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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.

Al Ries

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Al Ries
Age: 97
Born: 1926
Born: November 14
Author
Economist
Atlanta
Georgia
Three
Two
Brand
Brands
Answer
Question
Answers
Trouble
Words

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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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Good things happen when you narrow your focus.
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It's better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.
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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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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.
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THE LAW OF THE CONTRACTION: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.
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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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Positioning is how you differentiate yourself in the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.
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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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War and marketing have many similarities.
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Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.
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Marketing is not selling. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect.
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A laser is a weak source of energy. A laser takes [only] a few watts of energy and focuses them in a coherent stream of light. But with a laser, you can drill a hole in a diamond or wipe out cancer.
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A branding program should be designed to differentiate your cow from all the other cattle on the range. Even if all the cattle on the range look pretty much alike.
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The Law of the Generic: One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name.
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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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Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the world's first overcommunicated society. Each year we send more and receive less.
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To get into the consumer's mind, you have to sacrifice. You have to reduce the essence of your brand to a single thought or attribute. An attribute that nobody else already owns in your category.
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The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospects mind.
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Your brand's power lies in dominance. It is better to have 50% of one market, instead of 10% of five markets.
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