Positioning of Trover: The intersection of What, Who, and How

To understand the positioning of a company, we must begin by determining what the product is, who the product is intended for, and how that product is to be used.  For this week’s assignment, I continue to look at the photo-sharing service, Trover.  Trover describes its service stating: “Take an instant adventure: Join savvy explorers who love to find and share hidden gems.”

What? I previously posted about Trover, and continue my research into their services and offerings by examining their positioning in the mobile photo sharing space. Trover offers mobile applications for both android and ios to view and provide content, and a viewing-only platform online. Trovers main focus is about users, from around the world, providing content to their online database of photos (with small descriptive captions). The content on Trover is mostly of landscapes and architecture, although food dishes and wildlife are also prevalent in the content.

Who? Ultimately, this positioning helps differentiate Trover from their competitors like Instagram. Trover is about finding those “hidden” items in your life, whether a place or a dish you have savored, and sharing them with others, either to not-so-secretly elicit feelings of jealousy and seek validation or happiness from friends. They call their users “explorers”, which will help people feel like there are contributing to a larger “map” or “treasure trove” of content. This utilization helps create more content and helps users stick to the site, two crucial elements of success for both positioning and long-term viability.

How? While their positioning makes them effective toward users who want to add content to a larger database, rather than just share their content with “friends” and “followers”, Trover could be more effective by elaborating on the “How” of their positioning. Currently, their product is for explorers who want to take an adventure through semi-curated content. However, what is the benefit from building a treasure trove? That much is not readily clear from their site. Nonetheless, perhaps the benefit, or the “How” might be different for each user, thus negating a need to outline a specific “How” and leaving that task to their users at hand.

Beertending.com: Vote on the Event; Buy the Ticket

The folks at Beertending.com love some beer. This crew from Princeton works with local bars and craft breweries across the country to make the perfect match (beer + bar) time and again. They do this by creating a tasting event consisting of a 3-beer flight at a predetermined bar. Anyone can then vote on whether they think the event should occur. If the event is confirmed by a sufficient number of votes, then anyone can purchase event tickets at $4 per craft beer — that’s $12 per flight.

Short Positioning statement: For craft beer lovers, Beertending.com is the craft beer tasting social website that provides beer lovers with possible craft beer tasting events, and then gives them the power to choose which tasting event occurs, and THEN sells tickets at Happy Hour prices, because Beertending.com understands that craft beer lovers are picky about more than just beer. They want good beer and great venues at Happy Hour prices.

Long Positioning statement: Beertending.com provides a very convenient service to craft beer lovers, and it gives those same craft beer lovers a choice in that service. Specifically, the folks at Beertender create combinations of craft beer flights and local bars. They post these options on beertending.com and give people the ability to vote on which tasting events occur. Then, after a tasting is voted for, Beertending.com sells tickets for those craft beers at Happy Hour prices.

Effectiveness Analysis: I think that Beertending.com is trying to do too much, and it’s trying to do the job of a good beverage distributorship marketing department. On the first point, the service boasts the choice it offers craft beer lovers, but it makes the most important choices for the target market; it chooses both the craft beers to be offered and the tasting venue. The audience is then only given the opportunity to vote Yes or No.

I’m sure that Beertending is getting a cut of the $4 ticket price for the tasting event, but I see this lasting a few months, and then the local beverage distributors will create something similar and take away the business from Beertending.com.

Good idea, but it should be adopted by the distributors not attempted as a stand-alone business.