Positioning: How to be chosen in the AI era

Speaker 0 · 0:00

Welcome to the Media Unfiltered podcast. I'm joined by Paul Levins. He's the founder and chief positioning engineer of Version. Paul has had a fabulous career working brand side for Vodafone, held senior agency positions, and worked globally in ad tech. And now he's working on positioning. Positioning is about how you are perceived in the market by stakeholders, and today's conversations get centered on why this matters for a company, your branding, and indeed, in a personal capacity, in an industry dominated by a lot of noise and samey content driven by AI. Okay, Paul. Hello. How are you doing, mate? Justin, it has been a little while. It's a pleasure to catch up. My friend. It is a pleasure. It is it is... It's brilliant to do this, actually, because I've obviously been seeing, a lot of your writing online, and you're talking a lot about AI and positioning. And I I think I think the best way to start is is what is that all about? What are people doing right? What are people doing wrong? And just explain, you know, exactly sort of the area of business that you're currently operating in at the moment. That's just like the world's biggest question you've just opened up with. Thank you.

Speaker 1 · 1:07

So much. Should we start off with kinda what is positioning, I guess? Mhmm. Because it's... Honestly, I spend... I I spend probably, like, half my time kind of, educating slash inspiring, but educating on what positioning actually is. Because so many people think it's messaging kind of on on one side, which, you know, is about... That's copywriting, and that's kind of distinctive language. But positioning is is a little different. It's a strategic capability, and it's a business capability. It... I've, through the work in... That I do now with version as a kind of positioning studio, as a specialist b two b positioning, company for data and technology businesses. Right? That's kinda my back. I've I've looked to take positioning out of where it was previously kinda seen as a kinda marketing discipline, lower kind of... You know, more executional into something which basically now sits with the CEO and founder as a capability for the business. So my definition, which I've kinda worked on over time, and I'm really happy with it now, it's the translation of the business you wanna become. So business strategy, business capabilities, the translation of the business you wanna become into the differentiated context with which you'll be chosen. Now there's kinda, like, ways that we can unpack that a little bit. But what you've got in the middle then is this kind of this translation, a kinda catalyzing event from business strategy into context. And it's that context that people... They... It's it's how they choose you. Right? It's how they see you in terms of what category you belong to, how they frame you against competition, how they see you against the problem that you solve, the value you create that's unique to you, the way that you deliver that value, and the customers with which you kind of... You know, that you're solving that problem for. So that differentiated context is usually embedded within the business strategy. You kind of... You know, I'm I'm working with a few clients at the moment, and I get very good, very clear business strategies to work from. But business strategies are inherently kinda internally focused, team, board level, kind of board audience, and so on like that. You know, five pillars, that kind of thing. This is all about go to market context. This is about customer facing. It's also about kinda directing your teams, sales, marketing, and products, to become aligned and understanding very clearly about what you do, but then doing that with the customer in mind. So it's a kinda... It's a discipline that I've... You know, I I don't find many people do very well.

Speaker 0 · 4:05

Mhmm.

Speaker 1 · 4:06

HubSpot did some research recently, which, they analyzed, like, a a number of... A good proportion, a good number of, b two b businesses generally across, kinda different industries, software, I think, mainly. And something like half of all businesses operate without documented positioning. So if you think about, you know, what positioning is, this foundational strategy about choosing what you wanna go to market as, how you wanna be seen and perceived, if you're doing that on the fly, that's just, like, insane. And half of all businesses are doing that, which is kinda crazy.

Speaker 0 · 4:47

It is kinda crazy. So so so, basically, if I was to to sort of crystallize this in a simple form, you've got teams and businesses who have a view of themselves internally. But, ultimately, what you're trying to show them is how you're viewed externally and how to sort of change that and

Speaker 1 · 5:03

manage that throughout the entire organization. Is that is that a fair summary? I think that's not a bad summary. Yeah. That context, that differentiated context is Yeah. So, so important with how people make choices. Make choices to... Within the b to b world, you know, like nine month b to b selling processes, 13 or so different stakeholders, I think, on average within those selling processes. Right? Mhmm. You selling processes. Right? Mhmm. You need you need to be able to set that context for why you're on the shortlist. Right? What... To get to the shortlist, first of all, right, to be considered, which is where you get into interesting points about, like, humans and machines with AI discovery kind of, like, being used so heavily to create shortlists. You know, you need that context, which is out online, which says, you know, you create value that addresses that specific problem. And, you know, within the context of that, you need to be seen as competitive and different against a set of customers and that you deliver value in a different way to them.

Speaker 0 · 6:09

Mhmm. When you when you do this, I imagine you're doing research by talking to, the businesses that you're working for, their clients and their customers. Do you often see a massive discrepancy of how they are viewed internally or how they how they think they are viewed to to what their to what their clients see? Like, what... Give me an example of what is... What you hear. Without revealing without revealing the companies, you wanna embarrass them. No.

Speaker 1 · 6:32

It's pretty natural as well because, like, we all have personal blind spots, right, and our own kind of personal positioning as well online and whatever. Right? We kinda think we're seen as x and people see us as y. It's exactly the same for businesses. And I think it's, again, thinking about positioning as a strategic capability. Right? So it's a deliberate act. It's a deliberate choice to be known for x, y, or zed. And Mhmm. We were we were talking about this earlier that it's... There's something called a bowling pin strategy, which is, Geoffrey Moore crossing the cabin... Chasm. Right? And it is about saying yes to one thing and no to, like, nine other things. And Mhmm. That very... That clarity of choice about that's the value that I'm going to solve for and it's gonna be relevant against that competitive set, that's the clarity that makes the difference internally because people can rally behind that, understand it, and then be able to communicate it as they go to market, sales, marketing, product. And that's how customers will understand you more easily and choose you within this kind of competitive world. Right? The wonders of AI have made starting a business, building products, producing content really, really easy now. G two, the review site, has 200,000 software vendors on it, 15,000 MarTech vendors, 12,000 ad tech vendors. Right? Mhmm. Any... And you and I know ad tech incredibly well. Right? Yep. All of those businesses need to stand out within that cluttered environment. They need to claim which category they sit in within ad tech. Right? They need to be clear about their capabilities, not as features, because everybody lists out features, but the value they create. And they need to be really, really clear with, with, you know, who they compete against. Because it's, you know, as a DSP, it is an an obvious one. Right? Like, Magnite is all about video as an example. Whereas, you know, the... Another DSP might be, like, display orientated. So Mhmm. Even at that very rudimentary example, right, you're you're immediately making clarity for the customer in terms of, like, who to be seen against, who to choose against, and so on.

Speaker 0 · 8:57

Well, you see, they might have got their positioning wrong there, Magnite, because they're actually... I'd describe them as an SSP. So you can see the confusion is,

Speaker 1 · 9:05

is already present on this on this podcast. That could be my knowledge of, the ad tech industry as well, but let's not go there. Actually, we're gonna talk about ad tech.

Speaker 0 · 9:13

Let's tell tell me in the ad tech world with this positioning. Who do you think is getting it right? And tell me why, and who do you think is getting it wrong? And, again, explain why. Oh, that's like a horrible question. I'm gonna You you didn't come on here you didn't come on here to talk about AI cats and dogs. So let's Well let's get to the real point here. I just thought we'd have a lovely chat about, I mean, you know, the world in... No.

Speaker 1 · 9:35

So I'll give you some examples of people that I've worked with. And that's not about kind of blowing smoke of my own, so to speak. Mhmm. But where where I've seen the change from bad positioning, let's say, to good positioning and what that can actually do. Mhmm. So couple of businesses that, come to mind. So Compliant, if you know the Compliant guys that just, recently got acquired by PubX. Mhmm. So they have a, a privacy signal that they capture, which is about the compliance of publisher websites in, in, you know, delivering privacy compliant, at a consent level and a privacy level, right, on the on the website. And Yeah. That as a proxy for high quality media and high quality audiences. You know, I I think if I'm... I don't wanna speak, you know, on behalf of the client as well. I'm, you know, very conscious of kind of of that. But that that message wasn't resonating as well and as effectively as as it could have done. And I think one of the reasons that we deduced through that project work was because they didn't really have a home as a as a category to claim as their own. Mhmm. So within the work that we did there, we created the data integrity category as such. Mhmm. Category... You know, building categories and and, you know, making them live and breathe is a really, really hard thing. So I don't wanna overclaim here either. But being able to speak to the nature of data integrity and what that meant... What that inferred about the signal and what that inferred in terms of how and where they sat alongside other competitors like Double Verify or Integral within that verification space. So Mhmm. Immediately, they're like a a media quality signal as part of a set of quality signals that people could understand when framed around, like, data integrity as a bit of language. Mhmm. And all credit to the guys, at Compliant. They went and took that all the way through to go to market, worked with, like, World Federation of Advertisers on data integrity reporting, had it as a measurement, or part of the way that they, measured quality within their business as well. So with... Embedded within their product as well. And it worked incredibly well, hence the acquisition by by PubX just recently, which was, like, two years down the line. It's really strong.

Speaker 0 · 12:23

Yeah. It's great. Do do you find a lot of, like, CEO and founders? And I... I've I've sort of experienced this. We we we sort of work with a particular way. We we we... So we... We've got blinders on because we know this is what we're doing. And then you come in and say, well, actually, the market views you this way, and they just can't believe it. Do you see that quite a bit as well? They just go, how does the market view us like this? This is the way we operate. Do you see that as a as a as a massive sort of, like, problem when you come into a business? Kind of like a... Yeah.

Speaker 1 · 12:53

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little a little bit. I think most people hire me when they know they've got a positioning issue. And and it doesn't always have to be negative. Right? So there are some incredibly positive reasons to reposition your business. Say, for example, when you've gone through m and a, when you, are entering a new market, you've got a new product. So your product roadmap, you need to kind of, like, allow for that within your positioning because it changes the constitution of what you... You know, with the value you create. So there's some really positive reasons, but the the other signals are kind of like alarm bells, like internal alignment that we spoke about earlier. Right? So where the CEO and leadership team can see that, the go to market teams are either saying different things or completely disagree about how to speak about the business and how to talk about the value they create. Or, yeah, like, suddenly churn is going high or sales cycles are lengthening out because there's not that urgency as to why to choose that business. Mhmm. The commercial signals are there. They're very often kind of mistaken for, like, you know, we need to just get more sales meetings in. Right? But, actually, this is why it's kinda really important to always be... Kinda always be positioning your business, ultimately. There's, there's a company called Lovable, which, you know, is the vibe coding, app, kind of, you know, huge business. It's gone, like, from zero to whatever in terms of billions of revenue. Because of their expectations from their customers, they, their head of growth went on record as saying they reposition their business every ninety days, which is as I went... I... And I... With the positioning work I do, I tend to kind of do a project based kind of first, deliverable of work. Mhmm. But then then revisit on a cyclical basis to make sure that my clients are up to date with Mhmm. The market. So as a competitor change, as an example, right, have customer expectations changed in terms of, like, the problem that's being solved? Has the business fundamentally changed in terms of what it does, capabilities, roadmap, m and a, etcetera, etcetera? So that you're always, like, you're always versioning, positioning like software. Think of it like major minor patch in that way. Right? So you Mhmm. I take a business from version one to version two of themselves based on their business strategy. But you will... You'll need version two point one and two point two in the near future as your business grows and matures in positive ways or if, you know, if the market context changes as well.

Speaker 0 · 15:47

Okay. So I'm gonna give you a project, see if you can do. You don't know this, and the audience have to understand that we have not prepared this in in any shape or form. So you don't know you're gonna get this question, but I am gonna have myself repositioned in the market. I think I need a refresh. How would you reposition

Speaker 1 · 16:03

me, Paul? And can I just add on on this question, right, I? I've been getting this quite a lot recently because Have you? What Damn it. I thought that was... I thought I was being original. No. No. No. No. What you've just pointed at is a is a market need. And so what... So I'm a I'm a b to b positioning expert. Right? I've done 50 odd projects now within ad tech and media space and and beyond in... With data and technology businesses. So I've got a process and frameworks and principles about positioning that is b to b orientated, business orientated. Right? Mhmm. However, if you look online in LinkedIn, right, the amount of individuals out there that kind of, you know, profuse about personal branding and so on like that, that's basically how you show up. That's like writing a post or, like, the language you might use from a kinda, like, a messaging point of view. Actually, the more important thing to get right, first of all, for anybody that's considering kind of how they should turn up online is what do they stand for. And if you think about the same kind of work that I've spoken about with businesses, it's the same for people. So positioning for people is actually a thing I'm kind of looking at right now in terms of Alright. What I can do and there's a process for that. Because Mhmm. Think of it as the same. Right? What's the market that you want to address and be known for in? Mhmm. Who do you wanna be chosen by? Is it like, a headhunter, HR leads in a particular company, or is it like... You know, do you wanna be chosen by an investor as an example, which is totally different? So who... What... Why do they gonna... Why are they gonna choose you? What makes you different versus your competition? Who is your competition? Right? Is it, you know, if if it's for you as being, you know, an incredible, event, curator and host, you'll compete against Mark Ritson or or another kind of, like, high profile, you know, well versed industry expert. That's kinda where I'd put you. Now positioning you against Ritson is really interesting. Right? Because you're in the nicest way possible. Like, Ritson's probably a high ticket kind of item as an Super famous. Super credible, super famous, super well known. Right? Super expensive, v s two. Super expensive. Right? So if you position yourself against Ritson with a clear difference in the way that you would deliver that service, so you'd be different to him. So he'd come as a marketing professor, let's say, and talk about the academics of marketing and the way that value is created. Right? You could come with knowledge, from maybe more insider industry, kind of like, I know ad tech, and I know martech, and Mhmm. I know CEOs and founders and the challenges of building businesses and growing businesses from that context. So the framing of the category that you're in, who you wanna be chosen by, your competitive set, I always think competition within positioning is the most interesting thing because, ultimately, positioning is about difference. It's about being seen as different. Not better, but Yeah. Different. And that's, like, really, really important part about positioning. So I think this kind of positioning for people thing is a nice... I think is a nice nice nice route I might kind of flow down if I ever have another day in my eight day week.

Speaker 0 · 19:54

It's very interesting, response to that. And, I just think from from my side, I've never been... Never even thought about it in that context. I just, I'm interested in three or four areas, and I just... That's just what I write about, to be honest with you. There's there's no strategy of who I'm targeting, what I'm trying to say, who I'm trying to say it to, and what I'm trying to achieve is the truth of it. I get asked that all the time. What's your goal? And my goal is to just to just comment on the things that... I'm very fortunate that I can actually reflect on the things in the industry that I care about, and that's all I talk about, really. And do you know what... The same... The example

Speaker 1 · 20:29

going back to b two b and positioning and what you see with a lot of CEOs and founders, particularly founders that are product driven. Right? They tend to kind of, like, love getting their hands dirty on the tech and so on like that. They come with an inherent belief that the product is is is king, and the product and the best product always wins. Right? Mhmm. So, you know, the parallel for people is, like, you wanna post about or write about and be known for things that you like because that's, you know, personal to you. The parallel for business is, I I wanna talk about my product and features and how fucking great it is. But but that's not what gets you chosen. So really being able to make that leap from products or technology, which is part of the business strategy into go to market context is, like, what it's all about.

Speaker 0 · 21:21

Yeah. And not to reveal too many names, but both of us have, have worked for a business. I think that suffered from that a little bit. And, I think... So it's very interesting that you have that perspective. So I guess just just to just to wrap this up, I guess the the... When you talk about differentiation and, standing out from the crowd, I guess a large part... Problem we've got now is is AI and its ability to create all this all this content. Right? You got a lot of stats about this. There's a similarity, I guess, of what people are saying because ultimately, we have all these AI tools who can who can create this this sort of noise. Don't know what else. Is it... Yeah. Okay. So what's Yeah. It's it. What do people what do people do about that? Like... Because because obviously, you wanna use these tools to to help with efficiency. But Yeah. Does it also create a problem where we all sound the same? And and and when it comes to a business as well, you read them. And I've been on websites before and gone through product pages, and I do it all the time. I'm going, fuck. I have no idea what you do. Like, this is, it goes back to that sort of elevator pitch, isn't it? How long you're in elevator for? Can you explain what your business does? But are you seeing that in the real world, and what do companies do about that?

Speaker 1 · 22:24

Yeah. And there there are some really interesting data points on this. So we spoke about competitive intensity earlier. Right? Mhmm. 200,000 software vendors on g two as an example. Right? Yeah. And that's because it's really, really easy to to start a business and build a business or build products, let's say. The same is with content. It's really, really easy to produce content, but attention has remained the same. If not, I... People's attention is declining over time. And then, yes, that's... You know, we've got these incredible tools that allow us to produce content and and get it out there, you know, conveyor belt style. But AI is flattening content. And so what I mean by that, there's studies out there which say... Which have... So the study in question... I can't remember the, the author, but it was an academic, study between OpenAI and DeepSeek. And so one is obviously American, one's Chinese. So two different models created in two different, you know, parts of the world trained differently, on the Internet and whatever other sources they throw at it. Yeah. Yet fed with an identical prompt and an identical task of a product description for, an iPhone case. The two models produced, an output that was 80% similar. So Mhmm. 80% similar is kinda crazy. Right? Mhmm. There was some research done recently with, b to b marketers, which, I think it was something like 69% of b to b marketers feel the the noise, but also the quality, the low quality of content that's being produced at the moment is making their job harder and more difficult. So this is, this is a real thing. And, and, you know, is there a kind of silver bullet to it? I don't know. But I think I think the answer is, as with positioning, in terms of making a choice, like a hard choice about what you wanna be seen to do, as with your brand, in terms of being distinctive, being recognized, within a market. Zig, when everybody else is zagging, ultimately, would probably be my my advice. So, you know, produce content that is human, ultimately, right, and seen as human. But in that sense, right, AI, unless incredibly well prompted, will take you to the average. Yeah. Yeah. You can get good responses out of it. Right? But you have to do... You have to... Your zig when everybody else is zagging is in the prompting and is in the questioning and the interrogation of it and forcing it into a corner almost to produce something that's different. I I think the same is with, like, you know, human skills and human writing and creativity. It's just with the right with the right approach and with the right kinda outcome in mind, you can get to something, like, really, really interesting as a point of view, or as a kind of, you know, a different kind of destination, I guess.

Speaker 0 · 25:36

I totally agree. The human element is is is absolutely essential, I think, because there's far too far... Like, I I don't know about Aziz, but my LinkedIn feed is full of garbage mostly, and you can tell it's just AI generated nonsense. And I I... I've run events for twenty plus years. I've been involved in, obviously, the future TV series, which was acquired, obviously, by Ad Wanted and then MadFest as well. And I find I find it very hard to find people who are willing to be up the stage to have an opinion. So it's not just the human element, but it's also having an opinion, a viewpoint. Exactly.... To obviously buy some buy some data, but, like, being willing to share it and put it out there in order for to to learn from other people and to see what they think and say, you don't you don't get much of that. So just just to just to cap this off, I think there's lots of learnings here, by the way, for personal brands and for businesses, which is fantastic. So you're gonna write a book. I did... I didn't see you as a... As an author type,

Speaker 1 · 26:31

to be honest, and we've known you as a read into that, Justin. Well,

Speaker 0 · 26:35

I've known you for ten years plus. You think I can write that?

Speaker 1 · 26:38

Well,

Speaker 0 · 26:39

I I think it's a different breed. I think it's a different breed. I didn't say you couldn't write. With the help of AI, I think you'll make a I think you'll make a great author. Let me let me let me attack this kind of question in two different ways. So I haven't even asked the question yet. I haven't even asked the question yet. Can I just just to

Speaker 1 · 26:55

give you my own answer? Okay. Gorman. Yeah. Gorman. Well, I am actually a published author. So Okay. So to to share I'll take it back. I'll take it back. I I have just published a children's picture book, which has been two years in the making. I've seen that. Yeah. The Diplodocus Who Couldn't Focus, is about celebrating neurodiversity in kids. It's there for parents, to be able to read with their kids and and to be able to talk about... Like, in this instance, the lead character kinda gets distracted and focused exactly like my kid who is diagnosed with autism. Mhmm. So, yeah, that was that was... That's been, an incredible process to kinda bring to life and bring to market. So that's available on Amazon and and leading, you know, good retailers, good bookshop retailers, as well as my own website, come and find me, where you can buy it direct from me. But I do also have a, a publishing contract for a positioning book, which, which I I need to write. It's a double edged sword of being so busy with building version and doing, you know, 50 or so projects, positioning projects. But what that's actually allowed me to do... Kind of starting a business is like having a thesis, right, and having an opinion and a point of view, exactly what you were saying about kind of being human. Right? And then I've been able to, finesse and improve and perfect that process over time. So I I actually feel in a really, really good place to to write this book now. I got a really clear idea about what positioning is, what is different, why I'm different, what my difference is within the kind of market for positioning. And, yeah, my publisher wants me to write this book really fast. So I'm gonna get 40,000 words down over Christmas. That's my plan. January Okay. December, January. Okay. So it's coming out coming out in the new year? I reckon I reckon, typically, for getting a book to market, it's about a year if you kind of allow for, all of the work to be done with the the publisher and promotion and stuff like that. So I reckon, yeah, if we fast track it, it might be like November this time next

Speaker 0 · 29:15

year. Okay, Paul. Well, I look forward to that, and I'm sure I will, amplify the book when it comes out. I I appreciate your time today. It's been a really interesting chat. Cheers, mate.

Speaker 1 · 29:25

No worries. Always a pleasure.