Positioning: The Battle of Minds

The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a "position" in a prospective customer's mind-one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors.

Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to make and position an industry leader so that its name and message pushes its way into the subconscious of the market and leaves its mark there. It also shows us how to not become a shadow in the dark of the established company. .

The other things it shows us are:

How to-

·         Use leading ad agency techniques to capture the biggest market share and become a household name

·         Use the position you have attained to your advantage.

·         Choose an apt name for the product.

·         Determine when-and why-less is more

·         Analyze recent trends that affect your positioning.

Ries and Trout provide many valuable case histories and penetrating analyses of some of the most phenomenal successes and failures in advertising history. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning is required reading for anyone in business today.

Ries and Trout tell us that the strategies of the past are no longer responsive and that today the impact of advertising is to seriously overstate the potential effectiveness of the message. The only hope according to them is to be selective, to focus on narrow targets, to practice segmentation- In a word, “Positioning”. They say that advertising is a brutal business where you don’t get second chances to make first impressions. One mistake can prove to be extremely costly and to make it cost effective, you have to be along the same wavelength as the prospect. Positioning is based on a concept that communication can take place only at the right place at the right time.

Positioning has come to be when market place evolved from being in a product era (back in the 50’s) where the advertising focused more on product features and customer benefit. USP was the main mode. Then came the Image era where successful companies found that reputation or image were more important than focusing on product features. The soon evolved over time and came to be known as the positioning era. Ries and Trout tell us that the company needs to position itself in the prospects mind in order to be successful. Like a computer, you need to erase the old brand in the category in order to put a new brand into the minds of people.

To conclude, while positioning your brand, you must-

·         Understand the words. A word has no meaning until one uses it and fills it with meaning.

·         Understand the people. Words trigger meanings buried in the minds of the people.

·         You must be careful of change. The only permanent thing in our lives is change, but the more a thing changes, the more likely it is to remain the same.

·          Need vision.

·         Need Courage.

·         Need objectivity.

·         Need simplicity.

·         Need subtlety.

·         Need patients and

·         Need to be ‘they’ oriented.

Karan Gala
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