Brand Planning
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Happy Friday youze all…as we like to say in NY. It’s beautiful outside with everything blanketed in pristine snow. A fitting beginning for the Winter Olympics. Tonight, on the Olympics the new GE Healthymagination campaign breaks. Knowing it’s from BBDO, I’m sure it will be heartfelt and striking…in its pieces. It will also be a time for G.E. to try and flex some integration muscle.
I’ve seen two print ads already and they are pretty but plainly messaged. Having read about the campaign in the New York Times today and piecing together bits and quotes, I’m going out on a limb here and gonna say “What’s the Idea?
What’s the Idea?
Here’s what we can expect: GE wants to humanize the technology, so no pictures of machines. GE wants to make doctors the heroes. Doc’s are very influential in technology purchases, especially when it comes to those $80,000 procedures. Innovation will be in much of the new campaign; it’s a corporate keystone. Imaging technology will be front and center, as it should be; people understand medical imaging and how it helps them. Consumers will participate because “health spreads contagiously” so expect the people to be posting on Twitter and Faceboook. “Healthymagination is saving billions in healthcare costs.” There will be How-Tos on Howcast, iPhone apps, and, and, and. Lots of ideas, lots of agencies (Big Spaceship has a chunk), lots of content contributors, yet I haven’t heard a powerful brand idea with muscle memory. Healthymagination is a word, not an idea. After seeing the body of work I’ll weigh in again. Peace!
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Tags: bbdo, bog spaceship, facebook, GE, healthymagination, howcast, iphone, new york times, twitter, whats the idea, whatstheidea, Winter Olympics
I’ve been writing for a few years with great admiration about Google and its amazing, transformative search tools. Co-founder Sergey Brin’s original vision or brand idea “We deliver the world’s information in one click” is what allowed Google to become the NASA of the web. Case in point: Yesterday I was looking for a blog post on my machine and used the Microsoft search tool; after three strikes I Googled “whatstheidea+things we remember.” In less than a second I found my text on the Web. Thanks, YO.
More recently, though, I’ve found myself commenting on how Google has wandered from its original mission – getting into the productivity software, social net, chat and now phone businesses. The brand planner in me asks “How does one articulate Google’s Is-Does?” The Googleplex is filled with amazing minds but many seem to be trying to out-engineer one another; me thinks they have lost sense of mission. Steve Rubel’s post today on Google Buzz so reflects.
Culture of Technological Obesity.
Amidst Google’s amazing growth and all its Benjamins, a culture of technological obesity has developed. It’s time for a change. Here’s what will happen.
The company will go through a corporate divestiture, or as was the case with AT&T, a Trivestiture. It won’t happen now…probably within 48 months. My bet for the three parts? Search (Web and mobile), R&D Think Tank/Consultancy, and (surprise) Advertising Analytics. How would you break it up? Peace!
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Tags: google, google buzz, googlelex, googles technological obesity, Is-Does, nasa, sergey brin, Steve Rubel, trivestiture, whats the idea, whatstheidea
We remember beauty.
We remember new.
We remember rich.
We remember melody.
We remember funny.
We remember nature.
We remember poetry.
We remember pain.
We remember educators.
We remember warmth.
We remember charity.
We remember happy.
We remember love.
We remember triumph.
These are the things we remember.
These are the things consumers remember.
(I post this annually, to remind myself.)
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Tags: things we remember.
Blackberry’s current TV campaign built around the Beatles song “All you need is love” is goofy. Pretty to watch, great editing, hum it and smile – but it really has no inherent brand building value. And in a slipping market for Research In Motion, manufacturer of the Blackberry, this is not good thing. Enter a print ad today on battery life. The headline reads “Imagine falling in love with a battery?” Does anyone hear the “beep, beep, beep” of a truck backing up here?
The Blackberry is a stud phone. My son in college has one. My friend’s high school daughter has one. As does his wife, for work. Now we don’t live in “the valley” and I know that the kids might like an iPhone as an accessory, but they are sold on the Blackberry’s ability to get them on the net and text with grace and ease. Why? Because it works. It delivers. Blackberry owns the word “work” — in its two dimensions. Get on mass transit and see who is using Blackberrys. Fill up a gym with kids – put the Blackberrys on one side, the iPhones on the other. What do you see?
Research will tell you love is strong, but it’s not reason to buy a Blackberry. This is a difficult, difficult category for brand planners. I don’t have the inside track, but I will tell you this: “Love” isn’t it. Beep, beep, beep. Peace!
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Tags: "all you need is love", Advertising, apple, beatles, blackberry, Brand Planning, iphone, Research in motion, whats the idea, whatstheidea
I read in the paper paper this weekend about O.K.R.s, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. The measures, espoused by VC general John Doerr, were developed by Intel and, supposedly, are used by Google. The idea is that “the whole company and every group has one objective and three measureable key results.” Whether the objective and results are the same across the company is unknown, but I’ll look into it. Focus is important. And strategic.
What I do know is that this O.K.R. approach nicely mirrors the schema I use for brand planning: one powerful branding idea, supported by three brand planks – the collective power of which is unique to the market and business-winning for the brand.
ROS
Return on Strategy (ROS) is the antidote for ROI. While the latter focuses on marketing transaction payout and marketing tactics, ROS works to measure strategy against key business indicators (sales, share, retention, quality, employees). As we enter the marketing landscape, here referred to as “tactics-palooza,” we need to more and more measure strategy. Peace it up!
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Tags: google, Intel, John Doerr, marketing roi, okr, okrs, return on strategy, roi, ros, tactics-palooza, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Quick, I say “brand strategy,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Okay, let’s try another. “Brand plan.” You say ______? This sort of brand speak is really inside baseball to most businesses. Over the past couple of years I’ve spoken to some really smart people from many different walks of marketing life and they all know the words but, ask them to define or diagram them on paper, they can’t.
Wikipedia “Brand Plan.”
Wikipedia the words “brand plan” and Wiki asks you “Did you mean Brand Play?” The first option under the question is business plan. Wikipedia “Brand Strategy” and it says “You may create the page Brand Strategy.”
Everyone agrees that brands are important…that they have value. Most understand brands need to be managed. What they don’t always get is that brands need to be managed to a tight brand strategy. So they default to managing brands based upon acquisition, sales growth or retention metrics — all of which are measurable. Thanks to the web, we can now even measure clicks and views and engagement and referrals and, and, and. And tie measures to dollar investments. Break out the dashboard and play marketing videogames.
So if brands are important, and we all agree they are, how do we measure the efficacy of the brand strategy? I often use the example that Coke’s brand strategy is refreshment. Today, Wieden + Kennedy and Coke would have you believe it is happiness. Who is right and how to we find out?
Now don’t get me wrong, a powerful brand strategy is only so if it increases sales and margins. Period. But tying sales and revenue increase to a strategy, not a tactic, is what’s what. Peace!
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Tags: brand, brand plan, Brand Strategy, coke, whats the idea, whatstheidea, wieden + kennedy, Wikipedia
Last week at the DMA/PMN social media conference, Steve Rubel, a digital honcho at Edelman, said “information scales, attention is finite.” He couldn’t be more right. As social media adds more and more conversation to what is already being said about brands in the marketplace, the cacophony grows louder. It is in this environment that brand planners become even more important.
Creating a brand strategy that is easy for corporate officers and consumers to articulate is job one for today’s planners. Once that strategy is in place, “proving” it and refreshing it is the real work. Simply repeating the brand strategy — using words, pictures, speeches or song — is not marketing. Proving it is marketing. Proof through actions, deeds, and product innovation is what makes a brand strategy and what makes people pay attention…and remember. If you have a great strategy and no proof, you fail. Peace!
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Tags: Brand Planning, Brand Strategy, claim and proof, DMA, edelman, PMN, social media, Steve Rubel, whats the idea
My consultancy’s mantra is embodied in the statement “Campaign come and go, but a powerful branding idea is indelible.” Powerful brands are built upon powerful brand strategies which are, in turn, supported by creative and colorful demonstrations of that strategy. Powerful brand strategies transcend medium and even language. Good account planners will tell you that a powerful brand strategy becomes acculturated into the company.
For a ski resort, I developed the brand strategy “the best groomed mountain in the Northeast.” Everyone who went to work each day knew what their job was and how to behave. They didn’t need a mupermisor (rhymes with supervisor) over their shoulder every minute when making decisions. They had the strategy.
Did the ski resort’s campaign change? Sure. The website? Yep. Did the cafeteria employees show up to work with messy clothes. Nuh uh.
Do consumers own the brand as some will tell you? Hell no! Do they buy the brand, inform the brand. Sure. But consumers don’t own it. Do brand managers own the brand? Heck no. (Notice the subtle downgrade in passion?) Brand managers come and go, too. The average tenure of a company CMO is 18 or so months. So who does own the brand? The Answer: The owner of the brand strategy. Peace!
PS. Today marks the 3rd anniversary of What’s the Idea? My dad Fred Poppe was an ad man and a writer; sadly, he passed away before blogging became a thing. He would have loved blogging — especially in his later years, while sedentary. To you dad!
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Tags: Account Planning, Brand Strategy, cmo, fred poppe, whats the idea, whatstheidea, who owns the brand.
When I worked on the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System business with Welch Nehlen Groome, system CEO Michael Dowling would meet every Monday morning with new employees and welcome them. The system employed about 30,000 people so Mr. Dowling had an opportunity to go really viral with his mission.
At face value the mission, embodied in the tagline “Setting New Standards in Healthcare,” didn’t sound like much. Operationalized, it was a brand game-changer.
The brand planks supporting the strategy were unassailable and uniquely North Shore – creating tremendous wealth for the brand. Yet what was missing from the equation and where I didn’t do a good job as brand planner was getting senior management to acculturate the brand plan through the employee world. Had every Monday morning Mr. Dowling shared the brand strategy with his impressionable new employees, imagine how much stronger his brand would be today.
People think health systems are about saving money. Done correctly, they are about redistributing healthcare wealth (clinical and economic). North Shore had a system for doing this. It was, and is, its secret sauce.
All companies, big or small, need to share their unique brand strategies with employees. Otherwise, every employee at every company is driven by the same strategy: earn a paycheck.
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Tags: acculturation, brand plan, Brand Planning, healthcare advertising, Healthcare Marketing, marketing strategic, Michael dowling, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, Welch nehlen groome
I had to look up the word acculturation a couple of months back while writing a pitch email. In fact, at the time I wasn’t sure it was a word. Acculturation is mission-critical to my business and the goal of every brand plan I write. A good brand plan helps employees drink the Kool Aid — educating them as to the unique and meaningful points of difference. By acculturating a company with the brand’s promise and supports marketing in its many forms is simplified and made more effective. Only when a company adopts a brand plan can it truly be extended to consumers. The acculturation of a brand plan organizes employee and consumer minds, removing clutter.
Most advertisers and marketers hate “clutter.” I love it. The more clutter there is in a category the more likely it can be broken. A brand strategy may sometimes sound familiar, maybe even undifferentiated, but if it’s the right one, it will be actionable and defensible and its messages, demonstrations, and deeds profound.
Newsday knows where people (on Long Island) live. The Daily News doesn’t. North Shore-LIJ Health System provides a systematized approach to improving healthcare. St. Francis Hospital doesn’t. Isopure Plus uncovers the taste of pure protein. Milky Ensure doesn’t.
When a brand creates a culture around its points of advantage it becomes a brand. When it doesn’t it remains a product. Peace!
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Tags: acculturation, Brand Planning, daily news, isopure plus, marketing, newsday, north shore-lij health system, st. francis hospital, whats the idea, whatstheidea
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