counter-positioning playbook

Heard an interesting observation on the Prof G Markets podcast this week:

The host Scott Galloway had Ted Sarandos (CEO of Netflix) as his guest at a live show in LA…

And at one point, Sarandos explained the stupid simple logic behind basically every big move Netflix has ever made:

Counter-positioning.

Not as a one-time marketing stunt, but as a guiding principle baked into the business.

For instance:

Back in the DVD era, the thing everyone hated about renting movies was late fees.

Blockbuster and every other video store charged them.

So Netflix's counter-position was simple:

No late fees.

That got them in the door.

Fast forward to streaming…

The thing everyone had grown to hate was waiting a week to watch the next episode.

So Netflix's counter-position became dumping the entire season at once and letting you binge the whole thing in a weekend.

A totally new mechanism that made big waves at the time.

Yet in the past few years, they’ve been slowly tiptoeing away from it…

And moving back towards dropping new episodes one week at a time…

Because viewership has gone way down on shows that get dropped all at once.

However, the principle behind it remains the same:

Identify what the market hates.

Position yourself as the alternative.

Execute.

And counter-positioning isn't just a marketing tactic…

It works at every layer of your business:

At the email level, it's the subject line that contradicts the mainstream advice your audience has heard a thousand times.

At the offer level, it's the delivery mechanism nobody else in your niche is using, because everyone's copying the same tired format.

At the brand level, it's having a unique worldview people can either rally around or push back against.

This is how you take control of the conversation.

Especially crowded markets.

Yet host experts do the opposite.

They follow the mainstream playbook, attempt to blend in, then wonder why their audience has heard it all before and still isn't buying.

The opportunity isn't to be slightly better at the same thing.

It's to be the ONE person saying something different…

And, crucially:

With a logical case for why the mainstream got it wrong.

That's what gets attention, differentiates you, and makes people actually take out their wallet.

Make sense?

I hope so.

That's all I got for ya today.

I’m off to the island for the afternoon to enjoy the warm weather 🤘

Jim Hamilton
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