I’ve mentioned before a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout and as you can guess, it contains 22 chapters corresponding with the 22 immutable laws mentioned in the title.

The first two chapters of the book, The Law of Leadership and The Law of the Category, are probably the best known chapters of the book, but there are many other good “laws” too.

Why are they called laws instead of rules, tips, or something else? Well, as the authors cunningly point out (and yes, they are marketing consultants), you can build an airplane, but it will never take off if you ignore the laws of physics. Why then, they ask, shouldn't there also be laws of marketing that must be followed to launch and maintain winning brands? They go on to warn that if you violate the 22 immutable marketing laws, you’ll do so at your own risk.

Quotes and comments

I’ll be quoting below some of the highlights from chapter five of the book, called The Law of Focus, and I’ll also provide some commentary of my own.

The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.

That’s the tagline of the chapter and when I heard it, I immediately thought of words like Search, Tweet, iPhone, and Jacuzzi. It’s pretty evident what companies those words are associated with. I’m also amazed that the authors were able to explain the law so vividly with just a short and simple sentence.

You “burn” your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept. It’s the ultimate marketing sacrifice.

Looking at this strategy as a sacrifice is interesting. I suppose the authors believe that being able to achieve the necessary level of focus is possible only if you cut away everything else that’s not core to your business and focus on what remains. As an example they mention FedEx, who was able to put the word overnight into the minds of its prospects because it sacrificed its product line and focused on overnight package delivery only.

The essence of marketing is narrowing the focus. You become stronger when you reduce the scope of your operations. You can’t stand for something if you chase after everything.

Remaining focused and not messing around is a theme that comes up elsewhere in the book as well, for example in chapter 12 The Law of Line Extension. The authors consider line extension dangerous, because despite its obvious risks, expanding a business to new product lines often makes eminent sense in boards. Few directors will have the courage to challenge management on this critical issue.

Not a complicated word. Not an invented one. The simple words are best, words taken right out of the dictionary.

I agree, the simple words are the most powerful, because they mean something. The authors do provide a couple of exceptions, like Xerox, an invented word which became a verb, but here it shines through that the book was written before the Internet era. Otherwise they could have included many other powerful exceptions, like Google, Skype, Slack, or any other Silicon Valley unicorn tech company.

If you’re not a leader, then your word has to have a narrow focus. Even more important, however, your word has to be “available” in your category. No one else can have a lock on it.

This makes sense. If you’re already a big brand, you can own a big word like safety, which many will say Volvo owns. And you can’t try to claim it if someone else already possesses it. On the other hand, if you have a niche product, you’ll probably need a niche word. For example, Oatly owns the word Oat drink. Okay, I know that’s technically two words, but you get the point.

The law of focus applies to whatever you’re selling, or even whatever you’re unselling.

That a single word can be powerful also in reverse situations, i.e. when you want to “unsell” something, is intriguing. This is probably the most complex part of the chapter, but the authors give an example, which illustrates the point. They bring up the anti-drug crusade (from the 1990’s), which they thought lacked focus, because there was no one word to unsell the drug concept. They suggested adopting the word “loser”, so that recreational users, who typically are concerned with social status, would steer away from drugs.

It should be possible to come up with some better examples as well. The weapon of “unselling with one word” could quite possibly be successfully deployed in various forms of political or environmental activism. For example, climate change activists wishing to unsell the burning of fossil fuels could start calling their targets “fossils”.

Conclusion

On its surface, the Law of Focus seems simple and straightforward, but actually it’s got quite a few layers to peel. It’s perhaps more about narrowing things down than finding and owning a word, and being able to own a word comes as an end result of the process. Then again, perhaps first trying to find and own a word can be a means to an end, a way to ensure that your business is focused enough.

In any case, there’s no doubt that a company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to own a word in the mind of the prospect. And now I can’t stop thinking of what word I should try to own. It probably needs to be something extremely niche.