Brand Strategy

    Wendy’s Latest Brand Mistake.

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    wendys_mascot_logo“Quality is our recipe” is the new tagline for fats food chain Wendy’s. It adorns all the stores. Quality is an industrial word. It’s not a food word. If you go to a Lidia Bastianich or Eric Ripert restaurant you’re not going to savor a meal and talk quality.

    The key to branding is finding the right “claim” and proving it every day. I use three proof planks to support the claim. Three provides focus. Were I to parse the quality claim for Wendy’s I might select “ripeness” for vegetables, “natural” for ingredients, e.g., less additives, few GMOs, real sugar, and “immaculate facilities.” I’m just riffing here but you might actually build a nice story with this strategy. The problem, however, is the word quality. A far as claims go, it’s in the neighborhood, but a Norwegian neighborhood.  Quick, name a tasty Norwegian food.

    Brand strategy claims need poetry. Humanity. They need aspiration and emotion. Wendy’s can do better. This is a company that has always been ad campaign driven, not brand strategy driven.      

    Peace.           

     

    The Case for Brand Strategy Investment.

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    Brand strategy is such a misunderstood science. And undervalued.

    Here’s why: Brand strategy, as I define it, is “An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” As such, it guides all tactics — marketing and otherwise.  Because brand strategy, by this definition, impacts the product it can also impact things like operations; typically not thought of as the domain of brand strategy. So, when the brand strategy for a commercial maintenance company has “preemptive” as a brand plank, it requires all employees to looking for problems with a customer building and grounds before they occur. Blind curbs due to poorly trimmed bushes, sweating pipes that lead to burst pipes; things typically outside of the normal contract. Things commercial maintenance companies aren’t paid for. This is an example of an operational component of the brand strategy.

    Preemptive is both a care-about and a good-at at Excel Commercial Maintenance in NY. It’s partly why they landed a huge cornerstone account ten year ago.

    Brand strategy – unless you are hiring a multinational company – can cost less than an ad in a national magazine.  Yet it is rarely funded. It’s just not valued as much as the tactics it should be driving. That’s probably why John Wannamaker coined the phrase “I know half my advertising is working, I just don’t know which half.”

    Measure twice (invest in brand strategy) and cut once.

    Peace.

     

     

    Mutations and Evolution.

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    I’m a closet anthropologist and someone who likes to think about evolution. A professor at my alma mater Rollins College explained taught me one of the forces of evolution is gene mutation. Natural selection being another important force. Human evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years and even though my brand strategies are designed to be future-proof, they won’t stand up to that timeframe. Hee hee. So, we should always entertain the notion that brand strategies can evolve. To that end we must always keep an eye out for mutations. 

    Our job as brand planners is to watch out for the signs. One way to do this is to constantly update and refresh the proof plank.  Keep a history or archive of your proof planks over time and then look back to see how they have changed. 

    If the market changes in a way that one of your planks seems less of a care-about or good-at – or if that particular plank is lagging in activity — consider a new plank. Remember evolution is slow. And that can work in your favor. Just don’t assume everything stays the same forever.  

    If you feel a new stronger brand plank coming on, test it. Do not add a new plank to the mix. It will only confuse your target.

    Peace.

     

     

    Yahoo! Too Much Mouth.

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    I don’t like being a brand commentator, sitting on the sidelines sharing what’s wrong with brands, without offering something positive. And I feel that way with Yahoo! As a brand consultant, people hire me to help create brand strategy. Were Yahoo! to hire me, here’s what I’d do. (Earlier in the month I wrote about What’s The Idea? process which covers Discovery, Fermentation and Boil Down. Here’s how I’d handle Discovery.

    I was watching cyber security conference video last week and a senior level Yahoo! Security officer was leading the talk. He was smart, witty, believable, and committed. He is what I call a Poster – someone willing to share and help the public learn. Sadly, this gentleman who has since moved on to a big job at Facebook, was stowed away at corporate not seeing the public light of day. With Yahoo!, often all we get as the viewing, investing and using public, is Marissa Meyer playing offense and defense. Mostly from a stage.

    I suspect there are scores of people like this security office at Yahoo! and these are the people I would speak to in Discovery. These are the body organs that drive a brand. That fuel the brain. That feed the mouth.

    At Yahoo! we’ve been getting a modicum of brain and a lot of mouth. A good brand discovery would help go all deep dish on the company.

    Peace.

     

     

    Everything is a brand.

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    …and nothing is a brand. Hanging out in social media as I do and with my business proclivities, I often come across people talking about “people as brands.” I scoff. I’m very protective of my turf.

    As an early user of social media in market research, I made some serious money understanding its power to influence consumers.  That said, I like to think I’m an early adopter of the notion that today’s “influencers” are kind of a sham. Especially those who use influence for influence’s sake.

    I do, however, love the early influencers on social.  Those people with key motivations behind their postings: Emo Girl, Melting Mama, Kandee Johnson, Bob Lefsetz, Robert Scoble and dana boyd. They were/are SMEs. And if not exactly SMEs, they were certainly capturers of attention.

    Faris (Is it too soon to use only his first name?) likes to say we live in the attention economy. And, yes, having curators helps. But influencers? To me the title has a bad reputation. Today’s influencers and their acolytes use the word brand too much. To them everything is a brand. And when everything is a brand, nothing is. I like my social media influencers rare. Not medium or well done.

    Share. Not to make money but to make life better. More entertaining. Interesting. Fulfilling. Don’t share your shit to make yourself more commercial.

    Peace.     

     

    A Question for Stuart Elliott.

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    Ask any Chief Marketing Office or Marketing Director what their annual sales are and you’ll get an answer. Ask about the annual marketing budget. Quick answer. Cost of goods, manufactures suggested retail price, market share? These are questions for which marketing leads all have answers.

    Two questions likely to baffle CMOs and marketing directors, however, are: What is your brand strategy (claim)? And what are your brand planks (proofs of claim)? Most marketers know their business KPIs, but don’t have them translated into brand-benefit language. The language that give them life and memorability. CMOs use business school phrases like “low cost provider,” “more for more,” “innovation leader”, “customer at center of flah flah flah…”, but that’s not how consumers speak.  

    claim and proof

    The key to brand planning is knowing what consumers want and what the brand is good at. (“Good ats” and “care-abouts”.) Combining these things into a poetic claim and three discrete support planks is the organizing principle that focuses marketing and makes it more accountable. Across every expense line on the Excel chart.

    Stuart Elliott, advertising columnist of The New York Times should make this a requisite question in all his interviews. “What is your brand strategy?” If he gets any semblance of a claim and proof array, I’ll be surprised. Peace!

    The Golden Rule.

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    Branding with a brand strategy is simple. But it starts with having a brand strategy. At What’s The Idea? framework for brand strategy is one claim and three proof planks. The claim and planks never change; however, the proof points comprising the planks can, do and must. By finding new proofs for your claim you keep your brand fresh, relevant, topical and dare I say social.

    By way of example, I’ll share the brand strategy for a commercial maintenance client. The claim was “the navy seals of commercial maintenance.” The proof planks were “fast,” “fastidious” and “preemptive.” When marketing or content creating if the work did not support the claim and at least one element of the proof array, it didn’t get approved.

    Branding without a brand strategy and tight framework for same, is difficult. It lacks pragmatism. Branding without strategy is fluid, determined by the artist not the business person, and often ever-changing. Marketing directors come and go, campaigns come and go, agencies come and go, but a brand strategy should be indelible.

    To quote David Byrne, “This ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.” We’re trying to make money here. In good times and bad. The framework for successful marketing starts with brand strategy. Extensible, scalable, replicable and creative brand strategy.

    The golden rule. Peace.

     

    Gartner’s 2020 Annual CMO Spend Survey Research

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    I love this chart.  I freakin’ love this chart.  For CMOs to acknowledge the importance of brand strategy, overtaking analytics and all other measures, is a powerful endorsement of brand work. Gartner’s study queried 432 CMOs.

    I could get caught in the weeds asking questions like “How do the CMOs define brand strategy?”  or “What does your brand strategy framework look like?” but I won’t. I’ll just bask in the glow.

    Apparently, brand strategy was near the bottom of this list when asked in the 2019 Annual CMO Spend Survey Research, so this is quite a leap up in importance.  Now, one could say the Covid-19 Pandemic is playing a role in this leap; the logic being, when marketers cut budgets and activity, strategy becomes more important — but I am going to take the win here.

    Great job Gartner. Great job CMOs.

    Peace.   

     

     

    In Defense of Ad Agencies. 

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    The state of the advertising agency business is dismal.  Employees are leaving in droves and there is underemployment.  Black and brown people are nowhere to be found. If you are over 50, you had better be the CEO… and even then your days are numbered. And Google has replaced thousands of agency jobs.

    I work with a number of start-ups and young‘uns starting out in the business think Google Ad Words and YouTube videos explained customer acquisition are the way to successful marketing. It’s tactics-palooza out there.  Twenty something junior brand managers are doing $30k TV commercials, using friends with iPhones (FWi?) to shoot video, sans storyboards.

    I’d venture to say 15% of the advertising business – the so-called Madison Avenue ad business – has moved in-house, where craft is more likely the beer near the ping pong table than the creative product.

    Cranky much Steve?

    Twenty years ago there was a creative revolution: 72 and Sunny, Mother, Droga 5, BBH,  Crispin Porter. Now Accenture is the biggest digital shop. And David Droga is chief idea macher or something.

    I’m a strategy guy. Where my brand strategies end up is for the clients to decide.  I like to think though, that if a marketer invests in a tight brand strategy, they’re smart enough to want breathtaking creative. The best bet for great work is with an agency. Where the disciplines collide and thinkers rule the roost.  Not where an assembly line of tyros with titles and the algorithm do the work.

    Rant over.

    Peace.    

     

     

     

     

    Brands as culture.

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    As the economy moves away from manufacturing toward service, which it has been doing for 25 years now, the number of people who are actually making things decreases. Desks across America are filled with people whose jobs it is to make decisions and manage others. Sure, iPhones are being manufactured, and cars are being constructed. Sure, food is being processed, packaged, sold and served.  But the number of companies doing it has decreased and the scale of those companies hugely expanded. It won’t be long before Wal-Mart has a house brand that takes over the world.

    All these people at desks, tasked with making decisions along the chain of command and trying to add value, can create a leadership nightmare.  Add to that the web offering up the ability for people to collapse the 4Ps into a single P (platform) and one can see why brands are becoming more and more important.  Branding is an organizing principle for marketing.

    The best brands are culture. The best brands lead companies. Strong brands show the way.  And align the desks.  If you have a strong brand get to know it.  Peace!