The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving

587: Globally Recognized Marketing Strategist on How to Build Brands That Dominate

Sep 17, 2025

Laura Ries, a globally recognized marketing strategist and author of The Strategic Enemy, shares her insights on brand building. She emphasizes the importance of focusing on categories rather than brands, asserting that clarity and contrast drive success. Ries discusses pivotal strategies, like defining a category, choosing a strategic enemy, and the power of a memorable visual hammer. She illustrates her points with examples from Kodak and Toyota, highlighting that owning a singular idea can propel brands to dominance in a competitive landscape.

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INSIGHT

Category Trumps Brand

People think in categories more than brands, so category dominance drives brand excitement.
Positioning should aim to own a category in the consumer's mind rather than just push a brand name.

ANECDOTE

Raised On Positioning

Laura grew up with Al Ries and learned positioning at the dinner table and on client trips.
She apprenticed for decades and co-wrote books with him, carrying his legacy into her career.

INSIGHT

Focus Creates Brand Power

Focus is the core principle of positioning and creates disproportionate strength.
Narrowing what you stand for prevents confusion and amplifies impact.

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Laura Ries, globally recognized marketing strategist and author of The Strategic Enemy, outlines a category-first approach to brand building. As she explains, “while people talk in brands, they really think in categories. The category is king.” Her core message: focus, contrast, and clarity determine whether a brand leads or disappears.

The conversation emphasizes why narrowing focus creates strength, when to launch a new brand name rather than extend an old one, and how visible, repeatable signals, what Ries calls a “visual hammer”, turn a positioning into dominance. She draws on vivid examples: Kodak’s misstep in naming its first digital cameras, Toyota’s use of Lexus to enter the luxury market, Subaru’s turnaround through all-wheel-drive focus, and Target’s positioning as “cheap chic” against Walmart.

Strategic takeaways for leaders include:

Define and own a category. “The power is in owning a singular idea, and the even more powerful thing is to dominate and own a category.”
Choose a strategic enemy. As Ries argues, “the mind understands opposition faster than superiority.” Standing against something clarifies what you stand for.
Use new names for new categories. Legacy names can trap perception in the old category.
Deploy the visual hammer. A simple, memorable image or symbol cements positioning more powerfully than words alone.
Keep the message simple and repeat it. Brands like BMW (“The Ultimate Driving Machine”) and Chick-fil-A (“Eat More Chicken”) succeeded through decades of repetition, not campaign churn.
Invest in leadership visibility. Well-known figures, from Anna Wintour at Vogue to Elon Musk at Tesla, can embody and amplify brand positioning.
Treat AI as a tool, not a substitute. Ries uses it for research synthesis but insists, “there’s a great human element that is still incredibly valuable.”

For executives shaping brand portfolios or launching new products, this discussion offers a disciplined playbook: narrow the focus, name carefully, define the enemy, and repeat until the position is instinctive in customers’ minds.

📚 Get Laura’s book, The Strategic Enemy, here: https://shorturl.at/PUuwc

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