Narrator: In 2007, a man stood in a busy Washington, D.C. subway station and began to play the violin. For 45 minutes, he performed some of the most intricate and beautiful pieces ever written, on an instrument worth over three million dollars. Over a thousand people rushed past him on their morning commute. Only a handful stopped to listen. He collected just over $32. The man was Joshua Bell, one of the world's most acclaimed classical musicians, who regularly sells out concert halls where a single ticket can cost hundreds of dollars. So what went wrong? The talent was world-class, but the context was all wrong. In the subway, he wasn’t a virtuoso; he was just another street performer. This experiment powerfully illustrates the central argument of April Dunford's book, Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It. Dunford argues that the best product in the world will fail if it's positioned in the wrong context, and she provides a systematic process to ensure your product’s value is not just seen, but is obviously awesome to the right people.

Narrator: Most companies mistakenly believe positioning is about creating a clever tagline or a mission statement. Dunford argues this is a critical error. Positioning is the foundational context that helps customers understand what a product is, who it’s for, and why they should care. It’s the opening scene of a movie that sets the stage for everything that follows. Without that context, customers are left confused.

Consider a baker who sets out to make the world’s greatest chocolate cake. By deciding the product is "cake," they've already made critical business decisions. The competitors are other bakeries, the price is set by the cake market, and the target buyers are people looking for desserts. But what if, through experimentation, the baker creates a small, single-serving, portable treat? If they continue to position it as "cake," it seems strange. But if they reposition it as a "muffin," the context shifts entirely. Now, the competitors are coffee shops, the price point changes, and the target buyer is someone looking for a quick breakfast. The product itself didn't change, but the context—its positioning—transformed the entire business.

This is why Dunford argues that the traditional positioning statement exercise, a fill-in-the-blanks template common in business schools, is fundamentally broken. It assumes you already know the answers and reinforces the status quo. As one of Dunford's stories from her time at IBM illustrates, these statements often become an exercise in "malicious compliance," where a team fills out a form that gets filed away and is never used again, having no real impact on the business. True positioning is not about writing a sentence; it's about deliberately choosing the market context where your product’s strengths can shine.

Narrator: The traditional approach to positioning often starts with the product's features or a list of competitors. Dunford flips this on its head. The process, she insists, must begin with your best-fit customers. These are the "ecstatic fans" who not only buy your product but love it, use it enthusiastically, and recommend it to others. They intuitively understand its value, often in ways the creators themselves haven't fully grasped.

Dunford shares a story of a company struggling to find a clear pattern in their customer feedback. Surveys of their entire user base yielded muddy, inconsistent results. Frustrated, they decided to try a new approach: they surveyed only their most ecstatic fans. Suddenly, a crystal-clear pattern emerged. This small group of customers shared a specific set of characteristics and valued a particular aspect of the product that the company had previously overlooked.

This insight became the new anchor for their positioning. The company realized that their goal wasn't to please everyone; it was to find more prospects who looked just like their happiest customers. By focusing their sales and marketing on companies with those specific characteristics, their growth accelerated. The answer wasn't in a brainstorming session or a competitive analysis spreadsheet; it was waiting to be discovered in the real-world experience of their most passionate users.

Narrator: Companies often have a myopic view of competition, focusing only on direct rivals with similar feature sets. However, a customer’s view is much broader. For positioning, the only opinion that matters is the customer's. Dunford argues that you must identify your "competitive alternatives," which are defined by a simple question: What would your best customers do or use if your solution didn't exist?

The answer is often surprising. It might be a direct competitor, but it could also be a manual process using a spreadsheet, hiring an intern, or simply doing nothing at all.

In one powerful example, a startup Dunford worked with had built a specialized database. When they went into sales meetings, they positioned themselves as a database company. The first question they always got was, "So how are you better than Oracle?" It was a battle they couldn't win. They didn't have the features or brand recognition to compete head-to-head. But when they asked customers what they would use as an alternative, customers didn't name other databases. They named business intelligence tools and data warehouses. The startup realized they weren't in the database market; they were in the data analysis market. By repositioning themselves as a "data warehouse," they instantly escaped the shadow of Oracle and entered a context where their unique strength—rapid data analysis—was the most important feature.

Narrator: Once you understand what customers compare you to, the next step is to isolate your unique attributes—your "secret sauce." These are the features and capabilities you have that the alternatives do not. However, features by themselves are meaningless to a customer. A "patented fuzzy logic algorithm" sounds impressive, but it doesn't sell a product.

Value is created when you connect that unique attribute to a tangible benefit that helps a customer achieve a goal. The process looks like this: * Attribute: What your product has/does that is unique. (e.g., "Our frame is made of all-metal construction.") * Benefit: What that feature enables for the customer. (e.g., "The frame is stronger and more durable.") * Value: The tangible, quantifiable outcome for the customer. (e.g., "You will save $50,000 a year on frame replacements.")

Customers don't buy features; they buy outcomes. They don't care about your all-metal frame. They care about saving $50,000. Dunford stresses that this value must be provable. Your opinion of your value doesn't count; the opinion of customers, reviewers, and experts does. Strong positioning is built on a foundation of unique attributes that deliver demonstrable value to a specific set of customers.

Narrator: With a clear understanding of your value, you must choose a market frame of reference. Dunford outlines three primary strategies, with one being particularly powerful for startups and challengers: the "Big Fish, Small Pond" approach. Instead of taking on an established market leader head-to-head, you aim to dominate a well-defined subsegment of the market where the leader is weak.

The story of Janna Systems is a masterclass in this strategy. In the late 1990s, they were a small CRM startup competing against the goliath, Siebel Systems. They were consistently dismissed as a "cheaper, crappier Siebel." Their product had a unique feature for modeling complex relationships between people, but most customers didn't care. Then, a breakthrough came in a meeting with an investment bank. The bankers' eyes lit up; that one feature was exactly what they needed to manage their complex deal networks.

Janna Systems made a bold move. They stopped being "enterprise CRM" and repositioned themselves as "CRM for investment banks." They tailored their entire sales and marketing approach to this niche. Their revenue exploded from $2 million to over $70 million in eighteen months. They became such a threat in that lucrative pond that Siebel eventually acquired them for $1.7 billion. They didn't win by being a better Siebel; they won by being the best solution for a specific market that Siebel had overlooked.

Narrator: The final, optional step in Dunford's process is to layer a relevant trend on top of your positioning. A trend doesn't define your market, but it can answer the question, "Why is this important right now?"

Redgate Software, a profitable but "boring" company selling database tools, provides a perfect example. Their customers were development teams, and they noticed the rising trend of DevOps—a movement to accelerate software delivery. They saw that while everyone was talking about DevOps, the role of the database was being ignored. Redgate seized this opportunity. They began weaving "database DevOps" into their positioning, creating content and training their sales team to speak about how managing the database was a critical, overlooked part of any successful DevOps transformation.

The result was a 100% increase in inbound leads. Their tools hadn't changed, but by connecting them to a powerful trend, they made their "boring" products feel strategic, urgent, and cool. However, Dunford warns this must be done carefully. A trend that doesn't align with your core value will only create confusion. As the disastrous launch of "Bic for Her" pens showed, a subsegment without a real, unmet need is just a gimmick. It's better to be successful and boring than fashionable and bewildering.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Obviously Awesome is that positioning is not a dark art or a matter of luck; it is a deliberate, methodical process that anyone can learn. Great positioning is rarely the default. It requires stepping back, challenging your own assumptions, and seeing your product through your customers' eyes. It means understanding that your product is not doomed to languish in a market where nobody understands its value. It can be moved.

The ultimate challenge Dunford leaves us with is to honestly assess our own work. Is our product's value truly obvious to the people we want to serve? Or are we, like Joshua Bell, a world-class talent playing our hearts out in a subway station, hoping that someone in the rushing crowd will stop long enough to recognize the masterpiece in front of them? With a deliberate approach to positioning, we can choose to walk off the subway platform and onto the concert hall stage, where our value is finally understood.