Book Number One: Positioning The Battle for your Mind – Al Ries & Jack Trout

• To many, it is considered to be the Bible on marketing strategy – the most influential ad book ever written.
• Shook up marketing world when it first came out decades ago…still relevant.
• I read once a year to keep me grounded and on track because it keeps me looking at the world from the consumer’s point of mind, not mine.
• New approach to communication.
• Def: Positioning is not what you do to a product or service.  It is what you do to the mind of the consumer/prospective consumer.
• Also, first to school of thought that came to grip with getting heard in an increasingly over communicated society.
• Basic premise is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what is already up there in the mind. To retie the connections that already exist. (Velcro marketing)
• An analogy: Ladders (category) with uprights and rungs (competitive brands) and how they rank in the consumers mind.