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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.

Al Ries

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Al Ries
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: November 14
Author
Economist
Atlanta
Georgia
Must
Brands
Mind
Efforts
Build
Nobody
Branding
Focus
Owning
Effort
Owns
Word
Prospect
Else
Brand

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Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.
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Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.
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Advertising is the way great brands get to be great brands.
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It's better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.
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The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.
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THE LAW OF THE CONTRACTION: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.
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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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Marketing is what a company is in business to do. Marketing is a company's ultimate objective.
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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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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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Strategy should evolve out of the mud of the marketplace, not in the antiseptic environment of an ivory tower.
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Good things happen when you narrow your focus.
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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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Everyone is interested in what‘s new. Few people are interested in what‘s better.
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It normally takes decades to build a brand... It's the forgetting of the old truth that allows a person to accept a new truth. You need to allow enough time for this forgetting to take place
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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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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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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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Marketing is not selling. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect.
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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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