Semantic ambiguity in post-rationalization

I know it’s unfair for me to pick on a book based on a one-paragraph summary, but I was perusing the Ries & Ries site and noticed these sentences describing Al Ries’s Focus.

How do you build a brand? You narrow the focus. Nokia narrowed its focus to cellphones and became the world’s No. 1 cellphone brand. Federal Express narrowed its focus to overnight deliveries and became one of the world’s leading cargo carriers. Southwest narrowed its focus to coach service only and became America’s most profitable airline. Dell narrowed its focus to direct sales only and became the world’s leading PC manufacturer.

Let’s examine the examples of “focus” Ries provides here:

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All branding and no business

Just read this article by Laura Ries of Ries & Ries brand consulting. In it, she derides UPS for a recent ad campaign claiming that they do “more than shipping.”

Once your brand stands for something in the mind, it is almost impossible to change the brand’s position. UPS stands for shipping and the UPS Store stands for a place to ship. And that is not a bad thing, in fact it is an enormously profitable business.

Brands like UPS should reinforce their strengths in advertising and not try to expand into other companies’ categories.

I agree that brands need focus—that they should strive to stand for one thing in the minds of customers. But time and again Laura and her father/business partner, Al Ries, dole out advice without considering business realities. It’s unrealistic to assume that every business will do one thing only, forever. After all, one benefit of a strong brand is the “permission” it gives to extend into other relevant categories.

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Has brand positioning been repositioned?

[Originally published this on B2B Brand Debate, where it got some comments including one comment from Al Ries himself.]

Before Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote their seminal book “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind,” David Ogilvy—one of the true Mad Men—set the stage for their thesis, stating “It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product.” Ogilvy’s “big idea”—one that reflects the qualities of the brand and differentiates it from competitors—is Ries and Trout’s “position.” A quick glance at the websites and whitepapers of today’s leading branding firms suggests that elements of this definition remain intact. They speak of “relevant differentiation in the marketplace” (Landor) and ensuring that customers “can tell the brand apart from others” (Interbrand’s Brandchannel.com). Some experience in the world of branding firms and a look at the work posted on their sites, however, reveal that definitions and deliverables don’t always align.

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Of debatable importance: first to market

With all due respect, I find many of Al Ries’s confident assertions about how to build a brand suspicious. I’m sure that there are significant exceptions to most of them (and not just of the “proves the rule” variety), but haven’t gone to the trouble to find many. Then this article in The New York Times pops up in my email with the synopsis “It is not always the first one to market who wins but the one with the most aggressive marketing plan.”

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