IT IS not uncommon for people to equate more with better. The wealthier we are, the better off are our lives. The more working experience we acquire, the more in demand are our services. The bigger a company we work for, the better are the working conditions. While in general, more is better, there is a specific area in business, in particular, marketing, where more is detrimental and less is advantageous.

We are referring to positioning - the art of designing the distinctive place or image that a brand should occupy in a customer's mind. A good positioning specifies the essence of the brand and what it stands for, so that when a customer is looking for a particular product benefit, the brand that comes to mind is that which occupies the particular mental niche expressing that feature or benefit.

While this may seemingly suggest that the more mental niches or benefits that a brand occupies, the better off it will be, it is erroneous. Brands that claim to provide numerous benefits, though true, are setting themselves up for disappointment. How so?

Take for example, a car. It can be positioned on a host of benefits - safety, sporty, well engineered, roomy, fuel efficiency and so on. If a car were to position say on three or four benefits, it has to allocate its resources across these multiple benefits. Its communication to the public has to incorporate them. Its R&D has to hone these several features to ensure that indeed, the brand continues to provide a superior offering on these benefits. Its pricing must reflect, in a consistent manner, these benefits.

This is easier said than done. Given the competitive clutter, it is extremely challenging to be remembered by customers on one benefit, let alone four. Engaging an all-encompassing positioning is not only a strain on scarce resources, but it also muddles up what the brand stands for. Customers become confused as they see one communication that suggests the car is safe, another opining about its engines, and yet another about its spaciousness. The brand identity becomes diffused as different messages are communicated regarding what the brand stands for. R&D is stretched to ensure that the car does well on these multiple features. Eventually, trying to be everything can end up being nothing.

One example of this is Porsche. Porsche initially positioned itself as a sports car known for its German engineering. However, this positioning was not well communicated to its audience. Instead, some of its communication messages had tongue-in-cheek sexual innuendos featuring scantily-clad models. With the engineering message not well entrenched in customers' minds and confusion with the mischievous sexy image, people began to create their own opinion of what Porsche stood for. The positioning of Porsche began to take a life of its own. Some people mentally envisioned Porsche as a fast sports car; others viewed it as a car for playboys and picking up girls; and yet others saw it as a car for the wealthy to flaunt. The result is a mixed-up impression of what the essence of Porsche is. It took Porsche a long time to re-position itself as a well-engineered sports car and away from the playboy image that it once evoked.

In contrast, Volvo has consistently been harping on its safety feature in its ads. By and large, Volvo's ads communicated its safety record targeted at the safety-conscious driver. By focusing on only one benefit, it has been able to strongly entrench itself as a safe car. If you ask people what first comes to mind when they think of Volvo, most invariably say safety or variations of safety such as toughness and dependability. Hence, when a customer wants to buy a car that is safe for his family, the image of Volvo appears and the car is in his evoke set. This is when less is more. By focusing on one benefit and ensuring that its communication consistently and singularly supports it, a brand reaps a strong association with that benefit. The brand springs to mind whenever a customer is looking for that benefit it is strongly associated with.

However, there is a potential problem that marketers need to be mindful of - overpositioning. This occurs when a brand is entrenched too narrowly on a particular feature or benefit that it restricts potential growth. For example, say, Starbucks is overpositioned as a place that sells coffee. This means that consumers, by and large, associate Starbucks with coffee and not other beverages or other food items. If a consumer is thinking of having tea or some light snack, Starbucks does not readily come to mind as it is overpositioned too narrowly as a coffee place. In truth, Starbucks also sells tea and snacks. It would have lost sales from such tea/snack occasions.

While less is more, marketers should be mindful of restricting its brand too narrowly in consumer's mindset.

The writer is an associate professor in marketing at the NUS Business School. She specialises in consumer behaviour, advertising and branding