Intentional Brands.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

If I hear someone say the “intentional” again in a brand strategy meeting I am going to lose my cookies. It’s the most overused word in the space. The other day someone was talking about the word and was able to articulate it in ways I haven’t. In fact, it caused me to invent a new word. Actional. Okay, so it’s not a new word, it’s just underused.

The difference between intentional and actional is the former hasn’t happened.  It’s just meant to happen. It’s just talk.  As in Make America Great Again.  A nice intentional saying, but the actions that result are, well, you know…

It seems anyone who is intentional is a good talker but, perhaps, not such a good doer.

I wrote a couple of days a post entitle “Talk about it or be about it.” Same pew. Years ago I used to argue that people who claimed to be authentic, probably weren’t. Or, car salespeople who said trust me, protested too much.  

So don’t tell everyone your brand is intentional, just be and do the strategy. Find a claim you want to plant your flag on and act on the three ways you earn or prove it.

A life lesson I learned early on was that talking about yourself is boring. Being yourself, that’s a good beginning.

Good words for brand strategists.  Lose the work!

Peace

 

 

Legally Addictive Foods.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Legally Addictive is a startup in the food manufacturing space located in Asheville, NC. The founders are an ex-TV producer and a NYC marketing exec. The company is off to a great start creating and selling delectable cookie/crackers slathered in chocolate and other confections. In addition to offering a tasty, dare I say, addictive product they’re starting with a great brand name. Legally Addictive passes the Is-Does test, that is, you know what the product is and what the product does. Thirdly, they have great packaging, wonderful design and a unique color palette. Whoever the art director is hitting on all cylinders.

From a blocking and tackling standpoint the company also excels. Distribution today includes airports, Whole Foods, various specialty stores, and direct-to-consumer. Food startups can be either the hardest or easiest business to be in. Signing up retail partners is a bitch. Getting shelf space in grocery, convenience, and drug is ridiculous and don’t get me started on shipping but with a category-disruptor and smashing taste, a product can almost sell itself. And that’s Legally Addictive’s story.

Another feather in the brand’s cap is these cookies are not, I repeat not, good for you. In a sea of better-for-you claimants in the food business these guys are nonapologetic. The only positive thing you can say health-wise is that rather than eat a half bag of Oreos, one might get away eating a couple of cookies and be sated.

There is clearly a market and demographic for indulgent sweets.  The product is not inexpensive so the targeting has to be right. Consumers who can, do and will eat less-than-healthy (Can we establish that as a category?) foods are often young and/or not well-heeled. Finding youngish consumers who are higher earners limits the target. But one that can make media placement more focused and less expensive.

Keep your eyes open for Legally Addictive cookies.  They are coming to a store near you.  

Peace.

Talk About It or Be About It.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

A football player on a recent podcast offered up some sage advice. You can “Talk about it or be about it.”  This ladies and gentlemen, is a fundie of great branding. Don’t flood the airways and byways with commoditized claims — scorch the earth with deeds. Deeds not words.

Humans have always searched for truth. Fire burns. Projectiles harm. Being nice to people is better than being mean. Deeds. Not words. Good brand planning begins with actions not words. Evidence, not prose. While “strategy is your words,” to quote Mark Pollard, it is actions and proof that convince customers. That’s what should drive strategy…and builds brands.

Over the years I have interviewed thousands of consumers. I’ve printed out stacks and stacks of paper containing transcribed observations, feelings and opinions. But all I care about is evidence of value. Evidence of product superiority. It is the highlighted evidence buried in the transcripts that the drive brand strategy.

You can tell me Memorial Sloan Kettering has the best cancer care anywhere, but if you show me the statistics of how they treat the toughest cases, that’s proof.

Commodity claims are just that. Brains are desensitized to unsupported claims but they can process proof.

Peace.     

 

 

 

 

Proof and Drama.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand strategists like me know that the arrow to the heart of consumers is proof.  Make a claim then support it with proof. Not unsupported superlative.

A Geico radio ad I heard this morning rated Geico with 97% customer satisfaction. That’s proof. All the other stuff in the spot, mostly entertainment and Gecko-ness, was flah-flah-flah.  On one hand I applaud them. It’s a customer-facing proof point. On the other hand, it’s just data. And data alone has become, A.) not really believable and B.) boring. 

Copywriters and art directors once cared about boring. About drama. “Chat GPT, tell a 97% customer satisfaction story with drama.”  I fault the ad agency for this. And the creative directors. It’s lazy ad craft. Tell a dramatic and fun real customer sat. story then say, “Imagine 97 out of 100 people saying this about your product.”  Something.

Let’s find “proof” then deliver it in an exciting wrapper. 

Peace  

 

Organized Proof and The C-Suite.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

C-level executives have been known to devalue brand strategy. Politely, they nod in presentations but deep down they view it as more of a marketing thing than a business thing.  “All altruism, no profit.” 

What’s the Idea? is 100% about making money for clients. Hard stop.  

Here’s how:

Let’s start with some framework background.  At What’s The Idea? brand strategy comprises one brand claim supported by three proof planks. The proof planks are organized to bring the brand story to life, both backward and forward. Proof is the secret sauce of a powerful brand strategy. Proof convinces people.  

And while a small proportion of What’s The Idea? brand claims might come off as altruistic, mark my words the executional planks proving the claim are hard-as-nails selling points. Think of the brand claim as the strategic packaging surrounding tangible slam-dunk reasons to buy. By themselves brand claims — which may never be seen by a consumer– are headline-like. Sometimes pithy, sometimes boring, they are ideally poetic and memorable. When CEO’s, CFOs and Chief Marketing Officers, people steeped in the business fundamentals, hear the claim, the feel it and they get it. It speaks to them. Especially when brought to life by the proof planks.

Proof sells. Organized proof is branding.   

Peace.

 

Hellmann’s Haters Campaign.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s a new Hellmann’s Mayo radio spot out now which breaks a key branding rule.  The ad promotes a number of new mayo flavors yet the creative talks about Mayo Haters. The introduction of the new flavors is a means to turn Mayo Haters around. As a father who taught his young kids never to say the word “hate,” explaining it’s the ugliest word in the world, I’m not a fan. I know haters is a new member of the American lexicon but as the center of a new advertising idea, it’s a branding fail.  

Many years ago, we undertook some quantitative print ad testing for AT&T. In one of the ads a person was doing something dangerous. Standing too close to a cliff. The ad tested poorly. It seems danger is off-putting to consumers.  I therefore suggest negative imagery, and negativity is not a good selling scheme. Once a colleague told me P&G would never allow their products to be filmed thrown into the garbage. Even when the product was used up. Bad Ju Ju.

I’m no prude but I do subscribe to the idea that negativity sends a conscious and subconscious message to consumers that’s not brand-positive. This ain’t no disco and it isn’t Never Never land but good branding is about establishing positive associations. Focusing on negatives is not brand-productive.

Peace.

 

Common Brand Values

By
Steve Poppe
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0

“Advice Is Our Craft” is the UBS wealth management advertising line. Which means, for all intents and purposes, it’s their tagline. And brand claim. At least that’s the way one might parse it in the brand strategy business. It’s singular. It’s an important customer care-about. And it is pithy.

What it is not is unique.

Most every wealth management company offers advice. Brand strategists will tell you it is best to have a brand strategy claim built around a unique value. I heartily agree.  But sometimes a customer care-about is so strenuous a second-tier value is not a market mover. So, what do you do? 

What you do is adapt your culture, ethos and customer experience to that value. Just know it’s hard to own when other competitors profess the same thing. And it’s expensive. But if you truly commit and put as much wood behind the arrow as possible it can work. It must become a singular undertaking. It can’t be diluted. In the case of UBS, it has to be operationalized and proven every day. 

Strategy, as Mark Pollard rightly states, is your words. It’s the deeds that deliver the brand. And that is particularly so with a common brand value.

Peace.

 

 

Claim, Proof and Kandee Johnson.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I write a lot about “claim and proof.” ChatGPT tells me so.  I write about it because it’s fundamental to my business.  Claim and proof is the proof of my brand strategy chops.

I came across a “Poster” by the name of Kandee Johnson 10 plus years ago when working with Megan Kent and David Kessler on a brand called Plus White, an inexpensive teeth whitening system. Kandee is a prolific social media icon, who at the time posted about inexpensive fashion hacks. Kandee was a Plus White fan and one of her hacks was buying the whitener by itself sans boxed system and using it with a $1.99 sports mouthguard, thereby cutting the cost in half. Kandee would also demonstrate how to cut up a tee-shirts to make a cool dress/cover ups (sorry, man speak) and she also counseled fans to use olive oil to clean make-up brushes.

Kandee’s vibe was supportive of her audience, penny-wise and very, very real. And her creatively was unbound. Her followers loved her and still love her today as her career has taken off. The reason I bring her up is because her “authenticity” (that’s a joke, I hate that word), her motivation was grounded in proof. Some, today, might call them receipts. Kandee has a role, a motivation, and she delivers it every day.

I often say advertising is 90% claim, 10% proof.  Kandee built a mini empire out of proof. Much love to Kandee Johnson and all her loyal followers.

Peace.

 

 

Brand Strategy Framework

By
Steve Poppe
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0

“Tell me about your brand strategy framework?”, is the single best question you can ask brand planners when evaluating whether to hire them.

If they can’t answer the question in less than 30 seconds or write it on the back of a business card (ageism alert!), ask them to. Don’t get caught up in the gobbledy.

I’ll be first to say developing brand strategy is not a simple process.  Love-at-first-sight, it’s not. It requires lots of study.  Lots of time. And lots of thinking.  But the delivery of that thinking — the packaging of that thinking needs to be understandable. Specific. Thorough. And memorable.  (Current brand-o-babble theory asserts it should also be “differentiated” or “distinctive.” To that I will say, the product should be differentiated and distinctive but that’s a story for another post.)

If brand strategy were a science, it would fail. You can’t measure the value of voice and personality against sales. Ah, the ephemora. Strategy, by its very nature is measurable. It works or it doesn’t. But not if it can’t be articulated. And that requires a tight framework.

Ask your brand strategist about their framework. Have them show you the formula.

Peace.

Steve@WhatstheIdea

Brand Stalker?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The metaphor is a critical tool of the brand planner. It creates context, clarity and often gives creative people a source of inspiration. Brand planners ask a lot of questions and do a lot of research on their brands.  Planners — the good ones at least — are like dogs on a bone. We immerse ourselves in a category and have a hard time letting go. Even when sleeping. It’s stalker-ish.

Dare I say, for a one- or two-month paid engagement I often find myself a brand planner for life. Always on the hunt for proof of brand claim. It’s no way to run a business yet it is part of the planning life.

Strategy is timeless. It never really stops. In as much as I need to dump the cache on past clients, I just can’t. Unhealthy? You decide. But it’s part and parcel of the curiosity that is the brand planner’s world.

So, me droogies, stalk away on your brands. Find a good strategy and prove it.

Peace.

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