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    Brand Strategy

    First Get The Brand Right.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Here’s my pitch to people who manage small and mid-size companies. Also, to large companies in technology, considered purchase and B2B categories – most of whom think marketing is the main tool of growth. Marketing being defined as creating demand, proper pricing and good distribution.  I explain that marketing today is mostly practiced as a downstream pursuit with time spent on buildables. On tactics and execution. “Update the website. Generate more social engagement. Put on a promotional event.”

    I counsel these people, these builders, to first get the brand strategy right. First and foremost.  Because the brand strategy sets the parameters of winning in the marketplace. It establishes a framework for product, experience and messaging. The irony of my job is that I often have to look and product, experience and messaging, after the fact, to help create the framework.  It’s a little bass-ackwards.

    Get the brand right and it’s so much easier to get the marketing right.  “Ready, fire, aim” it’s not.

    Peace.

     

     

    The Importance of Product In Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Yesterday I posted a definition of brand strategy: An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. “Product” is the first component of brand strategy. It seems like a no-brainer but can be overlooked.

    Most companies aren’t thinking about brand strategy when developing a new product.  They are looking for differentiation and successful position in the marketplace.  Or price advantage.

    Brand strategists do most of their work on existing products; products with established manufacturing consistency and formulary, e.g. Coca-Cola, In-N-Out Burger. Where an organizing principle comes in handy is in cases of line extensions and reformulations.  White Castle, wouldn’t want to create a cat head size burger, for instance.

    Where an organizing principle for an existing company most comes in handy is in the service sector — where the product is people.  Sure you can dress them up in a uniform but if you don’t organize how they work and deliver service, it’s harder to brand.

    One of my favorite brand strategies in the service sector was for a commercial maintenance company. Their business is cleaning buildings at night and tending the grounds by day. Their brand staretgy became “The navy seals of commercial maintenance” (the claim), supported by “fast,” “fastidious” and “preemptive” (the proof planks). Think these employees didn’t know how to work? Or get a raise?

    Tomorrow Experience. 

     

    Proof Well Told.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    We undertake certain roles in life from which there is no return. Being mother is one such. My wife always felt mothered by my mom, but today my wife has similarly stepped to.  She not only mothers our children, she mothers me as well. (Oh, it’s a good thing.) As I said, there are some roles from which there is no return.

    For brand planners these roles are fertile ground. 

    I wonder if you can actually ask a person to accurately share their most important life role?  I suspect you wouldn’t get the cleanest of answers.  “Work is my life.”  “I live to teach.” “Saving lives.”  “My family.” These answers are a bit generic. They even sound like taglines. The planner’s job is to dive in, past the macro, and find the proof. Find examples of the claim. Because this is where the realities lie. Where the behavioral pictures truly emerge.

    Lots of planners talk about truths. And those truths may fill in lines on a brief. But to really understand the truths you must uncovering proof.

    McCann-Erickson’s tagline is “Truth Well Told.” It’s the best agency line in the business. It should be “Proof Well Told.”

    Peace.

     

    Brand Strategy and Messaging.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Component three of the organizing principle that is brand strategy is messaging: What a brand or company says about itself. It starts with the Is-Does (what a brand IS and what a brand DOES), extends through employee communications and finishes with outside communications, such things as PR and advertising.

    Messaging is the component easiest to understand, yet hardest to corral.

    I worked for a company Teq that sold interactive whiteboards to K12 schools. They also offered professional development to help teachers use the technology. The company had about 250 people. On LinkedIn, some employees said they worked in education. Others said they worked for a software company. Some said computers and hardware. 

    Messaging starts at home.

    Zude, a startup I worked with in the social networking space, was even worse. The chief technology officer, built new features into the product weekly, which took it down unique and different functionality paths. (Google “Fruit Cocktail Effect” with quote marks.) Fail.

    Imaging bringing up a puppy, changing its name every week. Like that.

    The beauty of a brand strategy is it handles the Is-Does and sets the ground work for all messaging. Whether you are talking or typing about your brand you are either on or off brand message.

    One claim three proof planks sets the brand strategy. Simple to understand, simple to follow.  

    Peace.

     

     

    Originality.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The problem with most marketing communications is lack of originality.  I was speaking to business owner yesterday who said he went to a seminar on branding where the speaker told the crowd everyone had to decide which of the two types of business they wanted to be: quality or service. (I hope he didn’t have to pay.)  Can you imagine, thinking there are only two types of brand or company? These are price-of-entry values. Not positioning values. And franking if you are not offering quality and service you won’t be in business very long.

    Branding is about originality. Finding new ways to convey value. Using new, ownable, believable words. New demonstrations. And I’m not talking a smiling face next to a stack of tasty pancakes. I’m talking a line out the door of the pancake house.

    Some say “nothing is original” in advertising and marketing.  And I say everything has a chance to be. Find your brand strategy (one claim, three proof planks) and invent originality every day. And then do it some more.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Strategy Is Organized Proof.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Brand strategists are organizers. Not like political or civic organizers. We are value and strategy organizers. Most brand strategists think binary worldviews are bad.  They like grays. Me? I like a plan that organizes deposits in brand value. A plan where you are either on strategy or off. I’ve heard it said “If you are not making a deposit in the brand bank you are making a withdrawal,” which may be too harsh, but if spending money or effort not supporting the plan, even if for a brand neutral-value, you are missing an opportunity.  So I’m a binary organizer.

    What else am I? I’m a proof-ist. Or proofist. As someone who grew up in the advertising business, buried in product and service claims that all sounded alike, I’ve landed on proof as my strategy differentiator. Proof is what gives people reason to believe. Reason to remember. Reason to be trusted.  Proof is performance. Taste. Experience. All existential. Claim is a promise. And idea tethered to proof. Advertisers have spent billions on promises, sans proof, so much so that consumers choose not to believe them. Claims flow and flow and never stop.

    Hence, the need for brand planning — brand planning based on organized proof.

    If you’d like to see some claim and proof arrays for real brands, names redacted, feel free email me… Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com.

    Peace.

     

    Unorganized Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    What is the pent-up demand for brand strategy services? What keeps company officers up at night that a brand strategy can fix? The answer: Unorganized marketing.

    The Oxford Dictionary defines organize as “give an orderly structure to, systematize.” Therefore, unorganized means the opposite — not organized or not orderly. Disorganized has a stronger connotation. It means to “destroy the system or order; throw into confusion.” It indicates a chaotic mode.

    The fact is, most companies in need of brand help suffer from unorganized marketing, not disorganized. That’s because they never had an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. They may have a logo, tagline, marketing plan, even a good ad campaign, but not a constant framework that governs everything.

    So what is the result of having unorganized marketing? Loss of time developing programs. Loss of money in poorly performing media and tactics. Lack of focus around customer care-abouts and brand good-ats. And poor accountability because marketing doesn’t know what to measure other than sales. With unorganized marketing big data becomes little data.

    My job as a brand consultant is to dig deeply into business fundamentals, determine care-abouts and good-ats and create a framework of values for presenting a brand that creates sales and loyalty.

    This is upstream planning — and too many marketers are afraid to paddle up. Ergo they lose sleep and sales.

    Peace.

     

    Branding and the better deal.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I read somewhere “people will naturally gravitate to a better deal.” Two Cheese Whoppers for the price of one is a better deal. Chevy Family Pricing is (probably) a better deal. $100 off a Deuter Backpack, better deal. 

    Thirty years ago, you had to promote a better deal in the newspaper, on TV, or at point of sale. Today, your network of friends and online cohorts can share a better deal in a nano. If you know where to look online better deals abound. But better deal viewed through a pricing lens is not the full story.  

    Brand strategy uses science to position products and services as a better deal, sans promotional pricing. Branding answers the “Why?” your product is a better deal than the competitor’s. The why used to be random and of the cultural moment; often something conjured up by ad agents.  Doritos are better than potato chips because they bounce around the room and hit people in the eye (from a Super Bowl spot years ago.) Yeah, no.

    Branding, the verb, uses a discreet organizing principle to convey positive associations based on endemic product values that preclude consumers from buying other people’s products. This doctor is better than that doctor. That four-wheel drive car is better than this. My beer is better than yours.

    People will gravitate to a better deal, if and when marketers help define what that better deal is – outside of price alone.

    Peace.

     

     

    Buzz Words in Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Marketers love buzz words. Here are a few ripped from the pages of today’s business journals: change management, design thinking, business development, disruption, innovation, and transformation programs.  Google these bitches and you will end up immersed in business-babble. Immersed in the writings of consultants, sales people, content jockeys and entrepreneurs.

    Here’s what I know. 

    These buzzwords are all tactics.  Innovation may feel like a strategy, but it isn’t until you actually have an innovation…a thing. Mostly these words are used to describe processes, promises of ways to make things better in the marketplace.  Can’t fault people for that. But as a brand strategist, whose job is also to make business better – to “sell more things to more people more times at higher process” (Sergio Zyman), I begin with a foundational brand strategy. One that governs and effects value and perceived value. With that in place, you can design think, change manage, develop business, disrupt, innovate and transform until your heart’s content. And do so in an organized way. With intent.

    Peace.

     

    How Much Brand Discovery is Enough?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    That’s a fine questions Steve. I’ve done some freelance work where the shop wanted 30-40 interviews. On the B2B side, inclusive of technology, that may be too many.  You can never learn too much, you can never talk brand too much, but 30 plus takes time and reduces focus.  That said, in my last engagement I probably conducted 25 interviews. It was for a complicated tech assignment, however, requiring that I learn blockchain, cryptocurrency and such.

    Ideally, and things are never ideal in the interview business, one would get all the conversations out of the way in a week. That said, don’t over-schedule and burn yourself out. You need time for the information and insights to marinate and react. I like to use a pat set of questions so I can look at the variation of answers or the deltas as they say in the research business.  

    If you don’t do enough interviews, you can fall into the traps of projecting insights from elsewhere — and that’s a bad.  If paid to only do a few interviews you might rationalize things by short-cutting — relying on your planning experience. Don’t do it. Your brain will fart. You’ll spend more time looking for patterns that aren’t there and it will take more time, not less.

    Go long, but be careful not to go too long.

    Peace.

    PS. For a presentation of brand strategy framework with real examples (sans attribution), write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com  

     

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