Product Description

What Charles Darwin did for biology, Al and Laura Ries do for branding.

In their exciting new book, The Origin of Brands, the Rieses take Darwin's revolutionary idea of evolution and apply it to the branding process. What results is a new and strikingly effective strategy for creating innovative products, building a successful brand, and, in turn, achieving business success. Here, the Rieses explain how changing conditions in the marketplace create endless opportunities to build new brands and accumulate riches. But these opportunities cannot be found where most people and most companies look. That is, in the convergence of existing categories like television and the computer, the cellphone and the Internet.

Instead, opportunity lies in the opposite direction—in divergence. By following Darwin's brilliant deduction that new species arise from divergence of an existing species, the Rieses outline an effective strategy for creating and taking to market an effective brand. In The Origin of Brands, you will learn how to:

• Divide and conquer
• Exploit divergence
• Use the theories of survival of the firstest and survival of the secondest
• Harness the power of pruning

Using insightful studies of failed convergence products and engaging success stories of products that have achieved worldwide success through divergence, the Rieses have written the definitive book on branding. The Origin of Brands will show you in depth how to build a great brand and will lead you to success in the high-stakes world of branding.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #425148 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This father-daughter marketing team, authors of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, believes that evolution is a useful analogy for marketers. Throughout the book, readers are encouraged to think of Darwin's tree of life. For example, the television tree used to consist solely of the three networks, but now comprises an array of cable and satellite offerings. The "phone" tree includes cellular, picture, computer, digital and other varieties. Using many examples, the authors explore this notion: "Competition between individuals (brands) improves the species. Competition between species (categories) drives the categories further and further apart." To survive in today's competitive market where technology makes innovations much faster than in the past, companies must continue to introduce new computers, cars, phones, food, etc. However, the drawbacks of expansion and innovation mean that some products and some corporations won't be profitable. Burger King keeps trying to launch new menus, essentially to compete with McDonald's. While McDonald's has had its own fiscal troubles, it continues to dominate the fast food market because it was first and has so many outlets. Along with their entertaining perspective on advertising and marketing, the authors offer specific advice including devising a new category rather than a brand. Innovative marketers will have a triumphant product if they create a category and launch with a clever name as well, such as Starbucks did for the high-end coffee-shop category. While the book is primarily directed at readers working in marketing, advertising and related fields, managers and executives at both large and small businesses will benefit from it as well.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Illuminating examples and wry humor combine for a delightful read." (Harvard Business Review )

About the Author

Al Ries and his daughter and business partner Laura Ries are two of the world's best-known marketing consultants, and their firm, Ries & Ries, works with many Fortune 500 companies. They are the authors of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, which was a Wall Street Journal and a BusinessWeek bestseller, and, most recently, The Origin of Brands. Al was recently named one of the Top 10 Business Gurus by the Marketing Executives Networking Group. Laura is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the Fox News and Fox Business Channels, CNN, CNBC, PBS, ABC, CBS, and others. Their Web site (Ries.com) has some simple tests that will help you determine whether you are a left brainer or a right brainer.

Customer Reviews

Al Ries' Greatest Hits
While others who've read this book rave about it, I would come down more on the ambivilant side. No doubt there are a lot of good ideas and examples in this book. However, if you've read other work by Ries (including his work with Jack Trout) you've read almost all this stuff before. While the Darwinian metaphor seems apt, Ries (and his daughter, Laura) really just exploit it for a literary device to repackage a lot of Al's prior thinking with plenty of new examples from the marketplace. (By the way, Al, if you go off on the mismanagment of the Miller brand one more time, I'm going to scream.)

So my bottom line is this. If you've never read any of Al Ries' books, this one is a good contemporary overview of his thinking (which is, no doubt, of significant importance). However, if you've read more than two or three of his other books, you'll recognize most of this book is a rehash of earlier work, updated for today and you'll end up feeling like you bought a new album from a great classic rock band only to find out they've just remastered some golden oldies and invited in Kid Rock, 50 Cent and the cast of American Idol to give the songs a new spin.

Not-so-revolutionary strategies that go unnoticed
Before reading, I expected this book to list historical examples of successful brand names and how they developed - Coca-Cola, Kleenex, GAP, etc. But after reading, I was delighted to find that this book had much more. "The Origin of Brands" is one of the most practical business strategy books I have ever read.

The book finds a niche by paralleling Darwin's book "The Origin of Species." The authors give a refresher in high school biology by showing the development of a product is analogous to evolution. Just as how the canine species evolved into many different breeds of dogs - Labradors, Golden Retrievers, Terriers; a product like the television can diverge into new categories - plasma, projection, LCD, DLP, etc. It is through this divergence in innovation that new products can be created and new brand names can come into existence.

Contrary to the belief that entrepreneurs must find unfulfilled markets and seize a business opportunity, Al & Laura Ries say that success can be found through creating new markets. Before the introduction of light beer, there was neither a market nor a demand for light beer. But a new market was created with Bud Lite as the dominating brand. The recently popular Red Bull drink found its success by creating a new market known as "energy drinks."

The book also gives good advice on battling with your brand. If you are competing with the #1 brand in a market, the book suggests you do the opposite of the leader. Target provides fierce competition with Wal-Mart by providing the opposite - clean, neat-looking displays and wide isles. Home Depot and Lowe's have a similar relationship. It is through uniqueness that business must compete - not by following a trend.

Near the end, the book somewhat reverts to basic marketing tactics - giving your brand an identity in the consumer's mind. Cadillac is able to keep a prestigious name by associating itself with the basic idea of "expensive American car." Products like Zima beer, introduced by the Coors company, are unsuccessful because do not identify with a simple basic image in the consumer's minds.

While I can't necessarily agree that the author's thinking applies to all business cases, this book definitely brings out some obvious truths in product development and marketing. It even points out psychological thinking on the customer's end. Unlike many other business books, this one supports itself with hundreds of real-world examples of successful and unsuccessful products. I enjoyed reading it because it was able to answer "why" to almost everything stated.

I recommend this for anyone in marketing, entrepreneurship, and even managers interested in making their business better. "The Origin of Brands" will provide you with ideas helpful in selling any product - no matter how large or how small. Best of all, it is enjoyable as much as it is informative.

Their work keeps getting better and better
This latest book by Al Ries and his daughter Laura extends their previous work on positioning, brands, categories, being first in a category, and why publicity is more important now than advertising.

The authors draw an extended analogy to Charles Darwin's Origin of Species that runs through out the book.

In the business world Categories like computers evolve slowly through competition but also diverge rapidly through specialization. Over time those species that have won look quite different (lion vs. a tiger, for example). The same diverging is true with categories like computers where we now have desktops, laptops, palmtops.

The authors draw the parallel that this concept of divergence of the species also applies to categories in business. Understanding this similarity, they say, is your key to success in business. You just have to create new categories, and then dominate that category. But this book develops this positioning logic in ways that seemed much clearer to me than their previous works.

To succeed, you (the business owner/manager) must CREATE NEW CATEGORIES (palmtops), and doing this is MORE IMPORTANT than your creation of new brands (Sharp Zaurus). Creating a brand is more important because you must end up being 1st or 2nd in that category to be successful. (Sounds like Jack Welch's thinking of 'We're going to be 1, 2 or 3 in an industry, or else we sell that subsidiary.')

Through a slow elaboration of proof after proof, chapter after chapter, the Ries authors convince you to see the logic of what they have been advocating for the last 20 or so years on positioning, categories, brands and publicity. As a reader I found this slow elaboration of proofs to be slow reading, however, I'm sure it's required for the skeptics (advertising account reps, I'm sure).

In regards to publicity, they recommend a way to create a new category. This methodology requires the use of slow build up publicity rather than fast splurge advertising.

If you accept their thinking on categories and brands, and I do, then you will be against mergers that take companies into unrelated fields, and you will be against line extensions that weaken your brand. The chapter on "Pruning" was especially enlightening in this regard. Toyota's development of Lexus was a great example of how to create a new category. The company can sell off Lexus and not hurt the Toyota brand. The authors have other examples of good creation of categories. But their examples of poorly thought out brands was quite extensive, and sometimes overwhelming.

There are three big rewards from reading this book. First, you will get a deep grounding in why you must create Categories first, then create the first brand in that category. Second, in reading all the elaboration you will develop a working knowledge of seeing brands and categories, and where companies fit in that category.

In this manner when you see that McDonalds is adding DVD rentals (yesterday's WSJ) you will know that this is CONVERGENCE and it is bad. They should be DIVERGING instead. Such convergence will dilute their brand of hamburgers, fries, and shakes. Should we now call them "Blockaburger?"

In fact, I found it interesting that the authors described how In And Out hamburgers in California now has higher per store sales than McDonalds and that McDonalds per store sales are static, and perhaps dropping if their figures weren't deflated for inflation. Again, there's lots of examples and details.

And the third reward from reading this book is that the last three chapters of the book provide a methodology (albeit somewhat abstract) for you to follow. You will learn to DIVERGE NOT CONVERGE, create the Category first, then create a brand to be first in that category. You will learn that its OK to be second in an industry, if you only... well, you'll have to read the book to get all the other details.

This book is highly recommended.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX