The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: notes

i liked this book so i made a few notes if you like some concepts i recommend checking the book out, it’s concise

how i see the book

• puts a real good accents on what to pay attention to
• paints a big picture of consumer <-> product relations
• condenses it to simple principles with numerous real life examples

notes

generally This is a quote

this is my thought

1, 2: Law of leadership AND Law of Category: better to be first than better

• for maximising success it’s easier to create a category
• IBM(computers), coca-cola(1st coke), heineken(1st import beer), Harvard(1st university), Jeep(1st off-road car), gillette(1st disposable razors), tide(1st laundry things)
• if it doesn’t work it might be to late OR idea sucks
• Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products
• many famous things that aren’t first WERE the first if you rephrase: first woman to cross the ocean were the third person
• the question to ask when launching is NOT “How is this better” but “First what?”
• Forget the brand, think categories: people are more open to trying new things than to switching to competitors / trying better things
• It’s so much easier without competition

3: Law of mind: better to be firs in peoples minds than in marketplace

• marketing: perception > product ::: mind > marketplace
• once mind is made up, it rarely changes

  see a lot of exaggerations today, with startups that hyped and never launched
  

4: Law of perception: marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products

• there are no best products but perceptions
• subjective reality > objective reality
• marketing is a manipulation of perceptions
• truth = expert’s perception; expert = person perceived to be an expert

  thought: those thesises make sence for cryptocurrency (why wouldn't they, cryptos are same as corporations). e.g BTC is the first one and the ~leader, there are some categories with their leaders, price largely depends on people beliefs at the moment
  

• it’s perception of the customers and their beliefs in “what’s best” makes the difference: same cars: toyota, honda, nissan in USA the honda is a leader, in japan the toyota is
• customers are influenced by second-hand perceptions: everyone knows that [blank]… (everyone knows that japanece products are of good quality)
• however, customers believe that the market is a battle of products

5 LAW OF FOCUS: owning a word in the prospect’s mind

• the word the leader owns is so simple it’s invisible (IBM Apple macbook = laptop; cola=coke; copier=xerox; dominos=home delivery…; pepsi=youth)
• a word has to be available in your category
• a word can relate to benefit; service; audience; sales
• essence of marketing = narrowing the focus 🤔 can’t stand for something if you chase everything; bc customers won’t believe you
• “everybody stands for quality. As a result, nobody does”
• “You can’t position yourself as a honest politician, because nobody is willing to take the opposite position” similarly, you can’t position yourself for quality
• once you have a word, you have to let others use it, it will signify your leadership
• anti-drug vs anti-abortion campaigns: abortion sides have strong words, meaning focus and focused sides: pro-life, pro-choice; while anti-drug campaign doesn’t and is failing
  • potential word for such campaign could be loser :)

6 LAW OF EXCLUSIVITY: 2 corps can’t share a single word in same mind

• example: FedEx and DHL: FedEx was successful in overnight letter, DHL had worldwide; FedEx tried to broaden self to worldwide but failed
• opposite of 5 “once you have a word, you have to let others use it, it will signify your leadership”: if you don’t own a word and try to chase it, you might just reinforce others leadership

  i like the concept of *word*: idea, concept, gist, position, value
  

• research often leads the contrary way. e.g. burger king done some research, found out that fast is what people want from fastfood, and their next marketing campaign best food for fast times failed because macdonalds has taken this word already

7 LAW OF LADDER

• ladder = hierarchy of products (phones(kind of): apple > samsung > xiaomi > …)
• Avis was top2. they tried to market were no. 1, failed. then they marketed as no.2. and were successful. because prospect disagreed with former statement and agreed with latter
• you can’t implant your hierarchy into peoples eyes just like that
• high interest and luxury products tend to have many levels (competitors) on a ladder (cola, cigarettes, etc)
• infrequent and unpleasant experience products have few rings (life insurance, car batteries)
• tendency is Nth company has twice as much as (N-1)th and twice as little as (N+1)th on a ladder (1-2-4-8-16-)
• ~max number of levels is ~7

8 LAW OF DUALITY: many competitors -long run-> 2 competitors

• usually its the old company and the uprising one
• usually the market share levels down to 50/50
• usually it’s the first two companies in the ladder

  the high level view of developement of markets is great
  

• the different markets have different speed (e.g. high speed videogame market vs slow telephone market)

year	1904	1914	1927	1995
car companies	60	245	44	~3

• top marketers concentrate on top2 rungs

9 THE LAW OF THE OPPOSITE: if you’re shooting for the 2nd place, the strategy is determined by the ladder

• leverage the leader’s strength into a weakness
• discover the essence and try to be different! (e.g. old cola vs new pepsi for youth)
• audience is often consists of those who want to buy from a leader and those who don’t want to buy from a leader
• one should accentuate on real faults of the leader: stolichnaya vodka said we’re from russia so we’re real, not brewed in america like other vodkas
• marketing is often a battle for legitimacy

10 THE LAW OF DIVISION: over time categories will split into more

• computers -> personal computers, mainframes, workstations, laptops, smartphones, etc
• says it also affects the countries (e.g. 1776:35 empires/kingdoms -> 130 -WW2->190) but i disagree
• musical genres
• some corps think that categories are combining because of interconnections
• don’t use same name for different categories (Volkswagen’s attempt lost them 67->4% market share) (create a new brand)

11 THE LAW OF PERSPECTIVE: marketing effects take place over an extended period of time

• long term effects are often the opposite of the short term ones: e.g. alcohol stimulant -> depressant
• sales (discounts) work similarly
• couponing is a drug: they use it to keep sales on a same level
• line extension is similarly dangerous
• if a bullet took five years to reach a target, very few criminals would be convicted of homicide
• example with donald trump: he used to put his name on everything(hotel, casinos, airline, mall) and now(~1995) he’s in debt, but look at him now :^)

12 THE LAW OF LINE EXTENSION: irresistible pressure to extend

• most violated law
• line extension in a nutshell: iphone -> ipad -> iwatch; macintosh -> mac, macbook; etc
• however it’s dangerous because the company is perceived as the product, not the manufacturer (the new product is not associated with the company)
• the leader of category is generally not line extended
• more is less; less is more

how come apple, microsoft, google, amazon became successfull??

amazon stands for 3 things at least: groceries delivery, amazon web servises, books
probably branding, they came up for different names for those services: amazon, AWS, kindle

• In conventional view, a business strategy is to develop such big idea to hold all of a company’s products and services
• The antidote for line extension is corporate courage hmm ???

13 THE LAW OF SACRIFICE: give up something to get something

is it a blue ocean?
probably better fit would be the law of categories

• opposite of the line extension
• 3 things to sacrifice:

1. product line: reduce the product
   • The world of business is populated by big generalists and narrow specialists… most of generalists are in trouble
2. target market: wider net ≠ more customers
   • the apparent target of your marketing is not the actual buyers: malboro marketed the cigarettes for the cowboys; the 50yo guy who thinks he’s 29 will drink pepsi
3. constant change: the best way to maintain a position is not to change it

14 THE LAW OF ATTRIBUTES: for every attribute(feature, word) there is an opposite, effective attribute??

kind of extention of the 9th law of the opposite

• Marketing is a battle of ideas

attributes are *prefixes* in a category, the word consists of attribute + category

reliable car
personal computer
cola for youth

• you can’t take on existing attributes
• you can’t predict the size of a new attribute’s share
• burger king failed to take “fast” from mcdonalds. it had the opportunity to own the adults or “grown up” kids. potential word: grow up

15 THE LAW OF CANDOUR(sincerity): admit the negative, the prospect will give you a positive

• admit the negative and twist it into positive
• candour is disarming: every negative statement is instantly accepted as truth
  • “joy is the most expensive perfume in the world” -> “must be worth it”
  • “with a name like Smucker’s it has to be good” -> “funny”
  • Listerine (mouth washing): “The taste you hate twice a day” -> “probably kills a lot of germs”
  • Avis: “we’re no.2 in car renting services” -> “they must be trying hard” did really well
• marketing is often a search for the obvious, cause you can’t change mind once it’s made up
• must be used carefully, has to trigger instant agreement, must shift to the positive

16 THE LAW OF SINGULARITY: only one move will produce substantial results

• trying harder or easier makes marginal results
• the law of averages wipes out a difference
• common-sense: success is result of combination of little right moves
• but Only thing that works in marketing is the single, bold stroke
• looking for a place for such stroke, where competitor is vulnerable, is hard
• case study: coke is fighting with old and the new coca-cola; they need to remove new and accentuate on the real taste

17 THE LAW OF UNPREDICTABILITY: unless you write your competitors’ plans, you can’t predict the future

• most of the US corp. problems are related to short-term financial thinking, not short-term marketing thinking
• “Companies that live by the numbers, die by the numbers”
• good short term planning: set up a word/angle that differentiates you from competitors
  • dominos: set up home delivery system
• long term: set up a coherent marketing direction to maximise that idea/angle
  • dominos: develop delivery chain ASAP
• you can’t predict the future but you can grasp trends
• danger of working with trends is extrapolation to the future (nothing changes is in fact~equally probable to something changes)
• problem with research: hard to measure new things
  • xerox research showed that no one would pay for the expensive copies, they ignored it
• to cope with unpredictability be flexible, be willing to adapt quickly
• predicting a future ≠ taking a chance: we can take acknowledged risks, but it’s riskier to be certain in predictions

18 THE LAW OF SUCCESS: success -> arrogance -> failure

• success -> ego -> less objectivity(they think they know better, that they can do anything they want) -> failure
• although ego is also a driving force
• success -> they think the name(brand) is what causes it -> line extension
• fact: right moves -> success
• injecting an ego in the marketing process is what hurts
• “Brilliant marketers have the ability to think like a prospect thinks”
• for the ceo, it’s getting harder and harder to gather objectivity with the growth
• marketing is to importent to delegate
• small companies can grow so fast cause they are mentally closer to the front

19 THE LAW OF FAILURE: expect and accept the failure

• recognise failure early and cut your losses
• Japanese seem to be able to adit a mistake early, they eliminate the ego. it’s easier to “we were wrong” than “i was wrong”
• Wal-Mart: “ready, fire, aim”: normalisation of mistakes
• personal agenda can mess with corporate agenda: failure to take risks (e.g. new managers tend to be overly careful, no one has been fired for NOT making a bold move)
• one way to fight this is to make this transparent: announce a person who would greatly benefit from the success of a new product (hm) + allow managers to judge a concept objectively

20 THE LAW OF HYPE: it’s often opposite of what it appears in the press

• hype is usually a signal of trouble
• when things are well one doesn’t need a hype
• new coke had probably the most hype: free ads estimate at 1$bil
• 1995: new coke vs coke classic sales are 1:15
• hype is often violates the law of unpredictability
• capture the imagination of the public ≠ revolutionise a market
• Real revolutions don’t arrive at high noon with marching bands and coverage on the 6:00 PM news. Real revolutions arrive unannounced in the middle of the night and kind of sneak up on you.

21 THE LAW OF ACCELERATION: successful programs are not build on fads(hot latest hyped trends), they’re built on trends

fad	wave	lots of hype	short term
trend	tide	little hype	long term

• fashion is a fad that repeats itself
• don’t miss a fad for a trend
• if you notice your business turns into fad, the best is to dampen it:
  • seasonal, movie toys are for one time sale
  • barbies are the trend; it wasn’t hyped, yet it’s popular long-term
• successful entertainers control their appearances:
  • Elvis Presley was restricted in the number of appearances -> impact of one appearance was bigger; as the start he overdosed appearances and later he dampened them
• One way to maintain a long-term demand for your product is to never totally satisfy the demand

THE LAW OF RESOURCES: idea can’t be realised without funds

• you need the money to get into peoples mind; you need money to stay there
• mediocre idea + $1kk > great idea + $0
• 1minute of WW2 ~ $9k; 1m of Vietnam ~ $22k; 1m of Super Bowl commercial ~ $1.5m (now $13m :^))
• use your idea to find the money, marketing comes later
• get the idea -> get the money to exploit it
• spend enough: in war they ~always overspend a bit

November 1, 2022