Polarizing Products and Positioning

This coming Friday, February 29, the exhibit Bodies - Revealed opens at Union Station in Kansas City.

If you're not familiar with the Bodies' exhibits, then you may want to check this out. Just visit the Union Station Web site for details.

The Bodies exhibit is one of those products that could define audience segmentation at an emotional level. Typically, people are either completely enamoured with the exhibit and cannot wait until it opens, or they are completely repulsed by the exhibit and would go no where near it.

It is typical to see this kind of polarization surrounding social issues and political campaigns, but it is rare to find it in an product. There are those who would argue the Bodies exhibits are a social issue. The developers of the exhibits would argue they are for scientific purposes — giving all of a the opportunity to take a peek inside to see what happens to our bodies as we age, grow, develop disease and die.

Do you have customers who love your product? Do you have people who hate it? A good test of how well you have positioned your company is if you have detractors — those people who go out of their way to say they would never buy your product. Of course, you don't want a lot of these people. Negative publicity at a certain level can kill a product or company.

To have love, you must have hate. To have good, you must have evil. To have customers who would do anything to have your product, you must have people who have made a conscious decision not to buy from you.