Marketing Strategy / Branding Principle

Positioning

Do not try to be remembered for everything. Choose the one useful place you want to occupy in the customer’s mind, then make the product and message prove it.

Popularity

Usefulness

Aliases

Brand Positioning / Product Positioning / Market Positioning / Competitive Positioning

Domains

Marketing / Branding / Advertising / Product Strategy / Business Strategy

Definition

Positioning is the marketing practice of shaping how a target audience perceives a brand, product, company, or offer relative to competitors. Cambridge defines positioning as the way customers think about, or the way a company wants customers to think about, a product compared with competitors’ products. (Cambridge Dictionary)

Core Idea

A product does not only compete in the market; it competes in the customer’s mind.
Effective positioning gives the audience a clear mental answer to: “What is this, who is it for, and why should I choose it instead of alternatives?”

How It Works

Identify the target customer segment.
Define the competitive frame of reference: what category or alternatives the customer compares you with.
Choose a clear point of difference: the benefit, attribute, identity, or meaning that makes the offer stand out.
Maintain enough points of parity so customers still see the offer as a legitimate member of the category.
Communicate the position consistently through product design, pricing, naming, advertising, distribution, packaging, and customer experience. HBR’s Keller, Sternthal, and Tybout emphasize that effective positioning requires a frame of reference, points of parity, and points of difference. (Harvard Business Review)

Usage Example

A small project-management app may position itself as “the simplest task tracker for solo developers” instead of “the best project-management software.”
This avoids fighting directly with large all-purpose tools and creates a clearer mental category for a specific audience.

Famous Example

Example: Avis “We Try Harder” campaign.
Why it fits this rule: Avis positioned itself against Hertz by acknowledging its No. 2 status and turning that weakness into a believable promise: because it was not the leader, it had to try harder. Avis’s own historical page says it launched the slogan in the early 1960s and positioned itself as the world’s number two car-rental company; Duke’s Rubenstein Library attributes the famous 1962 campaign to Paula Green. (production.rent-at-avis.com)
Verification status: Verified as a real campaign and widely accepted positioning example. Some commonly repeated performance claims vary by source; TIME reported in 1964 that Avis rentals had jumped 28% and nine-month revenues reached a record $31.2 million. (Time)

Use Cases / Situations Where It Applies

Launching a new brand, product, app, service, course, or startup.
Entering a crowded market where competitors already own strong customer perceptions.
Rebranding or repositioning an existing offer.
Choosing a focused niche instead of competing as a general-purpose alternative.
Creating advertising, landing-page copy, product messaging, or sales positioning.

When Not to Use or Common Misuse

Do not treat positioning as only a slogan; the whole offer must support the promised position.
Do not claim a difference that customers do not care about.
Do not position too broadly, such as “for everyone” or “best quality at lowest price,” unless there is real proof.
Do not confuse differentiation with positioning: differentiation is what makes the offer different; positioning is how that difference is placed in the customer’s mind.
Do not reposition too often; it can confuse the market and weaken memory.

Rule Invention / Origin

Invented by: Commonly associated with Al Ries and Jack Trout; however, “invented by” is partly simplified because ideas about market image and differentiation existed before the formal term became famous.
Year of invention: Commonly traced to 1969, when the positioning concept appeared in Industrial Marketing; Ries and Trout later expanded it in the 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. (Branding Strategy Insider)
Country / context of origin: United States advertising and marketing communications, especially in crowded “me-too” product markets.

Evidence / Research Basis

Positioning is not a scientific law in the physics sense; it is a marketing strategy framework supported by branding theory, consumer perception research, and practical advertising history.
The American Marketing Association describes brand positioning as defining an organization’s position in the market relative to competitors and guiding communication of value and benefits to the target audience. (American Marketing Association)
Kotler and Keller’s widely cited definition describes positioning as designing a company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market. (The Open University)
Keller, Sternthal, and Tybout’s brand-positioning work supports the practical structure of frame of reference, points of parity, and points of difference. (Harvard Business Review)

Short Practical Takeaway

Do not try to be remembered for everything. Choose the one useful place you want to occupy in the customer’s mind, then make the product and message prove it.