Positioning · Al Ries · 2000
A great introduction to brand positioning. The author offers an opinionated and principled approach to positioning products and brands in a crowded world. Supplement with other GTM and positioning books for more practical frameworks.
Key Points
Positioning is the art of planting a single, clear concept in the mind of your target audience. In a market filled with noise and complexity, claims of superiority often fail because people are overloaded with messages. Instead, success hinges on understanding what customers already believe and shaping your product's message to align with those preconceptions. This isn't about changing the product itself, but rather about selecting the right mental hook, something simple, specific and easy to grasp. Clarity and consistency are vital: a muddled message that tries to be everything to everyone risks ending up as nothing memorable to anyone.
For product managers, this means working with, not against, how the mind filters information. Being the first to claim a particular space, whether it's a feature, a price point, a use case, or a feeling, makes it far easier to stick. If someone else got there first, find a new angle or niche. Shortcuts like adding more messages, extending a strong brand name into unrelated categories, or boasting about being "the best" don't usually cut through. Instead, ensure your product name, promise, and positioning align so seamlessly that customers instantly know what you stand for. If the name doesn't fit the mental image you're aiming to create, change it. If your original message doesn't resonate, simplify it. Always remember that people store products in ladders of association; once an impression is set, it's hard to alter.
Over the long run, subtlety and patience pay off. Avoid battling the entrenched leader head-on and avoid complicating your offering with too many extensions. Focus on building a core identity and reinforcing it until it's unmistakable. Embrace the idea that less is more: fewer words, sharper differentiation, and a single, powerful idea. This same principle extends to personal careers and global markets. Whether you're positioning a new product line, entering a foreign market, or shaping your own professional reputation, the principles remain the same. It's not about talking louder; it's about giving people a reason to remember and trust you. In the end, clarity, focus, and deep insight into what customers already think are the levers that position you to win their minds and their loyalty.
- Plant one clear, distinct idea in customers' minds.
- Recognise that existing beliefs matter more than lengthy explanations.
- Use simple, relevant names and messages that fit pre-held notions.
- Don't dilute a brand's meaning with line extensions into unrelated spaces.
- Embrace subtlety and patience; fight for a memorable position rather than relying on volume or complexity.
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The Bitter Lesson
Rich Sutton. 2019. (View Paper → )
In AI development, approaches that leverage raw computational power consistently outperform systems built with human expertise baked in. This counterintuitive pattern has repeated across chess, Go, speech recognition, and computer vision, where statistical methods analysing massive amounts of data beat carefully crafted expert systems. The lesson is "bitter" because it challenges our belief that human intelligence is special and that programming our knowledge into AI is the path forward. Instead, Sutton suggests we should focus on creating systems that can learn and discover knowledge on their own rather than trying to encode our discoveries, implying that general methods scaling with computational power are ultimately more effective than those trying to mimic human thinking.
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Book Highlights
The essential problem for most businesses is that their so-called strategic-planning exercises do not produce strategies. Rather, they are actually attempting to predict and control financial outcomes. Put simply, they are a form of budgeting. They do not address critical challenges. The process may glance at broader issues but quickly centers on financial goals, to be later followed by budget allocations. Richard Rumelt · The Crux
The principles of primacy and recency in listening and memory tell us that people are more likely to remember the first and last things we say Tom Greever· Articulating Design Decisions
Toughness is about embracing the reality of where we are and what we have to do. Not deluding ourselves, filling ourselves with a false confidence, or living in denial. All of that simply sends us sprinting off the line, only to slow to a walk once reality hits. Being tough begins long before we enter the arena or walk on stage. It starts with our expectations Steve Magness · Do Hard Things
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Quotes & Tweets
You want two things - Simplicity: no wasted movement or effort. Compounding every project should have a long runway and feed others. James Clear
Certainly, the moment money can buy dramatically better ChatGPT, things change. Large organisations get to concentrate their vast resources to buy more intelligence. And within the category of "individual" too, the elite may once again split away from the rest of society. Their child will be tutored by GPT-8-pro-max-high, yours by GPT-6 mini. Andrej Karpathy