Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

Today, however, a lazy, say-nothing name isn’t good enough to cut into the mind. What you must look for is a name that begins the positioning process, a name that tells the prospect what the product’s major benefit is.

a guide, the five most common initial letters are S, C, P, A, and T. The five least common are X, Z, Y, Q, and K. One out of eight English words starts with an S. One out of 3000 starts with an X.

you must relate your brand to the brands already in the prospect’s mind.

the past advertising was prepared in isolation. That is, you studied the product and its features, and then you prepared advertising which communicated to your customers and prospects the benefits of those features. It didn’t make much difference whether the competition offered those features or not.

In the traditional approach, you ignored competition and made every claim seem like a preemptive claim.

the product is not, rather than what it is.

just as the me-too products killed the product era, the me-too companies killed the image era. As every company tried to establish a reputation for itself, the noise level became so high that relatively few companies succeeded.

old traditional ways of doing things die hard. “There’s no reason why advertising can’t do the job,” say the defenders of the status quo, “as long as the product is good, the plan is sound, and the commercials are creative.”
But they overlook one big, loud reason. The marketplace itself. The noise level today is far too high.

’s better to be a big fish in a small pond (and then increase the size of the pond) than to be a small fish in a big pond.

first make sure you can’t find something to be first in

A mind that has not been burnished by someone else’s brand.