Messaging & positioning resources
This is a list of resources about messaging and positioning:
“The Chasm Companion,” by Paul Wiefels, is the most practical, step-by-step guide that I’ve found for creating messaging or positioning around a product. There are a lot of books that address the concept and theory of messaging, but few that will walk you through the steps required for an actual product launch. Paul is a founding member of the Chasm Group, which is rightfully well-known for Geoffrey A. Moore’s classic technology marketing book “Crossing the Chasm.”
Wiefels’ book actually shows you how to put together an entire marketing campaign, from reviewing the basics of the Chasm theory to building a market development strategy to marketing communications planning. For PR and marcom people there are specific sections on messaging, positioning and communications, but the rest of the book is invaluable as a primer for understanding technology marketing.
“Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind,” by Al Ries and Jack Trout, is the classic book on positioning and the first one that you should read. They offer a few basic critical principles and a lot of great examples. The first guideline is to choose your messages carefully, because only so much is going to your customers limited attention span anyway. Another rule of thumb is figure out what you can offer with your product — price, features, prestige — then look at what your competitor can offer, and go where they aren’t.
This book is a great resource to turn to when you have to walk into a meeting with product development people who have been working on something for two years and want to include every detail in the collateral.
It’s a slim little volume that’s fun to read and loaded with fundamental concepts, anecdotes and advice that will stick in your brain for years: “Truth is irrelevant. What matters are perceptions that exist in the mind. The essence of position thinking is to accept the perceptions as reality, and then restructure those perceptions to create the reality you desire.”
“Don’t think of an Elephant,” by George Lakoff, is an incredibly interesting book about what is arguably the greatest positioning coup ever: the Republicans domination of the nation’s political dialog from the successful Southern Strategy in the 1968 elections to George W. Bush’s two terms.
Lakoff calls this framing, but it’s a close cousin to positioning. The important idea for PR and marcom people is metaphors. Here’s an example: when George W. Bush won the White House he immediately started talking about “tax relief.” By using “relief” to frame the very complex issue of whether to raise or lower taxes, Bush creates a metaphor: taxes as affliction.
Tax cuts are the cure to the affliction, he is a hero, and anyone who contests “relief” is automatically on the wrong side of the issue. This is such a powerful strategy because humans are hardwired to understand their world through metaphor, a UC Berkeley linguist who has written extensively on metaphor.
The importance of metaphor is critical for any PR or marcom person to understand when they sit down to write.
