{"id":398,"date":"2026-08-14T04:52:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T04:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/?p=398"},"modified":"2026-08-14T04:52:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T04:52:55","slug":"positioning-is-an-exercise-in-selective-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/positioning-is-an-exercise-in-selective-destruction\/","title":{"rendered":"Positioning Is an Exercise in Selective Destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first time I heard Neil Young\u2019s <em>Archives Volume One<\/em> on Blu-ray, I expected nothing more than background music. I had heard &#8220;<em>After The Gold Rush<\/em>&#8221; a hundred times. But when the high-fidelity audio kicked in, my head jerked up. It sounded as if Neil were in the room, sitting at the piano, singing directly to me. This was the first time I HEARD it.<\/p>\n<p>Most online music uses &#8220;lossy&#8221; compression. To make files small enough to stream, we throw away up to 90% of the data. We assume the discarded information is inaudible, but we are often wrong. We lose the texture, the depth, and the nuance.<\/p>\n<p>Your positioning statement faces the same physics.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">You cannot fit your entire business into a headline.<\/span> You cannot fit your history, your team, your process, and your mission into a single sentence. Compression is unavoidable. Every word you cut is data thrown into the trash.<\/p>\n<p>If you compress poorly, you end up with &#8220;Strategic marketing solutions.&#8221; It is a file with zero texture. It is noise that tells the listener nothing.<\/p>\n<p>If you compress well, you preserve the signal. You discard the fluff but keep the one distinction that makes a buyer care.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bad Compression:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe interview customers, analyze category language, review competitor claims, refine your offer, build messaging architecture, and write conversion copy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Useful Compression:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFind the sales argument your competitors missed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When you write your positioning, do not ask, &#8220;How can I say everything?&#8221; Ask, &#8220;What is the one piece of data that, if lost, makes the whole message useless?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Decide what must survive the loss.<\/p>\n<p>RW<br \/>\n.<br \/>\n.<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first time I heard Neil Young\u2019s Archives Volume One on Blu-ray, I expected nothing more than background music. I had heard &#8220;After The Gold Rush&#8221; a hundred times. But when the high-fidelity audio kicked in, my head jerked up. It sounded as if Neil were in the room, sitting at the piano, singing directly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategy"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardwinser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}