Positioning is subtraction
In defense of radical simplicity
It is a superpower to communicate simply.
And that superpower is becoming much more valuable because AI has made adding more ideas effortless.
MORE MOOREE MOOOREEE MOOOOOOORRRRRREEEEEEE!
And guess what? Buyers tune most of it out.
Back in 2024, Sam Altman said OpenAI was already generating about 100 billion words every day.
I don’t need to remind anyone how much more at-scale AI is 2 years later.
The buyer’s brain has not expanded to accommodate all of this.
It’s just getting hit with more.
April Dunford recently expressed the point beautifully:
I commented that it disappoints me that the late positioning old timers aren’t around to see their prediction become truer by the year.
Ries and Trout first published Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind in 1981.
The 2nd chapter was called:
They wrote about an overcommunicated society where companies were already struggling to reach overwhelmed buyers.
That was in 1981.
I wasn’t even born yet.
MTV launched that summer, and the first video it played was “Video Killed the Radio Star” which feels almost too perfect.
None of these are new problems.
But FUCK have they gotten worse.
In my client work, the first step is taking a full inventory of everything that already exists (and this is where things have changed a lot since ~2023).
Even teams of 1 or 2 people now have so much stuff.
Landing pages + old positioning docs + too many feature pages + random email sequences + sales 1-pagers + a million other half finished ideas.
I’m not saying they’re directionless, but they definitely are overbuilt.
To borrow from Arnie:
What I end up doing in positioning work is pruning an English garden that’s been allowed to grow 100x beyond its intended shape, and turning it into a French garden.
It’s good ol’ fashioned discipline.
A big part of this work is to decide what the company stops spending time on entirely (which is an uncomfortable yet extremely productive conversation for clients).
I’ll be sharing some client examples of this in future newsletters.
But if I leave you with one net learning, it’s that subtraction is hard…but subtraction is positioning.
Take another look at your product or service, and ask yourself:
Is it genuinely too complicated to explain simply?
Or have you avoided deciding what matters most?
Give buyers the radical simplicity they’ve craved since 1981, and they’ll show you with their dollars how much they love you for it.
~Brooks
Having the editing power in business writing is one thing. But persuading clients that this is in their interest is far more difficult. Consequently 'copywriting' no longer has the appeal that it once had. AI claims to do it well (and to a large degree, it's right). The focus needs to shift to strategic messaging and analysis. How do you stand out above an admitted rising quality content level? Where is the personality and sharpness that people are looking for? AI simply can't do that. The question therefore is: How do skilled writers hone their skills in an AI-dominated market? Any courses out there?