New Strategies on Brand Building - Al & Laura Ries 3 of 4

34. Given that all cameras are going digital and PCs are turning digital, if one looks at Kodak and Kodak is associated with film, in order to save the company one could evaluate keeping Kodak as a film brand and launch a second brand for the digital market. To save the brand one could look at moving the brand name to the digital market. From a marketing perspective it means moving the name from one point in the brain to another which is very difficult. Kodak is associated with film and not the digital market even though it invented digital cameras. Kodak entered the digital market with the brand name Kodak and lost its leadership. One can claim the caterpillar to be a flying caterpillar but actually they are 2 separate entities. Barnes & Noble is the largest bookstore in America. B&N tried to move the name on to the Internet and failed. Amazon a new company succeeded.

35. Brands are built in a blaze of publicity or PR. Botox was built totally on PR over a period of 9 years. It launched its first ad campaign 9 years after its launch. Viagra was built on PR which was followed by an ad plan. PR gets the idea into the mind. It is the nail. Advertising entrenches the idea in the mind. It is like a hammer. Volkswagen was launched in 1950. It was PR that built up the brand. It was only in 1960 that the ad campaign was launched. The ad campaign helped it to reach the 500 mn. unit sale figure. Harry Potter was built by PR. Cheesecake factory is a restaurant which is the no. 1 restaurant chain in America. It never advertised in 28 years.

36. If one wants to make one’s company famous then one can make one’s CEO famous. Jeff Bezos, Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Herb Kellegher, Linus Torvalds. Trump is the King of PR.

37. Advertising has little credibility in the mind. What you say about yourself has little credibility. The percentage who think advertising is honest is going down. PR has credibility in the context of ‘Third Party Effect’. Oprah Winfrey picked 48 books. Each one of them made it to the NYT list. There is a book titled ‘East of Eden’ - John Steinbeck. It had sold 50,000 books but then Oprah winfrey picked it and its sales touched 1 mn. copies. What we need is PR oriented advertising. PR establishes credibility of the brand. Advertising reaffirms the brand’s credibility. Advertising Agencies focus on creativity. This is wrong. You can’t have advertising trying to make advertising famous. What advertising industry believes in is PR not advertising. They seem to be interested only in awards.

38. Advertising can be effective if message is right. Find out what’s in the mind and reinforce the idea in the mind. Any advertising that touches an idea or concept that is already embedded in the prospect’s mind is the right message. Especially if that idea or concept contains a motivating reason to buy the brand.

39. Advertising is like a good joke. The best jokes don’t communicate, they just take advantage of what’s already in the mind.

40. Law of Advertising. It maintains your brand. Many established brands don’t spend enough on advertising. Can’t rely on PR forever. The belief can’t be that once a brand is established then its market share is mine forever. So let’s spend our ad dollars on line extensions, new flavours, new market segments. Nothing decays as surely as a brand unsupported by advertising.

41. Law of the Word. Volvo looks at ‘safety’. It invests in ‘safety’. But then it lost its focus and came out with a convertible. Its sales dipped. Owning a word leads to profits. Brands are built in the mind. To find that word and own it one has to sacrifice and give up the rest of the market and focus. Nokia gave up the rest and focused on the cellphone. Movado is a museum watch. Zippo is a wind-proof lighter. Among B-Schools, Northwestern is known for Marketing, Chicago for Quantitative Analysis, Harvard for Management.