Linda Thompson's Key Ideas from The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
by Al Ries, Laura Ries

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

What others say about your brand is more potent than what you can say about yourself. That’s why today’s brands are built with publicity first and maintained by advertising. 

A new brand must be capable of generating favorable publicity in the media, or it won’t have a chance in the marketplace. The best way to create favorable publicity is to be the first brand in a new category.

Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy.

Many mega-brands were born in a blaze of publicity. But as the hype died out, each of these brands had to shift to advertising to defend its position. 

When a brand advertising says, “our product is the leader,” the prospect thinks, “It must be better than its competitors.” That’s the power of brand leadership.

A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer.

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.

Once a brand owns a word, it’s almost impossible for a competitor to take that word away from the brand. Saab tried to take “safety” from Volvo but failed; Volvo has locked itself in the mind of the consumer.

How do you know when a brand owns its category name? When people use the brand name generically.

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

There is one claim that takes precedence over every other claim, and that’s the claim to authenticity. 

When Coca-Cola launched its advertising program called “The only thing like Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola itself,” customers instantly responded. “Yes,” they agreed. “Coke is the real thing. Everything else is an imitation.” This is the brand’s credentials.

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

There is almost no correlation between success in the marketplace and success in comparative testing of brands. Why? Because quality, or rather the perception of quality, resides in the mind of the buyer.

To build a quality brand, narrow the focus and combine that narrow focus with a better name and a higher price. The latter allows the buyer to obtain psychic satisfaction from the public purchase and consumption of a high-end brand. 

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

Customers don’t really care about new brands; they care about new categories. Buyers don’t care about Dominos; they care are whether or not their pizza will arrive in thirty minutes.

By first preempting a new category (as Domino’s did with the home delivery of pizza) and then aggressively promoting the category, you create both a powerful brand and a rapidly escalating market.

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. 

It’s easy to 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 to be first in a new category.

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 name of your competitors.

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

Before you launch your next line extension, ask yourself what customers of your current brand will think when they see the line extension. 

If the market is moving out from under you, stay where you are and launch a second brand. If it’s not, stay where you are and continue building your brand.

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

Not only should the dominant brand tolerate competitors, but it should also welcome them. Customers respond to competition because choice is seen as a major benefit. If there is no choice, customers are suspicious. But there is a caveat: when there’s too much choice, consumption suffers.

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

Generic brand names tend to disappear into the ether. Only brand names register in the mind. When naming a brand, a good rule of thumb is to find a regular word taken out of context and use it to connote the primary attribute of your brand. Blockbuster Video was a more powerful brand name than, say, General Video Rental.

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

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 (Coca-Cola), customers see these names as brands. If you have to use the company name, use it. But do so in a decidedly secondary way.

When building brands, sub-brands can destroy.

Holiday Inn became a mega-brand with the launch of sub brands like Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn Select, and Holiday Inn Garden Court. This sub-branding is eroding the power of the core brand. 

Sub-branding is an inside-out branding strategy that tries to push the core brand in new directions. It captures management’s attention because of what it promises, not necessarily because of what it delivers.

There is a time and a place to launch a second 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 familiar identity. You want to make each brand as different and distinct as possible.

A family of sibling brands is not a strategy for every corporation. But where it is appropriate, a sibling strategy can be used to dominate a category over the long term.

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

Since the eyes of your customers are mounted side by side, the ideal shape for a logotype is horizontal—roughly two and one-fourths units wide and one unit high. The Avis logotype is almost the perfect shape.

A brand should use a colour that is the opposite of its major competitors.

When selecting a color for a brand or a logo, managers usually focus on the mood they want to establish rather than the unique identity they want to create. And while mood or tone can be important, other factors should override a choice based on mood alone. Leaders have the first choice. And for that reason, it’s better to create a separate brand identity than it is to use the right symbolic color. 

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

Every country has its own unique perceptions. When a brand is in sync with its own country’s perceptions, that brand has the possibility of becoming a global brand. When playing the global game, appeal to a different segment of a market rather than its core. Corona Extra, for instance, became a global force by associating the brand with the boom in Mexican cuisine. 

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

Markets may change, but brands shouldn’t. Ever. They may be meant slightly or given a new slant, but their essential characteristics should never be changed.

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

If you are embedded in the prospect’s mind and have a unique and distinct perception, then avoid changing your brand. It’s going to be a long, difficult, expensive, and perhaps impossible process.  

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

Once you understand the nature of branding, you’ll know when it’s time to let your old brand die a natural death and know when to create another in a newly invented category.

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

In summary, what is a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.