“Marketing is not selling. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect.”

Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store.

After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about the brand forever.

You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.

What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.

Each year we send more and receive less.

The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.

What should a brand leader advertise?

Advertising is the way great brands get to be great brands.

It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.

It creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no product on the market quite like your product.

Even if all the cattle on the range look pretty much alike.

You have to reduce the essence of your brand to a single thought or attribute.

The new product, if it’s going to be successful, is going to require a new name. New ladder, new name. It’s as simple as that.

Only brand names register in the mind… What you should generally do is take a regular word and use it out of context to connote the primary attribute of your brand.

The reason is obvious. A well-known name got well-known because it stood for something. It occupies a position in the prospect’s mind. A really well-known name sits on the top rung of a sharply defined ladder.

To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.

IBM didn’t invent the computer; Sperry Rand did. But IBM was the first to build the computer position in the prospect’s mind.

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

It creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no product on the market quite like your product.

It is better to have 50% of one market, instead of 10% of five markets.

Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.

If you can intervene early in the lives of girls here and in other parts of the world, you can begin to change the prospects for the future.

Sales managers should track the number of first meetings with “right fit” prospects a sales person is engaged in on a monthly basis.