Book Summary Preview : The 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding

The Big Idea
Marketing guru Al Ries, who brought us “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” teams up with his wife Laura for another Marketing Classic. The textbook for any brand-building team, this book cites real-world stories from Starbucks, and The Body Shop, to Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Yahoo! Brand creation is explained in simple language, and in easily digestible chapters. This is the essential primer for anyone who intends to dominate a category and build a formidable brand, whether your product is sold in malls or on the Internet.

1. The Law of Expansion

The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope.

If you want to build a powerful brand in the minds of consumers, you need to contract your brand, not expand it.

Putting your brand name on everything diminishes the brand name’s power. Take a look at Chevrolet, a company that used to be the leader in the automobile industry. It expanded its brand into Corvette, Camaro, Caprice, Lumina, Malibu, Prizm, and so many other brands. People don’t exactly know what a Chevrolet is anymore. What happens when you extend your product line into so many types? You steadily lose your market share.

In 1988 American Express had 27% of the market. Then it expanded into offering Senior cards, Student, Membership Miles, Optima, Optima Rewards Plus Gold, and a whole range of other cards. Their market share is 18 per cent today.

2. The Law of Contraction

A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.

There used to be a time when every neighborhood had a small coffee shop where you could get everything from breakfast, lunch, dinner, to hamburgers, hotdogs, pancakes, and ice cream, and of course, coffee. This was before Howard Schultz had a simply wonderful idea: why not focus on selling great coffee? Today Starbucks Corp. is worth $8.7 billion on the stock market.

Schultz focused on coffee, but that doesn’t mean he just offered one, Starbucks offers thirty different kinds of coffee.

Narrowing the focus has resulted in big time success stories:

• Toys R’ Us narrowed the focus from the original Children’s Supermart concept carrying kid’s clothing, children’s toys, baby food, and diapers down to a store that offered a greater selection of toys.
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