From brand positioning to ad positioning: Using ‘mental referencing’ to capture meaningful mind-space for communications

Positioning is all about creating impressions of a brand in the mind of the consumer – the same ends that advertising seeks to achieve. Until now, the applications of positioning theory have largely been limited to crafting brand strategies. This is because there is no formal model that can stipulate how the principles of positioning should be applied to the creative process with the aim of creating memorable and persuasive communications. This paper seeks to address this issue by outlining a concept called ad positioning – one that can be used specifically for positioning advertisements in the minds of the audience using the process of ‘mental referencing’. After defining the concept, a step-by-step process on how to use ad positioning for designing communications is described, along with the expected benefits of utilising an integrated positioning framework in brand management. Throughout the paper, examples of existing advertisements are used to demonstrate how mental referencing is practically utilised. A conclusion is then drawn that shows that a number of effective advertisements that have withstood the test of time can be strongly linked to the technique of mental referencing – thus showing the potential advantages of using the ad positioning technique.