for measuring market resonance—brand surveys, media monitoring, social tracking, sentiment analysis, share of voice—should be able telling if stories are sticking. Sticky messages are like pornography—difficult measuring but you know them when you see them. Sticky stories should be palpable. Start seeing changes in press coverage, customer response, employee engagement, and the like. All of these can be analyzed to death, but you’ll know it if and when happening. And if not, know something is wrong or has changed, and move quickly tweaking messaging. If positioning is done right, if white spaces selected that no one owns, and if taking into consideration the Six Cs of positioning especially Context, traction should be achievable within one quarter. Bigger budgets are, quicker traction, of course, but all this can be done on cheap by blanketing owned channels with compelling messages.
The Contrarian Truth: Why Being First Often Means Being Dead
Pioneers end up facedown with arrows in backs as others thunder past toward Better Version 2.0. Pandora preceded Spotify and other streaming music apps. Numerous search engines beginning with preweb Archie paved ways for Google. Myspace led ways before Facebook. All these first-out-of-gate companies introduced great ideas but couldn’t go far enough changing—much less revolutionizing—behavior, at least not in long runs. Myspace and Facebook were founded on same concepts, but too much of Next Big Thing equations were missing with Myspace, and part of that missing equation was Mark Zuckerberg’s passionate leadership helping push Facebook to forefronts.
Steve Blank discusses this phenomenon, noting “Startups whose mantra is ‘we have to be first to market’ usually lose.” Why? First Movers tend launching without really fully understanding customer problems or product features solving those problems. They guess at business models and then do premature, loud, aggressive public relations hype and early company launches and quickly burn through cash. This is great strategy if bubbles occurring in markets or betting it all on flipping companies for sales. Otherwise juries are in—no advantage exists.
He points to Overture (originally GoTo.com) as examples. Considered pioneers of paid search, Overture in 1998 created and demoed pay-per-click search engines and advertising systems at TED conferences. Two years later Google launched AdWords, its versions of pay-per-click advertising systems allowing advertisers creating text ads for placement on company search engines. Outcomes? Overture was acquired in 2003 for $1.6 billion by Yahoo, its biggest customers. AdWords evolved into main revenue sources for Google, now worth more than $500 billion, numbers expected climbing to $1 trillion by 2020.
One company revolutionizing industries after legal skirmishes with rivals is Intuitive Surgical. Its robot-assisted da Vinci Surgical System launched in 1999 improved on conventional laparoscopy, allowing surgeons using robotics operating through small incisions with greater precision, dexterity, comfort. Surgical robotics had been around since late 1980s—industries developed from desires allowing surgeons operating remotely on soldiers wounded on battlefields—but Intuitive Surgical managed making itself big names in surgical robotics today. Though sued in 2002 by earlier-out-of-gate rivals Computer Motion Inc. for patent infringement of ZEUS Robotic Surgical Systems, two companies ultimately merged, and ZEUS was phased out in favor of Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci.
This death-to-pioneers pattern occurred across every industry. Visionaries develop something new and cool—lightbulbs, electric cars, portable phones, online shopping, robotic surgery, streaming services—and very quickly others begin parsing for mistakes and opportunities. Soon enough, by relying on innovative improvements, financial edges, superior marketing, or legal maneuvering, Fast Followers overwhelm First Movers, either absorbing or killing original offerings along ways. Innovator number two—or even number three or number four—then launches “new” products or services into large-scale success stories, revolutionizing human behavior along ways.
