HomeLibraryAdsIconic figure claim
Library ad

Iconic figure claim

What Lux is not

idn.duke.edupublic-domain-us

The pattern

This still is filed under Iconic figure claim.

Define

A single figure, drawn, silhouetted, or posed, is the whole claim. You can read it across a street.

Mechanism

Compression into a body. The figure is not decoration. It is the sentence. Distance-legibility is the test.

Verdict

Poster scale, outdoor, packaging at a glance

Read the pattern

Why it works

Definition by negation: the headline and the three struck-through drawings clear the reader's existing mental category before the product is described, so Lux is not compared against cake soap on cake soap's terms. The crossed-out illustrations do the work of three paragraphs and survive being glanced at, which is the real test for a page like this. The body then supplies the mechanism - flakes dissolve instantly, dissolving replaces rubbing, rubbing is what destroys fabric - so the new category has a physical reason behind it rather than a claim. The close inverts the usual promise into three negative guarantees, which is stronger here because the reader's actual fear is damage, not dirt.

Steal this when

Use this when your product is a genuinely new form of a familiar thing and the prospect will otherwise file it under the old category. Lead by naming and visually cancelling the two or three things it will be mistaken for, then give the physical reason the new form exists.

All ads