Facebook Instagram X Youtube
    Latest

    Marketing

    Whither Noah?

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Noah Brier was one of my earlier poster favorites.  Unlike a paster, a poster is an original content creator and influencer. An active thought provoker in branding and digital business, Noah blogged like a dookie. Alas, during his early years he got bitten by the start-up bug and co-founded content marketing platform Percolate.  I say alas, not because Percolate isn’t a great software technology, it is I’m sure.  I say alas because Noah and his brain could have been so much more transformational for our business. Before coat, suit and tie (Jefferson Airplane reference) he was the trailblazer, maker, and idealizer our business lacks today.

    Strategy is still the stepchild of ad makers, website makers, and content creators.  It is not the commerce fulcrum it will eventually become. Noah is a strategist. A market changer.

    Today, collapsing the steps to a sale (awareness to transaction) is a tactical job. A network job.   When it becomes strategic, we’ll see breakthroughs. Breakthroughs supported by technology. And on that day sell your Alphabet sock. Hee hee. That’s when we’ll start to see some Mars shots.  And Mars shots are what we missed when “Hey, It’s Noah” went to ground.

    Peace.

     

    Proof Pulling.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    You ever sit in the yard and pull weeds?  It’s a horrible job and even worse metaphor for what I’m about to share. My job is not pulling weeds but “pulling proof.”  Brand discovery is all about the search for proof points.  What is a proof point? It’s evidence. It may be an action. A practice. Perhaps a milestone. A result.  Proof is existential.  Why is proof in branding so important? Because 90% of all consumer facing advertising, packaging and promotion is sizzle. It’s claim, claim, claim. A promise without any foundation.

    If an ad makes a claim about a product or service and the consumer asks “Why?” or says “Prove it,” is there a suitable response? Is there proof? Almost always there is not. That’s why brands today are media driven not idea driven.

    Proof is what you use in a debate to make your point. Proof well told (McCann-Erickson’s mantra is Truth Well Told) makes a superior debater.

    The process of brand discovery begins with proof pulling. Then organizing the proof into care-abouts and good-ats. Then, if you learn the language of the consumer, overlay some category culture, and organize your findings, you may have yourself a brand strategy.

    Peace.

     

    TriNet TriNet Again.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    As a person in the brand building business, outsourcing has never been a favorite business practice. Companies that have a powerful brand strategy can only make it more so by letting that strategy infuse throughout every department, touching every function.  That said, I do see how agile companies, especially startups and fast growers, can benefit by keeping their eyes on the prize

    It is for this reason that I have been a fan of TriNet, a proud and accomplished provider of administrative and HR function as an outsourced offering.  These guys do chicken right.

    Except for advertising. 

    This weekend they broke a big ad in The New York Times. “Incredible starts here” is the new company tagline. The headline spans 2-pages in the form of a neon sign spelling the word “incredible.”  The copy offers time tested generic claims such as “tailor the right solution that fits your industry needs” and lots of other junior copywriter text.

    This is an example of a smart company making ads sans brand strategy. Ads without brand strategy are dangerous. Incredible this effort isn’t.

    Quick, close your eyes and think of incredible companies. Who comes to mind? Apple? Google? Claim and proof build brands. Where’s the proof?

    Peace.

     

    Fly Paper Strategy

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    My first brand strategy was a career changer. I was at technology boutique called Welch Nehlen Groome, in Garden City, NY trying to introduce account planning to the advertising rigor. The client we were going after was ZDNet, a Ziff Davis property in the tech space. It began as a portal of all the Ziff Davis technology publications with a few interactive bells and whistles.

    Our contact at ZDNet, Michael Della Penna, passed on a PowerPoint deck from a branding shop in San Francisco. The firm clearly understood branding I thought, because it had a cool name. Dog Bowl or Bath Water or some such. Once past the title page of the deck however, I noticed the group was all hat and no cattle. 80% of the paper was marko-babble. Or more specifically, brand-babble.

    I don’t remember writing a deck to win the business. I remembered the brief. ZDNet had a good sense of their proof points; they were smart people, as techies often are.  They just didn’t get the poetry side of strategy – the claim side. Their brand planks were what they called the 3Cs: Content, Community and Commerce. ZDNet’s main competition at the time was C|Net, who matched up pretty well with the 3C.

    The Brand Idea from the brief was “For Doers Not Browsers.” A strategic cherry and rational/emotional difference maker. We won the business and the CMO of all of Ziff companies called the paper strategy galvanizing (my word, it was a long tome ago).

    I was hooked.

     

    Bipolar Brands

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I say bipolar brands and you say “not good.” While doing discovery on a branding assignment, I ladder down to a few key care-abouts and good-ats. But the big money is in getting to one. 

    Who would start a business with a product or service that was only good at one thing? 

    I once walked into the corporate headquarters of recruiting giant Adecco, an advertising client, and on the reception room wall was a huge canvas touting 40 mission words. My head spun. It was amazing we got an ad approved.

    Brand strategy is an organizing principle anchored to an idea. A single idea. Bipolar brands, tripolar brands, quadripolar brands don’t have an idea.

    Staking your claim to an idea is freeing. Cathartic. A big exhale moment.

    What’s your brand idea. What’s the idea?

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Strategy is In Low Demand.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    The brand strategy business, at least the way I define it, is not an easy one.  Brand strategy is an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.  Not a lot of people wake up in the morning asking for an organizing principle. Not a lot of people walk to their car or train after work ruing the lack of an organizing principle.  Sure they want more sales, more efficient sales, and better sales but they’re typically not feeling disorganized.   

    The typical brand consulting inquiry goes something like this “Do you redesign logos?” Or, “Do you rename?”  Sometimes they use branding and a verb, “I need to rebrand my website.”  These are not what I do. I create paper strategy. 

    Most people want marketing stuff. They don’t want strategy or operating principles. There isn’t a lot of pent up demand for brand strategy. So I often have to come in the side door — find people who are looking for stuff.  Otherwise, I’m left to educate marketers as to the role of brand strategy and that’s a schlepp.

    Peace.

     

    Endemic Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Campbell’s Soup is one of America’s most famous and well-understood brands. It’s also known as one of the most economical meals in the country.  I’ve written a good deal about the Campbell’s Soup Company, especially so when they were moving into more healthy soups about 10 years ago.  Speaking of healthy, Campbell’s bought juice company Bolthouse Farms in 2012, which was a nice idea but not an endemic category. It didn’t work.  It was reported today, times are tough Campbell’s and losses are mounting. It is selling Bolthouse and considering selling the company.

    Focus is what makes great brands. And Campbell’s is a soup company. A company that puts tasty, nutritious meals in cans. At low price points.  To get out of this hole the research and development people need to double down their efforts to recreate new soups.  New packages. New dayparts. New ingredients.

    Pho. Stock. Bisque. Bouillon. Chowder. There are probably a hundred more types of soupy meals being served around the world today Campbell’s could consider. And another hundred they could invent. Bring David Chang in for a week. Or Katie Button.

    Don’t think like Camden, NJ. Think like Asheville, NC. Mine your consumer care-abouts and brand good-ats. Peace.

     

    Twitch And You Will Find.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Twitch Point Planning is a very heady (if I say so myself) communications planning tool that is really a sales planning tool.  The goal of twitch point planning is to move consumers closer to a sale. And isn’t that what all sales activity is about?

    Twitch Point Planning uses multiple media platforms, mostly digital, to direct consumers toward a product and preference for that product. Some are willing, e.g., they are actively seeking information, and others less willing – they a not necessarily shopping but may be vulnerable to an endemic or coincidental message.  

    A twitch is a media moment when a consumer leaves what they are doing and references a different source for clarification.  For instance, I was reading Kara Swisher in The NY Times paper paper today and she gratuitously used the word “codswallop.” I twitched from paper to digital and Googled the word – a behavior she predicted. Marketers who understand, map and manipulate twitches are marketers who are playing smart chess with consumers.  

    Customer Journey and DILO frameworks are smart frameworks, but Twitch Point Planning transcend media planning.  Kara Swisher gets it, and Google gets it. Google just doesn’t quite know what to do with it yet.

    Peace.

     

     

     

    Yuengling Brand Craft.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I was driving earlier this week and noticed a couple of Yuengling billboard ads.  Billboards are hard to do as the good ones contain 7 words or less.  It seems the Yuengling tagline is “spread your wings,” which until further notice with be their brand strategy claim. (A brand strategy is one claim, three proof planks.)  Yuengling is America’s oldest brewery, but that proof shouldn’t get in the way of a fallow claim like spread your wings. Everyone wants to spread their wings, no?

    The “wings” are derived from the eagle on the label — not to be confused with the Anheuser Busch eagle logo. The rational-emotional claim for the beer, has nothing to do with the beer. Just the purchaser.  It’s the same claim used by brands in nearly every category from mobile phones to cars to airlines. (At least airlines have wings.)

    Basically, Yuengling has no brand strategy…they have a logo.  That’s how you get headlines line “go big or go bigger.”  This is lazy and poor brand craft. 

    Brand strategy is the thoughtful result of consumer care-abouts and brand good-ats.  Where ever the twain shall not meet, we get wings.

    Peace.

     

    “It’s all about focus.” Really?

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I offer a fun brand exploratory to client prospects of a certain size called “Brand Strategy Tarot Cards,” in which I turn over 5 pieces of company/product content and do a reading. One such piece is the boilerplate – the copy on the About section of the website.

    Here is a sample from a successful insurance software company, with the name changed to protect the innocent:

    At Insurance Plus, we specialize in Property & Casualty software and services. It’s our focus and our passion. We’ve been doing it for over 25 years and we do it really well.

    Over the years, we have used our deep insurance industry experience and sophisticated technology expertise to envision, develop, and deliver the most comprehensive core systems and data solutions devoted exclusively to commercial, personal and specialty lines of business.

    We continually bring new thinking and new functionality to the market. We’ve forged deep relationships with our customers and keep them ahead of the technology curve with innovative solutions and a content library that has no equal. Over the past years, we’ve acquired companies to add to the list of solutions to better serve the market and our customers.

    The lede of this About section boilerplate can be found in quote marks in the post headline. (The Really is mine.)

    Beyond the fact that they are in the property and casualty software business, the only real information here is they are 25 years old and have bought other companies.  That’s it. The rest is marko-babble.

    Branding is about pouring value into a product or service vessel. And doing so in a way that consumers can play back.

    Many companies are starved for brand strategy. It’s tragic.

    Peace.

    1...131415...208Page 14 of 208
    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv