Pinched, the one word a machine-made rival cannot claim, anchors the positioning statement in this MT359 Unit 2 example, tested against every competitor who might sign it. Searches like "mt 359 unit 2 assignment example", "mt359 unit 2 sample" and "mt359 unit 2 example" land here.
What a finished MT359 Unit 2 positioning statement looks like
Four pages in all. A short situation note places Kolbe Street against the national machine-made leader, which holds the freezer case with a [$4.99] box, and against two store brands made by one co-packer. A mental ladder follows, drawn from [22] shopper interviews: the leader on the top rung, store brands below it, Kolbe Street absent for most respondents under forty-five. Most of the paper's weight rests on a candidate table of six possible claims, each with a column naming which rival could sign it too. Five fail. Pinched by hand survives because the leader and the co-packer both run automated forming lines. The statement is then written as a single onliness sentence, after Marty Neumeier's test, and a closing section lists what the brand must never say again.
How a MT359 Unit 2 example is structured
Ries and Trout supply the logic and Neumeier supplies the sentence, and the paper keeps the two jobs apart. The ladder comes first because it shows the problem in the buyer's terms: nobody climbs past an entrenched leader on its own ladder, so the brand needs a new one. The candidate table follows, and the rival column does the work, since a claim a competitor could also sign positions nobody. Each rejected claim gets one line of reason, and family recipe, the claim the owners liked best, is rejected at greater length. The surviving word is then written into one onliness sentence naming the offering, the difference, the buyer, the place and the moment. The last section works as a guardrail, naming claims such as best value that would pull the brand back onto the leader's ladder.
A ladder with the leader on top
Interviewed shoppers named the national brand first, a store brand second, and rarely Kolbe Street at all. The paper argues that competing for the second rung on that ladder would mean fighting a price war against a far larger rival.
Six claims and who else could sign them
Family recipe, real potato, generous filling, premium quality, local and pinched by hand each sit in a row. Only the last leaves the rival column empty, since both larger producers form their pierogi by machine.
Why family recipe lost
Owners preferred it, and every competitor already prints something like it. The paper notes that a claim nobody can disprove is also one nobody believes, which is why the family story moves into support rather than position.
The onliness sentence
Kolbe Street is the only frozen pierogi pinched by hand, for western Pennsylvania households raised on parish-sale pierogi, sold in [340] local stores, at a time when those parish sales are closing one by one.
Claims now off limits
Best value, more per bag and anything about speed are listed as forbidden, each with its reason: they invite comparison on the leader's terms and would make every later campaign piece argue a second idea.
Where marks go in MT359 Unit 2
Credit on MT359 positioning work usually turns on whether the claim is ownable, meaning a named rival could not say the same thing honestly. Statements built on quality, value or a family story rarely score well here, since every brand in the freezer case already uses those words. Showing the competition as it sits in the buyer's mind, through a ladder, a map or interviews, earns more than asserting where the brand stands. Rubrics often look for rejected alternatives with reasons, so a paper presenting one claim with no contest reads as a guess. A statement stretching to cover two ideas, pinched and cheaper, fails the single-proposition test the course applies in every later unit. Positioning written as an advertising slogan draws comment, because the statement guides the campaign rather than appearing in it.
Get a MT359 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
Name the brand behind your Unit 2 prompt and the competitors sharing its shelf; then the prompt, with its grading rubric, is all that remains. A free first custom statement follows within 24-48h, with a rival column for every candidate claim and the one that survives written out as a single sentence.
MT359 Unit 2 questions, answered
Is Ries and Trout still accepted as a source for positioning?
Generally, yes. Their book remains one of the most cited works on the subject, and its ideas about owning a word and starting a new category appear in most marketing texts. Check whether your course reading uses a different framework, such as a perceptual map or a four-part statement, and use that if the prompt names it. Citing the original beside the course text is common.
What is an onliness statement?
A one-sentence test from Marty Neumeier's book Zag: the brand is the only one in its category that delivers a stated difference to a stated buyer, in a stated place, during a stated trend. If the sentence cannot be completed truthfully with the word only, the difference is not yet strong enough. Many papers use it as a check beside the formal statement.
How many candidate claims should the paper test?
Enough to show a real contest, usually four to seven. Include the claims the brand currently makes and the ones its owners favor, since rejecting a favorite with reasons shows judgment. Each candidate needs the same test, most simply whether a named competitor could make it honestly, so the surviving claim is chosen by the table rather than by preference.