Branding. Get your social accounts to mesh with the image you want clients to envision your offering. All this sounds new.

Except, it’s not.

Long ago, back in the late 1960s and early 1970’s, this was called positioning. Promoted by Jack Trout and his partner, Al Ries. (They started their own firm back in 1969.) In 1981, their thoughts were codified in a book aptly termed “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind”. And, we made all our employees read the book.

Consider how alike positioning is to what everyone now considers to be the new focus. When you position your product, your company, your service- you really are not creating something brand new, but you are manipulating how your customer/client views what you have, to see you in the light you wish to be seen. You don’t want your product image to be all over the map- you want a single, sharp focus in the mind of your customer.

And, way back when, the business leaders were Xerox, Coca Cola, Kodak, Johnson & Johnson, Arthur D. Little, just to name a few. And companies like ours lacked a few zeroes in our sales and balance sheets to match the clout they had. So, it was our job to find ways to hook our offerings to theirs (as an alternative).  That way, when the consumer/customer/client thought of the other company, they would also think of us.

Many of you are not old enough to remember (back when he wasn’t a pariah) images of OJ Simpson dashing through airports to get to his rental car. He was promoting Hertz (the rental car company). And, Avis needed to get into the minds of the consumer, too. So, Avis declaimed, “We try harder”.  (Harder than who? Why, Hertz of course.)  Or, 7Up, which declared itself to be the “UnCola”.  So that you’d recall their name and their beverage when you thought of the big two brands- Pepsi and Coke.

But, it wasn’t only about slogans- it was the position the firms envisioned for their brands- in OUR minds. So, for the (now) defunct airline, Sabena (the name for the Belgian World Airlines), Trout knew there wouldn’t be any traction against TWA or PanAm (both also defunct now, but back then, they were the gold standard in world aviation)- or even KLM, with a great position. And, while Sabena did have comfortable seats and good service, Trout decided to position the country of Belgium- not the airline itself, to garner market share.  After allo,  Michelin had just rated five cities in Belgium with multiple stars.  So, Trout claimed they were “worth the special journey”.  And, then he compared Sabena to KLM (from Holland), that only had one rated city- Amsterdam.  Ergo,  Sabena brings one to beautiful Belgium, where there are five Amsterdams.

That’s pretty much what we want to do nowadays with our branding. All of which was pioneered by Jack Trout. Who, after a stint in the Navy, honed his skills at GE (and later Uniroyal, which he declared to be the tire company with the most patents).

Later on he refined his concept, by including “repositioning” in his vocabulary. This meant, you not only “positioned” your firm as the eminent choice- but figured out how to reposition your competitor as the lesser choice. (You needed to retain the positive perception; you provided the competitor with a negative impression.)

Jack Trout died 4 June 2017, at the age of 82.

A little history helps us all put things in perspective.

By the way, today was the birthday of my father, HaRav Ya’akov Avraham ben HaRav Chayim Shmuel Halevi.  In America, that name was Jack Ackerman,  He never met my youngest and was barely familiar with my middle child.  But, my eldest brought him a smile when she was all of two with her “L’shana tova, y’all”.

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