Every American Indian tribe (and every Texan and Mexican) feared the Comanches in the 1800s.

Their rise to dominance is in part a story of positioning strategy. I’m just finishing Sam Gwynne’s recent book, Empire of the Summer Moon – a riveting narrative on the rise and fall of one of the most feared tribes in American history. Only the Sioux on the northern plains come close to the Comanches’ ferocity.

The Comanches’ ascent can be traced clearly to their expertise in raising, breaking, and riding horses. Over the course of about 200 years, the tribe developed a specialty in handling horses. Consequently, the Comanches made their living by hunting buffalo and warring against other tribes (stealing their horses) and, eventually, killing the white man. The tribe had no patience for subsistence farming.

At a young age, Comanche boys had a horse to ride. By the time they were in their teens, a young brave could sweep up off the ground a wounded comrade at full gallop. For years, the Comanches raided and slaughtered the frontier settlers, including the Army and even the early Texas Rangers. For example, when chasing and then engaging the Comanches after a raid on a settlement, pursing soldiers would dismount their plodding Army horses to shoot their muskets. It took a minute or so to reload the rifle.

But the Comanches would stay on their mustangs, which were much leaner and faster than the those of the soldiers, and charge into a line of standing soldiers. By the time it took to reload a musket, a Comanche brave could shoot a dozen or more arrows while hanging on to the side of a horse at breakneck speed.

Eventually, the inexorable advance of the white man pushed out the Comanches. The white man slowly learned to ride more like a Comanche warrior – on a fast horse. And then came the game-changer: the Walker Colt, the repeating revolver. Then it was the white man’s turn to slaughter the Indians.

The simple point is that power comes from being really good at something. Ergo, one thing. Consequently, you develop a reputation (and a messaging strategy) for that one thing.

The specialist position is really the only tenable marketing strategy in today’s explosion of organizations, services, and products.

Several weeks back my family and I attended a Chicago Cubs baseball game.

Yes, they lost. In the 12th inning.

As we walked out of Wrigley, a middle-aged homeless-looking guy stood in the middle of the sidewalk with a cardboard sign: “Why Lie? I need money for cold beer.”

Gutsy, I thought. But I didn’t reach for my spare change.

Three other stories of need: The other day as I was exiting Starbucks, an apparently homeless man asked me for a Passion Ice Tea Lemonade with sweetener. He was specific, if not tactful.

A couple weeks ago, as I was driving from Boulder, CO, to Denver, a man with a deeply tanned face textured like that of a lizard skin, stood at the exit off 36 and held up a cardboard sign saying he was out of work. I averted my eyes as my car slowed at the top of the exit ramp.

As he walked past my car, he pulled out a purple mobile flip phone out of his back pack and took a call.

Last week, while leaving a downtown Chicago restaurant at around 10 PM, I turned down Clark and stopped at a light. A woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties emerged out of the darkness, ran up to the front passenger window of my car, and screamed at me, “I’ve got a baby in car and I’ve just run out of gas. You have to help me now.”

It’s all messaging, subtle and not so.

There’s the joyous message that you plan to communicate.

And then there’s the message that your audience (or prospects) receive and internalize.

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary recently, and we five kids put together an open house that included a short program.

Of the kids, I’ve orbited the farthest from my home state of North Dakota, where we held the reception for my parents. I had not seen many of my parents’ friends for twenty years. I was devastated at how frail many appeared. I still remembered them when they were in midlife. Many arrived alone, their spouses long since buried.

“I almost didn’t come this afternoon,” one woman said. “It was 10 years ago yesterday that my husband died – we had been married 42 years.”

Another elderly woman, whose rigid face looked like she’d had a stroke, lost two teenage children years ago to two different tragedies within six months, one of whom was a classmate of mine. The woman’s husband was not able to make the 50th anniversary celebration because he was wheelchair bound, in the late stages of Parkinson’s. She also said, “I wanted to see you, but I almost didn’t come.” We talked a while about her beautiful daughter Suzanne, who died in an avoidable car accident in 1980.

When planning the celebration, we five kids never considered the emotion that my parents’ 50th would evoke in their friends.

That day, there was a sense of joy for my parents’ successful partnership (and that fact that the marriage survived the rebellious teenage angst of their oldest son).

But for some, the gathering marked a milestone they would never reach, because of divorce or death.

It’s true that there is no such thing as a brute fact (or brute event, for that matter). Every message that is sent by your organization is deconstructed in transit and then socially reconstructed through the filters of your prospects. It makes communicating your message the greatest (and most wonderful) challenge facing your organization.

The only thing I despise more than car payments is paying for car repairs.

For the past 17 years, I’ve taken my cars (vans, trucks, etc) to a small garage run by two brothers. The other day when I picked up my truck, the younger brother (who is the boss) had on a shirt with the words: “Specialists in Imports.”

Years ago, my brother-in-law referred me to the garage, saying, “Mello Motors is really good at imports.” That resonated with me since, at the time, my wife drove a Toyota Camry.

I remember, though, thinking, “How will the garage do with my Buick?”

Of course, the Mello brothers had no problem with an American engine.

They had positioned themselves as experts in one thing: imports. It worked. The Mello boys ended up servicing our Camry and our Buick … and every car since.

This is an important point about messaging: You always message specifically to your position. Mello Motors advertised as a specialist in imports. That doesn’t mean the garage won’t service domestic cars.

You always grow by focusing your messaging on your one thing – while still providing services in other areas. The only exception is if you want to lay claim to the generalist position (which is the death knell for most organizations in today’s highly specialized environment).

I’ve found that in general, most organizations fight the strategy to specialize, but it’s the only way to stand out.

An article in The New York Times recently provided some statistics on the state of blogs on the Internet. The stats originate from Technorati, an Internet search engine that tracks blogs:

•There are roughly 133 million blogs;
•Only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs had been updated in the past 120 days; and
• Between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs generate most of the page views.

Millions and millions of poppies: Which poppy is prettier?

The stats on blogs confirm how cluttered the marketing landscape has become. The herculean challenge is to position your organization accurately and to communicate your message to your prospects with clarity and power.

I say, “Good riddance to the blog fever,” if in fact fewer folks are paying attention to their blogs. Most were lousy writers. Maybe the slow death (or at least slower growth) of blogs will free up some attention for those organizations whose message is worth hearing.

I’m a member at a local health club that recently spiked in growth.

It’s an “eat or be eaten” world, and when another local health club closed its doors for a couple weeks, my club feasted on the carrion. Note the phrase my club.

One day while I jogged around the indoor track, I rounded a corner and almost flattened a wizened lady who was walking in a run-only lane. I mumbled to myself something slightly profane and gave her a wide berth.

Does she not know which lane is for walkers? Is she illiterate? Can she not read?

Then one morning after my workout, I wanted simply to sit in one of the chairs in the lounge, sip the free coffee, and cool down before driving home. There was no open chair. A bunch of folks who looked like they had just caught the bus over from the retirement community sipped free coffee and chatted cheerily, like late-night patrons at a neighborhood bar.

Not long after, I began noticing a not-so-subtle change in the men’s locker room. I don’t classify myself as a “younger man” (I’m 46), except that I’ve noticed that there is a great divide in age (and psychology) between men who wrap a towel around their waist while in the locker room and those who appear to feel more comfortable with themselves. I know this sounds age-ist, but the male body after about 70 is no French painting.

Here’s the marketing story: A competitor goes under, and the senior management of my club likely said, “Wow, let’s create a promotion to cherry-pick these memberships from the other club – and voila! we’ll grow while having to spend no real marketing dollars to acquire them. We grow with no added expense!”

Makes perfect sense.

So management repaved the parking lot to narrow the parking spots – and thus increased parking capacity. Then, I noticed for the first time some signs that trumpeted valet parking. Yes. Valet parking for a health club! Most recently, the furniture in the lounge area was upgraded and expanded, ostensibly for those whom “going to the health club” means in large part chatting with friends and drinking branded coffee.

So, my question to you: Has this club’s position in the market changed, given that the average age of the club spiked along with the new growth?

Growth always involves a shift in power from the old to the new. I’m out of power, and the new folks are in. So, I bite my tongue, close my eyes, and head to the locker room to change before I run.

Twittering, social networking, blogging? They’re all the rave—and your company may be ready to jump on the social media bandwagon to promote your organization.

But beware of getting tripped up by the hype; you’ll need to have a little know-how before you start.

Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research Vice President and co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, talks about what you need to think about before you harness these new technologies-and how to make them work best for your organization.

Brand & Strategy: Often organizations considering social media and blogging are hung-up on what platform they will use. Is this where their focus should be?

Josh Bernoff: No. When an organization is considering starting a blog, community, or Twittering, the first question should be, “What problem am I hoping to solve?” Maybe you want to get information spread by word of mouth, or try to generate new product ideas. Based on what you want to accomplish, you can pick the right tools and technologies to best meet that challenge.
Why are organizations fearful of using social media to acquire customer opinion?

They think they are in control of their brands. In reality, the majority of customers increasingly decide what brands stand for. That the groundswell speaks for you is hard to get past.

What’s a good first step for small- to medium-sized nonprofit organizations to take that don’t have the Big Corporate budget but want to engage in two-way dialog with their donors?

First, listen to your customers with blog and Twitter searches. Then, begin to comment and respond. You can do a lot of these things cheaply: free platforms for blogging, Twitter is free, even community platforms like Ning are free. The real question is how much time you can put into it.

How should an organization deal with negative comments?

If your products are no good, you’re doomed. But if your customers are just having some problems, then respond. Comment on their blogs and in their discussion groups. Be honest, and people will respect you. See how the cable company Comcast addressed customer issue with @comcastcares. These days, you can address your customers’ problems by Twittering!

Can you share an example of a smaller organization that has harnessed the groundswell well?

One of this year’s winners of the Forrester Groundswell awards was a small credit union in Alberta, Canada. They held a contest, and a youth spokesperson blogged, uploaded YouTube videos, and participated in Facebook – and they generated 2,300 new account signups. To learn more about how they did it, see their entry here: http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/talking/common_wealth_credit_union.html

What’s a good example of “talking to spread messages” – and how do you identify a “spread message”?

Messages can be specifically designed so that people will spread them. See a great example at www.willitblend.com. The Blendtec company is selling a lot more blenders by having a message that people found amusing and powerful, which prompted them to pass it along to others.

Over the past decade, I’ve digested pretty much every book and article and blog that you can imagine on the subject of branding and marketing.

I’ve also interviewed by phone or via email many best-selling authors on aforementioned topics.

I learn something new from each one.

I tend to take away more from the conversation with the author than I do reading his or her book. When you ask the author to clarify a point in the book or give a specific example, often you strip away the flabby writing from the nugget of insight. Most books should be only an article in length. But the publisher wants at least 250 pages, so authors write to fit the book-length medium.

In some marketing writing, though, there’s a common thread that annoys me:

It’s as if the authors all went to the same convention, identified all the “successful stories” and then starting writing. Here are a few of the wake-me-when-they-are-outdated marketing stories:

• Facebook (still looking to make some real money in social media);
• Google (the big dog on the block; who can argue with its success?);
• Starbucks (closing 600 stores soon; see our interview with John Moore: http://www.czmarketing.com/brand/);
• Apple (the brand with design panache);
• SalesForce.com (the clunky convenience of online CRM); and
• Kiva (the creative online micro finance nonprofit).

Before the above, there was:

• Krispy Kreme (now a not-so-hot stock);
• Dell (trying now to reinvent itself);
• Amazon (now just another boring stock); and
•Too many others to mention.

What’s hot is touted as the pinnacle of truth for marketing your organization: “Just follow the marketing principles of this hot company or you will become irrelevant and die a thousand deaths.”

No one writes those words, but that underlying schtick is occasionally assumed in the writing.

Here’s my grumpy point: Growing an organization is hard work. It’s tedious, sometimes monotonous. Not very sexy. And it takes much longer than you think. And just when you think you’ve got it figured out, the demographics or economics of your prospects change. Then you’re forced to regroup and make adjustments in real time.

No doubt Starbucks and Google and Apple have lots to teach the rest of the world. But it’s important to strip out the bravado from the principles and ask the real question: What, if anything, is really relevant to our situation?

Maybe the most important purpose of reading about today’s hot companies is to inspire hope. Growth is possible. Our future can be brighter than our past.

You can’t trumpet something you’re not. Or, rather, you can, but good luck. You won’t have much of it. There’s no befuddling your potential clients.

According to Harry Beckwith, author of, among others, Selling the Invisible, and You, Inc the positioning of your organization demands authenticity. CZ President Dave Goetz interviewed Beckwith on why consumers buy into “true stories” and how to position yours:

CZ: What does positioning entail?

Harry Beckwith: To establish your position successfully, you must consider two things—how you are seen and how you want to be seen. From there, you measure the gap between the two. Then you can determine how to get to your end goal. Positioning is about moving that perception.

How do you obtain the best position?

There’s no such thing as an inherently superior position. The tendency is to reach to be “the best.” The superior product. The superior service. You can’t because “the best” doesn’t exist. However, each position has strengths and weaknesses. Part of positioning is being mindful of your inherent weaknesses.

Take cell phones, for example. What’s a superior cell phone? To some people, it’s the iPhone, because it’s colorful and does a lot of stuff; it’s even prestigious. To others, the iPhone’s features represent a whole lot of things that can screw up their work. They don’t even want a camera in their cell phone.

So it’s about staking a desirable niche, in which people will catch something really positive—and giving up on this notion of superiority.

Can you change an established position?

Yes, but you can’t position yourself as something you’re not or cannot be perceived as. It’s a waste of energy.

The most vivid example is when Gerber tried to market adult food. The mind didn’t allow it. Frito Lay tried to do lemonade. They produce salty and crispy snacks, so your mind won’t allow you to drink Frito lemonade.

The stronger your identity and the stronger you’re identified with something, the less able you are to be perceived in any way different than that. So it really depends of how flexible your brand is. How far does it stretch?

How does branding relate to positioning?

Positioning is about your message being perceived in a consistent way—like “sexy,” “fast,” “reliable,” or “safe.” Branding reinforces that single message as well as the nuances and subtle sub-messages that come within that.

I always use branding to describe all of the activities you engage in to reinforce your message. And an enormous part of this is your internal activities. Your staff activities create a sense of authenticity. For instance, if you’re a wealth management firm and the assistants are cold and ruthless, then chances are a warm, friendly service message will hurt you rather than help. It will raise expectations, and you won’t meet them. You have to deliver that position—you have to do what you promised.

How often should you change your position?

Re-positioning yourself demands real changes, not just cosmetic ones. You need confidence in your investment so that you will stay with it for a long period of time. When that position succeeds, you continue to build on your investment.

Take, for example, a University with a well-established School of Optometry: “Okay, we are known for optometry, how might we grow from that? You start to consider adding specialties closely related to optometry—audiology, for example, or other subspecialties in health care. You might offer health care administration in the general university—in short, growing from your strength into closely related areas that expand your offering. Whatever you do, you must begin your strategy by asking, “For what are we known?” And then ask how you can build on that, add to it, and grow.

Good marketing is rooted in good communication: It is concrete, not general. If you’re general—a little of this, a little of that—you’re not strategic. You don’t have a bona-fide, authentic position—and people will perceive it that way.