Marketing
by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Why don't better products win?
In 1981, admen Al Ries and Jack Trout argued that marketing battles are fought in the customer's mind, and that mind is already crammed. Positioning is the work of finding a place there. The product can stay as it is. What changes is where it sits in people's heads.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Ries and Trout call ours an overcommunicated society. People cope with the flood of ads by screening most of it out, and the mind lets in only what fits what it already believes. So the message that gets through is the one sharpened down to a single idea.
For each kind of product, people keep a ladder in their heads with one brand on each rung. They hold only a few rungs and rarely rearrange them. The easiest way onto the top is to get there first. Everyone else has to relate to the brands already above them.
Ries and Trout borrow the French word créneau, a gap. NyQuil became the night-time cold medicine. Look for a position nobody holds, and take it before someone else does.
When there's no gap, make one. Tylenol's ads spoke to the millions who shouldn't take aspirin, and spelled out why. Aspirin dropped down people's ladders. Ries and Trout call this repositioning the competition. An old idea has to go before a new one can get in.
Too much noise
People hear so many messages each day that only a short, simple one gets through.
The mind
Positioning happens in the buyer's head, so work with what they already believe.
Be first
It is far easier to be first in someone's mind than to prove you're better than whoever got there first.
The ladder
People rank brands on a ladder in their heads. Avis did well by tying itself to Hertz as number two.
Find a hole
Look for an empty spot in the customer's mind that no rival holds, then fill it.
A story from the book
Avis spent years behind Hertz in car hire, losing money. Then its advertising admitted it was only No. Ries and Trout's point is that Avis hitched itself to the leader's rung in people's minds, and became a clear second instead of a forgettable also-ran.
One thing to try
Pick the category your business, product or career is in. Write down the names on each rung of a customer's ladder, top to bottom, and be honest about where you are. Then answer Ries and Trout's first two questions. What position do you own, and what position do you want?
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Positioning comes with a Spot the Trap case to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhy don't better products win? In 1981, admen Al Ries and Jack Trout argued that marketing battles are fought in the customer's mind, and that mind is already crammed. Positioning is the work of finding a place there. The product can stay as it is. What changes is where it sits in people's heads.
The oversimplified message; The ladder in the mind; Cherchez le créneau; Move the rival down a rung.
Pick the category your business, product or career is in. Write down the names on each rung of a customer's ladder, top to bottom, and be honest about where you are. Then answer Ries and Trout's first two questions. What position do you own, and what position do you want?
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Positioning in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Spot the Trap case to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
