Al Ries Quotes

With a plethora of products in every category, how does a company use advertising to blast its way into the mind? The basic underlying marketing strategy has got to be “reposition the competition.” Because there are so few creneaus to fill, a company must create one by repositioning the competitors that occupy the positions in the mind. In other words, to move a new idea or product into the mind, you must first move an old one out.

Traditional marketing is not focused on creating new categories. Traditional marketing is focused on creating new customers. Traditional marketing involves finding out what consumers want and then giving them what they want, better and cheaper than the competition.

The most difficult part of positioning is selecting that one specific concept to hang your hat on. Yet you must, if you want to cut through the prospect's wall of indifference.

When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not 'How is this new product better than the competition?' but 'First what?' In other words, what category is this new product first in?

Големите компании виждат нещата такива, кавито са. Предприемачите ги виждат такива, каквито могат да бъдат.

Names don't matter, many managers believe; it's the product that matters. With the right product at the right price, goes the thinking, we can win the battle of the marketplace. Names do matter. Depending on the category, the name alone can represent the primary reason for the brand's success. A company might spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new product and then give that new product a brand name that almost guarantees failure. Innovation alone is never enough. Along with innovation, a company needs marketing to assure the brand's eventual success and survival. The heart of a good marketing program is a great name.

To be successful today, you must touch base with reality. And the only reality that counts is what’s already in the prospect’s mind. To be creative, to create something that doesn’t already exist in the mind, is becoming more and more difficult. If not impossible. 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.

In our overcommunicated society, the paradox is that nothing is more important than communication.

People don't like to change their minds. Once they perceive you one way, that's it. They kind of file you away in their minds as a certain kind of person. You cannot become a different person in their minds.

Everyone is interested in what's new. Few people are interested in what's better.

Don’t try to trick the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It’s a seduction.

The world is round,” said Christopher Columbus. “No, it’s not,” said the public, “it’s flat.”

To convince the public otherwise, fifteenth-century scientists first had to prove that the world wasn’t flat. One of their more convincing arguments was the fact that sailors at sea were first able to observe the tops of the masts of an approaching ship, then the sails, then the hull. If the world were flat, they would see the whole ship at once.

All the mathematical arguments in the world weren’t as effective as a simple observation the public could verify themselves.

If “what is the size of the market?” is the first question your company asks itself, then you are taking the wrong road to success.

Advertising can only maintain brands that have been created by publicity.

A fad is a wave in the ocean, and a trend is the tide. A fad gets a lot of hype, and a trend gets very little. Like a wave,