Tomorrow matchstic embarks on a cruise to the Bahamas, and I must apologize for any jealous felt by you, our blog readers.

But our cruise is not the subject of my blog, instead, it's on to the 2nd of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding.

The Law of Contraction

This law actually seems like it would be false at first glance, but after a closer look at brands practicing the law, it proves itself as an inescapable truth. When you're trying to grow your brand, it seems to make sense to expand your offerings to bring in more clients/customers, yet all that happens is that you lose focus on what you're good at; your brand even. Take for instance delivery pizza. Dominos narrowed it's focus to delivery pizza and took off. Little Caesars and Papa Johns both offered a range of food from roasted chicken to steak sandwiches, but it was only when they focused solely on pizza.

What I learned: Diluting your brand with multiple offerings does not build it, it waters it down and cheapens it. If you want your brand to flourish, it's not advisable to do what flourishing brands are doing (buying leer jets or Rolex Christmas presents), instead, look to what they did to get where they are.

_gern

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At least in my mind the Thickburger killed Hardees. In 2002 Hardees did 2 things, introduced the Thickburger and lost my business. One day in 2002 I was on my way to my friends house and wanted to stop and get something to eat so I pulled up to the drive-thru of my local Hardee's and ordered 2 hamburgers. The response from the other end of the static filled speaker was, "We don't have hamburgers anymore…" and that was it. I sat there for a few more seconds waiting for some sort of explanation or alternate choice but never received one. So I left Hardee's and have not been back since. What I found out later that day was that they had just introduced the Thickburger. Apparently Hardee's employees were not allowed to call it a hamburger, but I'm pretty sure they were allowed to offer me an explanation of why they don't sell hamburgers anymore. And I would have gladly ordered one of these monolithic hamburgers and could even possibly become addicted to them the same way I am to the Burger King Triple Stacker now. The simple lesson here is that customers have short memories on the positive things you do and long memories on the negative ones. I haven't been to Hardee's in 6 years because of one bad customer service experience.

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I want to talk about businesses saying they want to look unique and stand out from the competition but at the end of the day choosing symbols that fall back on graphic cliches that simply fit in. When its all said and done their overriding desire is to look "professional". It takes a confident business to stand by a unique corporate identity. Logos that simply fit in, look professional by relying on graphic familiarity (i.e. the swoosh) to give the company credibility. Marks that are different require interpretation because they are unfamiliar, which yes sometimes will not be what was intended. But then again you are different and exposure time will smooth out the perception.

Take for example Lucent Technology. People hated their identity at first, including their employees. They thought it looked like “a red doughnut drawn by a child, or an advertisement for a paint company." Sounds typical especially the paint company. This identity is referred to as the "innovation ring." Its about warmth, boldness, freedom and humanism with its strong, rough brush stroke. All of which is needed for a young child of AT&T stepping out on its own and wanting to be different than other tech firms. Acceptance was earned over time and now the corporate symbol is praised for its distinctiveness. The same reason for which it was hated, being called "the million-dollar coffee stain."

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Excuses, excuses, excuses! I'm going to be on the verge of sounding like a teacher with this one, but oh well here goes nothing.

Several times in the last week I've heard people say, "Its just so hard for small businesses right now, you know, with the economy and all". Is it really? Or is that an excuse?

Sounds like a fish caught out of Ole' Bull Crap Pond, if you ask me. I feel like, Americans have been blessed with such a great economic system that offers huge results from lackluster performances- and we don't even know it! We have been rewarded for complacency; fed for mediocre efforts. Now that things start to tighten down, and we have to fight a bit; those fat and weak brands will float to the top.

If we do slip into a (dare I say the "R" word) Recession it might just force a sense of pride and hard work back into small business. It could be a wake up call of sorts. Business would have to compete, fight, and work hard to earn their cash. Some will quit. Some will fail. Some will win. The sense of competition might be what our economy (and our character) needs!

Case in point, IBM made their largest growth, at the time, and became a Fortune 500 company during the Great Depression. I don't think Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM, was making excuses then.

If business is slow, is that really the economy? Or did the dog eat your homework?

Stop making excuses.

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It seems that Subway is changing it's face from Jared to Peter Griffin. I'm really confused by this. For the past several years Subway has been waving the health flag and has me believing that if I need a good alternative to fatty fast food in order to lose weight, I need to visit Subway. Are they trying to be hip and cool and "eat lots and get fat…hahha." If so, I'm afraid that's a bad move. When I think of fat and tasty, I'm thinking of a standard burger joint: BK, McDonald's, or Hardees*.

Either that or they are still trying to be the healthy alternative and failing miserably. Peter Griffin will never make me think healthy.

If my thinking is off here, please challenge the way I see it. I'm just having a hard time understanding.

(I must credit my brother Bryan for bringing this to my attention and asking that I blog about it)

*side note: if Hardees was Carl's Jr here on the east coast, I would totally go there twice as much

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This will be my first installment of my exploration of the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. As the title suggests, there are 22 laws, therefore my next 22 posts will examine each one of the laws, and my interpretation of said law. Some weeks, I might even beef it up and look at two laws, but for the inaugural post, I'll keep it simple.

Law #1 | The Law of Expansion

The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope."This law more or less states that the more the brand is stretched to encompass every aspect of the market, the brand is weakened. It makes plenty of sense seeing as that seems to be a natural law as well. Try to stretch a trash bag and you know the results, although I do concede that the Glad Force Flex breaks this rule and is therefore unnatural. It seems the reason these stretches happen is marketers mistaking the power of a brand with the sales of that brand. The truth being that sales are not only based on the strength of the brand, but the weakness of the competitors.

A great example of how this doesn't work is Cadillac. When you think of Cadillac, do you think massive cars that feeling like you're riding on air, Grey Poupon, and your grandparents? Yes? Then why did they try to market the Catera? Because they thought the brand was strong enough to jump into the midsize market, and not surprisingly, they were wrong.

What I learned…

Focus your brand on what made your brand what it is. Foster that strength and stand out. Don't waste energy and resources attempting to span the gamut of possible outlets for your brand.

_gern

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Last week Apple announced their new line of laptops, The MacBook Air. The biggest change besides the fact that it weighs less than some steaks and will fit into a standard office envelope, is that there is no disc drive. Is this a signal to the end of CD's? Apple's brand could be powerful enough to make CD's obsolete. The same way they did with floppy discs when they introduced the iMac, the first major computer to not have a built in floppy drive. Now you can't find a 3.5 disc unless you saved your old copy of Oregon Trail.

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Found it interesting that one of the best know brands in the world, Jeep, didn't have a real logo until about 2003. Until then it was simply the word "Jeep" with no frills or in-depth meaning. So much emphasis is placed on logo representation and that without the right one you cant build a brand. Doesn't seem to be the case here. In the automotive industry, logo design is not as important as the design of the car, the product. The design of the car must be the identity and be different than the competition. That is why Jeep was successful all those years without a real "logo", it was obviously different. The identity now is simply a graphic representation of their distinct design.

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Brand; a customer's understanding about a product, service, or company; a gut reaction, a reputation.

Let's test that definition. Here are my one word "gut reactions" about well known brands:

Target- Bullseye
Skittles- Fun
Starbucks- Everywhere
Lowe's- Home
Ikea- Nightmare
Apple- Cool
IBM- Technology
AT&T- Phone
BP- Gas
Coca Cola- Classic
Mercedes Benz- Solid
Ross- Cheap
McDonald's- Heart-Attack
Google- Knowledge
Nike- Sport
Budweiser- America
Nintendo- Play
Chanel- Fasion
Amazon- Books
Brittney Spears- Crazy
Johnson and Johnson- Family
Moet- Rappers
Snickers- Feast

I wonder what the Marketing Directors and Brand Managers would think of that? Your brand isn't what you say it is, its what they say it is.

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In 1948 Polaroid introduced their instant cameras. This idea carried Polaroid for decades as the leader in instant photography. Then came the age of the digital camera. Instead of being on the cutting edge of digital photography Polaroid continued to push their instant photo cameras and did not enter the digital camera market until late in the game. As a result on October 11, 2001 Polaroid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Almost all of the company's assets including the name were sold to a subsidiary of Bank One.

They went on to form a new company, which also operates under the name "Polaroid Corporation". It continues to sell Polaroid-branded products. The newest is the first attempt to bring back the instant picture, The Polaroid Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer. Essentially it is a mobile printer that can print a picture from any digital camera in 60 seconds. Polaroid has reinvented its brand but stayed true to what established them so long ago, letting consumers instantly have physical pictures as soon as they take them.

The moral of the story is, brands are living things that constantly need to update and adapt to the times. Just because something worked in 1948 doesn't mean it will still work in 2008.

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