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    Brand Strategy

    Consumer Experience.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    A musician is never more in touch with his/her art then when standing on a stage performing.

    A chef is never more in touch with her/his art then when watching people eat their food.

    Authors are never more in touch with their art then when listening to readers discussing their work.  

    And film makers never more in touch with their art then when sitting in a full audience watching their movie.

    So what is the moral here for marketers and brand builders?

    Watching and listening to consumers.  Especially consumers experiencing your product in real time. In situ, is best.

    Consumer experience is at least half of brand planning. Brand planners can’t process consumer experience listening marketing executives. And ad executives. And quantitative research professionals. It’s the fieldwork component.

    And, while the brand planners understand consumer experience is only half of the equation, they know it to be the most important half.

    Peace!  

     

     

    Generational Sales and Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Per their own in-house research team, ad agency EP+Co learned that 84% of furniture buyers experience regrets, an interesting and actionable insight.  

    EP+Co client Havertys Furniture, initiated a “Regret-free Guarantee” that fits that insight like a glove. It’s a strong, committed move. And it supports the existing tagline “We Furnish Happiness.” It is however, an example of good insight, poor brand craft.

    Let me explain. The first mistake is trying to own “happiness” as a brand claim. It’s too broad a promise. Also, it’s not endemic to the furniture business. (Coca-Cola spent billions positioning around happiness. Don’t get me started on that mistake.) A creative director might argue “Furnish” in “We Furnish Happiness” is a furniture word. I would not.  While the Regret-free Guarantee, packaged as a brand differentiator, is a smart move, it’s also nonendemic. Anyone can guarantee. So neither happiness or a satisfaction guarantee are tethered directly to furniture.

    It’s easy for me to sit on the sideline and throw darts. Especially after less than an hour of analysis. But science is science. Consumer pre-disposed to purchase, then repurchase, and purchase again is not tactical. It’s a long-term effort. Brand loyalty is the holy grail.  Little mistakes lead to tactics-palooza. Then agency-palooza. Then CMO-palooza. Brand strategy, well-defined and well-executed builds loyalty. And generational sales.

    Peace.     

     

    A Thought On Corporate Culture.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Much in branding has been written about corporate culture. Most believe it to be a good thing. I would respectfully disagree.

    A company does not need a culture.  In fact, it can be a detriment and lead to group think. Every organization needs outliers, obstructionists and contrarians; otherwise, it can become stale, even boring. Change is good and an overbearing culture may resist change. It may even keep good employees away. That said, what mustn’t be diluted are business objectives. And the brand strategy designed to meet those objectives. Of course, brand strategy (the organizing principle for product, experience and messaging) can change if the product or market changes, but it has been my observation that done right brand strategy can live on for decades.

    As for corporate culture, it’s overrated. Our great country was built upon diversity: of thought, religion, culture and political background. Culture cannot be prescribed. It can and should grow organically and change. It must remain fluid. Don’t color by numbers.

    Peace.

     

    Benefit Shoveling.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    What do you do?

    It’s a question that bounces back and forth at cocktail parties, breweries and work events.  There are a couple of ways to answer: a short form, couple-of-word answer, or go in-depth. In branding, I always encourage the former. Hit them with the Is-Does. What a brand product Is and what it does.

    Brands communicators don’t always follow this advice.  They think they need to sell and explain by the pound or by the word. It can leave audiences confused and/or fatigued. Good creative directors know this. They tell a simple story with a beginning, middle and end. A so-called narrative. Problem is, that narrative isn’t often based upon brand strategy.  (Post for another time.)

    So back to simple. Was it Benjamin Franklin who said (I paraphrase)  “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter?” 

    Marketing is made simple through brand strategy.  It’s objective driven. It provides proof of value. It’s measurable. And it leaves consumers with a gravity or gravitas constructed on care-abouts and good-ats.  It is the oppo of benefit shoveling, a meme I like to share which is the bane of marketers worldwide.

    Brand strategy, it’s what’s for dinner.

    Peace  

     

     

    The Two Types of Brand Strategist.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    My practice, What’s The Idea?, works on master brand strategy not everyday strategy. I set the strategy for all brand activity, for now and ever after. Unless there’s a big business discontinuity or business model change I’m only needed once. Brand strategists who work at large ad agencies on the other hand, are more seen as ongoing problem solvers. Or creative department lion tamers. They’re a strategic lens for important projects — to keep them scientific and on track.

    My work is upstream. Agency brand strategists tend to work downstream, closer to a sale, in project land. I’m not denigrating problem solvers, I love these people.

    Both type of brand strategists are critical but if you ask me the most critical work, the fundamental brand work, is with the master brand. Think strategy for winning the war, not strategy for winning a battle. Without the former, the latter can be randomized.

    My main competitors are large standalone brand strategy companies like Interbrand, Super Union, Landor and Siegel+Gale. But in addition to doing what I do, they also offer naming, logo development and graphic standards. That’s why an engagement from one of those standalone shops begins at $250,000 ish. I unbundle the paper strategy from all the add-ons. It’s a cleaner approach to master brand strategy.

    In master brand planning we discuss the import of importance.

    You feel me Jane Geraghty?

    Peace.

     

    Strategy and Action.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Strategists sometimes get a bad rap for overthink. And overwrite. My brand briefs created to deliver master brand strategy are often 3 pages. That’s a lot of words. Brand briefs are not meant to provide by-the-pound insights and lovely writing. Nor are they to provide a circuitous narrative that makes a brand manager feel optimistic. They are designed to provide a serial story that builds a logic trail toward a business-winning claim about a product or service. That singular claim – yes, I said singular – is built upon customer care-abouts and brand good-ats.  That’s the strategy component… or the information and data boil-down for which I get paid the big bucks.

    But strategy without action is simply ink. The best laid plans don’t work unless they’re acted upon and to be acted upon they must be advocated from on high, shared throughout the company, and operationalized. You can’t convince consumers unless you convince your workforce. Many practitioners believe brand strategy to be the sole domain of the marketing department. These companies are most likely to fail with marketing – even with $50 million budgets.  Brand strategy must be encultured throughout a company.

    You can’t write an effective marketing plan without a brand strategy. And you can’t write an effective brand strategy without an effective marketing plan. And make no mistake a marketing plan is an action plan. Fully funded. Not piece meal funded. Measured and corrected.

    Strategy and action.

    Peace.                 

     

     

    What a brand is not.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    So you have a company or product. You have a name. You have a logo. You have some design parameters. Packaging. You may even have a marketing person or an agency. But do you have a brand? Most would say yes, I say until you have an organizing principle that brings together what the “company is good at” and what “consumers want,” you really don’t have a brand. The organizing principle to which I refer is a brand strategy. It must be built upon truth, aspiration and above all it must be sinewy. That’s the hardest part. A brand strategy must not be a big expensive blob boasting something for everyone.  

    If you would like to see a sample or two, please let me know. Steve at whatstheidea. Everyone needs a plan. Peace. 

    Defense of a Brand Name.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    My business is called What’s The Idea? I rather like it. Following my own advice to have a brand name with a strong Is-Does, What’s Thea Idea? puts me in the idea business. The logo lock-up uses the descriptor “A Brand Consultancy” adding further context. (Perhaps I should have said brand strategy consultancy since I’m a words person not a graphic designer, but that’s a discussion for another time.) 

    Now the idea business could pigeon-hole me into an innovation bucket or a creative bucket. Don’t mind being there. Though, another way to parse the name is that I’m in the indignance business. “Hey, what the hell are you doing? What’s the idea?” Another bullseye. Another call for focus.

    At its simplest, the name asks businesses what is their single idea. Their single brand position the minds of consumers.  Their single consumer magnet.  The company is not called “Whats Are The Ideas?”, a common branding problem for many brands/companies that want to be many things to many people. AKA the “fruit cocktail effect.”

    One of my favorite quotes is from David Belasco a renowned Broadway producer. He said “If you can’t put your idea on the back of my card, you don’t have a clear idea.” Bravo!

    Find your brand idea and you’ve reached the first step in brand strategy.

    Peace.

     

     

    Benefit Shoveling is Not Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I received a lovely mailer today from my financial investment company trying to get me to move my credit card over.  The art direction was great, the copy good, but the strategy lacking.  You see, the promotional piece suffered from something I call benefit shoveling — the listing of consumer benefits ad nauseum. The bennies weren’t organized in an discernable way, other than, say, most impactful first. Plus they weren’t arrayed in a way that was brand salient. They were shoveled, one after the other.

    I work with a financial client in a similar business.  We have just landed on a claim and proof array (brand strategy) that captures what consumers want most and what the brand does best.  When I look at the credit card promotion-piece I received, it became perfectly clear to me how a brand strategy would have helped. Rather than shoveling benefits, a strategy would have built the benefits into a coherent story. A story that only one institution would tell.

    In fact, were I to rewrite the credit card promotion with my own client’s strategy, the shovel would disappear and the cement ready for mixing – as the strategic building blocks were already in place. That’s brand strategy at work. As Marilyn Laurie, world famous AT&T brand expert would say, “Make deposits in the brand bank.” Shovel no more.

    Peace!

     

     

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