Understanding the Power of Owning a Word in the Mind
Published June 4, 2010 | 
Arguably and without much debate, the most powerful position and concept in marketing is to own a word in the prospect’s mind, as you the Entrepreneur can become incredibly successful if you can find a way to put a word in the mind of the prospect, not a complicated word, or even a word invented for it. 
This is the law of “focus” (If you can teach your market segment to associate your product with a single idea, perhaps even a single word, you can be a market leader), as you burn your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word, as it is the ultimate marketing sacrifice.
An astute market leader will go one step further to solidify its position, as Heinz owns the word ‘ketchup,’ but Heinz went on to isolate the most important ketchup attribute with the “Slowest ketchup in the West,” and this was how the company preempted the thickness attribute, by owning the word slow helps Heinz maintain 50% market share.
If you are not the leader in the market, then your word has to have a narrow focus, while even more important, however, your word has to be available in your category. Prego went against market leader Ragu in the spaghetti sauce market and captured a 27% market share with an idea borrowed from Heinz, that Prego’s word is thicker. An important point to make here, and that you need to understand, is that the most effective words are simple and benefits driven, and no matter how complicated the product, no matter how complicated the needs of the market, it is always better to focus on one word or benefit rather than two, three, or even four.
If you properly choose “your word,” there will be a halo effect, and if you strongly establish one benefit, the consumer prospect is likely to give you a lot of other benefits as well, for example, a “thicker” spaghetti sauce implies quality, superior ingredients, value, and so on, while a “safer” car implies superior design and engineering.
You must always remember that whether the result of a deliberate program or not, most successful products are the ones that “own a word” in the mind such as Crest…cavities, McDonalds…fast, Mercedes…engineering, BMW…driving, Volvo…safety, Domino’s…home delivery, Pepsi…youth, Nordstrom…service, and Fed Ex…overnight.
Atari used to own a valuable position through the word videogame, but when Atari wanted a bigger piece of the computer market, it wanted Atari to mean computers, but unfortunately for Atari, a host of other companies including Apple and IBM owned the word they were after.
Atari’s diversification was a disaster, but the real irony was another company arrived in 1986 and took the word that Atari walked away from, and that company was Nintendo, which took over a majority of the market share of the ‘videogame’ industry.
At one point in the history of the American automotive industry, G.M. put forth the slogan, “Putting the quality on the road.”, and guess what they were doing at Ford, that’s right, the same thing. “Quality is job 1.” Over at Chrysler, Lee Iacocca was proclaiming, “We don’t want to be the biggest, just the best”, and while this is all great stuff inside the corporation, outside the corporation, the message falls apart. Does any Company proclaim itself as the “un-quality” corporation? No, everyone stands for quality, and as a result, nobody does. So you cannot narrow the focus with quality or any other idea that does not have proponents for the opposite point of view.
Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind, as when Energizer tried to take the word “long-lasting” away from Duracell who had it first, and Burger King tried to take away the word 
“fast” from McDonalds with its “Best food for fast times” campaign, but both campaigns failed to change the customer’s mind, as researchers can tell you what attributes people want and the mistaken assumption is that is what we should therefore advertise, but what researchers never tell you is that some other company already owns the word.
There are a few critical facts that you need to completely understand and remember, there is power in the position of owning a word in the mind, but you must own your niche and own it outright, as no one else can occupy your space, and if you can’t own it, especially from a marketing expenditure outlay, then decrease the size of the niche until you can, and you will retain the power of your word ownership position, and if somebody else occupies your chosen space you must try to reposition them.
Understanding Positioning and the Product Line Extension
Published June 3, 2010 | 
When a really neat product comes along, the path of least resistance dictates in most cases to use a name the market is already familiar with, but it’s almost always a mistake to hang a well known name on it, and the reason is obvious, a well known name got to be well known because it stood for something and a really well known name sits on the top rung of a sharply defined ladder. The new product, if it’s going to be successful, is going to require a new ladder, and new name, it’s as simple as that, and yet the pressures exist to go with a well known name are enormous but you must try and resist it.
When companies reach the decision to name across a number of products they always run into a problem known as the teeter totter principle which means that one name cannot stand for two distinctly different products, and when one goes up, the other goes down. 
Take Heinz for example, as name used to mean pickles, and Heinz owned the pickle position and got the largest share, then the company decided to make Heinz mean ketchup, very successfully too, as Heinz is the number one brand of ketchup, but what happened to the other side of the teeter totter, and why, of course, Heinz lost its pickle leadership to the Vlasic.
Scott paper products produces towels, napkins, toilet tissue and other consumer paper products under the names such as Scott Towels, Scot Tissue, Scotties, Scotkins, even BabyScott, but the more products on the Scott name, the less meaning the name has to the consumer, take 
Scott Tissue for example, Scott tissue was the number one brand in the toilet tissue market, then Mr. Whipple from Procter and Gamble moved in and now Scott tissue is second to Charmin, so in examination of Scott’s case, a large share of the market didn’t mean that they owned the position, and the consumer could write, “Charmin, Kleenex, Bounty, and Pampers” on a shopping list and we know what products he or she was going to get, but “Scott” on a shopping list has no meaning.
Lifesavers gum is another great example of a line extension that went nowhere, according to their vice president of marketing for “Lifesavers” means excellence in flavor, outstanding value, and dependable quality, but how many people would have said “Lifesavers” 
if you asked them, what brand means excellence in flavor, outstanding value, and dependable quality, the answer most often would be none. Now if you asked them, what’s the name of the candy with the whole? Most people would say “lifesavers”, so what happened to Lifesavers gum, actually nothing.
Ironically, Lifesavers had a big success in the downfield, the bubblegum failed, but it wasn’t with Lifesavers gum, it was with Bubble Yum, the first soft bubblegum, and the advantage of being first plus the advantage of not using a line extension name.
Eveready dominated the battery market until alkaline batteries came into the market and P. R. Mallory saw the opportunity and introduced the Duracell alkaline battery in a distinctive black and gold case, and the folks at Eveready 
refused the idea of a new day, because they thought we’ve got the best name in the battery business, and they simply added the words “alkaline power cell” to their ever ready brand name. The Duracell battery just said the Duracell, and didn’t have to say “alkaline power cell “because Duracell means alkaline power, and this is of course the essence of positioning, to make your brand name stand for the generic, and finally, Eveready gave up the name and began using Energizer which is giving Duracell a run for the money.
The classic test for a line extension is the shopping list, list the brands you want on a piece of paper and send your spouse to the supermarket (Kleenex, Bayer, and Dial) and most would say that’s easy enough, but most would come back with tissue, aspirin, and soap. How about the list of Heinz, Scott, and Kraft. Will they bring back Heinz pickles or ketchup, Scott tissue or towels, Kraft cheese, mayonnaise, or salad dressing? The confusion caused on one name stands for more than one product is slowly sapping the strength of brands like Scott and Kraft.
Let’s say you have a line of canned vegetables, do you have a brand name for peace, another for corn, and still another for string beans, most likely not, because economically, it wouldn’t make much sense. So Del Monte is probably right to use the same brand name on its line of canned fruits and vegetables, but notice what happens when a competitor zeroes in on a single product. The Dole line of canned pineapple, and when Dole versus Del Monte in pineapples it’s no contest, as Dole wins every time. A name that will stretch, but not beyond a certain point, furthermore, the more you stretch a name, the weaker it becomes.
You must understand that if you want to be successful today, you have to give up something in order to get something, as there are three things to sacrifice including product line, target market, and constant change.
The first thing you can sacrifice is the product line, where is it written that the more you have to sell, the more you sell? If you want to be successful, you have to reduce your product line, not expand it, so take Emery Air Freight that was in the air freight service business, and anything you wanted to ship you could ship via Emery including small packages, large packages, overnight service, and the delayed service, you name it, so from a marketing perspective, what did Federal Express do? That’s right, Federal Express concentrated on one service including small packages overnight, and today Fed Ex is a much larger company than Emery ever was.
Take Kraft for example, and of course, everybody thinks Kraft is a strong brand name, as in jellies and jams where Kraft can claim 9% of the market, but Smucker’s has 35%, and in mayonnaise, Kraft has 18% of the market, but Hellmann’s has 42%. Craft does have a leading brand in terms of market share, however, its name is not Kraft, it’s Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has 70% of the cream cheese market.
Take the retail industry, which retailers are in trouble? The department store’s, and what’s a department store, a place that sells everything, and you guessed it, that’s a recipe for disaster, as several retailers that are known as department stores have all filed for bankruptcy or are in very real danger of doing so. One department store in particular, Interstate Department Stores also went bankrupt, so the company looked at the books and decided to focus on the only product it made money on, which was toys, so it changed its name to Toys “R” Us, and today, Toys “R” Us does 20% of the retail toy business in the country, and very profitably too.
Coca-Cola got into the prospect’s mind first and built a powerful position , in the late 50s, Coke outsold Pepsi more than 5 to 1, and what could Pepsi due to go against Coke’s powerful position? In the early 60s, Pepsi finally developed a positioning strategy based on the concept of sacrifice and the company sacrificed everything except the teenage market, and within one generation, 
Pepsi closed the gap, but in spite of Pepsi’s success, however, the pressure for enlarging the tent is always present and Pepsi succumbed to the temptation.
Pepsi has outgrown the Pepsi generation, and in a major marketing shift, Pepsi will be pitched as a soft drink for the masses, but the one drawback of Pepsi advertising in the past has been a little too much focus on the youth according to Pepsi’s ad agency, and Pepsi could have made greater gains had it expanded its horizons and cast a wider net and catch more people. Yet, the actual results showed that Pepsi never got any closer to Coke, and in fact, it actually began to lose market share, as there seems to be an unproven belief that the wider net catches more customers, in spite of many, many examples to the contrary.
Understanding How to Reposition the Competition
Published June 2, 2010 | Sometimes there are no unique positions for you to carve out for your business, and in such cases, authors Ries and Trout suggest that you have to reposition a competitor by convincing consumers to view the competitor in a different way, but understand that repositioning the competitor is different from a comparative, since comparative advertising seeks to convince the consumer that one brand is simply better than another, and consumers by nature are not likely to be receptive to such a tactic. That’s because there’s a psychological flaw in the advertiser’s reasoning which the consumer prospect is quick to detect and ask, “If your product is so good, how come it’s not the leader?” and a deeper look at comparative ads suggests why most them aren’t effective, as they fail to reposition the competition.
Let’s look at successful repositioning, as Tylenol successfully repositioned aspirin by running advertisements explaining the negative side effects of aspirin:
“For the millions who should not take aspirin, if your stomach is easily upset… or you have an ulcer… or you suffer from asthma, allergies, or iron deficiency anemia, it makes sense to check with your doctor before you take aspirin. Aspirin can irritate the stomach lining, trigger asthmatic or allergic reactions, and cost small amounts of hidden gastrointestinal bleeding. Fortunately, there is Tylenol…”
You should notice there are six words of ad copy before any mention of the advertiser’s product, and sales of Tylenol took off, and as a result, today, Tylenol is the number one brand of analgesic.
Consumers naturally tend to perceive the origin of a product by its name rather than reading the label to find out where it really is made, and such was the case with vodka when most of vodka brands sold in the US were made in the US, but had a Russian name. Stolichnaya Russian vodka successfully repositioned its Russian sounding competitors by exposing the fact that they all actually were made in the US (by listing the cities they were produced in) and that Stolichnaya was made in Leningrad, Russia.
When Pringle’s newfangled potato chips were introduced, they quickly gained market share, however, Wise potato chips successfully repositioned Pringles in the mind of consumers by listing some of Pringles non-natural ingredients that sounded like harsh chemicals, even though they were not, and Wise potato chips of course, simply contained only “Potatoes, vegetable oil, and Salt,” and as a result of this advertising, 
Pringles quickly lost market share, with consumers complaining that Pringles tasted like cardboard, most likely as a consequence of their thinking about all those unnatural ingredients.
It may come as a surprise to you that one of the most effective ways to get into a prospect’s mind is to first admit a negative and then to twist it into a positive, because first and foremost, candor is very disarming to natural consumer skepticism, and every negative statements you make about yourself is instantly accepted as truth, but positive statements, on the other hand, are looked at as dubious at best, especially in an advertisement, for instance, successful campaigns include “Avis is only No. 2 in rental cars.” “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.”, “The 1970 VW will stay ugly longer.”, “Joy, the world’s most expensive perfume.”
Think back some years ago, to when Scope entered the mouthwash market with a “good-tasting” mouthwash, stating that Listerine’s leading product was responsible for “medicine breath.” Now think about what Listerine should do in response? 
It certainly couldn’t tell people that Listerine’s taste wasn’t all that bad, because that would raise a red flag that would reinforce a negative perception, instead, Listerine brilliantly invoked the law of candor: “The taste you hate twice a day.” Not only did the company admitted product tasted badly, it admitted that people actually hated it, and to set up the selling idea that Listerine “kills a lot of germs.” and a crisis was diverted by brilliantly using a heavy dose of candor to great success.
Understand that to reposition competition you must examine the market and examine closely all existing consumer perceptions about you and your competition, and as you look below the surface and find what might be obvious about the competition to you, how you deliver and state the obvious will have a lasting impact on your positioning in the market.
Understanding the Position of a Follower
Published June 1, 2010 | In the not too distant past, advertising was prepared in isolation, or in other words you studied the product and its features, and then you prepared advertising, which communicated to your customers the benefits of those features, and in comparing that to the ‘Positioning Era’ the rules are actually reversed, so to establish a position, you must often not only name competitive names, but also ignore most of the old advertising rules as well, since in category after category, the prospect already knows the benefits of using the product and to climb on someone’s 
product ladder, you must relate your brand to the brands already in the prospect’s mind.
Let’s take a look at a classic positioning strategy that can be used to worm your way onto a ladder owned by someone else as 7-Up did, by linking the product to what was already in the mind of the prospect, the “uncola” position brilliantly established 7-Up as an alternative to a cola drink, and so you won’t think that was just a one-time fluke, and to prove the universality of positioning concepts, let’s check out McCormick Communications that took easy listening radio station WLKW, an also-ran in the Providence, Rhode Island market, and made it number one, and their theme was WLKW, the “unrock” station, so to find a unique position, you won’t find an “uncola” idea inside a 7-Up can, you find it, and this is key, ‘inside the cola drinkers head.’
Understand that consumers rank brands in their minds and if a brand is not number one, then to be successful you somehow must relate it to the number one brand, and a campaign that pretends that the market leader does not exist is likely to fail, a great example of this is Avis, that tried unsuccessfully for years to win customers, pre
tending that the number Hertz did not exist, finally, it began using the line, “Avis is only No.2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder.” In examining the success achieved, we find that for 13 years in a row Avis lost money, and after the campaign, Avis quickly became profitable, so whether Avis actually tried harder is not relevant to their success, but rather, consumers finally were able to relate Avis to Hertz, which was number one in their minds, so once again it is critical to understand that consumers continually rank brands in their minds.
Shortly after being sold to ITT, Avis decided it was no longer satisfied with being Number 2, so it ran ads saying, “Avis is going to be Number 1.” Avis was not destined to be number one unless it could find a weakness in Hertz to exploit and everyone knew it, and furthermore, the old campaign not only related Number 2 Avis to Number 1 Hertz on the product ladder in the prospects mind but also capitalized on the natural sympathy people have for the underdog, and shortly after releasing their new campaign, Avis’ market share began to fall, after losing the value gained from consumer’s sympathy for Avis’ position as the underdog, and forgetting or ignoring the fact that it is the consumer that ranks brands in their mind.
In today’s marketplace, the competitor’s position is just as important as your own, and sometimes more important, because if a company isn’t first, then it has to be the first to occupy the number 2 position, and although it’s not an easy task, it can be done. MCI is against AT&T, Burger King is against McDonalds, Pepsi is against Coke, and Firestone is against Goodyear, and so on.
If you are shooting for second place, your strategy is most often determined by the market leader and in strength there is weakness, for where ever the leader is strong, there is opportunity for a would-be No. 2 to turn the tables, as you discover the essence of the leader and then present the consumer prospects with the opposite, in other words, don’t try to be better or different, as it’s often the upstart versus old reliable.
Scope, the good tasting mouthwash, hung the “medicine breath” label on its Listerine competition, but understand that you simply can’t knock the competition, as the ‘law of the opposite’ is a two edge sword, and it requires honing in on a weakness that your prospect will quickly acknowledge: One whiff of Listerine and you know that your mouth would smell like a hospital, and then you quickly twist the sword: Scope is the good tasting mouthwash that kills germs.
Burger King’s most successful years came when it was on the attack and it opened with “Have it your way,” which twitted McDonalds mass manufacturing approach to hamburgers, then it hit McDonalds with “Broiling, not frying” and “The Whopper beats the Big Mac.” All these programs reinforced the No. 2 alternative position. Then, believe it or not, for some unknown reason, Burger King ignored the law of the opposite, “The best food for fast times,” We do it the way you do it,” “You got to break the rules,” and so on. It even started a program to attract little kids, the mainstay 
of McDonalds’ strength, and this is no way to stay a strong No. 2, as Burger King’s sales per unit declined and have never returned, since Burger King made the mistake of not taking the opposite tack.
There are more successful followers than there are successful leaders (the first with the most), so the chances are great you will find your greatest success positioning your business as a follower, but you must develop a complete understanding of positioning and the mind of the consumer, and the fact that it’s the mind of the consumer that will always decide where you will rank, and ultimately the levels of success you achieve.
Understanding the Positioning of a Leader
Published May 30, 2010 | Many companies such as Avis and Seven-Up found viable positions to marketing leaders, but most companies don’t want to be an also-ran, successful or not, and they want to be a leader like Hertz or 
Coke, so how do you get to be a leader, actually, it’s quite simple to do, for example, remember Charles Lindbergh and Neil Armstrong? You just get there ‘first with the most’ and history shows that the first brand into the brain, on average, gets twice the long-term market share of the No. 2 brand and twice again as much as the No. 3 brand.
If you are still not convinced, to further prove the importance of being first, consider the fact that when a marketing leader isn’t first in a new category, the new product is usually an also-ran in the minds of the target consumer market, for example, take Coca-Cola, a gigantic company compared with Dr. Pepper, and yet when Coke introduced a competing product, Mr. Pibb, even the immense resources of the cola giant that is Coca-Cola, couldn’t put much of a dent in 
Dr. Pepper’s sales, and Kodak was supposedly going to cream Polaroid when they got into the instant camera business, but their results were disappointing to say the least, as Kodak managed to take only a small share, at the great expense of a substantial loss in its conventional camera business.
You must understand that as long as a company owns the position, there is no point in running advertisements that repeat the obvious, as in “We’re No.1” for instance, as it is much better to enhance the product category in the consumer prospect’s mind, for example, 
IBM’s advertising usually ignores competition and sells the value of computers in general. So then another good question becomes why isn’t it a good idea to rent advertising that says, “We’re No. 1”? The reason is psychological, as either the prospect knows you are No. 1 and wonders why you are so insecure that you have to say so, or the prospect doesn’t know you are No. 1, if not, why not, and you don’t want to create an opening for any doubt to creep into the minds of your target consumer market.
“The real thing”, this classic Coca-Cola advertising campaign is a strategy that can work for any leader, as the essential ingredient is again ‘getting into the mind first,’ and then keeping that position by reinforcing the original concept, in other words, Coke is the standard by which all others are judged, and in contrast, everything else is an imitation of the “real thing.” Now this is not the same thing as saying, “We’re No. 1,” but the “real thing,” like a first love, will always occupy a special place in the consumer prospect’s mind.
You must also be aware that you cannot define your leadership position in your own terms, it must instead be defined in the prospect’s terms, and saying we are, “The best-selling high-definition television under $1,000 in North America,” just won’t work, as you have to build a leadership position using the prospect’s terms, which is what’s already in their mind.
One classic marketing mistake made by market leaders is to assume that the power of the product is derived from the power of the organization, but it’s just the reverse, as the power of the organization is derived from the power of the product, the position that the leader’s product owns in the consumer prospect’s mind. Coke has power, but outside the cola field, the Coca-Cola Company has to earn its power the hard way, either by getting into the mind first, by establishing a strong alternative position, or by repositioning the leader, as we see with Coca-Cola’s Mr. Pibb, that ran a poor second place race to Dr. Pepper, and all the power of the Coca-Cola Company couldn’t do much about it.
Just like Coke, Xerox has much power, as Xerox means copier, and Xerox owns the copier position because it got into the mind the first thing, and exploited that copier position by a massive marketing program, but in computers, word processors and other office products, Xerox starts at ground zero, and usually without much success.
So you have to first ask yourself, “What position do I own now?”, and realize external strategy is really thinking in reverse, so instead of starting with yourself, you start with the mind of the consumer prospect, and instead of asking 
what you are, you ask what ‘position you already own in the mind’ of the prospect, and changing minds in our over-communicated society is an extremely difficult task, as it’s much easier to work with what’s already there. Next, ask yourself, “What position do I want to own?”, and then ask, “How can I be the first to claim a unique position in the mind of my customer?”, as here is where you try to figure out the best position to “own” from a long-term perspective.
Finally, it is critical to remember, “Own” is the key word, and too many failed programs set out to communicate a position that is impossible to preempt right from the very start because someone else already “owns” it.