1972. The Positioning Era Cometh

The moment

Monday 24 April 1972. Advertising Age, page 35. Two account men from a small New York agency, Al Ries and Jack Trout, open a three-part series with a sentence written to annoy every creative department on Madison Avenue: “Today it has become obvious that advertising is entering a new era. An era where creativity is no longer the key to success.” [2] The second part runs on 1 May, the third on 8 May. The series is called “The Positioning Era Cometh”. Its claim fits on an index card. The battleground has moved out of the product and into the prospect’s mind. The campaigns that prove it are a decade old, and the industry already knows them by heart.

What came before

Trout had used the word first, in June 1969, in the trade magazine Industrial Marketing, under a title nobody would choose today: “‘Positioning’ is a game people play in today’s me-too market place”. The idea was already whole. “Positioning is a game where the competitor’s image is just as important as your own. Sometimes more important.” [1] Few noticed. Ries gave a speech on it at the Sales Executives Club of New York; Rance Crain, the editor of Advertising Age, heard it and asked for a series. The book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, came in 1981.

The series told the industry’s history as three eras. The product era of the 1950s, Rosser Reeves and the unique selling proposition, ended under an avalanche of me-too products. The image era of the 1960s belonged to David Ogilvy. The third they dated to a full-page Ogilvy advertisement in the New York Times on 7 April 1971, 38 points on advertising that sells, the first of which read “The results of your campaign depend less on how we write your advertising than on how your product is positioned.” [2] The architect of one era, they wrote, had called the tune for the next. The word, then, is Trout’s. The practice belongs to the people who wrote Avis and Volkswagen. The theory is the series.

What it changed

The argument rested on a count. Ries and Trout wrote that per-capita advertising consumption in the United States was “approaching $100 a year”, that the average mind met “more than half a million advertising messages” a year and, citing George Miller, could hold about seven items in a category at once [2]. The first checks out; the other two we take on the authors’ word. Robert Coen’s historical series puts total US advertising at $12.0 billion in 1960 and $23.2 billion in 1972, which over a population of a little more than 200 million is their $100 [5]. Television took the growth: $1.6 billion in 1960, $4.1 billion in 1972, $11.5 billion by 1980 [5].

TelevisionNewspapersMagazinesRadio

The year the series ran, 1972, television billed $4.1 billion against newspapers' $6.9 billion; by 1980 the gap had narrowed to $3.3 billion on a total four times larger.

Source: Galbi, Coen Structured Advertising Expenditure Dataset (Robert J. Coen, Universal McCann), 2008, worksheet CS ad dataset. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: US$ millions, current dollars

Show the data

Year	Newspapers	Television	Magazines	Radio
1960	3681	1627	909	693
1961	3601	1691	895	683
1962	3659	1897	942	736
1963	3780	2032	1002	789
1964	4120	2289	1074	846
1965	4426	2515	1161	917
1966	4865	2823	1254	1010
1967	4910	2909	1245	1048
1968	5232	3231	1283	1190
1969	5714	3585	1344	1264
1970	5704	3596	1292	1308
1971	6167	3534	1370	1445
1972	6938	4091	1440	1612
1973	7481	4460	1448	1723
1974	7842	4854	1504	1837
1975	8234	5263	1465	1980
1976	9618	6721	1789	2330
1977	10751	7612	2162	2634
1978	12214	8955	2597	3052
1979	13863	10154	2932	3310
1980	14794	11488	3149	3702

The money followed the screen. Nine per cent of US households had a television set in 1950. By 1960 it was 87%, by 1972 96% [6]. Ries and Trout measured the crowding in one line: “In 1964, there were seven soft drinks advertised on network television. Today there are 22.” [2]

NetworkNational spotLocal spot

Network television is where national brands met one another; Ries and Trout counted seven soft drinks advertised on it in 1964 and 22 in 1972.

Source: Galbi, Coen Structured Advertising Expenditure Dataset (Robert J. Coen, Universal McCann), 2008, worksheet CS ad dataset. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: US$ millions, current dollars

Show the data

Year	Network	National spot	Local spot
1960	820	527	280
1961	887	548	256
1962	976	629	292
1963	1025	698	309
1964	1132	806	351
1965	1237	892	386
1966	1393	988	442
1967	1455	988	466
1968	1523	1131	577
1969	1678	1253	654
1970	1658	1234	704
1971	1593	1145	796
1972	1804	1318	969
1973	1968	1377	1115
1974	2145	1497	1212
1975	2306	1623	1334
1976	2857	2154	1710
1977	3460	2204	1948
1978	3975	2607	2373
1979	4599	2873	2682
1980	5130	3269	2967

TelevisionRadio

The decade of the creative revolution is the decade the screen reached the last household; by the time positioning was named, there was nowhere left for a message to go but into a mind already full.

Source: US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States 2003, Mini-Historical Statistics, table HS-42, 2003. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: % of US households

Show the data

Year	Television	Radio
1950	9.0	91
1951	23.5	92
1952	34.2	92
1953	44.7	95
1954	55.7	94
1955	64.5	94
1956	71.8	94
1957	78.6	94
1958	83.2	94
1959	85.9	94
1960	87.1	94
1961	88.8	93
1962	90.0	93
1963	91.3	93
1964	92.3	94
1965	92.6	95
1966	93.0	96
1967	93.6	95
1968	94.6	94
1969	95.0	96
1970	95.3	99
1971	95.5	99
1972	95.8	99
1973	96.4	99
1974	96.9	99
1975	97.1	99
1976	97.4	99
1977	97.4	99
1978	97.6	99
1979	97.7	99
1980	97.9	99

Print stood still. Daily newspaper circulation was 58.9 million in 1960 and 62.2 million in 1980, while the advertising inside those papers quadrupled, from $3.7 billion to $14.8 billion [5][6]. More messages, the same heads.

Newspaper advertising quadrupled over the same twenty years on a readership that grew 6%; the same heads were carrying four times the money.

Source: US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States 2003, Mini-Historical Statistics, table HS-42, 2003. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: Millions of copies

Show the data

Year	Daily newspaper circulation (millions)
1950	53.8
1951	54.0
1952	54.0
1953	54.5
1954	55.1
1955	56.1
1956	57.1
1957	57.8
1958	57.4
1959	58.3
1960	58.9
1961	59.3
1962	59.8
1963	58.9
1964	60.4
1965	60.4
1966	61.4
1967	61.6
1968	62.5
1969	62.1
1970	62.1
1971	62.2
1972	62.5
1973	63.1
1974	61.9
1975	60.7
1976	61.0
1977	61.5
1978	62.0
1979	62.2
1980	62.2

The day before, an agency’s job was to find something true about the product and say it well. The day after, the job started with what the prospect already believed about the category and its leader. “The mind accepts only that new information which matches its prior knowledge or experience. It filters out everything else.” [2] Avis’s line worked because Hertz was already in the head, and Avis attached itself to it. Seven-Up’s “Un-Cola” worked because two out of three soft drinks sold in America were colas; the cola slot was full, the slot beside it was empty, and sales rose “something like 10%” in the first year, by the authors’ account [2]. Beck’s set itself against Löwenbräu as the German beer Germans drink. Schaefer took “the one beer to have when you’re having more than one”, and Honeywell, in its own advertising, called itself “the other computer company vs. Mr. Big” and let IBM keep the lead [2].

Two consequences followed. The strategist moved ahead of the writer. And awards stopped counting as evidence. Of 41 agencies that had won Hall of Fame Clios, the series noted, 31 had since lost some or all of the accounts concerned [2]. “The fun and games of the ’60s have given way to the harsh realities of the ’70s.” [2]

The modern test is less kind than the authors were. Romaniuk, Sharp and Ehrenberg asked the buyers of brands in 17 categories across Australia and the UK whether the brand they used was “different” or “unique”. On average, 17% said either [7]. Buyers can see a large difference when one exists, 67% of Aldi’s own shoppers and 50% of Subway’s said so; Coca-Cola at 19% and Apple at 23% do not come close [7]. The memory half of positioning survived the test. The difference half failed it.

At least one soft drink brand is different or unique (UK, all respondents)76%

Aldi, own shoppers saying different (Australia)67%

Subway, own customers saying unique (Australia)50%

Apple, own users saying different or unique (UK)23%

Coca-Cola, own users saying different or unique (UK)19%

Average brand, own users saying different or unique, 17 markets17%

Average brand, own users saying different, 17 markets11%

Average brand, own users saying unique, 17 markets10%

Respondents were not indifferent, since 76% named some soft drink as different; they were selective, and the typical brand, including Coca-Cola and Apple, was not the one they chose.

Source: Romaniuk, Sharp and Ehrenberg, Evidence concerning the importance of perceived brand differentiation, Australasian Marketing Journal, 2007, text and Tables 2 and 5, n= per category in Appendix 1. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: % of respondents

Show the data

Measure	% of respondents
At least one soft drink brand is different or unique (UK, all respondents)	76
Aldi, own shoppers saying different (Australia)	67
Subway, own customers saying unique (Australia)	50
Apple, own users saying different or unique (UK)	23
Coca-Cola, own users saying different or unique (UK)	19
Average brand, own users saying different or unique, 17 markets	17
Average brand, own users saying different, 17 markets	11
Average brand, own users saying unique, 17 markets	10

The Mad Men thread

The series on AMC runs from March 1960 to November 1970 [19]. Positioning arrives eighteen months after the finale, and the campaigns it was built on are the ones the fictional Sterling Cooper watches from across the street. Third episode, 1960: the creative team passes round a Volkswagen ad from Doyle Dane Bernbach, Don Draper dislikes it, Pete Campbell calls it brilliant.

The record is better than the script. DDB opened on 1 June 1949, Ned Doyle, Maxwell Dane and Bill Bernbach, and its method was, in Mark Tungate’s words, “copywriters and art directors working side by side” from the first idea [9]. Volkswagen gave DDB its US account in 1959, with Helmut Krone as art director and Julian Koenig as writer, and “Think small” and “Lemon” came out of that pairing.

Robert Townsend arrived at Avis from American Express early in 1962 and hired DDB. By Time’s account, the agency asked what Avis did better than Hertz, and on cars, locations and rates the answer was nothing. “Well,” said Townsend, “we try harder.” [10]

Paula Green wrote the campaign and Krone laid it out. By mid-1964 the fleet had gone from 16,600 cars to 36,000 and rentals were up 28% [10].

Mary Wells was copy chief at DDB in 1963, moved to Jack Tinker & Partners in 1964, repainted Braniff’s aircraft under the line “The End of the Plain Plane” with Richard Rich and Stewart Greene, and founded Wells Rich Greene with them in April 1966. George Lois had left DDB in January 1960 to co-found Papert Koenig Lois with Julian Koenig; Steven Heller called PKL “the second creative agency in the world” [18].

What the series showed is a composite. The Kodak Carousel, Jaguar and Burger Chef pitches are inventions; the finale closes on McCann Erickson’s real 1971 Coca-Cola film. The revolution happened at DDB, PKL, Tinker and Wells Rich Greene. Positioning came after it, and its authors’ nerve ran ahead of their data. They predicted that Avis, now boasting, would lose ground to Hertz and National, and that Volkswagen, which had run “Think small” one year and announced a big Volkswagen the next, would erode fast. Volkswagen of America’s sales fell from about 570,000 vehicles in 1970 to just under 486,000 in 1972 [11]. Whether Avis lost ground we could not settle; the share figures in circulation contradict one another.

Applied: if you are a B2C brand

Say you sell a sparkling water in a market where two giants hold most of the shelf and most of the heads. Start from what the buyer already knows about those two. Avis conceded the rank and turned it into a reason. Seven-Up let the colas keep the category and named itself by them. Your version only makes sense because the giants exist, the water defined by what it is not. Write it in one line, and if that line only works for a buyer who already knows you, start again.

Then add the later evidence. Across 17 categories, only 17% of a brand’s own buyers call it different or unique, and they buy it anyway [7]. So spend the budget on recall. One bottle and one line, repeated until the trade is tired of them, in front of every category buyer the money reaches. The Uncola’s deepest asset was the word, and the years Seven-Up left it alone.

Applied: if you are a B2B brand

Say you sell a project management platform in a category with one dominant incumbent, and your buyers are operations directors who already run it. Ries and Trout would have you own a word. Honeywell took “the other computer company” and let IBM keep “computers” [2]. The word you can own is the one the incumbent cannot say without contradicting itself. If the incumbent is the suite IT chose for everyone, your word is the tool the operations director chose for her own team.

Keller’s discipline comes first, though. Before the point of difference, list the points of parity, the features “brands have in common with competitors” on which you only need to break even, such as security certifications and the integrations on the buyer’s checklist [8]. Then decide what to own. A word is a claim the buyer must accept. A distinctive asset, in Ehrenberg-Bass’s sense, is a colour or a shape that only has to be recognised. Own both and measure them separately. Ask whether buyers can name your word unprompted, and whether they can name your brand from the asset alone. We would bet the second number moves first.

What to do with it

1. Write the position as one sentence that names the leader or the category. Delete the leader’s name and read it again; if the sentence still holds, you have written a product description.
2. Find the slot that is already open. List the words buyers attach to the leader; your position is the word on that list the leader cannot take, or the honest rank the leader cannot claim.
3. Settle parity before difference. Write the three to five things every supplier in your category must have, confirm you have each one, and only then write a line about what makes you different.
4. Test recall first. Ask 100 category buyers to name your brand from your line, colour or shape alone; separately, ask your own buyers whether the brand is different or unique, and compare that with the 17% norm [7] before spending to move it.
5. Hold the position for five years. Volkswagen’s lesson in 1972 was that one year of “Big” was enough for two consultants to predict erosion in print. Before approving a new campaign, put it beside the last one and ask whether a buyer who saw the last would know it is the same brand.