Selected Quotes & Ideas from the Book

Core Tenets of Positioning

• "Positioning has changed the way the advertising game is being played today...(In marketing campaigns, companies used to say they were the "first" or "best".) Today, you find comparatives, not superlatives."
  • Example: "Avis is the only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder."
• "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...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."
• "There are too many competitors out there. You can't win by not making enemies, by being everything to everybody. To win in today's competitive environment, you have to go out and make friends, carve out a specific niche in the market. Even if you lose a few doing so."
• "In the positioning era, the single most important marketing decision you can make is what to name the product...What you must look for is a name that begins the positioning process, a name that tells the prospect what the product's major benefit is."

Be First

• "The easy way to get into a person's mind is to be first. You can demonstrate the validity of this principle by asking yourself a few simple questions. What's the name of the first person to fly solo across the North Atlantic? Charles Lindbergh, right? Now, what's the name of the second person to fly solo across the North Atlantic? Not so easy to answer, is it?"
• "In advertising, the first product to establish the position has an enormous advantage...In advertising, it's best to have the best product in your particular field. But it's even better to be first."
  • Examples: Xerox, Polaroid, Bubble Yum, Kleenex, Hertz, Coca-Cola, General Electric
• Try to find a niche (even a small one) where you can be first.
• "History shows that the first brand into the brain, on the average, gets twice the long-term market share of the No. 2 brand and twice again as much as the No. 3 brand."

Simplify Your Messaging

• "The best approach to take in our overcommunicated society is the oversimplified message."
• "In communication, as in architecture, less is more. You have to sharpen your message to cut into the mind. You have to jettison the ambiguities, simplify the message, and then simplify it some more if you want to make a long-lasting impression. People who depend on communication for their livelihood know the necessity of oversimplification."
• "It's a selection project. You have to select the material that has the best chance of getting through."
  • Example: Beck's beer = "You've tasted the German beer that's the most popular in America. Now taste the German beer that's the most popular in Germany."
• "Your problem is not just one of developing a good strategy. Equally important is the courage you will need to keep hammering at the same theme, year after year."
• "Experience has shown that a positioning exercise is a search for the obvious. Those are the easiest concepts to communicate because they make the most sense to the recipient of a message."

The Product Ladder: Positioning Yourself in the Prospect's Mind

• "To cope with the product explosion, people have learned to rank products and brands in the mind. Perhaps this can best be visualized by imagining a series of ladders in the mind. On each step is a brand name. And each different ladder represents a different product category."
• "To succeed in our overcommunicated society, 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...IBM didn't invent the computer. Sperry-Rand did. But IBM was the first company to build a computer position in the mind of the prospect."
• "A competitor that wants to increase its share of the business must either dislodge the brand above (a task that is usually impossible) or somehow relate its brand to the other company's position."
• "An advertiser who wants to introduce a new product category must carry in a new ladder...That's why if you have a truly new product, it's often better to tell the prospect what the product is not, rather than what it is."
  • Example: 1st Automobile = "Horseless carriage"
  • Example: "Seven-Up: the uncola."