Advertising Strategies

Positioning involves getting heard amidst an ocean of competing information. America has truly become an information-saturated society. Besides radio, television, and the print media, advertisers also must contend with a formidable recent addition, the Internet, which threatens to engulf society in a veritable explosion of information: "The assault on the mind takes place in many different ways" (Ries and Trout, 1986, p. 13).

Advertising strategies that worked in the past are no longer relevant for the present. For instance, during the 1950s, most advertising consisted of calling attention to product features and customer benefits. During the sixties and seventies advertising focused on product reputation or image. But with competition intensified, today's advertising must focus on positioning: "Advertising is entering an era where strategy is king . . . it's not enough to invent or discover something" (Ries and Trout, 1986, p. 24).

The only way to position something in

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ign throughout the years, the slogan that sticks in the public's mind is its rank comparison of itself with industry leader Hertz. An important concept that is echoed throughout this book is the power of the name. According to Ries and Trout (1986), choosing an appropriate name is the single most important marketing decision that a business or person can make (p. 71). In terms of the positioning process, the best name that can be given a product is one that describes its major benefits. Thus names like Head and Shoulders for shampoo or Intensive Care for skin lotion are more effective than Royal for calculators and typewriters. The authors cite a psychology study in which even elementary teachers demonstrated bias in the grading of term papers based on students' first name, e.g., grading popular names like David and Michael more favorably than unpopular names like Hubert and Elmer. Also discussed is the fact that name companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Bristol-Myers are likely to grow faster than initial companies like ITT and NCR: "A company must be extremely well known before it can use initials successfully" (Ries and Trout, 1986, p. 88). For example, IBM and AT&T became so rich and famous because people already
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Approximate Word count = 1541
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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