Michel Fortin

Tag: Power Positioning

Four-person leadership team mapping Power Positioning as an operating system on a glass wall, with positioning at the center connecting to marketing, sales, product, hiring, and retention functions during a strategy diagnosis.

Why Positioning Is an Operating System (Not a Tagline)

by Michel Fortin

Most positioning conversations happen in the wrong department. Positioning arrives as a marketing brief and leaves as a tagline. Between those events, three or four rooms of smart people generate an artifact everyone nods at, and nothing about the business actually changes. That is positioning-as-tagline. Power Positioning treats positioning as the operating system underneath every function. Marketing, sales, product, and hiring all read from the same instruction set. Here is what changes when they do.

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A senior executive sits at a leather-bound journal on a dark wood desk, examining a freshly written coined term under the warm glow of a brass lamp in a premium office at late afternoon. The image illustrates the article's argument that brandifying, the act of naming a category into existence, is a different move from branding what already exists.

Why I Brandify Categories Instead of Branding Products

by Michel Fortin

Most people use ‘branding’ and ‘brandifying’ as if they were the same word. They are not. Branding decorates what already exists. Brandifying names the thing into existence first, so it can be owned. I have been doing the second one for 35 years without a word for it. Here is the line, the move, and why expert-led firms that want to claim a category have to learn to brandify rather than brand.

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Overhead view of a Revenue Architect's diagnostic working journal spanning the first two months of a fractional engagement, illustrating the diagnostic-first approach that differs from a 100-day accelerator promise of tactics in week one

Why My First Two Months Look Nothing Like a 100-Day Accelerator

by Michel Fortin

The first two months of an engagement with me look quiet from the outside. I do not launch a campaign in week one. I do not hand you a framework in week two. I spend the first eight to nine weeks diagnosing your revenue system before I recommend a single tactic. If that sounds slower than what the accelerator-sellers promise, it is. Here is why the quiet is the point.

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Overhead view of an architect's drafting workspace with a hand-drawn revenue system blueprint, T-square, and drafting tools, illustrating the Revenue Architect's role of designing revenue systems before functional leaders execute inside them

What a Revenue Architect Actually Does

by Michel Fortin

The Revenue Architect title is showing up in more LinkedIn profiles this year than the last five combined. Some operators are doing the work. Most are not. Here is what a Revenue Architect actually does, how the role sits alongside a CMO, CRO, and Head of Growth, and how to tell the two apart when you are hiring.

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Overhead view of a consulting firm principal's desk with open reference books, notebook, and an analytics dashboard on a laptop, illustrating the authority architecture work a fractional CMO does for expert-led firms

Why Consulting Firms Need a Different Kind of Fractional CMO

by Michel Fortin

Consulting firms grow through authority, not demand generation. Most fractional CMO playbooks are built for product companies and miss what actually holds a consulting firm back. Here is what the work looks like when it is done properly, why the standard playbook fails, and when the fit is right.

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Fractional executive studying a revenue system diagram to diagnose where the business is leaking before filling a role

What a Fractional Executive Actually Does, and When You Need One

by Michel Fortin

A fractional executive is a senior leader who owns one part of your revenue system part-time, on retainer, and stays accountable for the outcome. Most companies hire the title they think they need (a CMO, a CRO, a CSO, a CGO) when the real seam that is broken sits somewhere else in the system. The role you need is an output of the diagnosis, not the input. Hire the seat after you find the leak, not before. The work I do first with every company is the diagnosis, and the seat we land on is often not the one they called about.

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