Monthly Archives: August 2018

Brand Strategy San Serif.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m not much of a cook but I’m certainly a student. What’s The Idea? uses a number of cooking metaphors in its daily operation. Many of the tenets of good cooking are also valuable in brand strategy. One such tenet is “Don’t use too many ingredients.”  The more ingredients used, the more likely the main component of the dish becomes obscured.

My uncle Carl taught me the best baked clams are the ones with the least amount of flavor enhancers. See the clam. The same for chicken parmesan. No sauce, just a brilliant tomato slice or two atop the golden brown cutlet.

Brand strategy development is about evaluating customer care-abouts and brand good-ats and selecting only the top three — the three with the most flavor (or most complementary flavors).  Most importantly, these three brand planks must support the brand claim, or, following the metaphor, the main protein.

Brand strategy is best served with one claim and three proof planks. It’s not over-complicated. It’s easy on the senses. And the consumer palate is very understanding.

Leave Michelin stars for the true chefs. Complexity in brand strategy rarely works.

Peace.

 

 

Starbucks Overindulgence.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Starbucks idea to deliver coffee (in China) is a bad one. I’m no economist but adding overhead to the business by way of delivery personnel, equipment, insurance (ish), and degradation of product (e.g., cold coffee) is a lose-lose.  But more importantly, if you make the coffee and tea more available during different dayparts in an “always-on” fashion, you dilute the special coffee reboot moments for which Starbucks is famous.

A mid-afternoon coffee run during a particularly in extremis day at work is a wonderful treat. Starbucks can and should be a daily morning occurrence but overdoing it can make it less of a delight. This was the problem with high-flying Krispy Kreme Donuts. On or about the time the stock went public, Krispy Kreme turned on the water hose and made the donuts too available. Expanding retail distribution with little brand experience forethought. You could fill up your gas tank and get a dozen. They oversaturated the market and our sweet tooth for the special treat lost its allure.

Good marketers always should leave customer wanting a little more.

Starbucks needs to slow its roll.

Peace.

 

Magazine Retrenchment…for now.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

This morning’s news included a piece on Conde Nast shuttering 3 big magazine properties. The company lost in excess of $120M last year keeping print properties churning. Magazines have been under web attack for over a decade. Magazines aren’t in the readership business, they’re in the entertainment and enlightenment business. As audio and video production became more common, entertainment and enlightenment moved to the web, albeit watered down.

Conde Nast will get it right.  It just needed this kick in the ass. Content experts are content experts. Content poseurs are content poseurs.

The death of radio was predicted and it still reaches 93% of US adults weekly. The end of network TV was also predicted…nope.  

Sorry publishers like Conde Nast, Time Inc. and Meredith have bloody noses. But for now at least, the holding company approach has become a little zaftig.

Peace.

 

 

Product First.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I was doing a little web research on a company yesterday and started looking for signs of a brand strategy on the “About” page. Atop the About page sat this quote.

“Customers are the most important people in any business.”

Many would find it hard to disagree with the statement. When writing market plans I spend a lot of time “following the money.” (If you are interested in such things write me for a copy of my 24 Questions. Steve at WhatsTheIdea dot com.) And money comes from customers.

BUT, a big but…I don’t agree customers are the most important people; product developers earn that mantel. It is the product, you see, that excites customers into action. Sure, product developers need to study customer tastes and proclivities. Sure, they must have a sense of consumer attachments to competitive offering. But when push came to shove, it was the people at Levi’s who designed the copper rivets, the soda formulator who put the Coca in the Cola, and the algorithm jockey who indexed web information that created Google.  Those were the most important people.

Customer are the bees, but sans flowers there ain’t a lot of buzz.

Peace.   

 

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