The big idea: Strategy comes before design. Know who you’re for, what job they hire you to do and what personality you show up with, and most design decisions become obvious.
See it in action
Positioning Builder Lab
Build a coffee brand from the strategy up. Choose who it is for, what it is and why anyone should believe it, then tune the personality. Watch the positioning statement, brand card and market map change.
Key concepts
- Jobs to Be Done: People hire products to make progress. When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome].
- Human-centered persona: One specific person in a specific situation. Demographics say who; psychographics say why.
- Positioning statement: For [audience], [brand] is the [category] that [benefit] because [reason to believe]. If it doesn’t make a design decision obvious, keep revising.
- Brand archetypes: Twelve personality types, like Hero, Sage, Rebel and Creator, that give a brand a consistent emotional character.
- The five-word personality test: Five adjectives that filter every decision. “Rebellious” won’t choose soft pastels.
- AI personas are hypotheses: Use AI to draft a persona, then list the assumptions you need to test with real customers.
Real examples
- Liquid Death: Water positioned against wellness culture, with everything flowing from one brief.
- Stanley: The same cup repositioned from worksite gear to a lifestyle statement.
- Oatly: Sells identity and meaning, not oats.
Real brands in action
Old Spice: From grandpa’s cologne to absurd humor
Before 2010, Old Spice read as your grandfather’s cologne, with navy blue, nautical imagery and traditional type. The brand repositioned around absurd, self-aware humor for guys who don’t take themselves too seriously, with bold red, strange photography and internet-culture jokes. Its 2010 campaign, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” went viral and made an old brand feel new to a younger audience.
The lesson: You can keep the product and change who it is for by changing the strategy behind the visuals.
Image courtesy of Old Spice
Liquid Death: A punk band, not a health brand
Liquid Death sells canned mountain water, one of the most commoditized products there is. Its strategy fits in three lines: for young people tired of wellness culture, against every water brand that looks like a spa, and with a rebellious, anti-corporate personality. The skull logo, heavy metal ads, Netflix partnership and merch all trace back to that one brief.
The lesson: Get the strategy sharp first and the creative decisions get easy.
Learn more: Liquid Death
Stanley: Same cup, new customer
For more than 100 years, Stanley sold rugged drinkware to hunters, construction workers and outdoor laborers. Around 2020 it redefined who the cup was for: health-conscious, style-aware millennial and Gen Z women. Pastel colorways, limited drops and micro-influencers on #WaterTok did the rest. The cup itself did not change.
The lesson: Product-market fit is not fixed. A new strategy can open a new market for the same product.
Learn more: Stanley
Brand images are shown for educational purposes only. Each image and trademark belongs to the brand credited, and each credit links to that brand.
Frameworks from class
Three questions that build a brand
A name without a strategy is just a word. Answer these three before any design work starts. Without them, every design choice turns into a debate, because no one agreed on what the brand means.
- Who is this for? A specific person with a specific problem, not a demographic label.
- What does it stand for? If this brand disappeared tomorrow, who would notice and why?
- What is its personality? How it talks, how it acts, and what it would never say.
Why people switch: trigger, push, pull, anxiety
People change brands when the old solution stops working. Map the moment of switching and you know what your brand has to say. This is the Jobs to Be Done lens applied to one real moment in a customer’s life.
- Trigger: the exact moment the need becomes real. Where are they and why now?
- What they do now: the workaround or good-enough option they use today
- Push: what makes that option no longer acceptable
- Pull: what makes a new option worth trying
- Anxiety: what might stop them from switching
Nobody buys coffee
The product is rarely the point. People buy the feeling or change the product delivers. Finish this sentence for your brand: they are not really buying ___. They are buying ___.
- Energy: fuel to get through the day
- Ritual: a predictable anchor in the morning
- Status: a signal of taste or lifestyle
- Quiet moment: a pause in a noisy world
The specificity test for positioning
After you write your positioning statement, ask one question. Does this sentence make at least one design decision obvious? For people who want quality makes nothing obvious. For women who treat self-care seriously points straight to premium finishes and lifestyle imagery. Most strong statements take several drafts.
- Audience too broad: adults 18 to 45 is a demographic, not an audience. Find the shared belief or tension.
- Benefit without tension: makes you feel good is noise. Name a specific charge like relief, prestige or belonging.
- Weak reason to believe: if a competitor could say it too, it is not specific enough.
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
Michael Porter
Class exercise: Prototype one customer at the moment of switching
Use AI to draft a Jobs to Be Done persona, then treat it as a hypothesis to test.
- Ask AI to act as a consumer strategist and build one specific customer for your brand. Tell it to skip generic demographics and made-up statistics.
- Add local guardrails so it is not generic: the city, specific neighborhoods, local culture and your local competitors.
- Ask for the person, the trigger moment, the struggle, what they do now, the push, the pull and the anxiety.
- Have it finish: When I ___, I want to ___, so I can ___. Then: they are not really buying ___. They are buying ___.
- Ask for one message that would make this person think, that is exactly for me.
- Ask for three assumptions that need testing and three interview questions to test them.
- Push back once. AI makes people too perfect. Add a real contradiction, like someone who cares about the planet but still grabs the convenient option.
Try it
As a team, sketch personas on your own, then agree on one shared persona and the job they hire your brand to do. Write your positioning statement two ways, choose five personality words, and write a short voice guide that includes what the brand would never say. Read it aloud: is it specific, distinct and true to the name?
Tips and best practices
- Write the strategy before you open a design tool. Audience, job to be done and personality come first. Most color, type and image choices follow from them.
- Name one specific person, not a demographic. “New parents running on little sleep” guides decisions better than “adults 25 to 40.” Add why they act, not just who they are.
- Pair every benefit with proof. Your reason to believe should prove the exact benefit you promise. If a customer can check it, it is stronger.
- Map the competition before you claim a spot. Plot competitors on two attributes customers care about. Look for open space you can credibly own, not a crowded corner.
- Use a five-word personality test. Pick five adjectives and check every design and copy choice against them. If a choice contradicts a word, change the choice.
- Treat AI personas as hypotheses. AI can draft a persona fast, but list its assumptions and test them by talking with real customers before you build on them.
Quick check
Think through your answer, then select a question to reveal one.
Finish the Jobs to Be Done formula.
When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [desired outcome].
How do you know a positioning statement is specific enough?
It makes at least one design decision obvious.
Go deeper
- Harvard Business School Online: Jobs to Be Done examples
View the Brand Strategy: Who Is Your Brand? slides on Gamma