March 2008 Edition

first cut

Catching up with Jack

Via the pages of Forbes magazine, I've reacquainted myself with Jack Trout after 15 years.

If you don't know Jack Trout, point yourself in the direction of Steve Forbes' magazine, a really good bookstore, or the website for Trout & Partners. Master Jack and his colleagues bill themselves as "global leaders in strategic positioning." That's no empty boast on their part, either. Just ask any of their clients — from Aero México to DuPont to Xerox. The name of their game is "positioning," or, as they explain it, "a body of work that figures out how to best position your company, product, or services in the minds of your customers and prospects."

In the marketing world, Trout is considered the prince of positioning. His 2004 book, Trout on Strategy (McGraw-Hill), is the culmination of 25 years of experience. But a lot of business folks know him best for the insights he and Al Ries shared in such books as Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

In the marketing world, Jack Trout
is considered the prince of positioning.

Back in 1993, while covering the marketing beat for a management magazine, I had a chance to talk with Trout about those durable marketing laws, including Law No. 3, the law of the mind. As Trout and Ries explain in their business classic, "It is better to be first in the prospect's mind than first into the marketplace....Being first in the mind is everything in marketing. Being first into the marketplace is important only to the extent that it allows you to get into the mind first."

For the record, Jack Trout also proved to be one of the most affable business gurus around. A four-star raconteur, Trout had me laughing so hard during the interview that our server threatened us with permanent banishment from her restaurant.

All this came back to me as I read his Forbes column about China. He was pointing out that China's "high-speed manufacturing machine" is experiencing globally-generated growing pains. Since China will never really corner the world market on low costs, he observed, it "must consider taking what can be called the 'branding highway.' This takes it to where it can start to build local and international brands that offer more than just low price."

But beware, Trout told China through the pages of Forbes. That's also going to generate competition for customers. Trout then offered this advice to China, if indirectly:

"Peter Drucker, the father of U.S. management consulting, once advised that only two business functions produce new customers. They are 'marketing' and 'innovation.' All other functions are expenses. This means Chinese companies have to learn about marketing. They will have to learn about 'positioning' or how to win battles in the mind of a customer and prospect. They will have to learn about 'marketing warfare' or how to cope with competition. They will have to learn about 'differentiation' or how to figure out what makes you different from your competitors. But most of all, they have to understand that it's not just about low price, but about added value or creating that reason as to why a product is worth a little more than competitive products."

I must have been wearing my associate publisher cap as I read this part of Trout's column. I realized that I spend a lot of time explaining to current and prospective advertisers that T&P is uniquely positioned in the market. It's the magazine that not only chronicles the technological advancements in metalworking manufacturing but also establishes an economic and marketing framework for those advancements. Sure, any other "metal mag" can relay the specs on a five-axis machine. T&P prides itself on explaining how applying that power to a production floor increases throughput, profits, and customer satisfaction.

I'm pretty keen on customer satisfaction. I may even have picked that up from Trout at the restaurant way back when. Probably between the laughing and the check.

 

 

 

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