The New Positioning: The Latest on the World's #1 Business Strategy

It's the most famous, most quoted, most misunderstood business strategy of all time.
Positioning is not what you do to the product. It's what you do to the mind. But how do you get into a crowded 1990s mind? What if somebody already owns your concept?
And what has an era of tumultuous change done to positioning?
The New Positioning is the first new body of thought in more than a decade on the world's most famous business strategy - written by Jack Trout, the author and marketing strategist who started it all, and Steve Rivkin.
The breakthrough 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind became a global best-seller in 19 languages.
Now its provocative sequel promises to open even more eyes. Packed with keen insight, penetrating analysis, and irreverent advice, The New Positioning delivers hundreds of examples, anecdotes, and case studies - on computers, oil companies, television shows, soft ice cream, even political candidates.

With short, staccato bursts of information, each chapter no longer than 10 pages, Trout intrigues the reader long enough to listen to his new theories on positioning. If a market has shifted or an entity has lost its focus, positioning--or redefining the entity in the minds of its consumers--must occur. His discussion includes some amazing facts and statistics and six abbreviated case histories, including Lotus (before its IBM purchase), Carvel, KPMG Peat Marwick, George Bush, Entertainment Tonight, and Spain's national oil company. Irreverent, brash, and fun to read. Barbara Jacobs

This new edition of Positioning (McGraw, 1980), which Trout coauthored with Al Ries (the two teamed up more recently on Marketing Warfare, LJ 10/15/85), offers recent examples of effectively positioned products along with new topics such as the importance of images that appeal to the ear vs. the eye. The authors give primarily practical advice and write informally. One of their main premises is that brand extension is not repositioning. Rather than put different products under the same name, the company should use different brands, so that each has a clearly focused image. Repositioning involves changing this focus. Despite the subtitle, this book is not aimed at the consumer but at the advertising executive interested in the best way to present ideas to top management. The book can be quickly absorbed and appears to have been quickly pulled together, since it reads as a person might talk. Not essential, especially if the library owns the previous edition.?Sue McKimm, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.