Ernie's Laws of Marketing



I've just updated Ernie's Laws of Marketing, a collection of apothegms reflecting lessons learned while working at Apple Computer and Boston Consulting Group. I started collecting them several years ago, making them my earliest attempt at applied philosophy.

The most famous, if I may use such a term, is my First Law:

The First Law:
Make things as vague as possible, but no vaguer

It sounds silly, but I actually find it almost as useful as Occam's razor in converging on an optimal solution. Which is perhaps unsurprising, since mine is derived from Einstein's related dictum on simplicity: Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

While Googling for my laws (ironically, I often find Google fastest way to track down my own URLs), I ran across two related Laws of Marketing:

First was Al Ries & Jack Trout's book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, as well as its sequel The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. I haven't read either, but I found the summary intriguing: Leadership, Category, Ladder, Duality, etc. I think I agree with most of it, though I'm not sure if first mover advantage is all its cracked up to be; or rather, I believe being first only helps if you are wise enough to efficiently capture the relevant learning and have the resources to stay ahead of potential competitors.

Amusingly, I was even more impressed by Dr. Ralph Wilson's tongue-in-cheek tribute called The Five Mutable Laws of Web Marketing, which surprisingly mirrored (and expanded upon) advice I gave to my father-in-law last night about building his web business. I'm always relieved, pleased, and slightly disappointed to learn that other people have had the same ideas I have, only better...

Posted: Thu - September 2, 2004 at 03:46 PM        

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