by Laura Ries
Take the hybrid vehicle. There are some 25 hybrid models on the American market, but one brand, the Prius, has a dominant share.
In a recent year, the Toyota Prius had 51 percent of the market.
Compare Honda with Toyota. Since 2002, the company has been selling the Honda Civic Hybrid in competition with the Toyota Prius.
In nine years, consumers have bought four times as many Prius hybrids as Civic hybrids.
Why the difference? The Prius is a visual hammer. It looks like a hybrid, meaning that it looks totally different than any other automobile on the road. Smaller and quirkier, too. The Honda Civic hybrid looks exactly like a Honda Civic.
In other words, it looks like all the other Honda Civics on the highway. In my neighborhood, there a Honda Civic hybrid with the vanity license plate “HYBRID.” People don’t just want a hybrid, they also want a car that looks like a hybrid.
The other half of the equation is the name “Prius,” which is the verbal name that gets hammered in the mind by the unique visual.
The Honda Civic hybrid has no visual hammer and no verbal nail.
Recently, Toyota announced that it would drop the Toyota name from the Prius and set it up as a separate brand. A good idea that will further hammer the Prius nail and its leadership position into consumers’ minds.
Look at the current move into electric cars by almost every major automotive company. The first two to hit the road are the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf.
Have you seen the new Nissan Leaf? They will be hard to see because production is limited and they look the same as every other small car.
It’s way too late to redesign the vehicle, but what Nissan could have done is to produce all of its Leafs for the first year or so in a single color.
“Electric green” would be my choice.
A simple step like this would have cost nothing but would have greatly increased “street visibility” for the Nissan Leaf brand. And with a name like “Leaf” what better color to use than green.
As far as a single color is concerned, you might think that “early adopters” would complain about the lack of choice. But I doubt it. Why did they buy a Leaf in the first place? It’s not to save money; it’s to make a statement. “Look at me. I care about the environment.”
A distinctive color would make the statement even more dramatic.
You can also have negative visual hammers. Take the Smart car which was introduced in the American market in 2008.
Initially, the vehicle received a blast of favorable publicity. Easy to drive, easy to park, good gas mileage. The first year the Smart car was on the market, 24,622 vehicles were sold.
Then Smart sales plummeted. To 14,595 vehicles the second year. And just 5,927 vehicles the third year. And 5,208 the fourth year.
It’s easy to figure out what happened to Smart. Its street visibility was bound to create a lot of negative comments and criticism.
“Why pay full price for half a car?” Or “what did it look like before it was rear-ended by an 18-wheeler?”
You can sometimes look too different. It’s not just what prospects think of your product; it’s also what everybody else thinks of your product, too.
Social pressure, which has been amplified even more by social media, plays an important role in what products and brands consumers buy or don’t buy.
People make statements with the brands they choose. And when they choose a brand they often want everybody to know what that brand is.
But in some categories, it’s difficult to create a visual difference. You could make a man’s dress shirt look different, but what man would want to wear it?
Instead, Ralph Lauren put the polo player on his shirts, the first dress shirts to carry a commercial message. Then he made a really bold move and eliminated the pocket, saving money and adding a touch of difference to his shirts.
Sometimes you can make a product look different by doing the same thing, subtracting something.
Years ago, the creator of a candy-mint product contracted with a manufacturer to press the mints into shape. But the manufacturer found the pressing process worked much better with a hole in the middle.
Hence the brand name Life Savers and the verbal slogan “The candy mint with the hole.”
A short time later, Life Savers was the No.1 mint-candy brand in America, a position it has held in the marketplace ever since.
With such a mighty hammer, you might think it would be easy to take the Life Savers brand into other categories like gum and fruit punch.
As an executive of the candy company said at the time: “Our consumer dialogue indicates that the Life Savers brand name conveys more than merely ‘candy with the hole.’ It also means excellence in flavor, outstanding value and dependable quality.”
Not so. Life Savers chewing gum, Life Savers fruit punch and other Life Savers line extensions are long gone, leaving Life Savers as “the candy mint with the hole.”
Even a product called “Life Savers Holes” was a total disaster.
A visual hammer is not a sledge hammer. It’s more like an upholstery hammer with a narrow head. It allows Life Savers to get away with selling Gummy Savers, the gummy candy with a hole.
But the hammer is not big enough to save a product called Life Savers Holes.
What Life Savers did in candy, Cheerios has done in breakfast cereal. Most cereals are flakes of wheat, corn, oats or bran. Distinguishable from one another on the outside of the box, but not in the bowl.
Not Cheerios, practically the only brand you can recognize in a bowl twenty feet away. “The cereal with the hole” is the brand’s visual hammer which differentiates Cheerios from hundreds of other breakfast cereals, most of them visually similar.
So it should come as no surprise that Cheerios is the No.1 cereal brand, selling one out of every eight boxes of cereal sold in supermarkets, twice the market share of the No.2 brand, Kellogg’s Special K.
Another dominant brand using a “holes” strategy is Thomas’ English muffins.
“The Original Nooks & Crannies English Muffins” is the verbal nail that exploits both the authenticity of the brand and its differentiation. The English stagecoach also hammers that verbal nail.
Then there was a shoe with the brand name “Beach.” The shoes had holes for ventilation and drainage.
Thank goodness they abandoned the Beach name and renamed the shoes “Crocs,” a brand which caught on quickly and developed a loyal and vociferous following.
“People would say Man, those are ugly,” said Crocs founder Duke Hanson, “and we would say, you just got to try them on.”
Eventually that became a verbal nail for the brand: “Ugly can be beautiful.”
The rise of Crocs was spectacular. From almost nothing in 2002 to $847.4 million in sales (and $168.2 million in net profits) five years later.
The fall of Crocs was just as spectacular as its rise. In 2008 and 2009, Crocs lost $229.2 million on sales of $1.4 billion.
It was a classic case of “too much, too soon.” Not only did Crocs flood the market with a rainbow of colors, it quickly added many other styles: flip-flops, sandals and even ladies heels. Especially troublesome was the fact that many of the expanded styles were meant to be attractive and fashionable, which undercut the brand’s verbal nail, “Ugly can be beautiful.”
In addition, Crocs spent millions buying up other companies like EXO Italia which made vinyl shoes and Fury Hockey which made sticks, gloves, pants and elbow pads. There was even talk of launching Crocs clothing. (Holes in clothing?)
Fortunately, most of these line extensions were liquidated and in 2010 Crocs became profitable again with net income of $67.7 million on sales of $789.7 million.
Even the tiniest of holes can also serve as the source for a visual hammer.
A brand with a fantastic track record is Geox, the shoe that breathes. Currently the company sells more than $1 billion worth every year. Even more spectacular is its profit margins, which over the
past five years have been averaging about 14 percent a year.
Geox is a very good example of the power of a verbal/visual approach to building a brand.
If you just focused on the benefits of the Geox brand, you might come up with a slogan like “The healthiest, most comfortable athletic shoe you can buy.”
That says it all, right?
It sure does, but it rules out the possibility of a visual hammer.
How do you visualize “healthiest” and “most comfortable?” You can’t.
But “the shoe that breathes” lends itself to a dramatic visual.
Notice, too, that without the visual, the verbal claim would fall totally flat.
“A shoe that breathes? That’s ridiculous. Shoes don’t breathe.”
(The right visual is often incredibly effective because many consumers will accept visually what they would instantly reject verbally.)
Reebok recently introduced a new shoe technology that is creating a lot of interest among consumers. Called “ZigTech,” the footwear utilizes a unique “zig-zag” geometry that propels the runner forward and reduces muscle fatigue.
It’s a great visual hammer that is getting lost in a blizzard of confusing words. The technology is called “ZigTech,” the design of the shoes is called “zig-zag,” the latest extension is the “ZigTech Nano” and the marketing program is called “ReeZig – More energy.” A better approach might have been to launch a new brand based on ZigTech.
Visual hammers are particularly effective for high-end fashion products. They tell friends and relatives how smart (or how dumb) you are. Take ultra-expensive Louis Vuitton handbags. They have a unique multiple-logotype design that anyone can recognize on the street.
In certain circles, owning a Louis Vuitton handbag is one of those possessions a woman just has to have. In Tokyo, according to one report, more than 90 percent of women in their twenties own a Louis Vuitton handbag.
If the handbag itself weren’t quite so “outlandish,” Louis Vuitton sales wouldn’t be nearly as high.
Sure, products should be attractive, but it’s even more important that they be distinctive, as the success of Louis Vuitton, Crocs and other brands demonstrates.
In Interbrand’s latest report, Louis Vuitton is the world’s 16th most valuable brand, worth $21.9 billion. The 44th most valuable brand in the world is Gucci, another example of a brand with a potent hammer.
As a matter of fact, two hammers, a luxury that few brands can afford. Red-and-green stripes and a double-G interlock trademark.
Each of the Gucci hammers do well, but what about a verbal nail?
Both Gucci and Louis Vuitton would benefit from verbal expressions of their luxury positions. But these are not easy to develop.
Pick up a copy of Vogue and study the fashion ads. Like this Gucci ad, you’ll find most of them totally visual, with the copy limited to the name of the brand. There’s an excellent opportunity to “break the fashion pattern” by developing a verbal nail that could be visualized.
That’s what Barack Obama did in 2008. His Presidential election campaign captured the attention of the marketing community.
At the Association of National Advertisers conference that year, Barack Obama was voted “Marketer of the Year.”
His 2008 political campaign combined a memorable nail (Change we can believe in) with a memorable visual hammer, the rising sun.
The combination produced an upset victory that few pundits would have predicted just a year earlier.
For a virtually-unknown first-time senator, a member of a minority group and a man with an unusual name to be elected President of the United States is a testament to the effectiveness of the hammer-and-nail marketing approach.
But the questions arises, what should Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign focus on? It shouldn’t be “Change.” Why is this so?
Because the incumbent always has an advantage. As the old saying goes, Better the devil you know (than the devil you don’t.) Obama needs to stress his leadership in engineering an economy that is “built to last.” In other words, the job is half done.
Or as he said in his State of the Union speech, “We’ve come too far to turn back now.” Therefore using the 2008 symbol without the change theme is a good direction.
Even better would be the verbal nail: “We’ve come too far to turn back now.”
CHAPTER 6
PACKAGE
MAKE IT DIFFERENT.
Most brands are focused on product. The emphasis is on developing and producing a product that is demonstrably superior to the competition.
Packaging is often overlooked as a branding element. Sure, the package itself is loaded with copy explaining the virtues of the brand. But the actual package, its shape and its composition can be an important visual element.
Too often package design is delegated to manufacturing experts who crave efficiency, cost and utility. Hellmann’s is a good example. It’s the leading mayonnaise brand but the packaging is mediocre at best. Hellmann’s looks just like every other mayonnaise jar on the shelf.
On the other hand, Heinz ketchup is an example of how innovative packaging can help build a dominant brand.
Its unique glass bottle with its octagon shape is instantly recognized by most consumers. It’s almost as well-known as Coke’s contour bottle.
Even high-end white-table-cloth restaurants will often put Heinz ketchup bottles on their tables, one of the few food brands that get treated this way.
For years, Heinz was marketed as “The slowest ketchup in the West,” one of the most effective verbal nails ever developed.
According to the company, Heinz ketchup exits its iconic glass bottle at .028 miles per hour. If the viscosity of the ketchup is greater than this speed, the ketchup is rejected for sale.
Currently, Heinz is marketing larger-size plastic ketchup bottles which presumably can be sold for lower prices. But like Coca-Cola and its contour bottle, the Heinz octagon bottle remains an important visual hammer for the brand, even though relatively few are sold.
How would you make a pair of pantyhose look different? (Most women want them to look invisible.)
If you can’t make your product look different, you can still make its package look different.
Years ago, Hanes Corporation marketed Hanes, the leading brand of pantyhose. But the Hanes brand was sold in department stores only and the corporation wanted a second brand for supermarkets and mass merchandisers.
The name it picked was brilliant and the packaging (the visual hammer) was even better.
The double-entendre “L’eggs” was an almost perfect name for a pantyhose sold in supermarkets. And the plastic-egg package was a killer hammer.
L’eggs was so successful it became the country’s largest-selling pantyhose brand. But apparently the plastic-egg packaging was expensive, so at some point in time L’eggs was moved from plastic to cardboard.
That’s not necessarily a bad idea. Launching a new brand is an difficult operation, especially one destined for supermarkets.
(In America, some 17,000 new food products are introduced every year.)
In some categories, it might make sense to launch a new brand in ultra-expensive packaging. Then, after the brand becomes successful, back off into conventional packaging to keep the brand’s price reasonable.
Another category that gets a host of new brands every year is beverages. One recently-successful new beverage brand is Vitaminwater. So successful in fact that in 2007 the Coca-Cola Company bought Glaceau, the maker of Vitaminwater and Smartwater, for $4.1 billion in cash, the company’s largest acquisition to date.
The Vitaminwater bottles are perhaps the most visually-arresting beverage packages ever conceived. They remind me of a row of prescription drugs on a pharmacy’s shelf, which is exactly the right concept for a “vitamin” beverage.
Whether or not the Vitaminwater brand is worth $4.1 billion is another matter, but you have to admire the brand’s visual hammer.
But beware. While the Vitaminwater bottle was designed to look symbolically like a bottle of vitamins, that’s exactly the wrong strategy to use if you’re not first.
If you’re not first in a new category, you want to design your bottle so it looks like the bottle doesn’t belong in the category at all.
Take vodka, one of the oldest alcoholic beverages. Some Polish vodka brands go back centuries, notable Zubrowka and Starka from the 16th century and Goldwasser from the early 17th century.
Compared to these and a number of Russian brands, Absolut from Sweden is an infant, not introduced until the spring of 1979.
In spite of its late start, the Absolut bottle would become one of the most famous visual hammers in the world. Instead of designing Absolut to look like a vodka bottle, the designers made it look like an apothecary jar you’d find in a pharmacy.
Swedish advertising executive Gunnar Broman brought the bottle and the proposed name to ad agency N.W. Ayer for its help in advertising the new vodka.
“It looks like one of those medical bottles,” was the first response of the Americans. “Like for blood plasma or something.” Another chimed in, ‘You can’t sell a thing like that. Well, you might be able to sell it to doctors.”
Eventually the account ended up at TBWA which made the Absolut bottle the star of a long-running advertising campaign which has won many awards.
Typical advertising headlines: “Absolut attraction.” And: “Absolut perfection.” And: “Absolut treasure.”
