NDA Editor-in-Chief Justin Pearse sits down with media and marketing veteran Paul Evans to find out more about V2RSION, the company he founded, described as ‘the first Positioning Engineering studio built for the intelligence era’.
Disruptive startups are common in our industry but when the founder is Paul Evans, it’s worth paying attention.
He has over two decades’ experience leading media transformation and strategy at global brands including Vodafone, Xbox, Emirates and Nike. At Vodafone, he was instrumental in pioneering the company’s in-housing strategy and helped reshape how media was planned and executed. Now, through V2RSION, he wants to redefine positioning as a dynamic, AI-powered system designed to keep companies relevant, discoverable and preferred by both human buyers and intelligent machines.
Why launch V2RSION now?
I’d been working as a fractional CMO, but over the past 18 months, I noticed a shift. More clients began asking for positioning work, urgently. In adtech especially, where a thousand companies sound exactly the same, founders were recognising that positioning could no longer be an afterthought. It was no longer just messaging, it needed to be foundational.
V2RSION is my response. It’s built to turn positioning into a structured system, something that can evolve and adapt in real time. And after years of media transformation work at Vodafone, Xbox and others, this was the business I knew I needed to create.
How does Positioning Engineering actually work?
We treat positioning like software. Traditional positioning has been static for 40 years. The original book on the subject was written in 1981, and frankly, not much has changed since. But today’s companies and markets are dynamic, and positioning should reflect that.
At V2RSION, we work in three phases. First is the audit, where we diagnose gaps in how a company presents itself, by analysing the business, its competitors and its customers. Second is the coding phase, where we define the business’s core positioning assets, from pitch statements to brand framing to internal alignment protocols, almost like a playbook. Third is the loop phase, where we version that positioning over time, adapting it as the business grows or the market shifts. We’re building this loop to be increasingly automated using AI and market signal tracking.
Where does brand fit into this flexible, versioned approach?
Brand and positioning are often treated separately, but they’re deeply connected. Brands evolve just like categories do, and our work doesn’t replace branding; it enhances it. Positioning is the strategic layer beneath everything.
It’s not about changing your logo or colours, but how your brand speaks, what it says, and how consistently it shows up across teams, markets and materials.
Good branding without clear positioning is just surface-level. Positioning drives the narrative and makes sure all those downstream activities are aligned.
And where does positioning sit among all the other agencies and specialists companies rely on?
Positioning should sit at the very beginning. It’s the missing middle between business strategy and go-to-market execution. Your operating model, your tech, your leadership, those can’t go to market on their own.
Positioning acts as the catalyst, shaping the brand, product, pricing, messaging and more.
I’ve created a bow-tie model to visualise this: from business strategy into positioning, and out into go-to-market. Skip positioning, and everything downstream risks misalignment. Too often, people leap straight to brand, website, or sales decks without defining the strategic code that ties it all together.
You describe positioning as dynamic. How does the feedback loop work in practice?
Real-time feedback is essential. We use generative AI, industry tools and synthetic research to monitor signals in the market, customer sentiment, competitor moves, new search language, even how LLMs like ChatGPT surface information.
Positioning today has to work for machines as well as humans. SEO is no longer about keyword stuffing, it’s about context and syntax. That’s why discoverability is one of our five core principles, along with differentiated, distinctive, directional and dynamic. All five work together to ensure positioning is not just static value prop, but a living system that evolves.
How does this relate to the concept of pivoting, especially in startups?
Most pivots happen early, when founders are chasing revenue and searching for product-market fit. That’s not our sweet spot. I tend to work with companies that have found fit and are ready to scale, when the founder can no longer do all the evangelising and the team needs consistent positioning to succeed.
Utiq is a good example.
I’ve worked with them from day one, but they launched with a mature model thanks to telco backing. We’ve evolved their positioning from version one through to version two as they’ve scaled across six European markets. Positioning helped them shape and own their category, Authentic Audiences, and remain distinct in a crowded identity space.
Who else is doing this kind of work?
There are plenty of brand consultants, and a handful of positioning experts globally, but very few treating positioning as a codebase, something to be engineered, updated and versioned over time. That’s why I built the 5D framework. We’ve moved on from simple differentiation to a system that’s distinctive, directional, discoverable and dynamic.
We’re not here to do surface-level messaging. We’re building structured, scalable systems for companies to win in the intelligence era.
How does this approach hold up globally, across markets and cultures?
If your core positioning code is strong and thoughtful, it can scale globally. You may need to tweak language or cultural tone, but the essence should hold.
Again, Utiq is a case in point, their positioning works across Europe. Execution matters, but great positioning gives you the foundation to execute with confidence anywhere.
What’s next for V2RSION as a business?
I’ve moved from the comfort of being a solo consultant to building something bigger. V2RSION will scale through people and product. There will always be a human-in-the-loop component, but we’re already working on digital products, especially within loop, that automate signal analysis and positioning updates.
The mission is clear: to democratise great positioning, and help companies of all sizes stay discoverable, preferred, and in front. This is about unlocking potential, not just rewriting messaging.
