The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

In their seminal marketing book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!, Al Ries and JackMarketing Tips Trout argue against the concept of line extension—which is exactly what Daniel is trying to do with his products. The “law” is this: trying to introduce new products under your established brand is almost impossible to make work.

Once you’re in the consumer’s hMarketing TipsMarketing Tipsead with one product, it’s hard to get into their head with another.

Example:

When Xerox was the god of the copier world, they decided to start selling computers. The huh? going through your head right now is testament to the fact they failed miserably. They were known for copiers, but computers? No way. They spent ibm-logo.jpgmillions trying to establish themselves as a computer manufacturer. Whoops. (By the way, IBM tried to sell copiers; it worked about as well as Xerox’s idea to sell computers.)

Would you buy a DVD player from Nike? Probably not. I know, that’s extreme, but would you buy a soft drink with the swoosh on it? History says no.

Did you know A1-Steak sauce spent $18 million dollars on A1-Poultry sauce? Yeah, I’m not using it on my chicken these days either.publication2.jpg

On the other hand we have Amazon that started out in books and has successfully extended their brand to include almost everything in the known universe.

So why did it work with Amazon and not with the other examples noted above? We’ll explore that next time and talk about whether Daniel (our 12-year-old entrepreneur) is going to succeed or not with his plan of line extension.

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