Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

by Al Ries

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.

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.

Mind-changing is the road to advertising disaster.

The medium may not be the message, but it does seriously affect the message. Instead of a transmission system, the medium acts like a filter. Only a tiny fraction of the original material ends up in the mind of the receiver.

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. “In politics,” said John Lindsay, “the perception is the reality.” So, too, in advertising, in business, and in life.

Besides, who’s to say that the view from the inside looking out is any more accurate than the view from the outside looking in? 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.

But the professionals who are opposed to advertising say it downgrades their profession. And it does. 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 first thing you need to “fix your message indelibly in the mind” is not a message at all. It’s a mind. An innocent mind. A mind that has not been burnished by someone else’s brand.

Were it not so, there would be no role for advertising at all. Were the average consumer rational instead of emotional, there would be no advertising. At least not as we know it today.

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. The first automobile, for example, was called a “horseless” carriage, a name which allowed the public to position the concept against the existing mode of transportation.

“Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder.” For 13 years in a row, Avis lost money. Then they admitted that they were No. 2 and Avis started to make money. The first year Avis made $1.2 million. The second year, $2.6 million. The third year, $5 million. Then the company was sold to ITT. Avis was able to make substantial gains because they recognized the position of Hertz and didn’t try to attack them head-on. To better understand why the Avis program was so successful, let’s look into the mind of the prospect and imagine we can see a product ladder marked “rent-a-cars.”

They positioned as #2 Therefore were only competing against #2 category. Your unique position is who you compete against

To prove the universality of positioning concepts, McCormick Communications took beautiful-music radio station WLKW, an also-ran in the Providence (Rhode Island) market, and made it number one. Their theme: WLKW, the unrock station. To find a unique position, you must ignore conventional logic. Conventional logic says you find your concept inside yourself or inside the product. Not true. What you must do is look inside the prospect’s mind. You won’t find an “uncola” idea inside a 7-Up can. You find it inside the cola drinker’s head.

With a good name, your positioning job is going to be a lot easier.

If there is one important lesson to be learned from the Milk Duds example, it’s this: The solution to a positioning problem is usually found in the prospect’s mind, not in the product.

Everybody. But only the rich can afford to hire an advertising agency. All the others have to learn how to do it themselves. Have to learn how to apply the invaluable ingredient only available from the outsider.

Changing the direction of a large company is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier. It takes a mile before anything happens. And if it was a wrong turn, getting back on course takes even longer.