Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

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.

But the best positioning ideas are so simple and obvious that most people overlook them.

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

In positioning a product, there’s no substitute for getting there first.

Today’s marketplace is no longer responsive to the strategies that worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies, and too much marketing noise.

The time for extra effort is clearly when the situation is in doubt. When neither side has a clearcut superiority. Winning the battle for sales leadership in a single year will often clinch the victory for decades to come. It takes 110 percent of rated power for a jet to get its wheels off the ground. Yet when it reaches 30,000 feet, the pilot can

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

The solution to a positioning problem is usually found in the prospect’s mind, not in the product.