creative strategy importance_visual or verbal

8/3/2019 Creative Strategy Importance_visual or Verbal

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Creative Strategy Importance: Visual or Verbal?

What's more important, the visual or the verbal?

You Need Both to Build a Powerul Brand. Advertising today is a visually oriented discipline. And we have

Conucius to thank (or blame) or this state o aairs. Conucius' amous saying, "A picture is worth 1,000words," has been quoted endlessly in advertising circles in America. Furthermore, most creative directors start-ed out as art directors. First and oremost, they see their job as creating a unique and distinctive visual. Tewords can come later.

Art directors generally believe that pictures or visuals are more important, while copywriters generally believethat the right choice o words are more important.

Both are wrong.

It's like asking what's more important in building a house, a hammer or a nail? Both have to work together.Te best hammer in the world is useless i the hammer misses the nail. And the best nail in the world is uselessunless there's a hammer to hammer the nail in.

Te visual is the hammer. It's dicult to build a strong, powerul worldwide brand without a strong, shocking,dynamic visual.

Te success o Marlboro cigarettes demonstrates the incredible power o the right combination o visual andverbal. Introduced in the U.S. market in 1953, Marlboro eventually became the world's largest-selling cigarettebrand.

Marlboro was the brand that made Philip Morris a hugely successul company. I you had invested $1,000 inPhilip Morris stock at the end o 1953, the year Marlboro was introduced, your stake would be worth $15.5million today. (As a matter o act, Philip Morris stock appreciated aster than any other stock on Fortunemagazine's list that year o the 500 largest companies in America.)

Wow! Te Marlboro cowboy must be an exceptionally powerul visual.

Tat's not necessarily true. Tat's not how advertising works. Te Marlboro cowboy is only a hammer.

What was the cowboy hammer trying to do? At the time o Marlboro's introduction, virtually all cigarette

brands were "unisex" brands, appealing to both men and women. Almost all cigarette advertisements eaturedpictures o women as well as men.

o the cigarette manuacturers, that made a lot o sense. Cigarette companies gured their uture depended ontheir ability to create as many emale smokers as male smokers. (Tey have almost achieved that goal. oday,28% o adult American men smoke vs. 22% o women.)

Marlboro was conceived as a "masculine" cigarette, one o the rst brands to ocus entirely on men. (In 55 years,there has never been a woman in a Marlboro ad.)

It was this "masculine" verbal message that the cowboy hammer was designed to drive into the smoker's mind.It was this combination that built the exceptionally powerul Marlboro brand.

Is a picture worth a thousand words? No. Without a verbal, a picture is essentially worthless.


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Currently, the auction house Christie's International is oering one o Andy Warhol's large portraits o MaoZedong or $120 million. Granted, the portrait is 14-eet tall and it was completed in 1973 just afer the U.S. andChina renewed their relations. But is it worth $120 million?

What makes any painting worth that kind o money? It can't be the quality o the painting. (Te portrait o Maowas actually printed on a silkscreen press.)

It's the name o the artist. In this case, Andy Warhol.

Te world o art and the world o business are alike. It's the brand name that makes a work o art valuable. Pi-casso, Van Gogh, Monet, Dali, Mondrian. It's the brand name that makes a product valuable. Rolex, Mercedes-Benz, Apple, Lexus, Marlboro.

Branding is a one-two process and it doesn't start with the visual. It starts with the verbal. I could paint 1,000pictures o Mao Zedong and none o them would be worth anything. Why? Te verbal is wrong. Al Ries? Whatdoes that name mean in the art eld? Nothing. On the other hand, put "Al Ries" on a book and the book willsell. (Maybe not millions o copies, but a ew thousand anyway.)

So the rst question a marketing manager must ask is, "What is the verbal? What is the verbal message we aretrying to put into consumers' minds?"

Tat's the nail. It's not that the nail is more important than the hammer, but the nail is the rst decision a com-pany needs to make.

Art directors in particular need to pay attention to this one-two eect. Ofentimes, an art director will ocushis or her entire attention on the visual without considering whether the visual hammer will hit the right nail.

Tere is ofen a disconnect between the two. I "Marlboro" were a eminine-type name, the cowboy hammer

wouldn't have worked at all. (Te rst step in a Marlboro marketing program would have been to change thename to a masculine one.)

In our consulting work, we nd the single most important mistake companies make is separating the hammerrom the nail.

Somebody, usually in the company, decides what words should be used to describe the brand. Ten these ver-bals are turned over to an outsider, usually an advertising agency, to visualize.

Te company creates great words and the agency creates great visuals and the two never get connected.

Ten, too, visuals are ofen evaluated by their attractiveness or beauty alone. "I love the look o this advertise-ment" is the reaction o a typical corporate executive. But beauty is seldom the key attribute o a powerulhammer.

One o the most eective branding programs is or a product called "Roach Motel." Te verbal is: "Roachescheck in, but they don't check out." You can imagine what the visual is.

Marketing has a job to do and creating a work o art is not what that job is.

Nor can a marketing manager select a verbal without also considering what the visual might be. I you try to

establish a verbal concept like "quality," you'll quickly nd there is no visual that can hammer in a "quality" nail.

Quality is too abstract a concept. Te same thing is true o concepts like excellent customer service, low main-tenance, high resale value, etc.


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A visual hammer works best with a down-to-earth specic concept expressed as simply as possible. For exam-ple, the rst three-blade razor (Mach3) and the rst ve-blade razor (Fusion) introduced by Gillette.

Yet the "nail" decisions, or verbal decisions, are ofen made without consideration o potential "hammers," orvisual devices.

I you can't nd a visual device to hammer your verbal nail, then your strategy tends to all apart.

Tere's one exception to this general rule. When your brand is rst in a new category, you have a golden oppor-tunity to create a powerul visual hammer. Not only can your brand pre-empt the leadership role, as Coca-Coladid in cola, but your brand gets a rare opportunity to create an exceptionally memorable visual.

Te old-ashioned Coke bottle, or example, is a visual symbol recognized around the world. When the leaderbrand creates a symbol associated with the category, the No. 2 and No. 3 brands are visually out o luck.

What visual symbol is associated with Pepsi-Cola? None, really.

Mercedes-Benz, perhaps the rst automobile marketed as a luxury brand, created the tri-star logotype which isuniversally associated with "prestige." Nobody seems to object when Mercedes uses a one-oot-high logotypein the grille o its automobiles.

Nike, one o the most successul athletic shoes, created the Swoosh, not a particularly attractive visual, as itstrademark. Yet the Swoosh is a well-known logo around the world in spite o its lack o visual excitement. Why?Because Nike was one o the rst mass-marketed athletic shoe and the Swoosh visual is associated with thatposition.

McDonald's, the rst hamburger chain, created the "Golden Arches," another visual with an enormous recog-

nition actor.

Rolex, one o the rst luxury brands in the watch category, created a unique watchband that has since beencopied by many other brands. Yet the Rolex watchband is one o the brand's most eective visual hammers.(It doesn't matter that other brands have copied the Rolex look. Tat just makes them look like "imitationRolexes.")

Visual hammers are particularly eective or high-end ashion products. Tey tell riends and relatives howsmart (or how dumb) you are. Te polo player or the Ralph Lauren brand, or example.

ake ultra-expensive Louis Vuitton handbags. Tey have a unique multiple-logotype design that anyone canrecognize rom 20 eet away.

In certain circles, a Louis Vuitton handbag is one o those possessions a woman has to have. In okyo, or ex-ample, more than 90% o women in their 20s own a Louis Vuitton handbag. I the handbag itsel weren't quiteso "outlandish," sales wouldn't be nearly as high.

Ten, too, i Louis Vuitton has captured 90% o young, urban Japanese women, the market share o the No. 2brand (whatever it is) cannot be too great. When your brand is rst in a new category and when you can alsodevelop a striking visual hammer to accompany your brand, you can sometimes achieve a near monopoly.

Tat's what happened with Rolex. Te combination o the brand name (and the watchband visual hammer) hasput Rolex in a very strong position.

oday, a high-end jewelry store cannot exist without also handling the Rolex watch brand. (I a jewelry store


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doesn't handle Rolex, consumers believe it's not a high-end jewelry store.)

Creating a unique visual to accompany a unique new-product development might seem like an obvious strat-egy, yet many companies miss the visual boat.

ake Apple's iPod, the rst high-capacity MP3 player, and perhaps the most successul new product o the 21stcentury. Instead o the "Apple" trademark, Apple could have created a unique "iPod" trademark that wouldhave been incredibly useul in the long term.

Companies are too concerned about using their corporate marks instead o creating distinctive visual hammersor their new products. Should oyota have used the oyota trademark on its Lexus brand? I think not. Yetthat's just what Apple did with its iPod product.

Te same is true o Prius, the rst hybrid automobile, and Scion, the rst youth-oriented vehicle. Both vehiclesuse ordinary, typographical trademarks when they could have created memorable visuals that would last ordecades.

Being rst in a new category creates enormous advantages. For one thing, you get your choice o visual. Almost

every leader brand has the opportunity to dream up almost any visual and consumers will connect that visualto the brand.

O course, a visual alone is not enough. You need to connect the visual to a powerul verbal statement. Whenthe two work together, when you have an exceptionally powerul hammer and an exceptionally sharp nail, theresults can be astounding.

One o the best-executed marketing programs o the 20th century, in my opinion, was or BMW, the "ultimatedriving machine."

BMW has become the largest-selling European import in the American market, outselling Mercedes-Benz. Asa matter o act, BMW outsells Mercedes globally.

It was the astute combination o words ("ultimate driving machine") with the powerul visual o a BMW beingdriven over a series o winding roads that made the brand such as enormous success.

Over the years, there have been many, many advertising campaigns showing beautiul automobiles being driv-en over lush, winding roads. Te hammers are terric, but the nails are missing.

Te trick is to nd the right combination o a visual hammer and a verbal nail. When these two work together

as they did or BMW, you have a potentially powerul brand.

creative strategy importance_visual or verbal

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