The true warrior embraces marketing, and understands that it is the most complex and poorly understood topic known to consumers and business people alike. Psychology, behaviour, economics, philosophy, accounting, and genetics all play a role in marketing. Marketing is uncovering perceptions in the prospect’s mind (known and unknown) and forging conformance between the product offering and that mind.

A company can become incredibly successful if it can own a word in the mind of the prospect or public—simple words taken right out of the dictionary. They burn your way into the mind by narrowing focus to a single word or concept, like “always” or “just do it”. This is the ultimate marketing sacrifice.

Warriors, do we have a word or a concept? Can we embrace this law? Is there a dark side to the law? Yes. It is possible to be branded negatively with a word or concept—”difficult” for example, which is not a good word to own. Vigilance is required to avoid negative connotations, while the team works on owning a megastar word in the prospect’s mind.

Owning a word in the prospect’s mind is a concept popularized by Trout and Reis, in the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing1 and it seems that these laws are often counterintuitive and require true courage to implement with faith, passion, and belief. In my own past, shortly after that book was first published in 1994, and I read it, I completely reorganized our product line, killed products completely, blew up the line extensions, and focused on one core product, in one core industry, under one word in our identity—“digital.” That caused my partner and I to become multimillionaires. I am living proof of the truth of these concepts.

You are warriors, and if you embrace this wisdom, you will demonstrate your courage. ‘By their deeds, they shall be known.’ (Psalm 28:4) So it has been written.