What Is Positioning?

My subscribers know. Most marketers out there don't have a clue.

Jun 03, 2026

A recent Ipsos study found that more than 40% of American marketers cannot define positioning.

Yet 84% of those same marketers rated themselves above average. Why? Because they know how to execute. They know the tools. They know the platforms. They know how to set up a campaign.

Nobody taught them the fundamentals of strategy they needed to master first.

And based on personal experience most of the other 60% who think they can define positioning - get it wrong.

That’s the real problem. And AI is about to make it much worse.

What is Positioning?

Positioning is the idea your brand owns in the mind of the prospect.

Not your tagline. Not your logo. Not your mission statement. The idea. The one word, or concept, or association that lives in the customer’s head and belongs to you alone.

Volvo owns safety. BMW owns driving. Red Bull owns energy drink.

My father, Al Ries, and Jack Trout introduced the concept. They argued that marketing is not a battle of products. It’s a battle of perceptions. This battle isn’t fought in the marketplace. It’s fought in the mind.

The most valuable position to own is leadership. The leader in a category dominates the mind. And the mind doesn’t change easily. That’s why the leader almost always wins.

First marketers need to know why Positioning matters, then they need to master the rules and know how to use them. Some key principles many marketers forget.

Law of Leadership. It’s better to be first than to be better. The first brand into the mind becomes the leader. Being better doesn’t move you to the front. Being first instantly does.

Law of the Category. If you can’t be first in a category, create a new category you can be first in. Don’t try to beat the leader at their own game. Change the game.

Law of Focus. A brand becomes strong when you narrow the focus. Not when you expand it. The instinct in every boardroom is to add — more products, more audiences, more messages. Positioning says the opposite. Give something up. Own one thing completely.

That was true before the internet. Before social media. Before AI.

It is more true now than ever.

AI makes Positioning more critical, not less

Here’s what AI does brilliantly: execution. Copy. Images. Personalization. Media optimization. Testing. It can produce in an hour what used to take a team a week.

AI is awesome.

The danger is this: if you don't know your position, AI makes you feel productive while doing nothing but amplifying the noise.

AI generates more content, faster, in more channels and without positioning powering it gets all pointed in no particular direction. You’re not getting 10x the marketing. You’re getting 10x the confusion.

Strategy is a human job. Positioning is a human decision. You must make it before you let the machines run.

The marketers who thrive in the AI era will be the ones who know exactly what they stand for and then use AI to pound that position home with relentless consistency.

Why the Strategic Enemy changes everything

Knowing your position isn’t enough. You need to know who you’re fighting.

Every strong brand is best defined in opposition to something. Liquid Death needed plastic bottles. Tesla needed Detroit. Pepsi needed Coke.

The Strategic Enemy works because it already exists in the mind. A concept, a convention, a habit, a default choice.

You don't create the tension. You name it. The Strategic Enemy isn't just a competitive frame, it's a focusing mechanism. It tells you what to say, what to ignore, and where to draw the line.

Without a Strategic Enemy, marketers drift. They try to be everything. They hedge. They produce content that is unrelated, belonging to no one.

AI makes this worse. Ask any AI tool to write brand content without a clear strategic enemy and it will give you pleasant, inoffensive, undifferentiated copy. It will sound like everyone else, because it’s trained on everyone else.

But give AI a clear position and a clear enemy? Now you have a weapon.

The brief becomes sharp. The output becomes distinctive. The brand becomes harder to ignore.

The Positioning test your team needs to pass

If you want to test your team’s marketing skills, make sure they can answer these questions.

What idea do we own in the mind of the customer?
Who is our Strategic Enemy?
What are we willing to give up?

Most brands never answer that last question. They add. They expand. They “evolve the Positioning.” They chase every segment and every trend. They call it growth. It’s actually surrender. A brand that stands for everything stands for nothing and AI will scale that nothing at breathtaking speed.

If you can’t answer all three, no amount of AI tools will save you.

The machines are ready. Most of the marketers running them are not.