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.

— Al Ries

Al Ries Quotes

Most marketing mistakes stem from the assumption that you’re fighting a product battle rooted in reality.

— Al Ries

Marriage, as a human institution, depends on the concept of first being better than best. And so does business.

— Al Ries

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

Success in business inflates the egos of top management.

— Al Ries

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.

— Al Ries

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

— Al Ries

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. And just how do you generate publicity? The best way to generate publicity is by being first. In other words, by being the first brand in a new category.

— Al Ries

The Avis campaign will go down in marketing history as a classic example of establishing the “against” position.

— Al Ries

Positioning is an organized system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances.

— Al Ries

The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be first.

— Al Ries

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.

— Al Ries

If you were forced to drink a beaker of di-hydrogen oxide, your response would probably be negative. If you asked for a glass of water, you might enjoy it. That’s right. There’s no difference on the palate. The difference, in the brain.

— Al Ries

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.

— Al Ries

In politics,” said John Lindsay, “the perception is the reality.” So, too, in advertising, in business, and in life.

— Al Ries

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

— Al Ries

In the communication jungle out there, the only hope to score big is to be selective, to concentrate on narrow targets, to practice segmentation. In a word, “positioning.

— Al Ries

To find a unique position, you must ignore conventional logic. Conventional logic says you find your concept inside yourself or inside the product. Not true. What you must do is look inside the prospect’s mind.

— Al Ries

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.

— Al Ries

Positioning defined Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself. But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.

— Al Ries

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.

— Al Ries
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