mgroves

I’ve picked up a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout, and I’m blogging a summary of each chapter.

Chapter 4. The Law of Focus

The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.

“Owning” a word like Xerox owns “copy”, Kleenex owns “tissue”, and Volvo owns “safety”, is the most powerful concept in marketing. Just recently I linked to a site called Brand Tags (see also the Volvo and Xerox links) which might be a useful sort of word association tool to see if a brand has achieved the focus they are going for.

It should be a simple word, with a narrow focus. The word should also be benefit oriented.

Achieving this isn’t simply a matter of advertising. If a firm want to obtain this kind of obiquity, it should reduce the scope of its offering(s) to narrow their focus instead of chasing after everything.

Also, it helps if the word is an “opposing” word. It’s not a good idea to go after a word like “honesty” because no one is going after after “dishonesty”. Words like “honesty” and “quality” are merely table stakes.

Now that I’m at #5, what do you think about this book? Should I continue summarizing the remaining 17 chapters?

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