East Los Angeles College Positioning the Battle for Your Mind Article Analysis Format:Three-page maximum (books)single space, block format, justified margi

East Los Angeles College Positioning the Battle for Your Mind Article Analysis Format:Three-page maximum (books)single space, block format, justified margins, 10-point font APA bibliographic citation of the work as your ‘title’ Your name, course, section number and date at the upper right Use the bold subheadings below to segment your narrative Content: Central theme – identify author’s main lesson/argument – what is the author(s) teaching usCritical analysis – evaluate the lesson/argument – strengths/weaknesses – considering pointing to a frame of reference in your own life or your training in the subjectMain takeaways – so what and now what? How do we best apply the knowledge from this article/book? Positioning: The Battle for Your
Mind
Al Ries
Jack Trout
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Dedicated to the second best advertising agency in the whole world.
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Whoever they might be.
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Contents
Introduction
“Positioning” is the first body of thought to come to grips with the
problems of communicating in an overcommunicated society
Chapter 1. What Positioning Is All About
Many people misunderstand the role of communication in business and
politics today. In our overcommunicated society, very little
communication actually takes place. Rather, a company must create a
“position” in the prospect’s mind. A position that takes into consideration
not only a company’s own strengths and weaknesses, but those of its
competitors as well
Chapter 2. The Assault on the Mind
There are just too many companies, too many products, too much
marketing noise. The per-capita consumption of advertising in America is
$376 per year
Chapter 3. Getting Into the Mind
The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be first. If you can’t be first,
then you must find a way to position yourself against the product, the
politician, the person who did get there first
Chapter 4. Those Little Ladders in Your Head
To cope with our overcommunicated society, people have learned to rank
products on mental ladders. In the rent-a-car field, for example, most
people put Hertz on the top rung, Avis on the second rung, and National on
the third. Before you can position anything, you must know where it is on
the product ladder in the mind
Chapter 5. You Can’t Get There from Here
A competitor has no hope of going head-to-head against the position IBM
has established in computers. Many companies have ignored this basic
positioning principle and have suffered the consequences
Chapter 6. Positioning of a Leader
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To be a leader you have to be first to get into the mind of the prospect—
and then follow the strategies for staying there
Chapter 7. Positioning of a Follower
What works for a leader doesn’t necessarily work for a follower. An alsoran must find a “creneau” or hole in the mind not occupied by someone
else
Chapter 8. Repositioning the Competition
If there are no “creneaus” left, you have to create one by repositioning the
competition. Tylenol, for example, repositioned aspirin
Chapter 9. The Power of the Name
The most important marketing decision you can make is what to name the
product. The name alone has enormous power in an overcommunicated
society
Chapter 10. The No-Name Trap
Companies with long, complex names have tried to shorten them by using
initials. This strategy seldom works
Chapter 11. The Free-Ride Trap
Can a second product get a free ride on the advertising coattails of a wellknown brand? In the case of products like LifeSavers gum, the answer is
no
Chapter 12. The Line-Extension Trap
Line extension has become the marketing sickness of the past decade. Why
it seldom works
Chapter 13. When Lina Extension Can Work
There are cases, however, of successful line extension (GE, for example.)
A discussion of when to use the house name and when to use a new name
Chapter 14. Positioning a Company: Xerox
Xerox owns the copier position. But as Xerox moves into the office
automation field, how should the company be positioned?
Chapter 15. Positioning a Country: Belgium
The answer to the problems of a national airline like Sabena Belgium
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World Airlines is to position the country, not the airline
Chapter 16. Positioning an Island: Jamaica
“Sand and surf” has become a visual cliché for all Caribbean islands. How
do you establish a unique position for one of them?
Chapter 17. Positioning a Product: Milk Duds
How a product with a small budget can get into the mind by positioning
itself as the long-lasting alternative to the candy bar
Chapter 18. Positioning a Service: Mailgram
Why a totally new service has to be positioned against the old
Chapter 19. Positioning a Long Island Bank
How a bank successfully struck back when its territory was invaded by its
giant neighbors from the Big City
Chapter 20. Positioning a New Jersey Bank
One of the best ways to establish a position is to find a weakness in your
competitor’s
Chapter 21. Positioning a ski resort: Stowe
How an outside expert can add credibility to a positioning claim
Chapter 22. Positioning the Catholic Church
Even institutions can benefit from positioning chinking. An outline of the
logical steps that could be taken to position the Roman Catholic Church
Chapter 23. Positioning Yourself and Your Career
You can benefit by using positioning strategy to advance your own career.
Key principle: Don’t try to do everything yourself. Find a horse to ride
Chapter 24. Positioning Your Business
To get started on a positioning program, there are six questions you can
ask yourself
Chapter 25. Playing the Positioning Game
To be successful at positioning, you have to have the right mental attitude.
You have to become an outside-in thinker rather than an inside-out thinker.
This requires patience, courage, and strength of character
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Index
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New Foreword to the Marketing Classic
For years, all of us in marketing taught our students to build a marketing
plan around the “four Ps”—Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
I began to realize some years ago that important steps needed to
precede the four Ps. All good marketing planning must start with R,
Research, before any of the Ps can be set.
Research reveals, among other things, that customers differ greatly in
their needs, perceptions, and preferences. Therefore, customers must be
classified into S, Segments.
Most companies cannot serve all segments. A company must choose
the segment that they can serve at a superior level. This is T, Targeting.
Now there is one more step before 4P planning can take place. That is
P, Positioning. This is the revolutionary concept that Al Ries and Jack
Trout introduced in their now classic book, Positioning.
Positioning is a revolutionary idea precisely because it cuts across the
other four Ps. It informs each of the Ps and adds consistency to them. Ever
since the 1972 series of Advertising Age articles on the subject by the two
authors of this book, the discipline of marketing has never been the same.
Positioning can affect the product. Volvo’s conscious decision to build
safety features into its product set up the hugely successful “safety”
position for the Volvo brand. In the process, a small company from
Sweden became one of the world’s most powerful automobile brands.
(And commanded a big price when the company was bought by Ford.)
Positioning can affect the price of the product. Häagen-Dazs’s
conscious decision to introduce a more expensive line of ice cream set up
the “premium” ice cream position for the brand and made Häagen-Dazs
one of the enduring marketing successes of the past several decades. (What
Häagen-Dazs did at the high end, brands like Wal-Mart and Southwest
Airlines did at the low end.)
Positioning can affect the place the product is sold. Hanes, the leading
department store brand of panty hose, developed a panty hose product
specifically for supermarket distribution. The brand was called L’eggs and
it was packaged in an eggshaped container. The “supermarket” panty hose
position made the L’eggs brand an enormous success and ultimately the
largest-selling panty hose brand in the country.
Positioning can affect the promotion of the product. Little Caesars
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became a powerful pizza brand by elevating its “two for the price of one”
promotion into a positioning strategy. Their “pizza, pizza” refrain became
one of the most memorable advertising programs ever run and made the
Little Caesars brand into the fastest-growing pizza chain.
Then, of course, Little Caesars dropped their “two-for-one” strategy
and sales fell apart, an event that demonstrates not only the power of
positioning, but also the difficulty of changing one’s position after it is
established.
Marketing is not a static discipline. Marketing is a constantly changing
discipline and positioning is one of those revolutionary changes that keeps
the marketing field alive, interesting, exciting, and fascinating.
When you read this seminal book on the subject I think you will find
that positioning is not only alive and well today, but also a powerful tool
for creating and maintaining real differentiation in the marketplace.
Philip Kotler, Ph.D.
Kellogg Graduate School of Management
Northwestern University
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Introduction
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
How often have you heard that bromide? “Failure to communicate” is
the single, most common, most universal reason people give for their
problems.
Business problems, government problems, labor problems, marriage
problems.
If only people took the time to communicate their feelings, to explain
their reasons, the assumption is that many of the problems of the world
would somehow disappear. People seem to believe any problem can be
solved if only the parties sit down and talk.
Unlikely.
Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the
world’s first overcommunicated society. Each year, we send more and
receive less.
A new approach to communication
This book has been written about a new approach to communication called
positioning. And most of the examples are from the most difficult of all
forms of communication—advertising. A form of communication that,
from the point of view of the recipient, is held in low esteem. Advertising
is, for the most part, unwanted and unliked. In some cases, advertising is
thoroughly detested.
To many intellectuals, advertising is selling your soul to corporate
America—a subject not worthy of serious study.
In spite of its reputation, or perhaps because of it, the field of
advertising is a superb testing ground for theories of communication. If it
works in advertising, most likely it will work in politics, religion, or any
other activity that requires mass communication.
So the examples in this book could just as well have been taken from
the field of politics, war, business, or even the science of chasing the
opposite sex. Or any form of human activity which involves influencing
the minds of other people. Whether you want to promote a car, a cola, a
computer, a candidate, or your own career.
Positioning is a concept that has changed the nature of advertising, a
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concept so simple, people have difficulty understanding how powerful it
is.
Every successful politician practices positioning. So do Procter &
Gamble and Johnson & Johnson.
Positioning defined
Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a
company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself.
But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you
do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the
mind of the prospect.
So it’s incorrect to call the concept “product positioning.” You’re not
really doing something to the product itself.
Not that positioning doesn’t involve change. It often does. But changes
made in the name, the price, and the package are really not changes in the
product at all. They’re basically cosmetic changes done for the purpose of
securing a worthwhile position in the prospect’s mind.
Positioning is the first body of thought that comes to grips with the
difficult problem of getting heard in our overcommunicated society.
How positioning got started
If one word can be said to have marked the course of advertising in the
past decade, the word is “positioning.”
Positioning has become a buzzword among advertising, sales, and
marketing people. Not only in America, but around the world. Teachers,
politicians, and editorial writers are using the word.
Most people think positioning got started in 1972 when we wrote a
series of articles entitled “The Positioning Era” for the trade paper
Advertising Age.
Since then, we have given more than 1000 speeches on positioning to
advertising groups in 21 different countries around the world. And we
have given away more than 150,000 copies of our “little orange booklet”
which reprints the Advertising Age articles.
Positioning has changed the way the advertising game is being played
today.
“We’re the third largest-selling coffee in America,” say the Sanka radio
commercials.
The third largest? Whatever happened to those good old advertising
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words like “first” and “best” and “finest”?
Well, the good old advertising days are gone forever and so are the
words. Today you find comparatives, not superlatives.
“Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder.”
“Seven-Up: the uncola.”
Along Madison Avenue, these are called positioning slogans. And the
advertising people who write them spend their time and research money
looking for positions, or holes, in the marketplace.
But positioning has stirred up interest well beyond Madison Avenue.
With good reason.
Anyone can use positioning strategy to get ahead in the game of life.
And look at it this way: If you don’t understand and use the principles,
your competitors undoubtedly will.
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1
What positioning is all about
How did a hard-sell concept like positioning become so popular in a
business noted for its creativity?
In truth, the past decade might well be characterized as a “return to
reality.” White knights and black eye patches gave way to such positioning
concepts as “Lite Beer from Miller. Everything you always wanted in a
beer. And less.”
Poetic? Yes. Artful? Yes. But also a straightforward, clearly defined
explanation of the basic positioning premise.
To be successful today, you must touch base with reality. And the only
reality that counts is what’s already in the prospect’s mind.
To be creative, to create something that doesn’t already exist in the
mind, is becoming more and more difficult. If not impossible.
The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and
different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie
the connections that already exist.
Today’s marketplace is no longer responsive to the strategies that
worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies,
and too much marketing noise.
The question most frequently asked by positioning skeptics is, “Why?”
Why do we need a new approach to advertising and marketing?
The overcommunicated society
The answer is that we have become an overcommunicated society. The
per-capita consumption of advertising in America today is $376.62 a year.
(That compares with $16.87 in the rest of the world.)
If you spend $1 million a year on advertising, you are bombarding the
average consumer with less than a half cent of advertising, spread out over
365 days—a consumer already exposed to $376.61½ worth of other
advertising.
In our overcommunicated society, to talk about the “impact” of your
advertising is to seriously overstate the potential effectiveness of your
message. Advertising is not a sledgehammer. It’s more like a light fog, a
very light fog that envelops your prospects.
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In the communication jungle out there, the only hope to score big is to
be selective, to concentrate on narrow targets, to practice segmentation. In
a word, “positioning.”
The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications,
screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind
accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.
Millions of dollars have been wasted trying to change minds with
advertising. Once a mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change it.
Certainly not with a weak force like advertising. “Don’t confuse me with
the facts, my mind’s made up.” That’s a way of life for most people.
The average person will sit still when being told something which he or
she knows nothing about. (Which is why “news” is an effective advertising
approach.) But the average person cannot tolerate being told he or she is
wrong. Mind-changing is the road to advertising disaster.
The oversimplified mind
The only defense a person has in our overcommunicated society is an
oversimplified mind.
Not unless they repeal the law of nature that gives us only 24 hours in a
day will they find a way to stuff more into the mind.
The average mind is already a dripping sponge that can only soak up
more information at the expense of what’s already there. Yet we continue
to pour more information into that supersaturated sponge and are
disappointed when our messages fail to get through.
Advertising, of course, is only the tip of the communication iceberg.
We communicate with each other in a wide variety of bewildering ways.
And in a geometrically increasing volume.
The medium may not be the m…
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