Ad Age

 
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Category builders and category killers.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 12/2007

It can cost a fortune for a company to pioneer a new category of product or service. Digital cameras, for example. Or satellite radio. Or Internet grocery service. Webvan, for example, lost $830 million on its two-year venture into the grocery-delivery business. Since it?s so costly to establish a new category, why would any company deliberately want to kill an emerging new category? Actually there are good reasons for putting the kibosh on a new category. In the marketing jungle, there are two kinds of companies: category builders and category killers.

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The long tail versus the re-tail.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 11/2007

The predictions of Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, seem to be coming true. ?Why the future of business is selling less of more.? In other words, the one-size-fits-all model is becoming obsolete. I?m not too sure. I wonder how many consumers have had the same experiences I have had. How come, in the face of bewildering variety, the one variety you want is often out of stock?

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Think category first. Brand second.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 10/2007

A brand is the tip of an iceberg. How big and how deep the iceberg is will determine how powerful the brand is. The iceberg is the category. If it melts, the brand will melt too.

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The Velvet Curtain.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 9/2007

From General Electric in New York to The Walt Disney Company in Los Angeles, a velvet curtain has descended across the country separating marketing from management.

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Multimedia and other misconceptions.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 7/2007

Every time a new medium arrives, older media players think, what an opportunity to extend our franchise. So magazines and newspapers and radio and TV outlets are jumping all over themselves to digitize their brands. Does this all make sense? Sure, it does. But common sense is not marketing sense which is quite different. Playboy fell into the line-extension trap, the most common fault in marketing. Digitizing its magazine is only the latest in a long line of similar mistakes.

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Will Apple?s iPhone pass the acid test?
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 6/2007

In the gold rush of 1849, prospectors checked their finds with Aqua Regia, a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids. If a sample passed the acid test, it was the real thing. When Apple introduces its iPhone this month, will it pass the acid test? In my opinion, no. Prediction No. 1: The iPhone will be a major disappointment. Prediction No. 2: The media will blame the execution, not the concept.

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The Dubious Practice of Double Branding
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 5/2007

A Name Twice as Long Is Not Necessarily Twice as Good. Branding is so popular in boardrooms today that some companies are overdoing it. "If one brand is good," goes the thinking, "then two must be better."

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Radiado.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 4/2007

Next to the Internet, radio is my favorite medium. It?s one-to-one and personal in a way that no other traditional medium can duplicate. Yet at the top of the hour, I turn off my radio and don?t turn it back on until 8 minutes after the hour. Why? Because that?s radio?s black hole. Eight solid minutes of commercials, traffic, weather, news and more commercials.

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The rise and fall of Robert Nardelli.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 3/2007

?The most-overpaid CEO in America? is the epitaph often applied to Robert Nardelli, the former chief executive of The Home Depot. After six years, he left the home-improvement chain with an exit package valued at about $210 million. After six years, Home Depot investors were left holding a bag of stock that had lost 8 percent of its value. (During the same time period the stock of Lowe?s, the No. 2 home-improvement chain, was up 188 percent.)

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Simply different.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 2/2007

?Simply Better? is the title of the marketing book that won the 2005 Berry-AMA Book Prize. ?Customers rarely buy a product or service because it offers something unique,? say authors Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan. Consumers want products that are ?simply better? in terms of quality, reliability and value. Not true. Too many companies focus on trying to make better products when the real advantage is making different products.

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The rise & fall of the Razr.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 1/2007

Motorola stock recently fell 12 percent after the company warned of disappointing holiday sales. ?The trend-setting Razr has lost its buzz in the marketplace,? reported the Associated Press, ?and Motorola?s efforts to come up with a new killer product have so far not paid off.? Like many companies, Motorola has focused its efforts on building better products not on building better brands.

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