Does your company have a visual aid that is recognizable for its brand?As private equity advisors, when we get a company ready to meet investors, we make sure there is a distinctive brand. This applies whether it is the brand painted on the side of the roofing trucks or the drilling equipment. The time when brands were just for pop stars and make up are gone.
Most of the recent marketing
successes are visual successes, not verbal ones. Here are 10 examples from Visual Hammer (www.visualhammer.com).
1. The lime.
Until 2009, there had never
been a Mexican brand on Interbrand's list of 100 most valuable global brands.
There is now: Corona, the beer with the lime on top of the bottle.
Today, Corona is the 86th most
valuable global brand, worth $3.9 billion. In the United States, Corona
outsells Heineken, the No. 2 imported beer, by more than 50 percent.
2. The chalice.
A second imported beer is
moving up the ladder in America and for exactly the same reason Corona was so
successful. It's Stella Artois from Belgium.
Stella Artois is the Budweiser
of Belgium, so ordinary fast-food restaurants sell it in plastic cups.
No plastic cups for Stella
Artois in the U.S. market. The importer provided bars and restaurants with its
unique, gold-tipped chalice glasses.
Today, Stella Artois is one of
the top 10 imported beer brands in America.
3. The silver bullet.
The only mainstream beer that
has increased its market share in the past few years is Coors Light, the silver
bullet.
Coors Light has already passed
Miller Lite, the first light-beer brand, and recently Coors Light also steamed
past Budweiser to become the second largest-selling beer brand in America.
4. The duck.
Then there's the remarkable
transformation of Aflac, the company that brought us the duck. In the year
2000, the company had name recognition of just 12 percent.
Today it's 94 percent. And
sales have gone up just as dramatically.
The first year after the duck
arrived, Aflac sales increased 29 percent. And 28 percent the second year. And
18 percent the third year.
5. The pink ribbon.
In 1982, Nancy Brinker started
a foundation to fight breast cancer in memory of her sister, Susan G. Komen,
who had died from the disease. Since then, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has
raised nearly $2 billion.
Today, it's the world's-largest
non-profit source of money to combat breast cancer. A recent Harris poll of
non-profit charitable brands rated Komen for the Cure as the charity that
consumers were "Most likely to donate to."
6. The red soles.
Look at the success of
Christian Louboutin, a French designer who regularly tops The Luxury
Institute's index of "most prestigious women's shoes."
In 1992, he applied red nail
polish to the sole of a shoe because he felt the shoes lacked energy
"This was such a
success," he reported, "that it became a permanent fixture." And
ultimately built the phenomenally successful Louboutin brand.
7. The green jacket.
In the world of professional
golf, there are four major championships: (1) The U.S. Open, (2) The British
Open, (3) The PGA Championship and (4) The Masters. The first three are hosted
by major golf organizations, but the Masters is hosted by a private club, the
Augusta National Golf Club.
Every, year the Masters gets
more attention than any of the other three events.
8. The colonel.
Consider KFC, now the leading
fast-food restaurant chain in China with more than 3,800 units in 800 cities.
To most Chinese people, the
letters "K F C" mean nothing, but Col. Sanders is known as a famous
American and the leading fried-chicken brand.
9. The Coke bottle.
What Coca-Cola calls its
"contour" bottle is 96 years old. Few are currently sold but
recently, the company gave its iconic bottle a major role to play in its
advertising programs.
The results have been
impressive. Recently Diet Coke passed regular Pepsi-Cola to become the second
best-selling cola drink.
10. The cowboy.
And look what the cowboy has
done for Marlboro cigarettes. The year Marlboro was introduced, there were four
strong cigarette brands in America: Lucky Strike, Camel, Winston and Chesterfield.
Yet today, Marlboro is by far
the leading brand, outselling the next 13 brands combined.
