Build the foundation
The Formation: B2B brand positioning and messaging in three to four weeks
The Formation defines or sharpens a B2B company's market position, messaging and brand voice. It reads the AI visibility audit run in your Flyover, showing who AI currently recommends across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini and in what language, then makes the call on where you should stand. The output is a Brand Position on a Page plus the full messaging toolkit. It costs 7,000 to 10,000 euro.
What the Formation is
Most B2B companies have the same positioning as their three closest competitors and have never noticed. The words are different. The claim underneath is identical, and the buyer cannot tell any of you apart.
The Formation fixes that. It decides where you stand, in language a buyer can understand, remember and repeat back to somebody else. Then it gives you the toolkit to say it consistently everywhere.
Know what you stand for. Not as an internal exercise, but as something that changes what a buyer does.
What makes it different
Most positioning work is conducted entirely inside the building: a workshop, some sticky notes, a competitor grid built from competitor websites.
We start outside instead. Your Flyover runs the questions your buyers actually ask across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, and the Formation reads what came back. Who gets recommended in your category. What language gets used to describe them. Which claims are so common they have stopped meaning anything.
That gives you something a workshop cannot: evidence of how your category is currently being described to buyers who are not in the room. Positioning against what competitors say about themselves is guesswork. Positioning against what is actually being said is a decision.
What you get
Brand Position on a Page
One page carrying your claim and six fields: what you do, who it is for, what they believe now, why it holds, what you rule out, and the territory you intend to be known for.
Messaging Hierarchy
Your claims, each with its evidence on the same row, translated for every audience, plus the short and long versions anyone in your business can say out loud.
Tone of Voice Guide
How you sound, written as rules a writer can apply rather than adjectives they have to interpret. Revisited after your first content cycle, because voice is sharpened by writing.
AI Visibility Audit read
The language, the entities AI names and the territory available, taken from the audit run in your Flyover rather than repeated here.
Why the Flyover comes first
Because most companies who think they have a positioning problem do not. They have a visibility problem, or a proof problem, or a content problem, and repositioning would be an expensive way of avoiding it.
The Flyover establishes which of those is actually true. If the answer is positioning, the Formation is the right next step and we will say so. If it is not, we will tell you that instead, which is cheaper for you and better for us than selling work that will not land.
If you are going on to the Flock, the Formation is required, because the Flock cannot build a toolkit on a position that has not been settled.
Who does the work
Senior people. No juniors learning on your account, and no account manager relaying messages between you and whoever is actually thinking.
We use AI for leverage, not substitution. It makes research, analysis and orchestration faster. Strategy, judgement, creativity and accountability stay with senior people. That is how we keep the team senior without carrying the cost structure of a traditional agency.
What it costs
- Investment
- €7,000 to €10,000
- Duration
- 3 to 4 weeks
- Format
- One-off project
Where you land inside that depends on the size of your category and how many competitors are in scope. Full pricing is on the pricing page.
What it pairs with
The Flock is the required next step if you are building a content programme. The Formation decides what you stand for. The Flock turns that into the toolkit that produces content: Content Blueprint, Channel Blueprint and content pillars.
Your voice and your claims come from the Formation and are applied in the Flock rather than rewritten.
From there, the Migration is what actually produces it, month after month, against the position the Formation set.
Wild Ducks. Never Tame.