Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

If you cannot see the differences in your service, look harder.
Position Is a Passive Noun, Not an Active Verb
We want to position ourselves as the market leader,” say several million
executives each year.
They cannot do that.
They cannot position themselves as the leader for a simple reason:
No company can position itself as anything.
You can focus your efforts and your message, which sometimes can
influence your position. But your position is a place, and someone else puts you
there: your prospects.
Even services that do nothing to market their company have a position. A
prospect simply takes what he knows about the company and positions the
company accordingly.
Take the position of my native state of Oregon, the last stop on the train to
heaven. For years, the state has tried to attract more tourists. Among the
obstacles the state confronts—including the fact that many people know nothing
about Oregon—is the state’s position in the minds of many other people: that

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place where it always rains.
Unless the state of Oregon spends $15 million a year on television
advertising for the next fifteen years, that is the position it will occupy: the
Rainy State.
Given that, perhaps the most effective thing that Oregon could do to attract
tourism would be to begin with that Rain State position, and make it a benefit.
To wit, run ads showing a thundering rainstorm over Mount Hood, with the
voice-over solemnly announcing, “From Thanksgiving to Memorial Day every
year [crackling thunder], Oregonians endure all of this [pounding rain] . . .”
The screen then shifts to the view of a spectacular green forest, Portland’s
gorgeous Rose Garden, Oregon’s green-on-darker-green golf courses— the
sheer emerald beauty of Oregon—while the announcer, with a slight change in
tone, says “. . . so that all summer and fall, tourists here can endure all of this
[birds chirping, surfers laughing].”
Position is a passive noun: It’s something the market does to you. You can try
to influence your position. Or, like the state of Oregon in this example, you can
take your position and turn it to your benefit.
No marketer ever followed this principle, “Take your position and turn it to
your benefit,” as brilliantly as Avis Rent A Car. Lagging behind Hertz for years
in the 1960s and early 1970s, and saddled with its second-place position, the
company decided to make second best a more desirable position than first.
“We’re Number Two,” Avis ads repeated for years. “We try harder.”
People believed it. Sales soared.
The people at Avis did not try to position the company. They knew the
market had already done it for them. They simply made the absolute most of the
position they had.