Hello everybody. Welcome back and welcome to start of Week Two. Last week, our focus was on what a brand is and we spent a lot of time on segmentation. This week, we're going to look at positioning. Beyond understanding the different segments of a market, a brand must also decide on a value proposition for that market. That is, how it will create differentiated value for target consumers and segments and what positions it wants to occupy in those segments. Consumers will position products with or without the help of a brand or it's team of marketeers and communicators. As they are overloaded with information, think about yourselves for a moment. Consumers will rarely re-assess products and brands each time they need to buy. You'll do a lot of thinking about what you like. You tend to repeat patterns. Instead, to simplify their buying behavior, they will organize products, services, and companies into little categories and position them in their mind. A product's position is this, it's the complex set of perceptions, and impressions, and feelings the consumer has for the product when compared to competing products. It's driven a lot by your previous experience. So, at its simplest, a product's position is the way a product is defined by consumers on important attributes. It refers to the place the product occupies in consumers' minds relative to these competing products in the market. The thing is, marketeers do not, cannot, will not want to leave their product position to chance. Instead, marketeers carefully plan their positions and choose a position that gives their products the greatest advantage in selected targets. Also, they should design marketing mixes to ensure their brands obtain those planned positions. Positioning is therefore the most rational exercise you will ever do for your brand. It is the expression of your company strategy in precise phrases that convey differentiation, role, and relevance. Position is without any doubt, the most important thing you will ever do for a brand. It is crucial that you establish your positioning from the beginning and get it right from the word go. A brand's positioning must serve the needs and preferences of well-defined target markets or segments like we learnt in the module before, and will always start by identifying and choosing the right set of differentiating, competitive advantages upon which to build a position. Also, through selecting an overall positioning strategy. As we move into pure branding, particularly identity, both in this module, the module after this one and in this specialization as a whole, you will see how branding yields into this more emotional side. Through this positioning, is brought to live in words, tonality, sound, color, design, imagery and illustrations. But for the time being, let's look at two different sides of positioning. What the brand decides to stand for, which is summarized in a position statement and how brands learn about their place in consumers' minds. We call this a perceptual map. We will look at these different aspects in the next few sessions.