- Publisher
- McGraw-Hill
- Published
- 2000 (first published 1981)
- Shelf
- branding: Strategy
- ISBN
- 9780071373586
Strategy
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
Al Ries & Jack Trout
Ries and Trout's case that a brand lives or dies in the customer's head, where the first name to claim a place usually keeps it.
Why read it
They start from overload. People meet far more messages than they can take in, so the mind screens most of them out and files the rest on short ladders, one brand to a rung. The advice follows from that. Be first in a category, or invent a new category you can be first in, or set yourself against the leader the way Avis did with "We try harder." The chapters on names, and on how stretching one name over many products weakens it, still hold up.
Why own it
The cases are real campaigns, named and judged, so every idea can be checked against what actually happened to Avis, 7-Up or IBM. It is short enough to finish in an evening, and the chapters on naming are worth opening again before you name anything.
Who it is for
Anyone new to brand strategy, and founders about to name or launch something.
Reading order
Book 1 of 6 in the branding reading order, where it starts. See all 6
Read nextBuilding a StoryBrandDonald MillerOnce you know the place you want to hold, Miller shows how to say it, casting the customer as hero and your brand as guide.Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
Also on the·branding shelf