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    Brand Strategy Brought to Life.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    It’s hard for me but don’t want to get into politics when I talk about Meredith Corporation, the venerable magazine publisher – so I will leave the Koch Brother’s backing of Meredith’s purchase of Time Inc for another day. I will however dig into a bit of the Meredith brand. Magazines are dead the way TV was dead 10 years ago.  Yeah, the model may change, the revenue redistributed, but magazines, written by smart people, supported by wonderful pictures are not going away.

    Meredith Corporation, headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa is and ever-shall-be a heartland company. America needs more and more of these companies. Even some in Silicon Valley, tired of the sturm und drang, are looking to moving inland a skosh. What I like about Meredith is they know who they are. Check out the picture of the trowel in front of headquarters.  The artist who designed this amazing, simple piece of art interpreted the company better than 100 brand strategists.

    As a branding element, this trowel is genius. It’s size, color, placement on the property – reminds employees and visitors every day what’s up at Meredith. Get your fingers dirty, get on your knees and close to the problem, start small to grow big. I love it.

    This is a wonderful example of art bringing paper to life.   I make paper strategy and I am so envious of those who build the stuff that gives it birth.

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Targeting

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I read something smart in an account planners group on Facebook yesterday about targeting. It suggested you have to refine the brand target so as to make a more compelling message. When creating your brand claim, you don’t want to address the entire consuming pop. Not everyone will like you. You have to find the largest grouping of people who share a proclivity for your product, service and brand claim — and focus the strategy on them. 

    It’s so smart.  I had the same targeting discussion with a client yesterday.

    When you do enough research on brand good-ats and consumer care-abouts, you’ll find that you can’t please everybody. It is at this point that the rubber meets the road. Do we change who we are? Do we try to change the attitudes and beliefs of what consumers think and know? Or do we simply speak to the low and “reach for” fruit that will most likely be motivated to buy our product?

    This is how we do-oo it!  Peace.

     

    Poetry in Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I so love what I do.  (To many “I”s?) The job is learning. Then processing. Then assembling. And lastly, writing a little poetry — whiich becomes the brand claim.  For years in the business as a pseudo strategist I wrote briefs as an advertising account manager. My selling ideas lacked soul.  The briefs were fodder for creative people who typically didn’t like us, they called us “suits.” But as I started reinventing myself as a brand strategist, I allowed my selling ideas (claims) to pick up some whimsy. Lightness. Poetry.

    The poetry is what keeps me in the game. It helps me know when I’m done with the idea. My most far reaching brand idea “systematized approach to improving healthcare,” done years ago for multibillion dollar organization, lacked poetry. It probably needed to.

    Today, I have the time and type of clients that want poetry in their claims. It makes them remember. It creates a little Zen moment. It reminds them of the love inherent in their brands. Poetry gets marketing clients to love what they do. 

    Peace.  

    PS. Sean Boyle introduced the word “poetry” to me as it relates to planning. A thousand thanks.

     

     

    Rage Along Side The Machine.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’ve been reading a lot about Artificial Intelligence, self-driving cars and trucks, brick layers whose jobs are in jeopardy because of robots….and that’s just in today’s paper. As a brand planner I have to admit it makes me a bit giddy to think about what the art of branding will be like when things are more automated.  I suspect there will be more compliance. The biggest hurdle to compliance when it comes to following brand strategy is, ta-dah, the people. The creative brain. The need to problem solve in one’s own unique way.

    Coloring outside the lines in brand strategy doesn’t work. Its s slippery slope. Brand managers get sidetracked. They see something shiny and skirt away from the claim and proof array that is their brand’s organizing principle.  SEO and Adwords might go off on a tangent that spikes sales. A new TV campaign might hit the front page of Vice. Little marketing tickles that cause a brand to veer.

    Machines won’t let that happen. They are relentless. Machine learning is focused…and relentless.

    Kind of stoked. Peace.

     

    Branding… A High Road Pursuit.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    There is a fearless Federal judge in Ohio taking on all participants who earn money as a result of the current U.S. opioid crisis. His name is Dan Alan Polster and his strategy is to get a group settlement and correction of the law fast. Nothing is fast in law; it’s how people get paid — so this is refreshing.   Rather than have the opioid crisis drag out in courts, Judge Polster is hoping to make big progress in days. In fact, today might be the tipping point.

    One tenet of Judge Polster’s approach is captured in his quote from today’s New York Times: “It’s almost never productive to get the other side angry. They lash out and hurt you and themselves. I try to get the sides to think it through as a problem to solve, not a fight to be won or lost.”

    Brand strategy, done well, is never angry. But I must admit to having written some that are combative. A mentor once asked: “Who is going to lose the sale you are trying to win.”  It’s a  question every planner and marketer must ask.  Yet the idea to replace anger with problem solving is genius — in adjudication and brand strategy.  

    Marketing is where acts of war may happen, branding is a higher road pursuit.

    Peace.   

     

    Governance and Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    In a story from The New York Times this morning about the toll the chaotic Trump administration is having on senior staff, the reporter wrote “With an erratic boss and little in the way of a coherent legislative agenda, they are consumed by infighting, fears of their legal exposure and an ambient sense that the White House is spinning out of control.”

    People, president and politics aside, let’s look at the central theme of the quote. No coherent legislative agenda.  Good governments require coherence in their agendas.  So do brands. When a brand has a coherent agenda, marketing and business become easier. Chaos in not an organizing principle.  Brands without coherence are brands without growing customer bases.  (Imagine if the product was inconsistent. Imagine if the logo changed monthly. Imagine if retail was spotty.  Incoherence.)

    No matter the company or category, articulating a brand strategy (one claim, three brand planks) is critical to coherence. Now, back to your regularly scheduled news program.

    Peace.

     

    Claim and Proof.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Claim and proof are the driving forces of the What’s The Idea? brand strategy framework. Find a claim (a simple, endemic idea that sets your product apart from the competition), then array three proof planks beneath. Proof sells the claim. It is evidence. The planning rigor, unlike many, is evidence-based.

    It’s not overly complicated. That’s why it works.  Consumers get a consistent brand claim, supported by memorable proof. Without proof a claim is just marketing drivel. (Hey Laura Ingraham “Shut up and drivel.”)

    When I turn over the brand brief to content creators, they love that there is direction. Some wonder, however, if they need to espouse all three proof planks in each piece of content. The answer is no. One is fine. One makes for a clean deposit in the brand bank.

    A website home page should hit all the planks, certainly the “About” section should. But the claim is always present — across product, experience and messaging.  Again, don’t feel that every ad, every promo, every PR story must hit all three support planks. Do one and do it right. 

    Once ensconced in this approach, it’s fun to modulate each plank and see how it impacts KPIs.

    Peace.

     

     

    Highland Brewing Brand Refresh.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Highland Brewing is “an original” craft brewery located in Asheville, NC – founded in 1995 by Oscar Wong.  When I moved to Asheville and having becomes a big fan of the Highland Gaelic Ale, I decided to contact president Leah Wong Ashburn for a quaff and chat about branding. Ms. Wong, I learned, was way ahead of me with a re-brand underway, using a shop in TX she had met at a beer tradeshow.  

    I’ve seen a little bit of the work – the grand reveal is at the brewery this Friday – and the brand shop and Highland team seem to have hit on all cylinders.

    Disclosure: I am a brand strategist who makes paper, not pictures. I deliver an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. As such, I’m always eager to hear the paper strategy. In the case of Highland the claim seems to be “Pioneers in Craft.” Nice. The phrase doesn’t say “craft beer,” it says “craft.” Love the nuance.  Craft extends way beyond beer making. So it opens more doors for the brand planks – the proof areas that deliver on the promise.

    Not being privy to the Highland brand strategy, I’ll have to do some digging to uncover the brand planks. Can you say fatty liver? JKJK.

    One minor for me was the mark or logo. Using a compass and letter “H” lacked a little local mountain flourish. Logos are hard. This one is strong and professional… I’ll get used to it.

    Bravo Highland. Good stuff. Can’t wait to see more.

    Peace.   

      

    Brand Planning Interviews: Commerce versus Caring.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    One of the keys to good brand planning is the consumer interview: Getting consumers to open up and share deeper insights.  To start you must do some shallow digging, but you don’t want to stay there too long or the process will feel like an online survey. If you sound like a research survey, you will be treated so.  The goal is to get to conversation as fast as you can, so the notion of an interview and the interview dynamic are quickly forgotten.

    When I am on roll, I’m giving as well as taking. I’m sharing ad hominem personal views and stories to fuel the conversational pump. My intent is to connect, share, listen, process and grow the conversation. In a word it boils down to “caring.” About the topic and the person sharing. When the questions feel too “commercial,” the caring quotient goes down. When stories flow, insights flow

    By caring and with a good ear for insights and the opportunity for redirection, each interview can be different. There’s nothing worse than hearing the same answers to the same questions. It makes the interviewer care less. And that’s bad tradecraft.

    Peace.

     

     

    Starbucks and Brand Stasis.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I went to the Starbucks yesterday, one housed in my local Ingles grocery store, and a nice young women in a non-descript polo shirt came to serve me.  I was looking for an Ingles logo on the shirt, but didn’t see one.  Within a minute another woman walked into the Starbucks retail space with a green apron on – she more befitting the brand experience.

    I asked her if they were still called baristas. She said yes.  Then I asked her when telling friends what she did for a living if she said “I’m a barista” or “I work at Starbucks,” she admitted the latter.  Howard Schultz are you listening?

    When Starbucks began, the barista was fundamental brand thing. They co-opted the word. Now people just work at Starbucks. When Starbucks first got rid of the hand-crated latte and espresso machines in favor of automated brewing, I thought it might be the beginning of brand stasis. Think I was right. The brand can advertise blonde coffee and all the new flavors it likes, but if it doesn’t tighten up the in-store brand experience, it will suffer.

    Peace be upon you, children and parents of Parkland, FL.

     

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