How to turn competitor strengths to your advantage

Most companies lose positioning battles before they’ve even started because they fight on their competitors’ terms.

If a rival owns ‘fastest delivery’ or ‘lowest price’ and you try to claim the same, you’ve already lost. 

Customers will always associate that benefit with the first mover. The more you shout about it, the more you reinforce their position.

Smart companies play a different game: they reframe the conversation so a competitor’s supposed strength becomes less relevant, or even becomes  a weakness. 

In this article, we’ll explore examples of successful counter-positioning, as well as when to highlight and when to ignore competitor strengths.

The art of reframing in positioning battles

Reframing is about shifting the criteria customers use to make decisions. Instead of playing defence, you change the rules of the game.

Amazon reframed rival bookseller Barnes & Noble’s advantage in store size and network into a liability.

Why browse shelves in person when you could access infinite choice online, delivered to your door?

Dyson reframed vacuum cleaners from ‘appliances’ into feats of engineering. Hoover’s heritage in suction became irrelevant against bagless, futuristic design.

Slack reframed email’s ubiquity as proof of its failure. Transparency through channels became the new definition of effective communication.

The lesson here is that you don’t win by being louder about a rival’s strength. You win by redefining what customers value.

Counter-positioning in action

Counter-positioning goes further. It highlights what competitors can’t easily copy without undermining their own model.

Zoom is a textbook case. Cisco’s WebEx dominated corporate IT but was slow and clunky. Zoom framed itself around simplicity: one click and you’re in. Cisco couldn’t match this without alienating its enterprise buyers. 

Oatly flipped dairy on its head. Instead of competing on calcium or protein, it built a lifestyle brand around sustainability, often mocking the entire milk category in its packaging.

Other examples:

• WeWork sold community and flexibility while landlords sold square footage.
• Southwest Airlines positioned itself around low-cost, no-frills fun,  something legacy airlines couldn’t replicate without dismantling their premium models.

Counter-positioning works when rivals are trapped. If copying you means breaking their own model, your advantage holds.

When to highlight and when to ignore

Not every competitor strength deserves a rebuttal. One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is trying to counter everything, which dilutes their message.

• Highlight a competitor’s strength if it’s central to the buying decision and you can flip it. For example, Zoom exposed WebEx’s ‘enterprise grade’ as over-engineered complexity.
• Ignore strengths that don’t matter to your ideal customer. “Largest network” is meaningless if your buyers care about speed, service, or trust.

“Differentiation isn’t about being better. It’s about being different in a way that matters.” - April Dunford 

You need to pick your battles. Sometimes silence is the smartest positioning move you can make.

Storytelling as a weapon

Reframing and counter-positioning only work if customers believe the new frame. That’s where storytelling comes in.

• Airbnb’s story was never about price. It was about belonging anywhere, which made hotels feel sterile and impersonal.
• Patagonia’s story reframed outdoor gear as environmental activism, making performance-only brands sound shallow by comparison.
• Monzo’s story wasn’t just faster banking. It was transparency and customer experience, which cast legacy banks as faceless and defensive.

Stories shift belief in ways facts can’t. They make a competitor’s strength feel outdated or irrelevant, and they pull customers into a frame where you are the obvious choice.

Play your own game

Competing head-to-head on a rival’s strength is a losing strategy. 

Reframing, counter-positioning, and storytelling give you the tools to compete on your own terms and neutralise competitor advantages. 

So the next time a competitor shouts about their strength, resist the urge to shout louder. 

Step back, reframe the game, and make their advantage your opportunity.

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