Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

by Al Ries

People seem to believe any problem can be solved if only the parties sit down and talk.

Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the world’s first overcommunicated society. Each year, we send more and receive less.

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.

Positioning is the first body of thought that comes to grips with the difficult problem of getting heard in our overcommunicated society.

Advertising is not a sledgehammer. It’s more like a light fog, a very light fog that envelops your prospects.

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.

In other words, since so little of your message is going to get through anyway, you ignore the sending side and concentrate on the receiving end. You concentrate on the perceptions of the prospect. Not the reality of the product.

It may be cynical to accept the premise that the sender is wrong and the receiver is right. But you really have no other choice. Not if you want to get your message accepted by another human mind.

By turning the process around, by focusing on the prospect rather than the product, you simplify the selection process. You also learn principles and concepts that can greatly increase your communication effectiveness.

To advertise effectively today, you have to get off your pedestal and put your ear to the ground. You have to get on the same wavelength as the prospect.

Positioning is an organized system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances.

The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be first.

“Imprinting” is the term animal biologists use to describe the first encounter between a newborn animal and its natural mother. It takes only a few seconds to fix indelibly in the memory of the young animal the identity of its parent.

If you want to be successful in love or in business, you must appreciate the importance of getting into the mind first. You build brand loyalty in a supermarket the same way you build mate loyalty in a marriage. You get there first and then be careful not to give them a reason to switch.

For many people or products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospect’s mind.

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. And the relationships are not easily changed.

Why isn’t it a good idea to run advertising that says, “We’re No. 1”? The reason is psychological. Either the prospect knows you are No. 1 and wonders why you are so insecure that you have to say so. Or the prospect doesn’t know you are No. 1. If not, why not?

Each leading Procter & Gamble brand has its own separate identity: Joy, Crest, Head & Shoulders, Sure, Bounty, Pampers, Comet, Charmin, and Duncan Hines. Not a Plus, Ultra, or Super in the lot. So a multibrand strategy is really a single-position strategy. One without change.

When a follower copies a leader, it’s not covering at all. It’s better described as a me-too response. (Usually phrased more diplomatically as “keeping in tune with the times.”)

most effective ad Volkswagen ever ran was the one which stated the position clearly and unequivocally. “Think small.” With two simple words, this headline did two things at once. It stated the Volkswagen position, and it challenged the prospect’s assumption that bigger is necessarily better.

Too often, however, greed gets confused with positioning thinking. Charging high prices is not the way to get rich. Being the first to (1) establish the high-price position (2) with a valid product story (3) in a category where consumers are receptive to a high-priced brand is the secret of success. Otherwise, your high price just drives prospective customers away.

For a repositioning strategy to work, you must say something about your competitor’s product that causes the prospect to change his or her mind, not about your product, but about the competitor’s product.

In some small corner of the brain is a penalty box marked “loser.” Once your product is sent there, the game is over.

“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?”

To be successful in this overcommunicated society of ours, you have to play the game by the rules that society sets. Not your own. Don’t be discouraged. A little disparagement may be preferable in the long run to a lot of conventional “brag and boast.” Done honestly and fairly, it keeps the competition on their toes.

Today, however, a lazy, say-nothing name isn’t good enough to cut into the mind. 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.

A name should not go “over the edge,” though. That is, become so close to the product itself that it becomes generic, a general name for all products of its class rather than a trade name for a specific brand.

The first company into the mind with a new product or new idea is going to become famous.

When they have a choice of a word or a set of initials, both equal in phonetic length, people will invariably use the word, not the initials.

Messages would “sound better” in print if they were designed for radio first. Yet we usually do the reverse. We work first in print and then in the broadcast media.

You can’t use the initials of a company that is only modestly successful (the cause) and then expect it to become rich and famous (the effect). It’s like trying to become rich and famous by buying limousines and corporate jets. First, you have to become successful in order to have the money to buy the fringe benefits.

Publicity is like eating. Nothing kills the appetite quite as much as a hearty meal. And nothing kills the publicity potential of a product or a person quite as much as a cover story in a national magazine. The media are constantly looking for the new and different, the fresh young face. In dealing with media, you must conserve your anonymity until you are ready to spend it. And then when you spend it, spend it big. Always keeping in mind that the objective is not publicity or communication for its own sake, but publicity to achieve a position in the prospect’s mind.

In a sense, line extension educates the prospect to the fact that Bayer is nothing but a brand name. It destroys the illusion that Bayer is a superior form of aspirin. Or that Dial is deodorant soap rather than just a brand name for a deodorant soap.

But when the tables are turned, the name makes no sense because the mind of the prospect is organized differently. The prospect thinks in terms of products.

But it’s better to establish a position in the prospect’s mind first and then worry about how to establish a retail connection later.

In positioning, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily the best strategy. The obvious name isn’t always the best name. Inside-out thinking is the biggest barrier to success. Outside-in thinking is the best aid.

While line extension is usually a mistake, the reverse can work. Reverse line extension is called “broadening the base.”

Notice the characteristics of this broadening-the-base strategy. Same product, same package, same label. Only the application has changed.

Easy come, easy go. Line-extension names are forgettable because they have no independent position in the mind. They are satellites to the original brand name. Their only contribution is to blur the position occupied by the original name. Often with catastrophic results.

The classic test for line extension is the shopping list. Just list the brands you want to buy on a piece of paper and send your spouse to the supermarket: Kleenex, Bayer, and Dial. That’s easy enough. Most husbands or wives would come back with Kleenex tissue, Bayer aspirin, and Dial soap.

The confusion caused when one name stands for more than one product is slowly but surely sapping the strength of brands like Scott and Kraft.

The step-down problem is just the reverse. Step-down products are often instantly successful. The hangover comes later.

The Packard Clipper was the most successful car Packard ever built. Sales were terrific, but it killed the company. (Or more precisely, it killed Packard’s prestige position, which in turn killed the company.)

We call line extension a “trap,” not a mistake. Line extension can work if.… But it’s a big if. If your competitors are foolish. If your volumn is small. If you have no competitors. If you don’t expect to build a position in the prospect’s mind. If you don’t do any advertising. The truth is, many products are sold, few are positioned.

So we offer some rules of the road that will tell you when to use the house name and when not to. 1. Expected volume. Potential winners should not bear the house name. Small-volume products should. 2. Competition. In a vacuum, the brand should not bear the house name. In a crowded field, it should. 3. Advertising support. Big-budget brands should not bear the house name. Small-budget brands should. 4. Significance. Breakthrough products should not bear the house name. Commodity products such as chemicals should. 5. Distribution. Off-the-shelf items should not bear the house name. Items sold by sales reps should.

Sabena had to make Belgium a place where a traveler would want to spend some time. Not a place you traveled through to get to somewhere else.

Most Americans knew very little about Belgium. They thought Waterloo was a suburb of Paris and the most important product of Belgium was waffles. Many didn’t even know where the country was.

But how do you find a position for a country? Well, if you think about it, the most successful countries all have strong mental images.

To position a country as a destination, you need attractions that will keep the traveler around for at least a few days.

A number of events kept this program from getting off the ground. All of which holds a lesson for anyone embarked on a positioning program. New management not committed to the program arrived on the scene, and when headquarters in Brussels wanted to change the strategy, they quickly acquiesced. The lesson here is that a successful positioning program requires a major long-term commitment by the people in charge. Whether it’s the head of a corporation, a church, an airline, or a country. In a constantly changing political environment, this is difficult to accomplish.