Immutable Laws of Branding

How to build a product/service into a world class brand

A presentation by:
Varqa Shamsi Bahar
 The Law of Contraction

• Brand becomes stronger when you narrow your focus

• Ultimate objective of any branding program should be
to dominate the category.
• Dominating a category makes a brand very powerful.
E.g. of Magic dominating Toothpowder.
• E.g. Subway specializes in the submarine sandwich.
• E.g. of Toys R Us: focus from children supermarket
concept to a wide range of toys for children.
• E.g. of Meril focusing on Winter care.

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 The law of the Word
• A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the
consumer.
• Volvo owns the word "safety".
• Mercedes owns the word "prestige".
• BMW owns the word "driving" and the idea of being fun to drive.
• Magic owns “toothpowder”.
• Kleenex owns tissue “Don’t put a cold in your pocket”.
• Fedex owns “overnight”.
• Honda owns “motorcycle”
• Make me a Xerox copy, Hand me the scotch tape.

• Conclusion: Once a brand owns a word its almost impossible for

a competitor to take the word away from the brand.

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 The law of Credentials
• The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to
specialty.
• A brand should be a specialist and not a generalist.
• A way to be a specialist is to narrow the scope of the brand.

• Credentials facilitates publicity:

• If a reporter is doing a cola story, he or she will almost always call
coca-cola.
• If a reporter is doing a social networking story, he or she will almost
always contact Facebook.
• If a reporter is doing a computer software story, he or she will probably
call Microsoft.

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 The Law of Quality

• Quality is important, but brands are not built

by quality alone.
• If you want to build a powerful brand , you
must build a powerful perception of the
quality in the mind of the consumers.

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 The Law of Fellowship

• The rightful share of a leading brand is never more

than 50 percent. Don't fight with competitive brands,
fight against competitive categories.
• Brands should welcome competition. It would bring
more customers to the category.

• The best thing that has happened to Pepsodent

toothpowder is Magic toothpowder.

• The best thing that has happened to Coca-cola is

Pepsi cola.

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 The Law of sub-brands
• What brands can build, sub-brands can destroy.
• Holiday Inn, the leading hotel/motel operator, wanted to get into
the upscale hotel market, so it developed Holiday Inn Crowne
Plaza. The problem was, Holiday Inn customers became
confused. Their response was, "Hey it's a bit expensive for a
Holiday Inn". The company finally just called its upscale chain
Crowne Plaza.

• Discussion: Standard Chartered Bank: Priority banking,

Preferred banking??

• A brand owns an idea in the mind of the consumer, and by sub-

branding, it may be communicating a totally different message to
the consumer, who has no idea you are already targeting
another market.
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 The Law of Siblings
• A family of brands should be developed that will assure
company’s control of the category for many decades. .
• The key to having a happy family of brands is to give each
individual brand its own unique identity.
• Sibling strategy can be used to dominate a category.
• Time Inc. has several magazines under its wing:
– Time
– Fortune (Business related)
– Life (pictures related)
– Sports illustrated (sports related)
– Money (Finance related)
– People (Celebrity related)
– Entertainment Weekly

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 The Law of Shape

• A brand's logotype should be designed

to fit the eyes. Both eyes.
• the ideal shape for a logotype is two and a quarter units
wide and one unit high.

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 The Law of Color

• A brand should use a color that is the

opposite of its major competitor's.
• A way that consumer may differentiate
between brands in the same category.
• Grameen phone (blue) vs Airtel (Red) vs
Banglalink (Orange).

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 The Law of Borders

• There are no barriers to global branding. A

brand should know no borders.

• Keep the brand's focus narrow in its home

country and go global.

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 The Law of Consistency
• “A brand is not built overnight. Success is measured
in decades, not years”

– BMW has been the ultimate driving machine for more than 30
years.
– Volvo has been selling safe for 40 years.

• Conclusion: Your brand needs to stand for something year

in and year out. It should serve generations of consumers.

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 The Law of Mortality

• No brand will live forever. Euthanasia (Good

death) is often the best solution.
• E.g. Film photography is slowly being
replaced by digital photography. But
KODAK refuses to face the reality. Instead it
is trying to save its brand by using the
KODAK name on its digital products.

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