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    Seeing Feeds Believing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Yesterday I wrote about the “ear,” as an important part of the brand planners toolkit. Today I write of the eye. Imagine yourself undertaking consumer discovery without your sense of hearing. What would you do? Smelling isn’t going to help too much, but sight may.  

    In-store observations are sight-based. Is the shopper making an impulse buy or recurrent buy? Is s/he paying attention or just picking and packing? Does price appear to be a concern? Does your consumer appear happy and optimistic or approach shopping as a trip to the dentist?

    Observe how your consumer is dressed and overlay that info on their behavior. See what type of car they drive.  Look at all the cars in the parking lot.  Look at the outside stickers on the cars. Commuters, pool members, what colleges?  Look at the repair of the cars.

    Based on the daypart, what is the demographic makeup of the consumers you are seeing? Are there clusters?  How are the people interacting with one another? Communally or independently? Once you start observing with your eyes, you can’t stop, And it get better and better.

    All of this info can be gathered with the eyes alone. The eyes do have it.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Planner Tool Kit.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Interviewing people for brand strategy development is the bread and butter of the softer side of the job. I say the softer side because brand strategy, after you get through the money making stuff, is all about people, ideas, motivations and desires (or lack thereof).    

    I was reading a thing in the NYT this morning on the topic of “asking for help” and realized how it intersects with my interviewing technique. When interviewing someone, at the beginning they are often of the belief that it will be like a journalist’s interview. That mindset is one I quickly debunk. From the outset, I let interviewees know they are the expert and I the pupil.  I try not to be obsequious (a talent), all the while sharing my genuine interest in them, their life, and the topic. My technique is not all inbound information, I share too. When you share and do so in humorous and sometimes vulnerable ways, people tend to open up.

    The consumer interview is the key to the brand strategy business.  If you have only one tool in your brand planer kit, it better be a good ear. But you need to prime the pump by sharing to have something good to hear.

    Peace.  

     

    Startup Success and Failure.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of start-ups.  Some have done well, some not so well, and a few have been just brilliant, but before their time. In the latter case, there was pend-up market demand but the timing wasn’t right. Which is a euphemism for we f’ed up. 

    In the seminal tech book “Crossing The Chasm,” author Geoffrey Moore suggests advancing from early adoptership to early majority is nirvana for start-ups. Most marketing planners (and everyone is a planner in the startup world) will say timing is key for this jump to happen. But honestly, two things are critical for startup success: pent-up demand, e.g., app-driven ride sharing, and near perfect business execution. If the product is hinky, all the demand in the world won’t help.  In fact, it can kill your product fast. Think being massively hungry and digging into a rotten tomato.  

    On the business side, awareness is important. It helps if you have an ad budget — about $5 million to make a national consumer impression. Or you can go the viral way and target key “Posters,” those who Codeword (agency) would call influencers. First user experience needs to be right. Naming needs to be right. Internal vision has to be fixed so external comms are in synch. You need to develop your own language.  This ain’t no disco.

    So startup entrepreneurs, don’t blame timing if your business doesn’t take — blame execution and lack of pent-up demand.

    Peace.

     

    Trendsetters and Trend Stoppers.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Ten percent more US citizens died of drug overdoses last year than did the year before.  Drug manufacturers in the opioid and Fentanyl businesses are making money. I’m planning on swimming in the Maggie Fischer Cross Bay Swim next summer.  It’s 5.25 miles and starts at slack tide — just before incoming tide. Were a leaf sitting on the water that time, the Great South Bay would do a bit of the heavy lifting, perhaps cutting off a half mile or so or effort. (I hope.)

    Trends and momentum are good things; especially in the science of marketing.  It’s hard to start a trend, ask most no-name or startup products. People aren’t Googling for trends that haven’t yet happened.  That’s why advertising is still important; it can help to create trends.

    Reversing trends is even harder.  Young mothers in America are buying diapers in record numbers. Getting them to potty train earlier, for instance, is swimming against the tide.  

    All marketers need to know where they are on the trend-ometer and plan accordingly.

    Brand planners need to be trendsetters and trend stoppers.

    Peace.  

     

     

    Close to the Maddening Crowd.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Marketing is about crowd building. Have you ever walked in a city, seen a long line of people and wondered what they are waiting for? Or seen 20 people on the street staring into a store window at a TV?  Crowds have a gravitational pull. When searching YouTube for an unfamiliar music artist, do you watch the video with 256,000 views or 2,600 views? Which food truck line to you get on, the long one or the short one?

    The key marketing and branding question is “How do you build a crowd?” How do you surround yourself with appeal and activity that feeds interest – that beckons?

    Start with focus. Don’t try to be too much.  When you do something, do it well. And do it differently. Be the exception not a rule.  Be clear in your value. Be easy to understand. Be easy to share. And always compel.  Most people like crowds. We are gregarious by nature.

    Make sure your marketing and branding move customers closer to a crowd.

    Peace.

     

     

    How to Stem Social Media Decline.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The New York Times reported today that the top social media platforms are either flat or declining in users.  For the first time in its young life Snap is down daily active users — 3 million this quarter compared to same qtr. last year.

    This news causes bosses to call marketing brainstorm sessions about adding users.  Often these meeting feel tactical and not strategic. Were I in one of these brainstorming meetings, I’d suggest the platform encourage current users to add additional accounts.  

    I’ve long supported the notion that each social platform has a different reason for being, with discrete lines between them. Facebook is for friends and friendship. LinkedIn for work. Instagram for the pictorial, artistic self. And Twitter for the individual, real-time persona. Your personality writ large. If social platforms get users to dig a little deeper into themselves, and expressions of themselves, they might find individuals will open additional accounts, e.g. Steve Poppe archeologist, Steve Poppe punk rock musings. The bosses might say, “Those aren’t new user.” And the bosses would be right.  But these multiple accounts would be adding incremental interest to the platform and fuel greater overall interest and, more importantly, time on site. And isn’t that a strategy requirement?

    Peace.

     

    Brand Strategy San Serif.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’m not much of a cook but I’m certainly a student. What’s The Idea? uses a number of cooking metaphors in its daily operation. Many of the tenets of good cooking are also valuable in brand strategy. One such tenet is “Don’t use too many ingredients.”  The more ingredients used, the more likely the main component of the dish becomes obscured.

    My uncle Carl taught me the best baked clams are the ones with the least amount of flavor enhancers. See the clam. The same for chicken parmesan. No sauce, just a brilliant tomato slice or two atop the golden brown cutlet.

    Brand strategy development is about evaluating customer care-abouts and brand good-ats and selecting only the top three — the three with the most flavor (or most complementary flavors).  Most importantly, these three brand planks must support the brand claim, or, following the metaphor, the main protein.

    Brand strategy is best served with one claim and three proof planks. It’s not over-complicated. It’s easy on the senses. And the consumer palate is very understanding.

    Leave Michelin stars for the true chefs. Complexity in brand strategy rarely works.

    Peace.

     

     

    Starbucks Overindulgence.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Starbucks idea to deliver coffee (in China) is a bad one. I’m no economist but adding overhead to the business by way of delivery personnel, equipment, insurance (ish), and degradation of product (e.g., cold coffee) is a lose-lose.  But more importantly, if you make the coffee and tea more available during different dayparts in an “always-on” fashion, you dilute the special coffee reboot moments for which Starbucks is famous.

    A mid-afternoon coffee run during a particularly in extremis day at work is a wonderful treat. Starbucks can and should be a daily morning occurrence but overdoing it can make it less of a delight. This was the problem with high-flying Krispy Kreme Donuts. On or about the time the stock went public, Krispy Kreme turned on the water hose and made the donuts too available. Expanding retail distribution with little brand experience forethought. You could fill up your gas tank and get a dozen. They oversaturated the market and our sweet tooth for the special treat lost its allure.

    Good marketers always should leave customer wanting a little more.

    Starbucks needs to slow its roll.

    Peace.

     

    Magazine Retrenchment…for now.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    This morning’s news included a piece on Conde Nast shuttering 3 big magazine properties. The company lost in excess of $120M last year keeping print properties churning. Magazines have been under web attack for over a decade. Magazines aren’t in the readership business, they’re in the entertainment and enlightenment business. As audio and video production became more common, entertainment and enlightenment moved to the web, albeit watered down.

    Conde Nast will get it right.  It just needed this kick in the ass. Content experts are content experts. Content poseurs are content poseurs.

    The death of radio was predicted and it still reaches 93% of US adults weekly. The end of network TV was also predicted…nope.  

    Sorry publishers like Conde Nast, Time Inc. and Meredith have bloody noses. But for now at least, the holding company approach has become a little zaftig.

    Peace.

     

     

    Product First.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I was doing a little web research on a company yesterday and started looking for signs of a brand strategy on the “About” page. Atop the About page sat this quote.

    “Customers are the most important people in any business.”

    Many would find it hard to disagree with the statement. When writing market plans I spend a lot of time “following the money.” (If you are interested in such things write me for a copy of my 24 Questions. Steve at WhatsTheIdea dot com.) And money comes from customers.

    BUT, a big but…I don’t agree customers are the most important people; product developers earn that mantel. It is the product, you see, that excites customers into action. Sure, product developers need to study customer tastes and proclivities. Sure, they must have a sense of consumer attachments to competitive offering. But when push came to shove, it was the people at Levi’s who designed the copper rivets, the soda formulator who put the Coca in the Cola, and the algorithm jockey who indexed web information that created Google.  Those were the most important people.

    Customer are the bees, but sans flowers there ain’t a lot of buzz.

    Peace.   

     

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