Quotes 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

“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

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Popular quotes

“Battles are won en route, Shalhassan of Cathal though. A worthy thought: he raised his hand in a certain way, and a moment later Razeil galloped up, uneasy on a horse at speed, and the Supreme Lord of Cathal made him write it down.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Wandering Fire

“The word “coherence” literally means holding or sticking together, but it is usually used to refer to a system, an idea, or a worldview whose parts fit together in a consistent and efficient way. Coherent things work well: A coherent worldview can explain almost anything, while an incoherent worldview is hobbled by internal contradictions. …

Whenever a system can be analyzed at multiple levels, a special kind of coherence occurs when the levels mesh and mutually interlock. We saw this cross-level coherence in the analysis of personality: If your lower-level traits match up with your coping mechanisms, which in turn are consistent with your life story, your personality is well integrated and you can get on with the business of living. When these levels do not cohere, you are likely to be torn by internal contradictions and neurotic conflicts. You might need adversity to knock yourself into alignment. And if you do achieve coherence, the moment when things come together may be one of the most profound of your life. … Finding coherence across levels feels like enlightenment, and it is crucial for answering the question of purpose within life.

People are multilevel systems in another way: We are physical objects (bodies and brains) from which minds somehow emerge; and from our minds, somehow societies and cultures form. To understand ourselves fully we must study all three levels—physical, psychological, and sociocultural. There has long been a division of academic labor: Biologists studied the brain as a physical object, psychologists studied the mind, and sociologists and anthropologists studied the socially constructed environments within which minds develop and function. But a division of labor is productive only when the tasks are coherent—when all lines of work eventually combine to make something greater than the sum of its parts. For much of the twentieth century that didn’t happen — each field ignored the others and focused on its own questions. But nowadays cross-disciplinary work is flourishing, spreading out from the middle level (psychology) along bridges (or perhaps ladders) down to the physical level (for example, the field of cognitive neuroscience) and up to the sociocultural level (for example, cultural psychology). The sciences are linking up, generating cross-level coherence, and, like magic, big new ideas are beginning to emerge.

Here is one of the most profound ideas to come from the ongoing synthesis: People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence.”
― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

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Or maybe, just maybe, he saw beyond all that and simply wanted to flirt with the wedding coordinator instead of rehearse for the big night.
I did my best to relax...and let him.”
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