In our overcommunicated society, the paradox is that nothing is more important than communication. With communication going for you, anything is possible. Without it, nothing is possible. No matter how talented and ambitious you may be.
What’s called luck is usually an outgrowth of successful communication. Saying the right things to the right person at the right time. Finding what the NASA people in Houston call a window in space.
Positioning is an organized system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances.
The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be first. You can demonstrate the validity of this principle by asking yourself a few simple questions.
What’s the name of the first person to fly solo across the North Atlantic? Charles Lindbergh, right?
Now, what’s the name of the second person to fly solo across the North Atlantic?
Not so easy to answer, is it?
What’s the name of the first person to walk on the moon? Neil Armstrong, of course.
What’s the name of the second?
What’s the name of the highest mountain in the world? Mount Everest in the Himalayas, right?
What’s the name of the second highest mountain in the world?
What’s the name of the first person you ever made love with?
What’s the name of the second?
The first person, the first mountain, the first company to occupy the position in the mind is going to be awfully hard to dislodge.
Kodak in photography, Kleenex in tissue, Xerox in plainpaper copiers, Hertz in rent-a-cars, Coca in cola, General in electric.
The first thing you need to “fix your message indelibly in the mind” is not a message at all. It’s a mind. An innocent mind. A mind that has not been burnished by someone else’s brand.
What’s true in business is true in nature too.
“Imprinting” is the term animal biologists use to describe the first encounter between a newborn animal and its natural mother. It takes only a few seconds to fix indelibly in the memory of the young animal the identity of its parent.
You might think all ducks look alike, but even a day-old duckling will always recognize its mother, no matter how much you mix up the flock.
Well, that’s not quite true. If the imprinting process is interrupted by the substitution of a dog or cat or even a human being, the duckling will treat the substitute as its natural mother. No matter how different the creature looks.
Falling in love is a similar phenomenon. While people are more selective than ducks, they’re not nearly as selective as you might think.
What counts most is receptivity. Two people must meet in a situation in which both are receptive to the idea. Both must have open windows. That is, neither is deeply in love with someone else.
Marriage, as a human institution, depends on the concept of first being better than best. And so does business.
If you want to be successful in love or in business, you must appreciate the importance of getting into the mind first.
You build brand loyalty in a supermarket the same way you build mate loyalty in a marriage. You get there first and then be careful not to give them a reason to switch.
And what if your name is not Charles or Neil or Kleenex or Hertz? What if someone else got into your prospect’s mind first?
The hard way to get into a person’s mind is second. Second is nowhere.
What’s the largest-selling book ever published? (Also the first book ever printed with movable type?) The Bible, of course.
And the second largest-selling book ever published? Who knows?
New York is the largest cargo port in the United States. But which one is second? Would you believe Hampton Roads, Virginia? It’s true.
Who was the second person to fly solo across the North Atlantic? (Amelia Earhart was not the second person to fly the North Atlantic solo, although she was the first woman to do it. Now then, who was the second woman?)
If you didn’t get into the mind of your prospect first (personally, politically, or corporately), then you have a positioning problem.
In a physical contest, the odds favor the fastest horse, the strongest team, the best player. “The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,” said Damon Runyan, “but that’s the way to bet.”
Not so in a mental contest. In a mental battle the odds favor the first person, the first product, the first politician to get into the mind of the prospect.
In advertising, the first product to establish the position has an enormous advantage. Xerox, Polaroid, Bubble Yum, to name a few more examples.
In advertising, it’s best to have the best product in your particular field. But it’s even better to be first.
Love might be wonderful the second time around, but nobody cares who the second person to fly solo across the North Atlantic was. Even if that person was a better pilot.
There are positioning strategies to deal with the problem of being No. 2 or No. 3 or even No. 203. (See Chapter 8, “Repositioning the competition.”)
But first make sure you can’t find something to be first in. It’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.
The advertising industry is learning the Lindbergh lesson the hard way.
With the magic of money and enough bright people, some companies feel that any marketing program should succeed.
The wreckage is still washing up on the beach. DuPont’s Corfam, Gablinger’s beer, the Convair 880, Vote toothpaste, Handy Andy cleaner.
The world will never be the same again, and neither will the advertising business.
Not that a lot of companies haven’t tried. Every drugstore and supermarket is filled with shelf after shelf of “half successful” brands. The manufacturers of these me-too products cling to the hope that they can develop a brilliant advertising campaign which will lift their offspring into the winner’s circle.
Meanwhile, they hang in there with coupons, deals, pointof-purchase displays. But profits are hard to come by, and that “brilliant” advertising campaign, even if it comes, doesn’t ever seem to turn the brand around. No wonder management people turn skeptical when the subject of advertising comes up.
It’s enough to drive an advertising person into the soft ice cream business.
The chaos in the marketplace is a reflection of the fact that advertising just doesn’t work the way it used to. But 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.
Messages prepared in the old, traditional ways have no hope of being successful in today’s overcommunicated society.
To understand how we got to where we are today, it might be helpful to take a quick look at recent communication history.
Back in the fifties, advertising was in the product era. In a lot of ways, these were the good old days when the “better mousetrap” and some money to promote it were all you needed.
It was a time when advertising people focused their attention on product features and customer benefits. They looked for, as Rosser Reeves called it, the “Unique Selling Proposition.”
But in the late fifties, technology started to rear its ugly head. It became more and more difficult to establish that “USP.”
The end of the product era came with an avalanche of me-too products that descended on the market. Your “better mousetrap” was quickly followed by two more just like it. Both claiming to be better than the first one.
Competition was fierce and not always honest. It got so bad that one product manager was overheard to say, “Wouldn’t you know it. Last year we had nothing to say, so we put ‘new and improved’ on the package. This year the research people came up with a real improvement, and we don’t know what to say.”
The next phase was the image era. Successful companies found that reputation, or image, was more important in selling a product than any specific product feature.
The architect of the image era was David Ogilvy. As he said in his famous speech on the subject, “Every advertisement is a long-term investment in the image of a brand.” And he proved the validity of his ideas with programs for Hathaway shirts, Rolls-Royce, Schweppes, and others.
But 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.
And of the ones that made it, most did it primarily with spectacular technical achievements, not spectacular advertising. Xerox and Polaroid, to name two.
Today it has become obvious that advertising is entering a new era—an era where creativity is no longer the key to success.
The fun and games of the sixties and seventies have given way to the harsh realities of the eighties.
To succeed in our overcommunicated society, a company must create a position in the prospect’s mind, a position that takes into consideration not only a company’s own strengths and weaknesses, but those of its competitors as well.
Advertising is entering an era where strategy is king. In the positioning era, it’s not enough to invent or discover something. It may not even be necessary. You must, however, be first to get into the prospect’s mind.
IBM didn’t invent the computer. Sperry-Rand did. But IBM was the first company to build a computer position in the mind of the prospect.
The Sperry-Rand of the fifteenth century was Christopher Columbus.
As every schoolchild knows, the man who discovered America was poorly rewarded for his efforts. Christopher Columbus made the mistake of looking for gold and keeping his mouth shut.
Amerigo Vespucci didn’t. The IBM of the fifteenth century, Amerigo was 5 years behind Christopher. But he did two things right.
First, he positioned the New World as a separate continent, totally distinct from Asia. This caused a revolution in the geography of his day.
Second, he wrote extensively of his discoveries and theories. Especially significant are the five letters of his third voyage. One (Mundus Novus) was translated into 40 different languages over a 25-year period.
Before he died, Spain granted him Castilian citizenship and gave him a major state post.
As a result, the Europeans credited Amerigo Vespucci with the discovery of America and named the place after him.
Christopher Columbus died in jail.
The great copywriters of yesterday, who have gone to the big ad agency in the sky, would die all over again if they saw some of the campaigns currently running.
Take beer advertising, for example. In the past a beer copywriter looked closely at the product to find a copy platform. And he or she found product features like “real-draft” Piels and “cold-brewed” Ballantine.
And even further back a beer copywriter searched for just the right words to paint a picture of quality, taste, and appetite appeal.
“Just a kiss of the hops.”
“From the land of sky blue waters.”
Today, however, poetry in advertising is as dead as poetry in poetry.
One of the biggest advertising successes of recent times is the campaign for Michelob. The brand was launched with a campaign that is as poetic as a stop sign. And just as effective.
“First class is Michelob” positioned the brand as a premium-priced American-made beer. In a few years, Michelob became one of the largest-selling beers in the United States. At premium prices too.
Was Michelob the first premium-priced domestic beer? No, of course not. But Michelob was the first to build the position in the beer-drinker’s mind.
Notice how the poetry in the old Schlitz beer slogan hides the positioning.
“Real gusto in a great, light beer.”
Did anyone out there in the neighborhood bar and grill believe that Schlitz was any lighter than Budweiser or Pabst? No, the Schlitz slogan made as much sense to the Joe Sixpacks of this world as the lyrics in an Italian opera.
But over at the Miller Brewing Company, they apparently asked themselves what would happen if they really positioned a beer as a light beer.
So Miller introduced “Lite” beer. And the rest is history. A runaway success that spawned a host of me-too brands. Including, ironically, Schlitz Light. (Presumably to be promoted as: “Real gusto in a great, light, light beer.”)
For many people or products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospect’s mind.
For example, there’s an imported beer whose positioning strategy is so crystal-clear that those old-time beer copywriters probably wouldn’t even accept it as advertising.
“You’ve tasted the German beer that’s the most popular in America. Now taste the German beer that’s the most popular in Germany.” This is how Beck’s beer effectively positioned itself against Lowenbrau.
Advertising like this made Beck’s beer popular in America too. Sales kept going up year after year. Lowenbrau, on the other hand, gave up the struggle and became a domestic brand.
Strange things have been happening in American advertising. It’s becoming less poetic—and more effective.