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Top Marketing Book

When you are looking for the best entrepreneur books or the best start-up books, you should buy The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al & Jack.

It is a really short book, packed with story examples of business successes and failures, good and bad marketing techniques, and more.

Al & Jack have written many books in various categories and as the name suggests this one tells of their 22 laws of marketing. This is about making good decisions in business growth and operations. They share their experience and perspective with the reader.

I enjoyed finishing the book in one day and yet came away with many examples of trial and error methods adopted by big and small companies. Similar to Zero To One.

Marketing Lessons

• Importance of being first Vs being better – first mover advantage
• Good Marketing is about perceptions, not about products
• Narrow your focus with regard to product line, target market, and need for constant change, in order to position yourself as a market leader
• Importance of candor
• Owning a word can be powerful
• Successful programs are built on trends, not fads
• Ideas without money are worthless – acquire funding before you launch

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Book Summary

On reading this short but dynamite book, I had many eye opener moments. I found that some of the points resonated with my own views and some offered a refreshingly different take on things, which set me reflecting on the many angles to a matter.

There are 22 laws enumerated in the book. I was particularly drawn to the laws outlined below:

• Law of Perception: Reality does not exist! Let me tell you, this statement shocked me out of my lethargic reading!! Reality is just a perception of our mind. In the world of marketing, there is no such thing as the best brand, product or service. Reality is relative. How the customer perceives your product, makes it a reality for him or her. Marketing is all about altering people’s perception to evoke in them a certain feeling to take a certain action. Their perception becomes their reality. Tell the most interesting story of your brand and subtly make your product an objective reality.
• Law of Singularity: History is witness to the fact that successful marketing is not the result of many small, sweet efforts or tactics, but the result of a single big, bold, masterful and brilliant stroke. Take a calculated risk. Choose an unexplored path. Adopt a strong stance and take the plunge to produce substantial results. You have to streak ahead of your peers and competitors and this requires you to make that one bold move.
• Law of Candor: This is an interesting approach to your brand and we think, it is purely based on human psychology.

Candor, as you know, means honesty or frankness. It is disarming but at the same time self-deprecating candor needs to be handled carefully or it can create a negative image in the mind of the customer and become their truth. This book skillfully teaches you how to exercise caution and redeem your image even while honestly airing your weaknesses and flaws.

The given example of Listerine is very apt to this chapter. It clearly connects dots in consumer’s minds. Listerine admitted that it tasted like a disinfectant, but redeemed its image by suggesting that this is precisely why it would disinfect all mouth germs. It got ahead of the negative and turned it into a positive.

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Similarly, General Foods admitted that its Grape Nuts Cereal was an acquired taste and advised customers to try it for a week to develop a taste for it. Sales shot up 23% and customers were forewarned that the taste was different, so they were mentally more accepting of the flavor. Smart marketing, huh! Many more examples like this in the book Hey Whipple Squeeze This.

• Law of Leadership: First mover advantage is a big one and being the pioneer in any industry is difficult to beat. The book Ready Fire Aim speaks from a different perspective about this point. According to Al & Jack, the benefit of being the first in is that you can become a market leader. You get to grab a lion’s share of the market and position your brand and product in such a way that your brand name and product become synonyms of each other. Examples like Heineken, Jell-O, Crazy Glue, Playboy magazine leading Penthouse, Time Magazine leading Newsweek – are brilliant cases in point of being the first in its category and market. The products that followed them are basically copycat and ‘me too’ products.
• Law of Predictability: Coming up with an angle or word that differentiates your company is good short-term planning. Then set up a long-term marketing direction that builds a program to maximize that idea or angle. Notice that the word used is not ‘long-term plan’ but rather ‘long-term direction’. Substantiated with the brilliant example of Domino’s Pizza, it drives home this law. Think, Volvo = Safe.
• Law of Acceleration: Scale your brand by building a successful program. A successful program is built on trends and not on fads. The book GRITTalks in great length about the difference. Again, this law is backed by the perfect example of how Ninja Turtles blew up, but Barbie didn’t. The key point being – Make strong and confident decisions about your business and ride the wave of long-term trend in the most profitable manner.

This book will hold your interest throughout the reading. There are some great takeaways, reminders, and conversational pieces (Social Currency from the book Contagious) to use in your next office meeting or when talking with a friend. It is a great little book and not too long, ideal for a quick, intellectual but not too heavy reading. A longer comparison book might be Alchemy.

About The Authors Jack Trout and Al Ries

Jack Trout and Al Ries, run a marketing consulting firm in Greenwich, Connecticut. They are the authors of the bestsellers: Positioning, Marketing Warfare, Bottom-Up Marketing and Focus.

Al Ries and Jack Trout are two of the world's most successful marketing strategists, with over 40 years of marketing expertise. Combining a wide-ranging historical overview with a keen eye for the future, they bring to light 22 superlative tools and innovative techniques for the international marketplace.

Their books have been published in more than fifteen languages and their consulting work has taken them into many of the world's largest corporations in North America, South America, and the Far East.

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