Chinese title: 定位 - The Most Influential Marketing Concept in American History
English title: Positioning - The Battle for Your Mind
Author: Jack Trout / Al Ries
Notes:
For a new industry or product, the first company finds it easy to make a deep impression in the customer’s mind; and if the company is very successful, people will even associate an entire industry or product with it — Baidu means search, Taobao means online shopping.
In a new field the mind readily finds an open slot for a company; for a company that enters the field later, it must create a slot by repositioning the competitor that already occupies the mind.
Once an old idea has been overturned, promoting a new concept often becomes extremely easy. In fact, people tend to actively look for a new idea to fill the gap that is left behind. The key to repositioning is to shake the existing idea, product, or person to its foundations.
The surest way to ruin a brand is brand extension.
A name is a rubber band. It can be stretched, but not beyond a certain limit. And the longer you stretch the name, the weaker it becomes.
One basic principle of positioning is to avoid the areas everyone is talking about, that is, fads. To grow, a company must open up new territory no one has set foot in.
To make itself the recognized leader of the chemical industry, Monsanto had to do what a leading company should do — speak for the whole industry.
No awareness, no business.
Complexity is the great enemy of positioning; simplicity is its essence.
You cannot ignore what already exists in the customer’s mind.
The work of positioning is to find the obvious; those are the concepts that spread most easily, because they mean the most to the receiver of the message.
Brand extension strategy can be used when expected sales are small, competition is fierce, there is no advertising budget to support it, the product is not innovative, and it is sold door to door.
Develop a new concept, or a product with a new positioning, and give it a name that fits.
A company is better off using its full name than an abbreviation. Before the company has built much influence, the full name is more recognizable; wait until the company holds absolute leadership before using an abbreviation to represent it.
