Public RelationsvsBrand Positioning

Public Relations (PR) is the strategic management of a company's public image and narrative. Unlike paid advertising, PR focuses on 'Earned Media'—convincing journalists, influencers, and publications to write about your company organically. PR provides massive third-party credibility that paid ads can never buy.

Brand positioning is the deliberate process of occupying a distinct, highly defensible space in the minds of your target market relative to your competitors. It defines exactly who a product is for, what unique value it provides, and why it is objectively superior to the alternatives.

The most common trap is the 'Self-Serving Press Release.' Sending a massive email blast to 500 journalists stating 'We just launched Version 2.0 of our app' will yield zero coverage. Journalists do not care about your product; they care about stories that serve their readers.

The deadliest trap is the 'Better' trap—positioning a product as simply a faster, cheaper, or slightly more feature-rich version of the market leader. 'Better' is a weak, easily copied position. You do not want to be 'Better'; you want to be 'Different.'

Stop pitching your product features. Pitch a 'News Hook.' Find a larger macroeconomic trend, a surprising data point your company uncovered, or a controversial contrarian opinion your CEO holds, and pitch that narrative to 5 specific journalists who write about that exact topic. Offer them 'exclusive' access to the story.

Write a positioning statement: 'For [target customer] who [statement of need], [your product] is a [product category] that [key benefit], unlike [primary competitor] who [competitor's core weakness].' If you cannot fill in the blanks without sounding generic, your product lacks positioning.