There are some throwbacks that you just want to throw away – the picture of yours truly in a majorette uniform in a previous blog post immediately comes to mind. But the one below, my 20-plus year old paperback edition of Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, is not one of them.
Many consider this 1981 bestseller by Al Ries and Jack Trout to be the holy grail of marketing strategy. The groundbreaking industry tome has had several updated editions, but the premise remains unchanged: 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. BTW, 30 years ago, the authors described our society as overcommunicated. They must have had a crystal ball into the digital age and era of social media. All the more reason to revisit six “classic” steps for a successful positioning program (Chapter 21 of the 1981paperback), along with excerpts from the book.
1. Determine What Position Do You Own – Instead of asking what you are, you ask what position you already own in the mind of the prospect…You get the answer to the question “What position do we own?” from the marketplace, not from the marketing manager.
2. Determine What Position Do you Want to Own – Too many programs set out to communicate a position that is impossible to pre-empt because someone else already owns it…If you try to be all things to all people, you wind up with nothing.
3. Determine Whom Must You Outgun – It’s better to go around an obstacle rather than over it…Try to select a position that no one else has a firm grip on…spend as much time thinking about the situation from the point of view of your competitors as you do thinking about it from your own.
4. Determine Do You Have Enough Money – It takes money to build a share of mind. It takes money to establish a position. It takes money to hold a position once you’ve established it.
5. Determine Can You Stick it Out – You can think of our overcommunicated society as a constant crucible of change…To cope with change, it’s important to take a long-range point of view. To determine your basic position and then stick to it.
6. Determine Do You Match Your Position – Creativity by itself is worthless. Only when it is subordinated to the positioning objective can creativity make a contribution.
The most recent edition of this classic tome is available from Amazon.com. In the meantime, we stumbled upon this 2009 video, Positioning for the Small Guy, featuring Jack Trout.
GB O’Brien
Principal, LGK
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