The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

By: Al Ries, Laura Ries

Narrated by: David Drummond

This marketing classic has been expanded to include new commentary and a bonus book: The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding.

Smart and accessible, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the definitive text on branding, pairing anecdotes about some of the best brands in the world, like Rolex, Volvo, and Heineken, with the signature savvy of marketing gurus Al and Laura Ries. Combining The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, this book proclaims that the only way to stand out in today’s marketplace is to build your product or service into a brand - and provides the step-by-step instructions you need to do so.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding also tackles one of the most challenging marketing problems today: Branding on the Web. The Rieses divulge the controversial and counterintuitive strategies and secrets that both small and large companies have used to establish Internet brands. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the essential primer on building a category-dominating, world-class brand.

©2002 Al Ries and Laura Ries (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers

Some Laws Proven Wrong

This book was written quite some time ago, during the time that Yahoo was the dominant force of the internet. This gives us an advantage to see if some of the laws are really immutable laws or just theories

Some examples where they got it terribly wrong
1. Amazon should just stick to selling books
2. Apple should stop manufacturing both hardware and software. Just focus on 1
3. TV and internet will never be together
4. palm pilot + telephone + cd player will never become 1 single device

However, many of the laws indeed have been proven to stand the test of time

As for the narrator, I felt as if I was listening to commercial. Never really felt a connection with him

Old but gold

The first 11 laws of branding are for physical brands and those are amazing. The last 11 are for internet brands and some of the info is quite dated. what was holding true in the early 2000s no longer applies, so take the last half of the book with a grain of salt. Still very good information through!

outdated but strong core

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Almost everything in this book is wrong

It's a book of predictions and 20 years later it's all either wrong, or 75% wrong with hints of right here and there. it's pretty adorable actually

Treezy

Great book great listen dropped a lot of gems that can help you when starting your brand

Interesting ideas

It reads as quite dated, especially regarding major current brands and trends, but there are real gems.

Branding concepts that sounded great, but then...

This book interested me as a historical read: Dell and Compaq dominate the market, along with AOL, CompUSA, and Toshiba portables. Blockbuster Video is big, and Coca-Cola still has Tab.


The authors make what seem like cogent arguments about how people perceive brands, yet it lost credibility backdropped against their confident assertions that ‘search engines will decline in importance (Yahoo dominated, and there was yet no Google), that ‘Divergence, not convergence, is consistent with the law of nature’ (except that we have mitochondria and plants have chloroplast, and animals and plants appear to be symbiotic convergences of different lifeforms), and finally, in Chapter 33, that ‘convergence will never occur, the palm pilot, telephone, and CD player all wrapped into one, it’ll never happen!’ I mean, that was humorous to hear on my iPhone. 



The authors appear to have touched on some core semantic/psychological basics of branding, yet in other instances clearly did not drill down to the fundamental bedrock, or 'immutable laws'.

All in all, a thought-provoking book; in part because it served as a warning about being too sure of oneself and ones theories of branding.

The most brutal narration

Classic book! The narration was so robotic and obnoxious I couldn’t finish listening. Ordered print copy.

One of the best books!

This book exceeded my expectations with many useless info about branding like perception and how do u want people to feel about ur brand. Highly recommended!

11 laws

Kinda out of date but the first 22 are good so I did get some good information.