# Obviously Awesome > Product positioning: unique value, target customers — an AI agent skill based on *Obviously Awesome* by April Dunford. Published 2026-02-19 · Updated 2026-08-17 · Marketing & Messaging · Free and MIT-licensed Canonical: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/obviously-awesome/ Source: https://github.com/wondelai/skills/tree/main/obviously-awesome **Install:** `npx skills add wondelai/skills/obviously-awesome --global` ## What is the Obviously Awesome skill? Obviously Awesome carries the methodology from April Dunford’s book of the same name into your AI agent as a repeatable five-step process. It works out what customers would use if you vanished, which of your attributes those alternatives lack, the value that unlocks, who cares most about it, and the market category that makes all of it obvious. ## Key concepts from Obviously Awesome your agent applies - **Competitive Alternatives** — Identify what customers would do if your solution didn't exist — this is your true competition. - **Unique Attributes** — List the capabilities you have that alternatives lack — these are your positioning pillars. - **Value Translation** — Translate features into customer benefits that matter — what each attribute means for the buyer. - **Target Customer Segments** — Find the customers who care most about your unique value — they buy fastest and love you most. - **Market Category** — Choose the market frame that makes your strengths most obvious to your best customers. ## When to use Obviously Awesome — and when not to Reach for it when: - Prospects follow every feature in the demo and still ask what, exactly, they would be replacing. - Your win rate is respectable against one named competitor and hopeless against a spreadsheet. - You are compared against a category you do not belong in, and lose on the criteria that category is judged by. - Two people describe the product to strangers and produce two convincingly different products. Reach for something else when: - Positioning is settled and you need the homepage written — hand that to StoryBrand Messaging. - The real move is reshaping the market rather than placing yourself in it — see Blue Ocean Strategy. - You cannot yet say why customers hire the product — Jobs to Be Done gets you that before positioning. - Pragmatists still will not buy despite clear positioning — Crossing the Chasm handles the whole-product gap. ## About April Dunford World's leading product positioning expert, 25-year tech executive. April Dunford is the world's leading expert on product positioning, having positioned or repositioned over 100 products during her 25-year career as a VP of Marketing at startups and global enterprises. The book: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL28266221M/Obviously_Awesome ## Example prompts - Run a positioning exercise for my project management tool using obviously-awesome skill _(Product positioning)_ - Identify our competitive alternatives and unique attributes using obviously-awesome skill _(Competitive analysis)_ - Define the market category that makes our strengths obvious using obviously-awesome skill _(Market strategy)_ - Write positioning-driven copy for our homepage using obviously-awesome skill _(Marketing copy)_ ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I install the Obviously Awesome skill? Run `npx skills add wondelai/skills/obviously-awesome --global`. It takes about 30 seconds and needs no account. The Obviously Awesome skill then works in Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw and Hermes Agent — anything that reads the open agentskills.io format — and your agent loads it on its own when a task calls for it. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the source is at https://github.com/wondelai/skills. ### Which book is the Obviously Awesome skill based on? It packages *Obviously Awesome* by April Dunford — world's leading product positioning expert, 25-year tech executive. The skill distils the book's method into instructions your agent follows while it works, covering competitive alternatives, unique attributes and value translation. It sits in the Marketing & Messaging part of the library. ### Isn’t positioning just messaging by another name? No, and Dunford’s book is largely an argument against that conflation. Positioning is the context you place the product in — the category, the alternatives, the segment. Messaging is the words that follow from it. Get the context wrong and better copy makes things worse, because you are being clearer about the wrong comparison. StoryBrand Messaging writes the words; this decides which words could possibly be the right ones. ### What does the positioning canvas actually contain? Ten components, five of them derived. You fill in competitive alternatives, unique attributes, value themes, best-fit customers and market category; from those come relevant trends, the positioning statement, proof points, the sales narrative and finally the external messaging. Dunford’s test is that everyone on the team fills it independently and arrives at the same answers. Divergence is not a wording problem — it means the company disagrees about what it sells. ### Can an AI agent do this without talking to customers? Only halfway, and it is worth being blunt. Step one asks what your happy customers actually switched from, and the book’s answer is to interview fifteen to twenty of them. An agent can structure the canvas, generate hypotheses, pressure-test your assumptions and draft the statement — but if your competitive alternatives are guesses, everything downstream inherits the guess. Use it to prepare and then process those interviews, not to skip them. ### Should we invent a new category? Usually not. Category creation is one of three positioning styles in the book, and it is the expensive one — you take on the cost of teaching a market that the problem exists before you can sell the cure. Winning the category you are already in, or carving out a subsegment you can dominate, are cheaper and available to nearly everyone. The skill picks the style your evidence supports rather than the one that flatters you most. ## Related - All Marketing & Messaging skills: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/marketing/ - StoryBrand Messaging: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/storybrand-messaging/ - Made to Stick: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/made-to-stick/ - Contagious: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/contagious/ - 1-Page Marketing Plan: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/one-page-marketing/ - Scorecard Marketing: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/scorecard-marketing/