Category: Brands

I am sure many of you out-there have a pair of those colorful funny plastic shoes called Crocs, also you added some flavor by showing your pins or what they call Jibbitz.
I have some friends who took the real world Crocs experience to another level and bought some real world stocks (symbol CROX), but unfortunately it was not as fun as they were expecting, as the poor stock took a ferocious plunge since 1 year from 75$ to 4.61$ (today’s price).

The Origin of Brand blog of Laura Ries is one of the coolest marketing blogs to have in your feed reader.

Laura is a marketing guru, consultant, bestselling author, speaker. In 2002, Business 2.0 named Laura a “management guru” and issued trading cards with her picture and statistics on them. Laura has appeared on the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Channel, CNBC, CNN, PBS, CBS, ABC World News Tonight, Bloomberg and more.

In 1994, Laura partnered with her father to form Ries & Ries. Together they have consulted with many Fortune 500 companies. They have also written four books: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding (1998), The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding (2000), The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR (2002) and The Origin of Brands (2004)

A posting called “LinkedIn: Dull by Design” caught my attention, so I would like to share with you some parts of it:

The way to build a powerful brand is not by emulating the leader and trying to be better. History proves time and again that the best strategy for going against the leader is to do the opposite.

… At the beginning of any new category there are usually many players. It is like conception. After sex, you have millions of sperm racing to get to that egg to fertilize it. Some are too early, some are bad swimmers, some get lost, and some are lazy. Only one lucky and smart sperm makes it and bam the race is over. The winner is chosen; fertilization is complete. No more winners.


History is actually filled of stories like this. To succeed, brands don’t need to be in the marketplace first; they need to get in the mind first.

• Yuengling was the first beer on the marketplace, but Budweiser was first in the mind.
• Duryea was the first automobile on the road, but Ford was the first car in the mind.
• MITS Altair 8800 was the first microcomputer, but Apple was the first microcomputer in the mind.

Read the full article here.