Laura rice visual hammer. The visual “hammer”, verbal “nails” and other “pincers” of modern marketing. Speak the language of diagrams

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Laura Rice
Visual hammer. How images beat a thousand words

VISUAL HAMMER

Nail Your Brand into the Mind with the Emotional Power of a Visual Hammer

All rights reserved. No part electronic version This book may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by law firm"Vegas-Lex"

This book is well complemented by:

Steal like an artist

Austin Kleon

Visual thinking

Blah blah blah, or What to do when words don't work

Marketing without a budget

Igor Mann

Speak the language of diagrams

Gene Zelazny

Infographics

Martin Toseland and Simon Toseland

Preface to the Russian edition

The famous fathers of “positioning” and “marketing wars” Al Ries and Jack Trout determined back in the 1960s that successful companies always achieve a single goal: they manage to take possession of one simple idea, or, better to say, in a word, in the consciousness target audience. However, today this is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. Jack Trout rightly calls the modern era “the tyranny of choice.” The world is literally drowning in an excess of goods, various offers and, accordingly, advertising messages. How not to lose your bright and original idea in an ocean of advertising noise? If it is expressed only in words, today it is too difficult to convey it to the consciousness of those for whom it is intended.

Laura Rice, daughter and partner of the famous Al Ries, made a discovery that literally gave the discipline of branding a second life. From vague creativity, it has turned into a clearly structured technology for introducing a brand into people’s minds. potential buyers. It turned out that in all cases of market success we're talking about about the same thing: " nail"selling idea" gets clogged"into people's consciousness visual “hammer”.

A visual hammer is a symbol that can clearly convey a selling idea. Thanks to its emotional charge, it is he who breaks through the advertising noise and firmly “hammers” the verbal nail into people’s minds.

A properly designed “nail” and “hammer” can work wonders: they ensure the profitability of a brand even with a limited advertising budget. This is not at all surprising, since a “nail” firmly “driven” into the consciousness encourages people to go in search of it without being bombarded with advertising. At the same time, their attention simply does not capture hundreds of similar sentences.

Today Russia is passing through the third decade of its market development, but the era of the “tyranny of choice” is increasingly coming into its own. The country urgently needs to get rid of the “raw materials needle” and develop non-raw materials business. But this means the development of profitable domestic non-resource brands! Fortunately, the trouble-free “nail and hammer” system from the famous classics of strategy and branding is available to every Russian entrepreneur today.

Tatiana Lukyanova,

exclusive licensed partner of Ries & Ries in Russia, CEO marketing and sales agency "Rice & Lukyanova", chairman of the industry branch "Marketing" of the Federal Interindustry Council of the All-Russian public organization"Business Russia"

Preface

Nine years later, McGraw-Hill published our book, Positioning: The Battle for Minds. 1
Trout J., Rice E. Positioning: the battle for minds. – St. Petersburg: Peter, 2006.

In subsequent years, the topic of positioning has become one of the most discussed in the marketing community. In 2001, the twentieth anniversary edition of the above-mentioned book was published. More than a million copies have already been purchased in different countries and another 400 thousand in China.

Forty years is a fair amount of time; During such a time, most ideas and concepts lose relevance, especially in the rapidly changing world of marketing. Maybe the idea of positioning is also outdated?

I don't think so.

Many companies still write positioning statements for their brands, and marketers are urged to clearly position all products in the minds of consumers.

In 2009, Advertising Age readers named the book "Positioning: The Battle for Minds" best edition about marketing that they have ever read. That same year, it was included in the Harvard Business School Press list of the “100 Best Business Books of All Time.”

About this concept different authors They still write a lot today. Recent books published on this topic include Competitive Positioning and Positioning for Professionals.

So it appears that this topic continues to attract a lot of attention, despite the numerous and truly revolutionary changes that have occurred in the field of marketing over the past four decades - just to name, for example, the Internet, social media, mobile marketing, the rise of PR Special mention should be made of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, LinkedIn and dozens of other digital tools for influencing consumer consciousness. However, no matter how important and radical all these innovations are, they are just tactical techniques. And to succeed in the market, a brand needs more than tactics, even the latest and greatest. It needs a strategy, and it is for this reason that the topic of positioning continues to attract enormous attention.

Meanwhile, it should be recognized that this concept has one significant drawback. The fact is that the positioning strategy is invariably formulated verbally, that is, using words. Everyone who implements it, in essence, looks for some kind of “verbal holes” in people’s minds and tries to fill them with the name of a new brand. Lexus, for example, once filled a "hole" that could be described as a "Japanese luxury car." Having taken a reliable position in the minds of consumers, the Lexus brand has become virtually invulnerable to competitors.

At the same time - this fact may surprise many - despite the obvious successes of the verbal positioning strategy, the most effective way penetration into the human mind is not a word at all, but a visual, visual image.

In 1973, psychology professor Lionel Standing conducted an interesting study. Participants in the experiment had to view ten thousand different images over five days. Each picture was in front of my eyes for only five seconds. Subsequently, people were shown pairs of images, in which one was one of those shown in the first part of the experiment, and the other was new, and the subjects were able to remember 70 percent of the previously seen images.

This is truly a phenomenal statistic. Try showing people ten thousand advertising slogans for five seconds each, and after five days see how much your subjects remember.

Believe me, in our information-overloaded society, consumers are able to extract very little from memory. advertising texts designed to position a particular brand. So, no matter how carefully thought out your positioning strategy is and no matter how great the results of focus group testing, if people don’t remember your advertising message, your marketing efforts are in vain.

What verbal messages are most often fixed in the minds of consumers? What keeps some ideas and concepts in a person’s memory for years, or even decades?

These are emotions.

Remember, for example, your past. What events do you remember best? Those that make your pulse quicken and your blood pressure rise. That is, truly emotional. The day you got married. Or when your daughter got married. The day you had an accident. Or received a long-awaited promotion. Or bought a house. All these events probably left a clear picture in your memory.

Visual images have a power of emotional impact that words, neither printed nor spoken aloud, do not have. Watch the audience in a cinema - you will see that people are either laughing loudly or wiping away tears. And look at a person reading a novel - perhaps even the same one that formed the basis of the film whose audience you watched before. External manifestations of so-called emotional involvement will in this case be much rarer and not so bright.

Here it is, the main difference between visual images on the screen and words on book pages: the former are emotional, the latter are not.

Emotions are the glue that attaches memories to our minds. But why are visual images emotional, but the same cannot be said about words?

This is explained by the peculiarities of the functioning of human higher nervous activity. As you know, the human brain consists of two hemispheres: left and right. The left hemisphere processes information logically and sequentially. It operates with words. It works linearly and methodically.

The right hemisphere processes information in parallel. It operates with mental images and sees the big picture.

Perhaps we can say that a person has two brains: verbal and visual.

The goal of any positioning strategy is to implant a specific verbal concept in the mind of the consumer, and this goal is most effectively achieved not with the help of words, but through visual images that have much greater emotional appeal.

However, not every visual image is suitable. After all, there is no shortage of pictures in our advertising and other forms of communication.

Successful brand positioning requires a visual image that reinforces and reinforces a specific verbal concept. If it is chosen correctly, it attracts the attention of the right hemisphere of the brain, which sends a signal to the left hemisphere to read or listen to the words associated with this picture.

Figuratively speaking, a verbal concept is something like a nail, and to drive it into the minds of consumers, you need a kind of hammer - a visual image.

I am confident that over time, this concept proposed by Laura will become as famous as our idea of positioning.

Al Ries

Chapter 1: The Amazing Power of Visual Imagery

In today's business world, the written word reigns supreme: tweets, status updates, text messages, PowerPoint slide captions, Email and even good old handwritten letters.

Ideas, projects and marketing programs are all formulated and written using an endless number of words.

Is it any wonder that when it comes to the practical implementation of marketing programs, company leaders also focus exclusively on verbal tools? They often use words because they are most familiar with this means of expressing and communicating thoughts. But in our time, there is plenty of evidence confirming the fact that visual images play an incomparably more important role in marketing than words.

In 1982, Nancy Brinker founded the Breast Cancer Foundation; she did this in memory of her sister Susan Komen, who died two years earlier from a terrible disease.

As Brinker recalls, at that time she had only two hundred dollars and a list of potential sponsors.

Today, the Susan Komen Foundation (Komen for the Cure) has approximately $2 billion at its disposal. It is now the world's largest non-profit source of funds to fight breast cancer.

According to a recent public opinion poll conducted by the Harris research company, Americans are more willing to donate to this charity than to any other. charities. In terms of this indicator, the Foundation surpassed even such well-known and respected institutions as the American Cancer Society, St. Jude Thaddeus Hospital, Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army.

What explains the amazing success of this non-profit organization with the longest and most incomprehensible name among all similar ones?

A pink ribbon that has become a symbol of the fight against breast cancer.

The American Cancer Society was founded back in 1913, but most people still have no idea what visual symbol it uses this organization. This is the main difference between development trademark and creating an image that fixes it in the minds. Almost all brands have a trademark, but not everyone can boast of a “visual hammer”, that is, their own symbol or “picture”.

Deciding to organize a fundraiser for cancer research, world famous cyclist Lance Armstrong came up with something akin to the pink ribbon of the Susan Komen Foundation.

His yellow silicone bracelets with the slogan "Livestrong" first appeared in May 2004; this is an example of a truly innovative approach to fundraising for a good cause.

The bracelet costs only one dollar, but currently more than 70 million of these bracelets have been sold.

This is part of the Wear Yellow, Live Strong outreach program. Yellow was chosen because in professional cycling it is considered the color of victory. The leader of the world famous Tour de France cycling race, in which Armstrong won seven times in a row, wears a T-shirt of exactly this color.

Pink ribbons, yellow bracelets and other visual images radically change the world non-profit activities. But, admittedly, their successes are based on an approach borrowed from business.

In 2010, the Coca-Cola Company spent $267 million on advertising for its namesake brand in the United States alone. Try to remember what slogan she used? "Always"? "Enjoy"? Or some other one? Most people won't remember this.

What is left in the minds of almost everyone? What do 99 percent of Americans remember when it comes to Coca-Cola advertising?

Not words at all.

Most people remember the famous figured bottle.

A Coca-Cola bottle is not just a container. This is an image, a “visual hammer” that cements in the consumer’s mind the idea that he is holding in his hands an original, real, genuine cola.

In Coca-Cola commercials, visuals speak louder than words. This is the main purpose of the “visual hammer”.

If you follow the advertising of this brand, you probably noticed that in the last few years the company has begun to exploit the image of the legendary figured bottle much more actively - and in print advertising, and on television, and on cans, and on packaging, and on billboards. Even on their letterhead and business cards.

And this is one of the main reasons why Coca-Cola has become the most valuable brand in the world. It is worth $70,500 billion, according to global brand consultancy Interbrand.

In today's global economy, a strong visual image is a particularly valuable asset. For example, Coca-Cola is sold in 206 countries today, and 74 percent of the company's revenue comes from outside the United States.

It must be said that global brands dominate local ones in many product categories. Global FMCG brands hold the majority of the market share in most countries. In Brazil they account for 70 percent, in China - 75 percent, and in Russia - all 90 percent.

Unlike ideas expressed verbally, a picture does not require a translator to cross international borders.

By the way, in the case of the legendary glass shaped bottle of Coca-Cola with a volume of 200 ml, it is curious that consumers in all countries quite rarely buy the drink in such a container.

However, it doesn't matter. A small figurative bottle of cola represents a very powerful “visual hammer”. And a can of soda is just a can of soda. That's why the idea of placing an image of a branded figurative bottle on cans and even on plastic cups was truly ingenious.

Glass bottles of Coca-Cola are quite often served in respectable restaurants - this is a fact that perfectly demonstrates how containers of this form are perceived by modern consumers.

It is worth noting that, constantly using this “visual hammer,” Coca-Cola repeatedly offered new “verbal nails” - texts that it was supposed to reinforce. Over the past 107 years, it has changed 57 advertising slogans - and most of them were successfully forgotten by consumers almost immediately. By the way, the same thing happened with the motto of 1941 - “Coca-Cola is Coca!”

I find the “It’s the Real Thing” slogan to be particularly apt because it ties into Coca-Cola’s visual image. The figurative outline of the bottle is a symbol of authenticity, the authenticity of the brand, and the words “the real thing” verbalize this authenticity.

Even today, the phrase “the real thing” lives on in newspapers, magazines, books and television shows, despite the fact that Coca-Cola used this slogan more than forty years ago, and for only two years.

This clearly demonstrates the enormous verbal power of an idea expressed in a slogan, and clearly demonstrates that these types of ideas can become stronger over the years - which is a very good reason to use successful advertising slogans for decades.

So why do most American companies do exactly the opposite? It seems to me that this is one of the unintended consequences of the dominance of annual awards for advertising creativity.

Today, no advertising agency in the United States can consider itself successful without receiving its share of prizes in various competitions. And of course, you won’t get a prize for last year’s slogan, no matter how effective it may be. By definition, it is no longer “creative” - that is, not new. As a result, advertising agencies are faced with a choice: continue to win awards or perish. And can you blame them for choosing the first option?

The exceptionally powerful “visual hammer” – the curly Coca-Cola bottle – puts its main competitor, Pepsi, in a very difficult position. What should PepsiCo do in this situation?

It seems that its management, like the leaders of many other companies, is convinced that a famous brand name can be used as a “visual hammer”. This is most likely why companies spend a lot of time and money on perfecting their brand names instead of looking for strong, sticky images.

In 2008, PepsiCo announced its intention to invest within three next years more than $1.2 billion in redesigning every aspect of the offering of all key brands - how they look, how they are packaged, how they will be sold in retail networks and find your way to the consumer. This is how the company’s president and financial director, Indra Nooyi, formulated this task.

As part of this program, PepsiCo has developed new logo and new advertising campaign, for the implementation of which $154 million was spent in 2010 alone.

And how many consumers today, without hesitation, will tell you the new Pepsi slogan?

I assure you, there will not be too many of them.

In fact, a trademark is not suitable for the role of a “visual hammer” at all. If a shaped bottle symbolizes the originality and authenticity of the drink it contains, then what idea does the “smiley face”, the new Pepsi logo, convey to the consumer?

The new sign says only one thing - it's Pepsi.

In essence, what we have before us is rather a kind of rebus, a visual symbol that replaces the brand name.

However, almost all brands are puzzles. After several years of constant use (and millions of dollars spent on advertising), they are perceived as a visual embodiment of the brand name - and, as a rule, do not convey any other idea or information.

Even very respectable brands are guilty of this. Do you recognize these two? Reebok and Adidas.

Would you say your brand has a powerful visual hammer? Or instead, do you also just have a meaningless trademark rebus? Or does your brand do without a visual component at all?

Of course, it is not the trademarks themselves that are meaningless. For example, the Nike swoosh is a very powerful visual hammer. What is the difference between the Adidas and Reebok logos and the Nike symbol?

The thing is, the swoosh doesn't just mean you belong to Nike. This is the visual embodiment of the word “leadership.” This trademark on Tiger Woods' baseball cap literally hammers the idea of Nike leadership into the minds of consumers.

And this is not explained at all by the fact that this graphic element something special. Nike could have taken any other simple and original icon - and after a while it would have become as powerful as the famous swoosh.

What allowed the company to turn a simple “tick”, slightly elongated to the side, as if in rapid motion, into an effective image that is ingrained in people’s minds?

That Nike was the first in a new category.

Nike was the first serious sports shoe brand and dominates the category to this day.

In this case, the symbol does not just visually embody the name of the brand - it, like a hammer, hammers into the minds of consumers a specific word - “nail”. When it comes to a brand that can create and dominate new categories, the word is, of course, “leadership.”

As seen in the Nike example, the key to creating an effective visual identity is simplicity. Unfortunately, many brand designers approach things as if they were designing a coat of arms for a medieval knight rather than a symbol for a 21st century company.

It is thanks to its simplicity combined with uniqueness that the “visual hammer” is easily recognized and remains recognizable even at a fairly large distance.

For example, the original Mercedes-Benz trademark was quite complex and pompous, but it cannot be called a “visual hammer”. A brand should not be seen as just decoration. The market leader must see it as a potential image that will help cement an idea in the minds of consumers. It must be admitted that the current Mercedes trademark is the true embodiment of simplicity. The laconic three-pointed star is considered one of the most effective visual images in the world. It literally drives the idea of prestige into the minds of car enthusiasts.

But, unfortunately, not every brand uses this chance correctly. Take Red Bull for example. The company created the energy drink category that it reigns supreme to this day, with annual sales of more than $5.1 billion.

And yet, despite its undoubted success, Red Bull does not have a visual hammer. The company had a great chance to create it, but chose a visual image that was clearly too complex and heavy for a small can of the drink.

“Two bulls against the background of the sun” is not a very powerful “hammer”. It cannot be compared in terms of impact with a Mercedes star, a Nike swoosh or a figurative Coca-Cola bottle.

And if the leader does not have a powerful “visual hammer,” the competitor has an excellent opportunity to oust him from this place of honor.

Monster entered the energy drink market by positioning itself as the polar opposite of Red Bull. It offered consumers the drink in a 0.5 liter can – twice the size of Red Bull (0.25 liter). And the voluminous can quickly merged in the minds of consumers into a single whole with the name of the Monster brand.

In addition, the company chose a very successful visual symbol. The M-shaped claw marks convey the message of power and danger in a simple, effective and subtle way. People remember this image well.

Today, Monster confidently occupies second place in the energy drink market, partly due to the active placement of its symbols at various concerts and sporting events.

So why, despite these and countless other examples that clearly show that visuals are the real power, are so many marketers still working exclusively with words?

To begin with, it should be said that words, of course, are also extremely important.

VISUAL HAMMER

Nail Your Brand into the Mind with the Emotional Power of a Visual Hammer

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

This book is well complemented by:

Steal like an artist

Austin Kleon

Visual thinking

Blah blah blah, or What to do when words don't work

Marketing without a budget

Igor Mann

Speak the language of diagrams

Gene Zelazny

Infographics

Martin Toseland and Simon Toseland

Preface to the Russian edition

The famous fathers of “positioning” and “marketing wars,” Al Ries and Jack Trout, determined back in the 1960s that successful companies always achieve a single goal: they manage to capture one simple idea, or better yet, in the minds of their target audience. However, today this is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. Jack Trout rightly calls the modern era “the tyranny of choice.” The world is literally drowning in an excess of goods, various offers and, accordingly, advertising messages. How not to lose your bright and original idea in the ocean of advertising noise? If it is expressed only in words, today it is too difficult to convey it to the consciousness of those for whom it is intended.

Laura Rice, daughter and partner of the famous Al Ries, made a discovery that literally gave the discipline of branding a second life. From vague creativity, it has turned into a clearly structured technology for introducing a brand into the minds of potential buyers. It turned out that in all cases of market success we are talking about the same thing: “ nail"selling idea" gets clogged"into people's consciousness visual “hammer”.

Tatiana Lukyanova,

exclusive licensed partner of Ries & Ries in Russia, general director of the marketing and sales agency "Ries & Lukyanova", chairman of the industry branch "Marketing" of the Federal Interindustry Council of the All-Russian public organization "Business Russia"

Preface

Nine years later, McGraw-Hill published our book, Positioning: The Battle for Minds. In subsequent years, the topic of positioning has become one of the most discussed in the marketing community. In 2001, the twentieth anniversary edition of the above-mentioned book was published. More than a million copies have already been purchased in different countries and another 400 thousand in China.

I don't think so.

Many companies still write positioning statements for their brands, and marketers are urged to clearly position all products in the minds of consumers.

In 2009, Advertising Age readers voted Positioning: The Battle for Minds the best marketing book they've ever read. That same year, it was included in the Harvard Business School Press list of the “100 Best Business Books of All Time.”

Various authors still write a lot about this concept today. Recent books published on this topic include Competitive Positioning and Positioning for Professionals.

At the same time - this fact may surprise many - despite the obvious successes of the verbal positioning strategy, the most effective way to penetrate the human mind is not a word at all, but a visual, visual image.

Laura Rice

Visual hammer. How images beat a thousand words

VISUAL HAMMER

Nail Your Brand into the Mind with the Emotional Power of a Visual Hammer

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

This book is well complemented by:

Steal like an artist

Austin Kleon

Visual thinking

Blah blah blah, or What to do when words don't work

Marketing without a budget

Igor Mann

Speak the language of diagrams

Gene Zelazny

Infographics

Martin Toseland and Simon Toseland

Preface to the Russian edition

Laura Rice, daughter and partner of the famous Al Ries, made a discovery that literally gave the discipline of branding a second life. From vague creativity, it has turned into a clearly structured technology for introducing a brand into the minds of potential buyers. It turned out that in all cases of market success we are talking about the same thing: “ nail"selling idea" gets clogged"into people's consciousness visual “hammer”.

Tatiana Lukyanova,exclusive licensed partner of Ries & Ries in Russia, general director of the marketing and sales agency "Ries & Lukyanova", chairman of the industry branch "Marketing" of the Federal Interindustry Council of the All-Russian public organization "Business Russia"

Preface

I don't think so.

Many companies still write positioning statements for their brands, and marketers are urged to clearly position all products in the minds of consumers.

Various authors still write a lot about this concept today. Recent books published on this topic include Competitive Positioning and Positioning for Professionals.

This is truly a phenomenal statistic. Try showing people ten thousand advertising slogans for five seconds each, and after five days see how much your subjects remember.

Believe me, in our information-overloaded society, consumers are able to retrieve from memory very few advertising texts designed to position a particular brand. So, no matter how carefully thought out your positioning strategy is and no matter how great the results of focus group testing, if people don’t remember your advertising message, your marketing efforts are in vain.

What verbal messages are most often fixed in the minds of consumers? What keeps some ideas and concepts in a person’s memory for years, or even decades?

These are emotions.

Oct 23, 2015

Visual hammer. How images beat a thousand words

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Title: Visual Hammer. How images beat a thousand words

About the book by Laura Rice “The Visual Hammer. How images conquer thousands of words"

The Nail & Hammer system described in this book replaces the traditional concept of positioning. Laura Rice (daughter of the famous Al Ries, the author of the concept of positioning) convincingly argues that no matter how good a verbal positioning idea, the so-called “verbal nail,” it is difficult for it to reach the consumer’s consciousness unless it is matched with the right “visual hammer.” , that is, a visual image that fully corresponds to the positioning idea and allows it to more easily take hold in a person’s memory.

Published in Russian for the first time.

On our website about books lifeinbooks.net you can download for free without registration or read online book Laura Rice "Visual Hammer" How images conquer thousands of words" in epub formats, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find last news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers there is a separate section with useful tips and recommendations, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

Business literature is a genre and category of books today that is extremely widespread and even in demand. You need to approach business literature very carefully, critically and with healthy disgust. Because for the most part, such publications are extremely meaningless, primitive and opportunistic. However, among the mass of business waste paper there are quite interesting and useful works that can affect, if not the level of competence of the reader, then certainly improve the quality of his argumentation.

Laura Rice. Visual hammer. How images conquer thousands of words. - M.: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2013.

Laura Rice's book The Visual Hammer. How images conquer thousands of words" (Laura Ries. Visual Hammer) represents a peculiar development and new version Al Rice's positioning concepts (Laura Rice is Al Rice's daughter). “The Visual Hammer” is not a very deep book, but, without a doubt, useful in terms of the examples discussed, application system"nail-hammer" The utilitarian pathos of the book lies in professional recommendations on how to hammer the consumer with a visual hammer, driving verbal nails into his mind, and in this regard, the book would be more accurately called: visual “pincers” of consumption. But the point, of course, is not in the title.

If we discard the metaphorical part, then Rice’s concept boils down to the fact that modern branding consists of two parts: verbal (words) and visual (images). Building brand positioning only in words is no longer enough; the verbal “nail” must be accompanied by a visual “hammer”. A visual hammer can be an image, logo, corporate color, interior elements, media, packaging, media persons, etc.

“A Coca-Cola bottle is not just a container. This is an image, a “visual hammer” that cements in the consumer’s mind the idea that he is holding in his hands an original, real, genuine cola. In Coca-Cola commercials, visuals speak louder than words. This is the main purpose of the “visual hammer” 1).

Rice directly says that without visual reinforcement, the verbal formulation of an idea is meaningless, the image conveys the idea much more sharply and the immediate, at the same time, verbal name “causes only boredom.”

“If a visual element conflicts with a verbal element, the former invariably wins. Take a photo, for example, of a nice-looking woman and caption the photo “Ugly.” Seeing such a picture, no one, of course, will believe that this woman is ugly; most likely, people will simply assume that someone mixed up the signatures. And the woman in the photograph will not become any more uglier because of the inscription. The visual element always dominates the verbal” 2).

However, Rice makes a reservation that first a verbal nail is created and then a hammer: “despite the undoubted power of the “hammer”, the “nail” is still more important. After all, words and ideas are the main goal of any marketing campaign.

“A “hammer” is just a tool that can significantly facilitate the task of hammering in the word “nail”” 3).

The visual hammer, and this is important to understand, is considered not from the point of view of visual design, but from the point of view of patterns of perception. So Rice evaluates not the compatibility of brand colors or their semantics, but, for example, the fact that two colors in an identity are worse than one local one. What color is ExxonMobil or Dunkin' Donuts as opposed to green Starbucks or brown UPS, asks Rice. The main principles of “hammering” (sorry, conveying the values and promises of a brand for the benefit of the consumer) are: simplicity, memorability, “signaling”, maximum clarity of verbal and visual information.

Despite the simplicity of the visual hammer concept, it would be wrong to consider it “unsophisticated.” The need for these manipulations is due to the fact that, as Rice notes:

“What makes a brand a winner is the perception of consumers who consider it a market leader. In other words, the struggle is in the area of perception, not the actual quality of the products” 4).

You probably won’t get such sincerity from Russian marketers.

Laura Rice's book can be recommended not only to professionals in the field of marketing and branding, but also to designers. After all, having “with you” several well-formulated rhetorically and figuratively arguments is necessary both for creating the final product and for everyday work. In some cases, such an arsenal will be indispensable and the book “Visual Hammer” will become a good tool in it.

1) Laura Rice. Visual hammer. How images conquer thousands of words. - M., 2013 - P. 23.
2) Ibid. - P. 118.
3) Ibid. - P. 175.
4) Ibid. - P. 70.

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