I’m talking about marketing laws from the book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
#5 The Law of Focus
The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospects mind.
Of the 22 Laws of Marketing, this is my favorite.
This law basically states you need to own a word that is associated with you, your company or your product. Oh, and only one company per word. If someone already owns the word you don’t get to own it too.
Some examples from the book are good.
If we are talking about Cars and I say the word Safety, which car brand owns the word Safety in the minds of the market?
The answer is Volvo. They even used to make ugly boxy cars because it reinforced their Safety standing
Other examples from the book:
Crest...cavities
Mercedes...engineering
BMW...driving
Domino’s...home delivery
Pepsi-Cola...youth
Nordstrom...service
Each of these companies is known for he word that is associated with them and no other company in their category owns that word.
And you only get to own one word, you can’t own a bunch of them, because then it means you don’t really own any of them.
6 Dumb Reasons
In the summer of 2001 I was working at Novell as the head of GroupWise marketing. I was on a team with the other marketing managers over the different products, including NetWare.
NetWare was getting ready to launch the next biggest version, NetWare 6. As part of the campaign, the NetWare team decided to use the number 6 in all of their marketing and messaging. The big idea was “6 reasons to upgrade to NetWare 6”
I was not involved with this effort, since each product team did their own thing and NetWare was the king. If you weren’t part of the NetWare team you were nobody.
But a time came when I finally couldn’t handle sitting by any longer. It was during a marketing manager’s meeting. All the teams were sitting around a table when our Director of Marketing came in and flopped into the chair with total disgust. She had just come from a meeting with upper management. After weeks and months of internal marketing, of internal promotional campaigns, of Laura Croft look-alikes rappelling off of building H on the Provo campus, after all of this effort and talking and promoting, she had just grilled the executives to name the six reasons to upgrade to GroupWise 6. The public launch was approaching and she wanted to see if management was paying attention.
Guess what? Not a single executive could recall even half of the 6 reasons. They were hard pressed to remember one. She threw up her hands and proclaimed how frustrated she was with Management not paying attention.
That is when I couldn’t be quiet any longer. I spoke up forcefully and said...
“It isn’t their fault. It is our fault. You can’t remember 6 things at once about a product. You have to pick one and make that word stand for the product, not 6.”
OH BOY!! My manager looked at me in surprise...she respected my opinion but didn’t know what to say under the circumstances. I had not said a word during the months of the marketing campaign preparation, it was odd for me to speak up now.
The NetWare Marketing guys blew a gasket. Yelling, arguing, fighting back and forth immediately erupted. They were convinced they were right. After all, they had just sunk several million dollars into this marketing campaign, it was on the eve of launching, and my opinion as the GroupWise guy wasn’t going to hold any water with them.
Finally, after arguing for a good while, one of them said, “If you don’t think our 6 words work, what do you suggest we use instead?”
1 Good Reason
Never speak up unless you have a solution...I pounced. I jumped to the white board, and said...
“There is one word, and one word only, that Novell owns, that NetWare owns, and that every single person in the industry knows. When you talk about Novell and you talk about NetWare, the word was and still is “SECURITY”
NetWare is secure. How did they react to this simple approach to a single word? Guess what, they yelled at me again for such a stupid idea that a word like Security was going to be a reason people stayed with Novell. What they didn’t realize was that I didn’t pick the word. The customers I spoke with, the press I spoke with, the analysts I spoke with, all expressed to me that word.
I argued that Microsoft, the competition, couldn’t own the word secure. And if they attempted to own it, then the company and product that owned it, Novell, would be reinforced by their competition.
The beauty of owning a word is that it positions your company in such a way that your competition reinforces the word when they attempt to use it themselves.
Needless to say, the team didn’t take my ideas. They went with the 6 Dumb idea words instead of the 1 good one.
So what happened in the market?
First, a few months later, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was the company focused on security, that they owned the word Secure...and he was laughed at in the press. This was seven years ago and VIsta, in an attempt to reinforce this word that Microsoft still doesn’t own, still gets laughed at for its clumsy attempts and increasing security.
Here is a link to the story - Bill Gates Makes Security Top Priority
To quote a section of this article:
“Microsoft has a serious image problem when it comes to the reliability, security, and stability of its network services and products”
Second, multiple email and Internet Viruses hit that year, crashing Microsoft servers all over the world. Bringing down companies like Boeing, who literally had to unplug the Internet from the entire company because the virus was so rampant.
2001: The year of the Virus
Here is a section of the article:
“...the greatest virus threat in 2001 came from Windows 32 viruses. The most destructive of these is SirCam -- a network-aware worm which is still spreading at a fast rate... In July, SirCam was responsible for leaking corporate documents, password files and, in one case, official FBI documents.
Not a single recorded incident of a NetWare or GroupWise crash occurred anywhere in the world due to a virus that year.
And 3rd, and this is the biggest, most terrible thing that happened...
By a terrible twist of fate, Jack Messman, newly appointed CEO of Novell, delivered his NetWare 6 press conference launch at 830am, on September 11, 2001. Almost to the hour of when the World Trade Center was attacked and changed the entire world’s focus to Security.
What word does GroupWise own?
If you have ever seen me speak, heard one of my presentations, or read any of my articles, you know that I hammer away on the word Security or Stability for GroupWise and for Novell. That Novell and GroupWise own the word security. It still does...but the world is changing, Microsoft, after 6 years since Bill Gates’ announcement, has increased its reliability and reduced its security threat.
For GroupWise right now, the word is Stable but the new GroupWise in the future has to take this word and see how to apply it.
#5 The Law of Focus
The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospects mind.
Of the 22 Laws of Marketing, this is my favorite.
This law basically states you need to own a word that is associated with you, your company or your product. Oh, and only one company per word. If someone already owns the word you don’t get to own it too.
Some examples from the book are good.
If we are talking about Cars and I say the word Safety, which car brand owns the word Safety in the minds of the market?
The answer is Volvo. They even used to make ugly boxy cars because it reinforced their Safety standing
Other examples from the book:
Crest...cavities
Mercedes...engineering
BMW...driving
Domino’s...home delivery
Pepsi-Cola...youth
Nordstrom...service
Each of these companies is known for he word that is associated with them and no other company in their category owns that word.
And you only get to own one word, you can’t own a bunch of them, because then it means you don’t really own any of them.
6 Dumb Reasons
In the summer of 2001 I was working at Novell as the head of GroupWise marketing. I was on a team with the other marketing managers over the different products, including NetWare.
NetWare was getting ready to launch the next biggest version, NetWare 6. As part of the campaign, the NetWare team decided to use the number 6 in all of their marketing and messaging. The big idea was “6 reasons to upgrade to NetWare 6”
I was not involved with this effort, since each product team did their own thing and NetWare was the king. If you weren’t part of the NetWare team you were nobody.
But a time came when I finally couldn’t handle sitting by any longer. It was during a marketing manager’s meeting. All the teams were sitting around a table when our Director of Marketing came in and flopped into the chair with total disgust. She had just come from a meeting with upper management. After weeks and months of internal marketing, of internal promotional campaigns, of Laura Croft look-alikes rappelling off of building H on the Provo campus, after all of this effort and talking and promoting, she had just grilled the executives to name the six reasons to upgrade to GroupWise 6. The public launch was approaching and she wanted to see if management was paying attention.
Guess what? Not a single executive could recall even half of the 6 reasons. They were hard pressed to remember one. She threw up her hands and proclaimed how frustrated she was with Management not paying attention.
That is when I couldn’t be quiet any longer. I spoke up forcefully and said...
“It isn’t their fault. It is our fault. You can’t remember 6 things at once about a product. You have to pick one and make that word stand for the product, not 6.”
OH BOY!! My manager looked at me in surprise...she respected my opinion but didn’t know what to say under the circumstances. I had not said a word during the months of the marketing campaign preparation, it was odd for me to speak up now.
The NetWare Marketing guys blew a gasket. Yelling, arguing, fighting back and forth immediately erupted. They were convinced they were right. After all, they had just sunk several million dollars into this marketing campaign, it was on the eve of launching, and my opinion as the GroupWise guy wasn’t going to hold any water with them.
Finally, after arguing for a good while, one of them said, “If you don’t think our 6 words work, what do you suggest we use instead?”
1 Good Reason
Never speak up unless you have a solution...I pounced. I jumped to the white board, and said...
“There is one word, and one word only, that Novell owns, that NetWare owns, and that every single person in the industry knows. When you talk about Novell and you talk about NetWare, the word was and still is “SECURITY”
NetWare is secure. How did they react to this simple approach to a single word? Guess what, they yelled at me again for such a stupid idea that a word like Security was going to be a reason people stayed with Novell. What they didn’t realize was that I didn’t pick the word. The customers I spoke with, the press I spoke with, the analysts I spoke with, all expressed to me that word.
I argued that Microsoft, the competition, couldn’t own the word secure. And if they attempted to own it, then the company and product that owned it, Novell, would be reinforced by their competition.
The beauty of owning a word is that it positions your company in such a way that your competition reinforces the word when they attempt to use it themselves.
Needless to say, the team didn’t take my ideas. They went with the 6 Dumb idea words instead of the 1 good one.
So what happened in the market?
First, a few months later, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was the company focused on security, that they owned the word Secure...and he was laughed at in the press. This was seven years ago and VIsta, in an attempt to reinforce this word that Microsoft still doesn’t own, still gets laughed at for its clumsy attempts and increasing security.
Here is a link to the story - Bill Gates Makes Security Top Priority
To quote a section of this article:
“Microsoft has a serious image problem when it comes to the reliability, security, and stability of its network services and products”
Second, multiple email and Internet Viruses hit that year, crashing Microsoft servers all over the world. Bringing down companies like Boeing, who literally had to unplug the Internet from the entire company because the virus was so rampant.
2001: The year of the Virus
Here is a section of the article:
“...the greatest virus threat in 2001 came from Windows 32 viruses. The most destructive of these is SirCam -- a network-aware worm which is still spreading at a fast rate... In July, SirCam was responsible for leaking corporate documents, password files and, in one case, official FBI documents.
Not a single recorded incident of a NetWare or GroupWise crash occurred anywhere in the world due to a virus that year.
And 3rd, and this is the biggest, most terrible thing that happened...
By a terrible twist of fate, Jack Messman, newly appointed CEO of Novell, delivered his NetWare 6 press conference launch at 830am, on September 11, 2001. Almost to the hour of when the World Trade Center was attacked and changed the entire world’s focus to Security.
What word does GroupWise own?
If you have ever seen me speak, heard one of my presentations, or read any of my articles, you know that I hammer away on the word Security or Stability for GroupWise and for Novell. That Novell and GroupWise own the word security. It still does...but the world is changing, Microsoft, after 6 years since Bill Gates’ announcement, has increased its reliability and reduced its security threat.
For GroupWise right now, the word is Stable but the new GroupWise in the future has to take this word and see how to apply it.
Recent Comments