Summary: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: Review and Analysis of Ries and Trout's Book

Not expensive, only purchased with the full book to get free postage, but very, very small and thin. Revision notes more than a summary. If that's what you want it's a four star, don't think you can buy this and avoid the full edition though.

Useful marketing guide

There are a vast number of marketing books available through Amazon but a few stand out as landmarks in the development of marketing and the underlying book for this summary is one of them.Many books look at what the marketer should do in preparing an advertisement, sales letter, website etc. This book looks at what happens in the mind of the customers as a result of the barrage of marketing messages thrown out every day.Does the marketing create a unique position in the customer's mind or is it lost deep down in an existing product ladder, never to be recalled easily? You need to create a unique position and that can sometimes be done by positioning against a product that it's not. I've never really understood the attraction myself but an example (not in the book) is Milky Way, the sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite.These summaries do much of their work by taking away the long-winded examples used to illustrate the key points. The book was written a long time ago and examples that are 1) old and 2) only well known in America aren't really missed.As well as explaining how to position a business or product brand, the book goes in to give tips on how to position yourself fir success as an employee.Four or five stars? It's a long time since I read the full book so I can't remember if there were any key points missing or under-emphasised. It certainly captures the main items I can remember and I highlighted a high proportion of the summary until I reached the section for employees. I've still got the problem that the examples are old and American so I'm withholding the final star.Paul Simister, business coach

Good summary