Positioning

Positioning can affect the product. Volvo’s conscious decision to build safety features into its product set up the hugely successful “safety” position for the Volvo brand.

Positioning can affect the price of the product. Häagen-Dazs’s conscious decision to introduce a more expensive line of ice cream set up the “premium” ice cream position for the brand

Positioning can affect the place the product is sold. Hanes, the leading department store brand of panty hose, developed a panty hose product specifically for supermarket distribution.

Positioning starts with a product.

Positioning is the first body of thought that comes to grips with the difficult problem of getting heard in our overcommunicated society.

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.

In our overcommunicated society, to talk about the “impact” of your advertising is to seriously overstate the potential effectiveness of your message. Advertising is not a sledgehammer. It’s more like a light fog, a very light fog that envelops your prospects. In the communication jungle out there, the only hope to score big is to be selective, to concentrate on narrow targets, to practice segmentation.

The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.

Millions of dollars have been wasted trying to change minds with advertising. Once a mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change it. Certainly not with a weak force like advertising.

The average person will sit still when being told something which he or she knows nothing about. (Which is why “news” is an effective advertising approach.) But the average person cannot tolerate being told he or she is wrong. Mind-changing is the road to advertising disaster.

The only defense a person has in our overcommunicated society is an oversimplified mind.

The average mind is already a dripping sponge that can only soak up more information at the expense of what’s already there. Yet we continue to pour more information into that supersaturated sponge and are disappointed when our messages fail to get through.

Who is trying to help the prospect cope with complexity that so overwhelms the mind that the average reaction to the wealth of information today is to tighten the intake valve? To accept less and less of what is so freely available? Communication itself is the communication problem.

In communication, as in architecture, less is more. You have to sharpen your message to cut into the mind. You have to jettison the ambiguities, simplify the message, and then simplify it some more if you want to make a long-lasting impression.

The enemy that is keeping your messages from hitting pay dirt is the volume of communication. Only when you appreciate the nature of the problem can you understand the solution. When you want to communicate the advantages of a political candidate or a product or even yourself, you must turn things inside out. You look for the solution to your problem not inside the product, not even inside your own mind. You look for the solution to your problem inside the prospect’s mind.

There’s a traffic jam on the turnpikes of the mind. Engines are overheating. Tempers are rising.

The only answer to the problems of an overcommunicated society is the positioning answer.

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.

“Imprinting” is the term animal biologists use to describe the first encounter between a newborn animal and its natural mother. It takes only a few seconds to fix indelibly in the memory of the young animal the identity of its parent. You might think all ducks look alike, but even a day-old duckling will always recognize its mother, no matter how much you mix up the flock.

What counts most is receptivity. Two people must meet in a situation in which both are receptive to the idea. Both must have open windows.

You build brand loyalty in a supermarket the same way you build mate loyalty in a marriage. You get there first and then be careful not to give them a reason to switch.

To succeed in our overcommunicated society, a company must create a position in the prospect’s mind, a position that takes into consideration not only a company’s own strengths and weaknesses, but those of its competitors as well.

For many people or products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospect’s mind.

Like the memory bank of a computer, the mind has a slot or position for each bit of information it has chosen to retain. In operation, the mind is a lot like a computer. But there is one important difference. A computer has to accept what you put into it. The mind does not. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The mind rejects new information that doesn’t “compute.” It accepts only that new information which matches its current state of mind. It filters out everything else.

To cope with the product explosion, people have learned to rank products and brands in the mind. Perhaps this can best be visualized by imagining a series of ladders in the mind. On each step is a brand name. And each different ladder represents a different product category.

A competitor that wants to increase its share of the business must either dislodge the brand above (a task that is usually impossible) or somehow relate its brand to the other company’s position. Yet too many companies embark on marketing and advertising programs as if the competitor’s position did not exist. They advertise their products in a vacuum and are disappointed when their messages fail to get through. Moving up the ladder in the mind can be extremely difficult if the brands above have a strong foothold and no leverage or positioning strategy is applied.

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.

Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the world’s first overcommunicated society. Each year, we send more and receive less.

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.