How many books are sitting on your shelf, collecting dust, waiting to be read? When will you ever fit them all in? You can either take a 2 month sabbatical to try and read them all (but those bills won’t pay themselves), or you can just read my “cliff-notes” and take this book off your list. My advice, keep your job and read the cliff-notes.
Every Tuesday, for the next few weeks, I will be posting “cliff-notes” and summarizing 2 chapters of the book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. It’s a great book with valuable information that deserves more than just a place on your bookshelf. So, check back every Tuesday for the next installment and before you know it you’ll have mastered the 22 laws of branding.
Part 1
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding How to Build a Product or Service into a World-class Brand
Written by: Al Ries and Laura Ries
Summarized by: Amie Hansen
What is branding?
To differentiate your product from every other product and to create in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no other product on the market quite like your product.
In the short term, conventional marketing strategies (expansion and line extension) can increase sales, but in the long run they usually undermine the power of the brand and decrease sales.
Marketing is not selling. Marketing is brand building.
The power of a brand lies in its ability to influence purchasing behavior.
Chapter 1 – The Law of Expansion
The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope.
The emphasis in most companies is on the short term. Line extension, megabranding, variable pricing and a host of other sophisticated marketing techniques are being used to milk brands rather than build them. Milking will bring in money in the short term, but in the long term it wears down the brand until it no longer stands for anything.
Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and are distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.
If you want to build a powerful brand in the minds of consumers, you need to contract your brand, not expand it. Expanding will diminish your power and weaken your image.
Chapter 2 – The Law of Contraction
A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.
If you want to have a successful company you have to do what successful companies did BEFORE they were successful.
Narrow the focus.
FOCUS= narrow vision and product concept, don’t extend the line just to create more profit today, it won’t survive tomorrow. Consistency is key.
