4.4 Sharpening Positioning: Make Competitors Irrelevant

Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirshberg wasn’t just competing against other yogurt brands. He was taking on industry giants like Yoplait and Dannon, which had multimillion-dollar advertising budgets.

But Hirshberg had something they didn’t: cows, a farm, and a killer positioning idea. Instead of trying to outspend competitors on traditional ads, he built a grassroots marketing strategy that turned his brand into a community.

• He launched the Adopt-a-Cow program, where customers could symbolically adopt one of the farm’s cows. They’d receive photos, updates, and even letters “from” their cow.

• He created the Moosletter—sharing farm stories, sustainability tips, and an inside look at organic farming.

Competitors sold yogurt. Stonyfield sold relationships, values, and stories.

The brand didn’t just offer organic dairy products. It offered customers the chance to align their purchases with personal values like healthy eating, environmental sustainability, supporting small farmers, and fostering a sense of community.

This bottom-up positioning built fierce customer loyalty. By 2014, Stonyfield had become the world leader in organic yogurt, with annual revenues topping $360 million. That same year, Danone acquired the brand, expanding its global reach while maintaining Stonyfield’s core values.

Laddering up:

Quinn’s team uncovered that athletes didn’t just want to reduce pain. They wanted to perform at their best, feel confident, and display their dedication to their sport. Kinesiology tape wasn’t just a treatment—it was a symbol of commitment and empowerment.

Laddering down:

Most kinesiology tapes at the time were plain, clinical, and difficult to apply. KT Tape introduced the following:

• Bright, bold colors (letting athletes wear the tape as a badge of identity)

• Pre-cut strips (for easy application without scissors or special training)

• Flexible, waterproof materials that held up under intense workouts

Instead of positioning solely on function (like competitors), Quinn blended the following attributes:

• Functionality; reliable support and pain relief

• Emotional benefit; empowering athletes to stay in the game

• Social signal; tape as a visible badge of commitment and resilience

By 2024, KT Tape accomplished the following:

• Dominated the kinesiology tape market

• Sold in over 100,000 retail locations worldwide

• Expanded into product lines including ice wraps, recovery tools, and performance gear

Here’s the bottom line:

By understanding what customers valued and crafting a bottom-up positioning strategy, KT Tape made competitors irrelevant. It wasn’t just tape; it was a statement of athletic identity.

1. Use laddering to uncover what really matters to customers.

2. Map it with HVM to find the leverage point that connects features to values.

3. Adopt a bottom-up mindset to find the kind of positioning and differentiating tactics competitors can’t easily match.

That’s how to build positioning that doesn’t just compete —it flips the game board.

WOW! Groups are focus groups made up of real potential customers from your target audience.

The goal is simple:

Of course, you can’t ask that question directly (because you’re looking for a spontaneous Wow!). But you can uncover those reactions—and gather richer feedback—by applying Edward de Bono’s1 Six Hats Thinking framework within the WOW! Group discussion.

Using Six Hats within a WOW Group helps balance emotion and logic, avoid groupthink and dominant voices, and reveal both gut reactions and the underlying motivations driving them.