Hope Schaefer - StoryBrand Certified Marketing Consultant & Copywriter

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22 Immutable Laws of Branding: The Laws I Live By

Branding laws

If you’re looking for ways to accelerate growth so you’ll surpass your competition, 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is your ideal guide.

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

In his classic on branding, Al Ries simply states, “the most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness.”

So if you or your marketing team ever says, “Why should we limit ourselves?”

Remember, this is a red flag question.

Pause and immediately return to the fundamentals of building a brand, “the most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness.”

Focus and single-mindedness require discipline, especially when you see your competition broadening their approach.

But a narrow focus is the key to success in branding.

Ries shares fundamentals to help business owners avoid common branding mistakes:

  • “Today most products and services are bought, not sold.  Branding ‘pre-sells’ the product or service to the user. Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.”
  • “Nothing happens until somebody brands something.”
  • “Your brand is the single idea or concept that you own inside the mind of your customer.”
  • “What you think your brand is doesn’t really matter. It’s only what your customer thinks your brand is that matters.”
  • “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.  The limitation is the essential part of the branding process.”  
  • “Limitation combined with consistency (over decades, not years) is what builds a brand.”

Remember, the core of a failed product is usually a no-brand strategy issue not a no-good product issue.

A few famous examples of branding strategy missteps:

  • Little Caesars leaving their buy one, get one “Pizza. Pizza” take out focused business.
  • KFC trying to distance itself from fried chicken.
  • Holiday Inn trying to get into the upscale hotel segment.
  • Atari walking away from gaming and attempting to become a computer.

When you read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service Into a World Class Brand you’ll discover:

  1. How the power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope. (Law of Expansion)
  2. Why a brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.  (Law of Contraction)
  3. How the birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising and why so many businesses get this wrong. (Law of Publicity)
  4. Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy. (Law of Advertising)
  5. The truth about why a brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer. (Law of the Word)
  6. How the crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity. (Law of Credential)
  7. Why quality is important, but brands are not built on quality alone. (Law of Quality)
  8. How a leading brand should promote the category, not the brand. (Law of Category)
  9. Why in the long run a brand is nothing more than a name. (Law of the Name)
  10. How the easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything. (Law of Extensions)
  11. Discover the counterintuitive truth that in order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands. (Law of Fellowship)
  12. Uncover the simple fact that one of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name. (Law of the Generic)
  13. Identity the very real difference between brands and companies. (Law of the Company)
  14. Understand how sub-branding can destroy your brand.  (Law of Sub Brands)
  15. How to know the time and the place to launch a second brand. (Law of Siblings)
  16. Why a brand’s logotype should be designed to fit the eyes.  Both eyes. (Law of Shape)
  17. How this simple fact proves a brand should use a color that is the opposite of its major competitors. (Law of Color)
  18. If there are no barriers to global branding, then a brand should know no borders. (Law of Borders)
  19. Why a brand is not built overnight, how success is measured. (Law of Consistency)
  20. What if brands can be changed. (Law of Change)
  21. Uncover if euthanasia is the best solution. (Law of Mortality)
  22. How to embrace the most important aspect of a brand. (Law of Singularity)

Three ways to overcome branding mistakes and create unity with your strategy and your messaging are to:

A Review: Contagious: Why Things Catch On

contagious review things catch on

Why do some ideas go viral while others disappear overnight?

If you want to learn how to make your brand spread like wildfire, delve into Jonah Berger’s book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

Berger uncovers the six principles or STEPPS needed to increase your chances of going viral:

  1. Social Currency: We share things that make us look good.
  2. Triggers: Top of mind, tip of tongue
  3. Emotion: When we care, we share
  4. Public: Built to show, built to grow
  5. Practical Value: News you can use
  6. Stories: Information travels under the guise of idle chatter

To increase your odds of building a contagious brand, ask these key questions and incorporate more of these basic principles or STEPPS today:

Social Currency

  • Does talking about your brand or idea make people look good?  
  • Are you making people feel like insiders?

Triggers

  • What cues make people think about your brand or idea?  
  • How can you grow the habit and make it come to mind more often?

Emotion

  • Does talking about your brand or idea create emotion?
  • How can you kindle the emotional fire?

Public

  • Does your brand or idea advertise itself?
  • How can you create a more public view of your product?

Practical Value

  • Does talking about your brand or idea help people help others?  
  • How can you highlight the value so others want to share the useful information?

Stories  

  • How can you embed your brand or idea in a narrative that people want to share?  
  • How can you make your story both viral and valuable?

Remember: Regular people with regular products and ideas have successfully created viral brands.  

Although Berger highlights success stories of Barclay Prime, Crest, Will It Blend?, andRue La La, he teaches you that word of mouth and social influence are not dependent on a large budget.  

If you want to learn to set the world on fire with your product or service, read the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

What books have you read lately that have helped you in your marketing? Comment below and share!

How to Use Brain Science to Grow Your Brand

science brain

What Brain Scans Reveal About Grabbing the Attention of Customers

If you’re struggling to gain the attention of your customer, you ’re not alone.

Imagine the noisy, busy, multitasking lives of your customers. Bombarded with countless messages each day, it’s no wonder your customers may be deaf to your message.

You may not realize it, but your customers are fighting a battle you do not see.  

In fact, you’re fighting this same battle. Think back to the last conference call, team meeting, or lecture you attended.

How much of your time did you spend actively engaged and how much time were you daydreaming?  

“We’re machines of daydreaming,”  Mike McHargue (better known as Science Mike) explained to Don Miller on the Building a StoryBrand Podcast.

“We spend up to a third of our waking time lost in fantasy, and that’s because most of our brain’s real estate, something called the neocortex, is devoted to trying to predict the future.

You’re constantly thinking about what could happen if this:  What if my paycheck comes through?  What if my paycheck doesn’t come through? What if I get a raise?”

Science Mike shares a practical way to cut through the daydreaming and attract the attention of our customers.

McHargue explained, “What we found in brain scans is that when people are wrapped up in a story, they stop daydreaming and are fully present in a way that would be in like a life or death situation. That level of focus, we call attentional narrowing, means that the senses, the imagined experiences of a story become real to our own brains.”

McHargue continued, “So if you read about Harry Potter drinking Butterbeer, your brain starts to imagine what Butterbeer tastes like and even gives you some of that sensation.

If you’re watching Star Wars and an X Wing is flying through this channel on the Death Star, you feel like you’re there, like you’re moving. Like the explosions are real. Your brain turns it all into real sensory information even though it’s fiction.”

As a business owner, now you realize daydreaming is holding your customers’ attention hostage, but you may not be sure how to free from this powerful distraction.

Incorporating the power of story into your marketing helps you grab and keep the attention of your customers.

When it comes to implementing story into your marketing, focus on these three key principles:

  1. The reason people are going to your website, asking for help, or buying your product is they’re trying to resolve some kind of problem.
  2. Remember, a story is basically a character who needs to solve a problem.  
  3. Based on the brain science, when brands engage customers through story and they help a customer solve a problem, they cut through the daydreaming and gain the attention of customers.

McHargue shared another powerful benefit of story, “When you just get someone a set of propositions, a lot of information, they feel like they’re being persuaded and they have a natural cognitive resistance. But when you tell someone a story, they become wrapped up in that narrative and they place themselves in the shoes of the protagonist.”

As a New York Times best-selling author, Donald Miller understood the elements of story.

When he implemented story based principles into marketing his business, he generated phenomenal growth.  By combining his knowledge of story and his experience in marketing, he created the StoryBrand framework. He built the whole hypothesis of the StoryBrand framework on the elements of 2000 years of the best practices of storytelling.  

“With story, your customers are going to be more engaged because they don’t have to think as hard. With the power of storytelling, your customers understand the subconscious language that your brand is speaking.” Donald Miller

To learn more about how to cut through the daydreaming, grab the attention of your customer, and harness the power of story so you grow your business, listen to the StoryBrand podcast with Mike McHargue  – “Why People Buy: The Powerful Science of Selling.” 

Catch more about the power of story at HopeSchaefer.com!