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Let’s Put Positioning On Pause
I once sat in an auditorium with a group of marketers to listen to Jack Trout and Al Ries talk about their new book, “Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind.” They handed out a narrow orange (orange!) pamphlet that highlighted their ideas — I still have it somewhere.
In the 1970s, Positioning pushed forward the perceptive notion that by framing your product in certain ways, you “positioned” in people’s minds how they thought about your product versus its competitors.
Since then, the “battle for your minds” concept of positioning has become a rote conference room discussion point. Over 40 years ago, I was a big fan. I’m still a big fan, really, but positioning needs to be re-positioned for marketing in 2022.
Why? First, because “Positioning” was built for top-down “push” strategies whereby companies dictated how people should think about their products.
Today, we live in a bottom-up, splintered media world where people could care less how the company wants them to view their products. They care about how their peers think about products and services — so they check the ratings and read the reviews.
(In fact, there may be times when the quality of your product doesn’t matter as much as the quality of your fan base.)
