competitive-platform-analysislisted

# Competitive Platform Analysis Use this skill to decide **who to benchmark** and **where to find them** before any scoring begins. A competitive analysis is only as good as its frame: the wrong set makes the client look either unbeatable or doomed. The goal is a defensible, decision-relevant set — not an exhaustive census. ## When to Activate - About to start a competitive benchmarking project and need to define the competitor set first. - Unsure which companies belong in Direct / Adjacent / Aspirational tiers. - Need a defensible, pruned scope for a market landscape report. - Has a positioning brief and wants to identify who contests that position. - First step before running benchmark-methodology. ## Client positioning brief (establish first) Before scoping the set, establish the client's positioning brief. If you don't already have it, run a short brand-discovery interview to elicit it — do **not** invent one and do **not** scope the set blind. The brief supplies: - **Identity / aesthetic register** — what kind of studio or company this is and how it presents itself. - **Offer** — what services or products it delivers. - **Target clients** — who it sells to. - **Differentiator** — the moat or positioning argument the client believes in. - **Scoping consequence** — the implication for how to weight competitors (e.g., prioritize by distinctiveness vs. capability overlap vs. price). - **Strategic tension** — the paired axes that define the client's white-space (e