Page 38 - MYM 2015

Visuals Speak Louder Than Words
Al Ries Laura Ries
Abstract: As business goes global, it creates a major problem for marketing people. How do you translate your brand’s position into some 6,000 spoken languages? Maybe you don’t. Maybe the best way into a mind is with a visual that can cross borders without translations. Like the Coca-Cola bottle. The Marlboro cowboy. Corona’s lime.
What’s the biggest change in marketing in the past 50 years?
You could make the case for the Internet. Or Big Data. Or mobile marketing. Or PR, public relations.
Or celebrities. Or a number of other revolutionary developments.
But in our work as marketing consultants, we nd the biggest change is the shift from “national” marketing to “global” marketing. Our clients are mostly focused on building global brands.
Almost any company of any significant size considers the world as its market, not the country it is located in. Google does 58 percent of its business outside the United States. McDonald’s does 68 percent and Apple does 70 percent outside the U.S. Currently, Apple sells more iPhones in China than it does in America.
When Brands Cross Borders
Problems can occur. Take the language problem. With 193 nations in the world, you might think you would need to translate your marketing message into a hundred or more languages.
But it’s worse than that. Globally, there are over 6,000 spoken languages. India has 15 official languages, plus many others, including English which is widely spoken.
It’s a hopeless task to try to translate your marketing message into so many different languages. Many companies have given up and just use their local language plus English, which has become the second language of the world.
English works well with many high-end products and services. But it’s not the answer for the majority of brands trying to reach the middle and lower ends of the market.
The answer to the global branding problem is not words at all. The answer to the global branding problem is visuals.
Marketing Today Is Almost Totally Verbal
And I accept part of the blame. Forty-three years ago, Advertising Age, America’s leading marketing publication, published a series of articles I wrote with Jack Tout entitled The Positioning Era Cometh.
Nine years later, McGraw-Hill published our book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. In the years that followed, “positioning” became one of the most talked- about concepts in marketing.
To date, more than 1.5 million copies of the Positioning book have been sold, including 400,000 copies in China alone.
Forty-three years is a long time for any idea to remain relevant, especially in the fast-changing world of marketing. By now, positioning is probably obsolete. Or is it?
38 I October 2015