I ran into one of my acquaintances at Storage Networking World, and as we talked about the marketing needs of one of my clients, he suggested a book called “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.”  He promised it was a quick read, so, on his recommendation, I ordered it from the local Barnes and Noble.  It’s got a 4-stars reader ranking on Amazon, but in keeping with the theme of “you can’t please all people,” the 100+ comments range from, “If an entrepreneur or sales person reads only one book on marketing, this would be it.” to “…there are a few small pearls to be gathered, but digging through the muck to find them makes them difficult to spot.”  The book was published in 1994, so some of the examples are a bit dated, but it is interesting to see how the authors’ predictions played out.  My favorite was the decline of Sears, which in a bit of irony merged with Kmart.

My favorite chapter in the book is “The Law of Focus,”  which starts with the chapter-head tagline:  “The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.”  You’ll need to read the book to get their examples, but I’m sure you can come up with a few examples on your own.  This one is not in the book, but if you live in the United States, you probably know “The Quiet Company. ”  OK, so that’s really a phrase, not a word, but the company, in my opinion, owns the word “Quiet.”   And any company that tries to be “Quieter” does so, in the words of the authors, “at their own peril.”

In the area of computer storage, a market I’ve spent more than 20 years studying, there are a number of words or descriptive phrases that are owned, or nearly owned.  Network Appliance is close to owning the word “Simplicity.”   One sustained push in that direction would probably put them over the top.  EMC is the “Information Management” company, and, at least within the storage sector, owns the word “Information.”  IBM, Oracle, and SAP might actually know more about managing and leveraging critical business information than EMC.  I won’t debate that topic. But in the area of storage, EMC still owns the word, and the word helps define the company’s differentiation.

I’m going to add this book to my recommended reading list.  Then I’m going to go think about whether there is a word I can own.  More importantly, I’m going to think about whether there is a word that any of my clients can own.