Laura Ries Speaker Biography
Branding Guru & Bestselling Author
Laura Ries is an internationally recognized branding strategist, marketing expert, bestselling author, positioning guru, and television personality.
Ries & Ries
After graduating from Northwestern University in the top 2% of her class, she worked at TBWA Advertising before partnering with her father and positioning pioneer Al Ries, Al and Laura founded Ries & Ries consulting in New York in 1994.
Clients
In 1997, Ries & Ries relocated to Atlanta, GA. Together the dynamic duo consults with companies around the globe including Disney, Ford, FritoeLay, Papa John’s Pizza, Samsung and Unilever on branding and marketing strategy.
Books
Laura has co-authored five books with Al including: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR, The Origin of Brands, and War in the Boardroom.
Visual Hammer
Laura’s first solo book, Visual Hammer has been translated into the Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Polish and German languages. Words alone can’t build a brand, driving an idea into the mind is best done with the emotional power of a visual.
Battlecry
Her latest book Battlecry complements Visual Hammer by outlining five strategies for improving the effectiveness of a company’s slogan or tagline.
Keynote Speaker
In addition to her consulting assignments and corporate speeches, Laura is a frequent guest on major television programs from the Today Show to Squawk Box. She appears regularly on Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, CNN and HLN.
Laura Ries Speaking Topics
The Visual Hammer
Laura Ries is a leading branding strategist for prominent media outlets, a sought-after speaker, a popular television personality, and a best-selling author. She recently released Visual Hammer, which discuss how the critical missing piece in most marketing programs is a powerful visual that can drive a brand into the mind. Consumers are blasted with words at an astounding rate. Between traditional media and new social media, the amount of words, tweets and status updates is overwhelming. Ries believes that in a world of words, a visual hammer is the best, most effective way to get inside a consumer’s mind, yet 99% of all marketing programs lack one. She says one reason is that management is totally focused on words, when they need to think more about visuals. A visual hammer is a symbol that stands for a brand name. It subconsciously communicates the emotional power of a brand while driving a verbal idea into the mind. In this presentation, she discusses effective visual hammers and explains how an audience can capitalize on this concept and create visual hammers of their own.
The Immutable Laws of Marketing and Branding
Based on her decades of experience, Laura Ries discusses the immutable laws of marketing and branding in a presentation tailored to her audience and its industry. She also discusses how the internet, including social media, plays a role in today’s marketing and how organizations can effectively use these tools to their advantage.
Narrow Your Focus
Al and Laura Ries make sure that their seminars are visually focused. They use up to 300 slides per hour, which adds up to 1,800 slides in an all-day presentation, which totals 900% more information imparted by the typical speaker. Their tailored, carefully edited slide list of images and key ideas makes watching their presentation feel like watching a movie. And they deliver suspense, comedy, intrigue and education, completely revolutionizing the traditional marketing seminar. No two speeches are exactly alike. Using examples from a wide variety of industries around the world, Al and Laura Ries discuss and illustrate the laws and principles of positioning, marketing and branding, all of which have made their own business bolder and better. Starbucks narrowed its focus to high-end coffee and became the world’s largest coffee chain. Dell Computer narrowed its focus to personal computers “sold direct” and became the world’s largest PC manufacturer. BMW narrowed its focus to “driving” and became the largest-selling European luxury car in the U.S. Focus is the key to successful brand building in today's ultra-competitive marketplace, and Al and Laura Ries give presentations that embrace and apply the right focus for clients and audiences.