Quotes from Al Ries

Don't overlook the importance of worldwide thinking. A company that keeps its eye on Tom, Dick, and Harry is going to miss Pierre, Hans, and Yoshio.

Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

The only reality you can be sure about is in your own perceptions. If the universe exists, it exists inside your own mind and the minds of others.

A perception that exists in the mind is often interpreted as a universal truth.

The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing is try to change a mind.

Don't play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It's a seduction.

Too often, however, greed gets confused with positioning thinking. Charging high prices is not the way to get rich. Being the first to (1) establish the high-price position (2) with a valid product story (3) in a category where consumers are receptive to a high-priced brand is the secret of success. Otherwise, your high price just drives prospective customers away.

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.

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.

When you try to be everything, you wind up being nothing.

Mind-changing is the road to advertising disaster.

With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good." Most companies, especially family companies, would never make fun of their own name. Yet the Smucker family did, which is one reason why Smucker's is the No.1 brand of jams and jellies. If your name is bad, you have two choices: change the name or make fun of it.

Today brands are born, not made. A new brand must be capable of generating favorable publicity in the media or it won't have a chance in the marketplace.

You want to change something in a computer? Just type over or delete the existing material. You want to change something in a mind? Forget it.

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

successful positioning requires consistency. You must keep at it year after year.

The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position. Nyquil

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.

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.

What's called luck is usually an outgrowth of successful communication.

Marriage, as a human institution, depends on the concept of first being better than best. And so does business.

Success in business inflates the egos of top management.

Futurist Faith Popcorn goes even further. By the year 2010, she predicts, 90 percent of all consumer products will be home-delivered. "They'll put a refrigerator in your garage and bar code your kitchen. Every week they'll restock your favorites, without your ever having to reorder. They'll even pick up your dry cleaning, return your videotapes, whatever you need.

Positioning is an organized system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances.