Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Book Club: My Top 5 Takeaways from The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

“Can you recommend a book for…?” “What are you reading right now?” “What are your favorite books?” I get asked those types of questions a lot and, as an avid reader and all-around bibliophile, I’m always happy to oblige. I also like to encourage people to read as much as possible because knowledge benefits you much like compound interest. The more you learn, the more you know; the more you know, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more opportunities you have to succeed. On the flip side, I also believe there’s little hope for people who aren’t perpetual learners. Life is overwhelmingly complex and chaotic, and it slowly suffocates and devours the lazy and ignorant. So, if you’re a bookworm on the lookout for good reads, or if you’d like to get into the habit of reading, this book club for you. The idea here is simple: Every month, I’ll share a book that I’ve particularly liked, why I liked it, and several of my key takeaways from it. I’ll also keep things short and sweet so you can quickly decide whether the book is likely to be up your alley or not. Alright, let’s get to the takeaways. --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: buylegion.com/mike Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hey, it's another episode of Muscle for Life. Welcome, welcome. I am your host, Mike Matthews, and thank you for joining me today to learn about a book that I liked. Now, why am I doing an episode about books that I like? Well, I often get asked for book recommendation. Many people want to know what my favorite books are on various topics. They want to know what books I'm reading right now or what books I've read recently and which

ones I've liked, as well as my all-time favorite books, again, on various topics or in various genres. And as an avid reader and all-around bibliophile, I am always happy to oblige. I also like to encourage people to read as much as possible because knowledge benefits you much like compound interest, because the more you learn, the more you know, the more you know, the more you can do, and the more you can do, the more opportunities you have to succeed. Now on the flip side, I really do believe that there is little hope for people who are not perpetual learners. Life is overwhelmingly complex and chaotic, and it slowly would just like to get into the habit of reading,

then this episode is for you. And this series of episodes is for you. I post one every four to six weeks or so. And the idea behind the series is very simple. I share books that I have particularly liked. I explain why I liked them. And I share several of my key takeaways from the books. Usually it's five, sometimes it's three, as well as some of my own thoughts on those key takeaways.

Okay, let's get to the featured book, which is the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al and Laura Reese. And before I talk about this book, if you're wondering why I don't feature fitness books in the book club episodes, it's because I don't like most fitness books. There are some good health books out there, some good nutrition books. There of course are some good fitness books out there, but I myself stopped reading them some time ago because I find it more productive to read research reviews. That's what I'm more interested in. And that allows me to stay on the cutting edge, so to speak, because by the time research makes it into a book, it is often at least a year old just because of the time that it takes to write and publish a book. And in many cases, the research is years old. And so if you're curious what fitness stuff I like to read,

check out a couple of research reviews. Check out Alan Aragon's. I've been a longtime subscriber to Alan's and have always enjoyed what he is doing. Definitely check out monthly applications in strength sport mass over at strongerbyscience.com. That is Greg Knuckles and Eric Helms and Mike Zordos and Eric Trexler. Always good information in mass. And check out Examines Research Review as well over at examine.com. Focuses more on nutrition and supplementation, but a lot of good information. And also check out the Weightology or Weightology, however you want to say it, review over at weightology.net. That is James Krieger. Good guy, smart guy, good scientist. I've had him on the podcast. He's on

the scientific advisory board for Legion, and I've always liked what he is doing as well. And just to put this out in the universe, I wish Lyle McDonald did a research review. I would be the first person to sign up for that. So Lyle, if you're listening, consider it, consider it. I'm probably not alone. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent.

There are no proprietary blends, for example, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products.

To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to buylegion.com slash Mike. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash Mike. And just to show you how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire first order. This is a short and straightforward, but a fantastic primer on how to use branding to successfully launch or grow a product, service, or business. And it could also be a personal brand, growing your own popularity on social media, for example. So if you are interested in any of that, read this book. It offers both high-level strategic suggestions, like brainstorming a category you

can dominate, which is something I'm going to talk more about, as well as tactical tips for building better brands, like coming up with an effective name. And if you've never looked into branding because you think that your business isn't big enough or isn't established enough to benefit from it, because often the term branding or the activity is associated with mega million dollar brand awareness campaigns conducted by mega corporations with no expectations of ROI, no trackable returns, then I still recommend you read this book because you will quickly realize that any commercial activity, any marketing of anything, including ideas, can benefit from good branding. In fact, it goes further than that. If we compare

launching a business or a product or service or an idea, anything that we want to popularize, and so that could be a solopreneur's side hustle, or it could be a founder's venture-backed moonshot. If we liken that to launching a rocket, then the branding determines how strong the gravity well is. With great branding, our ship can quickly soar to the stratosphere with minimal effort. But with terrible branding, the same journey requires a tremendous amount of thrust and may be destined to fail. So in other words, when it's done well, when it's done skillfully, branding is a force multiplier. It enhances the effectiveness of all other forms of marketing that you do, including direct marketing, which is what tends to get the most attention, at least in the startup or the

entrepreneur space, just selling directly to people and getting direct ROI on money spent, which is important, but those activities are much more effective when you have also done a good job with your branding. Here's how the authors put it to quote them. And then later, here's another quote that I'm stitching together because it flows, even though it didn't appear like this in the book, for most people, a brand is nothing more than a guarantee of quality and a system for saving time. A way of making sure that the products you buy are decent without having to spend an inordinate amount of time comparing one product with another. And finally, before I get to the takeaways, I just want to say that although I've read many books on branding over the years and many, many on marketing, I'm recommending this one in particular because it has most informed many of the better branding decisions that I've made in my businesses, my books and Legion and, well, yeah, those are my businesses, the publishing and Legion.

This is also a book that you can profitably review regularly because as your circumstances expand and evolve, so do your needs. And as a business gets bigger, mistakes and missteps, and especially branding mistakes and branding missteps and marketing mistakes and missteps, they become more and more expensive and excruciating because of course there's more and more at stake. All right, let's get to the takeaways. Let's start with the first one. Quote, successful branding programs are based on the concept of singularity. The objective is to create in the mind of the prospect, the perception that there is no other product on the market quite like your product. And my note here is that many strong brands offer more than just high quality products. They're also unique in other major and meaningful ways. They are a source of information, for example, that people can't find elsewhere, or they are a place to buy things that people can't find elsewhere, or buy them at prices they can't find elsewhere, maybe a place to meet people that they can't meet elsewhere.

Take Legion, for example, my sports nutrition company, which not only sells outstanding supplements that objectively outshine the offerings of even our best competitors, but Legion also provides services that most sports nutrition companies do not like custom meal plans, pre-made meal plans, one-on-one coaching, as well as nearly 2000 at this point, evidence-based and fact-checked articles and podcasts over at legionathletics.com on just about every aspect of diet training and supplementation that you can imagine. Like probably any question you may have has been answered in an article or a podcast over at legionathletics.com. You could go search just about anything and find a relevant hit. And as a result of that approach to business, we have legions of highly loyal customers who are responsible for

producing some eye-poppingly good business metrics, measures that would likely be impossible with a more one-dimensional product-focused branding strategy, no matter how slick it may be. Okay, let's move on to the second takeaway, which is the power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope. Now, my note here is that many consumers don't just want to buy from brands that offer unique products and experiences. They also want to buy from brands that specialize in just one thing. They want to buy their soap, their socks, and their supplements from companies that primarily produce just soap, socks, and supplements. And this is partly because we assume that a jack of all trades

is a master of none. We assume that a brand that offers too many different types of things couldn't possibly be better at each one of those things than individual brands that pour all of their resources into just one of them. This, for example, is almost certainly one of the reasons that Amazon's house brands, their house sports nutrition brands, Enraged Nutrition, Flexitarian, P2N, and Own Power all went nowhere and were abandoned. As a consumer, we can buy that Amazon can make batteries, backpacks, and cables as good as any major brand and then just sell them for less, right? In fact, we probably assume, at least I assume, that Amazon's knockoffs are likely the exact same product made in the exact same factories. So we are getting basically the

exact same thing with some different packaging, with some different branding, and we're getting it for a lot less money. But it's hard to swallow that Amazon really made the effort to understand the science of sports nutrition and to bring something truly special to the market. Instead, we assume that Amazon's product people simply saw an opportunity to seize on a trend and they just wanted to see if they could make something stick. And that doesn't work in sports nutrition where the average consumer is far more discerning and sophisticated than in other categories. I mean, these are things that we are ingesting after all. It's a bit different than a battery that our remote is ingesting. Another point related to

this takeaway is that a brand's one thing that they focus on should be distinguishable by one word. And the shorter the better here. And this is a word that they strive to own in the minds of their ideal customers. When one of those people think of that word, the brand that is best positioned for long-term success is the one that immediately pops into their mind. So for example, in the case of Legion, I've been working since the beginning deliberately to try to own the phrase all natural sports supplements because I felt that was more approachable than the lofty sports supplements perch currently occupied by a company, probably Optum Nutrition would be my guess, that has hundreds of millions in revenue. In the case of On, they're probably

north of 600, 700 million a year in revenue. And if it's not On, it's going to be another very large company that currently owns that term, sports supplements, but all natural sports supplements was up for grabs. And that is what I have been pursuing. And I would say the strategy is working because Legion is now the leading by revenue line of all natural sports supplements in the world. And that's of course, because the biggest players all use artificial ingredients. And if the current growth trends of the business continue, it won't be too long before a considerable percentage of 40-something college-educated, above-average-income weightlifters, and those are really Legion's ideal customers, will consider Legion synonymous with all- natural sports supplements. And that brings me to my next

takeaway, which is leadership is the most direct way to establish the credentials of a brand. When you don't have the leading brand, your best strategy is to create a new category in which you can claim leadership. And my note here is as far as brand credibility is concerned, nothing succeeds like success. And the ultimate expression of success is category leadership. If you can credibly claim and prove, if necessary, that your brand is the leader of your category, the most popular, the most best-selling, that is far more effective than trying to explain why your products are better than your competitors. Everyone tries to do that. Everyone tries to convince consumers that their stuff is better. And so consumers meet these types of claims with skepticism. That's what they all say, right?

Category leadership, though, that says we're better without having to say those words by tapping into the power of authority and social proof. When most people see a brand on top in a category or hear that a brand is on top in a category and believe it, they automatically assume that it must be better than the rest. It must be on top for a reason, right? Therefore, the authors believe that brand leaders should always promote their leadership above all because it is the single most important motivating factor in consumer behavior. And so the authors contend that when you are building a brand, you must find a category

that you can become a leader in. Even if you have to create that category and you have to promote it alongside your brand. Now, how do you do that? How do you create a new category? Well, you narrow your focus. To come back to the second takeaway that I shared, the power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope. So in this case, you are not going to enter the beer market. You are going to enter the organic American IPA market. I don't know if there is such a market. I'm not a beer drinker, but if there is, then that's an example. Instead of selling just protein chips, you sell chicken-derived

protein chips. And yep, those exist. And I've seen them in quite a few stores. They must be selling. Instead of competing in the sports nutrition market, Legion is in the all-natural sports supplements space. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. All right, the next takeaway, number four. But what works is not expanding the brand, but expanding the market. here is once a company is doing seven figures in annual revenue, the easiest way to keep growing is to just keep creating new products that the existing customers and other people like them will also buy. And there are very right and wrong ways of doing that. And a major mistake that many

companies make is they just start stamping their name on all kinds of things, products in very different categories. And when they do this, they can enjoy a short-term increase in sales, but they also will blur the image of the brand in the eyes of the consumers. And if it gets too fuzzy, then they're going to lose their position of leadership in the minds of the many. And once that happens, sales can plummet and refuse to reverse. That's actually how you kill a brand. The key then is to keep the brand focused on its core category and then work to grow the size of that category, of that niche by promoting its general desirability and counterintuitively by inviting competitors who can enter the category and help defray the enormous advertising expense of growing a category.

You need a lot of money to grow a category and you usually need a lot of publicity in particular. Advertising alone usually isn't enough. You need to get a lot of media attention, organic media attention. And so when you're the leader of a category, effective competition, which is going to be companies that come in and can take market share from you, are going to do that. And it will shrink your market share. But if they are good at what they're doing, they are more than going to make up for it by growing the size of the market much faster than you could ever hope to do by yourself. And if you are the category leader and you are leveraging that in your marketing and in your advertising and in your publicity, which you should be doing constantly, then a lot of the

new people that your competitors bring into the ecosystem are going to find their way to you. And unless you accidentally scuttle your ship and ruin your brand, it's going to be almost impossible for a competitor to unseat you, no matter how much money they spend or what they do. Really, the best your competition can hope for once you have solidified your position of leadership is the number two spot. And the authors, for example, believe that a single brand can never have more than 50% of the market share. There is always room for competition because people like choices, they like variety. And any viable market can support at least two big brands. And of course, there are many markets that support many others. But the two biggest are going to account for a large percentage of the total sales of the category, probably a majority of the sales in

the category. And this principle I'm talking about here, by the way, is one of the reasons why I am always excited when other fitness influencers and celebrities publish books, especially inaugural ones, especially first books, because I have established category leadership in in fitness books, I sell far more than any other fitness author in the world. It's not even close. And I promote that fact widely. And many people have associated me with fitness author or fitness book. When they think of fitness author or fitness book, they immediately think of me. And so I want my category, fitness books, to grow as fast as possible. And I'm doing a lot myself to make that happen. I'm always working on the next book. I'm always promoting my existing books more widely. I'm working to grow my email following, my email lists, my social media following. But the category is going to expand a lot faster if more people like me are doing the same things. And then there's also the fact that readers read widely. Books are not a zero-sum game. And if someone has good

information and if they are an effective communicator, then I like to see them getting into the book game because there aren't too many authors in the fitness space who I would openly endorse. And so, for example, when my friend Sal from Mind Pump released his book, I immediately wanted to help promote it because it's good information. And I want people who are into fitness to read my books. I want them to read Sal's book. And I don't want them to read Stephen Gundry's stuff, for example. Anyway, by the same token, I can't wait for large health and consumer brands to start launching all natural sports nutrition lines because that category is poised to explode over the next decade. The trends are clear.

And if my team and I can stay on our metal, then we'll be in for one hell of a ride. Okay, let's move on to the fifth and final takeaway. The most important branding decision you will ever make is what to name your product or service because in the long run, a brand is nothing more than a name. And my note here is I have always been very sensitive to the names of my brands and my products because it matters far more than most people think. According to the authors, all other factors being equal, the brand with the better name will come out on top. And I've seen enough circumstantial evidence to say that that is probably correct, or at least it is

more right than wrong. And so you want to be very deliberate in naming your businesses, naming your brands, naming your products, naming your services, because the power of the brand name is in the word. It's in the meaning of the word in the mind. It's not in the logotype. It's not in the trademark. It's not in the visual symbol. For most brands, those things have little or nothing to do with creating meaning in the mind of the consumer. And that's what the brand name needs to achieve. Now, naming is an art and science unto itself. And if you want to learn more about it, I recommend a book called Hello, My Name is Awesome. Great book name, also a great book,

a lot of good information. But the authors of the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding do offer a few naming tips. For example, they say that one of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name. What you should generally do instead is take a regular word and then use it out of context to connote the primary attribute of your brand. Another tip is unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise, the best branding strategy should be to use the company name as the brand name. Another is starting with the generic name for the category and then condensing that is a good way to kill two birds with one stone. So you create a proper name that's also short and easy to spell.

So you create a proper name that's also short and easy to spell. CNET.com, for example, took the generic term computer network and then shortened it to CNET, which is a has a good nickname because people feel closer to a brand when they can use the brand's nickname instead of the full name. And that's it. That's it for my book review, my top five takeaways from the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and my thoughts on each. Thanks again for joining me today. I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope it makes your marketing more effective. And what do I have coming next? Well, I have a Q&A, which is going to be on vegan meat alternatives, gaining strength but not size, and fitness for shift workers. Currently, that's slotted to come out on the 30th of April, but I just found out I have to travel next week. So I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it recorded in time. So it may come the following Friday on May 7th. We'll have to see, but I'm going to be talking also about how to fix the five most common vitamin and mineral

deficiencies that's coming up as well as another installment of best of muscle for life, which is going to feature beating back pain, information on beating back pain, rapid fat loss tips, and some motivation for training hard. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility. And thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want

to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmustfullife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.