By Ian Ortega
Many years ago, I observed something about most marketers – an insane ability to throw around words without making good sense of the words. As such, marketers tend to be associated with talk and razzmatazz and less with people that mean what they say. But that’s a story for another day, today, I seek to continue the story I have been writing in chunks over the years – the story of CJs aka Café Javas.
CJs is the classic story of anything that can go well in business management. From human capital management to financial management to marketing management, and even operations management. If you think of any business concept, you will realize that CJs has embodied that concept. Let’s take the concept of Position and Positioning.
There’s a mistake many that seek to copy CJs make, it’s the mistake of assuming that everything about CJs comes down to just the food, the customer service and the good design of the restaurant. As such, you will see potential competitors go on and about to copy the surface of CJs without ever being able to crack down on the DNA or the core of CJs.
I am here to say, CJs is none of those things. Their secret is not the food (they don’t sell food), it’s not the customer service, it’s not the beautiful layouts in their spaces. It’s far from these things. Instead, it is a secret that lies in the ability to find a position and become everything that speaks to that position.
When Apple chose the tagline; ‘Think Different’, it didn’t just stop on saying it, it went ahead and embodied it with the product it created, with the casing for that product. They embodied it in the style of their adverts, in the voices, in the brand associations. They embodied it in the people they hired to work at Apple, in the way they spoke to their customers. Thus, we can say, Apple picked a position or a mental territory in our heads then went ahead to claim and defend that territory.
Back home to Café Javas, CJs picked the mental territory of happiness, no worries, honesty, certainty, and service for you. They then went out to do everything to claim that territory. When for example, they say, we shall be there in 30 minutes, it will be 30 minutes. When they say, it’s an Aloha milkshake, it will always taste the same whether ordered in Entebbe or in Nakawa. It’s to keep telling you, that while with them, you should never have to worry about anything.
I have asked my friends this question: Let’s assume you have a couple of friends over at home. You have a mix of generations, children, old. You do not want to cook and want to order out. But you want a worry-free order, where there’s a 99.9% chance that things will arrive just as you expected them and on time. There’s only one brand that will immediately come to mind, it’s CJs. Now you are not ordering from them because they have the best food, or because they are cheaper. You are ordering that outcome.
Thus, you see that the work of positioning starts first with the Position. You pick a Position then you go ahead to claim and defend it. This is contrary to mainstream views about positioning. Most people do not mention that Position comes first. You first decide where and how you want to be in the mind of the customer, then you do the work of keeping and maintaining that location. That means for CJs, it also determines things such as the kind of equipment they will invest in. They won’t buy any bike; it will be a bike that enables them to maintain that position. It won’t be any packaging material, it’s the kind of packaging that will ensure your meals arrive hot/cold and intact. And they keep innovating to maintain this position. Every action they take is aimed towards this. They will invest in their own wheat flour because they again, want to ensure the consistency of their products, which results in that position of ‘worry free’. Essentially what CJs is doing with every engagement with the customer is to tell them; ‘do not worry, be happy, CJs is here’.
It’s the classic story: do people buy a drill, or they buy a hole? Well, people do not buy any of those. They buy the outcome. They buy how they will feel once they have either hanged that portrait or the feeling of serenity with a new door. Businesses that are serious about Positions and Positioning must never forget this classic story. It’s not the Positioning that gives you a Position. It’s your Position that determines how you should position. Your position determines all the choices and trade-offs you get to make henceforth. Position and Positioning shouldn’t be confused. It’s often the case in normal marketer’s speak, but it’s a costly mistake. It has costed brands and companies.