ZAG: The Number-One Strategy of High-Performance Brands

Brand-To-Brand Combat

The human mind deals with clutter the best way it can—by blocking most of it out. What gets in, those items that seem most useful or interesting, are labeled and stored in little mental boxes. Once a label goes on and a box is filled, the mind resists making changes to it. This simple fact has a profound effect on how businesses now compete.

To sustain success, companies have always needed to erect barriers to competition. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, for example, the favored barrier was ownership of the means of production. If a company had a knitting machine and its competitors didn’t, the company with the machine usually won.

When most companies had machines, the barrier to competition became the factory. ...