The 3Cs of Positioning: Your Brand Strategy Already Exists (You Just Haven't Found It Yet)

Brand Strategist Jonathan Sankey of CUT THRU Branding, demystifies the formula for successful brand positioning. He emphasises the three C's: Customer, Company, and Competitors. Sankey highlights the importance of aligning customer needs with company strengths and competitor weaknesses. Using examples from Volvo, Apple, and Dollar Shave Club, he illustrates how this strategic approach can optimise brand positioning and unlock a brand's potential.

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The 3Cs of Positioning: Your Brand Strategy Already Exists (You Just Haven't Found It Yet)

Right. Let's address the elephant in every boardroom: most brand positioning is fiction. Complete make-believe. Leadership teams sitting around conference tables, deciding what they'd like their brand to mean, as if the market gives a damn about their preferences. The 3Cs of positioning framework exposes this fundamental misunderstanding of how brand positioning actually works.

Here's the thing: brand positioning isn't a creative exercise. It's detective work. And the 3Cs of positioning (Customer, Company, Competitors) provide the investigative framework that separates real strategy from corporate wishful thinking.

But here's the massive strategic error most brands make: they do their positioning after their brand strategy. That's completely backwards. It's like building a house and then deciding where to put the foundation. Your positioning is your USP, it's your competitive advantage, and everything in your brand strategy should grow out of it from a competitive place. Not the other way around.

What Brand Positioning Actually Is (Not What You Think)

Let me clear something up. Plenty of people disagree on what brand positioning means, but here's the truth: positioning is the first word or words that come to mind when someone asks about a brand they've seen, know, or experienced. Not your mission statement. Not your brand guidelines. The actual words in actual people's heads. This is why understanding the 3Cs of positioning is so critical for effective brand strategy.

Brand positioning isn't what you say inside your company, it's what they say outside about you. You don't determine it. The majority does. The zeitgeist does. Sometimes brand positioning is about playing the hand you've been dealt. Take Pringles. They engineered a strong, dip-resilient chip. The market turned them into a quirky, playful social brand. Which positioning matters more: the one in the brief or the one in culture? The market decides. Always. This disconnect between intended and actual brand positioning happens when companies ignore the 3Cs framework.

Consider how Burberry tried to position itself as exclusive British luxury, but the market repositioned them as "chav check" in the early 2000s. It took years of systematic work across all 3Cs of positioning to reclaim their intended position. Or look at Stella Artois, marketed as "reassuringly expensive" premium lager, but known in the UK as "wife beater." The market's verdict on your brand positioning always trumps your marketing department's wishes.

The Market Has Already Decided Your Brand Positioning

Your brand positioning exists. Right now. In the wild. It's the sum of what customers actually think when they hear your name, what you can genuinely deliver, and where your competitors consistently drop the ball. This is precisely what the 3Cs of positioning framework helps you uncover.

The framework is straightforward, the 3Cs that Mark Ritson has been teaching for years. Ritson is one of the best marketing strategists in the world, someone I'm proud to have studied under. Having worked with brands like Donna Karan, LVMH, and TAG Heuer, his approach to the 3Cs of positioning emphasises that this isn't about creating something new, it's about discovering what already exists in the market's collective consciousness.

The formula for effective brand positioning: What do customers desperately need, that we can distinctively deliver, that competitors systematically fail at? Simple? Yes. Easy? Not even close. Most brands fail at brand positioning because they skip the rigorous analysis the 3Cs demand.

Customer: The First C of Positioning (The Reality Check You're Avoiding)

Remember Mad Men? A room full of white guys in suits deciding what ads young Black women should see for the next 12 months. Making decisions about pantyhose they've never worn (well, most of them haven't, some might for comfort reasons only!). That's still happening. Right now. In boardrooms everywhere. This is what happens when you ignore the Customer component of the 3Cs of positioning.

Most brands think they understand their customers. They don't. They understand a PowerPoint version of their customers: neat personas with stock photos and alliterative names like "Busy Barbara" or "Tech-Savvy Tom." Real customer understanding, the kind the 3Cs of positioning demands, requires deep, systematic research that most brands simply don't do.

Here's the brutal truth about brand positioning research: focus groups suffer from groupthink. Surveys are answered by god knows who, usually people with too much time and strong opinions. How can 12 people in a room represent decisions for a 12 million market populous? They can't. You can't just go Mad Men style and run a campaign with no feedback. You can't make brand positioning decisions in a vacuum. That's like hopping on a plane where the pilot has no dials in the cockpit. Sure, you can fly, but to where? And where's the ground?

Research That's Usually Good Enough (When Done in Conjunction)

Real customer understanding for brand positioning requires three types of research that work best in conjunction:

Qualitative Research: Deep ethnographic work. Watch how people actually behave, not what they claim in a sterile room. Qual allows you to go off piste a bit, explore unexpected territories. Oatly discovered their tribe by hanging out in cafés, not conference rooms. They noticed that ordering non-dairy milk had become a social signal, a way to telegraph progressive values. That insight shaped their entire brand positioning strategy. Similarly, when Red Bull was developing their brand positioning, they didn't survey people about energy drinks. They embedded themselves in the underground rave scene, extreme sports communities, and college campuses to understand when and why people needed functional energy.

Quantitative Research: Statistical validation at scale. Quant validates hypotheses, tells you if what you discovered in qual actually matters to enough people. But here's the catch: you need to know who's actually answering. Random online panels? Worthless. Behavioural data from actual customers? Gold. When Spotify was refining their brand positioning, they didn't just ask users what they wanted. They analysed billions of listening sessions to understand how music consumption patterns varied by context, mood, and social setting. This behavioural data revealed that their true competitor wasn't Apple Music or Amazon, it was silence and podcasts. That insight fundamentally shifted their brand positioning.

Split Testing (our speciality at CUT THRU): Here's what most brands miss: once you know who your customers are, the best place to research them is where you intend to advertise to them. Test there because that will eventually be your proving ground anyhow. Split testing can take your ideas from the qual and quant process and test them in the real world quickly to see if they work.

This form of testing does research as it builds. Want to know which product variant resonates? Advertise 5 different colours of bikini, then on the landing page say "sold out" and build a waitlist. You've just discovered actual demand, not survey intentions. Double-blind testing methodology means we don't know what we're looking for, and subjects don't know they're being tested. Pure, unbiased behaviour.

But here's the warning about the Customer C in positioning: research can become a never-ending pit. Sometimes having too much data, or the wrong data, is more dangerous than having none at all. The trick is getting the research right. You need the previous qual and quant to help form hypotheses you're looking to prove or disprove. Split testing then validates in the real world, where it actually matters.

Company: The Second C of Positioning (Your Actual Capabilities, Not Your Aspirations)

This is where delusion runs deepest in brand positioning. Every brand thinks they're innovative. Customer-centric. Quality-focused. Bollocks. Your real capabilities, the ones that matter for the 3Cs of positioning, are what you can execute consistently, profitably, at scale. Not what's in your mission statement. What's in your P&L.

The Company component of the 3Cs framework forces brutal honesty. Take WeWork's spectacular implosion. They positioned themselves as a tech company revolutionising work, commanding tech valuations. But their actual capability? Subleasing real estate with nice furniture and free beer. When the market called their bluff, their brand positioning fantasy collapsed overnight. The Company C doesn't care about your aspirations, only your operations.

Capability Research for Honest Brand Positioning

The research here is different but equally critical for the 3Cs of positioning:

Capability Auditing: What can you actually deliver when everything goes wrong? When your best people leave? When supply chains break? That's your real capability. Domino's discovered this the hard way. For years, they positioned on speed: "30 minutes or less." But their actual capability was logistics, not quality. When competitors matched their speed, their brand positioning crumbled. It took brutal honesty about their Company capabilities (admitting their pizza sucked) and a complete operational overhaul to build new capabilities worth positioning around.

Operational Benchmarking: How do your processes actually compare? Not in theory. In practice. Time studies. Cost analyses. Defect rates. The unsexy stuff that actually matters for brand positioning. When Lexus entered the luxury car market, they didn't just claim quality. They benchmarked every single process against Mercedes and BMW, then engineered capabilities that delivered measurably superior reliability. Their brand positioning wasn't aspiration, it was operational reality.

Resource Mapping: What assets do you actually control? What can competitors not easily replicate? Amazon's warehouses aren't just buildings, they're a capability moat that defines their brand positioning. When Warby Parker launched, their capability wasn't making glasses, it was cutting out the Luxottica monopoly through vertical integration. That operational capability enabled their brand positioning, not the other way around.

Byron Sharp's research on distinctiveness matters here for the Company C. Sharp, Professor of Marketing Science at the University of South Australia and director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, revolutionised marketing thinking with his book "How Brands Grow." His evidence-based approach showed that distinctive brand assets (what you can consistently execute) matter more than differentiation (what you claim makes you special). IKEA's flat-pack system isn't just efficient, it's a distinctive capability that shapes everything from store design to customer behaviour. You can't separate the capability from the experience. Their brand positioning flows directly from their operational reality: democratic design is only possible because their entire supply chain is engineered for it.

Split Testing Your Capabilities: At CUT THRU, we test whether customers actually value what you think you're good at. Double-blind methodology reveals the brutal truth: most "differentiators" aren't. We tested brand positioning claims for a premium coffee chain that prided itself on "artisanal brewing methods." Customers couldn't tell the difference in blind tests. But they could instantly identify the consistency of temperature and foam texture. Guess which capability actually mattered for their brand positioning?

Competitors: The Third C of Positioning (Where They're Failing Your Customers)

Lazy strategists look at what competitors say they do. Smart strategists applying the 3Cs of positioning look at what customers say competitors don't do. This is where the third C becomes crucial for brand positioning.

The Competitor analysis in the 3Cs framework isn't about copying or one-upping. It's about finding systematic failures in how they serve customers. When Dollar Shave Club launched, Gillette wasn't failing at making sharp razors. They were failing at the entire purchase experience: the locked cabinet, the ridiculous prices, the overwhelming choice, the Pink Tax on women's razors. DSC's brand positioning emerged from these systematic failures, not from trying to make a better blade.

Competitive Intelligence for Strategic Brand Positioning

The research approach for the Competitor C requires:

Switching Studies: Why do customers actually leave competitors? Not exit survey nonsense, behavioural analysis of actual defection patterns. When Uber analysed taxi defection, they found the core issue wasn't price or car quality. It was uncertainty: not knowing when the taxi would arrive, if it would show up, how much it would cost, whether the credit card machine would "work." Their brand positioning addressed every single uncertainty point.

Pain Point Mapping: Where do competitors systematically fail? Not random mistakes, structural failures built into their business model. Traditional banks can't offer the user experience of neobanks like Monzo or Revolut because their legacy IT systems, built in COBOL in the 1970s, make real-time notifications impossible. That technical debt creates brand positioning opportunities for challengers.

Perceptual Mapping: What positions do competitors actually own in customers' minds? (Hint: It's rarely what their positioning statements claim.) McDonald's might talk about "quality ingredients" and "fresh beef," but they own "fast" and "consistent" in consumers' minds. Fighting established brand positioning is usually futile. Finding unoccupied territory through the 3Cs framework is far more effective.

Netflix didn't win because Blockbuster lacked an online presence. They won because Blockbuster's entire business model, real estate leases, late fee revenue, prevented them from solving the customer's actual problem: the hassle of renting physical media. This is textbook 3Cs of positioning: finding where competitor capabilities structurally prevent them from serving customer needs.

The Double-Blind Advantage: When we test competitive positions at CUT THRU, neither our researchers nor participants know which brands they're evaluating. This strips away brand bias and reveals actual preference drivers. We tested brand positioning for a challenger energy drink against Red Bull. In branded tests, Red Bull won on "energy" and "performance." In blind tests, our client won on taste and effect. The insight? Red Bull's brand positioning was so strong it override actual product experience. Our client needed to compete on different territory entirely.

Your Brand DNA: Where the Three Cs of Positioning Intersect

Here's what separates real strategists from workshop facilitators: brand positioning only exists where all three Cs overlap. This intersection, your brand DNA, isn't something you choose. It's something you discover through systematic application of the 3Cs of positioning framework.

But remember: the market might have already decided something different from what you intended. Pringles wanted to be the strong chip. The market made them the fun chip. Which reality matters more for brand positioning? Lululemon started as yoga wear for women. Men started wearing it. Rather than fight this, they recognised the market was revealing a new intersection of the 3Cs and launched a men's line that now represents significant revenue.

The 3Cs of positioning framework reveals these market realities. When Patagonia found themselves at the intersection of outdoor enthusiasts who cared about the environment (Customer), their sustainable manufacturing capabilities (Company), and competitors who treated sustainability as marketing rather than operations (Competitors), their brand positioning wrote itself. They didn't choose to be the sustainable outdoor brand. The 3Cs chose it for them.

The Research Balance in 3Cs Analysis

You need enough data to find the truth, but not so much that you drown in analysis. It's like flying a plane: you need instruments, but staring at dials won't land you safely. You need to look out the window too. The 3Cs of positioning provides the instruments, but judgement still matters.

At CUT THRU, our double-blind split testing methodology cuts through both problems. We test real behaviour, not claimed preferences. We validate findings at scale, not in focus groups of 12. And we stop when we have statistical significance, not when we run out of budget. This disciplined approach to the 3Cs ensures brand positioning based on reality, not research theatre.

The 2 + 1 Rule: Simplifying Your Brand Positioning

Once you've discovered your actual position through the 3Cs of positioning research, you need to articulate it simply. We use the "2 + 1 rule": two rational benefits (nice) plus one emotional essence (spice).

But here's the key: these come from the 3Cs research findings, not creative brainstorms. Take a premium meal kit delivery service we worked with:

  • Nice 1: Restaurant-quality ingredients delivered fresh (validated through Company capability in cold-chain logistics)
  • Nice 2: 30-minute recipes that actually work (emerged from Customer research showing time anxiety around cooking)
  • Spice: "Chef's table at your table" (the emotional territory competitors ignored whilst focusing on convenience)

This simplification of the 3Cs intersection makes brand positioning actionable. Whole Foods' positioning: Healthy food (Customer need) + Premium quality (Company capability) + "Whole Paycheck" acceptance (Competitor gap) = America's healthiest grocery store (until Amazon's capabilities changed the equation).

Why Most Brands Fail at Positioning

The fundamental error: believing brand positioning is a choice rather than a discovery. The 3Cs of positioning framework makes this crystal clear. You're not Don Draper, conjuring brilliance from cigarette smoke. You're a detective, following evidence to an inevitable conclusion.

Most brands skip the 3Cs research because it's hard. Expensive. Time-consuming. Sometimes disappointing. But flying without instruments isn't brave, it's stupid. Peloton thought they were a fitness company. The 3Cs revealed they were a status symbol. When COVID ended and status seeking moved elsewhere, their misunderstood brand positioning nearly killed them.

The bigger issue? Most people do their positioning after their brand strategy, which is crazy. Your positioning is your USP, and everything in your brand strategy should grow out of it from a competitive place. Your visual identity, your tone of voice, your channel strategy, your product development, everything flows from positioning. Not the other way around.

The Bottom Line on Brand Positioning and the 3Cs

Stop treating brand positioning like a creative writing exercise. Start treating it like an investigation. The 3Cs of positioning (Customer, Company, Competitors) provide your investigative framework.

Get the research right:

  • Qualitative for the why (Customer needs and competitor failures)
  • Quantitative for the what (Company capabilities and market gaps)
  • Split testing for the truth (Where the 3Cs actually intersect)

Use double-blind methodologies to strip away bias. Test at scale to ensure validity. But know when to stop before drowning in data. The 3Cs of positioning framework guides the investigation, but judgement still matters.

Because here's the thing: brand positioning isn't what you say about yourself. It's what the market says about you. And the market has already decided. The 3Cs simply help you discover what it decided.

Your job is to discover what the market decided, then work with that reality. Not against it. The 3Cs of positioning make this possible.

About the Author

Jonathan Sankey is a Brand Strategist and founder of CUT THRU, a recent winner of the Netty Awards Boutique Branding Agency of the Year in both 2023 and 2024. Rated as a top branding agency in Sydney and New York on both Clutch and Design Rush. Jonathan has applied the 3Cs of positioning framework across diverse industries from some of the oldest Swiss banks and American law firms to techn statrtups, real estate and rappers.

Ready to discover your actual brand positioning? Stop guessing. Start testing. Get a positioning consultation from CUT THRU. We use double-blind split testing to find where the 3Cs of positioning actually converge for your brand, not where you hope they do. Because brand positioning isn't a decision. It's a discovery.

GET IN TOUCH WITH A CUT THRU BRAND STRATEGIST HERE

The 3Cs of Positioning: Your Brand Strategy Already Exists (You Just Haven't Found It Yet)

downwards arrow

The 3Cs of Positioning: Your Brand Strategy Already Exists (You Just Haven't Found It Yet)

Right. Let's address the elephant in every boardroom: most brand positioning is fiction. Complete make-believe. Leadership teams sitting around conference tables, deciding what they'd like their brand to mean, as if the market gives a damn about their preferences. The 3Cs of positioning framework exposes this fundamental misunderstanding of how brand positioning actually works.

Here's the thing: brand positioning isn't a creative exercise. It's detective work. And the 3Cs of positioning (Customer, Company, Competitors) provide the investigative framework that separates real strategy from corporate wishful thinking.

But here's the massive strategic error most brands make: they do their positioning after their brand strategy. That's completely backwards. It's like building a house and then deciding where to put the foundation. Your positioning is your USP, it's your competitive advantage, and everything in your brand strategy should grow out of it from a competitive place. Not the other way around.

What Brand Positioning Actually Is (Not What You Think)

Let me clear something up. Plenty of people disagree on what brand positioning means, but here's the truth: positioning is the first word or words that come to mind when someone asks about a brand they've seen, know, or experienced. Not your mission statement. Not your brand guidelines. The actual words in actual people's heads. This is why understanding the 3Cs of positioning is so critical for effective brand strategy.

Brand positioning isn't what you say inside your company, it's what they say outside about you. You don't determine it. The majority does. The zeitgeist does. Sometimes brand positioning is about playing the hand you've been dealt. Take Pringles. They engineered a strong, dip-resilient chip. The market turned them into a quirky, playful social brand. Which positioning matters more: the one in the brief or the one in culture? The market decides. Always. This disconnect between intended and actual brand positioning happens when companies ignore the 3Cs framework.

Consider how Burberry tried to position itself as exclusive British luxury, but the market repositioned them as "chav check" in the early 2000s. It took years of systematic work across all 3Cs of positioning to reclaim their intended position. Or look at Stella Artois, marketed as "reassuringly expensive" premium lager, but known in the UK as "wife beater." The market's verdict on your brand positioning always trumps your marketing department's wishes.

The Market Has Already Decided Your Brand Positioning

Your brand positioning exists. Right now. In the wild. It's the sum of what customers actually think when they hear your name, what you can genuinely deliver, and where your competitors consistently drop the ball. This is precisely what the 3Cs of positioning framework helps you uncover.

The framework is straightforward, the 3Cs that Mark Ritson has been teaching for years. Ritson is one of the best marketing strategists in the world, someone I'm proud to have studied under. Having worked with brands like Donna Karan, LVMH, and TAG Heuer, his approach to the 3Cs of positioning emphasises that this isn't about creating something new, it's about discovering what already exists in the market's collective consciousness.

The formula for effective brand positioning: What do customers desperately need, that we can distinctively deliver, that competitors systematically fail at? Simple? Yes. Easy? Not even close. Most brands fail at brand positioning because they skip the rigorous analysis the 3Cs demand.

Customer: The First C of Positioning (The Reality Check You're Avoiding)

Remember Mad Men? A room full of white guys in suits deciding what ads young Black women should see for the next 12 months. Making decisions about pantyhose they've never worn (well, most of them haven't, some might for comfort reasons only!). That's still happening. Right now. In boardrooms everywhere. This is what happens when you ignore the Customer component of the 3Cs of positioning.

Most brands think they understand their customers. They don't. They understand a PowerPoint version of their customers: neat personas with stock photos and alliterative names like "Busy Barbara" or "Tech-Savvy Tom." Real customer understanding, the kind the 3Cs of positioning demands, requires deep, systematic research that most brands simply don't do.

Here's the brutal truth about brand positioning research: focus groups suffer from groupthink. Surveys are answered by god knows who, usually people with too much time and strong opinions. How can 12 people in a room represent decisions for a 12 million market populous? They can't. You can't just go Mad Men style and run a campaign with no feedback. You can't make brand positioning decisions in a vacuum. That's like hopping on a plane where the pilot has no dials in the cockpit. Sure, you can fly, but to where? And where's the ground?

Research That's Usually Good Enough (When Done in Conjunction)

Real customer understanding for brand positioning requires three types of research that work best in conjunction:

Qualitative Research: Deep ethnographic work. Watch how people actually behave, not what they claim in a sterile room. Qual allows you to go off piste a bit, explore unexpected territories. Oatly discovered their tribe by hanging out in cafés, not conference rooms. They noticed that ordering non-dairy milk had become a social signal, a way to telegraph progressive values. That insight shaped their entire brand positioning strategy. Similarly, when Red Bull was developing their brand positioning, they didn't survey people about energy drinks. They embedded themselves in the underground rave scene, extreme sports communities, and college campuses to understand when and why people needed functional energy.

Quantitative Research: Statistical validation at scale. Quant validates hypotheses, tells you if what you discovered in qual actually matters to enough people. But here's the catch: you need to know who's actually answering. Random online panels? Worthless. Behavioural data from actual customers? Gold. When Spotify was refining their brand positioning, they didn't just ask users what they wanted. They analysed billions of listening sessions to understand how music consumption patterns varied by context, mood, and social setting. This behavioural data revealed that their true competitor wasn't Apple Music or Amazon, it was silence and podcasts. That insight fundamentally shifted their brand positioning.

Split Testing (our speciality at CUT THRU): Here's what most brands miss: once you know who your customers are, the best place to research them is where you intend to advertise to them. Test there because that will eventually be your proving ground anyhow. Split testing can take your ideas from the qual and quant process and test them in the real world quickly to see if they work.

This form of testing does research as it builds. Want to know which product variant resonates? Advertise 5 different colours of bikini, then on the landing page say "sold out" and build a waitlist. You've just discovered actual demand, not survey intentions. Double-blind testing methodology means we don't know what we're looking for, and subjects don't know they're being tested. Pure, unbiased behaviour.

But here's the warning about the Customer C in positioning: research can become a never-ending pit. Sometimes having too much data, or the wrong data, is more dangerous than having none at all. The trick is getting the research right. You need the previous qual and quant to help form hypotheses you're looking to prove or disprove. Split testing then validates in the real world, where it actually matters.

Company: The Second C of Positioning (Your Actual Capabilities, Not Your Aspirations)

This is where delusion runs deepest in brand positioning. Every brand thinks they're innovative. Customer-centric. Quality-focused. Bollocks. Your real capabilities, the ones that matter for the 3Cs of positioning, are what you can execute consistently, profitably, at scale. Not what's in your mission statement. What's in your P&L.

The Company component of the 3Cs framework forces brutal honesty. Take WeWork's spectacular implosion. They positioned themselves as a tech company revolutionising work, commanding tech valuations. But their actual capability? Subleasing real estate with nice furniture and free beer. When the market called their bluff, their brand positioning fantasy collapsed overnight. The Company C doesn't care about your aspirations, only your operations.

Capability Research for Honest Brand Positioning

The research here is different but equally critical for the 3Cs of positioning:

Capability Auditing: What can you actually deliver when everything goes wrong? When your best people leave? When supply chains break? That's your real capability. Domino's discovered this the hard way. For years, they positioned on speed: "30 minutes or less." But their actual capability was logistics, not quality. When competitors matched their speed, their brand positioning crumbled. It took brutal honesty about their Company capabilities (admitting their pizza sucked) and a complete operational overhaul to build new capabilities worth positioning around.

Operational Benchmarking: How do your processes actually compare? Not in theory. In practice. Time studies. Cost analyses. Defect rates. The unsexy stuff that actually matters for brand positioning. When Lexus entered the luxury car market, they didn't just claim quality. They benchmarked every single process against Mercedes and BMW, then engineered capabilities that delivered measurably superior reliability. Their brand positioning wasn't aspiration, it was operational reality.

Resource Mapping: What assets do you actually control? What can competitors not easily replicate? Amazon's warehouses aren't just buildings, they're a capability moat that defines their brand positioning. When Warby Parker launched, their capability wasn't making glasses, it was cutting out the Luxottica monopoly through vertical integration. That operational capability enabled their brand positioning, not the other way around.

Byron Sharp's research on distinctiveness matters here for the Company C. Sharp, Professor of Marketing Science at the University of South Australia and director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, revolutionised marketing thinking with his book "How Brands Grow." His evidence-based approach showed that distinctive brand assets (what you can consistently execute) matter more than differentiation (what you claim makes you special). IKEA's flat-pack system isn't just efficient, it's a distinctive capability that shapes everything from store design to customer behaviour. You can't separate the capability from the experience. Their brand positioning flows directly from their operational reality: democratic design is only possible because their entire supply chain is engineered for it.

Split Testing Your Capabilities: At CUT THRU, we test whether customers actually value what you think you're good at. Double-blind methodology reveals the brutal truth: most "differentiators" aren't. We tested brand positioning claims for a premium coffee chain that prided itself on "artisanal brewing methods." Customers couldn't tell the difference in blind tests. But they could instantly identify the consistency of temperature and foam texture. Guess which capability actually mattered for their brand positioning?

Competitors: The Third C of Positioning (Where They're Failing Your Customers)

Lazy strategists look at what competitors say they do. Smart strategists applying the 3Cs of positioning look at what customers say competitors don't do. This is where the third C becomes crucial for brand positioning.

The Competitor analysis in the 3Cs framework isn't about copying or one-upping. It's about finding systematic failures in how they serve customers. When Dollar Shave Club launched, Gillette wasn't failing at making sharp razors. They were failing at the entire purchase experience: the locked cabinet, the ridiculous prices, the overwhelming choice, the Pink Tax on women's razors. DSC's brand positioning emerged from these systematic failures, not from trying to make a better blade.

Competitive Intelligence for Strategic Brand Positioning

The research approach for the Competitor C requires:

Switching Studies: Why do customers actually leave competitors? Not exit survey nonsense, behavioural analysis of actual defection patterns. When Uber analysed taxi defection, they found the core issue wasn't price or car quality. It was uncertainty: not knowing when the taxi would arrive, if it would show up, how much it would cost, whether the credit card machine would "work." Their brand positioning addressed every single uncertainty point.

Pain Point Mapping: Where do competitors systematically fail? Not random mistakes, structural failures built into their business model. Traditional banks can't offer the user experience of neobanks like Monzo or Revolut because their legacy IT systems, built in COBOL in the 1970s, make real-time notifications impossible. That technical debt creates brand positioning opportunities for challengers.

Perceptual Mapping: What positions do competitors actually own in customers' minds? (Hint: It's rarely what their positioning statements claim.) McDonald's might talk about "quality ingredients" and "fresh beef," but they own "fast" and "consistent" in consumers' minds. Fighting established brand positioning is usually futile. Finding unoccupied territory through the 3Cs framework is far more effective.

Netflix didn't win because Blockbuster lacked an online presence. They won because Blockbuster's entire business model, real estate leases, late fee revenue, prevented them from solving the customer's actual problem: the hassle of renting physical media. This is textbook 3Cs of positioning: finding where competitor capabilities structurally prevent them from serving customer needs.

The Double-Blind Advantage: When we test competitive positions at CUT THRU, neither our researchers nor participants know which brands they're evaluating. This strips away brand bias and reveals actual preference drivers. We tested brand positioning for a challenger energy drink against Red Bull. In branded tests, Red Bull won on "energy" and "performance." In blind tests, our client won on taste and effect. The insight? Red Bull's brand positioning was so strong it override actual product experience. Our client needed to compete on different territory entirely.

Your Brand DNA: Where the Three Cs of Positioning Intersect

Here's what separates real strategists from workshop facilitators: brand positioning only exists where all three Cs overlap. This intersection, your brand DNA, isn't something you choose. It's something you discover through systematic application of the 3Cs of positioning framework.

But remember: the market might have already decided something different from what you intended. Pringles wanted to be the strong chip. The market made them the fun chip. Which reality matters more for brand positioning? Lululemon started as yoga wear for women. Men started wearing it. Rather than fight this, they recognised the market was revealing a new intersection of the 3Cs and launched a men's line that now represents significant revenue.

The 3Cs of positioning framework reveals these market realities. When Patagonia found themselves at the intersection of outdoor enthusiasts who cared about the environment (Customer), their sustainable manufacturing capabilities (Company), and competitors who treated sustainability as marketing rather than operations (Competitors), their brand positioning wrote itself. They didn't choose to be the sustainable outdoor brand. The 3Cs chose it for them.

The Research Balance in 3Cs Analysis

You need enough data to find the truth, but not so much that you drown in analysis. It's like flying a plane: you need instruments, but staring at dials won't land you safely. You need to look out the window too. The 3Cs of positioning provides the instruments, but judgement still matters.

At CUT THRU, our double-blind split testing methodology cuts through both problems. We test real behaviour, not claimed preferences. We validate findings at scale, not in focus groups of 12. And we stop when we have statistical significance, not when we run out of budget. This disciplined approach to the 3Cs ensures brand positioning based on reality, not research theatre.

The 2 + 1 Rule: Simplifying Your Brand Positioning

Once you've discovered your actual position through the 3Cs of positioning research, you need to articulate it simply. We use the "2 + 1 rule": two rational benefits (nice) plus one emotional essence (spice).

But here's the key: these come from the 3Cs research findings, not creative brainstorms. Take a premium meal kit delivery service we worked with:

  • Nice 1: Restaurant-quality ingredients delivered fresh (validated through Company capability in cold-chain logistics)
  • Nice 2: 30-minute recipes that actually work (emerged from Customer research showing time anxiety around cooking)
  • Spice: "Chef's table at your table" (the emotional territory competitors ignored whilst focusing on convenience)

This simplification of the 3Cs intersection makes brand positioning actionable. Whole Foods' positioning: Healthy food (Customer need) + Premium quality (Company capability) + "Whole Paycheck" acceptance (Competitor gap) = America's healthiest grocery store (until Amazon's capabilities changed the equation).

Why Most Brands Fail at Positioning

The fundamental error: believing brand positioning is a choice rather than a discovery. The 3Cs of positioning framework makes this crystal clear. You're not Don Draper, conjuring brilliance from cigarette smoke. You're a detective, following evidence to an inevitable conclusion.

Most brands skip the 3Cs research because it's hard. Expensive. Time-consuming. Sometimes disappointing. But flying without instruments isn't brave, it's stupid. Peloton thought they were a fitness company. The 3Cs revealed they were a status symbol. When COVID ended and status seeking moved elsewhere, their misunderstood brand positioning nearly killed them.

The bigger issue? Most people do their positioning after their brand strategy, which is crazy. Your positioning is your USP, and everything in your brand strategy should grow out of it from a competitive place. Your visual identity, your tone of voice, your channel strategy, your product development, everything flows from positioning. Not the other way around.

The Bottom Line on Brand Positioning and the 3Cs

Stop treating brand positioning like a creative writing exercise. Start treating it like an investigation. The 3Cs of positioning (Customer, Company, Competitors) provide your investigative framework.

Get the research right:

  • Qualitative for the why (Customer needs and competitor failures)
  • Quantitative for the what (Company capabilities and market gaps)
  • Split testing for the truth (Where the 3Cs actually intersect)

Use double-blind methodologies to strip away bias. Test at scale to ensure validity. But know when to stop before drowning in data. The 3Cs of positioning framework guides the investigation, but judgement still matters.

Because here's the thing: brand positioning isn't what you say about yourself. It's what the market says about you. And the market has already decided. The 3Cs simply help you discover what it decided.

Your job is to discover what the market decided, then work with that reality. Not against it. The 3Cs of positioning make this possible.

About the Author

Jonathan Sankey is a Brand Strategist and founder of CUT THRU, a recent winner of the Netty Awards Boutique Branding Agency of the Year in both 2023 and 2024. Rated as a top branding agency in Sydney and New York on both Clutch and Design Rush. Jonathan has applied the 3Cs of positioning framework across diverse industries from some of the oldest Swiss banks and American law firms to techn statrtups, real estate and rappers.

Ready to discover your actual brand positioning? Stop guessing. Start testing. Get a positioning consultation from CUT THRU. We use double-blind split testing to find where the 3Cs of positioning actually converge for your brand, not where you hope they do. Because brand positioning isn't a decision. It's a discovery.

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