According to Al and Laura Ries in the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, the objective is to make your product the brand leader through publicity or public relations, and then to use advertising to promote its brand leadership.
• Own a word from the minds of the consumer.
• The issue is not how large an existing market for your brand is. The issue is how large a market your brand can create by narrowing its focus and owning a word in the mind of the consumer.
• The best way to be a leader in the category is to simply define the category narrow enough to own it. Then, that leadership becomes your brand credential.
• From that point on, you can start advertising not only your own leadership, but the percentage of other competitors which will fall well below yours.
• Never assume that the consumer knows who is the leader. You’ve got to tell them who the leader is.
• Customers don’t care about new brands, they do care about new categories.
• A leading brand should simply focus on increasing the size of a category. It should not be fighting competitive brands who increase the size of the category; it should be fighting competitive categories.
• Consumers like competition because it actually validates the category. If there was one player in the category, not only is there not a lot of noise, but the consumer questions whether the category has enough value. When there are two or more solid competitors, such as Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, the consumers accept the validation of a category and are now inclined to just simply respond based upon the branding efforts as well as other competitive influences. For example, Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples are all battling each other as big brand competitors. What has gone away are the independent office and stationary stores which have declined from 10,000 ten years ago to less than 3,000 stores today. That’s called the law of fellowship.
• Customers associate with the brand. Employees and managers associate with the company. The focus should always be on the brand, not on the company. If the focus is on the brand, and the idea is to identify the brand with the company, then the company “endorsement” won’t hurt, but it probably won’t help.
• And it’s also essential that the manager realize that the focus needs to be on the brand, but also that brand isn’t the name, it’s the product itself.
• The sibling strategy for a stable of brands:
1. Focus on a common product area
2. Select a single attribute of the segment
3. Set of rigid distinctions among the brands
4. Create different, not similar brand names
5. Launch a new sibling only when you can create a new category
6. Keep control of the sibling family at the highest level
• The ideal shape of a logo type is horizontal: 2 ¼ units wide and 1 unit high.
• It’s the Nike name which gives meaning to the Swoosh; it’s not the Swoosh which gives meaning to the Nike name.
• Use color to capture the product/category. And choose a different color than your competitors.
• Markets may change, but brands should never change.
• View a brand as a badge that you wear. You tell yourself and everyone else that the brand is where you belong.
• The central characteristic of a brand is something that has to exist to stay the course. What makes it real is its consistency.
• A well known brand that doesn’t stand for anything or stands for something that is obsolete has no value. A brand that stands for something has real value even if the brand is not particularly well known.
• We need to distinguish between the company name as a company and the company name as a product. The company would be live and well by developing products in newer non-obsolete categories.
• What’s a brand? It is a singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.
• If you’re using the Internet as a medium, you can use your own existing brand name. The Internet simply becomes a complement or replacement for existing media. On the other hand, if you’re going to treat the Internet as a business, you cannot extend your business onto the Internet; you have to create a new product for the Internet. Don’t extend Sun Trust to the Internet; create a new bank category called eBank. In the first category, the Internet is simply a vehicle for simplifying the marketing and feel of your product.
Original writing date: February 24, 2006