Quote

Changing the direction of a large company is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier. It takes a mile before anything happens. And if it was a wrong turn, getting back on course takes even longer.

Al Ries

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Al Ries
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: November 14
Author
Economist
Atlanta
Georgia
Happens
Turn
Carrier
Change
Takes
Aircraft
Anything
Courses
Mile
Back
Course
Miles
Even
Company
Direction
Trying
Getting
Changing
Like
Wrong
Large
Turns
Longer

More quotes by Al Ries

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Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store. After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about the brand forever.
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Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.
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What should a brand leader advertise?Brand leadership, of course. Leadership is the single most important motivating factor in consumer behavior.
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Marketing is what a company is in business to do. Marketing is a company's ultimate objective.
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The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.
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Advertising is the way great brands get to be great brands.
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A successful branding program is based on the concept of singularity. It creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no product on the market quite like your product.
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Only brand names register in the mind... What you should generally do is take a regular word and use it out of context to connote the primary attribute of your brand.
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Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.
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If you can build a powerful brand, you will have a powerful marketing program. If you CAN'T then all the advertising, fancy packaging, sales promotion and public relations in the world won't help you achieve your objective.
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Strategy should evolve out of the mud of the marketplace, not in the antiseptic environment of an ivory tower.
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A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer.
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The real barrier (to building a brand) is the human mind. It normally takes decades to build a brand because it takes decades to penetrate the gray matter in between your ears.
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Good things happen when you narrow your focus.
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If you want 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.
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The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospects mind.
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The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.
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Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.
Al Ries
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What's your brand? If you can't answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand's in trouble.
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It's the first company to build the mental position that has the upper hand, not the first company to make the product. IBM didn't invent the computer Sperry Rand did. But IBM was the first to build the computer position in the prospect's mind.
Al Ries