The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand

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.

Customers don’t really care about new brands, they care about new categories. They don’t care about Domino’s; they care about whether or not their pizza will arrive in thirty minutes. They don’t care about Callaway; they care about whether or not an oversize driver will cut strokes off their golf scores. They don’t care about Prince; they care abou

Strategy should be developed first from a publicity point of view.

A better strategy in a sea of similar products with similar prices is to deliberately start with a higher price. Then ask yourself, What can we put into our brand to justify the higher price?

Let sleeping brands lie. Before you launch your next line extension, ask yourself what customers of your current brand will think when they see the line extension.

When you broaden your brand, you weaken it.

The minute a brand begins to stand for something in the mind, the company that owns the brand looks for ways to broaden the base, to get into other markets, to capture other attributes. This is a serious error and one of the most common mistakes in branding.

Run up a red flag whenever you hear the words: “Why should we limit ourselves?” You should limit your brand. That’s the essence of branding. Your brand has to stand for something both simple and narrow in the mind. This limitation is the essential part of the branding process.

Brands are used as personality statements. (Some marketing people call these statements “badges.”) Your choice of a badge is often determined by the statement you want to make to friends, neighbors, coworkers, or relatives.