Reposition into a better market

Sometimes a brand has been promoted to a target audience that is disappearing, or at least turns out to be less attractive than another audience. The brand might be doing perfectly well, but could do better: this is where repositioning comes in.

Repositioning means establishing the brand in a different location in the customer’s consciousness. Usually, it means changing the way everybody thinks of the brand —not just the existing customers, but anyone else who might now consider the product. The position of a brand in people’s minds is always relative to other brands and products, some of which may not be direct competitors — people often say that a product is “the Rolls-Royce of . . . ,” for example. Repositioning takes time and effort, but the payoffs can be very large indeed.