To Brand Your Business Find Your Niche Or My First Lesson in Branding and Positioning

"Frink you got to have a gimmick." That was the advice given to me on how to get women from Andy, one of my college roommates. I didn't realize it at the time and though I was in my third year in college as an advertising major it was my first lesson in branding and positioning.Andy's gimmick was to take on the persona of the "charming hick." Andy was a very bright guy from Beaumont, Texas. He was well read. There were few topics on which he couldn't converse with you. He graduated from The University of Texas with an accounting degree and a 3.5 grade point average. Yet he methodically and consistently over a period of four years cultivated his image as a hick. Why you might ask, would anybody intentionally portray themselves as a "hick". Andy's motivation was what we call in the advertising and marketing industry, "branding" and "positioning".Andy and I were members of a large fraternity at The University of Texas in the mid 1970s. The fraternity from a social stand poin t was our world, a small provincial, pretentious, chauvinistic world. Many of our "brothers" were handsome guys; we called them "face jocks." Even more of them seemed to be from wealthy families. They dressed well and they drove very nice late model automobiles. Being a face jock, dressing well and driving nice cars had its' advantages in the Greek world at The University of Texas in the mid 1970s. The most important advantage of course was with the women. If you had these characteristics you were guaranteed opportunities to date some beautiful sorority girls who might also be from a wealthy family. Yeah the Greek world at The University had some shallow aspects to it. Andy wasn't a face jock. He didn't drive a nice late model car and he didn't appear to be from a wealthy family. Since he couldn't compete in those areas Andy brilliantly identified a strength he could exploit when it came to competing against wealthy "face jocks" for women. Andy developed a "charming hick" pe rsona. Think Andy Griffith as the small town North Carolina sheriff in The Andy Griffit h Show. Andy was good at it. He worked construction during summers in east Texas and enjoyed using the region's accent and some of its' interesting phraseology that he had picked up. His positioning strategy worked. Andy dated more than his share of pretty sorority girls and eventually became engaged to one during his senior year. I wasn't rich or particularly handsome and I had no gimmick as Andy perceptively pointed out. Despite Andy's advice I didn't identify a positioning strategy that I could successfully execute. Therefore my love life was some what of a bust juxtaposed to my roommate the "Charming hick". What's your business' "gimmick" i.e. your position versus your competition?Have you done what Andy did by identifying and exploiting a market niche for yourself? Or are you like I was, without a positioning strategy? If your position is; "low prices", "been in business a long time" or "locally owned and operated" you probably haven't claimed a unique position in t he market place and my advice to you is, "you got to have a gimmick."