Marketing & persuasion

Ries and Trout defined it as the place a product occupies in the consumer's mind relative to its competitors, not as a feature of the product itself. Their central argument is that the mind filters information overload by retaining a single idea per category, and that the commercial battle is fought over that idea rather than over technical superiority.

Because a brand is an intangible asset that underpins pricing power, and pricing power is what separates a company with defensible margins from one competing on price alone. Anyone analysing listed companies will find in these books the mechanism explaining why certain businesses can raise prices without losing customers.

The media it describes — full-page press ads, direct mail — are obsolete, but its principles on prior research, message clarity and respect for the reader aged well. It reads today as a historical document with a still-applicable methodological core, not as an operating manual for digital advertising.

Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at Wharton, proposes six factors that make an idea transmit: social currency, triggers, emotion, public visibility, practical value and stories. The book draws on experiments and analysis of viral content, though — like all diffusion research — it describes observed correlations rather than a reproducible recipe.