Let me start by saying that we are passed the age of positioning, a concept that was pioneered as the 5th P, by the authors Ries & Trout of the book, fittingly called “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” Rather I think we are in the age of 2 C’s: Conversation & Customisation. Before I explain, I’ll briefly summarise my thoughts about the book in the next few paragraphs.

Book thoughts

What is positioning? It is

the art and science of creating positions in a targets mind, something “that takes into consideration not only a company’s own strengths and weaknesses, but those of its competitors as well.”

“Positioning” is neither a bad, nor an irrelevant book. Jeremy Fain gave it a favourable review a while ago, which inspired me to give it a read. Some things I immediately liked were its thinness (213 pages) and a very effective table of contents—every item has a short paragraph underneath it, shortly summarising that chapter. The book is also a pleasure to read, written in a flowing fashion and using effective titles that make you curious about what’s next.

The book itself points out that marketing has evolved in stages, determined by both our understanding of customers, but also by our competitors’ understanding and subsequent copycat-strategies. A marketing-strategy is only effective if it comes through clearly and isn’t diffused by too much noise.

In the 50s, according to the book, marketing was focussed on products, i.e. marketing your better mousetrap. As production-techniques evolved and more mousetraps were produced, that became increasingly difficult. This was followed by the image-era, where the focus was on brand and reputation. Again, as competitors caught on, the noise-level eventually decreased the ROI of that strategy. Now, the book (originally published in 1985, republished in 2001) states, we are in the positioning era, which is about “getting in the consumer’s mind.”

True, but clearly companies have had two decades to perfect and clone best-in-class strategies, so what’s next?

2 other C’s – Customisation & Conversation

Focussing on product features, on brand-image, and now positioning, is clearly something that won’t lose in relevance anytime soon. Nothing good in marketing ever disappears, but rather the marketing-mesh becomes ever more complex, integrating what came before into more comprehensive, more complete value-propositons. If I come up with more words starting with ‘C,’ I can probably write a book about it . Remember, there’s also the 4 C’s of positioning: confidence, clarity, continuity, and competitiveness.

What struck me about the book was that it seemed to describe a one-way strategy for interacting with customers. It wasn’t one-way with the competition, rather the book advises to actively combat other companies through your messages—e.g. “Avis is No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder!“—and even change your brand-name if it makes sense—e.g. when B. F. Goodrich (a company I never heard of) makes a tire, it is actually Goodyear that get most of the PR benefits, so why not change the name? The book’s tagline is “The battle for the mind,” yet that battle only takes place within a competitive environment.

Now, I’m not saying to ignore the competition, but the book does ignore the relationship that can be built up with customers these days. In a recent interview, Jason Fried of 37Signals, said that the company a. doesn’t market, and b. doesn’t really focus on the competition. I hate to bring up that little company every time, but it just has some great attributes.

There are two facets of today’s society that make a significant marketing-difference, as far as I can see. One is that it becomes increasingly easier to customise products. From just-in-time / lean manufacturing techniques in the factory, to agile development techniques, quick prototyping and market-testing in software, the argument for creating static one-size-fits-all products becomes less and less relevant.

The second is that there is a bottom-up media-explosion. Everyone is a journalist, everyone has a voice. Now that is certainly a science that still has to be perfected, but when I see initiatives like Getsatisfaction.com for software, and Dell Ideastorm, it certainly gives me hope.

Using these two effectively can be a differentiator in consumers’ minds, one which is adapted to his or her tastes and one which evolves as that taste evolves. By perfecting the science of customisation, based on ongoing conversation, you actually lock in on a customer, you make him or her feel special and you completely make the competition irrelevant. At least… until the competition catches on, where we will need something else again.

A reading list:

I’d like to end with reading list of books that I think discuss the next step in marketing, none of which, I should add, I have read. But I’m hoping you give your critical perspective in the comments and add some other reading suggestions.

• Scoble and Israel’s The Naked Conversation
• Locke, Levine, Searls, and Weinberger’s The Cluetrain Manifesto (for free here)
• Tapscott & Williams’s Wikinomics
• Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae

Vincent

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