Tom Asacker on unlocking hearts and minds: W.C. Fields on attitude

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W.C. Fields on attitude

"Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill."

One of the intellectual stumbling blocks that many people are running into with my new book is found in the title of Chapter Four: Positioning is Passé. I think it's because they have morphed the notion of positioning - which was originally a game of manipulating advertising messages to occupy a unique "position" in the customer's mind - into something else. Perhaps this (from the AMA):

Positioning refers to the customer's perceptions of the place a product or brand occupies in a market segment. In some markets, a position is achieved by associating the benefits of a brand with the needs or life style of the segments. More often, positioning involves the differentiation of the company's offering from the competition by making or implying a comparison in terms of specific attributes.

So tell me again. What "position" did Jobs carve out with the iPod? What specific "benefits" did he articulate? What comparisons did he make? And ditto for Shultz's Starbucks. I don't remember an ad exclaiming, "We brew better!" Do you? And Carl's Jr.? Help me with their competitive "position" again (pun intended)?

Positioning is passé. Yup, you read it right. Things are simply moving too quickly. So instead of trying to occupy a unique "position," develop a unique attitude. One that will alienate half of the world and turn on the other half. Here's cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken's take in a recent blog post:

At some point, almost all the important players in the world of marketing embraced the Hegarty trade off.* They stopped trying to appeal to everyone all the time. They gave up climbing to ever cheerier, cheesier heights of good humor. They surrendered the “fun in the sun” creative that made advertising the laughing stock of the educated world. Most important, they released marketing from its minstrel pursuit of the maximally agreeable.

Or how 'bout this, from BusinessWeek's David Kelley:

Judging from the dozens and dozens of comments received by this blog both condemning the original Paris ad and Carl's Jr. and the ones telling the naysayers to "lighten up," I'd say CKE was on to something.

Think of it this way. I was dining recently with the head of product development of Chrysler who was talking about the company's success with the 300, Dodge Magnum and new Dodge Charger. I told him that as I drove up on the Magnum wagon, I commented to my wife that I really liked it and would consider it for my next set of wheels. My wife immediately commented how much she seriously disliked the car's looks. "Looks like a gangster's car," she said. My dining companion said. "Perfect." At Chrysler, he explained, they are looking for 60%-70 of people to really like a design, and the other 30% or so to seriously dislike it. The danger, he said, is in creating products about which 90%+ of the public simply shrug their shoulders out of apathy.

Okay 70/30. Whatever. But the message is pretty clear and compelling: Forget about trying to carve out a unique position. Instead, uniquely express that position.

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference W.C. Fields on attitude:

» Attitude and positioning from Vy Blog
Dunno that I could add much more that's intelligent to this post about attitude and [Read More]

» Screw The Lowest Common Denominator from AdPulp
Anthropologist, Grant McCracken, considers the Hegarty trade off. At some point, almost all the important players in the world of marketing embraced the Hegarty trade off*. They stopped trying to appeal to everyone all the time. They gave up climbing... [Read More]

» Should we forget positioning? from Vasey on Marketing
Tom Asacker at 'a Clear Eye' has written a new book and discusses one of the key ideas late in the book - that positioning is passé. [Read More]

Comments

interesting post.

a real attitude statement was the famous benetton campaign about ten years ago. it was more a global art happening than a usual campaign - remember: what has aids gotta do with sweaters????
it polarized the market. some loved it, others hated it. and you could not argue with people about it. it was either or.
one problem though that benetton encountered was: those who bought their sweaters did not necessarily love the campaign and vice versa. the market audience was cut in half... but to a good extend it was cut into the wrong half...

working with fundamental irritation is an art that requires master skills - passion, persistence, precission.
you really have to know/feel what you are doing.

Posted by: jens | June 30, 2005 at 06:42 AM

Hi Tom!

I agree that positioning is passé in that old kind of sense. But I for one my one of the people who have morphed it into meaning something else. But that is not very important, although it could make up for an interesting theoretical discussion. What I believe is important is that we finally can get rid of the notion that reaching out to customers is more important than reaching in. Although I believe the facade still can be important to some brands, especially those who are lending some kind of status to its buyers, most brands would be better off decreasing the distance between itself and its customers instead of increasing it. Positioning is an idea that risk increasing this distance I think, since it has come to be about projecting an idea outward, it's about reaching out. But perhaps can it be difficult to let go of positioning as an idea because it is easy to see positioning and differentiation as being the same thing?

Posted by: Jonas Bergvall | June 30, 2005 at 06:56 AM

Cannot think...must have hamburger...and skinny white girl...Must have two hamburgers to feed skinny white girl...

Posted by: Aleah | June 30, 2005 at 09:13 AM

An excellent post (again), Tom. I think your focus on attitude is very important. In fact, good branding would be something like achieving personality. The traditional approach to marketing has stressed the rational elements of decision taking and perhaps that was why positioning had such an importance. Now we have disposition. I agree 100%. I think marketing or branding are personal relationships. Period. There´s also a kind of danger in the word disposition. You know as designer and artist that disposition has been equated with "order" in the artistic world, at least in the academic artistic training. I hope attitude will not be misunderstood by order for the sake of some business managers comfortability. A comfortability that conditions their decisions of marketing investment and priorities.

P.D. Hope your book is crossing the Atlantic by now. I´m looking forward to reading it this summer.

Posted by: felix gerena | June 30, 2005 at 11:59 AM

Tom, whenever you post something, a little lightbulb in my head goes off. I cannot think of a higher compliment I could possibly offer.

Thanks.

Posted by: Peter Flaschner | June 30, 2005 at 05:01 PM

I think attitude can be a great way to set your company apart from the competition, but I also think you can't force it. When you think of brands that have a so called attitude you'll usually notice that they haven't created it - it was generated by the consumers.

Posted by: Marketing tips blog | July 08, 2005 at 11:51 PM