by Laura Ries
Despite its success, Red Bull doesn’t own a visual hammer. It had the opportunity, but the visual it chose is much too complicated for a small energy-drink can.
"Two bulls and a sun” make a weak hammer. It doesn’t measure up to the power of the Tri-Star, the Swoosh or the Coke bottle.
If the leader lacks a potent visual hammer, it gives the No. 2 brand a golden opportunity.
Monster entered the energy-drink market by positioning itself as the opposite of Red Bull.
Monster was launched with a 16-oz. can as compared with Red Bull’s 8.3-oz. can. The large can and the Monster name link well in consumers’ minds.
Monster also made a good visual choice. Claw marks in the shape of an “M” send a subtle message of “strength” and “danger” in a simple and effective way. As a result, you remember the Monster visual hammer.
Today, Monster is a strong No. 2 brand in the energy-drink market, in part because of its use of its visual hammer at concerts and sporting events.
In spite of these and many other examples, why are many marketing people working exclusively with words, when the real power is with the visual?
Well, words are also important.
CHAPTER 2
NAIL
THE ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE.
Since a visual has more emotional impact than a verbal, it’s logical to assume that the first decision a marketing person should make is what visual to use.
Not so.
That’s a paradox that is bound to confuse many marketing people.
While a visual hammer can be effective in building a brand, that’s not the objective of a marketing program.
The objective of a marketing program is to “own a word in the mind.”
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.
Without the hammer, in my opinion, the verbal idea would have been road kill. After all, “driving” has been a consistent theme of automobile advertising for many, many decades, including “We build excitement,” a long-running Pontiac campaign without a visual hammer.
But if the objective is to own a word, why fool around with a hammer? Why not just focus a brand’s entire efforts on a verbal approach?
Consider a nail and a hammer. If the objective is to nail two pieces of wood together, why fool around with a hammer? Why not just focus all of your efforts on putting the two pieces of wood together with a nail?
That’s the problem of marketing. Your most important tool is a visual hammer which is redundant once you have nailed your idea into prospects’ minds.
Well, not exactly. The three rules of advertising are (1) Repetition, (2) Repetition and (3) Repetition.
So you need to hammer away, not just for years, but for decades in not just your advertising but in everything you do from websites to business cards to annual reports.
“The ultimate driving machine” was launched in 1975. By 1993, BMW was the largest-selling European luxury vehicle in America. In the 18 years since, BMW has outsold the No.2 brand (Mercedes) 14 of those 18 years.
So what did BMW do recently? They switched the focus to “joy” and you can understand why.
Joy is a unique verbal concept that broadens the appeal of the BMW brand.
Which is true, of course, but how do you visualize it? Like many other high-level abstract words (happiness, enthusiasm, customer satisfaction, quality) joy cannot be visualized in any meaningful way.
Most marketing slogans are weak for exactly the same reason. They might express an important benefit of the brand, but unless they can be reinforced by a visual hammer, they are fundamentally useless.
What do consumers look for when they buy an automobile? Among other things, they look for: reliability, good gas mileage, good looks, nice interiors, drivability and the right size.
The first mistake an automobile manufacturer might make is to advertise all of these features. That’s logical. That’s what consumers want in a car.
Big mistake. When you advertise everything, your prospects remember nothing.
The second mistake is to pick the most important feature of your brand. But that only works if that feature can be turned into a visual hammer.
Take Volvo. Years ago, the company latched onto “safety” as its verbal nail, and then hammered the idea with dramatic television commercials featuring crash tests. Every year in the 23 years from 1970 to 1992 (except for the single year 1977), Volvo was the largest-selling European luxury-car brand in the American market.
In those 22 years, Volvo outsold BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Jaguar. Then in 1993, things started to fall apart.
In the last two decades, Volvo drove away from its safety focus. Gone were the crash tests. Even the slogan was weak: “Volvo. For life.”
In order to increase sales, Volvo tried to promote performance. They introduced Volvo sports cars, even Volvo convertibles.
As Volvo’s director of global advertising said: “Safety on its own is not enough.” That’s left-brain logical thinking.
Consumers don’t buy cars just because they’re safe. They look for a lot of other things when they look at vehicles on the showroom floor. But unless the brand gets into the consumer’s mind and unless the consumer gets into the dealer’s showroom, all that logical thinking is useless.
In marketing, everything else is secondary to the necessity of getting into consumers’ minds. And without a visual hammer, that job is exceedingly difficult to do.
Volvo continues to drift downward. From a high of 113,267 vehicles in 1986, Volvo sold just 67,240 vehicles in 2011. That year, both BMW and Mercedes-Benz sold almost four times as many vehicles as Volvo. Even Audi sold almost two times as many vehicles as Volvo.
Volvo’s biggest mistake was to abandon a successful visual hammer. When it did that, the brand suffered.
Over the long term, a consistent visual hammer is even more important than a consistent verbal nail, although it’s better to have both.
Consider the Marlboro cowboy, perhaps an even more effective visual hammer than the Coke contour bottle. Introduced in 1953, the cowboy turned Marlboro into the world’s best-selling cigarette. (The brand’s share of the American market is 43 percent, more than the next 13 brands combined.)
Since its initial launch more than 58 years ago, Marlboro has never run an advertisement or an in-store promotion without using its cowboy imagery.
(Actually, since its “re-launch,” as Marlboro was once a woman’s cigarette, but that’s another story.)
Nor has Marlboro ever used a woman in its “cowboy” advertising.
Many brands have tried to emulate the success of the Marlboro cowboy. Pick up a magazine, surf the Internet, turn on your television and you’ll find hundreds of visuals that try to mimic the success of the cowboy.
Monkeys, donkeys, dogs, frogs, elephants, kids, babies, hot men, older men, hot older men, sexy women, older women, sexy older women, celebrities and many, many other visuals.
But most of the time these visuals never become hammers. Because art directors have selected visuals that are funny, serious, cute, sexy, or famous without first considering what the verbal ought to be.
You need two things to build a brand. A visual hammer and a verbal nail. And the nail comes first.
At the time of Marlboro’s introduction, the vast majority of competitive brands were “unisex.” Brands that made the classic mistake of appealing to everybody.
Marlboro was the first masculine cigarette. That’s Marlboro’s verbal nail. And what could be more masculine than a cowboy? (Not much, in my
personal opinion as an avid spectator of professional bull-riding.)
Most brand visuals never become hammers. They might be funny but unless they are also functional they do little for the brand. A good example are the frogs from the famed 1995 Budweiser Super Bowl commercial, often listed as among one of the best commercials in history.
The commercial shows a swamp at nighttime with three frogs rhythmically croaking “Bud”… “Weis”… “Er.”
Brilliant, right? Not in my opinion. Frogs croaking the name Budweiser? Where’s the verbal nail?
Frogs, lizards, dogs, Budweiser has used them all and more. All the while, the brand has the ultimate visual hammer which it uses only occasionally.
That visual is the Clydesdale horses pulling an old-fashioned beer wagon. That visual hammers in the authenticity of the brand, the King of Beers.
That visual also says “old,” which is a good thing in beverages. In technology, it’s good to be new. In beverages, it’s better to be old. Witness the success of brands like Dom Perignon founded in 1693.
Instead of sticking with the visual hammer it already owns as well as its companion verbal nail (King of Beers), Budweiser keeps searching for a new positioning idea.
A few years ago, Budweiser’s “Wassup?” campaign won a lot of awards in part because it made for a great visual (two goofy guys talking on the telephone.)
But as a verbal idea it lacked motivation. What does “Wassup” have to do with drinking Budweiser beer?
The latest is “Here we go.” Before that it was “Drinkability.” Both of these verbal ideas are almost impossible to visualize.
Left-brain management tends to prefer verbal nails that encompass everything.
Like “Chevrolet runs deep.”
Even if Chevrolet manages to put the “runs deep” idea into the mind, where’s the motivation to buy a Chevrolet vehicle?
Then too, when your idea is a high-level abstraction or a concept that is broad and general, it’s almost impossible to find a visual hammer that will drive the idea into prospects’ minds.
Effective visual hammers need narrow nails like driving and safety. (Real hammers need narrow nails, too.)
How can anyone find a visual hammer that symbolizes democracy, loyalty, trust and other high-level abstractions?
Consumers tend to take verbal ideas literally. “Chevrolet runs deep” sounds like a slogan for a tractor brand.
Abstract ideas needs to be brought down to earth before they can be visualized.
CHAPTER 3
SHAPE
SIMPLE IS BEST.
Suppose you were put in charge of marketing an organization that called itself, “International Committee for Relief to the Wounded.”
What visual hammer would you use?
Forget the hammer. The verbal nail comes first. But none of the organization’s words (international, committee, relief and wounded) can be visualized in a unique way. Fortunately, five years after its founding, the organization changed its name to “International Committee for the Red Cross,” which is still its official designation today.
With 97 million volunteers, supporters and staff in 186 countries, the Red Cross is one of the world’s largest and most successful organizations.
(The American Red Cross is an independent organization that works closely with the International Committee for the Red Cross.)
When you are searching for a visual hammer, you start with the nail. But here’s the paradox.
Often you have to sacrifice some of its verbal meaning in order to develop a more effective hammer.
“Relief to the Wounded” is more specific and meaningful than “Red Cross.” No matter. “Relief and wounded” can’t be visualized while “Red Cross” can.
The ultimate objective of a marketing program is to hammer an idea into the mind. But sometimes it’s easier to hitchhike on an idea that’s already there.
The Red Cross has made the word and the color “red” synonymous with a non-profit charity organization. So U2 lead-singer Bono and Bobby Shriver (son of Sargent Shriver) created Product Red to raise money to eliminate AIDS in Africa. The Product Red brand is licensed to partner companies like Apple, Converse, Dell, Gap, Hallmark, Nike and Starbucks. Each partner company creates a product with the Product Red logo and a percentage of the company’s profits is given to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Product Red is the largest private-sector donor to the Global Fund and has generated over $150 million for AIDS programs in Africa.
It’s interesting to note that the Red Cross and Product Red are well known, but the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is not.
Where is the visual hammer for the Global Fund? It needs a name change to make one possible.
In other words, you sometimes need to sharpen your verbal nail before searching for a visual hammer.
As far as shapes are concerned, there are only a handful of unique shapes that most people can recognize.
Furthermore, most common shapes (the rectangle, the circle, the arrow, the triangle, the checkmark, the sun, the star, etc.) are used by so many brands that they have become virtually useless as visuals hammers.
Adding a unique color can help, but even then many color/shape combinations have been pre-empted. The Red Star by both Russia and China for example.
Simplicity should be your guiding principle when looking for a potential hammer. It’s no coincidence that three of the world’s major religions all use symbols that are extremely simple. The Star & Crescent, the Cross and the Star of David.
Many of the simpler shapes are already taken by existing brands. The “target,” for example, is used effectively by both Target stores and by Tide detergent.
Tide’s “target” hammer works exceptionally well because Tide was the first brand in a new category.
It also helps that the name “Tide” looks like it’s stuck in the center of the target logotype. As far as the “target” of the Target stores is concerned, the utter simplicity of this design is what gives the Target trademark its power.
It may not be aesthetically pleasing, but in the retail category, the Target “target” is undoubtedly the most distinctive and most memorable trademark.
Compare Target’s target with Walmart’s new symbol, a six-petal design that resembles a sunburst or a flower.
Some reporters have speculated that the new symbol reflects former chief executive H. Lee Scott’s goal of transforming Walmart into an environmentally-friendly company.
If so, the symbol does neither that job nor does it serve as the brand’s visual hammer.
Too bad. Walmart is the larget retailer in the world, the dominant brand in the mass-merchandiser category. It should have been relatively easy for Walmart to develop a distinctive visual hammer.
The company’s first try, a miniature star that also served a hypen in the Wal-Mart name, was banality at its best. The sunflower is a close second.
The trademark world is loaded with circles, squares, stars, arrows and other conventional shapes. Almost all of these shapes are useless in the process of creating a visual hammer. A better approach is to try to create a unique new shape.
One that has become well known around the world is the “peace” symbol, designed in 1958.
The peace symbol is unique, but it does share some similarities with Mercedes’ Tri-Star trademark.
Recently, Under Armour created a unique symbol that has also become relatively well known.
Although simple, it’s actually more complicated than it needs to be. At a distance, the mark looks like an “H” in spite of the fact that the designers obviously tried to create a symbolic “UA” for the Under Armour brand name.
In evaluating trademarks, one mistake marketing people often make is asking questions like: “How do we feel about the design? Is there anyway we can improve the way the design looks?”
A trademark is not a pair of jeans. What a trademark looks like is immaterial. The a
ppropriate question to ask is: “What does the trademark say?”
The object of a visual hammer is to hammer a word in the mind. In Under Armour’s case it is “leadership in moisture-wicking compression garments designed to be worn under sports uniforms.”
There’s no visual that can communicate an idea like that so it needs to be done symbolically. Luckily, the “UA” in the Under Armour trademark is not obvious to most consumers. If it were, the mark would lose some of its value as a “moisture-wicking” visual hammer.
Many companies use initials as a trademark. “HP” for Hewlett-Packard. “GE” for General Electric. “A” for Ally Bank. In effect, the initials are just shorthand symbols for the names themselves. They don’t necessarily hammer in any unique verbal idea.
An opportunity often overlooked is to verbalize your visual hammer. Coca-Cola’s “contour” bottle. Mercedes’ “Tri-Star” trademark. Nike’s “Swoosh.” Naming a hammer emphasizes its uniqueness.
McDonald’s uses an initial “M” as a trademark. But by naming the symbol, “the Golden Arches,” the company moved beyond the rebus idea and turned the “M” into an effective visual hammer. The Golden Arches visualizes McDonald’s leadership in fast food.
Unlike what the art community might be telling you, visuals never work their way into human minds totally on their own. To be filed away in the mind, a visual needs to be verbalized.
