Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position. Nyquil, the nighttime cold medicine, gave up the daytime market. The focus of most marketing operations is just the opposite. They look for ways to broaden their markets by line extension, by size and flavor proliferation, b

Simple, yes. But easy, no. The difficulty is finding an open position that’s also effective.

You need simplicity Only an obvious idea will work today. The overwhelming volume of communication prevents anything else from succeeding. But the obvious isn’t always so obvious.

Objectivity is the key ingredient supplied by the advertising or marketing communication or public relations agency.

And what does the outsider supply? An ingredient called ignorance. In other words, objectivity. By not knowing what goes on inside a company, the outsider is better able to see what is happening on the outside. In the mind of the prospect.

Owning a position in the mind is like owning a valuable piece of real estate. Once you give it up, you might find it’s impossible to get it back again.

determine your basic position and then stick to it. Positioning is a concept that is cumulative. Something that takes advantage of advertising’s long-range nature.

With a given number of dollars, it’s better to overspend in one city than to underspend in several cities.

If you try to be all things to all people, you wind up with nothing. Better to narrow the focus of your expertise.