Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, by Al Ries & Jack Trout - Animated Book Summary

let me ask you a question are you interested in making your product service or company more visible to your would-be consumers do you want to know how to communicate with your customers in an overcrowded marketplace well stay tuned don't move because in this video we're going to be talking about a powerful effective and stealthy method of communication that will help you build your brand or business in this animated summary of positioning by al rice and jack trout let's get right into the five takeaways from this fantastic book we'll start by defining positioning positioning is a

unique approach to communication which starts with a product a service a company a person or even a country the goal is not to create some new method of communication but instead the goal is to use what's already in the consumer's mind essentially positioning is about unraveling and re-tying the connections that are already there this begs the question what is already there what is in the mind of the consumer well within the consumer's mind are countless products and services organized into categories and then within those categories the products and services are organized by brand so to

demonstrate this idea let's talk about three different categories how about chocolate cars and clothing now within the chocolate category you might think of brands like cadbury lint and hershey's how about the car category well you might think of brands like tesla toyota and bmw what about the clothing category you might think of polo gucci and levi's so what does this all mean it means that the solution to finding the perfect marketing message lies within the mind of the consumer if you understand how the consumer has organized this information then you can position your product or

service relative to the stuff that's already there and ultimately position your product firmly within the mind of the consumer let's move on to the second takeaway being first has big advantages the easiest way into the consumer's mind is to be first think about it who was the first person to walk on the moon neil armstrong right who was the second person to walk on the moon now think about this what's the tallest mountain in the world mount everest right what's the second tallest mountain in the world with the exception of a few mountain enthusiasts nobody

really cares about the second tallest mountain now let's talk about a product example when we think of aspirin we think of bayer aspirin and that's because bayer was the first company to build a position for aspirin within the mind of the consumer not only that but bayer had a patent on aspirin which means that for a while they were the only company to market an aspirin product now think about it which company is second in aspirin products again unless you're a booze enthusiast you're not going to know the answer to this question so as you

know by now it's good to be first being first is even better than being the best the point here is this if at all possible you need to find something for you or your company to be first in you want to be a big fish in a small pond think about the products that hold the strongest positions in the mind of the average consumer kleenex for example owns such a powerful position that its name is often used as a generic name in other words pass me a kleenex means pass me a tissue it doesn't necessarily

mean i want a kleenex brand tissue or how about this when you ask for a band-aid you're really asking someone for a bandage with a few adhesive strips you're not necessarily asking for a band-aid brand bandage when your product or company's name becomes a generic description of the product you sell you have won the positioning game and locked down your spot in the mind of the consumer if you can't be first in a category no worries you can still effectively position your product which brings us to the third point find your place on the ladder

as we've talked about over communication forces people to compartmentalize the advertising information around them into categories and brands this organizational phenomenon which occurs in the mind of the consumer can best be visualized as a series of ladders with each ladder representing a category of goods or services and each step of the ladder representing a brand let's use cars as an example a ladder in this category might be organized by price or by number of cars sold or by customer satisfaction so let's use price as an example a ladder for the car category that is organized

by price might have bugatti at the top as the most expensive or premium brand then porsche on the step below that then you might have audi below porsche and then you might have volkswagen below audi as the most affordable brand on this particular ladder now that we understand the ladders in the mine you might ask how do i use the ladders to position my product or service more effectively well as a competitor you have two choices first you could try to dislodge the brand above you good luck though this is nearly impossible because the companies

that have positioned themselves on a step of the ladder are established in the mind of the consumer and are thus very difficult to dislodge from their position the second option is this you could relate your brand to another company's position and use the power of associative psychology to get your brand onto a step of the ladder and thus into the mind of the consumer one of the most effective ways to employ this strategy is to establish an against position the most classic and successful example of this against strategy was employed by avis rental cars in

the 1960s avis created an ad campaign that took a position against the leader of the rental car category hertz and as a result avis ad campaign was wildly successful this was avis magical message avis is only number two in rental cars so why go with us well we try harder when you're not the biggest you have to in other words hertz takes its number one position for granted and thus it takes you for granted while we over here at avis well we strive to earn your business because we're not big enough to take you for

granted this message effectively related avis to hertz within the mind of the consumer and gave avis an unshakable position on the second rung of the rent-a-car ladder avis positioning strategy paid off and it took the company to the moon after it had been bleeding money for over 10 years in a row avis was the first to take the second rung on the rent-a-car ladder so my question to you is this which rung of the ladder can you be first on let's move on to the next takeaway find a niche or chrono the main point here

is that you can't win by being everything to everybody to successfully position your product in the mind of the consumer you must find a specific position a niche or a chrono and capture the attention of the consumers within that small segment of the market one of the best examples of this strategy was employed by volkswagen when the company took a novel approach to the size crno in the car category with its tiny little car the volkswagen beetle volkswagen created this powerful advertisement which contained a profound little message think small at the time the volkswagen beetle

entered the market cars were getting larger and sleeker by the year they were beautiful cars but they were all competing for the same spot in the consumer's mind although the conventional way to advertise the beetle would have been to emphasize its strengths and minimize its weaknesses in relation to its big sleek and popular competition volkswagen took an entirely new approach with its think small ad and it captured the small car credo this advertisement accomplished several main positioning objectives it challenged the industry assumption that bigger and sleeker cars were necessarily better which opened the door for

a new niche it then created the small car niche in the mind of the consumer by saying look at this ad people like small cars in other words small cars are cool finally the ad let the consumer know that the beetle is the quintessential small car to be sure when this ad came out there were other car makers manufacturing small cars but volkswagen was the first to define and capture the small car crane as a result the beetle made volkswagen lots of money now let's move on to the final takeaway from positioning which is this

generally you want to avoid line extensions let's start by defining what a line extension is a line extension is where a company takes the name of an established product and uses it on a new product let's talk about a few examples we talked about bayer aspirin earlier well bear made a non-aspirin pain reliever too and it wasn't very successful at least not compared to bare aspirin what about dial soap well the makers of dial soap extended the dial name into dial deodorant and it was not a very successful product how about lifesavers candy you know

the candy with the hole in it it's no wonder that lifesaver's gum was not a very successful product in all the brands above the established products were remarkably successful but the line extensions well they were not so why are line extensions such a bad idea let's talk about that for a second a line extension will eventually dilute the power of the established brand name and cloud its position within the mind of the consumer thus a line extension will eventually weaken the established brand's position and ultimately a line extension will reduce overall sales although line extensions

are typically a bad idea there are some situations where line extensions work for example line extensions are great for a company that makes lots of different small volume products we know a company like that right 3m sells thousands of unique products and it would be impossibly cumbersome and unnecessary to give each product a unique name so extending the 3m name to various unique products many of which are low volume products would make sense from a branding standpoint and that's exactly what 3m does well e-learners i want to thank you so much for watching this video

if you like this type of content and you want more of it please smash like and subscribe to my channel also a big thank you to a special viewer of the channel steve k for recommending positioning and placing it at the top of my to-do list alright everyone have a great morning afternoon or evening and i'll see you next time on mentally fit you