Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

AL RIES AND JACK TROUT

Reviewed by Jack

When you think of portable music, one brand rules: iPod. How Apple came to dominate this market is simply an extraordinary example of successful “positioning.” Positioning is the process by which you get your product into the minds of prospective customers. In 1972, Al Ries and Jack Trout introduced their idea of positioning in a series of articles in Advertising Age called “The Positioning Era Cometh.” In 1981, they published Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Positioning becomes necessary for a product, service, or company because overcommunication in today’s world leads to what Ries and Trout call an “oversimplified mind”—a defense mechanism consumers use to deal with all the clutter companies and, subsequently, marketers throw at them. The choices available to us today can be overwhelming. For example, in the 1970s, Frito Lay offered ten chip varieties; in the 1990s, it offered seventy-eight. Running shoes? There were five choices in the 1970s, 285 varieties in the 1990s. With this kind of contemporary overload, the mind just shuts down. So, for Ries and Trout, “[p]ositioning is an organized system for finding windows in the mind.”

Since advertising’s effectiveness is weakened by this overload, the authors advise marketers that only a simplified message will actually make it through the clutter. One of the ways they suggest positioning a product is by “[o]wning a word in the mind. Volvo owns ‘safety.’ BMW owns ‘driving,’ FedEx owns ‘overnight,’ Crest owns ‘cavities.’ Once you own a word in the mind, you have to use it or lose it.” Just how do you embed a word that symbolizes your product in a person’s mind? One way is to get there first. We remember Charles Lindbergh and Roger Banister as the “first” to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and to break the four-minute mile, respectively, but we don’t remember who the next person was. Another powerful way to be memorable, the authors say, is “If you can’t be the first in a category, then set up a new category you can be first in.” For example, Miller Brewing certainly wasn’t the first brewer, but it created Miller Lite, the first mainstream light beer.

For the twentieth anniversary of this classic, the publisher reprinted a new version in hardcover, and the authors added comments in the margins of the expanded format. What really adds value in the new edition are stories of more recent successes and failures. The authors’ concise and direct writing style made this book a success when it was first published in 1981, and their clear communication of facts and opinions, continued in subsequent editions, compels readers to think about marketing in a new way.

“Positioning is an organized system for finding windows in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances”

Ries and Trout believe you can position just about anything. Their case examples range from the Catholic Church to the country of Belgium to the biotech firm Monsanto. The authors believe you can even position yourself. In each case, the end game is clarity, and the primary mission is to become the customer’s first thought. JC

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, McGraw-Hill, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Hardcover 2001, ISBN 9780071359168

WHERE TO NEXT? Here for the power of being number 1 or number 2 Here for the power of low prices | EVEN MORE: Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy; Building Strong Brands by David A. Aaker; The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout