Understanding the Ladders in Your Head
Published May 29, 2010 | 
To cope with the explosion of products, people have learned to rank products and brands in their mind, and perhaps this can be best visualized by imagining a series of ladders in the mind, on each row is a different brand, 
and each different ladder represents a completely different product category, and while some ladders have many steps (seven is me) and others have few, if any, and a competitor that wants to increase its share of the business, must either dislodge the brand above (a task that is usually impossible) or somehow relate its brand to the other companies position.
Too many companies embark on marketing and advertising campaigns as if the competitor’s position did not exist and this strategy seldom works, as they advertise their products in a vacuum of market attention, and are disappointed when their messages failed to get through, as they fail to understand that moving up the ladder in the mind can be extremely difficult, especially if they prance about without a strong foothold, and no leverage or positioning strategy is applied.
The positioning strategy for you to use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder and your marketing strategy should depend on how soon you got into the mind of the consumer, and consequently which rung of the ladder you occupy, the higher the better, of course. 
The consumer mind is selective and prospects use their ladders in deciding which information to accept and which information to reject, and in general, any mind accepts only new data that is consistent with its product ladder in that category, and everything else is ignored.
The ladder is a simple, but powerful analogy and can help you understand and deal with the critical issues in marketing, but before starting any marketing program, ask yourself which ladder are “we” on, and more specifically, where are “we” on the ladder in the prospects mind, on the top rung, on the second rung, or are we not on the ladder at all?
You will come to understand that positioning is counter to classic marketing thinking, which is brand oriented, as in how I get people to prefer my brand, but you have to forget the brand and think categories, since prospects are always on the defensive when it comes to brands and everyone is talking about why their brand is better, but prospects have an open mind when it comes to the latest, as everyone is interested in what’s new, and few people are interested in what is better.
Early on, a new category is a matter of many rungs (remember seven is many), and in the long run, every market becomes a two horse race, and this is known as the “Law of Duality.” In photographic film, it is Kodak and Fuji, and in hamburgers, it is McDonalds and Burger King. In colas, it is Coke and Pepsi, and in sneakers, it is Nike and Reebok. In toothpaste, it is Crest and Colgate, and in long-distance, it is AT&T and MCI. 
Successful marketers concentrate on the top two rungs and Jack Welch, the former chairman and CEO of General Electric, said “Only businesses that are number one or number two in their markets, could win in the increasingly competitive global arena. Those that could not were fixed, closed, or sold.”
Over time, a category will often divide into two or more categories, and like an amoeba dividing in any petri dish, the marketing arena can be viewed as an ever expanding sea of categories, and a category starts off as a single entity, as in computers, but over time, the category breaks up into other segments including mainframes, minicomputers, workstations, personal computers, laptops, notebooks, Palm computers, etc., and instead of understanding this concept of division, many business leaders wrongly hold the belief that categories are combining, but it won’t happen, as categories are dividing not combining.
An Entrepreneur who wants to introduce a new product category must carry in a new ladder and this too, is difficult, especially if the new category is not positioned against an old one, as the mind has no room for what is new and different, unless it is somehow related to the old.
You must understand that’s why if you have a truly new product, it is often better to tell the prospect what the product is not, rather than what it is, as the first automobile, for example, was called the “horseless”
carriage. Words like “off-track” betting, “lead-free” gasoline, “sugar free” soda, and “wireless” Internet connections, are all examples of how new concepts can be positioned against the old.
Finally, due to the existence of ladders in the mind, there are only a few generic external positioning strategies you can employ including getting into the mind first, or finding the niche, positioning yourself to the leader, or repositioning the competition.
Understanding Your Assault on the Mind
Published May 28, 2010 | In order to be successful today, you have to touch base with reality and the only reality that counts is what’s already in the prospect’s mind, and to be creative, to create something that doesn’t already exist in the mind, is 
becoming more and more difficult, so the best and most basic approach to positioning for you is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the minds of your target market niche, too retie connections that already exist.
You must understand that the mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it, and in general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience, and there is no telling just how many millions of dollars have been wasted trying to change minds with traditional advertising, as the average person cannot tolerate being told that they are wrong, since once in mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change it.
The best approach that you can take in our over-communicated society is the over-simplified message, and you should always remember that in communication as in our architecture, less is more, so you have to sharpen your message to cut into the consumer’s mind. 
It’s a selection process, and you have to select the material that has the best chance of getting through to the mind, and the enemy that is keeping your messages from hitting pay dirt is the sheer volume of communication the average person is exposed to, and it is always important to know that only when you appreciate the nature of the problem can you understand the solution.
To better understand what your message is up against, let’s take a closer look at the ultimate objective of all communication, which is the human mind. Like the memory bank of computers, the mind has a slot or positioned for each bit of information it retains, but there is one critically important difference, and that is a computer has to accept what you put into it and the mind does not, in fact, the mind is quite the opposite, as it rejects any new information that doesn’t “compute”, and it accepts only that new information which matches its current state, as it filters everything else out.
Not only does the human mind reject information which does not match its prior knowledge or experience, it doesn’t have much prior knowledge or experience to work with, and an important fact for you to remember, is that the average human mind cannot deal with more than seven units at a time, 
which is why seven is a popular number for things that have to be remembered including seven-digit phone numbers, the Seven Wonders, seven card stud, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, just to name a few.
If you ever want to test the fact of “seven,” just ask someone to name all of the brands he or she remembers in a given product category and rarely will anyone name more than seven, and that’s for a high-interest product category, and as for low-interest products, you will find the average consumer can usually name no more than one or two brands, and with the strategy for the assault on the consumer mind you ultimately develop and use, it is a good thing to always remember that simpler is better, and less is more, in your campaign for the greatest positioning success.
Understanding Your Positioning
Published May 27, 2010 | 
David Ogilvy is one of the best-known names in American advertising circles, who after spending several billion dollars on advertising over the years, developed and listed 32 things that his ad agency had learned, and of the 32, the most insightful finding he said was the fact that the single most important decision involved positioning the product, as he further claimed that the marketing results depend less on how advertising was written, than how the product or service was actually positioned.
In their 1981 book, Positioning: the Battle for your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout describe how positioning is successfully used as a communication tool to reach targeted niche customers in a very crowded marketplace, and as the increased flow of information through Social Media Technology continues to escalate at an exponential pace, it grows increasingly difficult for any business to communicate with both its potential and existing customers. 
Only enlightened companies that develop strategies to cut through the market clutter and “noise” by careful positioning in the mind of the customer, will be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace, and not long thereafter the release of their findings, Madison Avenue advertising executives began to develop positioning slogans for their clients and positioning quickly became a key aspect of the marketing communications.
You must understand completely that positioning begins with a product, a piece of merchandise, a service, a company, or even a person, but what is not traditional thinking is that positioning is not what you do to a product, rather positioning is what you do to the MIND of the customer. That is, you position the product by the prospective customer, strategy is therefore planned in the MIND, not the marketplace, and marketing then becomes a battle of perceptions not products.
You therefore must realize that all successful positioning strategies must start with the MIND of the consumer and then work backward to the product or service, and this is true simply because the answer is not contained within the product or service itself, and no amount of creative thinking or analysis will result in the insights needed to successfully position your company, product, or service. The answer rest instead in the MIND of your customer, and you must begin with what’s already there and then work backwards, outside in, to successfully create your strategies.
Let’s examine an important figure in the history of the world to illustrate positioning in the MIND as a very effective strategy, now as every school child learns, 
the man who discovered America was poorly rewarded for his efforts, and Christopher Columbus made the mistake of not only looking for gold, but more importantly, keeping his mouth shut. Amerigo Vespucci didn’t, and Amerigo was five years behind Columbus, but he did two things correctly, with the first, he positioned the “New World” as a separate continent, totally distinct from Asia, and second, he wrote extensively of his discoveries, both absolutely brilliant positioning strategies, and as a result, Europeans credited Amerigo Vespucci with the discovery of America and even named the place after him, while Columbus died in jail.
Understanding Your Positioning and Message
Published May 26, 2010 | 
To begin with, you must understand that marketing results depend less on how advertising is written than how the product or service is positioned, since positioning is really used as a communication tool to reach target customers that are part of a niche in a sometimes very crowded marketplace, and while your positioning begins with a product, it’s not what you do to the product, positioning is what you do to the mind of the customer, and your marketing then becomes a battle of mental perceptions, not products.
Now, when it comes to developing your positioning plan, there are essentially only three generic positioning strategies including (1) positioning a leader within a unique niche, (2) positioning the follower, and (3) repositioning the competition, so you must always keep it in mind and ask yourself “How can I be the first thing a customer thinks about when thinking about my product or service”, and what exactly is my positioning message to the market? So an important point for you to remember is the consumer’s mind reacts by accepting only what is consistent with their prior knowledge 
or experience, also known as their “frame of reference,” and don’t try to change their mind, instead you should find a position that they already believe to be true, or have trouble being in opposition to, such as the “Clean Air Act”.
Remember, that to be successful at positioning, you must OWN your niche and own it outright, with no one else occupying any of your space, and if you can’t OWN it, especially after experiencing an ineffective marketing expenditure outlay, then decrease the size of the niche until you can claim OWNERSHIP, then start growing the size of the niche, and if somebody else occupies any of the space you have chosen then you will have to reposition them.
Other possible positioning strategies that you can pursue include product attributes (what are the specific product attributes?), benefits (what are the benefits to the customers?), and usage occasions (when / how can the product be used?), Users (identify a class of users), against a competitor (positioned directly against a competitor), away from a competitor (positioned away from competitor), and product classes (compared to different classes of products).
Understanding Timeless Principles of Communication
Published May 21, 2010 | 
There are three timeless principles of communication that will be just as important years from now as they are today, and the principles include Passion of the Heart, Simplicity of Brand Story, and a Compelling Story.
Passion of the Heart engages your community of readers from a place of both passion and compassion for your cause, business or both, and you should understand that the facts really matter less when Passion of the Heart is present.
The Simplicity of your Brand Story should make sense to a nine-year-old, or it’s not good and you should work on it until it makes sense, and understand that many times the fewer the words to tell the story, makes it much simpler to tell as well as make sense of, so remember if you can be economical with your words, Simplicity of your Brand Story can be much more effective.
The Story itself should be Compelling enough to the audience that it draws them in to continue reading to completion, a task many of your audience 
endures for only the most compelling stories and related threads, as a video should meet the compelling requirement as well.
For example, imagine the millions that survive without love or home, almost none of them living in silence, with the thread of narrative running and echoing through the fabric of their existence, and each with their own beat, and rhythm of time, and rhythm of life, as the sound of story becomes the ever dominant sound of the countless lives.
Like many good Buddhists I know that believe when the echo chamber of life starts to become too chaotic and complicated, then it becomes extremely urgent for them to find their way through all the noise of distractions that life many times presents, and they begin to once again simplify, and focus in on what really matters, and As Albert Einstein once said, “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
The great paradox of all this is that in an age of Technological (R)evolution when we have more communication tools at our fingertips, we somehow have lost much of our skills and effectiveness at communicating, but as we examine closer, we remember that it’s in our human nature and DNA to want the latest and shiniest new things, like shoes that make us run faster and jump higher so we can be just like our favorite professional athlete, and finally, we believe that Social Media and Web Marketing will somehow magically transform our messages into something everyone will stop what they are doing and read, watch, or listen to with great amazement, and all of this leads us to one final, and simple question…..…..What would Buddha Tweet?