Considering that she co-wrote a book called The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR along with her dad, Al Ries, it’s rather ironic that Laura Ries, President of Ries &Ries, is a keynote speaker at Goafest2017. But the focus of this consultant’s lively presentation at the ad jamboree was on ‘positioning’ and how a visual hammer is necessary to drive it into the customer’s mind. She enlarges on the subject on the sidelines of the event

What is different in positioning strategies from the time your dad wrote the famous book ( Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind ) with Jack Trout and now?

Positioning was tough then. It is even tougher now. Positioning then was primarily talking about using words to get into the mind of the consumer. But today, you have to combine the word with a powerful visual that does not just entertain people but also communicates an idea. That’s not easy to do, but can be very effective if done well. For instance, Coca-Cola’s contoured bottle has been a very good visual hammer in building and communicating authenticity. The Rolex and Mercedes Benz logos are visual hammers that reinforce the idea of luxury.

At a time when Alexa or Cortana will soon rule our world, and the spoken word will be more important, do you see positioning strategies changing again?

It’s not just visuals we are stressing, but visuals with words. You have to give consumers a word – a way of expressing – whether it is the “real thing” for Coke, or the “Ultimate Driving Machine” for BMW. Visual Hammer was one book that I wrote, but the next book was called Battlecry which is about the slogan, which is important as well. You need all the pieces. Lots of brands have just one or two pieces. But when they manage to get all the pieces in place, it’s great positioning.

Consumers don’t really care about brands. But they care about the category. However, people think in category and talk in brands. Take energy drinks. People think about the category but they ask for a Red Bull. Too many marketers are lulled into thinking people love the brand. People actually love the category.

Can you give examples of brands you have helped reposition?

One example of it is this auto company in China, Great Wall Motors. It was into everything. It came to us in 2009 asking us how do we build this brand. We said find a focus. At that time everyone was building sedans. We told it to focus on economical SUVs. They came out with a brand Haval, which became very successful in China. In 2013, Great Wall Motors had the highest net profit ratio among all auto companies worldwide.

Now it is talking about taking the brand global. But going global involves a different positioning strategy. For instance, you need to factor in perceptions about the country of origin too. For China, low-cost products is a perception. But that is a position that is available to them as the maker of an economical SUV.

You have talked about consistency in positioning. But startups are constantly pivoting. Are the rules different for startups?

When you have an established brand such as Coca-Cola or Pepsi, you cannot keep changing positioning. Once it has taken root in the customer’s mind, you have to stick to it. On the other hand, a brand in startup mode can keep changing. Good entrepreneurs do keep changing names, strategies until they hit upon the right combination. Then you need to stick to it.

BMW is a great example. It found the right strategy with “The Ultimate Driving Machine” and has stuck to it for 40 years.

Uber has got a great name – but what has it gone and done? Changed the visual to something ridiculous. However, when you have got as much PR as Uber has you can make stupid mistakes. Google has done it with Alphabet. It adds to the confusion, but is getting away with it. It might as well have been Google. If you are an Uber or Google you can afford to do these things. Not that they should do it.

When a brand gets acquired, how does its positioning get affected?

There are different types of strategies. Unilever, P&G have a corporate brand and a multi-brand strategy. So it is easier to work with these brands. But it’s difficult for brands that have the same corporate name and product name. If processed cheese gets bad press, then Kraft brands get affected. To distance itself from bad publicity for tobacco, Philip Morris tried to change its name to Altria. But that didn’t work.

You keep stressing that brands cannot be all things to everyone and must have focus. That may be true in large nations such as the US and India. But in small countries, you may want to own the whole market. So what then?

Good point. We do visit small countries and find that companies there are into everything. You see this in Japan and in South Korea. You have got Mitsubishi everything in Japan and Samsung everything in South Korea. In a small country you can do it. But not globally. It becomes problematic. If you look at it, Mitsubishi is not powerful globally. At the same time locally in a small country, you will have to compete with global brands with a focused push.

But Samsung is successful across the world too, is it not?

It is successful right now, but vulnerable. Because right now everyone else is unfocused. But if some focused competitors come along, they will be vulnerable. The warning for Korean brands is ‘look what happened to Sony’.

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