Wade's 22 Immutable Laws of Branding Review

I also read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding recently. I mentioned the book in a March post about the 10 best books on advertising. So, here is my version of Cliff Notes for the book:

Law #1: The Law of Expansion
The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope.
-When you put your brand name on everything from batteries to toothpaste it loses its power.
-Sales aren’t just a function of a brand’s power. They are also a function of the strength or weakness of a brand’s competition

Law #2: The Law of Contraction
A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.

Law #3: The Law of Publicity
The birth of a brand is achieved by publicity, not advertising.

Law #4: The Law of Advertising
Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy.
-Advertising budgets aren’t an investment that will pay dividends; they’re more like insurance against losses caused by competitors’ attacks.

Law #5: The Law of the Word
A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer.
- Long established brands like Kleenex, Jell-o, Xerox, and Band-Aid are generically used words because they were the first to market, established the category, and have owned it for decades.

Law #6: The Law of Credentials
The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity.

Law #7: The Law of Quality
Quality is important, but brands aren’t built by quality alone.

Law #8: The Law of the Category
A leading brand should promote the category, not the brand.
-Competition is good; it expands the market through consumer interest.
-If more people are buying within the category, you can have a smaller market share yet still generate more sales revenue overall.

Law #9: The Law of the Name
In the long run a brand is nothing more than a name.

Law #10: The Law of Extensions
The easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything.
-You need to ask yourself what customers will think of your brand when
they see it on a line extension.

Law #11: The Law of Fellowship
In order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands. -Choice stimulates demand.
-Customers respond to competition because choice is seen as a major benefit. If there’s no choice, customers become suspicious.

Law #12: The Law of the Generic
One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name.
-The majority of brand communication is verbal rather than visual. Generic words do nothing to differentiate your brand when it is talked about.
-Generic names also disappear from consumer’s minds; only specific brands stick.

Law #13: The Law of the Company
Brands are brands. Companies are companies. There’s a difference.
-The brand should always be your focus. If the company name is used it should always be secondary.

Law #14: The Law of Subbrands
What branding builds, subbranding can destroy.
-You can’t apply your own branding system to a market that sees things differently. ie/ what a car manufacturer might see as a brand, consumers see as a model. The manufacturer can claim that the latest car is a new brand all they want, but consumers won’t see it that way because they associate the company itself or the division as the brand rather than the models made by them.
-When you feel the need to create subbrands you’re chasing the market rather than building the brand.

Law #15: The Law of Siblings
There is a time and a place to launch a second brand.
-The key to a “family approach” is to make each sibling a unique, individual brand with a different name.
-Launch a new sibling only when you can create a new category, not just to fill a hole in your category or block competition.

Law #16: The Law of Shape
A brand’s logo type should be designed to fit the eyes. Both eyes.
-A ratio of one unit high by two and a quarter units wide is easily taken in by both eyes.
-Use legible typefaces rather than unique ones
-Remember: the brand name must have power before the symbol will become meaningful to consumers.

Law #17: The Law of Color
A brand should use a color that’s opposite of its major competitors.
-Red is a retail colour that attracts attention; blue is a corporate colour that communicates stability.
-Focus on creating a unique identity rather than just trying to establish a mood or using the right symbolic colour for the product.

Law #18: The Law of Borders
There are no barriers to global branding. A brand should know no borders.
-When a brand is in sync with worldwide perceptions of its own country, that brand has global potential.

Law #19: The Law of Consistency
A brand isn’t built overnight. Success is measured in decades, not years.
-Your brand has to stand for something both simple and narrow in the mind. This limitation is the essential part of the branding process.
-Limitation combined with consistency is what builds a brand.

Law #20: The Law of Change
Brands can be changed, but only infrequently and only very carefully.
Three situations where changing your brand is feasible
- Your brand is weak or nonexistent in the mind
- You want to move your brand down the food chain
- Your brand is in a slow-moving field and the change is going to take place over an extended period of time

Law #21: The Law of Mortality
No brand will live forever. Euthanasia is often the best solution. -A well-known brand that doesn’t stand for anything or stands for something obsolete has no value. A brand that stands for something has value, even if the brand isn’t particularly well known.

Law #22: The Law of Singularity
The most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness.
-No matter how long it takes, loss of singularity hurts a brand.
-What is a brand? It’s a singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.