In this video, Kevin from Organic Growth discusses one of the best marketing books he’s ever read: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Kevin explores the book’s timeless principles and how they relate to current trends like cryptocurrency and generative AI.
A transcript of the video follows…
Hi. I’m Kevin with Organic Growth. Emanuel asked me if I could provide a little more screen time to his How About Some Marketing community. Apparently, in the How About Some marketing webinar I participated in, I said some things that some people found interesting, and apparently I was requested.
Emanuel and I exchanged a few ideas, and I agreed to make this video. It’s about a book I consider to be one of the best marketing books I’ve ever read. As it was first published in 1980, it’s a bit dated these days and it no longer gets the recognition which I think it deserves. And while specific examples of the principles they discuss are dated, the principles themselves are not. I’ll throw up a graphic at the end of the video showing the book, but the title is Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind, and the authors are Al Reyes and Jack Trout.
The main thesis of this book even helps explain why crypto and generative AI became so popular so quickly. But first, a little background information… for 2024, total advertising spending in the US is on track to be $421 billion. The US population is about 335 million people The average American is exposed to an excess of 4,000 ad impressions per day. Somewhere between 4,000 and on the high end, 10,000 And that means tha: – the annual ad spend in the US is slightly more than $1,250 per person – and we’re really good at filtering out ad impressions – but some get throug – and since brands are willing to spend so much, it’s working for them
And per the book, a big part of the way we filter out ad impressions is called categorizing. As soon as we start hearing about some product or service, or anything for that matter, we immediately, without conscious awareness, start comparing it to things we already know of, which seem similar to it. We categorize. So ensuring a message is not filtered out of the bombardment of ad impressions we all see every day, we need to defy categorization. And this helps explain how crypto and generative AI became so popular so fast.
They were entirely new categories of things to which our minds were open. The problem is, defying categorization is easier said than done. I’ll use my venture, Organic Growth, as an example. Organic Growth has built a SaaS platform which is at its core, is contents and links, otherwise known as link building. But it’s not like other forms of link building. However, when I describe what our platform is, I bump up against preconceived ideas that we all have in our heads about what link building is.
In short, we get categorized. And this phenomenon of immediately starting to categorize what we’re hearing about or reading about is apparently called by psychologists, a referential search. And not only do we all do it, we can’t not do it. If every time someone mentioned chair, it was necessary to describe what a chair is, we could never get anything done. Merely communicating would be too cumbersome.
So categorizing is an essential part of human communications. Now for most people in SEO, link building includes private blog networks, pitches from sellers of low quality link placements, bulk email outreach, etcetera. And in some cases, tactics that are seen as attempts to bypass Google’s quality guidelines. When people hear link building, they do not think of a community implemented within a SaaS platform where members promote high quality content to other members and earn visibility within the community by linking to the high quality content of other members. Where the easiest way to earn links is to promote high quality content, then look for outbound link targets for your posts first within the community.
So far, I’ve not met a single person for whom the phrase link building evokes that image. And that’s the categorization that we need to break through. And in the spirit of full disclosure, breaking through the clutter of what we all know as link building to include our SaaS platform and community is easier said than done. And strategies for breaking through this clutter is what the book is all about. Again, due to it having been first published in 1980, some of the brands and campaigns will seem dated, but the ideas are not.
Now I’ll use a specific example from the book to explain their main method of breaking through the clutter. Almost everyone knows that the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean was Charles Lindbergh. Everyone knows the first person to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong. But only aviation buffs know who the 2nd, 3rd and 4th people to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean was. But most people know that the first woman was Amelia Earhart.
Most people do not know that the first woman and the third person are the same person. And for reasons that feel obvious, she’s known as the first woman, not as the third person. So their primary strategy for breaking through or defying categorization is if you can’t be first in your category, you need to create a new category in which you can. Again, it’s generally easier said than done, and the two examples that follow are a bit dated to the point where some of the younger people watching this video may not have even heard of these advertising campaigns, but back in their day, they worked. The first example is 7 Up.
They were not having much success competing against cola brands for whatever reasons. They did some market research and learned that people thought that a clear cola was just weird. Colas are brown. So it was decided that rather than compete head to head against cola, they would compete against the entire category, and the ad campaign of the Un Cola was born. And it worked.
They created Un Cola as a thing, as a category, and it stuck in our minds. And during the duration of that campaign, they sold a lot of 7 Up. The next example is Avis and this is my personal favorite of all of the examples because of what they did back in the day. Number 1 in car rentals was Hertz. Avis was always number 2.
And whatever they did, they were unable to to seriously eat into Hertz’s lead and they were chronically in 2nd place. So they decided to embrace and lean into being second. And that’s where the iconic tagline “Avis, we’re number 2, try harder” came from. And again, it worked.
And what’s so interesting to me about this campaign is that Avis became the first brand to brag about being 2nd best and turning it into a virtue. So how do you do this? And at this point, I would recommend that you read the book. Chapter 7 should be especially interesting. It is titled “Positioning of a Follower”, which definitely applies to me, and I suspect applies to everyone watching this video.
From there, you talk to people about your offering, try different messaging and keep testing, modifying, testing, modifying until you find messaging where you’ve effectively created a category in which you can be first, which allows you to break through the clutter. Again, the book is “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Reyes and Jack Trout, and I personally believe it’s one of the best books on marketing I’ve ever read. And this is from the Goodreads website. This is about the book. This is a picture of the jacket.
They list one of the authors, Al Reyes, but not the other one, Jack Trout. And I’d like to actually take this opportunity to put in a plug for an online used bookstore. I’m a huge believer in used bookstores. We need a lot more of them, but as things have gone online people go to Amazon. But thriftbooks.com is literally an online used bookstore.
Not every book I want can be found there, but it’s the first place I look and I like to give them a plug, even though I have no stake in the business. It’s just I just really believe in used bookstores. Anyway, this is the book “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Reyes and Jack Trout.
