By Al Ries, American Author
Some people have trouble playing the positioning game because they are hung up on words. They assume incorrectly that words have meanings and let Mr. Webster rule their lives. As general semanticists have been saying for decades, words don't contain meanings; the meanings are in the people using the words. Like a sugar bowl which is empty until someone fills it with sugar, a word has no meaning until someone uses it and fills it with meaning. If you try to add sugar to a leaky sugar bowl, you won't get anywhere. Similarly, if you try to add meaning to a leaky word, it’s much better to discard that word and use another.
The Power of Words
The word “Volkswagen” won't hold the concept of a medium-sized luxury car, so you discard that sugar bowl and use another—”Audi,” which holds the concept better. You don't insist that because it's made in a Volkswagen factory it must be a Volkswagen. Mental rigidity is a barrier to successful positioning. To be successful at positioning today, you must have a large degree of mental flexibility. You must be able to select and use words with as much disdain for the history book as for the dictionary.
Not that conventional accepted meanings are not important. Quite the contrary. You must select the words which trigger the meanings you want to establish. But is this ethical? Remember, words have no meaning—they are empty containers until you fill them with meaning. If you want to reposition a product, a person, or a country, you often have to first change the container. In a sense, every product or service is packaged goods. If it isn't sold in a box, the name becomes the box. Words are triggers; they trigger the meanings which are buried in the mind.
The Influence of Names
If people understood this, there would be no advantage in renaming a product or selecting emotional words like “Mustang” for an automobile. But they don't. Most people are unsane—they're not completely sane and they're not completely insane. They're somewhere in between. What's the difference between sane people and insane people? What exactly do insane people do? Alfred Korzybski, who developed the concept of General Semantics, explains that insane people try to make the world of reality fit what is in their heads. The insane person who thinks he is Napoleon makes the outside world fit that notion. The sane person constantly analyzes the world of reality and then changes what's inside his or her head to fit the facts.
That's a lot of trouble for most people. Besides, how many people want to constantly change their opinions to fit the facts? It's a whole lot easier to change the facts to fit your opinions. Unsane people make up their minds and then find the facts to verify their opinion. Or, even more commonly, they accept the opinion of the nearest expert and then don't bother with the facts at all.
The Psychological Impact
The power of the psychologically right name is evident. The mind makes the world of reality fit the name. A Mustang looks sportier, racier, and faster than if the same car had been called the Turtle. Language is the currency of the mind. To think conceptually, you manipulate words. With the right choice of words, you can influence the thinking process itself. As proof that the mind thinks with words and not abstract thoughts, consider how a language is learned. To be really fluent in a foreign language, say French, you must learn to think in French.
But there are limits. If a word is so far out of touch with reality, the mind just refuses to use the word. It says “large” on the tube that everyone except the manufacturer calls a “small” toothpaste tube. It says “economy” on the tube that everyone calls “large.” The People's Republic of China is usually called “Red China” because no one believes it is a People's Republic. Inside the country, the People's Republic of China is undoubtedly an effective name.
Embracing Change
People today are caught up in the illusion of change. Every day, the world seems to be turning faster. Years ago, a successful product might live 50 years or more before fading away. Today, a product's lifecycle is much shorter—sometimes it can be measured in months instead of years. New products, new services, new markets, even new media are constantly being born. They grow to adulthood and then slide into oblivion, and the new cycle starts again. Yesterday, the way to reach the masses was through mass magazines. Today, it's network TV. Tomorrow, it could be cable.
The only permanent thing today seems to be change. The kaleidoscope of life clicks faster and faster, new patterns emerge and disappear. Change has become a way of life for many companies. But is change the way to keep pace with change? The exact opposite appears to be true. The landscape is littered with the debris of projects that companies rushed into in attempting to keep pace: Singer trying to move into home appliances, RCA moving into computers, General Foods moving into fast food outlets. Meanwhile, the programs of those who kept at what they did best and held their ground have been immensely successful: Maytag selling its reliable appliances, Walt Disney selling the world of fantasy and fun, Avon calling.
Long-Term Vision
Change is a wave on the ocean of time. Short term, the waves cause agitation and confusion. Long term, the underlying currents are much more significant. To cope with change, you have to take a long-range point of view to determine your basic business and stick with it. Changing the direction of a large company is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier—it takes a mile before anything happens. And if it was a wrong turn, getting back on course takes even longer.
To play the game successfully, you must make decisions on what your company will be doing, not next month or next year, but in five years, ten years. Instead of turning the wheel to meet each fresh wave, the company must point itself in the right direction. You must have vision. There's no sense in building a position based on a technology that's too narrow, a product that's becoming obsolete, or a name that's defective. Most of all, you have to be able to see the difference between what works and what doesn't work.
Separating Efforts from the Economy
Sounds simple, but it's not. When the tide is rising, everything seems to be working. When the tide is falling, nothing seems to be working. You have to learn how to separate your efforts from the general movement of the economy. Many marketing experts are blessed with a generous supply of luck. Be wary—today's hula hoop marketing genius could be tomorrow's welfare recipient. Be patient. The sun shines tomorrow on those who have made the right decisions today. If a company has positioned itself in the right direction, it will be able to ride the currents of change, ready to take advantage of those opportunities that are right for it. But when an opportunity arrives, a company must move quickly.
When you trace the history of how leadership positions were established, from Hershey in chocolate to Hertz in rented cars, the common thread is not marketing skill or even product innovation. The common thread is seizing the initiative before the competitor has a chance to get established. The leader usually poured in the marketing money while the situation was still fluid. Hershey, for example, established a position in chocolate so strong that Hershey felt it didn't need to advertise at all. This conviction was a luxury that competitors like Mars couldn't afford. Finally, Hershey decided to advertise, but not in time. Today, the Hershey milk chocolate bar is not the largest seller. It's not even in the top five.
Establishing Leadership
Establishing a leadership position depends not only on luck and timing but also on a willingness to pour it on when others stand back and wait. To be successful in the positioning era, you must be brutally frank. You must try to eliminate all ego from the decision-making process. It only clouds the issue. One of the most critical aspects of positioning is being able to evaluate products objectively and see how they are viewed by customers and prospects.
You also have to remember that you can't play basketball without a backboard. You need someone to bounce your ideas off. As soon as you think you have found that simple idea that is the solution to your problem, you have lost something—you have lost your objectivity. You need the other person to take a fresh look at what you have wrought, and vice versa. Like ping pong, positioning is a game best played by two people. It's no accident that this book was written by two people. Only in a give-and-take atmosphere can ideas be refined and perfected.
The Simplicity of Ideas
Only an obvious idea will work today. The overwhelming volume of communication prevents anything else from succeeding. But the obvious isn't always so obvious. Charles Kettering had a sign which he placed on the wall of the General Motors research building in Dayton: “This problem, when solved, will be simple.” Raisins from California, nature's candy, moist and meaty Gaines-Burgers, the canned dog food without the can, Bubble Yum, double yum in bubble gum. These are the kinds of simple ideas that work today. Simple concepts expressed with simple words used in a straightforward way.
Often, the solution to a problem is so simple that thousands of people have looked at it without seeing it. When an idea is clever or complicated, however, we should be suspicious. It probably won't work because it's not simple enough. The history of science is a history of the discoverers of this world who found simple solutions to complex problems.
The Strategy of Simplicity
The head of an advertising agency once insisted that his account executives paste down the marketing strategy on the back of each layout. Then, when the client asked what the ad was supposed to do, the account person could turn the layout over and read the strategy. But an ad should be simple enough so
that it is the strategy. The agency made a mistake: it ran the wrong side of the layout.
Beginners who play the positioning game often remark how easy this is—you just find a position you can call your own. Simple, yes, but easy, no. The difficulty is finding an open position that's also effective. In politics, for example, it's easy to establish a position to the far right (a conservative position) or the far left (a socialist position). You will undoubtedly preempt either position. You will also lose. What you must do is find an opening near the center of the spectrum. You must be slightly conservative in a field of liberals or slightly liberal in a field of conservatives. This calls for great restraint and subtlety.
The Importance of Balance
The big winners in business and in life are those people who have found open positions near the center of the spectrum, not at the edge. You can sometimes have a positioning success and a sales failure. This might be termed “Rolls Royce thinking.” “We're the Rolls Royce of the industry” is a claim you often hear in business today. You know how many Rolls Royces are sold in America every year? About 1,000 or 0.01% of the market. Cadillac, on the other hand, sells more than 300,000. Both Cadillac and Rolls Royce are luxury cars, but the gulf between them is enormous. To the average automobile buyer, the Rolls Royce at $100,000 and up is out of reach. Cadillac, like Michelob and other premium products, is not.
The secret to establishing a successful position is to keep two things in balance: one, a unique position, with two, an appeal that's not too narrow. 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, by multiple distribution. All these things tend to produce short-term sales increases and long-term positioning erosion.
Focused Positioning
In positioning, smaller may be better. It is usually better to look for smaller targets that you can own exclusively rather than a bigger market you have to share with three or four other brands. You can't be all things to all people and still have a powerful position. Very few companies can afford to launch a new product on a nationwide scale. Instead, they look for places to make the brand successful, and then roll it out to other markets.
Strategies for Success
The geographic rollout is one way: you build the product in one market and then move on to another, from east to west or vice versa. The demographic rollout is another: Philip Morris built Marlboro into the number one cigarette on college campuses long before it became the number one brand nationwide. The chronologic rollout is the third way: you build the brand among a specific age group and then roll it out to others. The Pepsi generation helped Pepsi Cola build the product among the younger set and then reap the benefits as they grew up. Distribution is another rollout technique. The Wella line was first sold through beauty salons. After the products were established, they were sold through drugstores and supermarkets.
Worldwide Thinking
Don't overlook the importance of worldwide thinking. A company that keeps its eye on Tom, Dick, and Harry is going to miss Pierre, Hans, and Yoshio. Marketing is rapidly becoming a worldwide ballgame. A company that owns a position in one country now finds that it can use that position to wedge its way into another. IBM has some 60% of the German computer market. Is this fact surprising? It shouldn't be. IBM earns more than 50% of its profits outside the United States. As companies start to operate on a worldwide basis, they often discover they have a name problem. A typical example is U.S. Rubber, a worldwide company that marketed many products not made of rubber. Changing the name to Uniroyal created a new corporate identity that could be used worldwide.
The Flaw of Marketing Genius
What you don't need is a reputation as a marketing genius. As a matter of fact, this could be a fatal flaw. All too often, the product leader makes the fatal mistake of attributing its success to marketing skill. As a result, it thinks it can transfer that skill to other products and other marketing situations. Witness, for example, the disappointing record of Xerox in computers and the mecca of marketing knowledge, International Business Machines Corporation, hasn't done much better so far. IBM's plain paper copier hasn't made much of a dent in Xerox's business.
Positioning for Success
The rules of positioning hold for all types of products. In the packaged goods area, for example, Bristol-Myers tried to take on Crest toothpaste with “Fact.” Killed after $5 million was spent on promotion. Then they tried to go after Alka-Seltzer with “Resolve.” Killed after $11 million was spent. Then they tried to unseat Bayer with “Dissolve,” another financial headache. The suicidal bent of companies that go head-on against established competition is hard to understand. Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Nine times out of ten, the also-ran that sets out to attack the leader head-on is headed for disaster.
To repeat, the first rule of positioning is to win the battle for the mind. You can't compete head-on against a company that has a strong, established position. You can go around, under, or over, but never head-to-head. The leader owns the high ground—the number one position in the prospect's mind, the top rung of the product ladder. To move up the ladder, you must follow the rules of positioning. In our over-communicated society, the name of the game today is positioning, and only the better players are going to survive.
