Quotes from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace

Al Ries ·  213 pages

Rating: (11.7K votes)


“The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what's already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“Marriage, as a human institution, depends on the concept of first being better than best. And so does business.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“Mind-changing is the road to advertising disaster.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“companies are focused on building products rather than brands. A product is something made in a factory. A brand is something made in the mind. To be successful today, you have to build brands, not products. And you build brands by using positioning strategies, starting with a good name. Any”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace



“Don't play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It's a seduction.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“the professionals who are opposed to advertising say it downgrades their profession. And it does. To advertise effectively today, you have to get off your pedestal and put your ear to the ground. You have to get on the same wavelength as the prospect. In advertising, dignity as well as pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“The Avis campaign will go down in marketing history as a classic example of establishing the “against” position.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“Don’t try to trick the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It’s a seduction. The”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace



“If you were forced to drink a beaker of di-hydrogen oxide, your response would probably be negative. If you asked for a glass of water, you might enjoy it. That's right. There's no difference on the palate. The difference, in the brain.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“What’s called luck is usually an outgrowth of successful communication.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position. Nyquil,”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“In politics,” said John Lindsay, “the perception is the reality.” So, too, in advertising, in business, and in life.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


“In our overcommunicated society, the paradox is that nothing is more important than communication.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace



“You build brand loyalty in a supermarket the same way you build mate loyalty in a marriage. You get there first and then be careful not give them a reason to switch.”
― Al Ries, quote from Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


About the author

Al Ries
Born place: The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“...life makes ugly faces at us sometimes, I know.”
― Edith Wharton, quote from The Buccaneers


“No matter how good you think you are
or how clever... How many fancy new friends
you make on the telly... The reality of footballing life is this:
The chairman is the boss, then comes the directors...
Then the secretary, then the fans, then the players...
And then finally, last of all... bottom of the heap,
the lowest of the low... comes the one, who in the end, we can all do without...

The fucking manager.”
― David Peace, quote from The Damned Utd


“Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Reamde


“All Americans have something lonely about them. I don't know what the reason might be, except maybe that they're all descended from immigrants.”
― Ryū Murakami, quote from In the Miso Soup


“that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else.”
― Art Markman, quote from Smart Thinking: Three Essential Keys to Solve Problems, Innovate, and Get Things Done


Interesting books

The Aviator's Wife
(57.3K)
The Aviator's Wife
by Melanie Benjamin
As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust
(18.5K)
As Chimney Sweepers...
by Alan Bradley
The Principles of Uncertainty
(7.9K)
The Principles of Un...
by Maira Kalman
A Lost Lady
(3.9K)
A Lost Lady
by Willa Cather
Hairstyles of the Damned
(5.2K)
Hairstyles of the Da...
by Joe Meno
Comeback: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back
(8.9K)

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.