by Laura Ries
Phase one: The unrelated hammer.
Some examples: The eye patch for Hathaway shirts. Tony the Tiger for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. The stork for Vlasic. The mermaid for Starbucks.
The eye patch, the tiger, the stork and the mermaid are added elements, not germane to the brand itself.
In the short term, unrelated visuals can be surprisingly effective.
For one thing, there’s no need to use a visual symbol that has a logical connection to the brand. The sky’s the limit. You can use the most shocking, the most unusual visual you can find.
In the long term, however, because the visual is unrelated to the brand, it will often lose its effectiveness unless supported by consistent long-term advertising.
Hathaway shirts, for example, used to have a significant market share. Not so today. Ralph Lauren, has replaced Hathaway as the dominate shirt brand.
Phase two: The related hammer.
Some examples: The mustache in the “Got milk” campaign. The duck for Aflac. The gecko for Geico. The polo player for Ralph Lauren.
But wait. Isn’t a polo player just as much an unrelated visual for Ralph Lauren as the eye patch was for Hathaway?
Not exactly. Anybody could lose an eye, but only wealthy people can afford to play polo. The eye patch is a more shocking visual and perhaps attracts more attention than a polo player.
But the polo player communicates “upscale” which is the position the Ralph Lauren brand wants to occupy.
That’s the difference between a related and an unrelated visual. The related visual does a much better job hammering the attribute of the brand.
Especially if the visual is reinforced by a strong verbal, something that Ralph Lauren has neglected to do.
Phase three: The embedded hammer.
Up till now, most hammers were visuals added to marketing programs to improve their effectiveness. The latest, and most dramatic development, is the introduction of visual hammers embedded in the product or service being promoted.
Some examples: The zigzag designs of Missoni. The white earbuds of an Apple iPod. The red soles of Christian Louboutin shoes. The dripping red-wax seal on Maker’s Mark bourbon. The lime on the top of a Corona bottle. The watchband of a Rolex. The Twitter bird.
Embedded visual hammers are far more authentic than related or unrelated hammers.
Does anyone actually believe that Tony the Tiger thinks Frosted Flakes are great?
Or that celebrities get a white mustache when they drink milk?
Or that they actually drink milk?
Furthermore, an embedded hammer will continue to work without a massive advertising campaign, although that’s not always desirable. While I have strongly recommended the use of PR to launch a new brand (as advocated in the Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR) the opposite is true for an established brand.
Advertising is like insurance. Nothing protects an established brand as well as a large advertising budget. Brands like Rolex and Nike and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are almost invulnerable to competition, thanks to the millions of ad dollars these brands spend on protection.
But what if you don’t have the resources of Coke or Nike or McDonald’s?
Then forget advertising, because unless you can spend enough money to get above the noise level, you might as well spend nothing at all.
The good news is that an embedded visual hammer can help even a small company compete with the giants, no advertising required. An embedded visual is so much more powerful than words alone that it can compensate for the lack of marketing resources by amplifying the power of every sign, website, brochure and tweet you do.
In spite of the effectiveness of the many visual hammers mentioned in this book, there are actually very few brands (in terms of percentages) that have developed and taken advantage of the power of a hammer.
Most brands depend solely on unspecific verbal claims and positions.
Here are some verbal positions for companies starting with the letter A. Like most of the rest of the alphabet, these companies use verbal ideas that can’t be visualized.
Aetna: We want you to know.
American Airlines: We know why you fly.
American Cancer Society: The official sponsor of birthdays.
American Express: Take charge.
AT&T: Rethink possible.
Audi: Truth in engineering.
These verbal ideas have meaning, but because they lack visuals, they have little emotional impact. As a result, they are not very memorable.
Why does this happen? Why do brands use purely verbal ideas with no visual hammers?
Typically, a company will develop a positioning strategy, alone or in conjunction with an advertising or marketing agency, that is expressed verbally.
After company executives “sign off” on the verbal strategy, the next step is to execute the strategy with words, pictures, videos.
In other words, romance the verbal idea.
Stop right there. Before you even think about executing a desirable strategy, ask yourself, what is the visual hammer? Most verbal messages are impossible to visualize. How to you visualize “We know why you fly?”
Without a visual hammer, your marketing program lacks the most powerful device in your toolbox.
Let me repeat. A visual hammer is the best, most-effective, most convincing way to get inside a consumer’s mind. But 99 percent of all marketing programs lack one.
Yet, in spite of the power of a hammer, the nail is still more important. The nail, after all, is the objective of a marketing campaign. The hammer is only a tool that can facilitate the injection of the nail.
In practice, how can you deal with these two issues, the nail and the hammer, in order to develop an effective, unified marketing campaign?
First, use your left brain to try to express the essence of your marketing strategy in a single word or concept.
Stop. If you’re satisfied with your verbal concept, don’t think about it anymore. Go for a walk, take a nap, relax in the shower. Daydream for awhile.
Let your right brain go to work…without constant interruptions from your logical, analytical left brain.
Ask around, you’ll find that many great ideas have come to people not my concentrating on the problem but by relaxing and letting the ideas occur to them.
The idea for the Absolut vodka bottle campaign, one of the longest running and most successful advertising campaigns ever, came from art director Geoff Hayes who reported that the idea came to him in the bathtub.
So relax. Hopefully in an hour or two, a visual thought will occur to you…without any conscious effort on your part. That’s the way the right brain works. Emotions can’t be forced.
But what if no visual idea occurs to you? Then it’s back to square one. Try to find another verbal expression of your marketing strategy.
Often you need to sacrifice the effectiveness of a proposed verbal position in order to generate one that can work with a visual hammer.
Take BMW. Years ago, it’s easy to imagine that the company might have chosen “performance” as a positioning strategy. That’s logical and consistent with the many favorable reviews of BMW vehicles.
But where’s the hammer that can drive in a verbal nail called “performance?”
Instead, BMW chose “driving” as its positioning strategy, a verbal concept that could be visualized on television with emotional scenes of happy owners driving their BMWs on winding country roads.
In practice, one soon learns the reason why most marketing programs lack a visual hammer. Their verbal ideas are much too broad.
To develop a visual hammer you need a narrow verbal concept that you can visualize.
Don’t fret about a narrow concept not appealing to as many people as a broader one. It’s better to use a narrow concept that motivates a segment of the market rather than a broad concept that motivates no one.
It’s become increasing clear that we are entering a visual era. Unless a new brand inclu
des and hopefully embeds a powerful visual hammer, the new brand is unlikely to succeed. Paraphrasing an old proverb:
For want of a hammer, the nail was lost.
For want of a nail, the campaign was lost.
For want of a campaign, the brand was lost.
For want of a brand, the company was lost.
The nail is more important, but the hammer is more powerful. That’s not an easy concept to grasp.
That’s why I wrote this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURA RIES
Laura Ries is a leading brand strategist, best-selling author, sought-after-speaker and television personality.
Laura is President of Ries & Ries based in Atlanta, Georgia. She has been working for 18 years with her father and partner Al Ries, the legendary Positioning pioneer.
Together they consult with companies around the world on brand strategies.
They have traveled to over 60 countries from Austria to Australia and Chile to China teaching the fundamental principles of branding.
Laura and Al have written five books together: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding (1998), The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding (2000), The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR (2002), The Origin of Brands (2004), and War in the Boardroom (2009). Visual Hammer (2012) is her first book on her own.
Laura is a frequent branding analyst on major news programs from the O’Reilly Factor to Squawk Box. She regularly appears on Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, CNN, HLN. In addition, Laura writes her own popular blog RiesPieces.com
In 2008, the Atlanta Business Chronicle named Laura a top 40 under 40. In 2009, Advertising Age asked its readers “What’s the best book you’ve ever read on marketing?” Laura’s book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” was voted number three. (The number one book was Positioning written by her father.) In 2002, Business 2.0 magazine named Laura a “management guru” and issued trading cards with her picture and statistics on them.
Visit Ries.com to find out how to schedule a consulting assignment or to book Laura as a speaker at your next event.
Connect with Laura
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Table of 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