Being second can provide a more persuasive sales argument than making an unconvincing claim to be the best. That possibility reveals something important about brand positioning. A brand acquires meaning through its relationship with alternatives that an audience already understands. Its characteristics do not arrive in an empty marketplace. Buyers interpret an offering through expectations, comparisons and experience. A company can influence that interpretation, but it cannot simply announce what everyone will believe. The history of positioning therefore concerns both memorable advertising and the much older problem of making an offering intelligible in competition.
Al Ries and Jack Trout became closely associated with a particularly influential formulation of this problem. Their early publications of 1969 and 1972 are identifiable historical milestones. They are not evidence that every practice now described as positioning began at that moment. Their contribution was to turn competition over perception into a forceful strategic argument. Subsequent marketing literature extended positioning well beyond advertising, while also giving the term several meanings. Creating a distinctive interpretation, changing perceptions and securing competitive advantage are related activities, but they are not identical. The ambiguity belongs to the concept’s history rather than being an inconvenience that history can ignore (Saqib, 2021).
1969: Jack Trout’s article in Industrial Marketing
The June 1969 issue of Industrial Marketing carried “‘Positioning’ is a game people play in today’s me-too market place”. The accessible reprint identifies Jack Trout as its author. The article presents crowded communication markets and selective attention as reasons to explain a company relative to established competitor perceptions. IBM illustrates the difficulty of challenging an existing mental association in the computer market (Trout, 1969).
The publication setting matters. This early statement appeared in a journal addressing industrial marketing. Its relevance was not confined to packaged consumer goods or the imagery of everyday shopping. An organization could possess genuine capabilities and still struggle to persuade buyers to interpret it differently. What a company knew about itself and what customers understood about it were separate matters. A technical improvement did not automatically close the distance between them.
The article’s explanation should nevertheless be read as a practitioner argument in its historical setting. A metaphor about memory can illuminate a strategic difficulty without constituting a complete psychological model. People do not maintain an immutable register of brands. They learn, forget, distinguish occasions and interpret the same offering differently in different circumstances. Later research consequently treats perceptions as something to investigate and monitor, rather than assuming that a management statement can simply be installed in the audience’s mind (Saqib, 2021).
This distinction also clarifies how to use historical examples. A consultant’s interpretation of a company’s difficulties establishes what the consultant argued. It does not, by itself, prove that perception was the sole cause of those difficulties. The historian needs to preserve that difference between an argument made at the time and an independently demonstrated explanation of business performance.
1972: Ries and Trout announce an era
The 1972 Advertising Age series appeared under both Al Ries’s and Jack Trout’s names. Its reprint opens with “The Positioning Era Cometh”. They placed strategy ahead of creative novelty and emphasized perceptions of competitors. They selected an advertisement by David Ogilvy, published on 7 April 1971, as a symbolic turning point. That date expressed their interpretation of change, rather than establishing an objectively universal boundary between advertising eras (Ries and Trout, 1972).
These publication circumstances should not be flattened into a single invention date. There is an early article carrying Trout’s byline and a later joint presentation. A history of collaboration can acknowledge both authors without altering the identifying information on an individual document. The distinction is especially useful when later summaries repeat a familiar attribution without returning to the publication being described. Bibliographic precision is part of explaining how an idea developed.
Announcing a new era also has a commercial purpose. It presents established routines as inadequate and creates a reason to adopt a different advisory approach. That does not invalidate the argument. It does change the questions a historian should ask. Which problems did the authors recognize? Which earlier approaches did they simplify? Which selected cases made their own interpretation appear compelling? An influential account of advertising’s transformation is itself an object of marketing history.
In 1981 McGraw-Hill published Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind in New York. The first-edition catalogue record establishes that publication date (Ries and Trout, 1981). The book and the earlier articles represent distinct stages in the concept’s dissemination. Treating the book’s appearance as the beginning of the argument shifts the early discussion forward by more than a decade. Conversely, later elaborations should not automatically be attributed to the precise wording of the 1969 article.
Brand meaning before the positioning articles
In 1955 Burleigh B. Gardner and Sidney J. Levy’s “The Product and the Brand” had already addressed brands as complex carriers of meaning. Their discussion included social and psychological associations, competitive brand images and the difficulty of changing established impressions. Important thinking about products, audiences and brand meaning therefore preceded the positioning publications (Gardner and Levy, 1955).
That does not make brand image and positioning interchangeable. Image refers to a configuration of associations. Positioning directs attention towards an intended interpretation within a competitive frame. A company can appear friendly, familiar or traditional without giving buyers a compelling reason to select its particular offering. Equally, an intelligible competitive position does not necessarily explain every association attached to the brand. Keeping the concepts separate helps identify the actual problem a strategy is meant to solve.
Consider an illustrative repair business that is regarded as trustworthy and approachable. Three competitors may receive precisely the same descriptions. The favourable image does not yet provide a sufficiently distinctive basis for choice. An intended position might instead concern expertise in a particular type of equipment or the ability to make downtime predictable. Whether customers recognize that meaning remains an empirical question. This invented example separates a pleasant description from a potentially consequential competitive interpretation (an analytical illustration drawing on Saqib, 2021).
Product differentiation remains relevant. It concerns differences between offerings; positioning asks what those differences mean to a particular audience. An additional technical feature may be expensive to develop yet unimportant to buyers. A relatively modest service provision may remove a decisive uncertainty. Neither the number of differences nor their engineering complexity establishes the resulting position. What matters is which distinctions are noticed, understood and valued in the decision being made.
Earlier and international practice: British cyclecars
A useful historical comparison comes from D. G. Brian Jones and Alan J. Richardson’s research on cyclecars. Their study examines 205 advertisements and articles from specialist magazines published between 1912 and 1921. It reconstructs distinctions between economy-oriented offerings and a sporting segment particularly apparent in Britain. Its positioning map is a retrospective research device, rather than evidence that manufacturers used that particular management graphic at the time (Jones and Richardson, 2017).
The example changes what “new” can mean. A term may be new, an argument newly sharpened or an advisory method newly popular. The underlying commercial behaviour can be considerably older. Businesses do not need later academic vocabulary to recognize different buyer interests and present their products accordingly. At the same time, historians cannot simply impose present-day categories on every surviving advertisement. They must demonstrate which distinctions are supported by contemporary evidence.
The introduction to The Routledge Companion to Marketing History emphasizes the importance of older and international practices. Tadajewski and Jones discuss Fullerton’s research on differentiation and segmentation before familiar textbook dates. Their perspective cautions against treating a prominent theoretical publication as the beginning of all the market activities later associated with it (Tadajewski and Jones, 2016).
This suggests a productive division of historical work. An early publication establishes when a particular argument became publicly available. Company records and advertising reveal how offerings were distinguished before or alongside it. Subsequent historical research evaluates which interpretations the surviving evidence supports. These layers complement one another. Together, they explain how a familiar practical difficulty could acquire substantial new influence under a memorable conceptual label.
The geographical comparison matters too. A history organized exclusively around celebrated American publications can overlook commercial reasoning developed elsewhere. Recognizing an earlier British example does not require claiming that its manufacturers anticipated every proposition of later positioning theory. Its significance is narrower and more defensible: distinguishing offerings for different audiences was not an activity that had to wait for the language of the late 1960s.
Avis and the authorship of a famous campaign
The Avis campaign “We try harder” illustrates a competitive situation reinterpreted as a customer argument. Google’s Project Re: Brief documentation dates its introduction to 1962 and credits copywriter Paula Green. Mary Warlick’s account for The One Club also recognizes art director Helmut Krone, the collaboration at Doyle Dane Bernbach and the involvement of staff in the service promise (Google, 2012; Warlick, 2012).
The strategic interest lies in the connection between rank and benefit. A subordinate position is given a customer-facing interpretation: it becomes a reason to expect greater effort. The comparative frame forms part of the argument. Without awareness of a larger alternative, the reasoning would be less intelligible. It also creates a demanding standard. A business promising particular effort exposes actual encounters with its employees and service to that expectation.
This is an interpretation of advertising logic, rather than an isolated demonstration of revenue effects. Business results can change with prices, availability, financing, staff, locations and demand. A successful campaign is consequently not a controlled experiment measuring the independent effect of one positioning proposition. Famous examples deserve this distinction precisely because a satisfying narrative can be more memorable than the evidence available to establish causation.
The people who created the practical work also need to remain visible. A later theory may explain an earlier campaign without acquiring authorship of it. The history of positioning includes copywriters, designers, clients and employees whose contributions disappear easily behind the names of prominent consultants. Recognizing their work provides a fuller account of how strategic arguments became tangible experiences rather than merely ideas described in print.
What brand positioning actually specifies
A useful working definition is that brand positioning specifies the meaningful interpretation an offering seeks to achieve for a chosen audience relative to relevant alternatives. This connects intention, perception and competition. It describes a proposed outcome, not an outcome already achieved. Whether the audience adopts the intended interpretation requires separate investigation. Saqib’s literature review explains why such precision matters: definitions collected under the same term place emphasis on different tasks (Saqib, 2021).
Saqib identifies five recurring perspectives: competition, a vacant mental space, consumer perception, differentiation and competitive advantage. These overlap without being equivalent. A vacant area on a diagram may have no commercial value. A noticeable difference may leave buyers indifferent. A preferred offering may remain infrequently purchased because it is unavailable. A positioning decision has to explain the links between these stages instead of assuming that each automatically produces the next (Saqib, 2021).
The distinction between intended and perceived position is particularly important. Management may decide that its company should stand for simplicity. A complicated contracting process may produce a different impression among customers. An internal ambition and an external result then coexist. Rephrasing the ambition does not resolve the contradiction unless the corresponding experience changes. Positioning, understood this way, is a strategic hypothesis that can be tested against evidence.
Competition must also be defined from the buyer’s perspective. A supplier might compare only businesses in its own industry while customers choose between purchase, repair, rental and doing without. Its competitive frame would then be too narrow. In an illustrative repair market, the alternative may be replacing an item, rather than using another repair business. The relevant comparison follows the customer’s task, not simply the supplier’s industry classification.
There is no need to assume that every purchase involves a deliberate verbal comparison. The analytical requirement is to understand the alternatives and expectations shaping choice. A positioning statement is useful only insofar as it helps explain those circumstances and guides an offering capable of succeeding within them. Its elegance as a sentence is a different question.
Positioning, segmentation and target selection
Segmentation investigates differences between buyers or usage situations. Target selection determines which of those opportunities a business intends to serve. Positioning connects that choice with an intended relative meaning for the offering. The tasks can be distinguished even though they influence one another. A segment that initially appears attractive may prove unsuitable when the company cannot identify a credible benefit it can provide there (Saqib, 2021).
This does not imply an inflexible sequence. Research may reveal that customers compare different alternatives from those management assumed. Product development may make an improvement feasible that opens a previously unpromising application. A distribution channel may reach people who had received little attention. A careful strategy then revisits earlier choices. Positioning links market understanding and the delivery programme rather than merely labelling an offering that has already become unchangeable.
The familiar abbreviation STP should therefore not become an origin story in which Ries and Trout automatically invented segmentation, targeting and every later process model. The demonstrable contribution of a particular publication is narrower than the collection of concepts later textbooks associate with it. This historical distinction also improves practical reasoning. Recognizing differences among customers is not the same task as establishing an intended position for a selected group.
The relationship can be understood as an ongoing inquiry. A proposed position may expose a weakness in the target definition. A more precise understanding of the audience may require a different benefit. Neither decision becomes sound simply because it occupies the correct box in a planning diagram. The evidence and the organization’s ability to act on it remain decisive.
Positioning maps are representations, not discoveries by themselves
A positioning map can make relationships between offerings visible. Two axes reduce complex judgments to selected dimensions, such as perceived simplicity and perceived extent of support. The result represents particular information rather than the complete market. Choices about dimensions and included brands already shape the picture. Saqib’s review documents the role of perceptual space in positioning definitions; investigating a particular space still requires methodological decisions (Saqib, 2021).
Technical measures and perceptions should be distinguished. Recorded price is not identical to perceived value. A guaranteed response time is not the same as perceived helpfulness. Both types of information can matter, but they answer different questions. Presenting a management team’s drawing as customer perception bypasses the very inquiry positioning requires. The direction of reasoning must remain clear: either evidence informs a representation, or assumptions generate a hypothesis awaiting examination.
An empty area is not a business model. An offering may be absent because no substantial audience wants the combination, because the characteristics conflict or because the combination cannot be delivered profitably. Customers may also lack a useful way of understanding it. A supposed market gap therefore needs examination in terms of demand, willingness to pay, feasibility and reach. The map can generate a question without providing its answer.
Average positions can conceal further differences. One audience may consider a service exceptionally comprehensive while another finds it limited. Plotting a single midpoint may obscure both interpretations. A visually tidy graphic should not be allowed to determine the research question simply because it looks more authoritative than a complicated account of the underlying evidence.
From a positioning statement to a delivered promise
An internal positioning statement can specify the audience, comparison frame, principal benefit and reasons for believing it. Its purpose is to guide decisions. A public slogan has a different purpose: it must communicate effectively in a particular setting. The two may connect without being identical. A memorable phrase can remain strategically vague, while a precise internal formulation may be unsuitable as advertising copy.
Consider a deliberately invented maintenance supplier serving small manufacturing businesses. Rather than claiming general innovation, it seeks recognition for predictable maintenance windows. That promise would require suitable scheduling, documented procedures and sufficient operational capacity. It would influence which jobs the company accepts, how employees are assigned and what evidence salespeople present. A new visual identity would not establish those capabilities on its own.
Saqib’s review describes positioning’s relationship with overall marketing strategy and the coordination of marketing instruments. Product, price, communication and distribution can reinforce an intended position or contradict it. Positioning confined to advertising is correspondingly vulnerable. Customers encounter a specific offering with delivery times, operating requirements, invoices and available contacts, rather than the presentation used in a strategy meeting (Saqib, 2021).
The managerial implication is demanding. Choosing a benefit limits other possibilities. A company promising intensive support must finance the necessary capacity. One promising standardized simplicity should consider carefully before building every exceptional request into its core offering. Positioning becomes consequential through decisions about what the company will decline as well as what it will do. Otherwise, almost any business can claim almost any agreeable adjective.
International positioning involves changing comparison frames
Meaning does not travel simply through a translated slogan. Different countries may have different familiar competitors, distribution arrangements and expectations about standard service. This follows analytically from a relative definition of positioning: when the comparison set changes, the same offering may acquire a different position without any alteration to its technical specifications.
Imagine a brand considered an affordable quality alternative in its home market. In another country it is available only through an expensive specialist channel. The same name could acquire a more exclusive interpretation. A literal translation might conceal the difference rather than solve it. This is an illustration, not a documented company case. It explains why an international strategy needs to examine local perceptions together with actual prices and distribution.
Interpretation can also vary within one country. An offering may seem appropriate as a gift but unnecessarily elaborate for everyday use. A service may appear straightforward to a small company and insufficiently documented to a large institution. Positioning does not require assuming a single meaning that remains identical for everyone on every occasion. Strategic clarity has to remain compatible with the circumstances in which people actually choose.
Later research qualifies simple rules for success
In 2014 Mats Urde and Christian Koch distinguished market-oriented and brand-oriented approaches to positioning. Their literature review identifies different schools with different starting points and implications. Developing a position from market requirements or from brand identity consequently involves a strategic choice rather than a mere difference in wording (Urde and Koch, 2014).
For the interpretation developed here, that distinction means taking both external expectations and organizational capabilities seriously. An apparently attractive market role is of limited use if the organization cannot perform it. An internally cherished identity is equally limited if customers cannot understand its value. Positioning can reveal the tension without dissolving it through a definition. Established organizations must consider which continuities to preserve and which changes they can actually accomplish.
In two studies published in 2010, Christoph Fuchs and Adamantios Diamantopoulos investigated positioning strategies using real brands. Their evaluations included favourability, differentiation and credibility. No strategy outperformed all others on every dimension. The findings challenge a universal recipe, while the authors also acknowledge limits concerning the strategies and product categories examined (Fuchs and Diamantopoulos, 2010).
The practical inference is to separate objectives. A striking message may generate doubt. A credible claim may offer little differentiation. A distinctive interpretation may appeal strongly to a small group and leave others uninterested. That need not be a failure if the chosen group is commercially viable. One convenient score is unlikely to describe all these relationships adequately.
Measuring positioning: awareness is not enough
Separating intention from outcome has consequences for research. An investigation should establish whether people know the brand before interpreting the associations they report. An unfamiliar offering cannot be evaluated in the same way as a well-known supplier. Lack of knowledge and an unfavourable judgment are different findings. Combining them in an average risks producing a misleading diagnosis.
An illustrative research process could begin with open conversations to discover the audience’s language. A subsequent survey could examine how widely particular associations are shared. The questions would need to suit the market: a local service and software for institutional procurement require different comparisons. This is a methodological illustration, not a standard procedure published by Ries and Trout in 1969. It follows from treating positioning as an investigable question of perception (Saqib, 2021).
Results also require reference points. A desired association becoming stronger among already loyal customers differs from a change among undecided buyers. If prices fall or distribution expands at the same time, increased sales cannot simply be attributed to communication. A plausible account of effects needs information about period, audience, comparison and accompanying changes. An attractive chart does not replace those details.
This precision prevents awareness from becoming a substitute for position. Many people may recognize a name without attaching any particular benefit to it. A small professional audience may have a clear understanding of a supplier largely unknown to the general public. Which situation is preferable depends on the business model. Research should explain whose interpretation has changed and why that matters in actual decisions.
Digital encounters make promises easier to examine
The historical argument can be applied to digital encounters without rewriting its origins as a digital invention. Suppose a business promises simplicity while presenting contradictory product pages and a confusing booking process. Communication and experience then undermine each other. A clear advertising claim may make the contradiction more visible by establishing a definite expectation against which users judge the encounter.
Search queries, support conversations and reviews can provide evidence of such distances. Each represents a particular selection of experience. A frequent complaint among active users is not automatically the view of the entire market. A popular search expression does not independently establish brand preference. Digital observations therefore require interpretation according to their origin and limits. More available information does not by itself perform that work.
Short-term attention also differs from an enduring interpretation. A surprising activity may attract visits while leaving the offering’s purpose unclear. A less spectacular explanation may resolve an important uncertainty. The positioning question concerns both how many people encounter a message and what intelligible, supportable meaning develops through repeated encounters. This is a contemporary application of the perceptual approach, not a claim that the early authors predicted particular digital technologies.
Repositioning and established expectations
Repositioning attempts to change an existing interpretation. Its starting point is more demanding than a new internal ambition because customers may have experiences that tell a different story. New advertising then meets a previously learned comparison frame. Saqib’s review accordingly discusses positioning as relevant to established brands seeking to expand their opportunities or alter their differentiation (Saqib, 2021).
In another invented example, a previously price-focused supplier wants to sell more intensive advice. It needs trained staff, an appropriate service model and intelligible reasons for the changed price. Existing buyers may experience the transition as the loss of a familiar advantage. New buyers may initially doubt the broader promise. The strategic task encompasses movement between expectations rather than simply naming a new destination.
Continuity is neither invariably desirable nor invariably harmful. It supports recognition and can sustain trust, but it can also preserve an outdated interpretation. Change can open possibilities while weakening existing orientation. A defensible decision therefore requires knowledge of which meanings persist and which matter to choice. Repositioning begins with diagnosis rather than the wish to introduce a new phrase.
Historical significance without an invention myth
John P. Maggard’s 1976 article title already asked whether positioning was old, new or borrowed. Contemporary discussion was therefore more discriminating than a retrospective story about the sudden arrival of an entirely unprecedented way of thinking (Maggard, 1976). Much later, Saqib’s review documented continuing differences in how the concept was defined (Saqib, 2021).
For marketing.museum, Ries and Trout’s historical significance lies in making a particular argument about competitive perception exceptionally memorable and visible. Earlier research, older commercial practice and the creators of individual campaigns remain independent parts of the story. The years 1969, 1972 and 1981 mark different publication events. They should neither be confused nor compressed into a universal act of invention.
The enduringly useful question concerns the meaning an offering acquires relative to the alternatives buyers actually consider. It requires companies to move from their own descriptions towards an understanding of the audience’s judgments. A position is neither ownership of a word nor a guarantee of demand. It is an intended relationship between offering, audience and competition, supported through delivery and examined through research. That demanding interpretation makes the historical advertising argument more useful than a collection of celebrated slogans.
References
Fuchs, C. and Diamantopoulos, A. (2010) ‘Evaluating the effectiveness of brand-positioning strategies from a consumer perspective’, European Journal of Marketing, 44(11/12), pp. 1763–1786. DOI. Used: public abstract and bibliographic record.
Gardner, B. B. and Levy, S. J. (1955) ‘The Product and the Brand’, Harvard Business Review, 33, March–April, pp. 33–39. Reprint.
Google (2012) ‘Project Re: Brief Continued…’, Google Partners Blog, 16 April. Project account.
Jones, D. G. B. and Richardson, A. J. (2017) ‘Origins of sports car marketing: early 20th Century British cycle-cars’, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 9(4), pp. 329–358. DOI. Used: public abstract, not the complete article.
Maggard, J. P. (1976) ‘Positioning Revisited: Is positioning something old, new, or borrowed?’, Journal of Marketing, 40(1), pp. 63–66. DOI. Used: title, date and bibliographic record.
Ries, A. and Trout, J. (1972) ‘The Positioning Era Cometh’, article series in Advertising Age. Reprint on AlRies.com.
Ries, A. and Trout, J. (1981) Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. New York: McGraw-Hill. First-edition WorldCat record. Used: publication record.
Saqib, N. (2021) ‘Positioning – a literature review’, PSU Research Review, 5(2), pp. 141–169. Full text. DOI. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. The discussion drawing on this article consists of newly written summaries and analytical extensions. Illustrations and historical interpretations in the present article should not be attributed to Saqib. Early publication details have been checked against the primary texts and catalogue records listed here.
Tadajewski, M. and Jones, D. G. B. (2016) ‘The history of marketing practice’, in Jones, D. G. B. and Tadajewski, M. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Marketing History. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–22. Publisher preview.
Trout, J. (1969) ‘“Positioning” is a game people play in today’s me-too market place’, Industrial Marketing, June. Reprint at Innis Maggiore.
Urde, M. and Koch, C. (2014) ‘Market and brand-oriented schools of positioning’, Journal of Product & Brand Management, 23(7), pp. 478–490. Lund University abstract and record.
Warlick, M. (2012) ‘Still Trying Harder’, The One Club, 22 February. Article.
