Positioning & marketing warfare · after Al Ries and Jack Trout
The flank, not the frontal.
Think about the last time you needed a plumber. You didn't read every review. The one name already in your head won, without a fight. That name is the whole problem. When someone needs what you sell, is your name already in their head? If a big company's name is already there — the one with the money, the ads, the shelf space — you cannot beat them by shouting louder. So here is the only way a small company wins: don't fight them for the crowd they already own. Find one small group that nobody is taking care of, understand that group better than anyone, and serve them so well your name becomes the only name they think of. Then grow slowly, only into places where the same idea still works.
- Act I
- The beachhead
- Act II
- The wedge
- Act III
- The expansion
Four words to know first.
This is the Word that comes to mind when people think of you or your company. Think "the best nasi lemak in the West." It automatically happens in people's mind. Positioning is all about you getting into people's head.
Psychology studies have established that humans have a short mental list of who's best at something. Maybe the short two or three. The big companies sit at the top of the ladder. Many know who is first to the moon. Do you know who was second?
Precisely because it is so hard getting to the top of the ladder, to unseat the top brand from people's mind with a direct approach is significantly difficult. What has proven to work better is to flank through an untaken space, and claim your own top of ladder in a different category.
Arguably the most strategic part of it all. You have so many options to land. Where do you choose that is strategically the best? The first little patch of ground you take and hold before anything else. Like landing on a quiet beach with a flag: you only build outward after that one flag is safe.
Charging straight at the big company is a fight you cannot win.
When you need a new phone, a new insurance plan, a coffee before work — a few names just appear in your head, and you pick from those. That's a mental list, and the big company is already at the top of it. If you try to take that spot head-on, you're really agreeing to three contests you'll lose every time: a cheaper price, a shelf in every shop, and ads everywhere.
Meet our running example — a tiny two-person company that makes rain jackets. They decided to take on the household brand that owns everyone's idea of a good raincoat. It didn't move a single person's mind, and after a few months the money ran out.
Three bounded outcomes
Three ways to take the market. Every outcome is the same fight — steal share from a competitor. What changes is which tier you take it from, and how fast the revenue grows once you do.
Narrow hold
You take the whole small corner nobody important wants. Slow revenue, but it's a pure win — you're the only name there, and the big players never bothered to show up.
Out-specialise them. The small players split the niche and none of them stands out. Be the single name they think of — more specific than any of them — and you take the whole niche by default.
Adjacent move
Your customers bring you the next group. You step into the segment next door and take it from the mid players who were serving it poorly — real, compounding revenue growth.
Out-serve the gap. Your own customers hand you the referral — they know the next group with the same problem. Move there before the mid player notices, and take the segment on service they never gave it.
Category created
You redefine the question everyone's been arguing about. The big incumbent's lead no longer counts — their share is now the prize, and it goes to whoever owns the new question.
Change the question. The big company can't pivot fast because it's defending the whole old market. Define the new category in your words, be the leading name in it, and the incumbent's share follows yours — it has no choice but to answer.
All revenue and share figures on these cards are illustrative examples, not real data — they exist to show the trade-off, not to state a fact. The method follows Al Ries and Jack Trout's writing on positioning and marketing warfare. The terrain, the segments and the rain-jacket company are invented illustrations — no real company or market is depicted.