Visual Hammer Read online

  VISUAL HAMMER

  Nail your brand into the mind

  with the emotional power

  of a visual hammer.

  By LAURA RIES

  Other books by Laura Ries

  The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

  The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding

  The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR

  The Origin of Brands

  War in the Boardroom

  (above books co-authored with Al Ries)

  find them all at Ries.com

  © 2012 by Laura Ries

  All rights reserved.

  Ries, Laura 1971-

  Visual Hammer: Nail your brand into the mind with the emotional power of a visual hammer.

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-9849370-0-4

  Cover design by Matchstic

  Author photos by Mary Jane Starke

  Digital Editions (epub and mobi formats) produced by Booknook.biz

  CONTENTS

  Preface: By Al Ries

  Chapter 1 – HAMMER: Its astonishing power.

  Chapter 2 – NAIL: The ultimate objective.

  Chapter 3 – SHAPE: Simple is best.

  Chapter 4 – COLOR: Be the opposite.

  Chapter 5 – PRODUCT: The ideal hammer.

  Chapter 6 – PACKAGE: Make it different.

  Chapter 7 – ACTION: More effective than stills.

  Chapter 8 – FOUNDER: Natural-born hammers.

  Chapter 9 – SYMBOL: Visualizing the invisible.

  Chapter 10 – CELEBRITY: Pros & cons.

  Chapter 11 – ANIMAL: Anthropopathy works.

  Chapter 12 – HERITAGE: Putting the past to work.

  Chapter 13 – YOUR HAMMER: How to find one.

  Laura Ries: About the author

  PREFACE

  BY AL RIES

  Forty years ago, Advertising Age published a series of articles I wrote with Jack entitled “The Positioning Era Cometh.”

  Nine years later, McGraw-Hill published our book “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.” In the years that followed, “positioning” became one of the most talked-about concepts in the marketing community. (In 2001, McGraw-Hill released a 20th anniversary edition of the book.)

  To date, more than a million copies of the Positioning book have been sold, not including 400,000 copies in China alone.

  Forty years is a long time for any idea to remain relevant, especially in the fast-changing world of marketing. By now, positioning is probably obsolete.

  Or is it?

  Many companies still write “positioning” statements for their brands. Many marketing programs call for establishing “positions” in consumers’ minds.

  As recently as 2009, readers of Advertising Age selected “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” as the best book they’ve ever read on marketing. (That same year, the Harvard Business School Press published a book entitled “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.” Positioning was one of them.)

  Other authors are still writing books on the subject. In the last two years, “Positioning the Brand,” “Competitive Positioning,” and “Positioning for Professionals” were published.

  Positioning seems to be still important in spite of the many revolutionary changes that have taken place in marketing in the last four decades. The Internet, social media, mobile marketing, the rise of PR. Then there’s Google, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, LinkedIn and dozens of other digital ways to influence consumers.

  As important and as revolutionary as these developments are, they are still tactics. And to be successful, a brand needs more than the latest tactic. A brand also needs a strategy and that’s why “positioning” continues to attract attention.

  Yet the positioning concept has a weakness. Invariably, positioning strategy is expressed verbally. In executing a positioning strategy, for example, you look for a verbal hole in the mind and then you fill that hole with your brand name. Lexus, for example, filled a hole called “Japanese luxury vehicle.” Once the Lexus brand was securely positioned in the mind, it was almost invulnerable to competition.

  In spite of the successes of “verbal” positioning strategies, it may come as a surprise to some readers that the best way into a human mind is not with words at all. It’s with visuals.

  In 1973, for example, psychology professor Lionel Standing conducted a research study in which he asked subjects to look at 10,000 images over a five-day period.

  Each image was presented for just five seconds each. When the subjects were showed pairs of images (one they had seen before and one they had not seen), they remembered 70 percent of the images they had seen before.

  That statistic is phenomenal. Try presenting 10,000 advertising slogans for five seconds each and see how many of them a person will remember five days later.

  In an over-communicated society, consumers will remember very few positioning slogans. No matter how cleverly constructed or how well your positioning concept tests in focus groups, if consumers can’t remember your message, all is for naught.

  What verbal messages stick in consumers’ minds?

  What’s the glue that holds some concepts in a person’s memory for years, even decades?

  Emotion.

  Think about your past. What events do you remember the most?

  Those events that raised your pulse rate and your blood pressure. Those events that were emotional.

  The day you got married. The day your daughter got married. The day you had your car accident. The day you got promoted. The day you bought your first house. These are all events you can “picture” in your mind.

  Visuals have an emotional power that printed words or aural sounds do not. Observe people at a theater watching a movie. They’ll laugh out loud, sometimes even cry.

  Now observe a person reading a novel, perhaps the same novel the motion picture was based on. Seldom will you see any outward signs of emotional involvement.

  That’s the difference between visuals on a screen and words in a book. One is emotional; the other is not.

  Emotion is the glue that sticks a memory in the mind. But why are visuals emotional and words are not?

  It’s because everybody’s brain is actually two brains. A left hemisphere and a right hemisphere.

  Your left hemisphere processes information in series. It thinks in language. It works linearly and methodically.

  Your right hemisphere processes information in parallel. It thinks in mental images. It “sees” the big picture.

  In essence, every consumer has two brains. One verbal and one visual.

  While the objective of a positioning program is to put a word or a verbal concept into consumers’ minds, the best way to do that is not with words at all. It’s with a visual that has emotional appeal.

  But not just any visual. After all, advertising and other forms of communication are loaded with visual images.

  What a brand needs is a visual that reinforces its verbal positioning concept.

  The visual attracts the attention of the right side of the brain which sends a message to the left side of the brain to read or listen to the words associated with the visual.

  The “position,” a verbal concept, is the nail. The tool that hammers the positioning nail into consumers’ minds is the Visual Hammer.

  That’s Laura’s concept and I fully expect it to become as famous as Positioning ever was.

  CHAPTER 1

  HAMMER

  ITS ASTONISHING POWER.

  In the business world today, the printed word reigns supreme. Tweets, status updates, text messages, PowerPoint slides, emails, even old-fashioned letters.

  Ideas, projects and marketing programs are all spelled out in a blizzard of words.

  When it comes to executing a marketing prog
ram, no wonder business executives focus on the words alone.

  Words are what they use the most and are most familiar with. Yet there is a lot of evidence that visuals play a far more important role in marketing than do words.

  In 1982, Nancy Brinker started a foundation to fight breast cancer in memory of her sister, Susan G. Komen, who had died from the disease two years earlier.

  Back then, Brinker says, her only assets were $200 in cash and a list of names of potential donors.

  Since then, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has raised nearly $2.0 billion. Today it’s the world’s-largest non-profit source of money to combat breast cancer.

  A recent Harris poll of non-profit charitable brands rated Komen for the Cure as the charity that consumers were “Most likely to donate to.”

  Ahead of such organizations as the American Cancer Society, St. Jude’s Research Hospital, Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army.

  What accounts for the amazing success of a non-profit organization with the longest and strangest name in the field?

  It’s the pink ribbon which has become a well-known symbol in the fight against breast cancer.

  The American Cancer Society was founded in 1913, yet most people have no idea what visual symbol the society uses. That’s the real difference between designing a trademark and designing a visual hammer. Almost every brand has a trademark, but very few have visual hammers.

  For his foundation to raise money for cancer research, Lance Armstrong did something similar to Susan G. Komen’s pink ribbon.

  His yellow silicone-gel “Livestrong” bracelet was launched in May 2004 as a fund-raising device.

  Sold for $1 each, more than 70-million Livestrong bracelets have been bought to date.

  The bracelet is part of a “Wear yellow live strong” educational program. Yellow was chosen for its importance in professional cycling. It’s the color of the jersey worn by the leader of the Tour de France which Armstrong has won seven consecutive times.

  Pink ribbons, yellow bracelets and other visual devices are transforming the non-profit world. But their successes are based on techniques borrowed from the business world.

  In 2010, Coca-Cola spent $267 million in the U.S. advertising its Coca-Cola brand. What was Coke’s slogan? Was it “Always” or “Enjoy?”

  Or maybe it was “Coke is it?” Most people can’t remember.

  What do most people remember? What does 99 percent of the American public remember about Coca-Cola advertising?

  Not the words.

  Most people remember the “contour” bottle.

  The Coca-Cola bottle is not just a bottle. It is a visual hammer that hammers in the idea that Coke is the original cola, the authentic cola, the real thing.

  In a Coca-Cola commercial, the visual speaks louder than the words. That’s the function of a visual hammer.

  If you’ve noticed Coca-Cola advertising in the past few years, you’ve probably noticed a much greater use of its iconic Coke bottle. In print and television advertising, on the cans, on the packaging and on the billboards.

  Even on letterheads and calling cards.

  The company’s visual hammer is one reason why Coca-Cola is the world’s most-valuable brand, worth $70.5 billion, according to Interbrand, a global branding consultancy.

  In today’s global economy, a strong visual hammer is a particularly valuable asset. Coca-Cola is sold in 206 countries and 74 percent of the company’s revenues come from outside the United States.

  In many categories, global brands dominate local brands. In household and consumer products, global brands have 70 percent of the market in Brazil, 75 percent in China and 90 percent in Russia.

  Unlike a verbal idea, a visual hammer can cross international borders with no translations necessary.

  What is surprising about Coca-Cola’s 6.5-oz. “contour” glass bottle is how few of them are actually bought.

  No matter. The Coke contour bottle is a powerful visual hammer. A Coke can, on the other hand, is just another can of cola. That’s why it was so brilliant to print the contour bottle on the can and even on plastic cups.

  One place where the contour bottle is used quite extensively is in high-end restaurants, a fact that speaks to the visual impact the Coke bottle has with consumers.

  While Coca-Cola has consistently used the same visual hammer, its verbal nails have been repeatedly changed. In the last 107 years, Coke has used 57 different advertising slogans. Most of these are totally forgettable like the 1941 slogan, “Coca-Cola is Coke!”

  But four of these advertising slogans could have become long-lasting verbal nails for the brand if they had been used continuously.

  “The real thing,” in particular, is a strong verbal nail because it ties in well with the visual hammer.

  The contour bottle symbolizes the authenticity of the brand and “the real thing” verbalizes that authenticity.

  None of the other three slogans, as good as they are, strongly connect to the brand’s visual hammer.

  Today, “The real thing” lives on in newspapers, magazines, books and television shows in spite of the fact that Coca-Cola used the slogan only once, for just two years, more than 40 years ago.

  That demonstrates the verbal potency of the idea. It also demonstrates the fact that verbal ideas can get stronger as the years roll by, a reason for keeping a slogan alive for decades.

  Yet, why do most American companies do the opposite? It’s the unintended consequences of the annual slew of advertising “creativity” awards.

  You can’t be a successful advertising agency today unless you can win your share of awards. And you can’t win an advertising award if you use last year’s ad slogan. It’s not “creative.” That is, it’s not new and different.

  So ad agencies face a difficult choice. Win awards or perish. You can’t blame them for choosing the former.

  Coca-Cola’s exceptionally-strong visual hammer puts its major competitor in a difficult position. What should Pepsi-Cola do?

  The management at PepsiCo, like many other executives, seems to think that a visual hammer is nothing but a glorified name for a trademark. That’s why they tend to spend a lot of time and money perfecting their trademarks rather than searching for visual hammers.

  Back in 2008, PepsiCo said it would invest more than $1.2 billion over the next three years revamping, according to chief executive Indra Nooyi, “every aspect of the brand proposition for our key brands. How they look, how they’re packaged, how they will be merchandised on the shelves and how they connect with consumers.”

  As part of that revamping, Pepsi-Cola has a new trademark and a new advertising campaign which in 2010 the company spent $154 million promoting.

  So today how many consumers know what Pepsi’s new slogan is?

  Not very many.

  Generally speaking, a trademark is not a visual hammer. If the “contour” bottle says “the original, the authentic cola,” what does Pepsi’s new “smiley-face” trademark say?

  Pepsi’s new “smiley-face” trademark says “Pepsi.”

  In essence, it’s a rebus, a visual symbol that is a substitute for a brand name.

  Almost all trademarks are rebuses. After years of constant use (and millions of advertising dollars), they are recognized as symbols that stand for brand names.

  But they generally don’t communicate much more than that.

  And many brand trademarks don’t even do that. Do you recognize these two? Reebok and Adidas.

  Does your brand have a visual hammer? Or does it have a meaningless, rebus trademark? Or perhaps it has no visual at all.

  Not all trademarks are meaningless. Nike has the Swoosh, a powerful visual hammer. What’s the difference between the Adidas and Reebok logos and the Swoosh?

  The Swoosh doesn’t just say “Nike.” The Swoosh says “leadership.”

  The trademark on Tiger’s cap hammers Nike’s leadership position into consumers’ mind.

  And it’s not because the Swo
osh is in any way special. Nike could have taken any simple and unique visual and over time its visual could have become a powerful hammer.

  What gave Nike the ability to create a visual hammer out of a rather ordinary symbol? (A checkmark that has been streamlined.)

  Because Nike was first in a new category.

  Nike was the first serious athletic-shoe brand. And today, Nike dominates the category.

  A visual hammer doesn’t just repeat your brand name; it hammers a specific word into the mind.

  For brands that can create and dominate a new category, that word is “leadership.”

  Like the Nike mark, simplicity is the key when creating a visual hammer. Too many trademark designers think they are designing a coat of arms for some mythical 15th century warrior rather than a symbol for a 21st century company.

  Simplicity combined with uniqueness allows a visual hammer to be instantly recognizable at a distance.

  The original Mercedes-Benz trademark had a lot of pomp but very little power.

  Trademarks shouldn’t be thought of as mere decorations. For market leaders, trademarks are potential visual hammers.

  The new Mercedes trademark represents the ultimate in simplicity. Today, the Tri-Star symbol is one of the strongest visual hammers in the world.

  As the original “prestige” automobile, the Tri-Star hammers “prestige” into the automobile buyer’s mind.

  Brands that create new categories have a singular opportunity to create a visual hammer that represents leadership and authenticity.

  But not every brand gets it right. Take Red Bull, for example. The company created the energy-drink category which it dominates with annual worldwide sales of over $5.1 billion.