The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them At Your Own Risk! — Book Notes
Al Ries, Jack Trout
12 min readAug 2, 2017
Published: 1994
Who are Al Ries & Jack Trout?
In their own words: Al Ries & Jack Trout are probably the world’s best-known marketing strategists. Along with Jack Trout, Ries is credited with coining the term “positioning”, as related to the field of marketing
What This Book Is About:
If there are laws of the jungle and laws of the universe, there should also be laws that marketing professionals follow. These are the 22 laws of marketing.
Big Lessons (or tl;dr version):
- Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products or services.
- It’s better to be first than it is to be better.
- Create a category that you can be first in — and make sure that the category is supported by a singular word.
- Fight the leader by not being better, but being their opposite.
- Don’t extend your brand through line extension; it rarely works. Plus, your brand is not the one that works, it’s the association with something.