Page 75 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

rename their way back out—something to consider before you call your
restaurant Harry’s Hoagies, say. But the Anchoring Principle warns you: Most
people get anchored to your initial position and will not accept the new position
if the gap between them is too wide.

In positioning, you have to jump from lily pad to nearby lily pad, one at a
time.

If the gap between your position and your positioning statement is too big,
your customers won’t make the leap. Keep your steps small.

If That Isn’t Our Positioning Statement, What Is It?

A too grand, overly bold positioning statement that tries to leap over too
many lily pads still has value. It can be, and probably is, your goal.

Keep it. It can motivate your people, define your longer-term goals, and
guide your mission statement and long-term plan. It gives you an end in
mind, as Stephen Covey puts it—a significant step toward being more
effective.

Just because your statement is too grandiose for now doesn’t mean you
can’t hope and try. But marketing must deal realistically with perceptions,
and with the fact that people cannot make huge perceptual leaps. They can
only make little jumps.

Have big goals and great visions—“big hairy audacious goals,” as one
writer put it. But make sure they are goals and visions—and not positioning
statements.

Craft bold dreams and realistic positioning statements.

Repositioning Your Competitors

The country’s top architects know how to design a position. They develop a
style and then stand for it. They don’t do some of this and some of that.

If you want avant-garde, you call Frank Gehry.
If you want postmodern wit, you call Michael Graves.
If you want very corporate late modern, you call
I. M. Pei.
These architects “own” those positions. As a result, they own many other