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    Brand Strategy

    Benefit Shoveling is Not Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    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!

     

     

    Branding Pablum.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Mission Health, an operating division of HCA Healthcare, is based in Asheville, North Carolina, and is the state’s sixth largest health system. In 2018, for the sixth time in the past seven years, Mission Health has been named one of the nation’s Top 15 Health Systems by IBM Watson Health (formerly Truven Health Analytics). Mission Health is the only health system in North Carolina to achieve this recognition. Mission Health operates six hospitals, numerous outpatient and surgery centers, post-acute care provider CarePartners, long-term acute care provider Asheville Specialty Hospital and the region’s only dedicated Level II trauma center. With approximately 12,000 colleagues and 2,000 volunteers, Mission Health is dedicated to improving the health and wellness of the people of Western North Carolina. For more information, please visit missionhealth.org or @MissionHealthNC.

    The above 130 words are an example of boilerplate copy; a wonderful exercise undertaken by PR (internal or external) to convey what a company “is” (in this case a regional healthcare provider), and some of its best characteristics. Unlike a brand strategy, boilerplate gets to be lengthy and inclusive. The problem with most boilerplate is it rarely acknowledges brand strategy. And for those not overly familiar with brand craft, brand strategy is not just for consumer packaged goods. It’s for all businesses.

    The above boilerplate example does a good job of sharing company provenance, scale, along with a couple of cherry-picked “bests/onlys.” It does not explain “how” it is a good health system. The closest it gets is buried at the end “dedicated to improving the health and wellness of the people…” This sentence is the same for every health system extant. It’s marketing pablum.

    What this boilerplate needs, probably in the first sentence or three is a demonstration of that so-called dedication. Branding is about claim and proof — but mostly proof. Organized proof.  While healthcare is getting better at branding but it’s still, en masse, pretty awful.

    I love the challenge of messy brands. I wait by the keyboard.

    Peace.

     

     

    Company Culture.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I read a lot about company culture.  When I first started working at McCann-Erickson I was told the culture was entrepreneurial. That translated into “Do what you think is right until a boss tells you differently.”  Or “Fall forward fast.” I guess that’s culture.

    The brand strategist in me however asks the question “Is company culture prescriptive or is it free-flowing?”  Coming from the strategy side of the business I go with the former.

    At What’s The Idea? brand strategy is defined as “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”  I certainly could add the word “culture” here but it’s kind of superfluous. Kind of implied.

    When studying anthropology at Rollins College it was a given fact that culture resulted from structuralism and/or functionalism. I forget what structuralism is but functionalism suggests that cultural behaviors are tied to functional outcomes.  Well, in brand strategy functional outcomes are prescribed. And that’s not just “sell more stuff.” It’s “sell more stuff because”…  If you are a company that makes web development easier or loan applications easier, then the company culture should be about improving usability. But sometimes culture decouples from business-winning pursuits, e.g., ping pong tables or kegerators. And that’s off-brand if you ask me.

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Claim.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The claim for the TV show Soul Train was Black Joy is good TV.  How do I know that? Because I heard the statement on NPR and decided to make a blog post about it.  I’m in the claim business. I study these things.

    While most consultants are paid by the page, delivering hundred-page analyses of business strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats, I deliver a single page, boiled down from all that information. A page with one claim and three proof planks (three discrete, actualized behaviors that allow consumers to believe the claim.)

    In the case of Soul Train, conveying joy and using dance and music as the conduit was genius.

    “A bottle so distinct, it could be recognized by touch in the dark or when lying broken on the ground” was the brief written in 1915 to the designers of the Coke bottle. Pretty short, pretty sweet. Today I’m sure a marko-babbling brand manager could write a good 20-page brief on the topic.

    The work of the brand planner — for master brand strategy development at least — is to amass as much information about customer care-abouts and brand good-ats as one can, then boiling it all down into a single statement of value. Ava DuVernay recently said about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion “It came from a place of absence. Now it comes from a place of abundance.”  Well brand claims are all about coming from abundance and moving toward a place of absence… of singularity. A singular, powerful, endemic claim.

    Master brand strategy is the most important work in all of marketing.

    Peace.

     

    Dynamic Strategy?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I like EP and Co and strategy lead Chris Plating, though I never would have changed the original agency name Erwin Penland to EP. (Stay on track Steve.) Everybody in the ad business is looking for an edge and to that end EP and Co. just launched a new research modality called EPiQ. 

    I read the introductory LinkedIn post a couple of times and am not exactly sure what it is.  Marko-babble is a bear. It may be some sort of online panel that works as concept testing and creative testing.  And it seems to throw off consumer insights, either through AI or manual data nerds. Nothing wrong with that. And the name is okay. 

    Where I get rubbed though is when I see explanations like this, from new hire Sheniqua Little, who comes to EP with serious chops: “Compelling research results fuel dynamic strategy and creative.”

    The words dynamic strategy, in the context of brands, is an oxymoron. Brand strategy should not change with the wind. Even if consumers are driving that wind.  Brand strategy is built upon what consumers want most and what brands deliver best. (In What’s The Idea? parlance, those are care-abouts and good-ats.)

    This tool seems to suggest strategy can change in almost realtime — as long as its consumer derived.  I love consumers trust me. But the Yin and the Yang of branding is a balance. Changing your strategy based on consumer Galvin Skin Response is a mistake. Lock down your brand strategy then use EPiQ to test communications effectiveness of tactics. But not the strategy.

    Thoughts?

    Peace.

     

     

     

    In Defense of Ad Agencies. 

    By
    Steve Poppe
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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.    

     

     

     

     

    One Part Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I may have gotten this whole consulting thing wrong.  After a recent Zoom with a business consultant who was nice enough to let us look behind the curtain, it became clear that these men and women are really smart when it comes to business.  Brand planners? Not so much.

    When talking about his business proposals, it became clear that chunking it up into three parts is business-winning. Part 1 is a review of the business and situation analysis.  He conducts lots of interviews, evaluates best practices, understands success measures and establishes benchmarks. Probably lots of other B school speak and acronyms. Part 1 ends with a presentation of findings. Most notably, the findings will contain business problems impacting the bottom line. Specifically.

    Part 2 of the proposal, should you decide to accept if, is outlined as more of a strategy document. It has its own price tag.  With a proper articulation of the problem, any good business person will want to go about fixing things, so they need a strategy. The fish is nibbling at the bait. Part 2, one must imagine, will include objectives, quantification of measures, strategic option reviews and projections, and recommendations. Oh, and more interviews and some quantitative research. All of which ends in a presentation. So what does that leave?

    Part 3 is Operations. Now that the problem and strategy have been identified, someone has to build something. Change something. Make the magic happen. Part 3 of the consulting engagement is where the real money is spent. The beauty of this three-pronged approach is that initially the client is signed on for only one part but typically adds on parts 2 and 3 because they fit nicely together.   

    What the brand planning consultant does, at least this brand planner, is collapse parts 1 and 2 and go straight to the solution. Silly me. Rather than spend up to a year laboring over 3 parts, I use agile techniques. I get to strategy fast. Straight to sausage. Oh, and at a fraction of the cost or the business consultant. Clients don’t measure me by the pound of paper I deliver but by the idea. And the organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.

    I’m a one-parter. And I like it that way.

    Peace.

    PS. And a good brand strategy is built to last. Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand strategy is indelible.

     

     

    Targeting and Brand Planning.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    For the brand planner targeting is everything.  But it can also be ruinous.  Finding the largest grouping of people that may be willing to buy your product or service is Job One.  Then finding a value proposition that the outsized target shares is Job One A.

    I recently read that Netflix has determined there are 2,000 “taste clusters” among their viewers/streamers.  Data science can cluster people pretty finitely. But in brand planning we see those 2,000 clusters as one. Finding one commonality in taste or attitude is a challenge. But hey, that’s the job.

    And no, we won’t build a brand around hangers on. People who do not care enough to commit. That would water down the target even more.     

    The challenge for the brand planner is to decide whom to exclude. Once you have a sense of outliers and why they are so, you can tighten up the key value.  Let’s face it, customers deserve more attention than hangers on.

    When doing your targeting and parsing that large target to determine their most sought after desires, don’t water it down and lose identity. Be tight with your value prop. Be discrete with your value prop. And be memorable.

    Peace.    

     

     

    Making Stuff.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Okay, I like strategy.  Sometimes it can be a difficult birth, but it’s such a noble profession.  Organizing.  That’s what brand strategy does. Inside the company, it organizes, the product, the experience and messaging.  Outside the company it enables creative counsellors and vendors to deliver selling brilliance, unencumbered by a blank page of intention.  For a creative person, having a blank page is hard. Really hard.  With a foot in the blocks at the starting line, facing in one direction, creatives can accelerate and thrive.

    All that said, creating programs, events, campaigns and communications is what gets the blood moving. Making stuff.  Be it beautiful pictures, heart-warming cinema, a raucous consumer event — these are the things consumers remember.  (Google “brand planners prayer.”) 

    I miss making the stuff that my words direct.  Watching other people make the stuff my words direct is a nice second but not a close second.  No regrets though. Advertising is a stressful business. Especially without good brand craft upon which to build.

    The tagline for Lucent Technologies, a brand I worked on years ago was “We make the things that make communications work.”  That’s brand strategy in a nutshell.

    Peace.

     

     

    Tania

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I wrote this ad in 2012 while marketing director at TEQ.  I never showed it to anyone…until now.  It was meant to be produced as a handwritten letter from a student named Tania.  Hope you like it.   

    The roof in my kitchen fell in last night.  Me and mom and my little brother had to sleep across the hall at Mrs. Junez.  Mom was so tired she fell asleep on the couch with the remote under her. I had to pull the plug on the TV to get to sleep. It took me a long time to figure out how find the TV plug without turning the lights on. Mrs Junez doesn’t like mom but she sometimes gives me molasses cookies. She always asks me if I’m doing my homework. Always.  Sometimes I fib. I don’t want to make her sad.

    School makes me feel normal, but it doesn’t last long enough. I wish they had it until after dinner. I love reading and gym and recess. And Friday is churros day.

    Sometimes I walk home from school and look at the buildings and wonder who made them. It all started with a piece of paper.  Who is that smart? I like dreaming like that.

    My teacher sometimes says I don’t pay attention to what he’s saying. I try to. It’s hard.

    I do like it when I can go to the Smartboard, though. It’s like I’m the teacher.

    Tania

    Everything you need to know to teach a child is in their eyes.

    Teq. The eyes have it.

    An Educational Development company.

    Interactive White Boards, Professional Development, Usability Training

    You don’t have to be  great writer to create a connection. Oh, and this ad was on strategy: Illuminating Learning.

    Peace.

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