22 Unchange Laws of Marketing.
Rule 5. Law of Center of gravity
The most powerful concept in marketing is mastering a word in the customer’s mind.
A company can be wildly successful
if it finds a way to master a word in the minds of its customers.
Not a complicated word,
not inventing it.
Simple words are best,
often found in the dictionary.
This is the law of focus.
You shorten the path to the customer’s mind
by reducing the point of convergence to a single word or concept.
That’s the fundamental sacrifice in marketing.
marketing Federal Express got the word overnight into their customers’ minds
because it sacrificed other services
and focused solely on overnight package delivery.
To some extent,
a leading position or a better position has enabled that
leading brand or company to own a word in the minds of consumers.
But the word that the leading company owns
It must be so simple as to be invisible.
The leading firm can own a word that
represents the whole category (category).
For example,
IBM owned the word computer.
This is also another way of saying that
a brand becomes a generic name for the whole category
“We need an IBM machine,
anyone doubt it’s not a computer. Right?
You can gauge the claimed position of the leaders
by combining words.
If the given words computer,
copier,
chocolate bar and cola are given,
the four most appropriate words would be IBM,
Xeror,
Hershey’s and Coke.
A wise leader will go one step further to strengthen his
or her leadership position.
The Heinz Company is the owner of the word ketchup (ketchup)
but it has struggled to be independent:
The most important thing about ketchup is “slowest ketchup in the West”.
Just mastering the word slow,
Heinz maintained 50% control of the market.
If you are not a leader,
your words should narrow the focus.
However, more importantly,
your word must be in the product category,
no one can hide it.
You don’t have to be a great linguist to win.
Prego beat leader Ragu in spaghetti sauce
and took 27% of the market thanks to an idea borrowed from Heinz,
from Prego’s thicker.
The most effective words are those that
They are simple and tend to talk about benefits.
No matter how complicated the product,
no matter what the market demand,
it is always best to focus on one word or customer benefit,
rather than two,
three or four words.
This will work even better
if you offer a strong benefit,
customers may tell you about several others.
A “thicker” pasta sauce speaks of good quality,
high nutritional value…
A “safer” designed car means a “safer” car.
Whether it’s the result of a well-thought-out process or not,
most successful companies (or brands) are those that
master a word in the minds of consumers
(a few words like Volkswagen’s aren’t worth mastering).
Here are a few examples:
Crest Cavities Toothpaste
Cars Mercedes Engineering
Volvo Safety Cars
Cars BMW Driving
Domino’s Home delivery pizza
Pepsi Cola Youth Drink
Nordstrom Service
The words are different.
It can be related to benefit (cavity prevention),
to service (home delivery).
While we know those words stay in our customers’ minds all the time,
they don’t last forever.
There are times when words need to be changed.
It’s not an easy job.
The recent story of Lotus Development Corporation is a clear demonstration
of the nature of this problem.
For many years,
Lotus has mastered the word spreadsheet.
Lotus is synonymous with 1-2-3 and spreadsheet .
But the word spreadsheet is competitive,
and growth prospects are limited.
Like other companies,
Lotus wants to be bigger.
How can the company surpass me,
which is only a one-product business?
The conventional answer is to expand in all directions,
as IBM and Microsoft did.
Lotus has expanded its Ami Pro software purchase
and introduced some new software.
Then Lotus reorganized the organization
and focused on a new concept called groupware,
the software product for personal computer networks.
Lotus was the first software company to successfully develop groupware.
The company has naturally mastered a second word in the mind
of its customers.
Unlike Microsoft,
Lotus today has a goal for the company.
This work is not overnight,
but a long-term expansion in the software field.
What overnight helps Federal Express and Safety helps Volvo,
groupware will do for Lotus.
You cannot take someone else’s word.
success comes from groupware,
no other company has done it yet.
Furthermore,
there is a broad technology oriented towards network computers.
More than half of business computers are connected to the internet.
There’s even a new magazine called network computing.
Many companies see the benefits of mastering a word or concept,
but they are careless not to be the first to master it.
What not to do in marketing is to throw away words that
are one’s own and run after a word that
It already belongs to someone else.
This is the case with Atari,
the company that owns the video game.
Because of business decline in 1982,
the company changed direction.
They wanted Atari to be synonymous with computers.
CEO James Morgan stated:
“Atari has the strength of a name
but at the same time manifests weakness.
It means video games-Atari has to redefine its image
with electronic products.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Morgan’s strategy,
other companies including Apple
and IBM have mastered the words he pursues.
Atari’s diversity is a disaster.
But the real irony is that in 1986 a company took back the concept
that Atari had thrown away.
That’s the Nintendo company,
which now controls 75% of the multi-billion dollar market.
Now who knows where Atari is?
The essence of marketing is narrowing down.
You become stronger as you decrease your range of motion.
You can’t stand your ground
when you’re chasing after everything.
Some companies accept the narrowing of the target
and try to perfect this strategy.
“We focus on quality for the market.
We don’t participate in the market,
put a lot of weight on the price.”
The problem is that customers won’t believe you
until they see you’ve limited your business to high-value products,
like a Mescedes Benz or a BMW.
General Motors tries to sell products,
the quality of the product depends on the price
“Putting quality on the road” is the company’s newest slogan.
Every General Motor product has the words “Mark of Excellence”.
Guess what Ford is doing?
They do the same “Quality is Job 1”
(quality is the first thing),
the advertising of Ford said so.
“We don’t want to be biggest,
We just want to be the best,”
said Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca.
Does anyone believe that Iacocca doesn’t want to be the biggest?
These are the big stuff inside the company.
The whole quality,
the way to greatness.
It makes great slogans at customer conventions,
especially when added with orchestra,
flowers and dance.
But outside of the company,
these messages are scattered.
Is there a company that claims to be an unqualified company?
Never.
Everyone says they have qualities,
but as a result,
no one has them all.
You cannot narrow the focus to qualities
or qualities without advocating for the opposite point of view.
Nor can you position yourself as an honest politician,
because no one wants to take the opposite position
(although there are many good candidates).
However, you can position yourself
as a business-oriented candidate
or a working-world candidate,
and be immediately accepted for having support for the other side.
When you focus on expanding your wording,
leave the lawyers out.
They want to trademark everything.
This trick is to let others use your words
(as a leader, of course,
there must be followers).
It was helpful for Lotus
to have other companies jump into the groupware business.
That makes the field even more important
and people admire Lotus’s leadership position even more.
Once you own a word you have to defend it in the marketplace,
the case of BMW illustrates this very well.
For many years,
BMW has been the ultimate “driving” machine.
Then the company decided to expand the product line
and chase after Mescedes-Benz
with the large 700 series passenger car.
The problem was how to make a living room
with wheels be the best driving machine,
you can’t feel the road surface.
As a result,
things started to go downhill for BMW.
Fortunately,
the company has just introduced a small BMW,
and once again the word driving is emphasized.
The company has restored their focus.
The law of center of gravity applies to anything you sell.
As an example,
the anti-drug campaign,
which was widely broadcast on television and in the press,
failed because of a lack of focus.
There are no words that enter the mind of drug users that
can start talking about the concept of drugs.
Anti-drug ads are everywhere.
You might think that anti-drug forces (professionals)
It should imitate the anti-abortion amateurs
who have focused on a single powerful word- pro-life and pro-choice.
Counter-narcotics forces should do the same
– focusing on a single powerful word.
What is needed is how to drugs are as rejected
by society as smoking is now.
One word that can do this unique role is loser.
Drug users will create all kinds of losses,
loss of job,
loss of family,
loss of freedom,
loss of life.
A show that says “Drugs are for losers” can have a profound effect,
especially on recreational drug addicts,
who are more concerned with social status than indulging in intoxication.
Then,
who knows.
The law of focus,
a law of marketing,
can help curb a great evil of society.
