5 positioning quotes for inspiration and guidance

How do you ensure you look at your positioning with a fresh perspective? We like to be inspired by practical examples and the thoughts of other professionals. Regularly, we come across articles or statements that we underline for ourselves, and maybe you will find them useful too. Therefore, we share 5 compelling positioning quotes that provide inspiration and direction and explain why we find them interesting.

Quote 1: Positioning as a benchmark in a changing world

Marketing is not a static discipline. Marketing is a constantly changing discipline and positioning is one of those revolutionary changes that keeps the marketing field alive, interesting, exciting, and fascinating.
– Philip Kotler (marketing author)

positionering-quotesWhat happens to your positioning when the world or market you operate in changes permanently?

Marketing and communication are strongly subject to trends and changes and look completely different every 10 years. Some companies are able to take a distinctive position every time, how is that possible?

Adaptive positioning

An adaptive positioning works less with fixed strategies and resources and more with clearly defined goals. What characterizes adaptive positioning?

  • Clear core positioning: adaptive positioning has an unchangeable core that serves as a guideline or benchmark for everything else. IBM was able to transition from ‘hardware specialist’ to IT service provider because they knew the core lay in their IT knowledge, not the products or services.
  • Flexible marketing budget: if only the goal is fixed, the means or medium can change quickly
  • Nothing is ‘finished’: the requirements for your website can change tomorrow and this must be taken into account
  • Success is a direction, not a point: evaluating what works and what doesn’t is a continuous process instead of an annual exercise. The goal is to be able to adjust quickly.

Quote 2: Positioning a brand or product

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.
– Al Ries, Jack Trout (Authors of ‘Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind’)

Everything made in a factory can be copied. The difference nowadays is made by the brand. We associate values and feelings with the brand, which make us buy a product from one brand but not from another. Without this distinctive power, you compete solely on price.

Tesla was certainly not the first maker of electric cars but was the first brand to bind customers to itself. Oh, and by the way, it goes beyond cars and concerns the ways we use energy (Tesla Powerwall). Nice when a brand allows that.

Quote 3: Positioning sometimes erodes slowly

As brands become larger, the need to reach greater numbers of customers makes them less edgy and dilutes their unique positioning as they try to please everyone. It is therefore not surprising to find such brands go into a few years of decline before they are able to reinvent themselves.
– Nirmalya Kumar (Visiting Professor of Marketing at London Business School)

How many brands can you think of where this has happened? The dilution of their position and distinctive power because they want to include everyone. Think of Armani, which every student can wear nowadays, Blackberry that collapsed as quickly as it rose, or Makro, where no one knows anymore what you are supposed to find there.

Quote 4: The customer at the center

Forget ‘branding’ and ‘positioning.’ Once you understand customer behavior, everything else falls into place.
– Thomas G. Stemberg (founder of Staples)

You don’t come up with positioning in an ivory tower. The Segway and Google Glass were brilliant products on paper but in both cases, the makers could not see that ‘nerd appeal’ was at odds with large sales volumes.

It is therefore essential that the world, needs, and preferences of your customer are thoroughly mapped before you start positioning. It provides valuable insights and it is certainly not uncommon that the initial outline of the positioning already becomes clear in this phase.

Quote 5: Everything old is new again

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.
– Al Ries, Jack Trout  (Authors of ‘Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind’)

Positioning is quite similar to a good movie. The blockbuster Alien can be described in 3 words: Jaws in space. Does that mean it’s not original or not worth it? In any case, the film was a great success.

A positioning must also break with the ‘established order’. A classic example is the positioning of car rental company Avis, which with its ‘we try harder’ breaks with the traditional role of number 2 in the market. Instead of competing, Avis states that it is better.

Which established patterns or concepts can you detect in your market? Are there not some that actually don’t have to be so ‘true’? That can be a good starting point for your positioning.

Positioning quotes; inspiration and direction

With these 5 quotes, we hope to provide you with some inspiration and direction when it comes to your own positioning. If you want to know more about positioning, you can visit merkelijkheid.nl/positioneren or read the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Ready to get started? Then read: Brand strategy translated into positioning in 5 steps