Brand Planting, I mean Planning.

By

-

December 20, 2011

I’m an idea farmer. A strategic farmer. I assess the ground, rid it of things that will hinder growth, and then I plant. I search for the right kind of idea, make sure it’s clean and healthy, and put it into an environment where it can grow strong. This is what many strategic planners do and where they often stop.

Too often planners hand off the idea and let the elements take over. But ideas need attention. And cultivation. Water and sunshine. They can handle some bad weather, it’s natural, but this is not a “plant and go” business. There are ideas I have planted for corporations a decade ago that are still growing. Their root systems are strong. Long gone is my paper, but those roots are herculean.

There are lots of consultants and freelance planners bouncing around who are in it for the invoice. They plant the seeds and go farm elsewhere. Me, I like to stick around and watch what flowers and bears fruit. I like to use those grown nutrients to sustain additional growth. Strategic planners who seed an idea but don’t get involved with the deliverables – aiding other departments to bring the idea to life — are either poorly managed or cowardly. Life is not easy for an idea farmer.

If you are in the business of redistributing marketing wealth, growing markets, you need someone who plants and cultivates. Peace!

The Moral of Account Planning.

By

Steve Poppe

-

December 12, 2011

0

Henning Mankell, one of my new favorite writers, wrote an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times yesterday (12/11/11) discussing how, thanks to the storytelling culture he’s experienced by having a second home in Africa, he’s learned how to truly listen. Google it, it’s a worthwhile read.

An interesting point he makes is that people confuse information with knowledge. Information, he reasons, is just content. Knowledge is something smart learned form that content…and hopefully applied.

Brand and strategic planners who write a lot about “storytelling” these days — it’s quite the topical marketing concept — would do well in their brief writing to recognize the difference between content and knowledge. I was once scolded in anthropology class at Rollins College for doing otherwise (Oh, the scars) but in brand planning it’s important.

Farrah Bostic, a smart planner, did a nice piece entitled “There are no such things as insights” which I would recommend. Her point is not dissimilar to Mankel’s. But I interpret it a bit differently. My view is that every good story has a moral. It’s the center of gravity of the story – its reason for being. Every good brief should also have a moral. Let’s start adding one extra line to our brand and creative briefs: “What is the moral of this story?”

If Ms. Bostic’s point is that insights are content, and storytelling is knowledge applied, I agree. The moral takes the idea one step farther though. Content drives insights which create knowledge. The application of that knowledge through story creates a moral. And a moral at the end of the story is a nice bow on the package. A bow that, well-wrapped, moves consumes closer to a sale. As my Norwegian aunt might have said “Tink about it.” Peace

Fear, Uncertainty and Dismal Doubt.

By

Steve Poppe

-

December 7, 2011

0

FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) drove billions of dollars of B2B marketing communications in the 90s and was the brainchild, so I’ve been told, of IBM. “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” was the quiet mantra of IBM sales team and ad agencies. With proper and subtle brand management, this notion was acculturated into the IT departments across American and beyond. I’m not aware of any IBM ads ever mentioning FUD.

Digital Equipment may have been the company IBM was trying to scare people from; Apple at that time certainly wasn’t a factor. The strangle hold IBM had on business during that period, thanks to FUD, was broken by Dell when Michael Dell opened up the computer and showed us it was a bunch of simple parts — worth a good deal less than the white shirts at IBM were offering. Plus Dell took advantage of a technological breakthrough – the US Postal Service – to change the game by selling direct to the IT dept. For those old enough to remember, Dell boxes were flying in and out of IT depts. across the country. It was Christmas every day for techies. The fear was gone. Fast forward a few years and IBM sells its PC business and does some serious brand retrenchment, tossing “the fear” in favor of a more positive “building good systems” approach. IBM is crazy back.

Strategic planners need to understand fear, but they shouldn’t use it. Leave it to Disney and Comcast and CBS to deliver our required dose of fear. (NBC…Grimm? Really?) Plan strategy using the end-game of hope and deliverance and well-earned reward. Those are things in which it is worth investing. Peace!

The Two Sides of Brand Planning.

By

Steve Poppe

-

December 1, 2011

0

I am an arbiter of ideas…I am a brand planner.

The best brand planners do two things: they incite brilliant creative and the recognize creative that sells. Sometimes clients and agencies only want creative that gets noticed. Blight to the budget and brand though it may be, sometimes it’s a worthy, temporary fix. It can set the table for a better idea or to fight another day.

An arbiter of ideas creates briefs thick with consumer need, consumer care-abouts and fulfillment. These briefs, mostly pieces of paper brought to life through presentation, mime and voice over incite artists, writers, digitists and their directors to create and package selling stories and experiences. Because the creative people don’t have the time to get out of the building the inspiration must be brought to them in boiled down fashion by the planner. (Aside: Why planners and HR people hire planners is odd to me – they should be hired by creative people.) Inciting creative through inspiring inputs is part one.

Part 2, is being able to see strategic ideas with ballast. This requires telling creatives, clients, and money people which ideas will live and resonate in the ecosystem. Pretty ideas are nice — as are pretty boys and girls in ads. Poetry of phrase is nice. Newness is remembered. But our brains have seen so many selling claims each day — stacked up like salmon in a fish pen – that we’ve been conditioned to ignore and repel them. The ability to actually see an idea like Deutsch’s “Darth Vader” Volkswagen spot and feel it work before it’s produced is not a commodity skill. It’s a gift. And it’s part 2. Telling creative people they’ve missed, based upon this arbiter’s “gut” feel is where many brand planners and agencies fall short. Luke, use your gift wisely. (Not Luke Sullivan. Couldn’t you hear the depth of the voice? Luke Skywalker.) Peace.

“Brand” is No Substitute for “Idea.”

By

Steve Poppe

-

November 30, 2011

0

I was just reading an article about Grimaldi’s pizza in Brooklyn (“This is my piz-ah-reeah,” Danny Aiello) and one of the key difference-makers for the stores is their coal-fired ovens. Sure the ingredients are good, but there is something to be said for 700 degrees of coal-fired, brick oven pizza. An idea.

Papa John’s Pizza, a national chain, also has a brand idea: “Better ingredients.” And a delivery mechanism for the claim: Papa John himself. Better ingredients is a great place to start — if your ingredients are better. I suspect if the ingredients were better, we’d probably know why. But we don’t. This where brand planning falls down: all claim no proof. I saw a Papa John’s ad watching NFL football this weekend that showed ingredients that looked like they were shot through cellophane. The commercial was likely shot using a video or low-def video camera.

Marketers and agencies who use the word “brand” all the time and who don’t fill their conversations with real “claim” and “proof” words are not only a nuisance, they’re a blight. To wit, Papa John in meetings should never be talking about the brand, but about better ingredients. At the end of the day as he heads to his car he should be saying to himself “What did I do today to make our ingredients better?” This isn’t meant to be a slam on Mr. John, he actually has a brand idea. (Many marketers just have campaigns.) He just needs to live it. Peace!

Best Definition of Branding.

By

Steve Poppe

-

November 11, 2011

0

Were I to guess, I’d say 90% of people who use the word “branding” misuse it. Designers use it to define packaging. Art directors to describe “look and feel.” For P&G brand managers it’s a reference to budget size. Direct marketers think it means synergy with general advertising. Copywriters don’t really know what it means. The digiterati try not to use it. And agency principals think it is whatever makes the bank deposits flow.

Noah Brier while a head strategist at the Barbarian Group once asked me “There are lots of definitions of brand plan, what is yours?” That’s a question every marketer who hires an agency should ask. There would be a lot of Rick Perry answers, me thinks.

Branding is an organizing principle. Locked onto the right organizing principle one can build a brand with ease and sharp measurement. Brand strategy as an organizing principle can guides all the other strategies you will hear during the course of the marketing day: the product strategy, sales strategy, retail strategy, channel strategy, pricing strategy, media strategy, messaging strategy. I could go on.

The organizing principle defines how a product is built, cared for, presented and nurtured. It’s one simple piece of paper that organizes the others. It organizes leadership, employees and the hard to manage consumer.

I always wanted to create an ad agency named Foster, Bias and Sales. It’s where the rubber meets the road in marketing. But without an organizing principle to guide these steps to a sale, you are simply a tactics jockey.

Account planners tool. Story-listening.

By

Steve Poppe

-

November 9, 2011

0

I was reading the paper-paper today on the flooding in Thailand and a quote really hit me in the solar plexus: “I have lost the ability to be angry.” Though not the exact definition of hopelessness, it’s in the neighborhood. I am a brand planner, which means I help brands organize their Is-Does using one big honking brand idea and 3 support planks. Support that, when combined, convinces consumers of unique value.

To get the idea and planks, I do a lot of research, ask a lot of questions and map a lot of behaviors. As a small business without the resources of huge research machines, my craft has been fine-tuned with tricks, short cuts, and marketing muscle memory. And when I come across a sentence like “Lost the ability to be angry,” it gives me planning pause. It’s raw. It’s real. And I’m going to steal it. (Faris Yakob, I borrowed your “S” word.)

My challenge is to find a way to work that probe into the battery of Qs I pose when interviewing. Those questions are a good portion of the “What’s the idea?” secret sauce, but not the sauce itself. Jacques Pepin would say it’s not the ingredients. it’s the technique.

If you are selling Heineken Light and asking 20-something males about their evening drinking habits (this target indexes high for daytime Heineken Light drinking), how do you segue into a discussion about “numbness to anger?” By being on your toes. You have to be chatting and story-listening, not interviewing. Peace!

Yahoo’s Going to Get its Exclamation Back!

By

Steve Poppe

-

November 4, 2011

0

I would not be surprised to see Yahoo sold to Jerry Yang and the Texas Pacific Group (TPG) fairly quickly. Yahoo, with lots of schmutz on its shoes, is still one of the top 5 tech brands in the world. And what is a brand but a vessel into which we poor meaning. Organized meaning. Yahoo’s fix requires an Is-Does. What a brand Is and what a brand Does.

Is it a portal?
Is it search engine?
Is it an advertising company?
Is it a web content publisher?
Is it a technology company?

Does it provide news?
Does it provide entertainment?
Does it provide organization?
Does it provide results?

Yahoo needs to retrench and make tough decisions — and that will only happen if the property is sold. A public company with lots of shareholders, Yahoo will get its Yahoo! back with new leadership, some old leadership, tough love, and a brand plan. And when I say brand plan I don’t mean a new logo, new color palette and an replacement agency for Goodby, Silverstein and Partners. I mean an organizing principle for marketing. A plan that inform every decision made by the company — from hiring to firing to what new mobile services to launch.

When dimensionalized through obs and strats, a brand plan creates marketing clarity. TPG doesn’t speak like this, but they know how to make it happen. It’s about time. Peace.

Brand Promises and Stereotypes.

By

Steve Poppe

-

October 28, 2011

0

Stereotypes are important in marketing because they are patterns. Many feel that if you play to the patterns, you will win. Creative directors, on the other hand, have made a living going the other way — staying away from patterns, which is a pattern in itself.

Stereotyping Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, might suggest she was more likely to assist in the EU bailout because she’s a woman – a mom. Stereotyping a Long Island Rail Road worker who took retirement with disability at age 50, might portray him as a golf-playing aerobicist, while the reality is he is an arthritic thanks to 30 years keeping the trains moving during winter snowstorms.

Is someone in Aspen, CO who opens a retailer door and shouts in “Which way to Little Nells?” a New Yorker? Okay, that one might be accurate – but the reality is stereotypes are nothing more than learning for a brand planner. And as planners if we know “no one wants to be a stereotype.” It doesn’t mean the consumer wants to be the pioneer who takes the arrows or the Beta User whose machine gets crapped – it just means when being sold, we want to feel individualized. The promise has to have promise…not an explicit benefit. Let consumers’ minds work and process things in their own way. Europeans are better at this type of selling than Americans. In the U.S. we are very explicit with our ads and social media.

Sometimes being broad with a promise works harder. Peace.

BlitzLocal and brand planning.

By

Steve Poppe

-

October 27, 2011

0

Dennis Yu CEO of BlitzLocal is a smart dude. He did a presentation about BlitzLocal, Facebook, data, and marketing futures last night at Hofstra University and it was eye opening. (What is Hofstra’s brand idea, by the way? Something with a right pointing arrow?) Anyway, a number of cottage industries have popped up over the years to help people market on Facebook and BlitzLocal is a good one. As is Involver.

Sitting through the preso I was wondering what kind of company BlitzLocal was — never having heard of them. My take? It’s an analytics company. The BlitzLocal Is-Does? A Facebook analytics company (Is) that implements and optimizes Facebook marketing programs (Does).

Mr. Yu started the evening with some really heady talk about brand building and how promotional giveaways are a blight, then he segued into data capture, tools, and the raw power of the Facebook platform. As an admin on a brand account, he playfully posted an offer to see how many people wanted a free pair of jeans and in minutes had 4,000 hits.

So how does this type of real time analytics stuff rub a brand planner like me – someone in search of the big positioning ideas and planks that and drive long term value? Well, I’m a believer and will add these tools to my arsenal. I rail about tactics-palooza, but the insights derived from a BlitzLocal engagement are too important to cast off. This kind of data, especially at the high order level, needs to go into the boil down. One more important loci for the plan. Right brain, left brain. Yin and Tang stuff. Can’t wait to play. Peace.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Feb
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Tell Me About Your Advertising.

The Brand Planner’s Conundrum.

Cultural Literacy.

Brand Planning

Brand Planting, I mean Planning.

The Moral of Account Planning.

Fear, Uncertainty and Dismal Doubt.

The Two Sides of Brand Planning.

“Brand” is No Substitute for “Idea.”

Best Definition of Branding.

Account planners tool. Story-listening.

Yahoo’s Going to Get its Exclamation Back!

BlitzLocal and brand planning.