Monthly Archives: March 2018

Walmart Groceries

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

It’s great that Walmart wants to create greater shareholder value by getting into the groceries-to-the-home business, but I’m not so sure it’s good for the planet.  I recently spoke to a younger mom who energetically juggles her work and family lives — she uses Walmart’s delivery to the curb service.  She drives to Walmart and pops the trunk, they fill it. Another nice service to help us get more done – while doing less foot shopping (not a “food” shopping typo).  But having groceries and perishables delivered to the home in advance makes me wonder what will happen to all the waste.

As a society we’re already tossing out too much food. Ask a restauranteur. Ask a homeless person.  It’s mega tons.

You can argue that driving to the store to pick up just-in-time groceries is bad for the planet and I won’t disagree. I need to do better, even in my fifteen-year-old, 42 MPG Prius. My gas mileage is prob way better, though, than any Walmart van or Uber Ford Focus.

Walmart has a tough time ahead competing with Amazon.  Bricks, steel and mortar are costly. Groceries will only provide incremental help to Walmart’s bottom line. They best look elsewhere. They best look for a whoosh.

Peace.

Brand Indelibility.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I love this quote I wrote a few years back for a presentation to Gentiva Health Services, now owned by Kindred Healthcare: “Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible.”  It’s so true.

Ad campaigns get tired. Were I to guess, I’d venture the length of an average ad campaign is 2.5 years.  Why is that? Brand managers and agency creators get tired of it. They burn out. Also on the agency side, there’s a little “not invented here” syndrome. 

Campaigns are an expression of the brand brief – at least they are supposed to be. Smart marketers who change the ad campaign stick to  the brand brief; they just sing it in a different color.  But not all marketers follow this logic. For many, when the campaign changes the brand brief changes. And the brand becomes a moving target. Agencies love to change the brief, and unseasoned client marketers let them. The result is the dissipation of muscle memory around the brand claim. And everyone must start anew. Market share flails. First positively, then negatively. And in 2.5 years, it’s time for a new campaign.

My best brand strategies last decades. Ad agencies come and go, marketing directors come and go, the brand strategy remains.  Indelible.

Peace.

 

 

I Like Myopia.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I’ve read a number of pieces by brand planners who advocate “question everything.”  Look at a problem, then look at it from many other directions. Point-counterpoint. Question everything was driven home to me early in  my career with McCann using AT&T’s heavy-handed reliance on consumer research and message testing. It was healthy to listen to consumers share likes, dislikes, preferences and attitudes.  I grew as a result.

But today my brand planning rigor is more fluid. I do not stop and question myself. I don’t look at the obverse. It’s a buzz kill. It kills the poetry. As a rapper might say if I’m in the “flow” I don’t want to break it. So on I go.

Clients are the ones I rely on to question my brand strategy (one claim, 3 proof planks). I like to think, after all my deep digging, marinating, cogitating and “boil down,” that all sides have been considered. And it’s time for flow.

If this approach seems myopic, so be it. But a good brand idea, a big brand idea, is usually rooted in flow, not the result of over analysis.

Peace.  

Brand Strategy Brought to Life.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hard for me but don’t want to get into politics when I talk about Meredith Corporation, the venerable magazine publisher – so I will leave the Koch Brother’s backing of Meredith’s purchase of Time Inc for another day. I will however dig into a bit of the Meredith brand. Magazines are dead the way TV was dead 10 years ago.  Yeah, the model may change, the revenue redistributed, but magazines, written by smart people, supported by wonderful pictures are not going away.

Meredith Corporation, headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa is and ever-shall-be a heartland company. America needs more and more of these companies. Even some in Silicon Valley, tired of the sturm und drang, are looking to moving inland a skosh. What I like about Meredith is they know who they are. Check out the picture of the trowel in front of headquarters.  The artist who designed this amazing, simple piece of art interpreted the company better than 100 brand strategists.

As a branding element, this trowel is genius. It’s size, color, placement on the property – reminds employees and visitors every day what’s up at Meredith. Get your fingers dirty, get on your knees and close to the problem, start small to grow big. I love it.

This is a wonderful example of art bringing paper to life.   I make paper strategy and I am so envious of those who build the stuff that gives it birth.

Peace.

 

 

Brand Targeting

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I read something smart in an account planners group on Facebook yesterday about targeting. It suggested you have to refine the brand target so as to make a more compelling message. When creating your brand claim, you don’t want to address the entire consuming pop. Not everyone will like you. You have to find the largest grouping of people who share a proclivity for your product, service and brand claim — and focus the strategy on them. 

It’s so smart.  I had the same targeting discussion with a client yesterday.

When you do enough research on brand good-ats and consumer care-abouts, you’ll find that you can’t please everybody. It is at this point that the rubber meets the road. Do we change who we are? Do we try to change the attitudes and beliefs of what consumers think and know? Or do we simply speak to the low and “reach for” fruit that will most likely be motivated to buy our product?

This is how we do-oo it!  Peace.

 

Poetry in Branding.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I so love what I do.  (To many “I”s?) The job is learning. Then processing. Then assembling. And lastly, writing a little poetry — whiich becomes the brand claim.  For years in the business as a pseudo strategist I wrote briefs as an advertising account manager. My selling ideas lacked soul.  The briefs were fodder for creative people who typically didn’t like us, they called us “suits.” But as I started reinventing myself as a brand strategist, I allowed my selling ideas (claims) to pick up some whimsy. Lightness. Poetry.

The poetry is what keeps me in the game. It helps me know when I’m done with the idea. My most far reaching brand idea “systematized approach to improving healthcare,” done years ago for multibillion dollar organization, lacked poetry. It probably needed to.

Today, I have the time and type of clients that want poetry in their claims. It makes them remember. It creates a little Zen moment. It reminds them of the love inherent in their brands. Poetry gets marketing clients to love what they do. 

Peace.  

PS. Sean Boyle introduced the word “poetry” to me as it relates to planning. A thousand thanks.

 

 

Rage Along Side The Machine.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I’ve been reading a lot about Artificial Intelligence, self-driving cars and trucks, brick layers whose jobs are in jeopardy because of robots….and that’s just in today’s paper. As a brand planner I have to admit it makes me a bit giddy to think about what the art of branding will be like when things are more automated.  I suspect there will be more compliance. The biggest hurdle to compliance when it comes to following brand strategy is, ta-dah, the people. The creative brain. The need to problem solve in one’s own unique way.

Coloring outside the lines in brand strategy doesn’t work. Its s slippery slope. Brand managers get sidetracked. They see something shiny and skirt away from the claim and proof array that is their brand’s organizing principle.  SEO and Adwords might go off on a tangent that spikes sales. A new TV campaign might hit the front page of Vice. Little marketing tickles that cause a brand to veer.

Machines won’t let that happen. They are relentless. Machine learning is focused…and relentless.

Kind of stoked. Peace.

 

Branding… A High Road Pursuit.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

There is a fearless Federal judge in Ohio taking on all participants who earn money as a result of the current U.S. opioid crisis. His name is Dan Alan Polster and his strategy is to get a group settlement and correction of the law fast. Nothing is fast in law; it’s how people get paid — so this is refreshing.   Rather than have the opioid crisis drag out in courts, Judge Polster is hoping to make big progress in days. In fact, today might be the tipping point.

One tenet of Judge Polster’s approach is captured in his quote from today’s New York Times: “It’s almost never productive to get the other side angry. They lash out and hurt you and themselves. I try to get the sides to think it through as a problem to solve, not a fight to be won or lost.”

Brand strategy, done well, is never angry. But I must admit to having written some that are combative. A mentor once asked: “Who is going to lose the sale you are trying to win.”  It’s a  question every planner and marketer must ask.  Yet the idea to replace anger with problem solving is genius — in adjudication and brand strategy.  

Marketing is where acts of war may happen, branding is a higher road pursuit.

Peace.   

 

Governance and Branding.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

In a story from The New York Times this morning about the toll the chaotic Trump administration is having on senior staff, the reporter wrote “With an erratic boss and little in the way of a coherent legislative agenda, they are consumed by infighting, fears of their legal exposure and an ambient sense that the White House is spinning out of control.”

People, president and politics aside, let’s look at the central theme of the quote. No coherent legislative agenda.  Good governments require coherence in their agendas.  So do brands. When a brand has a coherent agenda, marketing and business become easier. Chaos in not an organizing principle.  Brands without coherence are brands without growing customer bases.  (Imagine if the product was inconsistent. Imagine if the logo changed monthly. Imagine if retail was spotty.  Incoherence.)

No matter the company or category, articulating a brand strategy (one claim, three brand planks) is critical to coherence. Now, back to your regularly scheduled news program.

Peace.

 

12Page 2 of 2
© Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv