Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

Al Ries and Jack Trout present "positioning" as a framework for communication and marketing strategy designed to address what they identify as the central challenge of modern business: an overcommunicated society. The concept, which the authors first articulated in a 1972 series of articles for the trade publication Advertising Age, rests on a single foundational premise. Positioning is not something done to a product; it is something done to the mind of the prospect, meaning the target customer. The goal is to organize a product, service, company, or person so that it occupies a distinct, defensible place in the prospect's mental landscape.

The authors open by diagnosing the problem. Per-capita advertising consumption in America reached $376.62 per year, vastly exceeding the rest of the world. Beyond advertising, the volume of communication, from 30,000 books published each year to over seven hours of daily television per household, created what the authors call an "assault on the mind." The mind responds defensively: It screens out most incoming information, accepts only what matches prior knowledge, and resists change once it has formed an opinion. In this environment, the only viable strategy is to simplify one's message radically and focus not on the product's reality but on the prospect's existing perceptions.

Ries and Trout trace advertising through three historical eras. The product era of the 1950s emphasized unique selling propositions, meaning product-specific claims of distinctive features or benefits. The image era, championed by advertising executive David Ogilvy, shifted focus to brand reputation. The positioning era requires a company to create a place in the prospect's mind that accounts for its own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors. IBM did not invent the computer, but IBM was first to build a computer position in the consumer's mind.

The easiest way into the mind, the authors assert, is to be first. Most people can name the first person to fly solo across the North Atlantic (Charles Lindbergh) or the first person to walk on the moon (Neil Armstrong) but cannot name the second. The authors liken this phenomenon to "imprinting" in animal biology, where a newborn permanently bonds with the first creature it encounters. Brands that arrived first, such as Kodak in photography, Xerox in copiers, and Hertz in car rentals, enjoyed enormous advantages that proved nearly impossible to dislodge.

To cope with information overload, consumers organize brands on mental "product ladders," with one brand per rung. The Avis car rental campaign illustrates how a follower can claim a viable position by acknowledging the leader. By admitting it was only No. 2 and pledging to try harder, Avis went from 13 consecutive years of losses to profitability. The 7-Up "uncola" campaign demonstrates another approach: Rather than competing on the cola ladder, 7-Up defined itself as the alternative to cola, becoming the third option behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

When a competitor holds a dominant mental position, going head-to-head is futile regardless of resources. RCA invested heavily to challenge IBM in computers and wrote off $250 million in losses; General Electric similarly exited the business. The authors argue that competitors should instead leverage existing strengths. NCR succeeded in computers by concentrating on retail data entry systems, building on its established cash register position.

For market leaders, the authors prescribe reinforcing the original concept that established dominance, as Coca-Cola did with "The real thing," rather than running insecure advertisements. Leaders should also adopt promising new developments early. When Kodak and 3M declined to license the xerography process invented by Chester Carlson, a small company called Haloid seized it and grew into Xerox, a $9 billion corporation. The multibrand strategy of Procter & Gamble, which assigns each product a unique name and distinct position (Tide for laundry detergent, Pampers for diapers), exemplifies how leaders can address new segments without diluting existing brands.

For followers, the central strategy is cherchez le creneau, a French expression meaning "look for the hole" in the prospect's mind. Volkswagen's "Think small" campaign staked out the small-car position against Detroit's trend toward larger vehicles. Michelob claimed the high-price position in domestic beer. Other viable holes include time of day (Nyquil as the first nighttime cold remedy) and distribution (L'eggs as the first hosiery brand sold in supermarkets). The authors warn against filling a gap in the product line rather than a gap in the mind, citing the Ford Edsel, which addressed an internal need but found no open position in a saturated market.

When no open positions exist, the authors advocate repositioning the competition. Tylenol became the No. 1 analgesic by enumerating aspirin's negative side effects before presenting itself as the alternative. Stolichnaya vodka surged by revealing that Russian-sounding American brands like Smirnoff and Wolfschmidt were actually made domestically. The authors distinguish repositioning from comparative advertising, which merely claims superiority. True repositioning changes how prospects perceive the competitor's product.

Several chapters address naming, which the authors call the single most important marketing decision. A name should convey the product's major benefit: Head & Shoulders, DieHard, Close-Up. The authors warn against replacing meaningful names with initials, arguing that companies like IBM could use initials only because they were already famous. They also warn against line extension, the practice of reusing an established brand name on new products. When the Mennen company extended the Protein 21 shampoo name to hairspray, conditioner, and concentrate, the shampoo's market share fell from 13 percent to 2 percent. Volkswagen's extension from the Beetle into eight models dropped the brand from first to fourth in imported car sales. The "teeter-totter principle" holds that one name cannot stand for two distinctly different products: When Heinz shifted its emphasis from pickles to ketchup, Heinz lost its pickle leadership to Vlasic.

The book's second half applies these principles through extended case studies. For Xerox, the authors propose a "third-leg" strategy: Rather than pursuing IBM's computer territory, Xerox should expand its copier position into an "output" leg encompassing laser printers, scanners, and storage devices. For Belgium, the authors developed an ad headlined "In beautiful Belgium, there are five Amsterdams," leveraging the Michelin Guide's rating of five Belgian three-star cities to Holland's one. For Jamaica, the "Hawaii of the Caribbean" concept differentiated the island by borrowing Hawaii's existing mental image of green volcanic mountains meeting blue sea. For Western Union's Mailgram service, a six-city test demonstrated that positioning the service as a "low-cost Telegram" doubled awareness and produced 100 percent volume increases, far outperforming the alternative "high-speed letter" positioning.

Banking case studies illustrate how positioning reshapes perceptions. Long Island Trust, after ranking last on traditional banking attributes, built its campaign around the "Long Island position" and moved to first in perceived branch coverage and capitalization within 15 months, despite no actual changes. United Jersey Bank adopted the "fast-moving bank" strategy, exploiting the slow decision-making of large competitors through both advertising and operational changes; unaided awareness nearly tripled, and earnings rose 26 percent.

The book extends positioning to personal career strategy, advising individuals to define themselves with a single concept and to find a "horse to ride," whether a growth company, a competent boss, or a powerful idea. Ries and Trout close with a six-question framework: What position do you own? What position do you want to own? Whom must you outgun? Do you have enough money? Can you stick it out? Do you match your position? Positioning is cumulative and long-term, requiring patience, courage, and willingness to sacrifice breadth for focus. The first rule is that a company cannot compete head-on against an established leader. It must go around, under, or over, but never head to head.