#BR28

In 1971, Phil Knight had to send a name to his shoe factory by telex. Production started Friday. Three options were on the table: Falcon, Nike, and his own personal favourite….. Dimension Six.

This is one of those situations where it’s impossible to see the outside of the label because you’re inside the jar. He’s the boss. He’s come up with a name, the name he wanted to name his whole business over.

Another reminder of that name: Dimension Six, which had been described (correctly) as “unspeakably bad” by his team.

A big moment in history happened in front of the telex. Knight found himself writing “Nike”.

This was the name that came to his first employee, Jeff Johnson, in a dream. The name is four letters and a white dwarf sun: small, but densely packed. It’s a great brand name because it’s short, carries a strong sound, and means something beyond the product.
(Athena) Nike was the goddess of victory.

After it was done, the team formerly known as Blue Ribbon Sports (and luckily, never to be called Dimension Six) said, “Maybe it’ll grow on us.”

The Nike story has come to mind because it’s not about the company's name; it’s about positioning. We’re in planning season with customers whose financial year starts in April. And positioning is coming up a lot.

Peter Drucker wrote in 1954 that a business has only two functions: marketing and innovation.

Underpinning this philosophy is the strategic infrastructure that sits upstream of both: understanding what the market actually needs and positioning your company to deliver it.

He wasn’t talking about marketing tactics, sales channels, or product development.

This was about the story you occupy in your current and future customers’ minds.
In plainer language:

The positioning problem isn’t a marketing problem. It’s a business problem, and it’s almost always invisible from inside.

This applies as much to a tech, consultancy or professional services firm as it does to a product company like Nike.

One way to position is to describe your capabilities. The other (more successful way) is describing a problem you’re solving and how you made them feel.

An example: “We help organisations digitally transform” is Dimension Six.
It describes something real. But the person you’re trying to reach isn’t thinking about something kind of amorphous like digital transformation. It’s more ground-level.

They’re thinking about the board meeting where the numbers didn’t add up, and about how every month it’s a nightmare to pull the figures together, or about the way the competition’s new technology is making them significantly faster and more efficient.
“Saving your ass at board reporting time” is probably not quite Nike-type positioning… but it’s getting there.

It’s planning season, so we’re doing a lot of this work. But it doesn’t mean downing tools or your LinkedIn feed going quiet. You can run and gun.

Here are three easy ideas, hand-selected by me from real life, Google and Claude, to test your positioning, gather useful data, and pivot if needed.

You can run all three of these tests yourself, and you should. But if the exercise surfaces something uncomfortable (it usually does), that’s the moment a good strategist earns their keep. Done well, this kind of work takes days or weeks rather than months. It costs a fraction of what you’re currently spending on campaigns that aren’t converting at the rate they should. 

The upstream fix is almost always cheaper than the downstream symptom.

Nike has been worth over $100 billion. Dimension Six would have been a footnote.
Planning season is the one real moment in the year to ask the upstream question.

If you want to work through what your Nike is, reply here (or hit the button below) and let’s set something up.

Cheers, Dave