Foundation — Pillar 2: Market Awareness
Purpose: Map the field outside the building — who you compete against, which forces are reshaping the ground, and where your customer’s attention concentrates — then turn that map into deliberate positioning. Observe before you analyse, analyse before you respond. Work left to right across each row.
When to run it / Inputs: Run it once while building the Foundation Blueprint, and again on entering a new market, facing a new competitor, or at a regular cadence (quarterly is sensible). Reads from your completed Company worksheet — your Unique Mechanism, Brand Voice, and intended positioning scope the whole scan. Do the looking first: visit competitor sites, read reviews, note trends, characterise channels. Fill the cells from what you actually observed, not from memory.
| 1. OBSERVE — What Is There | 2. ANALYSE — The Gaps & Weaknesses | 3. RESPOND — Your Strategic Position | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. COMPETITIVE SET (The rivals contesting your customer) | A1: Rivals & Stated Value: (Name the 2–4 who fight hardest for your customer; their main offer and the value proposition they actually state) ________________________________________________________________ | A2: Named Weaknesses: (Where each falls short — review complaints, missing features, generic messaging, ignored segments. Evidence each one) ________________________________________________________________ | A3: Differentiation Statement: (How your Unique Mechanism overcomes a named weakness. The honest answer to “why you”) ________________________________________________________________ |
| B. MARKET FORCES & TRENDS (The currents under the scrap) | B1: Relevant Shifts: (The 2–3 technological, cultural, economic or behavioural shifts genuinely touching your niche) ________________________________________________ | B2: Pains & Unmet Needs: (What each trend does to people — the new pain it creates or the old need it exposes, beyond what rivals address) ________________________________________________ | B3: Posture Per Trend: (Ride it or stand against it — and how your narrative aligns with or counters each) ________________________________________________ |
| C. CHANNEL & COMMUNICATION CONTEXT (The ground you fight on) | C1: Channels & Tone: (Named surfaces where customer and competitors are; the tone and noise level of each) ________________________________________________ | C2: Saturation & Openings: (Which channels rivals saturate; which are underused; which styles are underserved) ________________________________________________ | C3: HOOK Priority & Voice: (The 1–2 channels to prioritise; how your Brand Voice must adapt to cut through each) ________________________________________________ |
Worksheet Instructions:
- Restate the scope: From your Company worksheet, name who your customer is and where you intend to sit. This scopes the whole scan before you record a single rival.
- Work Row A left to right: Name the few rivals that matter and their stated value (A1). Read their reviews critically and name 2–3 evidenced weaknesses each (A2). Aim your Unique Mechanism at a named weakness — they are weak here; we are strong precisely there (A3).
- Work Row B left to right: Record the handful of trends that genuinely touch your niche (B1). Tie each to a human pain or unmet need (B2). Decide on purpose whether you ride each trend or stand against it (B3).
- Work Row C left to right: Map the named channels and characterise each one’s tone (C1). Find the gap between where the customer is and where the competition is loud (C2). Prioritise the one or two channels for your first HOOK and note the voice adaptation each demands (C3).
- Test for rigour: Read down each column and across each row. Every weakness must trace to a real observation, every trend to a need, every response in Column 3 back to a named observation in Column 1. “Better quality” and “more premium” are placeholders, not findings — replace them. Date the reading; markets move.
Feeds: → Customer worksheet (turns this reading of the field into the portrait of the person you play it for) · → Alignment worksheet (where Company, Market and Customer are reconciled into one positioning).
Sources: 1.2-market.md · prompts/Market.md · the Market SOP — “Read the field honestly” (in 1.2-market.md).