Goafest 2017: Use the visual hammer, Laura Ries

Laura Ries opened the strike at the conference on the third and final day of Goafest 2017. In her crisp presentation, Ries, who’s father Al Ries is a marketing legend, outlined some simple yet golden rules on how to get the brand strategy right.  

 

Talking about the example of BMW she said that the brand in its communication wanted to be everything to everybody more than four decades back. It landed at the bottom of the heap. Then with its positioning as The Ultimate Driving Machine it managed tobecome the number one luxury car maker in sales the same slogan for more than 40 years.

 

Putting up a picture of film star Deepika Padukone with the caption ‘Ugly Woman’, Ries drove the point that people would see the picture first and then find something wrong with the caption.

She emphasised that more than words it is a ‘visual hammer’ that works better. When most cigarettes were targeting consumers with unisex messaging, Marlboro with its cowboy image created the first masculine cigarette verbal nail, she said. Similarly Corona with its lime imagery had moved up from being a beer for the working class to one of the world’s 100 most valuable brands.

 

Given below are some more examples given by Laura Ries that made brands stand out using different attributes:

 

Colour  - the golden arches of Mc Donald’s, the red soles of Christian Louboutin, the white earbuds of iPod earphones

 

Product – Rolex watches, Volkswagen Beetle

 

Packaging – Absolut, Perrier, Red Bull

 

Action – Tropicana’s orange with a straw

 

Founder – KFC’s Col Sanders, Virgin’s Richard Branson

 

Symbol – Nike swoosh

 

Celebrities – Tiger Woods hired and fired

 

Animals – which are safer and do not get brands into trouble unlike ambassadors Twitter bird and Gorilla glue