About the Book

The 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding by Al Ries and his daughter and business partner Laura Ries  The authors of this book examine marketing campaigns that have succeeded and others that have failed, why good ideas didn’t live up to expectations, and offer their own ideas on what would have worked better. The real-life examples, common-sense suggestions and killer instincts contained are nothing less than rules by which companies will flourish or fail.

Examine brand-blazing strategies from the world’s best, including Coca-Cola, Xerox, BMW, Federal Express and Starbucks, to provide you with the expert insight you need to build a world-class brand.

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The 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding Summary

1. THE LAW OF EXPANSION

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

Marketers often confuse the power of a brand with the sales generated by that brand. But sales are not just a function of a brand’s power. Sales are also a function of the strength or weakness of a brand’s competition.

If your competition is weak or non-existent, you can often increase sales by weakening your brand. That is, by expanding it over more segments of the market. You can therefore draw the conclusion that line extension works.

But in so doing, the only thing you have demonstrated is the weakness of the competition. Coca-Cola had nothing to lose when it launched Diet Coke, because the competition (Pepsi-Cola) also had a line-extended product called Diet Pepsi.

While extending the line might bring added sales in the short term, it runs counter to the notion of branding. If you want to build a powerful brand in the minds of consumers, you need to contract your brand, not expand it. In the long term, expanding your brand will diminish your power and weaken your image.

2. THE LAW OF CONTRACTION

A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.

Every small town in America has a coffee shop. In larger cities and towns you can often find coffee shops on every other block. So what can you find to eat in a coffee shop? Everything. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Pancakes, muffins, hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches, pie, ice cream, and, of course, coffee.

What did Howard Schultz do? In an incredible burst of business creativity, he opened a coffee shop that specialized in, of all things, coffee. In other words, he narrowed the focus.

Good things happen when you contract rather than expand your business. Most retail category killers follow the same five-step pattern.

1. Narrow the focus. A powerful branding program always starts by contracting the category, not expanding it.

2. Stock in depth. A typical Toys “R” Us store carries 10,000 toys versus 3,000 toys for a large department store.

3. Buy cheap. Toys “R” Us makes its money buying toys, not selling toys.

4. Sell cheap. When you can buy cheap, you can sell cheap and still maintain good margins.

5. Dominate the category. The ultimate objective of any branding program is to dominate a category

3. THE LAW OF PUBLICITY

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

Most of America’s 15,000 advertising agencies are committed to the concept of building a brand with advertising.

“The fundamental thing we’re all about is building brand leaders,” said the chief executive of D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles recently. “The way to do that is to have a superior understanding of the consumer, which leads to better, fresher, more powerful creative work that ultimately builds brands.”

Building brand leaders with better, fresher creative work? We think not. Most marketers confuse brand building with brand maintenance. While a hefty advertising budget might be needed to maintain high-flying brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, advertising generally won’t get a new brand off the ground.

Today brands are born, not made. A new brand must be capable of generating favourable publicity in the media or it won’t have a chance in the marketplace.

And just how do you generate publicity? The best way to generate publicity is by being first. In other words, by being the first brand in a new category.

1. Band-Aid, the first adhesive bandage
2. Charles Schwab, the first discount stockbrokerage firm
3. CNN, the first cable news network
4. Compaq, the first portable personal computer
5. Domino’s, the first home delivery pizza chain
6. ESPN, the first cable sports network
7. Gore-Tex, the first breathable waterproof cloth
8. Heineken, the first imported beer
9. Hertz, the first car-rental company
10. Intel, the first microprocessor
11. Jell-O, the first gelatin dessert
12. Kentucky Fried Chicken, the first fast-food chicken chain

1. National Enquirer, the first supermarket tabloid
2. Playboy, the first men’s magazine
3. Q-Tips, the first cotton swab
4. Reynolds Wrap, the first aluminium foil
5. Rollerblade, the first in-line skate
6. Samuel Adams, the first microbrewer beer
7. Saran Wrap, the first plastic food wrap
8. Sun Microsystems, the first Unix workstation
9. Time, the first weekly news magazine
10. Xerox, the first plain-paper copier

All of these brands (and many, many more) were first in a new category and, in the process, generated enormous amounts of publicity.

Most companies develop their branding strategies as if advertising were their primary communications vehicle. They’re wrong. Strategy should be developed first from a publicity point of view.

4. THE LAW OF ADVERTISING

Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy.

Your advertising budget is like a country’s defence budget. Those massive advertising dollars don’t buy you anything; they just keep you from losing market share to your competition.

Almost every successful brand goes through the same process. Brands like Compaq, Dell, SAP, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart were born in a blaze of publicity. As the publicity dies out, each of these brands has had to shift to massive advertising to defend its position. First publicity, then advertising is the general rule.

Leaders should not look on their advertising budgets as investments that will pay dividends. Instead leaders should look on their advertising budgets as insurance that will protect them against losses caused by competitive attacks.

The list of leaders that advertise their leadership is very short. Most leaders advertise some aspect of their quality.

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 prospect’s mind. A word that nobody else owns.

What prestige is to Mercedes, safety is to Volvo. Volvo owns the word “safety” in the mind of the automobile buyer. And, as a result, over the past decade Volvo has become the largest-selling European luxury car in America.

Once a brand owns a word, it’s almost impossible for a competitor to take that word away from the brand. Could you build a safer car than a Volvo? Probably. Many brands have already claimed to do so, including Saab, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. Could one of these other brands own the word “safety” in the mind? Probably not.

What comes to mind when you think about owning a BMW? A car that’s fun to drive. The ultimate driving machine. BMW owns the word “driving” in the mind. And, as a result, BMW has become the second- largest-selling European luxury car in America.

To be successful in branding a “prestige” product or service, you need to do two things:

1. You need to make your product or service more expensive than the competition.

2. You need to find a code word for prestige.

6. THE LAW OF CREDENTIALS

The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity.

Customers are suspicious. They tend to disbelieve most product claims. Your brand might last longer, require less maintenance, and be easier to use, but who will accept claims like these?

There is one claim, however, that should take precedence over every other claim. It’s the one claim that elevates the brand above the competition. And makes every other claim much more believable.

It’s the real thing. It’s the claim to authenticity. When Coca-Cola first made this claim customers instantly responded. “Yes,” they agreed. “Coke is the real thing. Everything else is an imitation.” Even though the last “real thing” advertising ran almost thirty years ago, the concept has become closely associated with Coca-Cola. It’s the brand’s credentials.

Even today, “the real thing” is so closely associated with Coca-Cola that newspaper and magazine reporters will try to work these words into almost every article written about the company.

Credentials are the collateral you put up to guarantee the performance of your brand. When you have the right credentials, your prospect is likely to believe almost anything you say about your brand.

7. THE LAW OF QUALITY

Quality is important, but brands are not built by quality alone.

What is quality?

Everybody thinks they can tell a high-quality product from a low-quality one, but in reality things are not always so obvious.

• Does a Rolex keep better time than a Timex? Are you sure?
• Does a Leica take better pictures than a Pentax? Are you sure?
• Does a Mercedes have fewer mechanical problems than a Cadillac? Are you sure?
• Does Hertz have better service than Alamo? Are you sure?
• Does a Montblanc pen write better than a Cross? Are you sure?
• Does Coca-Cola taste better than Pepsi-Cola? Most people seem to think so, because Coke outsells Pepsi. Yet in blind taste tests most people prefer the taste of Pepsi.

Common wisdom blames the testing procedures. If Coke outsells Pepsi, there must be something wrong with a taste test that shows the opposite. Quality is a concept that has thousands of adherents. The way to build a better brand, goes the thinking, is by building a better-quality product.

8. THE LAW OF THE CATEGORY

A leading brand should promote the category, not the brand.

According to the law of contraction a brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus. What happens when you narrow the focus to such a degree that there is no longer any market for the brand?

This is potentially the best situation of all. What you have created is the opportunity to introduce a brand-new category.

• What was the market for cheap cars before Volkswagen? Almost nothing.
• What was the market for home pizza delivery before Domino’s Pizza? Almost nothing.
• What was the market for in-line skates before Rollerblade? Almost nothing.

There’s a paradox here. Branding is widely perceived as the process of capturing a bigger share of an existing market. Which is what is usually meant when the newly appointed CEO says, “We have to grow the business.”

Yet the most efficient, most productive, most useful aspect of branding has nothing to do with increasing a company’s market share. The most efficient, most productive, most useful aspect of branding is creating a new category.

In other words, narrowing the focus to nothing and starting something totally new. That’s the way to become the first brand in a new category and ultimately the leading brand in a rapidly growing new segment of the market.

To build a brand in a nonexciting category, to build something out of nothing, you have to do two things at once:

1. You have to launch the brand in such a way as to create the perception that that brand was the first, the leader, the pioneer, or the original. Invariably, you should use one of these words to describe your brand.

2. You have to promote the new category.

9. THE LAW OF THE NAME

In the long run a brand is nothing more than a name.

The most important branding decision you will ever make is what to name your product or service. Because in the long run a brand is nothing more than a name.

Don’t confuse what makes a brand successful in the short term with what makes a brand successful in the long term.

In the short term, a brand needs a unique idea or concept to survive. It needs to be first in a new category. It needs to own a word in the mind. But in the long term, the unique idea or concept disappears. All that is left is the difference between your brand name and the brand names of your competitors.

Xerox was the first plain-paper copier. This unique idea built the powerful Xerox brand in the mind. But today all copiers are plain-paper copiers. The difference between brands is not in the products, but in the product names. Or rather the perception of the names.

10. THE LAW OF EXTENSIONS

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

You don’t have to go to Asia to find examples of rampant line extension. More than 90 percent of all new products introduced in the U.S. grocery and drug trade are line extensions. Which is the major reason that stores are choked with brands. (There are 1,300 shampoos, 200 cereals, 250 soft drinks.)

According to industry experts, power has been shifting from manufacturers to retailers. The primary reason is line extension. With so many products to choose from, retailers can force manufacturers to pay for the privilege of getting their products on the shelf. If one company won’t pay, the retailer can always find another company that will.

11. THE LAW OF FELLOWSHIP

In order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands.

Greed often gets in the way of common sense. The dominant brand in a category often tries to broaden its appeal in order to capture every last bit of market share. “If we served beer and wine,” the CEO of McDonald’s once said, “we might eventually have 100 percent of the food-service market.”

Unlikely. The law of expansion suggests the opposite. When you broaden your brand, you weaken it. Look what happened when McDonald’s tried to broaden its appeal to the adult market with the Arch Deluxe sandwich. Its market share fell, and ultimately it was forced to discontinue the product.

Which brings us to the law of fellowship. Not only should the dominant brand tolerate competitors, it should welcome them. The best thing that happened to Coca-Cola was Pepsi-Cola. (To that end it’s ironic that the Coca- Cola Company fought Pepsi-Cola in the courts over the use of “Cola” in its name. Fortunately for Coke, it lost, creating a category which has been growing like gang busters ever since.)

12. THE LAW OF THE GENERIC

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

History often leads us astray. In the past, some of the most successful companies (and brands) had generic names.

1. General Motors, General Electric, General Mills, General Foods, General Dynamics.
2. American Airlines, American Motors, American Broadcasting Company, American Telephone & Telegraph, American Express, Aluminum Company of America.

Some companies have even tried to combine two or more of these lofty “all things to all people” names. The American General Life and Accident Insurance Company, for example. (We’re surprised that nobody thought to use “International General American Standard Products Company.”)

In the past, companies thought they needed big, scopy, generic names. And the brand name was almost always the company name. (Today such an approach might produce the General Global Corp.) And yet, this naming strategy clearly worked. Why?

Years ago the market was flooded with commodities produced by thousands of small companies operating in a single town or region. The big, scopy, generic names put these small competitors in their place.

The fact is, these brands/companies are successful in spite of their names. We believe the primary reason for these corporate successes is the strategy and not the name.

• National Biscuit Company was the first national biscuit company.
• General Electric was the first general electric company.
• International Harvester was the first international harvester company.

Being first in the marketplace gave these companies such a head start and such a powerful presence in the market that it overcame the liability of their generic names.

13. THE LAW OF THE COMPANY

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

Nothing causes as much confusion in the branding process as the proper use of a company name.

• Should the company name dominate the brand name? For example: Microsoft dominates Microsoft Word.
• Should the brand name dominate the company name? For example: Tide dominates Procter & Gamble.

The issue of how to use a company name is at the same time simple and complicated. Simple, because the laws are so clear-cut. Complicated, because most companies do not follow the simple laws of branding and end up with a system that defies logic and results in endless brand-versus-company debates.

Brand names should almost always take precedence over company names. Consumers buy brands, they don’t buy companies. So when a company name is used alone as a brand name (GE, Coca-Cola, IBM, Xerox, Intel), customers see these names as brands.

When you combine a company name with a brand name in a clear and consistent fashion, the brand name is the primary name and the company name is seen as the secondary name.

14. THE LAW OF SUBBRANDS

What branding builds, sub branding can destroy

Typical line-extension strategies would have produced brand names like Holiday Inn Deluxe, Cadillac Light, Budget Waterford, and Kasual Karan. Even the most callow marketing people would have found these brand names difficult to swallow.

What to do? Invent a sub brand. So we have Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Cadillac Catera, Marquis by Waterford, and DKNY. Now we can have our cake and eat it, too. We can use our well-known core brand at the same time as we launch secondary or sub brands to move into new territory.

When you feel the need to create subbrands, you are chasing the market, you are not building the brand.

The essence of a brand is some idea or attribute or market segment you can own in the mind. Subbranding is a concept that takes the brand in exactly the opposite direction. Subbranding destroys what branding builds.

Branding concepts that are not driven by the marketplace are going to go nowhere. Sub branding, master branding, and mega branding are not customer- driven concepts. They have no meaning in the minds of most consumers.

15. THE LAW OF SIBLINGS

There is a time and a place to launch a second brand.

The laws of branding seem to suggest that a company concentrate all of its resources on a single brand for a single market. Keep the brand focused and ignore opportunities to get into new territories.

True. But there comes a time when a company should launch a second brand. And perhaps a third, even a fourth brand.

A second-brand strategy is not for every company. If handled incorrectly, the second brand can dilute the power of the first brand and waste resources. Yet, in some situations, a family of brands can be developed that will assure a company’s control of a market for many decades to come.

• Big Red (a cinnamon-flavoured brand)
• Double mint (a peppermint-flavoured brand)
• Extra (a sugar-free brand)
• Free dent (a stick-free brand)

The key to a family approach is to make each sibling a unique individual brand with its own identity. Resist the urge to give the brands a family look or a family identity. You want to make each brand as different and distinct as possible.

The Wrigley approach is not perfect. Wrigley’s first three brands (Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, and Double mint) are too much like line extensions. They need the Wrigley name to support their generic brand names. Big Red, Extra, Freedent, and Winterfresh, however, can stand on their own, each as totally separate brands.

16. THE LAW OF SHAPE

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

A logotype is a combination of a trademark, which is a visual symbol of the brand, and the name of the brand set in distinctive type.

Of equal importance to shape is legibility. Logotype designers often go way overboard in picking a typeface to express the attribute of a brand rather than its ability to be clearly read.

On the other hand, if the typeface is virtually illegible, the logotype has little or no meaning in the consumer’s mind. Not because of the typeface used, but because the prospect can’t read the words. Legibility is the most important consideration in selecting a typeface used in a logotype.

17. THE LAW OF COLOR

A brand should use a colour that is the opposite of its major competitor’s.

Another way to make a brand distinctive is with color. But color is not an easy attribute to work with. There are thousands of words to choose from in order to create a unique name, but only a handful of colors.

18. THE LAW OF BORDERS

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

In our consulting work we find that most clients strongly believe two things:

• 1. Their brands’ market shares cannot be substantially increased in their home countries.
• 2. They need to grow.

As a result of these ironclad beliefs, they insist on expanding their brands into other categories. “It’s the only way to grow,” they say.

So they fall victim to the first law of branding, the law of expansion. “Sure,” they say. “Expanding our line may be dangerous, but it’s the only way to grow.” It’s not the only way to grow. In fact, the perfect solution to achieving both goals is to build a global brand. That means:

• Keep the brand’s narrow focus in its home country.
• Go global.

For years the magic word on many products has been “imported.” Food, beer, wine, liquor, clothing, automobiles, appliances, and many other items have benefited from an imported label. As if crossing a border suddenly increases the value of the brand.

English has become the second language of the world. If you are going to develop a brand name for use on the worldwide market, the name better work in English. It doesn’t have to be an English word, but it should sound like one.

19. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY

A brand is not built overnight. Success is measured in decades, not years.

The most frequently violated law is the law of consistency. A brand cannot get into the mind unless it stands for something. But once a brand occupies a position in the mind, the manufacturer often thinks of reasons to change.

“The market is changing,” cries the manufacturer, “change the brand.” Markets may change, but brands shouldn’t. Ever. They may be bent slightly or given a new slant, but their essential characteristics (once those characteristics are firmly planted in the mind) should never be changed.

20. THE LAW OF CHANGE

Brands can be changed, but only infrequently and only very carefully.

Having harped on the idea of consistency and focus, why would we bring up the concept of change?

Because nothing in life, nothing in branding, is ever absolute. There are always exceptions to every rule. And the law of change is the biggest exception to the laws of branding.

But brand changing does not occur inside a company. Brand changing occurs inside the mind of the consumer. If you want to change your brand, keep your sights on your target: the consumer’s mind.

21. THE LAW OF MORTALITY

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

While the laws of branding are immutable, brands themselves are not. They are born, they grow up, they mature, and they eventually die.

It’s sad. Companies are willing to spend millions to save an old brand, yet they resist spending pennies to create a new brand. Once you understand the nature of branding, you’ll know when it is time to let your old brand die a natural death.

Opportunities for new brands are constantly being created by the invention of new categories. The rise of the personal computer created opportunities for Compaq, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and many other brands.

22. THE LAW OF SINGULARITY

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

• What’s a Chevrolet? A large, small, cheap, expensive car or truck.
• What’s a Miller? A regular, light, draft, cheap, expensive beer.
• What’s a Panasonic? At one point in time, Panasonic was a computer, computer printer, facsimile machine, scanner, telephone, television set, and copier, among other things.

These are all burned-out brands because they have lost their singularity. They could, of course, remain on the marketing scene for many years because of the line-extension generosity of their competitors. But make no mistake about it. Loss of singularity weakens a brand.