There are two cat cafes within walking distance of my apartment. This is not unusual for Portland, a city that supports more cat cafes per capita than anywhere has a right to. What is unusual is that they're both thriving, despite being three blocks apart and serving essentially the same product: mediocre coffee in the presence of adoptable cats.
I've been going to both for years (board member of Cat Adoption Team, remember? This is research, not procrastination), and I recently realized they're a perfect miniature case study in brand positioning.
Cat cafe A positions itself as a calm, meditative experience. Soft lighting. Quiet music. A two-drink minimum that encourages lingering. The cats are mellow, older, and pre-selected for their chill demeanor. The whole experience says: this is your escape from the world. Slow down.
Cat cafe B is chaos. Kittens everywhere. Kids welcome. Loud. Colorful. The coffee is somehow worse but nobody cares because there's a kitten climbing your leg. The whole experience says: this is joy. This is energy. Surrender to the adorable mayhem.
The coffee is somehow worse but nobody cares because there's a kitten climbing your leg.
Same category. Same neighborhood. Same fundamental offering. Completely different brands. Both full on a Saturday afternoon.
This is what positioning actually looks like in practice. Not a positioning statement in a strategy deck. Not a Venn diagram of functional and emotional benefits. Two businesses that understood, maybe intuitively, that the way to coexist in a crowded market is not to fight over the same customer but to serve different needs so clearly that the customer self-selects.
I think about this every time a client says "but our competitor does the same thing." Yes. And two cat cafes three blocks apart both let you pet cats while drinking subpar lattes. The product is not the position. The experience is the position. The feeling is the position. The specific human need you serve is the position.
Most brands are competing on product features in a world where product parity is the norm. The winning move is to zoom out from what you sell and ask: what state of being do I deliver? Then own that state so completely that competitors become irrelevant rather than threatening.
Cat cafe A doesn't worry about cat cafe B. They're not playing the same game. They just happen to be in the same category.
That's the goal. Not to beat your competition. To make them irrelevant by serving a different need so clearly that comparison doesn't even occur to the customer.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have research to conduct. Truffles needs a playdate.