The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding 22 Immunatble Laws of Branding - Al Ries and Laura Ries

How to build a product or service into a world-class brand

Time Date 01-Jan-9999 Venue Speaker Seat Available: N/A

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Al Ries, Laura Ries
Publisher: New York : HarperBusiness.
ISBN: 0060007737

This is a synopsis only. RESULTS.com recommends you buy the original book.

1. The Law of Expansion

“The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope”

• When you put your brand name on everything it loses its power

• Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and are distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.

• A brand should also “own” a word in the mind of the customer

  • e.g. – Mercedes (prestige), BMW (driving), Volvo (safety)

• Line extensions bring short term sales growth but sacrifice the power of the brand long term

• You need to contract the brand not expand it

• e.g. – Is a Ford a truck or a car? No one is sure

• Line extension mistakes = Mercedes making small cars (where is the prestige?), BMW station wagons (driving?), Volvo sports convertibles (safety?)

2. The Law of Contraction

“A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus”

• In order to dominate a category you must contract your focus.

• Do not try to be all things to all people

• Only try to be a generalist if you are competing on being the lowest price provider (e.g. Wal-mart)

• E.g. – Starbucks should focus on coffee, Subway should focus on submarine sandwiches, Dunkin donuts should focus on donuts

3. The Law of Publicity

“The birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising”

• Most marketers and advertising agencies confuse brand building with brand maintenance

• While hefty advertising will maintain mature brands like McDonalds and Coke, advertising won’t get a new brand off the ground

• Publicity is generated by being the first brand in a new category

• Promote and announce a new category, not a new product

• What others say about your brand is more powerful than what you say about it yourself, that’s why publicity is more powerful than advertising

• Branding strategies should be developed first from a publicity point of view

4. The Law of Advertising

“Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy”

• Sooner or later the category leader has to shift the branding strategy from publicity to advertising

• Advertising doesn’t buy you anything, it just keeps you from losing market share to your competitors

• First think publicity, then advertising

• What to advertise? Your category leadership of course!

• Don’t make the mistake of advertising quality – every company makes “better product” claims – these have little effect on customers

• What customers respond to is the company that claims to be the category leader – the customer then forms the perception the leading product must be better (even if it is not necessarily the case)

5. The Law of the Word

“A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer”

• If you want to build a brand, you must focus your branding efforts on owning a word in the customers mind. A word that nobody else owns

  • e.g. – Volvo = safety, BMW = driving, Kleenex = tissue

• It is a mistake to try to expand the customer base by using the brand name to get into other market categories

  • e.g. – Mercedes moving into cheap cars

• If you are not the first product into a category (e.g. pens) create a new category by narrowing your focus (e.g.-Mont blanc = expensive pens)

• Or create a new brand to compete in the category e.g. Toyota creating the Lexus brand to compete in the luxury car category

• Don’t ask what % of an existing market your brand can achieve, ask how large a market your brand can create by narrowing its focus and owning a word in the customer’s mind

6. The Law of Credentials

“The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim of authenticity”

• Customers tend to disbelieve product claims (“That’s what they all say”)

• Category leadership is the best way to establish the credentials of a brand

• If you don’t have the leading brand, your best strategy is to create a new category in which you can claim leadership

• Never assume people know which brand is the leader (tell them you are!)

• People naturally gravitate to what they perceive is the leading brand

7. The Law of Quality

“Quality is important, but brands are not built on quality alone”

• Does a Rolex keep better time than a Timex? Are you sure?

• Does a Mercedes have fewer mechanical problems than a Nissan? Are you sure?

• In taste tests Pepsi always beats Coke, but Coke dominates the cola category

• There is no correlation between comparative tests of quality and market success

• Quality (or rather the perception of quality) resides in the mind of the consumer and they are swayed by many psychological factors

• If you narrow your focus you become a specialist in the consumer’s mind and you are perceived to be of higher quality in that category

• If you charge a high price, you create the perception of quality – people obtain psychic satisfaction from purchasing and displaying expensive brands

• Generalists can only compete on price

8. The Law of The Category

“A leading brand should promote the category, not the brand”

• The most productive, useful aspect of branding is not increasing market share, but creating a new category you can own.

• Create the perception that the brand is “the first”, “the leader”, “the pioneer”, “the original”

• Then promote the new category - not the brand

• Customers do not really care about brands, they care about new categories

• e.g. – they do not care about Domino’s Pizzas (brand), they care about the 30 minute pizza delivery (the category)

To build a brand:

• Narrow your focus to claim a new category

• Make your brand name stand for the category (the generic effect)

• Expand the category by promoting the benefits of the category – not the brand

• A new category gives you a PR platform

• Promoting the category will pull your brand up along with it

• Even when competitors appear, continue to promote the category, to increase the size of the pie rather than your slice of the pie

• Competition will help stimulate consumer interest in the category – welcome them

• Leading brands should promote the category – not the brand (and promote their leadership in that category)

9. The Law of The Name

“In the long run a brand is nothing more than a name”

• The difference between brands is not in the products, it is in the consumer perception of the brand names

• Make your name stand for 1 word / 1 product in the customers mind

• Don’t make a number of different products under the same name

• Hyundai makes everything except profits (likewise most Japanese companies)

• Xerox = copiers, Xerox tried to use their brand to sell computers - naturally they failed to sell

10. The Law of Line Extensions

“The easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything”

• Line extensions provide short term sales boost, but long term brand damage

• Line extensions are often just copying a category leader product – you will never win this battle

• Launch a new brand name if you want to compete in a new category

11. The Law of Fellowship

“In order to build a category, a brand should welcome other competitor brands”

• The best thing that happened to Coke was the introduction of Pepsi as it grew the cola category by increasing the noise level and raising consumer awareness

• Welcome competition as they will bring new customers into the category

12. The Law of The Generic

“One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name”

• The best brand names are always unique pronouns and not in common use prior to the brand becoming dominant

• The biggest mistake when picking brand names is to do it visually (usually done by ad agencies with names set inside a logo mounted on a board)

• The printed word is secondary to the sound in generates in the reader’s mind

• The mind doesn’t deal in letters or words, it deals in sounds

• Make your brand name unique. Make a new word up if you have to!

13. The Law of The Company

“Brands are brands. Companies are companies. There is a difference”

• Brand names should always take precedence over company names (for large companies making many products)

• Consumers buy brands, they don’t buy companies

• What is the name of the brand? What is the name of the thing inside the packaging? Both names had better be the same or you are in trouble!

Alternatively for a start-up company with a single narrow-focus product, the best branding strategy is to use the company name as the brand name

14. The Law of the Sub Brands

“What branding builds, sub-branding can destroy”

• Can a brand be marketed as more than 1 model? Sure, as long as those models don’t detract from the essence of the brand, that single word or concept that the customer associates with the brand

• If it doesn’t – create a new brand name for new products

15. The Law of Siblings

“There is a time and place to launch a 2nd brand”

• Make each sibling a unique individual brand with its own identities

• The strength of a brand lies in having a separate, unique identity, not being associated in the mind with a different category

• I.e. Toyota created Lexus to compete in the luxury car market, likewise Black & Decker created DeWalt for high end tools

• Maintain a separation between brands! Avoid overlap. Use different pricing.

• Create different, not similar names

• Only launch a new brand when you are creating a new category

• Do not launch a new brand just to compete in a category with an existing competitor

16. The Law of Shape

“A brand’s logotype should be designed to fit the eyes. Both eyes”

• Since your eyes are mounted side by side, the ideal logo should be 1 unit high and 2 and a quarter units wide (in this proportion)

• It should be clearly legible

• The visual symbol is over-rated. The meaning lies in the word or words the brand forms in the consumer’s mind, not in the visual symbol

• You can spend a lot of money to make a symbol stand for your brand (e.g. Nike swoosh) but you have to keep spending that money to re-educate each new generation.

• You can spend millions to get people to associate your brand with a symbol but what is the advantage of doing so?

• The power of the brand lies in the meaning of the word in the consumer’s mind. For most brands a symbol has little or nothing to do with creating this message in the mind

17. The Law of Color

“A brand should use a color that is the opposite of its major competitor”

• Leaders have 1st choice of color

• New competitors should choose the opposite color to differentiate

18. The Law of Borders

“There are no barriers to global branding. A brand should know no borders”

To grow your brand:

• Keep your narrow focus

• Be the first in a category

• Go Global

• Use brand names that work in English

19. The Law of Consistency

“Success in measured in decades – not years”

• A brand cannot get into a consumer’s mind unless it stands for something

• Markets may change but brands shouldn’t

• If you follow a fad you will destroy a brand

• E.g. Tanqueray was the leading high-end gin. Vodka became the new fad. Tanqueray created Tanqueray Vodka to compete in this category. They will not dominate the vodka category and will undermine their brand because in the consumer’s mind they stand for “high quality gin”. Now they have confused the market. They should have launched a new brand or stayed put and waited for the fad to pass

• Brand building is boring work. What works best is consistency over time

• Impatient marketing managers feel they have to expand their brands (to stop getting bored or justify their existence). This is a mistake

• You should limit your brand

• Your brand has to stand for something both simple and limited in the mind

• Limitation combined with consistency is what builds a brand

20. The Law of Change

“Brands can be changed infrequently and very carefully”

• When you try to tell your customer that your brand is different than it used to be they will reject your message

• Brand changing occurs in the mind of the consumer. If you want to change your brand keep your eye on the consumer’s mind

• You can strategically cheapen the brand if your strategy is to become a price leader

• It is impossible to do the reverse (upgrade your brand to a luxury item) (Volkswagen are try to unsuccessfully sell luxury cars – it won’t work because Volkswagen = fun beetle cars)

• Only if you have no brand awareness can you realistically change your brand

21. The Law of Mortality

“No brand will live forever. Euthanasia is often the best solution”

• There is a time to build and a time to harvest and divest

• E.g. Kodak = photographic film. They have no digital connotations – other companies already dominate the digital category - the writing is on the wall for the brand

22. The Law of Singularity

“The most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness”

• A brand is a pronoun that can be used in place of a common word

• A brand is a single idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the consumer

• It’s as simple at that!

Internet Branding

1. The Law of Either / Or

• You fracture your brand when you try to make it an internet brand as well as a physical brand

• No brand can be all things to all people

• Big physical brands have limited online value

• If the internet is going to be your business, create a totally new strategy and a new brand name

• If the internet is going to be a medium to communicate information about your existing physical business, that is fine but don’t expect it to dominate the category where competitors treat the internet as their sole business

• E.g. Borders dominates physical bookstores. Amazon dominates internet bookstores. Borders’ website will not be able to dominate the internet bookstore category because consumer’s associate the Borders brand with a physical bookstore

• It is better to give your internet business a different name

2. The Law of Interactivity

• Interactivity will make the internet the greatest of all media

• Interactivity will define what will succeed on the internet and what will fail

• Advertising will never work on the internet because people will turn it off or use ad blocking software

• Interactivity is the ability for the customer:

  • to type in information and have responses tailored to their information

  • to receive recommendations based on their original purchase / query

  • to contribute comments to your site

  • to receive all pricing / payment options

  • to input information and receive a diagnosis / recommendation

3. The Law of The Common Name

“The kiss of death for an internet brand is to use a common name”

• With a physical product you have packaging, premises, displays etc to aid the visibility of your brand

• With an internet business all you have is a domain name and it had better be a good one

• Common names have not worked as brand names (Pets.com, Sports.com, Hifi.com, Toys.com, Mortgage.com, Cars.com etc)

• Companies have paid millions of dollars for such domain names that have turned out to be useless

• All the big internet businesses use unique names (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, Ebay etc)

• One of the reasons for the dotcom disaster was the lemming-like use of common-name websites

4. The Law of The Proper Name

• Your domain name is your most valuable asset

• A proper name is superior to a common or generic name

• Even in the physical world: McDonalds is a better brand name than Burger King, Hertz is better than National Car Rental, Kraft is better than General Foods

• The shorter the domain name and the easier to spell the better

• The name should be simple, using only a few letters in combinations that repeat themselves (e.g. Volvo, Coca Cola, Blockbuster, Dirt Devil, Weight Watchers)

• It works with movie stars too (Robert Redford, Sharon Stone, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Munroe, Greta Garbo, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck)

• Always register alternative spellings of your domain name (including numbers as letters)

• Do not use numbers in your real brand name however

• Make sure your brand name is easy to say verbally (word of mouth is your best advertising)

5. The Law of Singularity

• In the real world 1 product dominates, with a strong 2nd competitor. 3rd place brand always struggles or is about to go out of business

• Retailers play the 2 leading brands off for their own leverage

• In the internet there are no middle men (retailers)

• In the internet there is no 2nd place

• Every category will be dominated by a single brand

• If you are not the leader, narrow your focus and create a new category

• Borders closed their online store on their website and now outsource to Amazon

• Which brand will be the winner in each category?

• It won’t necessarily be the first in the marketplace

• It will be the first brand to establish a dominant position in the consumer’s mind

6. The Law of Advertising

• The internet will be the first new medium that will not be dominated by advertising

• Click through rates on online ads are less than 0.3%

• You will need to advertise in the physical world to increase your brand’s visibility to get people to log on to your website

• Publicity is the key (especially when you create a new category)

• Advertise the category, your market leadership of the category, and your domain name

7. The Law of Globalism

• The internet allows you to be a truly global business

• You need a brand that will transcend borders

• Go for an English-only website. 80% of computer data is in English.

• Time is on your side. Every day 10,000 people learn to speak English (esp. India)

• The internet will homogenize cultures

8. The Law of Time

“You have to be fast, you have to be first, you have to be focused”

• You have to get into the mind first (not the market first).

• First mover advantage is a myth

• Beware being a small company first into a category and having a large company take your idea, and with greater resources win the “battle for the consumer’s mind” and create the perception that it was the pioneer

• Be quick or be dead

• Don’t wait until it is perfect before you launch.

• Get it up there and improve as you go

• Big companies can miss the boat through endless research and testing and be beaten by a nimble competitor who gets big fast!

9. The Law of Vanity

“The biggest mistake you can make is to believe you can do everything”

• Overconfidence leads to marketing disasters

• Remember it is not your perceptions, it is how the customer perceives your brand that matters

• As soon as one company is successful in one area, it tries to move into another – usually with little or no success

• The confusing thing is - line extensions seem to work in the short term, but almost never in the long term.

• If you try to be all things to all people, no one will know what you stand for

• Gain leadership of a category and people will perceive that you are the best

• If you want to diversify, launch a 2nd brand rather than create line extensions

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