What is positioning?

define

  • Positioning is what you do to prospective customers
  • The basic approach is to change what already exists in people’s minds, to reconnect those connections that already exist

The reasons causing

  • Overspread society: The average American spends $200 a year on advertising. In this jungle of overtransmission, the only hope for big success is to be selective, narrow down and categorize: “targeting.”
  • Simplistic brain: The brain takes in limited information
  • Brain harassment: A flood of updated information

The human brain

A shortcut to the brain

  • First impressions are most lasting

The difficulty of accessing the brain

  • Second place is no different from obscurity

Brain stairway

  • The human brain has a defense mechanism against existing information. It can reject information that cannot be “calculated” and accept only new information commensurate with its internal status. Everything else is filtered out.
  • People see what they want to see
  • The average person’s brain cannot process more than seven units of information at once

era

  • Products era
  • Image era
  • Positioning era

How to deal with the era of product explosion?

  • Categorize products and brands

The specific method of positioning

“Contrast” positioning method

  • Rule of thumb: If a company is not number one, it should be number two
  • How to do it: Associate yourself with tier 1 companies
  • Example: Weiss has lost money for 13 consecutive years. But it has since turned a profit since admitting it was number two. Burger King did it in fast food. Honeywell did it in computers

“Non-cola” positioning

  • Rule of thumb: To find a unique niche, you have to look inside your prospective customers’ heads.
  • Approach: By associating the product with something that already occupies the minds of prospective customers
  • Example: Sales of “7up” increased dramatically after it was promoted as an alternative to Coke. (The coke ladder can be thought of like this: the first tier is Coca-Cola, the second tier is Pepsi, and the third tier is 7up.)

F.W.M.T.S. trap

  • “Forgot what made them successful.” Forget what made them successful”

example

  • Shortly after selling to ITT, Weiss decided he could no longer settle for second place. So it ran ads saying, “Avis is going to the NO I.”
  • 7up’s ads now say, “America is Turning 7-up.
  • But none of this is enough to change what people already know about them, so it doesn’t make any difference

Don’t go up against the likes of IBM

  • IBM has 60% of the computer industry, and the biggest of those dwarves has less than 10%.
  • Losers often think that the key is to try harder. Even if a failing company tries hard, it won’t make much difference
  • The problem is timing. If you want to make extra efforts to achieve greater results, you should make efforts to establish product advantages earlier, which is valuable.
  • Example: Smith and Jones of General Electric.

Smith is a classic “CAN do” manager. The company put him in charge of the computer business and he accepted cheerfully.

Jones, by contrast, is realistic. He knew that GE had come to dominate the computer industry late in the game. At this point, it would be too expensive to catch IBM, even if it could.

As Smith failed to turn around the computer business; Jones had a chance to participate. He advised GE to get out of the computer business, which the company eventually sold to Honeywell. That’s one of the reasons Reginald Jones ended up as CEO of General Electric

Positioning of leaders

  • Just do what you can to get ahead of it. Establish a lead
  • History shows that the first brand to enter people’s minds usually has twice the long-term market share of the second brand and three times the market share of the third. And that ratio won’t change easily.

Market: the phenomenon of unstable equality

  • It is true that in some product categories there will be two leading brands neck and neck.
  • Sooner or later, one or the other will prevail and end up with a solid 5 to 3 or 2 to 1 situation
  • Example: Hertz trumps Elvis. Harvard is superior to Yale. McDonald’s is more famous than Burger King

What should the leaders do?

  • Stay ahead of strategy and plan for the long term

  • The only thing to worry about in the short term is the government. Keep doing it. Keep doing it until the government says so

  • Try to raise the level of product categories in prospective customers’ minds:

    Example: IBM’s ads generally avoid mention of competition and focus on the value of computers of all types, not just those made by the company

  • The cliche: solidify old strengths

  • Keep your hair on the line: Adopt a product as soon as you find it promising

    What not to do: Two companies, Delta and 3M, are in trouble in the office copier business. The two leading companies in coated paper copiers had the opportunity to buy carlson’s xerography rights, but they declined to do so. It was later overtaken by Schiller

  • Deeply aware that the strength of the enterprise comes from the strength of the product, from the product in the expected customer’s mind to occupy the position

  • Agile: Proactively intercepting new products before they take root in the minds of prospective customers

  • Use multiple brands to block each other:

    Example: Each of P&G’s leading brands has its own name :Joy, Crest, Head & Shoulders, Sure, Bounty, Pampers, Comet, Charmin and Duncan Hines, Instead of adding “Plus,” “Ultra,” or “Super” to the original name

  • Let’s call it something more general

People take names basically literally. (Eastern Airlines, for example.)

Government departments are often very good at making names broad, For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development used to be called the Housing and Home Finance Agency, The ability to expand its jurisdiction and increase its staff will naturally lead to an increase in its budget.

Follower positioning

  • Look for gaps look for weak links in the business structure of large companies

  • A gaping price on a high price is an advantage, especially if you’re the first to find a gaping price in that category.

  • A hole in the low price

  • Gender gap Marlboro. – Men’s cigarettes

  • Don’t look for loopholes in the factory

    The mistake often made in looking for a gap is to fill a gap in a factory rather than in a man’s head

  • Don’t fall into the technology trap

    No matter how good the technology is in the laboratory, it will fail if there is no space in people’s minds. Example: Brown-FormanDistillers introduced the first “dry white whisky” —- “Frost 8/80” in 1971. Less than two years later, however, Fross 8/80 was a multimillion-dollar flop, a positioning request from prospective customers. The first dry white whisky? No, there are at least four others, and they’re gin, vodka, rum, and Mexican tequila.

  • Don’t fall into the trap of satisfying everyone

    You have to take a stand these days, both in the product world and in politics. There are too many companies in the world. It is impossible to win by making enemies and pleasing everyone in every way

Reposition your competitors

  • Create your own space

    In order for a new idea or product to enter people’s minds, you must first push the related idea or product out of people’s minds.

    Example: Columbus “the earth is round”, people “the earth is square”. One of the more convincing arguments they make is that sailors at sea see first the mast of the opposite ship, then the sail, and last the hull. If the ground were flat, they could see the whole ship at the same time.

  • Repositioning aspirin Tylenol broke the aspirin scam. “Think of the millions of people who should not be taking aspirin.” “Tylenol,” the AD says

  • For “back to Knox” in the new location

    In order for a repositioning strategy to work, you must comment on a competitor’s product so that prospective customers change their minds about the competitor’s product rather than yours.

    Example: “RoyalDolton porcelain made in stoke-on-trent, England: Lenox porcelain made in mona, New Jersey, USA” Royal Doulton reckons that 6% of the company’s market share was achieved by this single AD.

  • To “Pringles” and new positioning

    Pringles – the latest chips – accounted for 18%

    Competitors advertise: “Ingredients of wisdom: potatoes, vegetable oil and salt. “Pringles ingredients: dehydrated potatoes, mono and diglycerides, ascorbic acid, butylhydroxyanisole.”

    Pringles market share – down to 10%- people complaining that Pringles taste like paper – the difference is not in taste but in mind – repositioning and contrasting advertising

    This is called comparative advertising, and it doesn’t work very well. There is a psychological hole in the advertiser’s argument that the client is expected to discover soon. “If you’re so strong, why aren’t you rich?”

    The repositioning programme, though effective, has attracted plenty of complaints. Many advertisers object to this tactic.

  • The Power of a Name

    Example: Haug Island in the Caribbean was unknown until it was renamed Paradise Island

    1. How do you choose a name?

    Having a weighty, nearly universal, descriptive name prevents copycats from crowding your turf

    Example: People was a great name for a gossiping magazine, a great success, and its imitator, US, ran into trouble

    2. How not to choose a name?

    Don’t choose vague, don’t choose outdated

    Example: Time was the first magazine to join newsweek, which was clearly a success. But Newsweek is not far behind. (In fact, Newsweek runs more AD pages per year than Time.)

    Fortune has a similar name. (Fortune could be a magazine for stockbrokers, retailers, or gamblers. The meaning is very unclear.) Business Week is a much better name and a much more successful magazine.

    3. When to use a meaningless name?

    You can only afford a meaningless name if your product is new and badly needed, and if the name is the first to pop into people’s minds.

    4. Good name, bad name

    A bad or inappropriate name will set off a chain of reactions that will only reinforce the bad impression you already have.

    5. Bad names in the sky

    Take the airline industry. The four largest U.S. Airlines are UnitedAirlines, AmericanAirlines, Trans World Airlines and Eastern Airlines. China Eastern ranked fourth in travelers’ minds because it is a regional name, so it belongs to a different category in prospective customers’ minds than big national names like “American” and “United.”

    6. Don’t name yourself after your biggest competitor

    7. Don’t be afraid to change your name

    The only thing in a bad name is negative equity. Bad name, it’s only gonna get worse. With a good name, things tend to get better.

    10. No-name trap Example: People call General Motors “MM” and American Motors “AM” while almost no one calls Ford Motor “FM”.

    Reason: Abbreviated pronunciation. Ge-ne-ral Mo-tors is often shortened to GM, A-ME-I-Can Mo-tors is often referred to as AM, and FordMo-tors is almost never referred to as FM. Because one syllable of “Ford” is enough.

    The result: All but a handful of powerful companies with short names will be degraded

    11. Do not hitchhike easily. New products can be replaced with similar names of their original old products, but do not run in parallel

    12. Different company naming strategies (internal development, external M&A)

    As companies have grown from two different strategies (internal development and external acquisitions), two different “name-based” strategies have developed. A company’s self-interest dictates the strategy it adopts.

    When companies develop a product internally, they often use the company name as the name of the product. For example, the “General Electric” brand computer.

    When a company acquires a product through an external acquisition, it usually retains its original name. For example, RCA kept the brand “Herz” and ITT kept the brand “Eavis.”

    13. The benefits of a new name

    Example: P&G and CDGate-Palmolive have their own strategies.

    P&g positions each product carefully. So that it can occupy a special place in people’s minds. For example, Tide makes clothes “white,” Cheer makes clothes “whiter,” and Bold makes clothes “sparkling after drinking.”

    Colgate-palmolive products include many popular brands, such as Colgate Toothpaste, Colgate Disposable Shave, Colgate 100 Oral disinfectant, Colgate toothbrush and Colgate powder. Also available are palmolive detergent, palmolive quick razor, palmolive shaving cream and palmolive soap.

    The result: P&G has fewer brands than Colgate-Palmolive (51 major brands compared with 65), but twice as much business and three times as much profit.

    14. The seesaw rule

    The seesaw principle is that one name cannot be used to represent two completely different products. When one goes up, the other goes down.

    Example: What is Heinz? It used to stand for kimchi. Heinz is the first kimchi giant in the market. Later, the company asked Heinz to represent the tomato sauce. It was also a success. Heinz is now the market leader in tomato sauce. But what about the other end of the seesaw? And lo and behold, Heinz has, of course, ceded its kimchi lead to Vlasic.

Product extension

  • Definition: Product extension is the use of the name of an existing product on several new products. (This is the end result of the free-rider trap.) Then came Dial soap, and then Sundial deodorant. With Life Savers, come Savers Gum.

  • Pros: The economics support it, merchants accept it, consumers accept it, it can reduce advertising costs, increase revenue, and improve a company’s image.

  • The result: Product extension strategies often don’t work. Example: Sundial still has a large share of the soap market, but its share of deodorant soap is very small. Bayer’s share of the acetaminophen market for astlin-free products is minuscule.

  • The reason: From the perspective of prospective customers, product extension is bad for generic brand names. It obscures the clear image of the brand in people’s minds, and prevents customers from using Bayer when they want aspirin or sundial when they want soap.

  • When is product extension effective?

    1. The extension name is linked to the original name, so it’s easy to say, “Ah, yes, diet coke.”
    2. Long term adverse product extension names are easy to forget because they have no independent place in people’s minds. They are satellites of the original brand name, serving only to blur its place, often with disastrous results.
    3. Conclusion Only where there is no brand or well-known brand, you can do product extension. However, as soon as there is fierce competition, you will run into trouble.

  • How to check product extension?

    1. Check your shopping list: Write down the brands you want to buy: Kleenex, Crest, Lister, Bayer And Daily Count, and send your man to the supermarket. Most husbands or wives can buy Kleenex toilet paper, Crest toothpaste, Lister mouthwash, Saviour candy, Bayer aspirin and Sundial soap
    2. The bartender’s Test: Just say the brand name, what will the bartender give you?

  • Product Extension Trilogy

    Early success —- product extension —- disillusionment

    Example: Volkswagen

    Act one is the big success, the big breakthrough. This is usually the result of spotting a big gap and using it well. Volkswagen established itself as a minicar and was quick to capitalize on the breakthrough. Beetle red

    The climax of the second act is greed and the desire for invincibility. So Vw extended its reliability and quality to bigger, pricier cars. It extends to buses and Jeeps. The Sprinters are attacking the old way of life of the masses. But VW is unwilling to change course. “Different ‘masses’ for different people,” the AD best sums up the company’s attitude. Today, Volkswagen has five different models that use the company’s logo.

    Act three: It’s the finale. Is it possible that the combined sales of five models are not as good as just one? This is not only possible, it is true.

    Method: How does it go about finding new territory? One obvious way is to develop a new concept or product with a new status, and give it a name to match it.

  • Product extension rules of conduct

    1. The expected sales

      Products with winning potential should not be used, while products with low production should be used

    2. competition

      Not where there is no competition, but where there are a lot of competitors

    3. Advertising support

      Brands with large advertising budgets should not be used, and brands with small advertising budgets should be used

    4. impact

      Innovative products should not be used, general products such as chemicals should be used

    5. distribution

      Products that are not customized should not be used, but products that are sold door-to-door by sales representatives

Locate case

Corporate positioning case: Monsanto

  • The goal: Discuss Monsanto’s (Monsanto) recently implemented corporate positioning program as an example to make Monsanto a leader and spokesperson for the industry. (I’m not sure which industry.)
  • Methods: Consider three aspects: “product leading”, “business leading” and “industry leading”.

    1. Product Leadership – Is it possible for Mondushan to become the no.1 company in product market share?

      Market share: DuPont 81%, Dow 66%, Monsanto 63%, Union Carbide 57%, Union Chemical 34%, American lime nitrogen 29%, Olin 25%, FMC13%

      Bottom line: DuPont’s success with products like Teflon, nylon and polyester has kept it in first place. It is obviously impossible to overtake him.

    2. Business Leadership – Could Monsanto be the first company to defend the free enterprise system?

      Free enterprise system: the first is the freedom of enterprise creation right, the second is the freedom of enterprise management right. In the United States, ‘freedom’ is understood to mean that everyone has the freedom to establish a business.” This is probably the best explanation of the free enterprise system: the American environment at the time was not supportive of free enterprise

      IBM Business Leadership model

      The cardinal rule of positioning: Avoid areas that everyone is talking about, which are trendy. To grow, companies must go their own way and go where no one has gone before

    3. Industry Leadership – Can Monsanto increase its lead in the chemical industry?

      Industry status: Chemicals are under attack. Every day the public sees or hears bad news about chemicals that cause cancer in newspapers, magazines and on radio and television. Mandushan’s decision: To defend chemicals and inform the public that they are both dangerous and beneficial. Mount Mondu’s approach: The advertisement “Without chemicals, life cannot sustain itself” conveys that nature itself is chemical. Plants produce the oxygen we need through the chemical process of photosynthesis. When you breathe, your body absorbs this oxygen through a chemical reaction in your blood. Chemicals can help you live longer. Why do you do that? To establish itself as a recognized leader in the chemical industry, Monsanto must do what a leader should do and speak for the industry.

    4. The end of Monsanto turned around, with public support for the chemical industry rising from 36% to 42% in less than two years. In 1979 Business Week said, “The chemical industry’s image-building campaign was spearheaded by Monsanto in 1977.

Country positioning case: Belgium

The goal: Make Sabina Air stand out from the 16 big North Atlantic airlines competing for international passengers

  • Sabina Airlines Status: The number of north Atlantic passengers who flew to 16 major countries in the last year was 29% in the UK, 15% in Germany, 10% in France, 9% in Italy, 0% in the Netherlands, 5% in Spain, 5% in Ireland, 4% in Portugal, 3% in Switzerland, 3% in Iceland, 3% in Israel, 3% in Denmark, 2% in Greece, 2% in Belgium, 1% in Norway, and 1% in Sweden
  • Sabina’s strategy: Sell food and services. The downside: With all the great food in the world not going to tempt you to take a flight that doesn’t go to your destination, Sabina has to present Belgium as a place to entice travelers to stay for a while rather than connecting on their way somewhere else.
  • Sabina’s proposal: Positioning Belgium – beautiful Belgian cities + scale – beautiful Belgium has five Amsterdames – has led to massive phone inquiries
  • Program outcome: failed to carry out, resulting in a decline in upsurge. Reason: Change in personnel structure. The new management was not enthusiastic about the project and quickly backed down when headquarters in Brussels demanded a “gateway to Europe” strategy.
  • Lesson: The only hope in an over-propagated society lies in simplifying ideas. Bringing in other cities only confuses and complicates the question.

Product positioning case: Milk jelly bean

  • The goal: Beatrice Foods wants to expand its Buttermilk jelly bean business to younger, sugar-loving customers.
  • Solution:
  1. Idea: prospective customers to understand customer group is expected to feature: in a candy store in and out at least hundreds of back to buy sugar, about 10 years old, is expected to be careful, suspicious, shrewd candy purchases home, pay attention to the value Expected customer idea: for most of the children at the age of 10, is yearning for candy will form the concept of rod-shaped sugar immediately. Source: Hersheys, Nestle, Mounds, Almond Joy. Reese, Snicker, Milky Way and many others paid a fortune to make them.
  2. Reposition your competitor: Find a way to brand it better than the candy bar, and turn millions of advertising dollars spent by your competitor to promote the Buttermilk Jelly Bean. The weakness of the candy bar: It doesn’t take long for a child to eat a 30-cent stick of “good” candy in 2.3 seconds. Cream-flavored candy positioning: Anti-eating candy Ending: Sales surge Lesson: The solution to positioning problems is in the minds of prospective customers, not the product.

Define yourself and your career

  • Define yourself

Identify the concepts you will use to build this position over the long term. It won’t be easy, but the rewards can be huge. I’m the best lawyer in Dallas

  • Be willing to make mistakes

Whatever is worth doing is worth taking the trouble. What is not worth doing should not be done at all.

  • We need a proper name

You’re more likely to be successful if you have a name that’s close to success

  • Get out of nameless traps

Confusion is the enemy of successful positioning. You can’t “stick” a name that’s too common. How can anyone tell John T. Smith from John S. Smith?

  • Avoid the product extension trap

In the show business, you have to create a clear image in the public mind. Maybe you should not even use your famous last name, such as Jackie Chan’s son

  • Get a horse Working harder is rarely the road to success. Working smarter is the better way
  1. The first horse — the company

Is there a direction for the company? Bet on growth sectors, such as computers, electronics, optics and telecommunications, and focus on finance, leasing, insurance, pharmaceuticals, financials and consulting services. Instead of asking how much the company can pay you now, ask how much it might pay you later.

  1. The second horse. – Boss

Always try to work for the smartest, best, and most capable person you can find. If your boss can succeed, there’s a good chance you can, too. Top management tends to throw the whole bouquet away if they are unhappy with a business unit. Job search: “You’re strong in my area of expertise. You guys are doing an amazing job, and I want to work with the best.”

  1. The third horse. – Friend

Keep in touch with business friends

  1. The fourth horse. – That’s a good idea

Victor Hugo wrote in his diary the night before he died: When an idea comes to pass, nothing can stop it, not even all the armies on earth.

One sign of whether a principle is workable “is, in the words of the psychologist Charies Osgood, the intensity and persistence of opposition to it.” “In any field,” Dr. Osgood said, “if people think a principle is obviously nonsense and vulnerable, they tend to ignore it. If, on the other hand, the principle is hard to refute and makes people question some of their own fundamental beliefs, which may have a bearing on their personal reputation, they will have to find ways to find fault with it.”

Never be afraid to fight.

  1. Fifth horse – Confidence

Have faith in other people and their ideas. The importance of going beyond yourself and going outside to find your fortune is illustrated by the experience of Ray Kroc, a man who has had a bad day for most of his life. He was nearing the end of his life and had failed to achieve anything before he met the McDonalds brothers, who had a good idea but no confidence. So they sold their idea, along with their name, to Ray Kroc for a few bucks. Today, Ray Kroc has built McDonald’s into a successful chain and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

  1. Sixth horse – find yourself a horse to ride and run as hard as you can.

Six steps to success

Where are you?

Positioning is a kind of reverse thinking, starting not with oneself, but with the concept in the mind of the expected customer.

To have a wide vision, you must see the whole picture, not see the wood for the trees.

Example: Sabina’s problem is not with the airline, but with Belgium. 7Up’s problem is not in anticipating customers’ attitudes toward lemons and lime drinks, but in the overwhelming dominance of colas. For many people, “Give me a Coke” means they’re asking for Coca-Cola or Pepsi. 7Up’s big picture approach has allowed it to develop and succeed in non-Cola campaigns. What to do now: Try to hook your product, service, or concept into what people already have in mind.

Think long term about the best position you want to be in?

Today’s labor market belongs to those who can position themselves as skilled workers.

Who do you have to beat?

If you come up with a position that directly confronts the marketing leader, don’t mention it. Getting around an obstacle is better than overcoming it. Step back and find another position that someone else has not secured.

Do you have sufficient funds?

There is just too much noise in the market right now, and too many copycat products and copycat companies competing for the minds of prospective customers. It’s getting harder and harder to get noticed. If you don’t have enough money to go above the noise, you’re allowing companies like P&G around the world to take your ideas away from you. One way to deal with noise is to narrow the geographic scope of your problem by launching a new product or concept market by market rather than nationwide or global at once.

Can you keep it up?

Once you have defined your basic position, stick to it. Positioning is an accumulative concept and an idea that pays attention to the long-term characteristics of advertising. You have to be nailed in there year after year. Most successful companies rarely change a plan that works

Are you worthy of your rank?

From what you wear to the way you do things

Ways to position your game

  • You must understand the meaning of words Ordinary semantics have been saying for decades that words are undefined. Meaning is not in the words, but in the person who uses them. In a sense, every product or service is a “packaged good”. If it’s sold in a box, its name changes to the outside box
  • You have to understand people
  • You have to be cautious about change. Companies that stick to their best features and don’t mess around have had great success with their projects. Maytag’s durable goods are all the rage, Walt Disney’s magic lands are all the rage, Avon’s cosmetics are all the rage.
  • Courage + vision + objectivity + simplicity + savvy + patience + global perspective + following the rules of the positioning game: To win the battle for brains, you can’t go toe-to-toe with a strong, established positioning company. You can swerve sideways, underneath or overhead, but never confront.