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Yearly Archives: 2016

Stitch Fix Brand Planks

By
Steve Poppe
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0

stitchfix

I’ve been writing a lot lately about how brand strategy is the perfect intersection of customer care-abouts and brand good-ats. Earlier this week I posted that it’s best to have good-ats as part of company DNA rather than just build them based on customer needs research.

Enter Stitch Fix, a very cool clothing start up that melds the best of the online web retailing with features of brick and mortar clothing stores. Stitchfix has built its business around convenience, surprise and renewal. It’s genius. And addictive.

The brand planner in me loves what I interpret as the company’s three brand planks: “personalized,” “better every time,” and “on your time.” This organizing principle for product, experience and messaging is unique and, if done well, highly defensible.

The website lists these three things as benefits, which is another word for care-abouts.  They are presumably brand good-ats but time will tell. This is a case where a start-up has to build the good-ats as the business matures. And course-correct in real time.  But you can see how having a plan, an organizing principle and commitment to brand strategy can make it work.

If Stitch Fix gets benefit delivery right it is going be a high-flier.

Peace.

 

 

 

Popping New Brand Strategy Questions.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

popping the question

What’s The Idea? readers know my brand planning framework revolves around the mining of proof.  Proof of actions, deeds and results. But how does one mine for proof?  Google might use the algo. Me? I ask questions. Done well, questions are the lubricant that bring forth critical values.

I’d be fibbing if I told you the battery of questions I use is unique to each investigation. That said I’m constantly adding, subtracting and thinking of question to help in discovery. Following are two new questions worth sharing.

What about this product or service heroic? Heroes are what make great books and movies. It’s what kids aspire to. Saviors of the neighborhood. Heroes are what make countries, religions and cultures great. Heroes are passed down generationally. This question requires thought and may take some prodding. Best to ask it early in the interview so it can be thought about if not readily answerable.

What about this product or service will stand the test of evolution? Students of natural selection understand the scientific order that culls out bad traits and preserves good. Genes that improve an organism will, over time, outlast the destructive ones. This question is meant to find brand strengths through a new lens. A scientific lens.

I can’t wait to pop these questions. Always be learning. And evolving.

Peace.

 

An Extensible Recipe for Business Failure.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Growth Hacking is an idea for the times.  I’m kind of sure it’s a bad idea.

Here’s a definition from Wikipedia:  

Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business. Growth hackers are marketers, engineers and product managers that specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business. Growth hackers often focus on low-cost alternatives to traditional marketing, e.g. using social media, viral marketing or targeted advertising[2] instead of buying advertising through more traditional media such as radio, newspaper, and television.[3]

I don’t take issue with rapid experimentation across marketing channels. I do believe, though, product development as a hack is a little iffy. If growth hacking is a synonym for research and development (R&D) that’s fine. But using the web to randomly and quickly build a business case is goofy.

When it comes to growth hacking, start-ups or recalibrating business better know their good-ats. They shouldn’t look to the web to find out what people want. Brand planning is about good-ats and care-abouts. At What’s The Idea? brand strategy is an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.  It’s business strategy writ small.  Too much focus on care-abouts and not enough focus on good-ats is an extensible recipe for business failure. You may want to look like Cinderella but you are who you are.

Growth is what businesses aspire to. How they get there and how they get to success is a result of planning, learning and commitment. An hour-long presentation on growth hacking may make you feel all warm inside, but it’s not a sustainable business approach.

Peace.          

 

Attack Ads in Politics.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand strategy is all about playing offense.  The organizing principle behind brand strategy (1 claim, 3 proof planks), which drives product, experience and message is designed to build value and engender loyalty. This claim and proof array all brand and consumer-positive. Offense.

In this presidential election season, Super PACs are spending lots of money supporting their candidates of choice. But contrary to consumer brand building, Super PAC money goes into playing defense. Rather than say good things about their candidate, Super PACs line up bad things to say about opponents. We’ve seen and heard these ads and they’re not pretty… but they can be effective. The John Kerry Swift Boat ads helped put his candidacy asunder. Typically, one big ad can have an effect.  But those Swift Boat ads are rare. What about all the other drecky ads? They just create confusion.

Just as consumer brands are built using an organizing principle steeped in positivity, PAC attack ads must be organized for negative effect. They should also follow the 1 one claim, 3 proof plank construct. Otherwise, PACS are just throwing tons of negatives at the wall.  It can become cartoonish.

I’m sickened by all the negative advertising in politics and wished it didn’t happen but, hey, it’s life.  And it’s a big business. Why do it poorly?

Peace.

 

Fearful Advertising.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is one of the greatest healthcare organizations in the world. Perhaps the greatest. As a result, it has also become a powerful, powerful brand. It is exactly what it is…and lives up to the brand claim “the best cancer care anywhere.”  Its words spread through stories and proof. Patients and caregivers syphon proof off their experiences and share. (Branding revolves around “claim” and “proof.”)

MSKCC more scienceA couple of years ago MSKCC appointed new advertising agency Pereira O’Dell. I complimented the shop and client on the new brand strategy claim “More Science. Less Fear.” Having worked in healthcare branding for a long time, studying the claim and proof arrays of the top area hospital systems (disclosure: I penned one of those strategies), I rubbed my hands together in anticipation of some good work to follow.

This past week I was listening to an MSKCC radio spot and was disappointed to hear talk about serving the “mind, body and soul” of patients. This type of copy is what you’d expect from a religious-based group or a second tier hospital. From a system that can’t differentiate based on the science. This ad hurt MSKCC in two ways. It didn’t deliver on the brand promise, wasting money, time and resources, but more importantly it dumbed down the sanctity of the brand, making MSKCC peddlers of healthcare marko-babble like many others.

If anyone can educate the populace about the science of cancer care, using real proof, it’s Memorial.

This isn’t that hard. Find your claim and prove it every day.

Peace.

 

 

Social Media SME.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

At what are you expert? It’s a question I ask clients looking to fathom and navigate the world of social media. If the answer is “nothing,” social strategy becomes more of a grind. If you (or your brand) are expert in something and it is in great demand, your social media strategy can be quite easy.  That said, if your expertise is in a commodity market, say search engine optimization or low-priced appliances, the difficulty picks up again.

It is the strategist’s your job to find an expertise or sub-expertise that really makes the brand best in class. A friend of mine is a fish wholesaler in NYC. He sells to sports stadiums, cruise lines and top fine dining chefs. His expertise is in getting fresh fish to clients faster than competition at reasonable prices. Inside his head is more information about fish seasonality, migration, weather, shipping and demand than 99% of the people on the planet. Not great cocktail discussion but something of great interest to tops chefs and buyers.

He’s s SME. A Subject Matter Expert. Not a journalist. Not an MBA. Not an oceanographer. When he has something to share about fish quality, futures and price, people listen. Taking that information and creating a social program around it – and finding the right followers – is a business home run. Commercially, it’s a market-changer.

At what are you or your brand expert? That’s where you want to start.

Peace.

 

 

Hitting the Wall a Brand Planning Trick.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I learned a trick from ad agency president Brendan Ryan many moons ago that has contributed mightily to my brand planning framework.  Mr. Ryan, who ran FCB New York, would ask for a print campaign to be tacked to the wall. And sans any briefs or account foreplay he’d review what he saw, explain the “idea,” and identify which ads fit.  It was after-the-fact ad forensics.

This approach also works in brand planning.

I did some work for an agency that handles a top 5 financial institution. I was helping the agency create a strategy for the holding company brand (sitting atop the retail and commercial bank, personal wealth group, and investor relations). Our strategy wasn’t being served up as a corporate branding assignment per se, just an organizing principle for delivery of the brand online (wink wink).

Anyway, one of the tools we used was borrowed from Mr. Ryan – we reviewed all the content on the site (stories, copy and videos) and pasted them up on a wall. Our team was then to cluster the content into discreet, organic segments. If we couldn’t find a segment, we were to move outliers off to the side.

I can’t share business secrets but this forensic approach helped show us where the centers of gravity were. Our next step was to make sure these clusters were customer “care-abouts” and brand “good-ats.” If they weren’t, we needed to make corrections.

It’s a wonderful brand planning exercise and one I must say was borrowed from another. Peace.

 

 

Microsoft’s Mobile Marketing Mistake

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Microsoft has blown billions on the mobile phone business. Yes, billions. The Nokia purchase was smart I thought but never got its head above water. All the problems can be tracked back to marketing.   Marketing is best defined by the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion).  The product, sadly was the first misstep. The handsets could have been differentiated and weren’t. The tiles software is still a good bet, but it could have gone farther to draw in desktop features. Desktop tendrils. The cloud utility and automatic back-up of photos was clunky and poorly executed.  With Price, they should have won the day.  As I wrote in posts years ago, Microsoft could have bought share by giving away low end Windows OS smart phones. Didn’t happen.

Promotion didn’t happen – or if it did I didn’t see an ad.  As for place, they ceded control of handsets to HTC and others (after the Nokia hardware group was trimmed) making it hard to actually find a Windows phone at a Verizon store.

Satya Nadella should be applauded for focusing the company. However, mobile was not a business he should have left. People are carrying two mobile phones around for God’s sake. It may be a growth business…ya think?

Peace.

 

The “C” Word in Branding.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Computer Sciences just announced a merger with the call center and enterprise services businesses of HP Enterprise (recently split off from the HP computer business). I’m not sure what they will call the entity but wouldn’t be surprised if it was named Computer Sciences. The new company will be dedicated to services, a la managing other people’s networks and call centers. I’m thinking there will not be a lot of PhDs at this company or a huge R&D budget. Ergo, “science” may not be the most accurate and descriptive word for the name.

I’d go with something new. It will be interesting to see what they come up with. Computer Sciences was a huge brand in its day. But with tooth brushes having computers in them, they may want to jettison the “C” word and find some new naming territory.

Peace.                                     

 

Scott Weiland Brand.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

scott-weilandI went to see Scott Weiland the week before he died. It was his second to last show. I suggested my son go to see him; Scott being one of the great rock voices of all time. Mr. Weiland’s gravelly pipes and larger than life presence on the rock scene couple of decades ago was an American dream.  His Stone Temple Pilots were right up there with Nirvana (Kurt Cobain), Soundgarden (Chis Cornell) and Pearl Jam (Eddie Vedder) as vocalist-centered superior bands that walked Grunge to the fore of the American consciousness.

But Mr. Weiland’s voice was not the same toward the end of his life. My son scratched his head a little when hearing Plush and other songs sung in a higher register. Sans gravel. Sans primordial ooze.  

Mr. Weiland’s voice was his brand. Addictions aside, it must have been hard to lose his most important performance asset. Pitchers lose their fast ball, football players lose their legs, finger-pickers lose their dexterity. So when we refer to people as brands (it’s a thing) we aren’t being fair. People age and their skills diminish. Beauty Kim Novak aged. Patty Smith aged. Some do so gracefully and allow their sso-called brands to do so as well.

People are not brands, however. I just wish Mr. Weiland had realized it and allowed himself to evolve and reinvent before his final act. He was a great. A historic great.

Peace.  

 

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