Top 15 Al Ries Quotes

Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

The only reality you can be sure about is in your own perceptions. If the universe exists, it exists inside your own mind and the minds of others.

A perception that exists in the mind is often interpreted as a universal truth.

The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing is try to change a mind.

Too often, however, greed gets confused with positioning thinking. Charging high prices is not the way to get rich. Being the first to (1) establish the high-price position (2) with a valid product story (3) in a category where consumers are receptive to a high-priced brand is the secret of success. Otherwise, your high price just drives prospective customers away.

Don't play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It's a seduction.

The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.

Today brands are born, not made. A new brand must be capable of generating favorable publicity in the media or it won’t have a chance in the marketplace.

The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.

With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.” Most companies, especially family companies, would never make fun of their own name. Yet the Smucker family did, which is one reason why Smucker’s is the No.1 brand of jams and jellies. If your name is bad, you have two choices: change the name or make fun of it.

Mind-changing is the road to advertising disaster.

When you try to be everything, you wind up being nothing.

companies are focused on building products rather than brands. A product is something made in a factory. A brand is something made in the mind. To be successful today, you have to build brands, not products. And you build brands by using positioning strategies, starting with a good name.

The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.

You want to change something in a computer? Just type over or delete the existing material. You want to change something in a mind? Forget it.