Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time – Changing events can affect the outcome of your marketing, especially with line extensions.
There’s an irresistible pressure to extend the equity of your brand – This law gets broken more often than the others. Product success often outweighs internal discipline, encouraging companies to put their names on many more products, often with disastrous results. While line extensions sound like a rational way to extend products, remember that marketing isn’t about products, but about how people think of your products. The better route is to do more with less. Do not try to provide solutions for every need. Focus on your core brand or product.
You have to give up something in order to get something – Don’t offer too many products. Companies have to make sacrificial decisions about products, line extensions and the need for continuous change. Concentrate. Smuckers is synonymous with jelly and jam since that is all it makes. Department stores try to sell everything to everybody, so they are in trouble.
For every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute – Work against the category leader. Crest promotes its cavity-fighting ability, so other toothpastes tout whiteness or fresh breath. To take the top spot, come up with something new and very different, like new product benefits or a lower price. When you offer a new twist, seize the marketing opportunity.
When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive – Honesty pays. Even if something is widely recognized as ugly (the VW Beetle), costly (Joy perfume) or second-best (Avis), the public will reward honesty. Admitting something obvious reinforces public perceptions, an affirmation that makes the consumer feel empowered and receptive.
In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results – Make a dramatic move to gain ground. Incremental, small, unfocused moves are ineffective. Japanese and German cars hit GM in the low-priced and high-priced markets, so GM focused on its mid-range models, but it didn’t change the body styles, so the cars began to look alike. Ford filled the gap with new models. Get involved in the product hands-on so you can find a bold, unexpected competitive move.
Unless you write your competitors’ plans, you can’t predict the future – Accurately forecasting the future from a marketing perspective is impossible because most marketers take a short-term view of sales and budgets. Quarterly corporate budgeting puts too much emphasis on the short-term, which is antithetical to marketing’s long-term vision. To get an idea about the future, pay attention – but not too much attention – to trends. Don’t overestimate their longevity or reach. Don’t put excess trust in research, either, because people often act unexpectedly.
Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure – Great success often motivates companies to offer too many brand extensions, which frequently fail. A good brand name does not necessarily translate into universal success. To contain the urge to expand, marketers and CEOs should check their egos and think like their customers. Marketers should shop in their own stores and eat in their own restaurants. The average CEO spends 17 hours per week in corporate meetings, and another six hours preparing for those meetings. That is all time spent away from the front lines, which is why smaller firms may have a better handle on their businesses than larger companies.
Failure is to be expected and accepted – When a mistake happens, correct it quickly. The tendency is to prognosticate, procrastinate and delay repairs, especially if they seem insurmountable. A company’s approach to solving problems indicates how it addresses experimentation and failure.
Successful programs are not built on fads; they’re built on trends – While fads can be profitable, they only last a short time, so you must be nimble to capitalize on one
Without adequate funding, an idea won’t get off the ground – Money helps marketers get their ideas to the consumer. It is essential. A great idea with no money behind it is not as good as a mediocre idea buttressed by a large budget. An entrepreneur with a great idea and no money should be prepared to give away a big percentage of the idea to get financial backing. Resources are behind the success of many mid-quality products. Large corporations spend billions on ads to maintain market share. That fact is intrinsic to successful marketing.
