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 ↗

Diagram — not yet drawn

A single occupied slot in a row of category slots, with the competitor's claim shown being pushed out — position as displacement, not as a quadrant.

In the wild

Unvetted · not part of the tier assessment

What has been written about this tool in the last twelve months. Machine-retrieved and unchecked — everything above this line was checked.

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