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    brand idea

    One objectionable word.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    One thing that seems to be a norm for my consulting business is what happens when I present the brand strategy.  (A brand plan is made up of one strategy statement and three support planks.)  Almost always there is one word in the strategy that makes the client uncomfortable.  Until recently whenever I remark about this phenomenon to clients, I feel a little defensive about it – almost apologetically so. Not anymore. I’ve grown up.  The objectionable word is usually the strength of the brand plan. The ballast (which is long for another word).

    This “one objectionable word” notion echos things I’ve heard creative people say to clients about advertising.  “If it makes you feel a little uncomfortable, it is good creative.  It will be noticed and remembered” they say. 

    The discomfort clients’ feel is because a good brand plan is not easy. It’s work. Born of the category, target consumers and the company DNA (sorry about the markobabble, but is is a good work sometimes), a brand plan is only a beginning.

    Clients that want to slide into a brand plan with great ease and a sense of constant well-being are not ready to work. To innovate. To sweat the wins and losses. Those who are ready are prepared to live the strategy, to toil and feed it. To create life around the brand.  If your brand is a name, color palette and the ad agency’s new campaign, your brand is not alive. It’s not pulsing.  You don’t have a brand, you have a product. Peace.

     

    When a sale isn’t a sale.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I wrote a brief for a top 10 daily newspaper which, at its very core, contained an organizing principle that grew paper subscriptions and newsstand business.  The idea was intended to grow share at the expense of a much larger competitor with a grand national reputation.

    The brief was presented and so well received that the paper’s marketing officer decided to use the brand strategy (with one word omitted) as the newspaper’s tagline. The omitted word was important (to me), but overall the integrity or ballast of the idea was maintained even with its absense.

    It was a pyrrhic victory however, because rather than becoming the brand strategy (one claim, three support planks) it simply became a tagline. Sure the tagline governed communications and did so for many years to come, but I never had the chance to enculturate the planks into the paper’s marketing operations.  I was with an ad agency at the time – paid to deliver of ads.  The agency made lots of TV and print ads. We won awards for ourselves and for the paper. And we changed the market dynamic for a while — the real goal. But by selling a tagline not a strategy, we missed the opportunity to create a powerful brand that lived beyond paper and ink.   A sale that was not a sale, in other words.

    Peace.

    John Hegarty and the Levi Strauss Brand.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    While watching a video yesterday on Sir John Hegarty, one of the guiding lights of advertising over the last 50 years, I was made to realize how BBH (Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty) was fundamental to the brand building of Levi Strauss & Co.  As a huge fan and consumer of Levi’s jeans and also of their advertising, oddly, I have never studied the brand strategy up close. Yesterday in the movie, John offered up the brand idea: Toughness. And he’s so right. Even as I sit in a pair now with a hole in the nether area, I completely understand this position. Toughness.

    Admittedly, a good deal of advertising has hit the market, especially in the U.S. that has been off-idea. In fact, when stone washed jeans and tight-fitting jeans came to market, to expand the market, it become harder to support toughness. Stone washing made jeans less tough. Form-fitting jeans for women, reduced the toughness needed in the jeans and its appeal to younger women.

    The rivets that made Levy’s tough, the mega-durable stitching, and the hearty denim fabric, all contributed to the main claim. But cowboys in stretchy jeans don’t really fit the brand. Or do they? Toughness is expected of Levi’s.  Even when the models are dancing in the club. Toughness is as toughness does. We evolve, brands evolve,

    Starts with a good product. Build it with a good brand strategy. Then, as Hegarty might say, it’s time for the magic.

    Peace.

     

    The Brand Idea is Misunderstood.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The whole brand plan thing – one claim and three support planks – is not really that difficult a concept. Ask the executive suite “What are the three things that differentiate your company?” and you are likely to get answers like “people.”  “Service or product” is often the second thing and in today’s touchy/feely business world the third point is “culture.”  Oy.  And American business chugs on.

    Even with these three undifferentiated corporate drivers, a girl can make a living. (And trust me, these are pretty lazy planks.)  What most companies have a hard time articulating is their main claim or idea. Brand strategy is made up of this claim plus the 3 planks.  That’s what drives success inside and outside a company. But the brand idea must stand alone and it must have power.  Apple’s “simplicity.” Coke’s “refreshment.” Krispy Kreme’s “sweet treat.”  Google “information in one click.”  Outside the realm of consumer marketing circles, these over-arching ideas are hard for corporate executive suites to articulate.  They use b-school worlds like excellence and operations and shareholder value.

    Brands and the molders of brands are the bedrock of marketing.  The more they are understood, the more successful marketing will be…Peace.

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