De-Positioning: The Secret Brand Strategy for Creating Competitive Advantage

What is the brand strategy Apple, Starbucks, and other market leaders have mastered for decades, yet never name? It’s not differentiation. It’s not purpose. It’s something far more powerful, and in today’s hyper-competitive business world, it’s the only strategy that consistently wins.

It’s called De-Positioning, a method that turns your competitor’s strengths into liabilities while positioning your brand as the only solution your customer truly trusts. De-Positioning works by identifying the most critical problem your customer needs solved, exposing how your competitors fail to solve it, and making your brand the clear, inevitable choice. When applied with discipline, it renders competitors irrelevant.

In this book, brand strategy veteran Todd Irwin shares the exact process he’s used to help Fortune 500 giants and disruptive VC-backed startups dominate their markets. He explains why “being different” no longer works, how to uncover your market’s Hero Pain Point, and how to build an unshakable competitive advantage rooted in hard strategy, not hype.

Drawing on three decades in the trenches and case studies from brands like Apple, Volvo, and Zoom, Irwin shows how De-Positioning becomes the unifying force behind every decision, message, and customer interaction. This is not a marketing gimmick. It’s a battle-tested, repeatable system for building a brand so ultra-relevant and trusted that your competitors fade into the background.

If you’re ready to stop fighting for attention and start dominating your market, this is your brand strategy playbook.

Todd Irwin is the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Fazer, a global brand strategy firm known for helping companies thrive in brutally competitive markets. After decades of watching traditional positioning fail in the real world, he built a new model: De-Positioning. This methodology has helped Fortune 500s and disruptive startups turn customer pain into competitive advantage, and leave their rivals behind.