Exclusive Research on Brand Positioning in 2023

Author Bio

Grant Polachek is the Head of Branding at Inc 500 company Squadhelp.com, the world's #1 naming platform, with 30,000+ customers from early-stage startups across the globe to the largest corporations including Nestle, Philips, Hilton, Pepsi, and AutoNation.

Brand Positioning Research in 2023

The age, experience, gender, and culture of your target audience, without a doubt, have a big influence on how people react to your business. Hence brand positioning research is needed.

That’s why, if you must establish a successful company, you need to learn how to position your brand so that it quickly stands out from the crowd and appeals to your target audience.

Properly positioning your business will determine whether it becomes a household name or simply another business fighting to survive in a crowded market.

So, in order to help you make the best choice when it comes to positioning your company, we conducted brand positioning research where we evaluated a few brand positioning concepts to see how people react to businesses that choose a modern vs. classic brand position.

What is this Survey Significant?

The purpose of this study was to find out which brands customers were drawn to and how this changed depending on their demographics.

The data we gathered will help business owners, whether they run a small, medium, or large company, make quick, data-driven branding decisions that will position their company for greatness.

To meet the survey's goals, we asked this question to people in the United States, ‘Would you be more interested in working with a new, innovative company or a historied, trusted organization?’

Why is this Question Important?

It’s vital to realize that choosing your company's tone is one of the most important and defining branding decisions you will make when beginning or rebranding your business.

Choosing the right tone is essential because it helps entrepreneurs, product managers, and brand executives to shape the future of their organization.

Take a moment to imagine what the market would look like today if:

• Steve Jobs had used Executex as his company’s name instead of Apple
• Zappos was still known as Shoestore
• Jeff Bezos hadn’t renamed Cadabra to Amazon
• Phil Knight hadn’t changed the name of his company, Blue Ribbon Sports, to Nike
• The Loose brothers picked a more attractive name instead of Hydrox
• Ayds diet candy had been rebranded

The tone of your brand impacts your company's overall personality as well as your customer’s perception of your brand. Your business’s tone is so important to your branding that you can't afford to ignore it when establishing your naming strategy.

Now, even though there are several brand tones out there, most of them fall somewhere between these two spectrums: ‘historied and trusted’ or ‘modern and innovative.’

Take a look at some historied brands:

• Blackstone
• Warby Parker
• Liberty Mutual
• IBM
• Gucci

Here are a few examples of some modern and innovative brands:

• Urban Decay
• Robinhood
• Slack
• Apple
• Accenture

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Our study was created particularly to determine which audience demographics are drawn to modern companies and which are drawn to historied brands. We did this because selecting whether to go modern or traditional is one of the most important decisions that every company makes before creating its brand identity.

Here's What the Survey Discovered

Despite the fact that the survey's conclusions were not earth-shattering, the results we received were surprising and refreshing. Here's a quick view of what we learned from the 301 participants we surveyed:

• People between the ages of 25 and 34 are drawn to new and modern companies. More than half of those we surveyed preferred new and innovative brands over historied and trusted ones.

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• People between the ages of 35 and 45 preferred modern and innovative companies over traditional and trusted ones. This group, on the other hand, was evenly divided between the two alternatives.

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• People between the ages of 45–54 and 55–65 were more drawn to historied and trusted brands than they were too new and innovative ones.

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• People between the ages of 55 and 65 were particularly drawn to historied and trusted brands.

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• According to the findings of the survey, men show little to no preference for either modern or historied brands.

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• Women, on the other hand, prefer traditional and trusted brands over new and innovative ones.

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• Among the 301 people we surveyed, 153 preferred traditional and trustworthy brands, while 148 preferred new and innovative companies. So it’s pretty easy to see from the survey that businesses can take any viewpoint they choose as long as it aligns with the preferences of their target audience.

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What does This Mean for You and Your Business?

According to the brand positioning survey, the majority of young people are interested in new, modern, creative, and innovative companies. So, if you want to attract a younger audience, make sure your brand has a distinct, modern, and unique brand identity.

But if your target audience demographic are Baby Boomers and older Generation Xers, then it’s best your company adopts a historied and trusted brand identity. Customers between the ages of 45 and 65 are more inclined to historied companies, so make sure your company emits a classic, conventional, and trustworthy image.

The results we gathered show that if an entrepreneur wants to position their business correctly, they need not only focus on their products but also pay special attention to the tone of their brand.

And one of the most successful ways to integrate your product, audience, and business is to use a strong brand name, and one of the quickest ways to do so is by using a powerful business name generator.

Here's a Great Example of a Well-Positioned Brand

Hulu is an excellent example of a well-positioned brand. The company had entered the market with a unique brand name that completely embraces a ‘modern and innovative’ tone. And with almost 40 million subscribers, it's clear that Hulu’s brand is paying off.

Hulu is currently enjoying prosperity because its tone is perfect for the brand and its target market. Hulu's target demographic includes Gen Z, Millennials, and even Gen Xers, and our research shows that this group values modern and innovative companies.

Is There Another Way?

Sure! Compass, the innovative real estate company, is a great example of a brand that brilliantly combines classic and innovative elements. Despite the fact that real estate is a fairly traditional business, the company intends to appeal to both an older and younger audience by introducing some unique elements to the sector.

So, before you start building your company’s brand, you need to figure out who your target customer demographics are and build your brand around them. Brand positioning is a great way to start building your company's brand.

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