Position Your Brand for Where the Puck will Be, Not Where It Is

I am looking forward to a trip in a few weeks to Toronto, one of my favorite (favourite, if you're Canadian or British) cities. I lived in Toronto for about 10 1/2 years. Great city! Vibrant, multi-cultural, young, wealthy, clean.... Somehow, though, this great city north of the border did a lousy job marketing itself.

When the Canadian dollar was cheap compared to the U.S. dollar (as low as $.59 at one time), Toronto had the brilliant idea to market itself as a cheap place for Americans to visit. "Come see us. We're cheap, have great theatre and restaurants, and you can buy all you want at basically half the price". Things worked well. Americans flocked to Toronto and shopped and went to theatre and had a great time.

Then, the Canadian dollar (called the Loonie in Canada) began to strengthen compared to the U.S. dollar. Up it climbed until it was nearly at par. As of today it is about $.93, or about equal to the U.S. dollar. What happened? You guessed it, Americans stopped visiting. Toronto was no longer cheap.

So, here sits a great city--the equal or better than any city we have in the U.S., and Americans don't visit because they do not know about all of the attributes that could have been part of the positioning of the city. So, off they go to Chicago, San Francisco and New York--cities as or more expensive than Toronto, but cities that have billed themselves all along as places you need to see.

Too bad the marketing geniuses in Toronto didn't follow their Canadian son Wayne Gretzky. When the "Great One" was asked what made him so great, he answered: "I skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is".

I use the Gretzky quote with every company I work with. It is a great marketing strategy. The Toronto dilemma is repeated in way too many companies that develop a positioning with brand attributes and associations that are wonderful for a time, only to find themselves in the wrong place when the market forces change.

It is important to think forward and to make market force analysis a part of the brand process. Will the attributes and associations hold up and be differentiating and desirable if things change? Don't just position against the market as it is; position against the market as it might be.