Engineering Desire

What Flavor Science Taught Me About Positioning

One of the most interesting connections I made this week came from an unlikely place: food science. In the 1990s, food companies relied on “flavorists” to rebuild taste into packaged goods that had lost their richness after being processed for long shelf life or microwaves. A rice cake without seasoning tastes like cardboard—but with a carefully engineered buttered-popcorn note, it suddenly feels indulgent again. The insight is simple: when something loses impact, you don’t need to redesign the entire product—you amplify the right note that consumers will actually notice.

That same principle applies to positioning in marketing. Positioning isn’t about who we think we are—it’s about what place we hold in the mind of the customer. Starting with an inside-out question like “Who are we?” can be dangerous. Instead, the real question is “What mental slot do we already own, and how do we reinforce it?” For example, in my professional world of real estate and hospitality marketing, Century 21 Grenada Grenadines already occupies the slot of “trusted local guidance for international buyers.” My job isn’t to reinvent that—it’s to keep dramatizing it in ways that stick.

Positioning also teaches that the sharper and narrower your lane, the stronger you are. Just as NyQuil preempted the “nighttime cold remedy” category and Seven-Up built an entire identity around being the “Uncola,” brands today win by specializing. For me, this translates to defining Sequoia Socials not as a generic marketing agency, but as one that specializes in place-based brand building for Grenada. Specialists get remembered; generalists blur into the noise.

Another key takeaway is consistency. Once you claim a mental slot, you must reinforce it again and again. Changing your position mid-stream is like abandoning prime beachfront property—you may never get it back. That doesn’t mean creative ideas can’t evolve; it means every new ad, reel, or testimonial must read like a different dramatization of the same strategy.

Finally, both flavor science and positioning warn against chasing trends for the sake of novelty. Not every new “flavor” becomes mainstream, and not every platform gimmick strengthens a brand. The position is the dish; trends are just garnish.

The lesson I’m carrying forward is this: marketing is about engineering desire, the same way flavorists engineered taste. Choose a single note to amplify, preempt a clear niche, and repeat your position consistently until it becomes unforgettable. That is how brands—like food—become irresistible.