Introduction

In 1841, the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay published an essay entitled “Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds”. It is in fact a popular belief that people usually get dumb when they gather into crowds. James Surowiecki’s book discusses several situations where this is absolutely wrong, and collective perception, behaviour, or problem-solving can in fact outperform any given individual. He further stresses that, for such a “wisdom of crowds” to happen, certain conditions must be met. (more…)

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

1. The Law of Expansion: The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope. Trying to be all things to all people undermines the power of the brand. The strength of brands lies in becoming synony-mous with a single category. Brands that spread themselves across categories lose brand focus, identity, and ultimately market share.

2. The Law of Contraction: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus. By narrowing the focus to a single category, a brand can achieve extraordinary success. Starbucks, Subway and Dominos Pizza became category killers when they narrowed their focus.

3. The Law of Publicity: The birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising. A new brand must be capable of generating favorable public-ity in the media or it won’t have a chance in the marketplace. Anita Roddick built the Body Shop into a global brand with no advertising, but with massive amounts of publicity. On the other hand, Miller Brewing spent $50 million in advertising to launch a brand called Miller Regular. The brand generated no publicity and very little sales. (more…)

Mind Maps

Mind Mapping is an important technique that improves the way you take notes, and supports and enhances your creative problem solving. By using Mind Maps, you can quickly identify and understand the structure of a subject and the way that pieces of information fit together, as well as recording the raw facts contained in normal notes. More than this, Mind Maps provide a structure which encourages creative problem solving, and they hold information in a format that your mind will find easy to remember and quick to review.

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I found out a new marketing term: pinko marketing. What a strange term. The big idea is that we are coming back to the roots of commerce which is communication. The contact and the building of trust between community members are back at the core of commerce. In fact pinko marketing is not well defined but here are some elements that characterize pinko marketing: (more…)

Inspirational quotes for entrepreneurs from the CenterNetwork’s guide. Selected by Simpleentrepreneur.com :

The highs are higher, the lows are lower. The key to success is to maintain balance and a level head through both.

— Alex Bard from goowy

Be ready to accept failure (9 out of 10 start ups fail).

— Alex Bard from goowy

Be ready to sacrifice: Building a product and company is a lot of hard work. The hardest part is not coming up with an idea or building the product, it’s staying committed enough to do it when you’re tired, or when the first major investor says no, or when you have to sacrifice a night out. If you can’t give up some of the things that you really care about right now, you will have a hard time sticking with your idea. (more…)

Brands that achieve the status of icons succeed because they forge a deep connection with the culture. In essence, they compete for culture share. The strategic focus is on what the brand stands for, and not how the brand performs. Icons are valued because, through them, people get to experience powerful myths. (more…)

Principles of Defensive Warfare

• No. 1 Only the market leader should consider playing defense
• No. 2 The best defensive strategy is the courage to attack yourself
• No. 3 Strong competitive moves should always be blocked (more…)