Marketing101-The Geek

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Marketing 101
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

The Law of Leadership
It’s better to be first than it is to be better.
• The basic issue in marketing is creating a
category you can be first in. It’s the law of
leadership: It’s better to be first than it is to be
better. It’s much easier to get into the mind
first than to try to convince someone you have
a better product than the one that did get
there first.
2

The Law of the Category
If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
• If you didn’t get into the prospect’s mind first, don’t give up
hope. Find a new category you can be first in. It’s not as
difficult as you might think.
• If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you
can be first in.
• When you’re the first in a new category, promote the
category. In essence, you have no competition.
• DEC told its prospects why they ought to buy a minicomputer,
not a DEC minicomputer.
3

The Law of the Mind
It’s better to be first in the mind than it is to be first in the marketplace
• The law of the mind follows from the law of
perception. If marketing is a battle of
perception, not product, then the mind takes
precedence over the marketplace.
• Apple’s problem in getting into its prospects’ minds was helped by its
simple, easy-to-remember name. On the other hand, Apple’s competitors
had complicated names that were difficult to remember. In the early days,
five personal computers were in position on the launching pad: Apple II,
Commodore Pet, IMSAI 8080, MITS Altair 8800, and Radio Shack TRS-80.
Ask yourself, which name is the simplest and easiest to remember?
4

The Law of Perception
Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perception.
• Changing a prospect’s mind is another matter. Minds of
customers or prospects are very difficult to change.
With a modicum of experience in a product category, a
consumer assumes that he or she is right. A perception
that exists in the mind is often interpreted as a
universal truth. People are seldom, if ever, wrong. At
least in their own minds.
• Everybody knows there’s a problem with Audi cars. On November 23, 1986, CBS broadcast a “60 Minutes”
segment called “Out of Control.” It called attention to a number of complaints about Audi’s “unintended
acceleration.” American sales of Audis fell through the floorboards—from 60,000 in 1986 to 12,000 in
1991. But have you ever personally had any problems with “unintended acceleration” while test-driving an
Audi? It is unlikely. Every single automobile expert who has tested the car has failed to duplicate the
complaint. Yet the perception lingers on. Recently Audi has been running advertisements comparing its
cars to comparable cars made by Mercedes-Benz and BMW. According to the ads, German automotive
experts rated Audi cars ahead of both Mercedes and BMW.
5

The Law of Focus
The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.
• A company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to
own a word in the mind of the prospect. Not a complicated word.
Not an invented one. The simple words are best, words taken right
out of the dictionary. This is the law of focus. You “burn” your way
into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept.
It’s the ultimate marketing sacrifice.
• In a way, the law of leadership—it’s better to be first than to be
better—enables the first brand or company to own a word in the
mind of the prospect. But the word the leader owns is so simple
that it’s invisible.
• An astute leader will go one step further to solidify its position. Heinz owns the word Heinz
went on to isolate the most important ketchup attribute. “Slowest ketchup in the West” is
how the company is preempting the thickness attribute. Owning the word slow helps Heinz
maintain a 50 percent market share. If you’re not a leader, then your word has to have a
narrow focus. Even more important, however, your word has to be “available” in your
category. No one else can have a lock on it.
Crest. . . cavities
Mercedes. . . engineering
BMW. . . driving
Volvo. . . safety
Domino’s. . . home delivery
Pepsi-Cola. . . youth
6

• What won’t work in marketing is leaving your own word in search
of a word owned by others. This was the case with Atari, which
owned the words video game. But the business turned out to be
faddish, so in 1982 it sailed off in a new direction. It wanted Atari to
mean computers. CEO James Morgan laid it all out: “Atari’s strength
as a name also tends to be its weakness. It is synonymous with
video games. Atari must redefine its image and broaden its business
definition to electronic consumer products.” Unfortunately for Mr.
Morgan’s strategy a host of other companies, including Apple and
IBM, owned the word he was after. Atari’s diversification was a
disaster. But the real irony was in that another company arrived in
1986 and took over the concept Atari walked away from. The
company was Nintendo, which today has 75 percent of a
multibillion-dollar market. Who knows where Atari is these days?
7

The Law of Exclusivity
Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.
• When a competitor owns a word or position in the prospect’s mind, it is
futile to attempt to own the same word. As we mentioned earlier, Volvo
owns safety. Many other automobile companies, including Mercedes Benz
and General Motors, have tried to run marketing campaigns based on
safety. Yet no one except Volvo has succeeded in getting into the
prospect’s mind with a safety message.
• Despite the disaster stories, many companies continue to violate the law of exclusivity. You can’t
change people’s minds once they are made up. In fact, what you often do is reinforce your
competitor’s position by making its concept more important.
• Some years ago Burger King started down this slippery slope from which it has never quite
recovered. A market study showed that the most popular attribute for fast food was “fast” (no big
surprise there). So Burger King did what most red-blooded marketers do. It turned to its advertising
agency and said, “If the world wants fast, our advertising should tell them we’re fast.” What was
overlooked in the research was that McDonald’s was already perceived as being the fastest
hamburger chain in the country. Fast belonged to McDonald’s. Undaunted by this, Burger King
launched its campaign with the slogan “Best food for fast times.” The program quickly became a
disaster very nearly on a par with the one that involved “Herb.” The advertising agency was fired,
management was fired, the company was sold, and downward momentum was maintained.
8

The Law of the Ladder
The strategy to use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder.
• All products are not created equal. There’s a hierarchy in the mind that prospects
use in making decisions. For each category, there is a product ladder in the mind.
On each rung is a brand name.
• Take the car rental category. Hertz got into the mind first and wound up on the top
rung. Avis got in second and National got in third. Your marketing strategy should
depend on how soon you got into the mind and consequently which rung of the
ladder you occupy. The higher the better, of course.
• There’s a relationship between market share and your position on the ladder in
the prospect’s mind. You tend to have twice the market share of the brand below
you and half the market share of the brand above you.
• Take Avis, for example. For years the company advertised the high quality of its rent-a-car service. “Finest
in rent-a-cars” was one of its campaigns. The reader looked at the ad and wondered, How could they have
the finest rent-a-car service when they’re not on the top rung of my ladder? Then Avis did the one thing
you have to do to make progress inside the mind of the prospect. They acknowledged their position on the
ladder. “Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars. So why go with us? We try harder.” For 13 years in a row, Avis had
lost money. Then, when it admitted to being No. 2, it started to make money, lots of money. Shortly
thereafter, the company was sold to ITT, which promptly ordered up the advertising theme, “Avis is going
to be No. 1.” No, they’re not, said the prospect. They’re not on the top rung of my ladder. And to make the
point, many picked up the phone and called Hertz. The campaign was a disaster. Many marketing people
have misread the Avis story. They assume the company was successful because it tried harder (i.e., it had
the better service). But that wasn’t it at all. Avis was successful because it related itself to the position of
Hertz in the mind.
9

• The top rung of the lemon-lime soda ladder was occupied by 7-Up.
(Sprite was on the second rung.) In the soft-drink field, however,
the cola ladder is much bigger than the lemon-lime ladder. (Almost
two out of three soft drinks consumed in America are cola drinks.)
So 7-Up climbed on the cola ladder with a marketing campaign
called “The Uncola.” As tea is to coffee, 7-Up became the
alternative to a cola drink. And 7-Up sales climbed to where the
brand was the third largest-selling soft drink in America.
• Unfortunately, in recent years 7-Up lost its grip on third place by
violating one of the laws yet to be discussed (The Law of Line
Extension).
• The ladder is a simple, but powerful, analogy that can help you deal
with the critical issues in marketing. Before starting any marketing
program, ask yourself the following questions: Where are we on the
ladder in the prospect’s mind? On the top rung? On the second
rung? Or maybe we’re not on the ladder at all
10

The Law of Duality
In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.
• Early on, a new category is a ladder of many rungs. Gradually, the ladder
becomes a two-rung affair.
• In batteries, it’s Eveready and Duracell. In photographic film, it’s Kodak
and Fuji. In rent-a-cars, it’s Hertz and Avis. In mouthwash, it’s Listerine and
Scope. In hamburgers, it’s McDonald’s and Burger King. In sneakers, it’s
Nike and Reebok. In toothpaste, it’s Crest and Colgate.
• Early on, in a developing market, the No. 3 or No. 4 positions look
attractive. Sales are increasing. New, relatively unsophisticated customers
are coming into the market. These customers don’t always know which
brands are the leaders, so they pick ones that look interesting or
attractive. Quite often, these turn out to be the No. 3 or No. 4 brands. As
time goes on, however, these customers get educated. They want the
leading brand, based on the naive assumption that the leading brand must
be better.
• We repeat: The customer believes that marketing is a battle of products.
It’s this kind of thinking that keeps the two brands on top: “They must be
the best, they’re the leaders.”
11

The Law of the Opposite
If you’re shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader.
• In strength there is weakness. Wherever the leader is strong, there
is an opportunity for a would-be No. 2 to turn the tables.
• Much like a wrestler uses his opponent’s strength against him, a
company should leverage the leader’s strength into a weakness. If
you want to establish a firm foothold on the second rung of the
ladder, study the firm above you. Where is it strong? And how do
you turn that strength into a weakness? You must discover the
essence of the leader and then present the prospect with the
opposite. (In other words, don’t try to be better, try to be different.)
It’s often the upstart versus old reliable.
• Coca-Cola is a 100-year-old product. Only seven people in the history of the world have
known the Coke formula, which is kept locked in a safe in Atlanta. Coca-Cola is the old,
established product. However, using the law of the opposite, Pepsi-Cola reversed the essence
of Coca-Cola to become the choice of a new generation: the Pepsi Generation.
12

The Law of Division
Over time, a category will divide and become two or more categories.
• Like an amoeba dividing in a petri dish, the marketing arena can be viewed
as an ever-expanding sea of categories.
• A category starts off as a single entity. Computers, for example. But over
time, the category breaks up into other segments. Mainframes,
minicomputers, workstations, personal computers, laptops, notebooks,
pen computers.
• Like the computer, the automobile started off as a single category. Three
brands (Chevrolet, Ford, and Plymouth) dominated the market. Then the
category divided. Today we have luxury cars, moderately priced cars, and
inexpensive cars. Full-size, intermediates, and compacts. Sports cars, four-
wheel-drive vehicles, RVs, and minivans.
• In the television industry, ABC, CBS, and NBC once accounted for 90
percent of the viewing audience. Now we have network, independent,
cable, pay, and public television, and soon we’ll have in store and
interactive television.
13

The Law of Perspective
Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time.
• Is alcohol a stimulant or a depressant? If you visit almost any bar and grill on a Friday night after
work, you’d swear that alcohol was a stimulant. The noise and laughter are strong evidence of
alcohol’s stimulating effects. Yet at 4:00 in the morning, when you see a few happy-hour customers
sleeping it off in the streets, you’d swear that alcohol is a depressant.
• Chemically, alcohol is a strong depressant. But in the short term, by depressing a person’s
inhibitions, alcohol acts like a stimulant.
• Many marketing moves exhibit the same phenomenon. The long-term effects are often the exact
opposite of the short-term effects.
• Does a sale increase a company’s business or decrease it? Obviously, in the short term, a sale
increases business. But there’s more and more evidence to show that sales decrease business in
the long term by educating customers not to buy at “regular” prices.
• Any sort of couponing, discounts, or sales tends to educate consumers to buy only when they can
get a deal. What if a company never started couponing in the first place? In the retail field the big
winners are the companies that practice “everyday low prices”— companies like Wal-Mart and K
Mart and the rapidly growing warehouse outlets.
• What happened to Coca-Cola clothes also happened to Donald Trump. At first, The Donald was
successful. Then he branched out and put his name on anything the banks would lend him money
for. What’s a Trump? A hotel, three casinos, two condominiums, one airline, one shopping center.
Fortune magazine called Trump “an investor with a keen eye for cash flow and asset values, a smart
marketer, a cunning wheeler-dealer.” Time and Newsweek put The Donald on their covers. Today
Trump is $1.4 billion in debt. What made him successful in the short term is exactly what caused
him to fail in the long term. Line extension. It looks easy, but marketing is not a game for amateurs.
14

The Law of Line Extension
There’s and irresistible pressure to extend the equity of a brand.
• One day a company is tightly focused on a single product that is highly profitable.
The next day the same company is spread thin over many products and is losing
money.
• When you try to be all things to all people, you inevitably wind up in trouble. “I’d
rather be strong somewhere,” said one manager, “than weak everywhere.”
• In a narrow sense, line extension involves taking the brand name of a successful
product (e.g., A-1 steak sauce) and putting it on a new product you plan to
introduce
• For many companies, line extension is the easy way out. Launching a new brand
requires not only money, but also an idea or concept. For a new brand to succeed,
it ought to be first in a new category(1: The Law of Leadership). Or the new brand
ought to be positioned as an alternative to the leader (9: The Law of the
Opposite). Companies that wait until a new market has developed often find these
two leadership positions already preempted. So they fall back on the old reliable
line extension approach.
• The antidote for line extension is corporate courage, a commodity in short supply.
15

The Law of Sacrifice
You have to give up something in order to get something.
• The law of sacrifice is the opposite of the law of line
extension. If you want to be successful today, you should
give something up.
• There are three things to sacrifice: product line, target
market, and constant change.
• First, the product line. Where is it written that the more
you have to sell, the more you sell?
• The full line is a luxury for a loser. If you want to be
successful, you have to reduce your product line, not
expand it. Take Emery Air Freight. Emery was in the air
freight services business. Anything you wanted to ship you
could ship via Emery. Small packages, large packages,
overnight service, delayed service.
16

The Law of Attributes
For every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute.
• In The Law of Exclusivity we made the point that you can’t own the same word or
position that your competitor owns. You must find your own word to own. You
must seek out another attribute.
• Too often a company attempts to emulate the leader. “They must know what
works,” goes the rationale, “so let’s do something similar.” Not good thinking. It’s
much better to search for an opposite attribute that will allow you to play off
against the leader. The key word here is opposite—similar won’t do.
• Coca-Cola was the original and thus the choice of older people. Pepsi successfully
positioned itself as the choice of the younger generation. Since Crest owned
cavities, other toothpastes avoided cavities and jumped on other attributes like
taste, whitening, breath protection, and, more recently, baking soda.
• Some say all attributes are not created equal. Some attributes are more important
to customers than others. You must try and own the most important attribute.
• A company that never laughs at new attributes that are exactly the opposite of their current products is
Gillette, the world’s No.1 razor blade maker. Its dominance revolves around its high-technology razors and
cartridge systems. When an upstart from France brought an opposite attribute to the category in the form
of a “disposable” razor, Gillette could have laughed and wheeled out its research on how America wants
hefty, expensive, high-technology razors. But it didn’t. Instead, Gillette jumped in with a disposable razor
of its own, called Good News. By spending heavily, Gillette was able to win the battle of the disposables.
Today the Gillette Good News razor dominates the disposable category, which has grown to dominate the
razor blade business. Moral: You can’t predict the size of a new attribute’s share, so never laugh.
17

The Law of Candor
When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.
• It goes against corporate and human nature to admit a problem. For years,
the power of positive thinking has been drummed into us. “Think positive”
has been the subject of endless books and articles.
• So it may come as a surprise to you that one of the most effective ways to
get into a prospect’s mind is to first admit a negative and then twist it into
a positive.
• First and foremost, candor is very disarming. Every negative statement you
make about yourself is instantly accepted as truth. Positive statements, on
the other hand, are looked at as dubious at best. Especially in an
advertisement. You have to prove a positive statement to the prospect’s
satisfaction. No proof is needed for a negative statement.
• Now with that mind open, you’re in a position to drive in the positive, which is your selling idea. Some
years ago, Scope entered the mouthwash market with a “good-tasting” mouthwash, thus exploiting
Listerine’s truly terrible taste. What should Listerine do? It certainly couldn’t tell people that Listerine’s
taste “wasn’t all that bad.” That would raise a red flag that would reinforce a negative perception. Things
could get worse. Instead, Listerine brilliantly invoked the law of candor: “The taste you hate twice a day.”
Not only did the company admit the product tasted bad, it admitted that people actually hated it. (Now
that’s honesty.) This set up the selling idea that Listerine “kills a lot of germs.”
18

The Law of Singularity
In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results.
• Many marketing people see success as the sum total of a lot of small
efforts beautifully executed.
• They think they can pick and choose from a number of different strategies
and still be successful as long as they put enough effort into the program.
If they work for the leader in the category, they fritter away their
resources on a number of different programs. They seem to think that the
best way to grow is the puppy approach—get into everything.
• Successful generals study the battleground and look for that one bold
stroke that is least expected by the enemy. Finding one is difficult. Finding
more than one is usually impossible. Military strategist and author B.H.
Liddell Hart calls this bold stroke “the line of, least expectation.” The Allied
invasion came at Normandy, a place whose tide and rocky shore the
Germans felt would be an unlikely choice for a landing of any scale. So it is
in marketing. Most often there is only one place where a competitor is
vulnerable. And that place should be the focus of the entire invading force.
High Med Low
19

The Law of Unpredictability
Unless you write your competitors’ plans, you can’t predict the future.
• Implicit in most marketing plans is an assumption about the future.
Yet marketing plans based on what will happen in the future are
usually wrong. With hundreds of computers and an army of
meteorologists, no one can predict the weather three days in
advance, so how do you expect to predict your market three years
in advance?
• So what can you do? How can you best cope with unpredictability?
While you can’t predict the future, you can get a handle on trends,
which is a way to take advantage of change. One example of a trend
is America’s growing orientation toward good health. This trend has
opened the door for a number of new products, especially healthier
foods. The recent runaway success of Healthy Choice frozen entrées
is a clear example of a product that took advantage of this long-
term trend.
• No one can predict the future with any degree of certainty. Nor
should marketing plans try to.
20

The Law of Success
Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.
• Ego is the enemy of successful marketing.
• Objectivity is what’s needed. When people
become successful, they tend to become less
objective. They often substitute their own
judgment for what the market wants.
• Small companies are mentally closer to the front
than big companies. That might be one reason
they grew more rapidly in the last decade. They
haven’t been tainted by the law of success.
21

The Law of Failure
Failure is to be expected and accepted.
• Too many companies try to fix things rather than
drop things. “Let’s reorganize to save the
situation” is their way of life.
• Admitting a mistake and not doing anything
about it is bad for your career. A better strategy is
to recognize failure early and cut your losses.
American Motors should have abandoned
passenger cars and focused on Jeep. IBM should
have dropped copiers and Xerox should have
dropped computers years before they finally
recognized their mistakes.
22

The Law of Hype
The situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.
• When IBM was successful, the company said very little. Now it throws a
lot of press conferences.
• When things are going well, a company doesn’t need the hype. When you
need the hype, it usually means you’re in trouble.
• Young and inexperienced reporters and editors tend to be more impressed
by what they read in other publications than by what they gather
themselves. Once the hype starts, it often continues on and on.
• No computer has received more hype than the NeXt computer. Demand
for press conference credentials was so great that Steve Jobs had to print
tickets in advance, even though the auditorium could hold several
thousand people. All the seats were filled.
• But, for the most part, hype is hype. Real revolutions don’t arrive at high
noon with marching bands and coverage on the 6:00 P.M. news. Real
revolutions arrive unannounced in the middle of the night and kind of
sneak up on you.
23

The Law of Acceleration
Successful programs are not built on fads, they’re built on trends.
• A fad is a wave in the ocean, and a trend is the tide. A fad gets a lot
of hype, and a trend gets very little.
• Like a wave, a fad is very visible, but it goes up and down in a big
hurry. Like the tide, a trend is almost invisible, but it’s very powerful
over the long term.
• A fad is a short-term phenomenon that might be profitable, but a
fad doesn’t last long enough to do a company much good.
Furthermore, a company often tends to gear up as if a fad were a
trend. As a result, the company is often stuck with a lot of staff,
expensive manufacturing facilities, and distribution networks.
• Forget fads. And when they appear, try to dampen them. One way
to maintain a long-term demand for your product is to never totally
satisfy the demand.
• But the best, most profitable thing to ride in marketing is a long-
term trend.
24

The Law of Resources
Without adequate funding an idea won’t get off the ground.
• If you have a good idea and you’ve picked up this book with the thought in
mind that all you need is a little marketing help, this chapter will throw
cold water on that thought.
• Even the best idea in the world won’t go very far without the money to get
it off the ground. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and assorted idea generators
seem to think that all their good ideas need is professional marketing help.
• Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing is a game fought in the
mind of the prospect. You need money to get into a mind. And you need
money to stay in the mind once you get there. The more successful
marketers front load their investment. In other words, they take no profit
for two or three years as they plow all earnings back into marketing.
• Money makes the marketing world go round. If you want to be successful
today, you’ll have to find the money you need to spin those marketing
wheels.
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