Critical updates on branding, video, and how to combine them to drive brand value.
One of these things is not like the others. 🙂↔️
Published 4 months ago • 2 min read
Critical updates on branding, video, and how to combine them to drive brand value.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
13 / The Law of the Company
When you're building a brand, you want to put your company name front and center. After all, your company is the source of the product, the organization behind the quality, and the name on the paycheck. It's the foundation of everything, so it should be the most important thing to promote, shouldn't it? It seems pretty logical, right?
It's okay. You're not the only one to eve make that mistake.
Let's get into today's immutable law.
The Law of the Company / Brands are brands. Companies are companies. There is a difference.
Big difference. This law highlights a fundamental distinction that managers inside the company often forget, but consumers never do. As the authors write, "Managers are employees, too. That’s why management is company-oriented. And customers are brand-oriented." In other words, remember who you're marketing to. Spoiler alert, it's not you. Think about it this way:
Do you say, "I'm going to grab a PepsiCo Frito-Lay potato chip"? No, you ask for a Lay's or a Dorito.
Do you ask to listen to a song on an Apple iPod? Or do you just say, "Put it on my iPod"?
When a friend shows you their new phone, do you ask, "Is that a Samsung Electronics Galaxy"? Unlikely. You ask if it's a Samsung Galaxy.
That's a beautiful Samsung Group Samsung Galaxy running Google's Android, brought to you by Google LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc. See what we're getting at?
The book explains that consumers buy brands, not companies. The brand name is what customers use to identify the product. The company is just the organization that makes it. The best branding strategy is to use the company name as the brand name, but only when it becomes the brand. The authors point to examples like WD-40, Coca-Cola, and Zippo. The company name and the brand name are one and the same. To a customer, the name "Coca-Cola" isn't a company that makes soda—it's the soda itself. This distinction is at the heart of an effective branding strategy.
What happens when companies get this wrong?
When a company's product name is a generic word, it can cause confusion. For example, the book points to Microsoft Word. "Word" is a generic term, so customers often have to say "Microsoft Word" to be clear. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's not ideal. As the authors state, "When customers feel they have to use both your company name and your brand name together, you usually have a branding problem."
Even this guy had a better brand name than Word. Come on, you know his name.
However, when a company has a strong, unique brand name, the company name becomes secondary. Apple has done this brilliantly. The company's name is Apple, but its brands - iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch - are what people talk about and ask for. The Apple name provides a level of quality and consistency, but the brand name is the hero. The same goes for Google. Thecompany name is also the brand name, but the company's sub-brands, like Pixel, Nest, and Android, are the ones that define the individual products. So, how should you use your company name? The best approach, according to the authors, is to make the brand name the focus. If you use the company name, do so in a decidedly secondary way. As the authors explain, "The brand itself should be the focus of your attention."
You can purchase The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding on Amazon. If you'd like to wage war against the generic and build a powerful brand story in the process, we should connect. 🤺
