Positioning, a great book by Trout and Ries, says that companies need to own a place in their customer's mind - a position. For example, Volvo owns the place "safe" and Maytag tries to own the position as "dependable." Companies are encouraged to capture a position in the customer's mind.
Now, what happens if the position your company wants to take is already owned by another company? Well, you need to reposition that company in the customer's mind. Smart companies have been doing that for years. For example, dairy farmers did a study that showed that margarine may not be heathly to allow customers to think butter is healthier than margarine. Miller is currently trying to reposition Bud as weak on taste (which was done in retaliation for making Miller appear weak on freshness).
This happens in politics as well. For example, John Kerry was repositioned as a "flip flopper," not as a thoughtful, reflective person. Now, its being done with religion as well. Let me give an example.
In a December 3rd,
New York Times article, columnist Peter Steinfels highlighted how "critics uncomfortable about the religious subtext of Lewis's [Narnia] stories have been launching pre-emptive strikes to alert the susceptible." Steinfels writes the following:
"'The books are better when read without the subtext,' wrote Charles McGrath in The New York Times Magazine last month. "Aslan, for example, is much more thrilling and mysterious if you think of him as a superhero lion, not as Jesus in a Bert Lahr suit.
Steinfels also writes, "So far, the best of these pre-emptive strikes was an essay on Lewis by Adam Gopnik that appeared in The New Yorker of Nov. 21. Midway, Mr. Gopnik tosses out the challenging notion that 'Aslan, the lion, the Christ symbol, who has exasperated generations of freethinking parents,' is 'in many ways an anti-Christian figure.' Aslan, of course, is the lion-king who can liberate Narnia from the wintry rule of a witch only after allowing himself to be sacrificially slain by her and then miraculously returning to life."
These folks are trying to reposition Christianity as against "free thinking" and tries to reposition the new Narnia movie as anti-Christian. In doing so, they are trying to separate the art from its meaning in order to reduce its effectiveness. Could you image what people would say if the New York Times recommended we not read any polical subtext in Orwell's Animal Farm? Yet, these journalists are making similar claims.
Positioning is really about putting your value in context of something meaningful. That undergirds what we are recommending with The Paradox of Excellence. Narnia is book set with a specific underlying mental paradigm - a way of thinking which is the Christian notion of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection.
Chuck Colson wrote in
How Now Shall We Live that we are dealing with a fundamentally different worldview. This world view is the context that informs what is going on with the release of Narnia. Context is what makes the Narnia books so powerful.
What should we do about it?
Call out this re-positioning for what it is and address it directly. Don't allow others to re-position us. Recognize that context is critical and reinforce our value in society as strongly and consistently as possible. Reposition the repositioners. Highlight how judging us as narrow-minded is narrow-minded. Judging us as judgmental is judgmental. Call it out for what it is - hate.