Positioning comes before the deck
A deck is a record of decisions. If the company's position isn't settled first, the deck becomes a list of everything the company could be. What to decide, and in what order.
A pitch deck is a record of decisions. When the company’s position hasn’t been settled, the deck tries to cover everything the company could be, and an investor reads that as a company that hasn’t chosen.
Signs the position isn’t settled
- Each founder describes the company differently in one sentence.
- The competitor slide lists a dozen companies, because it isn’t clear which ones matter.
- The market slide is the size of a whole industry.
- The website says something different from the deck.
None of these is a design problem, and a better-looking deck won’t fix them.
What positioning decides
Positioning is a small number of decisions, made explicitly:
- Who it is for first. Not a market, but the specific customer who needs this most and will pay soonest.
- What it replaces. Every product displaces something: a competitor, a spreadsheet, a habit or doing nothing. Naming it makes the value concrete.
- Why it wins. The one or two reasons a customer will choose it over the alternative, and why a competitor can’t easily copy them.
- What it is not. The markets and features the company is choosing not to pursue yet. This is what makes the rest believable.
When the category is new
Some companies have to explain a category before they can argue for the company. With a new kind of product, the business plan and the deck have to make it understandable in a single slide before any slide about the company can land. That is a positioning decision first and a design decision second.
The brand carries the position
Once the position is settled, the brand has a job: to make the same impression wherever someone meets the company. The name, the identity, the website and the deck should all carry it, so an investor who looks up the company after a meeting finds the company they just heard about.
The order of work
Position first, then the narrative that follows from it, then the numbers and the design. Done in that order, the deck is mostly a matter of writing down what has already been decided. Done the other way round, the deck becomes the place where the decisions get argued about.
Our brand strategy work starts here.
Strategic Studios. Questions about this piece: stu@strategicstudios.co.uk