The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!

The principles and laws of this book are fantastic. But I gave this book a lower review because so many of the laws seem to contradict themselves. I would prefer they called this book the "22 principles of marketing." Laws seem to imply that they should never be broken.

For context, this book was written in 1992 - so I have the benefit of seeing what actually happened in the future. This book famously called Steve Jobs a failure and that his company NeXT would never succeed. They used Donald Trump as an example of failure and they praised the efforts of Toys R Us and Blockbuster as the pillar for good niche marketing.

That being said, I still really enjoyed the book - particularly two of it's "principles." One, niches are the way to go. If a bigger brand already owns the word or association for a conception or idea, don't try to compete with them. For example, IBM owned big computers that corporations utilized. But Microsoft did a different approach and focused on personal computers used by individuals.

The second principle I liked was the law of sacrifice. You have to be willing to let go of certain market segments and products to grow the company. For example, McDonald's is known for appealing to children. They have the Happy Meal, playgrounds and the fun artwork. While a company like Subway can focus on a completely different segment - on adults trying to be healthy. But if Subway were to try and do both things, they would fail at both. So often times companies need to let go of certain ideas to fully grow.