Your Best Customers Are Your Best Creative Brief

Your Best Customers Are Your Best Creative Brief
When I was working on the Minute Rice ® marketing early in the 90’s, the brand had a problem. Many people thought Minute Rice was fake because the rice grains were split in a shrimp-like shape. (In reality, the grains looked that way because the rice was pre-cooked, which is why it cooks so fast.) The brand team before mine had spent a lot of...

AI Agents Are Changing How People Shop

AI Agents Are Changing How People Shop
During a job interview with a well-known over-the-counter (OTC) pharmaceutical company in the 1990s, the brand team shared something that stuck with me: If a consumer tried the generic version of their flagship over-the-counter pain reliever, they considered that customer lost to the brand forever. The reason? In the US, generics and name-brand...

Beers With Peers: Identifying the Unmet Need

Beers With Peers: Identifying the Unmet Need
In the 18 years since Argentum’s founding, I’ve been invited to judge dozens of pitch competitions. When listening to founders pitch their ideas, nothing makes my heart go pitter pat more than hearing a passionate, visionary founder talk about the real unmet need that they have identified and then figured out how to solve better, faster,...

Reasons to Believe – Not Just Blowing Smoke

Reasons to Believe – Not Just Blowing Smoke
In a positioning statement, the Reasons to Believe (RTB) provide the evidence to support the Point of Difference. They’re what stand between your message being a puff piece and being authentic. However, as with so many other things in marketing, people are often tempted to throw the kitchen sink into their RTB’s rather than remaining strategic...

Evolving Value Propositions

Evolving Value Propositions
When you position your product or company, the value proposition is typically grounded in brand fundamentals that are expected to remain core to the business across multiple years. So how and when do you adjust your positioning for normal evolution and growth? What happens when market conditions change so dramatically that they impact your...

Throwdown: So You Think YOUR Service is Differentiated?

Throwdown: So You Think YOUR Service is Differentiated?
Whenever we teach Positioning, someone invariably wants their Point of Difference to be “Exceptional service.” Generally, this is way too generic to be genuinely differentiating. But a remanufactured toner cartridge company we worked with a few years ago was the exception to this rule.  Watch this quick video case study. 

From Positioning to Packaging

From Positioning to Packaging
Situation After buying Amylu Foods in early 2018, the new owner put developing a new logo and revitalizing the packaging high on the brand’s marketing to-do list for the company’s flagship chicken sausage business. Argentum Actions Conducted customer and consumer research to identify core brand equities. Leveraged the research and the...

Is Your Point of Difference a Buried Treasure?

Is Your Point of Difference a Buried Treasure?
Point of Difference (POD) is the proverbial “Big Kahuna” in your positioning statement. It’s the one piece of the statement that should be as distinctive, special and remarkable as possible, without descending into hyperbole, flights of fancy, or even truth-stretching. Not surprisingly, this can also mean that the POD is the...

So You Have a Positioning Statement, Now What? Messaging Matrix.

So You Have a Positioning Statement, Now What? Messaging Matrix.
A few years ago, I was working with the CEO of a fast-growing Bay Area technology start-up. After a recent promotion from CMO, he wanted my help with the company’s messaging since he no longer had the time to lead that project himself. While he wanted to focus solely on messaging, I knew that grounding that messaging in a foundation of...

So You Have a Positioning Statement – Now What? Elevator Pitches.

So You Have a Positioning Statement – Now What? Elevator Pitches.
For fledgling marketers, it’s not always clear how to use a positioning statement beyond on-boarding and grounding creative partners. The good news is that it’s actually a tool that can be used to enhance all of your sales and marketing efforts, not just the classic creative ones like ads and collateral. A great example is using your...