The two different books positioning and differentiation says the same thing. The book by Jack Trout on differentiation – Differentiate or Die is repackaging of his book coauthored with Al Ries on positioning – Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. In my views when Jack Trout separated from Al Ries wrote Differentiate or Die to position Trout & Partners Ltd. Truly a positioning genius. I strongly believe that it hardly matters what you call the activity of buying share of consumer mind – positioning or differentiation you are doing same thing.
Brand managers across globe are busy differentiating their products or say working hard to position them. However, the major problems with most of the companies are that they don’t understand the concept of differentiation or positioning. In most of the cases they work on differentiation for the sake of differentiation. The situations in a few cases are so grim that some brand managers really don’t know the difference between a name and a brand. Addressing similar situation, Sergio Zyman, and Armin Brott says that If you don’t keep giving customers reasons to buy from you, they won’t. Awareness is absolutely worthless if it doesn’t lead to sales. In my views one can’t blame the brand manager solely for the problem. The problem of positioning also depends on the proliferation of me-too products. Today any company can come out with almost similar product that their competitors have within a few days.
The brand managers of successful brands take their brand for granted. They don’t work on them regularly and as a result the charisma of brand goes down. It is vital to remember that even the strongest brands don’t stay their way without working on them regularly. They need repositioning or for your convenience you may call it brand maintenance. The brand needs to be renewed or redefined constantly, else it will die.
The market analyst firm also correlate branding with the data analysis and ROI of marketing; and few other marketers believe that it’s advertising which position products. In my vies branding is not only about advertising and data analysis – it’s also about understanding how consumer lives are changing and how is it impacting consumer preferences. I believe branding is also about developing and implementing strategy which is grounded on a deep understanding of consumers that connects companies. Authors, Sergio Zyman, and Armin Brott in their book The End of Advertising as We Know It says that Advertising is a lot more than just television commercials – it includes branding, packaging, celebrity spokespersons, sponsorships, publicity, customer service, the way you treat your employees, and even the way your secretary answers the phone.
