What's your position? A marketing classic.
#4 Positioning by Ries and Trout. How does the battle for your mind look like and how can you win it?
To get more out of what you read it helps to write. This is my 4th book summary with my concrete takeaways that can inspire you as well. Previous book was A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Help me to more readers by sharing or liking this post. 🙏
Al Ries and Jack Trout first published this positioning classic back in 1980 (Goodreads: 4.01, 16.5k ratings).
In four decades not much changed; positioning of a brand, company, country or a politician is still all that matters to stand out in an overcrowded marketplace, even if you take social media enabled segmentation into account.
Who should read it?
Everyone who:
is building a product, a service or wants to be an elected official,
wants to improve decision-making about marketing budgets and get closer to find out which 50% of the budget is wasted,
wants to challenge their marketing agencies, departments or colleagues.
Top 3 takeaways
It reads extremely fast and is 1/4 theory to 3/4 examples (it was hard to pick 3 takeaways only). Some examples are ancient, but this does not really matter, because history rhymes and we, the people, are the same: our minds are made up.
Since 1980 we did not change much; the amount of bullshit has not decreased, we now get it served absolutely everywhere. The explosion of everything is targeted.
Segmentation makes advertising more efficient, but we are still spending a lot: advertising media owners revenue in 2021 was over $760 billion (Statista). And for this year global ad agencies forecast that the U.S. ad market will exceed $300 billion. Add another $700 billion from everyone else. Imagine the amount of advertising 1 trillion buys? Heck, I also spent 21.44 € on advertising my lindyrecipe.
As the subtitle puts it, “The Battle for Your Mind” will never be won, and companies still wonder “How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace.”
Majority of this money is spent on a weak force of marketing to change people’s minds that are mostly made up. Counterintuitively “reality or facts about the product do not matter, what matters is the perception […].”
In other words:
“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.”
And doing this is simple: you need to be first in your prospect’s mind, if not, you should look for a hole. If there is none, you need to reposition the competition and create a hole for yourself.
Wise, so why don’t we all do it this way? Because we did not read the book yet!
Let’s break it down a bit.
1. Be the first on the ladder
Your mind has a ladder for each product category, and if you check “best type of cheese for bolognese” ladder, your first thought will be Parmigiano Reggiano and not Emmentaler. The same is valid for every category. Who is number one on your “Electric vehicles” ladder? And if you want to read a good book summary you surely first think of this place, no? Joke.
“The easy way to get into a person's mind is to be first.”
You should do everything to find something you can be first in, and well… this is easier to write than do. Everybody knows that everybody knows that a niche is the easiest way forward, yet everyone first tries to swim in the biggest pond, because it is healthy to show ambition.
We all know the first man on the Moon, the first smart phone with a touch screen. Google, Zoom, Coca-Cola, McDonalds. Not necessarily the first ones, but clearly first in our minds.
Everything exploded; it is harder than ever to be first, we have something for everything. So besides going to a smaller pond and be the first there, what can you do?
2. If you are not the first, search for a hole
Companies/builders often waste time perfecting and polishing their products before release, forgetting that once the mind is made up, being better and shinier won’t matter. If the number one did not yet establish a clear leadership you should be extremely fast and aggressive to prevent the number one establishing it.
No budget or too late? You should look for a hole (Cherchez le creneau as per Ries) and fill it. And for finding a hole you
“must have the ability to think in reverse, to go against the grain. If everyone is going east, see if you can find your creneau by going west.”
They list several examples of possible holes; I chose three:
The size creneau: in the 70s and 80s Detroit carmakers all went for streamlined big cars. VW came with a Beetle and “Think small.” So this was VWs position.
The high-price creneau: in the 80s there were many holes left to fill in the luxury segment. These mostly got closed by today.
The low-price creneau: “if the thing does not work, I did not lose much money.” Maybe Anker today, or maybe the supermarket’s own-brands?
In practice I pissed against the wind and tried to bring my own ladder when I was working on my personal finance app. Go against existing budgeting concepts and instead of explaining what my app is, explain what is not. This was, for example, done brilliantly with “horseless” carriage for the first auto and “sugar-free” drinks. Well, I still didn’t give up!
Ok, but what if you cannot find a hole?
3. You make it by repositioning the competition
Explosion of everything, right? There are hundreds and hundreds of variations everywhere and the only thing left is to do something less crowded (smaller pond!) or try to reposition your competition:
“To move a new idea or a product into the mind, you must first move an old one out.”
You create a creneau by repositioning the competitors that occupy the positions in your prospect’s mind. You will need a conflict, because this means undercutting existing concept, product or person. An example of repositioning American vodkas:
“Most American vodkas seem Russian,” said the ads. And the caption said: “Samovar: Made in Schenley, Pennsylvania. Smirnoff: Made in Hartford, Connecticut. Wolfschmidt: Made in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. “Stolichnaya is different. It is Russian,” continued the ad. And the bottle is labeled, “Made in Leningrad, Russia.”
Guess who won? To be honest, I am not sure to what extent these things are allowed wordwide, but at least in the US comparative advertising is even encouraged, so you can stretch it. But careful:
“We're better than our competitors" isn't repositioning. It's comparative advertising and not very effective. There's a psychological flaw in the advertiser's reasoning which the prospect is quick to detect. "If your brand is so good, how come it's not the leader?"
A look at comparative ads suggests why most of them aren't effective. They fail to reposition the competition. Rather, they use the competitor as a benchmark for their own brand. Then they tell the reader or viewer how much better they are. Which, of course, is exactly what the prospect expects the advertiser to say.
Undercutting existing concepts and conflict made me think of Trumpism. It clearly worked. We will see in the conclusion that it is because we are all “unsane.”
My personal experience / How did it change me?
Things are simpler than we think. But we still try to reinvent the wheel; why would we stand on the shoulders of giants, eh? Positioning concept is 40+ years old and it holds.
Is it possible that some things have already been said and do not need to be said again? Absolutely.
How is it possible that so much money still gets wasted in marketing? Beats me, but I guess we need all those jobs.
Should you try a mandatory annual review of classic ideas in your field to validate your plans against them? Totally.
I tried some of the ideas in practice and they make sense. A book to revisit often because it really offers excellent ideas. And you can just open it anywhere.
Closing remarks
A must read for anyone who markets anything (also yourself). I rated it 4/5, deducting one point for some outdated examples (ok, maybe not fair but hey). Read it so you can learn from the giants, and stop thinking you know better.
"In politics," said John Lindsay, "the perception is the reality." So, too, in advertising, in business, and in life."
I leave you with a paraphrase of a powerful passage about how words affect people (p. 202):
Words are triggers. They trigger the meanings which are buried in the mind. If people understood this there would be no difference if you named a car Mustang or a Turtle. Most people are “unsane,” not completely sane nor insane.
Insane people try to make the world of reality fit what is in their heads.
Sane people constantly analyse the world of reality and then changes what's inside their head to fit the facts. That’s an awful lot of trouble for most people. How many people want to constantly change their opinions to fit the facts?
It's a whole lot easier to change the facts to fit your opinions.
“Unsane” people make up their minds and then find the facts to "verify" their opinion. Or even more commonly, they accept the opinion of the nearest "expert," and then they don't have to bother with the facts at all.
Insane how we all do it. Admit it to yourself! I did. And try the scout mindset from time to time.
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