- As the pace of business quickens and the number of brands multiplies, it's customers, not companies, who decide which brands live and which brands die.
- Today's real competition doesn't come from other companies but from the extreme clutter of the marketplace.
- Fighting clutter with more clutter is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
- Customers today don't like to be sold—they like to buy, and they tend to buy in tribes.
- To find a zag, look for ideas that combine the qualities of GOOD and DIFFERENT.
- Artists are trained to see negative space. Companies need to think like artists when they're looking for new market space, because new market space, or "white space," is the secret to finding a zag.
- A "scissors" company is a startup or small business that competes by snipping small pieces of business from much larger "paper" companies.
- The leader's job is to shape and articulate the vision, making it palpable, memorable, inspiring. True vision leads to commitment rather than compliance, confidence rather than caution.
- Without a clearly drawn vision, employees tend to work at cross-purposes, often taking refuge in functional silos instead of collaborating to transform a shared picture of the future into reality.
- The power laws that control brand leadership can be reduced to a simple formula: first mover + popularity = leadership.
- A brand is part of an ecosystem in which each participant contributes and each participant gains.
- Rather than trying to please everyone at the risk of pleasing no one, step right up and pick a fight. Just make sure you take on the biggest, most successful competitor you can find.
- A marketing budget based on zagging will appear much larger than it actually is. The object is to compete where you can win.
