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Here's something I've noticed watching brands try to grow.

They spend weeks on a tagline. They run workshops. They hire consultants. They test three versions on a focus group. They eventually land on something clean, something that sounds good on a billboard. And then they wonder why it isn't converting.

The tagline was never the problem. And fixing it is never the solution.

What most brands are actually suffering from is a positioning problem. And the frustrating thing is, they think they've already solved positioning. Because they have a tagline.

These two things are not the same.

Let me explain.

Think about the last time you had a bad headache. You didn't walk into a pharmacy and browse. You asked for Saridon, Combiflam, or Crocin. You already knew what to reach for.

No one had to remind you of their tagline in that moment.

That's positioning working the way it should. Before you were even in the market, the brand had already placed itself inside your head as the answer to a specific problem. It owned the moment before the purchase decision even started.

Messaging happens at the point of contact — the ad, the landing page, the email. Positioning happens before any of that. It's the work that makes your brand the obvious answer to a specific question someone is already asking.

Messaging says, "Here's why we're good." Positioning says, "When you have this problem, we are what you think of."

A huge number of brands position themselves around what they do or what makes them different: faster delivery, better ingredients, more features. These are attributes. And attributes are easy to copy.

But a problem? A genuine frustration or fear that a group of people wakes up with every morning? That's much harder to take from you.

Let's look at a few examples.

Zerodha didn't just launch a cheaper brokerage. They owned the problem of ordinary Indians being shut out of investing because it was too complicated and too expensive. Their whole brand — Varsity, their content, their minimalist product — said "We exist because the old system didn't want you in it." They didn't own "low-cost trading." They owned the feeling of being excluded from wealth creation.

Traya — which I've written about before — didn't own "hair care products." They owned the problem of people who had tried everything for their hair and still had no real answer. The root cause was never addressed. That gap was what they stepped into.

CRED, in its early days, didn't own "credit card payments." It owned the problem of responsible credit card users feeling like they were being lumped in with everyone else, no reward, no recognition, no status. The brand was essentially saying: "You've been doing the right thing all along. You deserve a different experience."

In each case, the brand found a problem that was real, felt deeply, and had not already been claimed. Then they built everything, product, content, communication, around owning that problem.

I think there are three specific reasons this happens.

The first is that most brands start with their solution, not with the customer's problem. The founder builds something, then figures out how to explain it. The narrative naturally centers on the product, what it does, how it works, and why it's better. But the customer doesn't care about your solution until they're already feeling their problem. You need to be present at the problem level, not just the solution level.

The second is that brands confuse differentiation with positioning. "We're the only XYZ that does ABC" is differentiation. It tells people how you're different from competitors. But positioning isn't about competitors. It's about the customer's mind. The question isn't "how are we different from X?" The question is, "When someone has this specific problem, are they thinking of us?"

The third is that positioning feels risky because it requires narrowing. You have to say "this is the problem we're for." That automatically means there are problems you're not for. Most brands are afraid of that narrowing because it feels like leaving money on the table. But the paradox is that the more specific the problem you own, the more mental real estate you occupy. A brand that's for everyone is remembered by no one.

When you own a problem instead of just describing a product, four things start to happen.

It filters the right audience in before they even engage. If someone resonates with the problem you've described, they already feel understood. The trust starts before the pitch. You're not convincing them you're relevant; you already are.

It makes your content obvious. When Zerodha decided to own "investing was never made accessible for ordinary Indians," their content strategy wrote itself. Varsity, the learning platform, was the natural output of that positioning. The positioning told them exactly what to create.

It creates loyalty that discounts can't buy. A customer who came to you because you understood their specific problem will not leave when a competitor offers 10% off. They came for understanding, not price. You can't undercut understanding.

It makes your word-of-mouth more precise. When your positioning is clear, people know exactly who to refer you to. "You should try this, they're specifically for people who are dealing with X." Vague positioning produces vague referrals. Sharp positioning produces sharp ones.

This is where most frameworks fall short. They tell you that you need strong positioning, but not how to find what you should own.

Here's a way to think about it that I've found useful.

Start by mapping your customer's journey, not from awareness to purchase, but from problem onset to problem solved. What actually happens in that journey? What do they try first? Where do those things fail? What's the frustration that sits in the gap between what's available and what they actually need?

That gap is where positioning lives.

Traya found that the gap in hair care was a diagnosis. Everything else was just products sitting on shelves. No one was diagnosing the root cause. So they stepped into that gap.

Zerodha found that the gap in investing was access. Products existed, but the ecosystem was designed for a certain kind of investor. So they stepped into that gap.

Once you've found the gap, the next question is: can you credibly own it? This means your product actually solves the problem, not just claims to. Positioning that doesn't match product experience collapses at the moment of truth. A customer who felt understood at the awareness stage and then felt let down at the product stage is worse than someone who never engaged at all.

And finally, is the problem specific enough that it can become a signal? If your problem statement could apply to any brand in your category, it's too broad. The test is whether a customer who has your specific problem would read it and immediately feel "this is for me."

There's a phrase Al Ries and Jack Trout used in their work on positioning: "the battle for the mind." The idea is that consumers can hold only a limited number of brands in any given category in their heads. The ones who win are the ones who arrived first and stayed clearest.

But here's what I'd add to that: the real battle isn't for category space. It's for problem space. The brand that owns the problem in someone's mind will be there long before the category even comes up.

Your tagline is how you say it. Your positioning is what you've claimed before you said anything at all.

And the brands that are still growing five years from now? Most of them won't be the ones with the cleverest tagline. They'll be the ones who found a real problem, owned it without apology, and built everything — product, content, community — around that ownership.

What problem does your brand have in your customer's mind right now?

Think about it carefully. If the answer is unclear, that might be the most important thing to fix before anything else.

See you at the next edition,
Arindam