15.10.2026 |

It’s not about being the best – it’s about being the right fit

If you want to be the best for everyone, you have to be prepared to be compared with everyone else. But if you want to be the right choice for your target audience, you need to understand what they really need.  Effective corporate positioning happens when a company’s strengths meet the specific needs of its target groups.

“I didn’t select the best players; I took the right ones with me,” said Austria’s national football coach Josef Hickersberger in the run-up to the 2008 UEFA European Football Championship. Given that Austria was eliminated in the group stage, it’s debatable whether he truly did pick the right players. Nevertheless, his thought process was interesting: it is not just individual ability that is decisive, but also how well someone is suited to a particular task.

Excellence alone is not enough

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read press releases in which companies call themselves “market leaders” or “leading providers” in their field, often accompanied by a generous helping of other superlatives. They grow the fastest, are the most innovative and have the best products. Some of these claims may even be true. But they lose credibility when they pop up in every company’s press release.

And even bona fide excellence is not enough to establish a strong market position. Even if it is true that a company is the best in its sector, this doesn’t automatically make it relevant to its target audience. Good positioning can only be ensured when a company’s strengths meet the specific needs of its target group.

Identifying strengths

Sometimes these strengths are obvious. Other times, they are harder to spot. They might be found in the company’s history, its location or its people. They can even be found in apparent weaknesses. For example, a small destination may not be able to compete with Switzerland’s major tourist centres, but that is precisely what makes it stand out to people seeking peace and tranquillity. For a management consultancy firm, the answer might be to specialise in a particular sector instead of fighting a losing battle for clients against the Big Four. And a CEO doesn’t have to put on a show if their strengths lie in being down-to-earth and more on the reflective side.

So the key question is not whether a company is better than all its competitors, but who it is the better choice for. The role of communications is to identify the strengths and USPs of companies, make them visible and align them with the needs of the company’s target groups.