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    Brand Strategy

    Love is Not a Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I just bought a Subaru. It’s a cool and powerful brand but much of the heavy lifting has been done by the product.

    Back in 1991 I read a book entitled: Where the Suckers Moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign. Written by Randall Rothenberg, it told the story about a celebrated Subaru pitch by some hot ad agencies. I learned a good deal about the brand and, since then, things haven’t really changed that much from a product standpoint. The cars are still highly reliable, they stay on the road a long time, and perform well in the outdoors. The product is good, the brandcraft is disorganize.

    Everyone with a television knows the line “Love. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.” It’s sing- songy. Uses the brand name twice. And who doesn’t like love? Should work, right? But it doesn’t. It’s an okay retention idea, which is probably why it’s been around so long but let’s face it it’s impossible to qualify. Whose love makes a Subaru? The manufacturer? The owner? Everybody? And what is it that people love? For a diffuse love explanation, visit the love promise here.

    There is a tagline I’ve seen locked-up in some of my recent communications “Confidence in Motion.” I Googled it and it seems to date back to 2016, but who knows. It could also be an international tagline. The line is the opposite of Love. Very unkempt.

    Subaru is a wonderful product for the times. For millennials. The product has outperformed the branding and certainly the advertising. Love is not what makes a Subaru a Subaru. If it was, they’d have a better brand strategy. Peace.

     

    Turning Data Into Insights.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’m a big data guy.  Especially today when so many are treating data and science like the plaque. “My data trumps your data.  My statistics are better than yours.” But data feeds objectives. And though objectives are the metrics by which we measure success in business, they are really paint by numbers sans strategy. And a chaotic paint by numbers at that. 

    It’s okay to judge marketing activity using data reports. Drink cases sold. Percentage of beds filled at the hotel. Readmissions to the hospital for the same diagnosis. But without written, codified and adhered to strategies, what are you really measuring? And how can you monitor and affect change.

    What’s The Idea? is in the strategy business. Make no mistake.  This branding practice is not in the tactics business. Not until the master brand strategy is developed and approved. I will not create a marketing plan without a brand strategy to drive it. Brand strategy is the driver of marketing.  Without a driver, a car is on autopilot. Without a driver a car is a machine. Without a driver a brand is a random tactics generator.

    Insights are the fulcrum of data. Properly packaged and culled, insights are the fastest way to successful data.

    Peace.

     

    Smarten-up.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’m not the smartest guy on the planet. Sometimes it takes me a beat to get a joke. I didn’t get As in college until my senior year.  I can’t finish the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle (but I do help my wife finish it). This somewhat average acumen serves me well in my brand strategy practice.    

    I can tell a story, I have an ear for consumer likes and language, and have good taste in styles – all assets that contribute to my business. So there’s that.

    H.L Mencken once wrote:

    “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

    You’ve heard the expression “dumb down?” Well, when crafting brand strategy for the masses, you don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. Brand planners who are off-the-charts smart sometimes overthink and overcomplicate brand strategy. Whether challenging themselves or making points with the client or creative team it hurts the work.  Conversely, other planners who get that 330 million Americans come in all shapes, sizes and aptitudes, work to “dumb down” brand strategy to a lowest common denominator.

    I take issue with both these approaches.

    The opposite if dumb down is smarten-up. In my planning rigor, I boil down brand strategy to one claim and three proof planks.  The claim may border on common but the proof planks are certainly the “textures of belief” that appeal to consumer smarts.   

    So brand people, smarten-up your strategies. And H.L. Mencken be darned.

    Peace.    

     

    Every Company Can Benefit From Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    It has been said, Margaret Mead when CEO of the American Museum of Natural History, required every employee to undergo psychiatric counseling. Her thinking was that all people can benefit from being in touch with their inner selves and that every wo/man can benefit from better mental health.  I love this woman.

    In my opinion, every brand can benefit from being more self-aware and having better brand strategy health. Marketers are hyper-sensitive about their products. As they should be.  In service industries they are sensitive about service delivery.  Large companies have big departments dedicated to product management and product marketing. These people eat, sleep and live the product — from supply chain, to legal, to distribution, competitive position and pricing. But few people are in charge of actual brand strategy. (Large consumer packaged goods companies like P&G are the exception.)

    AT&T Business Communications Services was the first service company I knew that actually managed the brand with a brand strategy. And it worked like crazy.  I have borrower their rigor for brand management and tweaked it a bit for use in my brand strategy practice. And though my clients don’t typically have the marketing budgets and data tracking of AT&T, the theory and practice is alive and well and still very effective.

    Brand strategy, or the “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging” as I like to call it, is every bit as important and predictive of success as is proper product management.

    Write Steve@WhatsTheIdea to begin a discussion of your brand strategy and a health-check of your brand.

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Solutions.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Brand strategists and brand planners make a living uncovering problems. Sales problems, targeting problems, product problems. I could go on and on. In my brand planning rigor, I delve into customer care-abouts and brand good-ats.  When customers care about something your brand is not good at, you’ve got work to do. That’s a problem. Pretending is not a good brand strategy. So you can see why many brand planners circle the problem.

    But I like to think of care-abouts and good-ats as positive qualities.

    Unabashedly a contrarian, I don’t spend my days looking for problems but for solutions.  How does one plot success for a brand without looking for hindrances? Weaknesses? Negatives?  Well, by looking toward the light.

    Twenty years ago when baseball god Mike Piazza emerged from the NY Mets dugout with blond hair, he gave men everywhere permission to color their hair.  Did L’Oreal or other hair care companies use that moment to double the hair coloring market? Nope. An opportunity missed. A solution, sans a problem.

    Attempt to be a solution seeker not a problem solver. It’s harder work, but more rewarding.

    Peace.  

     

     

    Marketing and Branding Are Different.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I was listening to a segment on Fox Sports Radio…I said sports radio… and one of the guys was talking about the NBA logo and its value.  I may have misheard but its possible someone had suggested putting Kobi’s likeness in the logo. The talk show host, it might have been Ben Maller, was against the idea suggesting it’s bad business to mess around with a very recognizable logo — one with so much brand equity.

    He went on to say “Marketing is the battle of perception not products,” and I go all “Whoa, hold up.”

    Au contraire sir.  Marketing is, most definitely, the battle of product. “Sell more, to more, more times, at higher prices” said Sergio Zyman.

    Brand Strategy is the battle of perception. Brand Strategy is the brain work, the mental conditioning, the preference creation that leads to predisposition.  Brand strategy is words on paper that directs the mental outcomes that change consumer behavior.  Moving a consumer closer to a sale. Marketing encompasses the tactics – governing product, price, place and promotion – that activate a sale.

    These words are not interchangeable. Brand Strategy is strategy. And marketing is the mission critical plumbing that makes it happen.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Claim and the Boil Down.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    “How do you know if you have a good brand strategy?  More importantly, how do you know if a brand strategy being presented to you is any good?  

    When I present brand strategy, I’m presenting words on paper. No mood board. No customer journey montage. No recorded customer interviews. Just words. And those words, typically presented in serial, near story form, lead to a benefit claim – a single-minded value proposition capturing the emotional and logical reason to buy. Done right, the claim is pregnant with meaning and brand-positive interpretations.  Hopefully, poetic in its memorability, it will often sound like a tagline – but not a campaign tagline.

    In addition to the claim I present “proof planks.” Proof planks are the organized reasons to believe the claim. Three in total. Proof planks cement the brand claim. Without proof, a claim is just advertising.  

    Back to the “How do you know?” question. Clients know they have a good brand strategy when it captures the essence of the brand’s reason for being. And when the proof supporting that essence (claim) is not only familiar it’s filial. The job of the brand planner is not to rearrange words that make the client nod.  It is to boil down those words into a single, powerful sentence.  Like naming a baby in reverse — after they are grown.

    No easy feat.

    Peace.

     

    The Creative Brief.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Words are important. Especially to creative people.

    Creative directors, art directors and copywriters all have their own way of making decisions about what constitutes good creative. Certainly, the output is mission critical. But good creative know the ability to motivate action and preference among consumers is most critical. And that means action beyond liking the ad.

    One of the key stimuli for a creative team is the brief: the document that sets the stage and strategy for the execution. There are a couple of different type of words used in a brief: science words and sales words.  “Science” words are the what and the why – the evidence of the product and claim. “Sales” are the word flourishes that are supposed to excite the creative team into creating great ads.  The problem is, creative people don’t want to read briefs that are salesy.  Exposition that is anything more than a valid claim, specs, advantages and competitive superiority are bullshit to them.  Creative people know this because they are in the bullshit business. They see it and smell if before anyone.

    Tell a creative person your widget is more reliable and they seize up. Tell them it has a gold-plated framis that last 10 times longer and they can get to work.  

    This is why creatives prefer shorter briefs. It’s easier for them to remove the sell from the science.

    Peace.

     

     

    More Science in Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Yesterday I wrote about a famous ad campaign for Dawn Dishwasher Detergent and its use degreasing ducks following oil spills.  I mentioned that the key ingredient in Dawn, the one that cuts the grease, is a surfactant. (When a kid in the ad business I did advertising for Union Carbide Corporation surfactants.)

    As a brand consultant that touts proof in its strategy framework, you can expect I would lock on to surfactants as the proof of grease cutting. A surfactant being defined by Wikipedia as: “Compounds that lower the surface tension between two liquids, between a gas and a liquid, or between a liquid and a solid.” But the fact is, in the Dawn commercials there was no mention of surfactants. Likely, there were not even scrubbing bubbles diagrams or animations about surface tensions being broken down. Someone decided to remove the science from the spots. Just greasy ducklings then clean, happy ducklings for our viewing pleasure.

    As smart and creative as those spots were, there was a missed opportunity to educate the dishwashing public about the solution (pun intended). When someone asks why Dawn degreases better than other competitors, a reason why is always a good thing to convey.

    Science is the new black. And it will only continue to get stronger…ahem.

    Peace.

     

    Enculturation.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Many think of marketing as acquisition. Or lead generation. Business leaders in that mode don’t really understand brand planning. What often drives leaders who think this way towards branding or rebranding are: old logos, mergers and acquisitions, and boredom. Brand planning though, is all about strategy.

    At What’s The Idea? a brand plan is defined as one strategic idea (or claim) and the three support planks – planks that prove the claim and organize how business is done. A mark or logo is best if it supports that idea. Salespeople and operations people are optimized if they are guided by an organizing principle.  Those businesses who don’t get branding can’t ask employees to go out and “blue” for the company based on the color palette or “leader” for the company, based on a mission statement.  

    A brand plan makes it so that when every employee leaves the building at night they can ask themselves a strategic question about their performance. And that is the litmus test.

    I like to say “campaigns come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible.”  Leads come and go. Customers come and go.  Brands strategy should not. If it’s not about building and maintaining business through strategy, it’s not a brand plan.

    Employees come and go too, their understanding of the strategy should not. Executives talk all the time about company culture. At the best companies strategy is enculturated.  Peace.

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