Laura Ries

“When you expand your brand, you weaken your brand”

laura visual hammer

Laura Ries is a leading marketing strategist, bestselling author and television personality. In 1994, Laura founded Ries & Ries, a consulting firm with her father and partner Al Ries, the legendary Positioning-pioneer. Together they consult with companies around the world on brand strategy. With Al, Laura is the co-author of five books on branding that have been worldwide bestsellers. Her first solo book was Visual Hammer. Her latest book Battlecry was published in September 2015. In this interview she speaks to Vivek Kaul.


In the foreword to your new book Battlecry, Al Ries writes that “over time, companies drift sideways. They get into many different businesses and lose their focus.” Can you give us a few examples.

There are so many, but here are a few. Yahoo was the leading search engine, at one time worth $120 billion on the stock market. Then Yahoo turned itself into a “portal” by adding a host of new services. Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Games, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Pager, etc.
Those additions allowed Google to move in and dominate the search market. Today, Yahoo is worth only $29 billion on the stock market and most of that value is due to its investment in Alibaba stock. (Google is worth $428 billion on the stock market.)

Any other examples?

Dell was once the largest maker of personal computers with 17 percent of the global market. Today, Dell has fallen to third place with 13 percent. Dell stock once sold for $60 a share. Two years ago, was Dell bought out by a private-equity firm for $13.75 a share.

What caused Dell to collapse?

Expansion. Dell once sold computer direct to businesses. That was it. Then Dell started selling to the consumer market, including such products as television sets, digital audio players, computer printers and smartphones. The company also made many acquisitions in such areas as storage, services, data centers, security, virtualization, networking and software. In the three years from 2009 to 2012, Dell spent $12.7 billion on 18 acquisitions.

IBM, General Electric and a host of other companies have tried to expand their businesses by introducing many new products and services. Today, these and other companies have gotten smaller, not larger.

Why does this happen?

Because when you expand your brand, you weaken your brand.      

How do you correct this mistake at the branding level?

First of all, a company should narrow its focus so it stands for something. Dell once stood for “Personal computers sold direct to business.” What does Dell stand for today? Nothing. As a result, Dell has to sell its products and services based on low prices.

Years ago, Dell had a powerful slogan. “Direct from Dell,” a slogan that implied that companies could save money by buying their PCs from Dell’s website. Furthermore, the slogan was memorable because it used “alliteration,” one of the five techniques mentioned in my Battlecry book that can increase memorability.

What is Dell’s slogan today?

“Better technology is better business.” That’s a generic slogan that could apply to any company.

Why is a narrow product line better than a broad product line? Because a narrow product line is needed to build a powerful brand.

Can you give us an example?

Take Subaru, a Japanese automobile brand. In the American market in the year 1993, Subaru sold 104,179 vehicles, but the company lost $250 million on sales of $1.5 billion. So a new president was hired. The new president found that 48 percent of Subaru’s sales were four-wheel-drive vehicles and 52 percent were two-wheel-drive vehicles.

So what did he do? He decided to focus on four-wheel-drive vehicles only. Sales declined the first two years, but then they took off. From 104,179 vehicles in 1993 to 515,693 vehicles in 2014, an increase of 393 percent. (The total automobile market in those 21 years increased only 19 percent.) In 1993, Subaru was the ninth-largest Japanese vehicle brand in the American market. Today, Subaru is the fourth largest, trailing only the big three: Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

So what is the moral of the story here?

It’s hard to find cases like Subaru because most brands are taken in the opposite direction. Companies expand their brands; they don’t contract them. That’s logical, but that’s not good marketing strategy.

Why do companies like formal words in their marketing campaigns? You recommend colloquial expressions. Why? A few examples would be great.

Formal words like “motion picture” sound important. But consumers invariably use shorter words like “movies.” Or “TV” instead of “television.” Or “SUV” instead of “sport-utility vehicle.”

One of the most-famous charities in America, organized by the United States Marine Corps, collects toys for children at Christmas time. Instead of calling the charity “Toys for Children,” they called the charity “Toys for Tots,” a colloquial expression that is also alliterative.

You also talk a lot about abstract words. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how they hurt a marketing campaign?

You have two brains. A left brain which handles words and a right brain which handles visuals. The right brain is also the site of your emotions. There are also two kinds of words, abstract words and specific words. “George Clooney” are specific words. “World-famous movie star” are abstract words.

So?

Both abstract and specific words are processed in the left brain. But specific words like George Clooney also conjure up images in your right brain, the emotional half of your brain. Emotion is the biggest, single, memory stimulant. What events do you remember the most? The day you graduated from college. The day you got married. The day you had your automobile accident. These “emotional” events are also visual. You can never forget them. That’s why slogans using specific words are much more memorable than slogans using abstract words.

Can you give us an example?

“The ultimate driving machine” made BMW the world’s largest luxury-vehicle brand. BMW could have said “The ultimate performance machine,” a broader and more inclusive slogan.

But “driving” is a word that can be visualized. (Two hands behind the wheel.) But “performance” cannot.               

What is the difference between slogans that consumers remember and the ones that they don’t? How is related to the concept of Battlecry?

Two things make a slogan memorable: Money and memory-enhancing techniques. If you have enough money (and enough time), you can make any slogan memorable. “Just do it,” the Nike slogan, is memorable because Nike has spent billions of dollars to promote it over the past 27 years.

But most companies don’t have the resources of Nike. Nor do they have the time. What can they do?

They need to consider one of these five memory-enhancing techniques.

(1) Rhyme. Folgers became the No.1 coffee brand in America by focusing on breakfast with the slogan: “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

(2) Alliteration. M&Ms became a leading candy brand by focusing on a feature of the brand with the slogan: “Melts in your mouth. Not in your hands.”

(3) Repetition. Federal Express, an air-cargo carrier, entered the American market to compete with the market leader, Emery Air Freight. FedEx (the current name of the company) decided to focus on overnight delivery. They could have said, “The overnight carrier.”

Instead, they used repetition to create memorability. “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” Within a few years, FedEx became the leader in the category.

(4) Reversal. Secret became the leading antiperspirant/deodorant for women with a simple reversal slogan: “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.”

(5) Double-entendre. This is perhaps the best way to create a memorable slogan. The two meanings contained in a single slogan oscillate back and forth in your mind, thereby creating memorability.

Can you give us an example?

“A diamond is forever” is a typical example. A diamond (the hardest substance known to man) can presumably last forever. A love symbolized by a diamond can also last forever, too.

You write: “Apple is an enormously successful company…But it wasn’t because of abstractions like “Designed in California”.” What is it that you are trying to say here?

Even successful companies can fall into the trap of using grandiose, abstract words instead of down-to-earth specific words. Apple’s “Designed in California” campaign had exceptionally-low viewer ratings and was discontinued within a year.

Three successful brands made Apple the world’s most-valuable company. And they all used specific words or concepts in their introductions.

The iPod: “A thousand songs in your pocket.”

The iPhone: “The first touchscreen smartphone.”

The iPad: “The first tablet computer.”

Yet when Apple introduced the Apple watch, the company did not try to position the brand with specific words on concepts. Many people, including me, think the Apple watch will not turn out to be nearly as successful as the three brands that came before it.  A sign of trouble ahead: Apple regularly provides data on iPhone sales, but refuses to disclose Apple watch sales.

Why are companies in love with the word “innovation”?

“Business has only two functions,” wrote Peter Drucker, “Marketing and innovation.”

Innovation, like many other abstract words, is both important and useless. Important in business and useless in marketing.

Inside a company, management should focus on innovation. Long-term, a company cannot be successful unless it is innovative. When it communicates to prospects on the outside, however, it should forget about innovation. That’s inside-out thinking. Instead, companies should practice “outside-in thinking.” Start with the mind of the consumer and try to fill an open hole in the mind. “Innovation” is a typical abstract word that has no real meaning for consumers. Instead, a company should look at its innovative product and try to express that innovation in specific words like “The first touchscreen smartphone.”

But that doesn’t seem to be happening…

Many, many companies, however, continue to try to pre-empt “innovation” in their marketing slogans. Some recent examples:
ASUS: Inspiring innovation. Persistent perfection.

Bosch: We bring innovation.

Firestone: A tradition of innovation.

Ford: Driving American innovation.

NEC: Empowered by innovation.

Nissan: Innovation that excites.

Siemens: Global network of innovation.

Toshiba: Leading innovation.
It’s highly unlikely that consumers will associate the word “innovation” with any of these companies. They will, however, associate “innovation” with Apple because Apple had launched innovative products with specific slogans.

How can a slogan provide protection from future competition?

A slogan can build a brand. And a strong brand is the best protection a company can have from future competition.

How do you build a brand that will last a lifetime?

There are four critical steps.

Step one: Be first in a new category. Coca-Cola, introduced in 1886, was the first cola. It’s still the leading cola today, 129 years later.

Step two: (Which isn’t a step at all, but it’s the most important thing you can do.) Don’t line-extend the brand. Keep the brand focused on its category. If you want to introduce another product or service, use a different brand name.

Step three: Create a slogan that communicates your leadership. Coca-Cola is widely known as “The real thing.” That’s the slogan the brand should be using because it communicates the fact that Coca-Cola is the original, the authentic cola.

Step four: Hammer the slogan with visual hammer. In Coca-Cola’s case, it’s the contour bottle which the brand has been using extensively.

You just talked about a visual hammer. Can you explain that in a little more detail?

The objective of a marketing campaign is to “own a word in the mind.” But the best way to own a word is to find a visual that can hammer that word in the mind. Marlboro was the first cigarette targeted to men only. But to drive that idea in the mind, Marlboro used a cowboy. The cowboy is the visual hammer that made Marlboro the world’s best-selling cigarette.

Corona beer is the only Mexican brand that has made Interbrand’s annual list of the 100 most-valuable brands in the world. How did Corona achieve this? With a lime. When Corona was introduced in the American market, the importers insisted that the beer be served with a lime on top of the bottle. (America is a lemon country. Mexico is a lime country.) The lime communicated the fact that Corona was the authentic Mexican beer.

The interview originally appeared in the Forbes India magazine             

Extending Your Brand May Dilute its Identity

laura visual hammer
Vivek Kaul
 
Vijay Mallya, the liquor king, who wanted to run an airline, recently told the staff at Kingfisher Airlines that he had no money to clear their salary dues. Mallya, like many businessmen before him, also became a victim of the line extension trap. “The line-extension trap is using the same brand name on two different categories of products. Kingfisher beer and Kingfisher Airlines. We have studied hundreds of categories and thousands of companies and we find that line extension generally doesn’t work, although there are some exceptions,” says marketing guru Laura Ries, who has most recently authored Visual Hammer.
Along with her father, the legendary marketing guru Al Ries, she has also authored, several other bestsellers like The Origin of Brands, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR and the War in the Boardroom.
But does such a rigid line against line extensions make sense in this day and age, when it is very expensive to build a brand. “We have never said that a company should not line extend a brand. What we have said is that line extension “weakens” a brand,” says Ries. And there are always exceptions to the rule she concedes. “Sometimes, a brand is so strong it can easily withstand some weakening. Early on, for example, the Microsoft brand was exceptionally strong so the company could use it on other software products and services.”
There is also the recent case of Tide, the leading detergent in America, opening a line of dry-cleaning establishments using the Tide brand name. And it might just work, feels Ries. As she explains “Because there are no strong brands or national chains in the category, this can possibly work, although we believe Procter & Gamble, the owners of Tide, would be better off with a new brand name.”
These exceptions notwithstanding there are way too many examples of companies which haven’t fallen for the line extension mistake and are doing very well in the process. Toyota is one such example. And one of the reasons for its success is the launch of three new brands in addition to Toyota. Scion, a brand for younger drivers. Prius, a hybrid brand. And Lexus, a luxury brand.
“Initially, Prius was a sub-brand of Toyota, but the company recently decided to create a totally separate brand. Prius has some 50 percent of the hybrid market in America and is a phenomenal success. The separate brand name will assure its success for decades to come,” says Ries.
What about Apple we ask her? How does she view the brand, everyone loves to love? Hasn’t it also made the line extension mistake by launching the Apple iPod, the Apple iPhone and the Apple iPad? “Apple is not a product brand. Apple is a company brand. Nobody says, I bought an Apple unless they have just visited a grocery store. They say I bought an iPod or an iPhone or an iPad, three brands that made Apple one of the most-profitable companies in the world,” explains Ries.
So in that sense Apple did not really make a line extension mistake. For every new product it created a new brand. And the success of this strategy reflects in the numbers. Apple’s competitors, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, line extended their brands into many of the same products. Both are in trouble. Last year, Apple made $41.7 billion in net profits. Dell made $2.4 billion. And Hewlett-Packard lost $12.7 billion.
But what about Samsung, which has been giving Apple a really tough time in almost all product categories that they compete in. “Currently, Samsung is an exception to the principle that line extension can weaken a brand. But that’s only in the short term. We predict that sometime in the future Samsung will suffer for its marketing mistake,” states Ries. “What keeps Samsung profitable is the principle that in every category there’s always room for a No.2 brand. Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, for example,” she adds.
And Samsung is clearly not as profitable as Apple. Last year, Apple made almost twice as much in net profits as Samsung even though Apple’s revenues were smaller. Apple’s net profit margin was 26.7 percent compared to Samsung’s 11.5 percent.
The other two big companies in the mobile phone market have been Nokia and Blackberry. Nokia recently launched a smartphone under the new ‘Lumia’ brand name. On the face of it this is exactly what Ries would have recommended. The company launched a Lumia smartphone, and did not fall for the line extension trap. Given this, why is Nokia losing out in the smartphone business, we ask Ries.
“What’s a brand name? What’s a model name? What’s a sub-brand name?” she asks. “Many companies like Nokia think they can decide what is a brand name and what is a model or a sub-brand name. So Nokia considers “Lumia” to be its smartphone brand name. Not so. It’s consumers that make that decision. Consumers use iPhone as a brand name and not Apple. Consumers also use Nokia as the brand name and not Lumia. To consumers, Lumia is a model or sub-brand name.”
And there several reasons behind consumers not considering Lumia to be a brandname. “Look at a Lumia smartphone and you’ll see the word “Nokia” in big type. Look at an iPhone and you won’t see the word “Apple.” You’ll see the word “iPhone” in big type and just an Apple trademark,” says Ries.
And on top of that Lumia doesn’t even have a website of its own (www.lumia.com is a website of a British IT company). “Lumia” doesn’t sound like a brand name and it doesn’t even have a website. That makes it very difficult to create the impression that Lumia is a brand. This isn’t the first line-extension mistake Nokia has made. Nokia was its brand name for a line of inexpensive cellphones. And today, Nokia is also using the Nokia name for its expensive smartphone products,” says Ries.
The Blackberry story goes along similar line. On the face of it, the company doesn’t seem to have made a line extension mistake. But Ries clearly does not buy that. “What’s a BlackBerry? Is it a smartphone with a physical keyboard? Or a smartphone with a touchscreen? It’s both, of course, and that’s exactly why BlackBerry has fallen into the line extension trap. To compete with the touchscreen iPhone, the BlackBerry company (formerly called Research In Motion) needed to introduce a new brand of touchscreen smartphone. It’s very difficult to build a brand that it has lost its identity.”
And given the lost focus its very difficult for these companies to go back to the days when they were immensely successful. As Ries puts it “It depends upon whether either company (i.e. Nokia and Blackberry) can do two things: (1) Develop an innovative new idea for smartphones, and (2) Introduce that innovative new idea with a new brand name. It’s hard for us to tell whether it’s possible to come up with a new idea for a smartphone. It could be too late.”
And this could work in favour of Samsung, feels Ries. “Every category ultimately has a leader brand and a strong No.2 brand. Since all three smartphone brands (Samsung, Nokia and BlackBerry) are line extensions, one line extension has to win the battle to become the No.2 brand to the iPhone. Samsung made massive investments in product design and development plus massive marketing investments,” says Ries.
So it’s logical that Samsung would become a strong No.2 brand. Furthermore, they priced their smartphones as less expensive than iPhones, another strategy that increased its market share although not its profitability. This has worked particularly well in Asia, feels Ries.
This success of Apple over Samsung comes with a caveat. As Ries explains it “Long-term, every category has two major brands. But they are normally quite different. Long-term, we see Apple as the leader in the high-end smartphone category and Samsung the leader in the “basic” smartphone category. Apple would make a mistake in introducing less-expensive smartphones. That would undermine its position at the high end.” And that is mistake that Apple needs to avoid.
Another massively successful company that has fallen prey to the line extension trap has been Google. The company has introduced a number of products under the Google brand name, but none of them have been massive money spinners like the Google search engine.
As Ries puts it “Currently, I can’t think of any Google product that is very successful. Google +, the company’s social media competitor, is nowhere near as big or as profitable as Facebook. Google’s most successful introduction has been Android, which now is being use by 75 percent of all smartphones.” Google bought the Android company, one of the reasons it probably didn’t use the Google name on the software.
What all the examples given above tell us is that line extensions have had a sketchy track record. So why do companies fall for it, over and over again? Ries has an answer for it. “As one CEO told us, We have a great company and great products. Why can’t we use our great company name on our great products?,” she points out. “Most chief executives believe that the only thing that really matters is the quality of their products and services their prices. Deep down inside, they don’t believe that the name or the marketing makes much of a difference.”
Then there is the pressure to keep increasing earnings. Chief executives are under pressure to increase sales and profits and they see product expansion (including line extensions) as the best way to achieve these goals. “The more important strategic decision is the question of “focus.” It’s our opinion that the best way into the mind is with a narrow focus. That’s not, however, the majority opinion, at least among top management people. Most companies are moving in exactly the opposite direction. They are line extending their brands,” says Ries.
Given this, CEOs don’t believe a new brand is worth the cost and effort required. It’s true, too, that many management people equate new brands with expensive advertising programs, feels Ries.
But that again is a perception that they have. Most big brands in the last ten years were not built because they advertised left, right and centre. Ries questions the assertion that it’s expensive to create a new brand. “It’s only expensive if a company uses advertising to launch the new brand. In our book, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR, we recommend launching new brands with no advertising at all. Just PR or public relations. Advertising doesn’t have the credibility you need to launch a new brand.”
This is because when a consumer sees an advertisement for a new brand, his or her first reaction is, this can’t be very important because I’ve never heard of the brand. And that’s why some of the biggest brands in recent years like Amazon, Twitter and Google, used almost no advertising. They did, however, benefit from extensive media coverage, feels Ries.
In order to succeed in the years to come, companies will have to create multiple brands. “The future belongs to multiple-brand companies. But with one reservation. A company needs to be successful with its first brand before launching a second brand. You can’t build a successful company with two losing brands,” concludes Ries.
 
The article originally appeared in Forbes India edition dated July 12, 2013
 
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)
 
 
 
 
 

“Marlboro is probably the best example of the power of a visual hammer”


Laura Ries is a globally respected marketing consultant. Ries has run Ries & Ries, a consulting firm with her partner and father, Al, since 1994. Together they consult with Fortune 500 companies on brand strategy. Her new book Visual Hammer is just out. “The critical missing piece in most marketing programs is a powerful visual that can drive a brand into the mind,” says Laura. This book outlines the steps a brand needs to take to develop a visual hammer.
In this interview she speaks to Vivek Kaul.
Excerpts:
You talk about marketing messages from companies ignoring half of the prospect’s brain. What do you mean by that?
Everyone has two brains, a left brain and a right brain, plus the corpus callosum connecting the two brains. The left brain is associated with verbal messages; the right brain with visual messages and is also the site of your emotions. If a marketing message is totally verbal, it ignores the right brain and especially the right brain involvement with “emotion.” What things do people remember the best? Those things that have an emotional connection. The day you got married. The day you had an automobile accident. The day you graduated from college. Etc. A totally verbal message is usually flat and unemotional. That greatly hinders the memorability of the message.
Could you explain this through an example?
The old-fashioned Coca-Cola bottle (which the company calls a “contour” bottle) communicates the fact that Coke is the original cola, the authentic cola, the real thing. Coca-Cola has also used the verbal (“the real thing”) but it just doesn’t have the same emotional impact of the bottle itself. Of course, the best strategy to use would be both. The Coke bottle (the visual hammer) and the verbal nail (“the real thing.”) They reinforce each other.
You say that most marketing messages are abstract ideas built around concepts like good consumer service, superior reliability, dependable performance etc. Why is that?
In general, a major corporation would first develop a verbal strategy for a brand. Then the company would “sell” the verbal idea to top management before they bring in an advertising agency to develop the idea. And since most corporate executives are left brainers, they readily accept verbal ideas. There is a lot of evidence that top management is dominated by left brainers. Right brainers are usually introverts and not very talkative. Left brainers usually are extroverts and very talkative. Now which type is likely to make it to the top of any organization? A quiet, introverted left brainer. Or a talkative, extroverted right brainer. When a CEO makes a speech, he or she usually stands behind a podium and reads from a Teleprompter or from a script. Totally word-oriented and a sure sign of a left brainer.
But exceptions are always there…
There are exceptions. Steve Jobs of Apple was a right brainer, but of course, he was once fired from Apple. After he returned to Apple, his “speeches” involved a screen 40-feet wide and enormous visuals, not exactly the type of speech a left brainer would make.
Could you share some of the most abstract marketing messages with us?
Here are some recent slogans from major global corporations. starting with the letters A and B.
ABB: “Power and productivity for a better world.”
Accenture: “High performance. Delivered.”
Acura: “Advance.”
Air France: “Making the sky the best place on earth.”
Audi: “Truth in engineering.”
BlackBerry: “Be bold.”
Bridgestone tires: “Your journey, our passion.”
British Airways: “To fly. To serve.”
None of these slogans can serve as verbal nails because they are not specific enough. They are typical abstract ideas that need to be brought down to earth before they can be visualized. I could go through the rest of the alphabet and give you dozens of similar slogans. All abstractions.
You write “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”. Why do you say that?
The reason Visual Hammer is such a helpful concept is that very few companies are actually using visual hammers. That’s why successful examples are few. The lime in the top of a Corona beer bottle. There were dozens of Mexican beers imported into America, but until the arrival of Corona none used a visual hammer. The lime help to communicate the fact that Corona is an authentic Mexican beer. Thanks to its visual hammer, Corona went on to become the best-selling imported beer in America and the best-selling Mexican beer on the global market. It also was ranked by Interbrand, a branding consultancy, as the 86th most valuable brand in the world (and the only Mexican brand on the list) worth $3.9 billion. The last time I was in Mumbai, a diner at the table next to us ordered a Corona beer. And sure enough, the waiter served the beer with a lime on top of the bottle.
Any other example?
The red soles of, a French designer who regularly tops The Luxury Institute’s index of “most prestigious women’s shoes.” In 1992, he applied red nail polish to the sole of a shoe because he felt the shoes lacked energy. “This was such a success,” reported Mr. Louboutin, “that it became a permanent fixture.” The red sole was the hammer, but what was the nail? It was the stiletto (heel heights of 120mm or more) which Louboutin helped bring back into fashion in the last two decades. To build a brand you need both: The red sole and the stiletto. Let me give you another example. BMW, for example, owns the word “driving,” an achievement that lifted the brand from nowhere into the world’s largest-selling luxury-car brand. But what put the “driving” idea into the minds of consumers? What’s was BMW’s visual hammer? It was a long-running, consistent series of television commercials showing happy owners driving their BMW vehicles over winding roads. “The ultimate driving machine” was the nail. But it was the visual hammer was put that idea into the mind.
You write in your new book “Unless there is an instant connection with a verbal idea, a visual becomes nothing but wasted ammunition in a marketing war.” Can you elaborate on that through an example?
There is a lot more to say about how visuals are received by the brain and how verbal messages are received. For example, you are driving down a street and a stoplight in front of you changes to “red.” Your foot hits the brake . . . without conscious thought on your part. That’s the right brain at work. If a stoplight used words (Stop, Caution, Go) instead of visuals, your left brain would have to first translate those type-set words into “aural” sounds that your mind could understand. That takes time and effort. You might be reading an article and you get to the end of a paragraph and suddenly think to yourself, What was that all about? In other words, it takes effort for your left brain to understand printed words. With a visual, however, your right brain can almost instantly understand a visual and react to it.
How is that linked to building a brand?
In building a brand, however, visuals are only effective if they “say something” about the brand. Advertising is filled with visuals, but very few visual hammers. It’s only things like the Coke bottle (authentic cola), the lime on top of a Corona (authentic Mexican beer), the TV commercials showing happy BMW owners (the ultimate driving machine), which hammer the nail in.
You have repeatedly talked about the visual hammer hammering the verbal nail. What do you mean by that?
The Marlboro story is probably the best example of the power of a visual hammer. We don’t like to feature it, however, since smoking is such a health hazard. Before Marlboro was launched, there were four exceptionally strong cigarette brands in America: Lucky Strike, Camel, Chesterfield, Winston. All of these brands were “unisex,” in the sense that they appealed to both men and women. In general, they pictured both men and women smoking.
Marlboro narrowed the focus to men only. (Another strategic concept that we strongly recommend for an also-ran brand.) In other words, Marlboro wanted to become a masculine cigarette. And the cowboy is perhaps the best visual to use to communicate the masculinity idea.) In America today, Marlboro outsells the next 13 cigarette brands combined. Marlboro is also the largest–selling global cigarette brand.
Why is it very difficult today to put a verbal idea into a consumer’s mind without a visual hammer?
The world is awash in words. This is especially true because of the Internet. Consumers are drowning in Emails, Tweets, Facebook pages and other web-oriented media. To cut through the clutter with a verbal message only is extremely difficult unless you have a revolutionary development. And if you have a revolutionary development, you probably don’t need much marketing help. In 2010, the five largest advertisers in America were AT&T, Verizon, Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota. Together these five brands spent $6.9 billion on advertising. What was the verbal idea, or slogan, used by each of these brands? I’ll guarantee that few consumers would remember. Here they are.
AT&T . . . “Rethink possible.”
Verizon . . “Rule the air.”
Chevrolet . . . “Chevrolet runs deep.”
Ford . . . . “Drive on.”
Toyota . . . “Moving forward.”
None of these slogans can be effectively visualized into a hammer. That’s why, in spite of the $6.9 billion, most consumers don’t remember them.
Could you share some marketing messages from companies which have good visual hammers and why do you think they are good?
In general, it is difficult to create a memorable visual hammer. One exception is for leader brands. Any simple visual used consistently with a powerful leader brand can become a visual hammer.
The “Golden Arches” of McDonald’s.
The “Swoosh” of Nike.
The “Tri-Star” of Mercedes-Benz.
What these visual hammers are communicating is “leadership,” and leadership is probably the most important verbal idea for a brand. If consumers perceive your brand to be the leader in a category, your brand can maintain that leadership for decades. Hertz in rent-a-cars. Kleenex in pocket tissue. Heinz in ketchup.
You say that unlike a verbal idea, a visual hammer can cross International borders with no translations necessary. Could you explain that through an example?
The Coke bottle, the Marlboro cowboy, KFC’s Colonel Sanders, Mercedes-Benz’s Tri-Star, Corona’s lime are all global visual hammers that say something about the brands. Coca-Cola is sold in 206 countries and 74 percent of the company’s revenues come from outside the United States. Coca-Cola can use the same contour bottle visual in every country, but trying to translate a single slogan into dozens of different languages would be very difficult. And sometimes a verbal slogan just cannot be translated into another language. For example, my dad (marketing guru Al Ries) wrote a book called “Bottom-Up Marketing,” a verbal idea that works well in English. But the Spanish translators of the book couldn’t find any Spanish words that could capture that idea. (They were all vulgar expressions not suitable for a book title.)
Coca-Cola’s exceptionally-strong visual hammer puts its major competitor in a difficult position. What should Pepsi-Cola do?
Narrow its focus. In general, you cannot find a visual hammer with a broad conceptual idea. You have to narrow that idea. For example, BMW could have used “performance” as its verbal strategy, but how would you visualize that verbal idea? Instead, they narrowed the focus to “driving,” an aspect of performance. That allowed them to run “driving” TV commercials to drive in the idea to prospects.
So what is Pepsi-Cola’s new verbal strategy, just announced last week. “Live for now.” How can you visualize a conceptual idea like that? You can’t. Years ago, Pepsi-Cola had a verbal idea that could be visualized. “The Pepsi Generation.” In other words, Pepsi was appealing to the youth market, the Pepsi generation, a narrow-the-focus concept. That idea could have been easily visualized. As a matter of fact, even today, most consumers remember The Pepsi Generation, but none of the dozens of other slogans the brand has used.
You write “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.” The real thing was a slogan that Coke used just once for two years, 40 years ago. But it lives on. So why does the company keep coming up with all these different slogans which no one can remember?
The dominate concept in the advertising field is “creativity.” Ideas are evaluated based on how creative they are. But what is creativity? An idea is usually considered “creative,” if it’s “new and different.” An old idea used before can never be considered “creative.” That’s why Coca-Cola refuses to use it. There’s also the influence of the advertising agencies that handle big accounts like Coca-Cola. Advertising agencies live or die based on their abilities to win awards in the annual creative contests. And you can’t win an advertising award if your advertising is not creative. Take Marlboro which has used cowboy visuals ever since its launch in 1953. I don’t believe Marlboro has ever won an advertising award because its advertising is not “creative” in the usual sense of the word.
(The interview was originally published on May 14,2012, in the Daily News and Analysis (DNA). http://www.dnaindia.com/money/interview_marlboro-is-probably-the-best-example-of-the-power-of-a-visual-hammer_1688368).
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])