Why is it that some people with sterling credentials and impressive personality—even if they can write job application letters in impeccable, grammar-perfect English—don’t get any calls at all for a job interview? Why is it that some politicians with good character and a good public-service record get bashed right and left by the public for every conceivable shenanigan that they may not even know about?
The problem in the first case might be that they are unable to communicate themselves well enough or don’t know at all how to position themselves in the job market. And in the second case, the problem might be even more serious: their opponents might have insidiously positioned them into a political rut but the latter have ignored the need to counter that negative positioning and rise above it.
The operative word in both cases is
positioning, and this—for both good and bad—is the powerful marketing concept presented by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their now-classic book
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. The revolutionary idea was originally developed by the authors—both advertising agency executives—for branding and product advertising, but since the book’s publication in 1981, that idea has found wide, vigorous, and successful application in various fields: in marketing, politics, corporate communications, education, even in organized religion.
Positioning, as defined by Ries and Trout in their book, “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.”
And that product, the authors explain, could be “a piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself.”
In the battle for people’s minds, Ries and Trout argue, perception is reality. You may not be the best, but if you position yourself well and pursue that positioning well, you stand a good chance of beating the competition and winning the recognition that you desire.
It therefore behooves all of us to position ourselves purposively for whatever enterprise we find worth pursuing—and not allow other people or no one at all to make that position for us by default. The best way to begin, of course, is to get hold of
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind and to seriously study it now.
Preview Ries and Trout’s Positioning (20th Anniversary Edition) in Google BooksRead an interview of Al Ries by Tom H. C. Anderson of Next Gen Market Research 
