Andy Cunningham - Get to Aha!: Discover Your Positioning DNA and Dominate Your Competition

Praise for Andy Cunningham and Get to Aha!

Andy Cunningham spent years working with the great Silicon Valley technology giants learning how to market innovation. In her remarkably accessible Get to Aha!, she pulls back the curtain to reveal the secrets of success.

Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute and New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs and The Innovators

Andy Cunningham puts forth a brand-new way to position companies based on her insightful concept of corporate DNA: internal code that reveals the essence of great marketing strategy.

Regis McKenna, Silicon Valleys original marketing guru

In Get to Aha!, PR legend Andy Cunningham shares her secret for bringing innovation to market in Silicon Valley. Its all about positioning.

Steve Blank, Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, father of the Lean Startup movement, and bestselling author of The Startup Owners Manual

Disruptive products require disruptive positioning, and theres no one better equipped to explain how to do it than Andy Cunningham in Get to Aha!

Reed Hastings, cofounder and CEO of Netflix

Branding is what you say about yourself. Positioning is what other people say about you. Andy Cunningham knows the difference, and she shows readers how to create authentic marketing communications in a digital age.

Geoffrey Moore, bestselling author of Crossing the Chasm

Stop! Before you start a branding program, read Andy Cunninghams book. First figure out your companys DNA. Mother, Mechanic, or Missionary? A revolutionary idea, well-written and quite convincing.

Al Ries, bestselling coauthor of Positioning

A brilliant marketing mind explains how to gain competitive advantage by telling the truth. In the Internet Age substance beats bling.

Bill Davidow, cofounder of Mohr Davidow Ventures

Positioning with corporate DNA in mind leads to better marketing. In Get to Aha!, Andy Cunningham shows that when you know what youre made of, you can be a better you.

David Kelley, founder, chairman, and managing partner of IDEO and bestselling coauthor of Creative Confidence

Andy Cunningham is a natural; she learned all about positioning long ago when she launched the Macintosh and helped it grow into the success it is today. But now shes done more than that; she has explained how to do it for your product or service.

Esther Dyson, founder of HICCup and author of Release 2.1

Its noisy out there. Andy Cunningham perfectly pulls a Watson and Crick for marketing and helps identify your corporate DNA. If you position it, they will come.

Andy Kessler, technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author of Running Money and Eat People

Andy Cunningham has been there and done that for many of the critical turns in the technology industry. Consider Get to Aha! the core curriculum in the continuing education of any modern branding executive.

Stewart Alsop Jr., technology pundit and partner at Alsop Louie Partners

In Get to Aha!, Andy Cunningham shares her many years of experience in Silicon Valley, launching innovation after innovation beginning with the Macintosh. She captures the essence of marketingstrategic positioningin the digital age.

Rich Moran, social scientist and author of The Thing About Work

Get to Aha! is as smart and grounded as Andy Cunningham herself. For more than three decades, journalists have known that in Cunningham they will find someone rich with common sense and ready with straight answers, someone who knows not to waste peoples time. This book is all that and morea crucial set of insights into what it takes for a corporation to know itself well enough to get resultsall while staying true to its deeply embedded DNA.

Katie Hafner, technology journalist and coauthor of Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Copyright 2018 by Andy Cunningham. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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To my late parents,
for whom writing was the noblest of pursuits
and publishing a book was the Holy Grail

Part I
The Principles of Positioning

Part II
Aha! in Action: The Practice of Positioning

A ndy and I met when we were working for Steve Jobs on the launch of Macintosh. She was leading the charge from Regis McKenna, Inc., Apples PR firm, and I was a software evangelist spreading the good news to developers. My job was to sell the dream. Andys was to make it credible.