Welcome to The Lens, a newsletter focused on Product Management and related topics, written for product managers and those who work with them.
Positioning
Positioning is how an audience pictures or places a brand in their mind — but brands can deliberately shape that perception through their communication choices.
The Band-Aid example: Among many desirable qualities an adhesive bandage could have, Band-Aid chose to emphasize "flexible fabric" in their advertising, using imagery to reinforce that single attribute to their target audience. One feature. One message.April Dunford's positioning guide applies a jobs-to-be-done lens and stresses starting with competitive alternatives before defining what makes you different. A useful analogy: muffins and cakes are made from nearly identical ingredients, yet are positioned entirely differently — one is breakfast, the other is celebration.
Positioning by Differentiation
Richard Montañez, creator of Hot Cheetos, built his career on standing out. His mother's advice to "stand out and not fit in" became a product philosophy. He didn't try to make a better version of an existing snack — he made something that didn't exist for an audience that felt unseen.
Positioning by Association
KitKat chose not to compete on ingredients or atmosphere. Instead, they associated the product with something more abstract: a "break." The result is one of the most durable taglines in advertising history — and a product that became culturally associated with a moment, not a flavor.
Advice for Product Managers
For new products, positioning can be defined through customer experience — how your earliest users describe you is often more accurate than any internal document.
For existing products, your current positioning should guide feature prioritization. Every feature you build either reinforces your positioning or dilutes it. That's a PM decision, not just a marketing one.