The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout outlines fundamental principles that businesses should follow to succeed in marketing. These "laws" emphasize positioning, brand perception, and market leadership. Key ideas include being first in the market, focusing on a narrow niche, and the importance of perception over reality in consumers' minds. The book highlights strategies to avoid mistakes and build a strong, lasting brand presence.

About the Author

Al Ries is a marketing professional and author. He is the co-founder and chairman of the Atlanta based consulting firm Ties & Ries. He is known for resurrecting the idea of “positioning” in the field of marketing.

He is a graduate of DePauw University, where he majored in Mathematics. He worked in the advertising department at General Electric. He founded his own advertising agency, Ries Cappiello Colwell, in 1961. He was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame in 2016.

Topics

Entrepreneurship

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Key Insights

The game of marketing is all about the perception of a business, brand, or product.

Companies, however, fail to always see this. They will spend millions and millions of dollars trying to vamp an old product when instead all they really had to do was change people’s perspectives about the product!

“Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.”

― Al Ries

In, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing,” by Al Ries and Jack Trout, you will learn how to use marketing as a tool to change people’s perspectives in order to make your competitor look weak and to make your brand strong.

Get Your Product to the Market ASAP

Your company’s success depends on how fast you can get your product to the market. To do this, you must make a very good first impression.

To make an impression on the market, you must get creative. You must make your product seem different from other products that are out there. This will make it seem like an innovative product, even if it’s not! Perception is everything!

When your product is the ‘first’ of its kind, it will automatically be a market leader.

And, when a company is a market leader, it will automatically come to a customer’s mind when they think of that market.

When you are the leader of the market, you have a definite advantage because a customer’s mind is hard to change once it has made a decision. But, why is this?

“You want to change something on a computer? Just type over or delete the existing material. Do you want to change something in a mind? Forget it.”

― Al Ries

It’s because brands have such high recognition when they are the first. For example, Purell is a known hand-sanitizer, just like Kleenex is a known tissue brand. Oftentimes, people will ask for the name brand, rather than the product.

Having a catchy name brand is important too! Think Apple or Google. They are short and sweet.

Create Your Own Product Category

So, if it’s impossible for you to be a leader in an already established market, then create your own!

When you create a new category, you will be first in the category automatically, so you are giving yourself the upper-hand.

And, by starting your own category, you will eliminate potential competition, at least until people start to infiltrate your new category.

If you do not want to create your own category but join an existing one, use the Law of the Opposite to your advantage. This law states that you should look at the leader in the market, observe their strengths, and make them come off as weaknesses.

While doing that you must also paint the positives of your company in comparison to the market leader.

Try “Owning” A Word

A good company logo will do wonders for your business.

For example, Google owns the word “google”. It is not just the name of their brand, it is now an adjective people use when they go to search something on the internet.

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