22 Immutable Laws

of Branding
A look at the Title Pages and chapter
examples in the book Al Ries and Laura
Ries made famous back in 1998

Expansion
The power of a brand is inversely
proportional to its slope.
Chevrolet used to be the largest-selling
automobile brand in America. In 1986,
for example, the Chevrolet division of
General Motors sold 1,718,839 cars. But
trying to be all things to everyone
undermined the power of the brand.
Today Chevrolet sells less than a million
cars per year and has fallen to second
place in the market behind Ford.
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Contraction
A brand becomes stronger when you
narrow its focus.
In a few short years, Starbucks has
become one of Americas best known
and most popular brands. Narrowing
ones focus is not the same as carrying a
limited line. Starbucks offers thirty
different types of coffee.
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Publicity
The birth of a brand is achieved with
publicity, not advertising.
Anita Roddick created the Body Shop in
1976 around the concept of natural
cosmetics, made of pure ingredients, not
tested on animals, and kind to both the
environment and the people indigenous
to the communities in which the products
originated. With virtually no advertising,
but with massive amounts of publicity,
the Body Shop has become a powerful
global brand.
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Advertising
Once born, a brand needs advertising to
stay healthy.
A consistent theme of Goodyear
advertising over the years has been #1
in tires. So who makes the best tires? It
must be Goodyear, thinks the consumer.
Its the leader.
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The Word
A brand should strive to own a word in
the mind of the consumer.
Federal Express became successful by
being the first air cargo carrier to narrow
its focus to overnight delivery, thereby
owning the word overnight in the mind
of the air cargo user. FedEx has become
synonymous with overnight delivery.
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Credentials
The crucial ingredient in the success of
any brand is its claim to authenticity.
In 1942, Coca-Cola launched an
advertising program called the only thing
like Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola itself. Its
the real thing. In 1970, it reprised the
real thing slogan for about a year.
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Quality
Quality is important, but brands are not
built by quality alone.
Rolex has become the worlds bestknown and best-selling brand of
expensive watch. Does quality have
anything to do with its success?
Probably not. Does Rolex make highquality watches? Probably. Does it
matter? Probably not.
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The Category
A leading brand should promote the
category, not the brand.
EatZis is the first brand in a new
category which it calls the meal-market.
Jointly owned by Brinker International
and Phil Romano, EatZis focuses on
restaurant-quality food primarily for
takeout consumption.
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The Name
In the long run a brand is nothing more
than a name.
One of the worlds most powerful brands,
Xerox demonstrates many of the most
important laws of branding, including
being the first in a new category (plainpaper copier) with a short, unique name.
Yet when Xerox tried to put its powerful
copier name on computers, the result
was billions in losses.
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Extensions
The easiest way to destroy a brand is to
put its name on everything.
With a powerful marketing program,
Miller High Life was rapidly gaining on
market leader Budweiser. (It got within
20 percent of the King of Beers.) Then
Miller introduced a bevy of line-extension
brands and stopped Miller High Life cold.
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Fellowship
In order to build the category, a brand
should welcome other brands.
One of the best locations for a numbertwo brand is across the street from the
leader. The best place for a Planet
Hollywood is right across the street from
its biggest competitor, Hard Rock Caf.
Both brands will benefit.
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Generic
One of the fastest routs to failure is giving
a brand a generic name.
Blockbuster Video is a good brand name
for a video rental store, while General
Video Rental is not. Brands should avoid
generic names like the plague. Yet
wherever you look, you see a raft of
generic names, especially in the retail
area.
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Company
Brands are brands. Companies are
companies. There is a difference.
Does the Tide brand need the corporate
endorsement of the company name,
Procter & Gamble? Probably not. Will a
corporate endorsement hurt the brand?
Probably not. Corporate endorsements
are primarily for the trade, not for the
enlightenment of the consumer.
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Subbrands
What branding builds, subbranding can
destroy.
Holiday Inn has become a megabrand
with the launch of subbrands like Holiday
Inn Express, Holiday Inn Select, Holiday
Inn SunSpree Resorts, and Holiday Inn
Garden Court. This subbranding is
eroding the power of the core brand.
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Siblings
There is a time and a place to launch a
second brand.
When Honda wanted to introduce an
expensive car, it didnt call the brand a
Honda Plus or a Honda Ultra. It
developed a new brand called Acura,
which became a big success. As a
matter of fact, Acura quickly became the
largest-selling imported luxury car in
America.
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Shape
A brands logotype should be designed to
fit the eyes. Both eyes.
A customer sees the world through two
horizontally mounted eyes peering out of
his or her head. Its like looking out the
windshield of an automobile. For
maximum visual impact, a logotype
should have the same shape as a
windshield, roughly two and one-forth
units wide and one unit high. The Avis
logotype is almost the perfect shape.
The Arbys logotype is much too vertical.17

Color
A brand should use a color that is the
opposite of its major competitors.
What color is a Tiffany box? Its that
distinctive robins-egg blue. All Tiffany
boxes are blue. If Tiffany had used a
variety of colors for its boxes, it would
have lost a marvelous opportunity to
reinforce the brand name with a
distinctive color.
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Borders
There are no barriers to global branding.
A brand should know no borders.
Heineken NV exports its brand to some
170 different countries. In most of these
countries Heineken is the largest-selling
high-priced beer. (Today Heineken
brews its beer locally in some fifty
countries.)
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Consistency
A brand is not built overnight. Success is
measured in decades, not years.
BMW has been the ultimate driving
machine for twenty-five years. Whats
even more remarkable is the fact that
BMW retained its strategy even though
the brand was driven through three
separate advertising agencies. A change
in agencies usually signals the end of a
brands consistency.
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Change
Brands can be changed, but only
infrequently and only very carefully.
Citibank is in the process of changing
from a corporate bank to a consumer
bank. It plans to make Citibank the first
global consumer bank. It will take awhile,
but it can be done. So far, so good. But
now comes the merger with Travelers
Group, which threatens the entire
branding process.
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Mortality
No brand will live forever. Euthanasia is
often the best solution.
Film photography is slowly being
replaced by digital photography. But
Kodak refuses to face that reality.
Instead it is trying to save its brand by
using the Kodak name on its digital
products.
22

Singularity
The most important aspect of a brand is
its single-mindedness.
Volvo has been selling safety for some
thirty-five years. In the process, the
brand has become the largest-selling
European luxury car.

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The 22 Immutable
Laws of BRANDING
How to Build a Product or Service into a
World-Class Brand
Al Ries and Laura Ries
1998

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