Quotes About Branding

Most marketing mistakes stem from the assumption that you're fighting a product battle rooted in reality.

With a plethora of products in every category, how does a company use advertising to blast its way into the mind? The basic underlying marketing strategy has got to be "reposition the competition." Because there are so few creneaus to fill, a company must create one by repositioning the competitors that occupy the positions in the mind. In other words, to move a new idea or product into the mind, you must first move an old one out.

Today brands are born, not made. A new brand must be capable of generating favorable publicity in the media or it won't have a chance in the marketplace. And just how do you generate publicity? The best way to generate publicity is by being first. In other words, by being the first brand in a new category.

In the communication jungle out there, the only hope to score big is to be selective, to concentrate on narrow targets, to practice segmentation. In a word, positioning.

A company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to own a word in the mind of the prospect. Not a complicated word. Not an invented one. The simple words are best, words taken right out of the dictionary. This is the law of focus. You "burn" your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept. It's the ultimate marketing sacrifice.

Aflac, the company that brought us the duck. In the year 2000, the company had a name recognition of 12 percent. Today it's 94 percent. And sales have gone up just as dramatically. Aflac sales in the American market went up 29 percent the first year after the duck arrived. And 28 percent the second year. And 18 percent the third year.

If you want to build a successful brand, you have to understand divergence. You have to look for opportunities to create new categories by divergence of existing categories. And then you have to become the first brand in this emerging new category.

We are marginally—but crucially—less likely to question the soundness of an article about a rationale for going to war when it comes presented beneath the neo-Gothic Cheltenham typeface of the New York Times, or to probe the coherence of a thesis defending a presidential budget when it is laid out in the sober yet sensuous columns of Le Monde's Fenway font. Brands alone dissuade us from picking sceptically at their underlying content.

Business is about seduction. To increase market size, we have to seduce customers who have never used our product or service.

My name had become a brand. (I have mixed emotions about that part of our (Christian media) industry, for sure.)

Online reputation management

Occultists, as brand-savvy as social media influencers and just as cynical.

I think commercials are something that everyone does to get out there and get a little bit of exposure, get their feet wet, and also pay the bills. So anytime you can be a part of a wonderful, fun commercial, that's just a bonus.

What if Whitney was at her top, and we brought in a name like Whitney Houston, it would sell.

We try to make earth-friendly decisions whenever we can, as it's part of our brand DNA.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke. Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.

The Kindle app runs on iPads, BlackBerry, and Android devices, so you can read your books wherever you want; with Apple, you're locked into Apple devices.

The reason my kids like McDonald's is that they always know what they're going to get. It's not gourmet food, but the french fries they order in Indianapolis are just like the french fries they order in Tampa. Wherever they get McDonald's fries, they know it will be the same. That's what McDonald's does.

You have to create a consistent brand experience however and wherever a customer touches your brand, online or offline. The lines are forever blurred.

If a brand wants a specific girl, they want a specific girl, wherever you are.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They're keeping up with their friends and family, but they're also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They're connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It's almost a disadvantage if you're not on it now.

Learn as many mistakes and what not to do while your business or product is small. Don't be in such a hurry to grow your brand. Make sure that you and the market can sustain any bumps that may occur down the road.

If I'm doing a logo, I'll do it in black and white. Once the form is feeling right, only then do I start exploring the color palettes. A good example was the process of rebranding the Salvador Dali Museum. I did at least 100 versions in black and white.

Apple was selling $400 iPods with $1 earbuds. They're making a beautiful white object with all the music in the world in it... I'm going to make a beautiful black object that will play it back.