Why a food & beverage brand sells even when the product is the same as everyone else's

What food & beverage brand positioning is, and the three factors that define it

When a food & beverage consumer chooses between similar brands on the shelf, they decide on the brand's positioning in a matter of seconds. Let's look at how Erbacipollina builds a food & beverage brand's positioning by applying the FBBP® framework (one of the method's three proprietary assets), with four concrete steps drawn from the agency's real work.

Positioning is the first brand decision

Positioning is the first decision a food & beverage brand makes, even before choosing the tagline, the logo, the color palette, the pack. The answer can't be the physical product. What counts is the purchase decision the audience makes standing in front of the shelf, when they have only a few seconds to choose between similar options.

What we mean by positioning

This is the working definition we use at the agency. Positioning is the set of product, price, channel and language choices that make a brand recognizable to a specific consumer, in a specific consumption occasion. Skipping one of these choices means losing precision across the entire chain of brand decisions that follow.

Our FBBP® framework, one of the three assets of the Erbacipollina method, treats positioning as the first phase of work, because every subsequent decision on brand identity, packaging and digital communication inherits the choices made here. Getting positioning wrong means redoing the work six months later, with a loss of both investment and the client's time.

Positioning is the product decision that remains after the tagline.

(Definition)

Food & beverage positioning is the set of product, price, channel and language choices that make a brand recognizable relative to alternative brands in the same segment, for the real consumer of a specific category, in a precise consumption occasion.

Three factors that define food & beverage positioning

When we work on a new positioning by applying the FBBP® framework, we always start from three factors. Each one requires an explicit decision, written into the brief and shared with the client's marketing manager. Without an explicit decision on all three, positioning stays implicit, and the client's team can't reproduce it on their own.

• Declared consumption category. The brand explicitly defines which category it wants to be perceived in. A niche, high-value artisan panettone stands apart from an industrial supermarket panettone, even though both respond to a similar consumption occasion. The declared category shapes price, sales channel, marketing seasonality, even which trade shows to attend.
• Real audience. The brand identifies two or three concrete Food Buyer Personas to build its base on. People with purchasing behaviors that can be verified through qualitative research, described by consumption occasion, channel and price sensitivity. Demographic segmentation remains a starting tool that gets refined through ethnographic work on the real customer.
• Distinctive product promise. The brand chooses what it wants to be preferred for, whether that's sensory quality, format, price accessibility or perceived value. A single primary promise, stated in the positioning and then carried through each touchpoint without ambiguity.

Three examples from our portfolio

In recent years we've applied this framework to brands in different sectors of the Italian market. Let's see how the three factors combine in three real cases, cited anonymously for commercial confidentiality.

Example 1 (premium wine). A wine brand from Veneto that wanted to move from the traditional HoReCa channel to premium retail rewrote its consumption category as a high-end corporate gift red wine. Real audience, corporate purchasing managers looking for a representative gift for the end of the fiscal year. Primary promise, a coordinated gift box and packaging as an element of perceived value greater than the grape variety itself.

Example 2 (capsule coffee). A coffee brand that sold through tobacco shops opened up to the premium retail channel by redefining its category as sustainable single-origin Italian coffee in compostable capsules. Real audience, urban families with environmental awareness, already capsule consumers. Primary promise, the combination of single origin and compostability at a price that stays accessible for retail chains.

Example 3 (emerging confectionery). A new plant-based fresh pastry brand defined its category as special-occasion vegan dessert. Real audience, people looking for a vegan dessert for a birthday or celebration, within family or extended groups. Primary promise, appearance and taste equal to a conventional dessert, with certified vegan labeling.

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The real consumer, from Food Buyer Personas to positioning

Food Buyer Personas are one of the three proprietary assets of the Erbacipollina method, dedicated to profiling the real consumer of a food & beverage brand. They're people described by consumption occasion, purchase channel, price sensitivity and perceived product value. Three or four Personas per brand. Just one is too few to cover the variety of consumption occasions in the category. A dozen stay abstract and lose operational usefulness.

Building the Personas takes between four and six weeks. It combines direct qualitative interviews in stores, analysis of sell-out data by geographic area, and ethnographic research on the digital channels the target audience uses. From this base comes an eight-to-twelve-page positioning document, shared with the client and signed off by the food & beverage company's marketing team.

Knowing the real consumer means knowing which factor drives the purchase decision. For the premium Veneto wine in our example, the corporate buyer decides based on brand reputation and delivery packaging. For the single-origin capsule coffee, the decision comes down to price per capsule versus environmental perception. For the vegan pastry, visual quality on social media matters even before the taste of the first bite.

Four recurring mistakes we see

In sixteen years of food & beverage work we've seen four recurring mistakes in building Personas. All easy to catch if whoever writes them does the fieldwork, hard to fix afterward.

• A Persona that's too generic, like "urban woman, 30-50": it describes a demographic bracket and says nothing about purchase behavior.
• A Persona defined only on demographic data, without ethnographic research at the point of sale.
• More than six Personas for a single brand: the message fragments and becomes impossible to activate.
• Personas built on paper by the marketing team without input from the client's sales force, who see every day who's really buying.

When positioning isn't working, what to change

Repositioning a food & beverage brand is a decision made when the numbers call for it. It's done based on market evidence, grounded in sell-out data and the real consumer's response to the brand's touchpoints. Never because of a design trend in the category.

Four concrete signals indicate the need for repositioning.

• Continuous market share erosion for twelve to eighteen months in a stable category where competitors aren't growing, or are growing less.
• Sell-out held back by private label lookalikes that present the same brand claim at a lower price.
• Lack of response from the target audience on the main touchpoints, with digital campaigns below the industry average and store checks showing a low purchase rate.
• A commercial brief inconsistent with the perceived brand, with product extensions that the consumer doesn't recognize as part of the original brand.

What to change first

When positioning needs to change, Erbacipollina always starts again from the three factors of the FBBP® framework. For each factor, we assess whether the current decision still holds or needs updating. Often only one of the three factors needs revision, while the other two remain consistent with the consumer's reality. Only in cases of structural erosion is positioning rebuilt from scratch.

Repositioning ends with a new shared document, a one-page summary that becomes the reference point for every subsequent operational decision, from brand identity and packaging to the seasonal calendar and digital touchpoints. That document holds for five working seasons, rarely less. That's why it's worth taking the time needed to get positioning right the first time.

A food & beverage brand sells even when the product is the same as everyone else's, when positioning is clear to the buyer before it's clear to the seller. Positioning work exists to build this clarity, over a five-year horizon of the brand's commercial life.