Describes an approach to creating a position in a prospective customer's mind - one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses and those of its competitors. This book shows readers how to reposition a strong competitor and create a weak spot, use the present position to its best advantage, and choose the best name for a product.

'One of the most important communication books I've ever read. I highly recommend it!' - Spencer Johnson, author of Who Moved My Cheese? and co-author of The One Minute Manager . '...Ries and Trout taught me everything I know about branding, marketing, and product management. When I had the idea of creating a very large thematic community on the Web, I first thought of Positioning ...' - David Bohnett, Chairman and Founder of GeoCities. The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a position in a prospective customer's mind - one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors.Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to: make and position an industry leader so that its name and message wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of your market - and stays there; position a follower so that it can occupy a niche not claimed by the leader; and, avoid letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one. Positioning also shows you how to: use leading ad agency techniques to capture the biggest market share and become a household name; build your strategy around your competition's weaknesses; reposition a strong competitor and create a weak spot; use your present position to its best advantage; choose the best name for your product; determine when - and why - less is more; and, analyze recent trends that affect your positioning. Ries and Trout provide many valuable case histories and penetrating analyses of some of the most phenomenal successes and failures in advertising history. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning is required reading for anyone in business today.

Publisher:

McGraw-Hill Professional

ISBN:

9780071373586

Publication date:

January 2001

Length:

203mm

Width:

134mm

Thickness:

12mm

Weight:

226g

Edition:

2nd

Pages:

213

Readership:

Professional & scholarly

If you understand the essential brilliance of the concept of an uncola (never mind what they put in it), you understand positioning. But don't confuse it with image. Image is a man with an eyepatch in a nice shirt, or Commander Whitehead. And forget product features, too, say admen Ries and Trout, because even the better mousetrap and creativity are Nowhere in our overcommunicated society of the Eighties, where the average family watches television seven hours a day. The mind can only take so much. In advertising today, less is more, and to succeed a company must create a position in the prospect's mind. Positioning can make or break what would otherwise be an also-ran product, and the key is not to try to beat the leader head-to-head. Instead, the Ries/Trout theory goes, you find a position: the against position (uncola, Avis as number-2); the size position (Volkswagen, at least before they fell into the FWMTS trap - forgot what made them successful ); the high price position, (Chivas Regal). There are positioning holes aplenty for an advertiser who's willing to research the market. Was there a crying need for a nighttime cold medicine or a feminine cigarette? Not really, but Nyquil and Virginia Slims are classics of successful positioning. It works if you're the leader, too, since nothing beats being there first with a good product - except being second with as good a product and a better name (Metrecal was first, but Slender got the sales), unless you proceed to put that name on a dozen products and forfeit your former position (Heinz owned the pickle position until it went into ketchup, too). In the ad agency world, Ries and Trout own the positioning position - they've been pushing the theory in trade journals since the early Seventies - and although not much here will be new to advertising professionals, this is a sharp, punchy introduction for us prospects. (Kirkus Reviews)