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

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

When my dad, Al Ries, wrote “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” in 1981, he overlooked one important idea. The visual. <br /> <br />Positioning is a totally verbal concept. You build a brand by owning a word in the mind. <br /> <br />Yet the best way into a mind is not with words at all. The best way into a mind is with visuals. <br /> <br />But not any visual. You need a “visual hammer” that hammers a verbal nail. The Marlboro cowboy. Coca-Cola’s contour bottle. Corona’s lime. <br /> <br />The cowboy hammers “masculinity.” The contour bottle hammers “authenticity.” The lime hammers “genuine Mexican beer.” <br /> <br />A trademark is not a visual hammer. Almost every brand has a trademark, but fewer than one out of a hundred brands have a visual hammer. A trademark is a rebus which communicates nothing except the name of the brand. <br /> <br />A visual hammer, on the other hand, communicates the essence of the brand. <br /> <br />Visual Hammer is the first book to document the superiority of the “hammer and nail” approach to branding. Some examples. <br /> <br />The pink ribbon that made Susan G. Komen for the Cure the largest nonprofit foundation to fight breast cancer. <br /> <br />The Aflac duck that increased Aflac’s name recognition from 12 percent to 94 percent. <br /> <br />The green jacket which made the Masters the most-prestigious golf tournament. <br /> <br />The polo player which made Ralph Lauren the largest-selling high-end clothing brand. <br /> <br />The bottle which made Absolut the largest-selling high-end vodka. <br /> <br />The watchband which made Rolex the largest-selling luxury watch. <br /> <br />The red soles which made Christian Louboutin the leading luxury-shoe brand. <br /> <br />The chalice which made Stella Artois the fifth largest-selling imported beer. <br /> <br />Colonel Sanders who made KFC the world’s largest chicken chain. <br /> <br />Why are marketing plans usually nothing but words when the best way into a mind is with the emotional power of a visual? <br /> <br />After reading Visual Hammer, you might want to tear up your current marketing plan and start fresh. <br /> <br />The first edition of Visual Hammer was an ebook, published on Kindle in 2012. This is the second edition which was released in Paperback on April 23, 2015. <br /> <br />Visual Hammer has also been translated into German, Chinese, Russian and Turkish.