Book Summary: Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind By Al Ries And Jack Trout

Book Summary: Positioning: the battle for your mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Nowadays our world has become over-communicated and we receive more information than we give. A person’s mind can only take a particular amount of information and it blocks out everything that is not important or relevant. The authors of the book “Positioning: the battle for your mind” define positioning as what you do to the mind of the customer and not what you do to a product. In that way, positioning is an approach to communication where the goal is to position the product in person’s mind.

The book begins with a theory that in communication less is more. The message to a customer has to be simplified and contain no ambiguities. The authors of this book also suggest that person’s mind accepts only what matches prior knowledge or experience, therefore average person cannot tolerate being told they are wrong. For this reason, it would be a mistake to try and change customer’s beliefs. According to the book, the truth becomes irrelevant when a company is keen to sell its product.

Another chapter in this book talks about how the easiest way to get into a person’s mind is to be first. For example, most of the people would know the name of the first person to walk on the moon, but not many can answer who was the second. The same applies to Coca Cola Company, which was the first in cola production. Every company aims to develop brand loyalty and it is the easiest if you get in the mind first and are careful not to give up your position in peoples’ mind.

The book also analyses advertising in the recent past and compares it to nowadays methods. What authors have found out is that today’s marketplace is no longer responsive to the strategies that worked in the past.