Life was getting pretty boring, as such. The pile-up of books to be read was getting pretty thin, it was time for me to cough up some good book from my father’s overhead storage. In that process, I came across a book ‘Differentiate or Die’ by Jack Trout (along with Steve Rivkin). After reading the book, I firmly believe that it is the Mecca of the modern advertising campaigns launched by varied products across the world- whether it is on T.V., magazine, newspaper or the internet.
For the survival in this era of killer competition it becomes necessary for any product to carve for itself a niche, at least in the minds of the consumers- he must differentiate himself from the other competitive products to sell. Though this book was written way back in 2000, the idea of the book is reinforced in today’s testing times as the business houses battle two-pronged challenges, one emanating from the global slowdown and other from the killer competition in this globalized world with the presence of gazillions of choices that consumers have when they decide what to shop. See the internet Shopping Boom spreading across India- ‘Yebhi.com’, ‘Flipcart.com’, ‘Onlineshoes.com’, ‘Zomato.com’ and many more that are following the suit.
Read this book and surf across the television- you would surely be able to pin-point out the type of differentiation technique used by the so-televised brand. It seems that the Indian Advertising Agency has taken this book to the heart.
The book is written in simple and lucid style; the concepts are pretty well explained. Loaded with examples ranging from the Coca-Cola to Walmart, from Volvo to Bentley and from Oral-B to Gillette, the book drives this point straight to the heart that survival depends on our ability to project the image of our being different in the mind of the consumers. It may be ‘Being First’, ‘Owning an attribute’, ‘being a Leader’, ‘having a Rich Heritage’ or any other differentiating idea listed in the book, the authors strongly believes that the differentiating idea of a product should be firmly drilled into the consumers’ mind.
Though the authors seemed pessimistic and prophesized bleak future for those internet companies that offered free email services or free softwares- they should have by now changed their opinion with the business that Gmail or Yahoo (though it is a stage of massive overhaul today) is garnering as well as how hugely popular Mozilla Firefox or Linux probably is (though not all its softwares are free).
Anything said, I strongly recommend this book if you are to take your product to the market- it would act like a guiding beacon for the way you boost your sales. I am looking forward to read Jack Trout’s ‘Positioning’.
Alienman 