The Most Important Marketing Decision to Make
What brand name to use. Most marketing mistakes can be corrected. Not with brand names. Once you’re committed to a brand name, that’s usually it. Eveready made that mistake. The long-time leader in appliance batteries, Eveready introduced a new alkaline battery in 1959. So what did the Eveready company call its new alkaline battery? A […]
Why don’t you take your own advice?
In the spring of 1972, Jack Trout and I wrote a series of articles for Advertising Age entitled “The Positioning Era Cometh.” And it sure came. By December of that year, The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story on positioning (not totally favorable.) But it turned out to be a “keystone” story that sparked […]
Does the watch on Tim Cook’s watch measure up to Steve Jobs’ standards?
The signs are not good. What reason does Apple have for not disclosing watch sales on its latest financial returns? I can think of one reason. They’re not good. Tim Cook says otherwise. “We made the decision back in September not to disclose the shipments on the watch, and that was not a matter of […]
They might want quarter-inch holes, but they buy better quarter-inch drills.
Marketing is frustrating because virtually all common-sense ideas are wrong. Take Theodore Levitt’s famous maxim, People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole! True perhaps, but that seduces marketing people into promoting better holes when they should be promoting better drills. Should you promote the benefit of your brand (the […]
What put Donald Trump in First Place?
Donald Trump kicked off his Presidential campaign by attacking Mexican immigrants. And the whole country was in an uproar. NBC fired him. Macy’s fired him. Serta fired him. Univision dropped his Miss USA pageant. The PGA fired his Trump National Golf Course and announced it was relocating the 2016 Grand Slam of Golf to another […]
Price is a valuable position: So why do companies deliberately destroy theirs?
Headline in a recent issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Retailers to roll out low-price stores. As the newspaper pointed out, the Gap retail chain is in trouble and is closing 175 stores. Keeping the Gap Inc. (the corporate name) above water is the company’s low-priced Old Navy chain. Other retail chains have noticed the success […]
