3.1
Positioning
The practice of claiming a single defensible place in the prospect's mind relative to competitors, rather than competing on product attributes.
Trout (1969); Ries & Trout, Advertising Age series (1972); book (1981)
What it does
The contest is fought in the mind, not on the product: take one defensible slot in the category and hold it. Still the single most-used idea in marketing.
When it breaks
Fails when you do not control the category definition, or when the category does not exist yet. And unless the mental position is actually measured, it decays into an argument about taglines.
Case
Ries and Trout's showcase repositioning was Tylenol against aspirin. “For the millions who should not take aspirin” attacked the leader's side-effect vulnerability instead of claiming superiority. Tylenol went on to displace Bayer as the US number-one analgesic.
CBC Under the Influence · repositioning the competition ↗In the wild
Unchecked · not part of the tier
What people have written about this tool in the last twelve months. A machine found these and nobody has read them. Everything above this line was checked by hand.
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