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    Tactical Measures.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Much of marketing today is tactical. We build stuff we can measure to see if it impacts sales.  Without measurement, how do marketers know they are any good? Measurement is the holy grail of marketing. ROI baby ROI!

    When measurement isn’t going well – read, sales are flat/down/slowing – senior marketers often default to the brand value of the effort. “Well, we may not have sold as many products as we had hoped, but consumers like us more or engaged more.”  The advertising industry thrived for years using this thinking.

    Here’s the problem. Tactics, ungoverned by brand strategy are just random hits. To use a baseball metaphor, they are not wins. Even runs aren’t wins. I coined the term tactics-palooza a number of years ago, when Google and the web were milking ad budgets for dollars. Tactics not strategy. Follow the clicks. Better yet, follow click-to-buy.

    Well, its still true. Tactics and so-called performance marketing are the realm of the day. I’m all for measurement but measurement against a brand strategy is the way to role. With an overlay of sales.  On-brand tactical sales are how you build a brand. And loyalty. And sustaining businesses.

    Marilyn Laurie, a great FCB strategist of yore used to say “Make deposits in the brand bank.”  Not the tactical measurement bank.

    Peace.

     

    Tool. Or Not a Tool.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Just reading Abigail Posner’s bio on LinkedIn. It spoke of her brand and marketing approach connecting “data, people and humanity.”  Nice bracketing.  And earlier this week I was speaking to a brand strategist Kevin Perlmutter whose book Brand Desire delves into neuromarketing and emotional positioning for brands. An approach not dissimilar from that of pal Megan Kent, whose book Build an Irresistible Brand: Learn the 7 Brain-Friendly Branding® Drivers is a classic.

    Both of these paths — one broad one focused — sparked a realization for me about my practice. Data, you see, is a tool. Technology another tool. And the study of humanity (through the limbic system or amygdala) analytical tools.  Strategy, on the other hand, is not a tool. Strategy is a plan. An ongoing plan with a particular goal. A strategy has a focus and success measures.  Tools definitely get you to strategy, but they are not the endgame.

    Now, I’m not a “creative.” Nor a data analyst or technologist. Or Margaret Mead or Erik Erickson for that matter.  But I do know powerful, indelible brand ideas. I have a process (tool) and a framework (tool) but what I sell is strategy. The moneymaker.

    Peace.

     

     

    Little Q & Large A.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I was driving through the Beaucatcher Tunnel this morning, listening to NPR (Don’t judge, okay judge.) and knew I was going to lose reception for a few seconds. Upon realizing I would miss the interviewer’s question it struck me the important part was the answer, all things considered. Hee hee.

    As a brand planner who has made a modest living asking questions, it was a bit of a slap in the face. Or was it? 

    Upon reflection it hit me all my brand strategies are the result of answers. Consumer answers. SME answers. Corporate answers. Market insights built on answers. In fact, many of my best questions are redirects and probes based upon answers. As a quiet self-promoter I will admit it takes skill to set interviewees at ease and get them to truly share.  Tone, interest, humor, self-deprecation, eagerness to learn — in addition to truly listening — are all tools the brand planner needs to generate fruitful responses. No doubt.

    That said, were I to weight questions versus answers, I’d have to go with answers every time.

    Any answers?

    Peace.

     

     

     

     

    A Brand Strategy Regret.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    It’s funny when “work stuff” resurfaces years later. Especially in strategy. 

    A while back I worked for a reseller of interactive classroom white boards. I trod the halls of many K-12 schools, interviewing teachers, principals, administrators and technology professionals. After much discovery on a once-in-a-lifetime assignment, I landed on a cool brand strategy. “Leading The Educational Spring.” The CEO didn’t buy it.  Timewise it was during the Arab Spring and just after the famous Broadway play Spring Awakening. Contextually and culturally it carried a good deal of meaning. The strategy intent: classroom and learning was in need of reform after 50 years of chalkboard teaching.

    The new brand strategy, the one the CEO agreed to, was “Illuminating Learning.” Not bad and certainly endemic. However today, many years later, while reading something in the NYT I’m struck that I may have let the brand down. I should have fought harder.

    Movements you see – Strawberry Frog’s Scott Goodson and Chip Walker would agree – are stronger than claims.  If you can keep them. (Thanks Ben Franklin.) And the Educational Spring had a chance to be a movement. A movement with a single brand as champion.

    (Caveat: Saying you’re going to create a movement and doing it are two different things.)

    Sometimes you need to fight for a strategy. The brand planners’ dilemma. 

    Peace.

     

     

     

    Personal Branding is a Fool’s Errand.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I was reading someone’s advice on personal branding on LinkedIn recently. Oy. Part of that advice was to first get in touch with yourself. The personal brand advocate then suggested listing people you admire, and articulating the traits you admire most about them. Ironic much? 

    After a boil down of all those traits, one assumes the job is to cobble together a path forward for oneself — a strategy for one’s personal brand. Still with me? 

    As if one could study, copy and paste together a life. Or personal ethos upon which a life is built.

    They had me shaking my head at the idea of personal branding, but tools for personal branding?  Try inputting that one into Chat GPT.  You’d fry AI forever. Hee hee.

    At What’s The Idea? all customer care-abouts and brand good-ats go into the stock pot. What come out when the process is done is one claim and three proof planks. It’s a bloody horrible process. Important things must be boiled away to get the equation to three planks. People are too complicated to get to three. Products not so much.

    Don’t wrestle with personal branding. Don’t do it. It’s a fool’s errand.

    Peace.

     

     

     

    Big Ass Focus.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Performance marketing is a huge thing now.  Well, it’s always been a thing but Google and digital advertising have made advertising more trackable so it’s even more of a thing. 

    I sat through an AOR (agency of record) selection process not long ago and here a list of tactics outlined in the briefing doc: Search engine, display, programmatic display, social media, native advertising, content syndication, direct lead gen, new platform testing, outbound email marketing, sponsorships, affiliate marketing, enterprise partnerships, brokers, marketplaces, advertorials, event marketing, out of home, digital audio (podcasts) — dare I say, the list went on.

    Most of these tactics are trackable, read: performance marketing. (At least for the last touch, i.e., the last consumer touch before the website is hit.) If your head isn’t spinning, you are not a performance marketing nerd.

    The problem with this tactics-palooza, is that not all metrics lead to Rome. The results often lead to a cacophony of “things that work.” Marginally. And when one optimizes this cacophony, you have a doggy’s dinner of strategic direction. A compass spinning out of control. Is it any wonder marketers are beginning to talk about brand again?

    Performance marketing needs to also be brand marketing. And for that to happen, there needs to be a brand plan — a litmus for what tactics are making deposits in the brand bank.

    I often speak to clients about “beyond the dashboard” planning. And that starts with big ass focus. Not the dashboard.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Strategy Freebee.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’m hungry for brand work.  Blogging’s fun but planning and talking to people about consumerism is funner. The problem is, I charge money for my work and when I’m not on a job, the planning field lies fallow.  

    My life is cursed with a brain that watches marketers shoot in the dark. My blood curdles when I see ads, pr, social, and promotion that lacks brand strategy. The owners of this errant marketing will tell you they have a business strategy — to make more money — yet they think by publishing their brand or company name, surrounded by some generic sales effluvium, sales will appear.  That doesn’t work today. As I watch all this silliness play out in the marketplace I wonder what could be. If organized.

    A brand strategy is an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. Are you organized? Sure, you say. But tell me how. Tell me how today!  I’m giving it away. I’m giving away my critique of your organizing principle.

    Write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com. It’s a limited-time only freebee. I’m hungry.

    Peace.

     

    You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I posted earlier this week that I don’t take direction when doing a master brand strategy. That may sound controversial, even dick-ish, but it’s why clients hire me.  If they could do it themselves, they wouldn’t need outside counsel.

    Back in the 80s when diagnosed with depression, I didn’t know I was depressed.  I was having dizzy spells and my body was sending signals my brain didn’t pick up. A psychiatrist had to convince me.  You don’t know, what you don’t know.  If more people knew about the power of brand strategy they would be on board.  But brand owners/business owners and especially SMB chiefs think they know everything there is to know about their business. They do know lots of stuff.  But that doesn’t translate into brand strategy.  That translates into the “Fruit Cocktail Effect.” (Google it.) A common brand killer.

    Brand strategy is very delicate. Very compartmentalized. Arty. And reduced. A brand that is all things to all people is not a brand. Ads, Promotions, Packaging, Search Terms ungoverned by brand strategy are a waste of air and money.  As are any other unfettered marketing dollars.  Investments supporting a brand strategy (a boiled down set of good-ats and care-abouts”) is money well spent. Money in search of return.

    Peace be upon Veterans and veteran families this Memorial Day.

     

     

    I Am the Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Since moving to Asheville, NC I’ve had to refocus my business.  There are only a handful of large companies here; mostly mid-size and small.  These latter two classes are not waking up in the morning thinking about brand strategy.

    Most small business owners think they are the brand strategy. That is, as the owner, they believe they know everything there is to know about their business. And those savvy enough to think otherwise believe they need to find out the answers on their own, not outsource it. Understanding what motivates consumers to buy from you is just part of an owner’s day job. First they have pay the refrigerator repair man. But managing a business around consumer care-abouts is mission critical. And that’s what brand planners do. The reality is business hardware, inventory, and tools always come before strategy.

    In brand planning we call this “the problem.”

    So what’s a body to do when a SMB owner incants “I am the brand strategy?”  How do we move strategy up the needs ladder?

    It’s some real chicken and egg shit.  All thoughts welcome.

    Peace.

     

     

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