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…)

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…)

A new brand world

#1 All aboard the brandwagon
Relying on brand awareness has become marketing fool’s gold

A brand is the result of a synaptic process in the brain. (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…)