The Onlyness Test

"Onlyness" is by far the most powerful test of a strategic position. Brands need strong positioning because customers have choices—if you don’t stand out, you lose. I wrote a little book about this, called ZAG. It says that to win the positioning game, you have to answer one simple question: What makes you the “only”?


You'll soon see that answering this question is far from easy. One way to approach it is to think about why your brand matters. At our company, we take our clients through a series of steps to discover what makes them the only, which is nothing less than a journey to the core of their business. Remember, you can’t advertise your way to onliness—you have to start with it.

For your next strategy meeting, use the slide above to get the conversation going about what makes you the only. You’ll be surprised how quickly you start talking about the things that really matter.

This simple test isn’t the only way to find a powerful position in the market, but no matter how you get there, if you can’t say why your brand is both different and compelling in a few words, don’t fix your positioning statement…fix your company.