Customer's want brands that are narrow in scope and easy to identify with a single word.

A five-step pattern that retail powerhouses follow:

1. Narrow the focus by contracting the category, not expanding it.
2. Stock in depth. A typical Toys "R" Us carries 10m toys, more than triple the selection of large department stores.
3. Buy Cheap. Because of economies of scale, Toys "R" Us makes its money buying toys, not selling them.
4. Sell cheap. By buying at low prices, a category killer can sell at low prices and still maintain good margins.
5. Dominate the category. This is the ultimate objective of any branding program.

When consumers are bombarded by hundreds of commercial messages each day, they tune out the jingles and slogans. But most people do pay attention to news stories about new products.

The best way to generate publicity is by being the first brand in a new category. Since the news media want to talk about what's new, a brand that is first can generate enormous amounts of publicity.

Once the story grows stale, however, companies can no longer count on getting free publicity. At that point, and only at that point, the company has to shift to advertising. Advertising doesn't build leadership of a brand: but, once the brand is on top, advertising keeps it there. Any new competitor that takes on a brand leader will have to pay heavily to compete.

Through both publicity and advertising, you must strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer. Once a brand owns a word, it's almost impossible for a competitor to take that word away. Ideally, the brand name will turn into a household name for the product. Consumers then refer to the category by the brand name, even when they use a competing product.

Expand The Market, Not the Brand:
Instead of expanding the brand, companies succeed by expanding the market. Build your profits by expanding the market for its core.

Throughout history, the most successful brands have been those that kept a narrow focus, and then expanded the category. Instead of asking what share of the an existing market your brand can capture, ask how large a market your brand can create by narrowing its focus, and owning a word in the consumer's mind.

Creating a New Product Category:
When you narrow the focus so much that there's no longer any market for the brand, you create something even better: a new category.

The paradox is that branding is usually thought of as the process of capturing a bigger share of an existing market. But its most useful aspect has nothing to do with increasing a company's market share. Instead, it has to do with starting a totally new category.

In this way, you can have the leading brand in a rapidly growing segment of the market. This requires you to do 2 things at once:

1. Launch the brand in a way that creates the perception that the brand is the first, the leader, the pioneer, or the original. You should use one of these words to describe your brand.
2. Promote the new category.

A Unique Brand Needs a Unique Name: The most important branding decision you'll ever make is what to name your product or service. With a strong, unique name, your brand can become the household name for the new category, and maintain its leadership when competitors introduce similar products.

To find a unique brand name, choose a regular word taken out of context that describes the primary attribute of your brand. Keep in mind that using the same name for two different businesses weakens the identity of the brand.

Beware of Line Extensions:
Reasons why Line extensions typically fare poorly in the marketplace:

1. They often combine a brand name with a weak generic name.
2. Managers typically measure only the success of the extension, without measuring the erosion of the core brand.
3. Can tell consumers that there's something wrong with the existing product.

How To Use the Company Name:
Should the company name dominate the brand name? Should the brand name dominate the company name? Or, should they be given equal weight?

The answer is based on the fact that consumers buy brands: they don't buy companies. When a company name is used alone as a brand name, customers see the name as the brand. 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 secondary name is seen as the company name.

The best branding strategy should be to use the company name as the brand name. If this is not an option and the company name and the brand name are different, then the brand name should dominate. Use only the brand name on the package, and relegate the company name to small type.

Launch Sibling Brands, Not Subbrands:
Subbranding takes the brand in exactly the opposite direction, destroying the image that the brand builds. The most effective way for a company with an established brand to introduce new products is by launching totally new brands, each with a unique name and a separate identity.

Follow 6 principles when selecting a sibling strategy for your brands:

1. Focus on common product area, such as passenger cards, chewing gum, or over the counter drugs
2. Select a single attribute to segment. The most commonly used attribute is price, but you can also choose distribution, calories or flavors. This allows you to keep each brand unique from the others
3. Set up rigid distinctions between brands. Price is the easiest, because you can put specific numbers on each brand to avoid overlap.
4. Create different, not similar brand names. Instead of creating a family of brands, create a family of different brands.
5. Launch a new sibling only when you can create a new category. New brands should not be launched just to fill a hole in the line, or to compete directly with an existing competitor.
6. Keep control of the sibling family at the highest level. If you don't, your distinctive brands will slowly grow to resemble each other.

According to the law of fellowship, the dominant brand should not only tolerate competitors, but welcome them. When there is no competition within a category, the competition is with other categories. Competition makes customers more conscious of the product, and increases sales in the category. Without another brand as a comparison, consumers suspect that category is flawed, or that the price is too high.

Build a Global Brand:
This allows you to keep the brand's narrow focus in its home country, while growing sales through going global. Since every country has its own unique perceptions, a brand that is in sync with those perceptions, and the first to be exported, has the potential to become a global brand. It doesn't even have to come from the country that carries that perception.

Don't Change Your Brand Name to Keep Up with the Market:
The only way for a brand to get into the consumer's mind is by standing for something. While markets may change, brands should stay the same. Therefore, whenever you hear the question, "Why should we limit ourselves?" remember this answer: The best brands have to be limited. The brand has to stand for something simple and narrow in the mind. This limitations is the essential aspect of branding. Limitation combined with consistency over many decades is what builds a brand.

A few rare exceptions when a brand can be changed successfully: It occurs inside the mind of the consumer and not inside the company.

1. Your brand is weak or nonexistent in the mind. You have nothing to lose.
2. Want to move your brand down the food chain. Remember, though, that it is nearly impossible to move up the price ladder.
3. In slow-moving filed, and the change is going to take place over a long time. Where very little change has actually occurred in the mind of the prospect.

A well-known brand that doesn't stand for anything, or that stands for something obsolete, has no value. In contrast, a brand that stands for something has value even if its not well know, because it still has the potential to create a powerful brand.

A brand is most powerful when you can use it to ask for specific product. Above all else, a brand is a singular concept or idea that you own inside the mind of the prospect.

I hope you have enjoyed this brief recap of, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries & Larua Ries.

Stay tuned for the article recap of, Brand Warfare.

Referrals are greatly appreciated. If you know someone who I should contact, please let me know.

If you would like to join me on one of our upcoming tours, if there is something that you would like me to address, or if you know of someone who might like to receive TK's Korner, please let me know via e-mail at tkubinski@sextonprinting.com or phone. Take care and have a great day.

Successfully,
Tom Kubinski-Printing Consultant