The Message Pro

Competitive positioning through trade-offs.

"Strategy is choosing what not to do. Positioning is choosing where not to stand."

The Core Insight

The Message maps brands in competitive space to identify where to position and what trade-offs to make. Good positioning isn't about finding an empty space. It's about finding a defensible space that competitors can't or won't occupy.

Why Positioning Requires Trade-Offs

Most positioning fails because it tries to have everything: premium quality AND competitive price, heritage credibility AND innovative disruption. These positions are logically incoherent and strategically weak.

Strong positioning makes explicit choices: We are this, not that. We serve these people, not those. Trade-offs create defensibility.

The Four Lenses

Theoretical Grounding

• Porter's Generic Strategies: Cost leadership OR differentiation, not both
• Ries & Trout: Own a word in the mind
• Kapferer's Brand Identity: Heritage and innovation create different authority
• Sharp's Distinctiveness: Be different, not just better

Cascade Mode vs Free Roam

The Message operates in two modes:

Cascade Mode

In Cascade Mode, The Message receives market context, brand name, and audience tension from upstream tools (Story and Audience). Your competitive set, positioning analysis, and position statement cascade forward to The Plan and Frame.

Key behaviours in Cascade Mode:

• Market and brand pre-filled from The Story
• Audience context inherited from The Audience
• Core brand locked (you can't accidentally select a competitor)
• Cascade brand force-added to competitive set if AI doesn't include it
• Breadcrumb navigation shows your progress
• Strategic Confidence score carries forward and updates

Core Brand Lock: In Cascade Mode, your core brand (the one you're positioning) is locked to the brand from The Story. You can't select competitors by accident. This prevents mid-pitch confusion and ensures coherence.

Brand Validation: If you manually add a competitor brand, The Message validates category fit. If AI believes the brand doesn't belong in this category (e.g., adding Nintendo to Smartphones), you'll see a confirmation dialogue explaining this could mean: AI isn't aware of recent developments, the brand is entering this category, or you've selected the wrong brand. You can override the warning if you know better than AI training data.

Free Roam

Use The Message independently without cascade. Good for exploring competitive positioning, testing white space hypotheses, or analysing any category without committing to a full pitch flow.

Key differences:

• All fields manual entry (no cascade data)
• You select any brand as core (not locked)
• Save button instead of Lock & Continue
• No Strategic Confidence score
• Top navigation stays active

How It Works

Step 1: Define Competitive Set

Generate a competitive set using AI (based on category and region), import from The Landscape tool, or use a saved shared set. The AI suggests 6-8 major competitors based on market share and message positioning data.

In Cascade Mode: If your brand isn't in the AI-generated set (common for new category entrants, niche players, or brands launching new products), The Message automatically force-adds it to the top with a note: "Added automatically (your brand from pitch)". This handles edge cases where AI training data doesn't include your brand or doesn't recognise it in this category yet.

Manual brand addition: Type a brand name to add manually. The Message validates category fit. If the brand doesn't typically operate in this category, you'll see a confirmation dialogue. This respects your market knowledge over AI assumptions while preventing accidental wrong-category additions.

Step 2: Select Your Core Brand

Choose which brand you're positioning. This is the brand that will be analysed across all four lenses.

In Cascade Mode: Core brand is locked to your cascade brand. You can't select competitors. This prevents accidentally switching to a competitor mid-analysis. If you try to click another brand, you'll see a warning: "Core brand locked to pitch: [Your Brand]".

Step 3: Upload Positioning Research (Optional)

Upload market research reports, competitive analysis documents, positioning studies, or perceptual maps. The Message extracts positioning data to ground brand placement on the four lenses. Accepted formats: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Max 10MB per file.

Most useful: Perceptual maps, competitive audits, brand tracking studies, consumer perception research.

Step 4: Generate Positioning Maps

Click "GENERATE MAP" to plot all brands across four strategic lenses. Each lens reveals different competitive dynamics and white space opportunities.

Step 5: Analyse and Refine

Review Market Leaders analysis, Strategic Trade-Offs, and generated position statement. Drag brand dots on maps to refine positioning based on your market knowledge. Add Human Sense-Check notes to capture your observations.

Strategic Confidence: Every output shows a confidence score based on AI knowledge, client input quality (uploaded research), and completeness. Hover over the score to see the breakdown. See Quality Indicators for details.

Step 6: Lock & Continue or Save

In Cascade Mode: Click "LOCK & CONTINUE" to save your position statement, trade-offs, and white space analysis, then advance to The Plan. Your positioning becomes the "Opportunity" section of the pitch brief.

In Free Roam: Click "SAVE" to add this positioning analysis to your library without cascading data forward.

White Space vs Viable Space

Not all white space is valuable:

• Empty space: No one is there (but maybe for good reason)
• Viable space: No one is there AND it's credible for this brand AND the audience values it
• Defended space: Someone owns it and will fight to keep it

Output

Each output includes source attribution when based on uploaded documents. Export as Word or PDF using the selective export modal. Choose which sections to include: position statement, white space analysis, all four positioning maps, market leaders, trade-offs, exclusions, and human sense-check notes.

How It Fits The Cascade

The Message sits between The Audience and The Plan:

• Receives: Audience tension from The Audience; sector messaging convention from The Story
• Produces: Position statement and exclusions that define strategic direction
• Feeds into: The Plan (position becomes the Opportunity in the pitch brief)

Best Practices

• Upload positioning research before generating-brand placement quality depends on data grounding
• Use Cascade Mode for client work-core brand lock prevents mid-analysis confusion
• Review all four lenses before finalising position-each reveals different white space
• Pay attention to validation warnings-they flag knowledge gaps or category mismatches
• Use Human Sense-Check to flag positioning that doesn't match your market knowledge
• Don't skip exclusions-they're what make the position defensible
• The exclusions are as important as the position. They make the trade-off explicit.
• Test positions against what competitors would need to sacrifice to copy you.
• If a position doesn't require sacrifice, it lacks strategic value.
• White space is optional - larger brands may choose to occupy existing territory.

Common Mistakes

• Skipping document uploads-positioning maps without research are just AI assumptions
• Using Free Roam when you meant to continue a pitch-you'll lose cascade context
• Ignoring validation warnings-sometimes AI is right about category mismatches
• Adding too many brands to the competitive set-8 is the max for map clarity
• Accepting position statements that could apply to any brand-specificity matters
• Trying to claim multiple positions across different lenses
• Writing position statements that could apply to any brand
• Forgetting to add exclusions - they're what make the position defensible

"The position statement says where you stand. The exclusions say where you won't."