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    Brand Planning and Startups.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’ve done a good deal of brand work with startups.  It’s not the easiest work but it is exciting because a great deal of the planning takes place “beyond the dashboard.” When I break out the “24 Questions,” (the follow the money questions) there’s not a lot of history to discuss. No last year’s earnings. No market segments. Just lots of nos and nones. (Note: Beyond the dashboard planning refers to tabula rasa planning, contrasting with the more common “rearview mirror” or “side view mirror” planning.)

    And let’s not even start talking about how founders, especially in the tech space, can change strategy. Like underwear. More disciplined startup founders may change business strategy only once or twice. Sometimes a meandering proof-of-concept is the culprit, e.g., you build a brand around family doctors and specialists want to purchase, or you focus on ecommerce and people keep paying you for search. Shit happens.

    The more flighty founders (the underwear changers) can be influenced by the last meeting they were in; say, an investor or a key industry blogger. (Been there, learned from that.)

    But startups are a good training grounds for brand planners. Planners can have a powerful influence on direction. Even if founders don’t abide   It creates structure for them. Yeses and Nos. Ones and Zeroes. 

    If you are a brand planner, you need to bracket your experience with some startups. Trust me.

    Peace.

     

     

    Inchoate. Word of the day.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’ve never used the word inchoate in a blog post before. Its definition is hard to remember, as is its pronunciation. I means “not fully formed” or “partially in existence.”  Okay, okay you know where this is going. Am I that transparent?

    Most brands use inchoate brand strategy. Everyone says that have a brand strategy. Everyone believes in their logical minds, they have a thing called a brand — comprising a name, logo, and a Ramblin Jack Elliot value proposition. But were you to ask for an articulation of that strategy, in words, on a piece of paper, they’ll want to change the subject.  Ask marketing directors at service companies and B2B companies and it gets worse. You are likely to get push back about brands being for packaged goods. So “nope.”

    With the disintermediation of sales and marketing, due in part to Google and the web, brands left unmanaged are brands without endurance.

    Brand strategy sets direction for product, experience and messaging. It provides guardrails. Consumers understand brand strategy. They can articulate it, just like they can articulate words from an ad campaign. “We are farmers…” But only when clear. When managed.

    Inchoate brand strategy is the enemy. Fix it.

    Peace.  

     

    Discipline

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Brand strategy is, in a word, discipline. I define brand strategy as an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging; that’s all fine and good. But if the paper strategy isn’t actualized by management and marketing, all is for naught. As someone who came up in the ad business, I know that getting work approved is the financial goal. Getting good work approved is the business goal. And in all the day-to-day management of those processes, holding to strategy often gets overlooked. That’s the ad business. On the marketing side, it’s even more complicated. More moving parts. So adherence to strategy isn’t easy. Business strategy is “make more money.” Brand strategy is “make more people love the brand, so you can make more money.”

    It takes disciple during all the marketing horse trading to hold to a brand strategy. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the according to Mike Tyson. That’s how it is with brand strategy. Everybody has a brand strategy until they get punched in the face. 

    Strong brand is a most critical KPI. (Imagine if you changed your name every year.) It sets direction and it sets expectation. Disciplined brand strategy undergirds all successful brands.  Checkmate.

    Peace.    

     

    Customer Journey Shtuff.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I was going over some notes taken during a recent WARC webinar presented by (my boy) Faris Yakob and came across a slide on the customer journey.  I’m a fan of customer journey having created a facsimile I call Twitch Point Planning.  Twitch Point Planning attempts to “understand, map and manipulate a customer closer to a sale.” In effect, it’s a customer journey, but using media twitches.

    The WARC presentation on customer journey had a wonderful slide entitled “Start with what customers are doing rather versus what we want to say.”

    I love this advice.  It may be the anthropology major in me, but this is just such a rudimentary planning perspective. Everything needs to start with the consumer. As planners we can decide not to heed consumers’ behavioral advice, but we need to understand it.

    Consumers first. Peace.

     

     

     

    Meme Metrics.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’m a big proponent of something I call Meme Metrics. Wikipedia defines a meme as

    “A meme (/ˈmiːm/ MEEM) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture — often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme.”

    As a blogger who tosses crumbs around the web in an effort to draw attention to What’s The Idea? and my marketing consultancy, marketing memes (phrases) are critical.  The metrics referred to in Meme Metrics are straight up Google rankings.  When I’ve done a good job pounding the digital pavement with phrases filled with brand meaning, they propagate.

    The more memorable and longer the phrase to more likely it will point back to my website. I’ll show you how it works. My sister’s nickname is EJ.  Google “EJ” and you are likely to get thousands of results. Google the little sing-songy lyric I wrote for my kids to sing to her “EJ the DJ radio personality” and you will find my blog. But not today. Since I’ve never posted this phrase before. All I’ll need to do it post it a few times and it will point directly to my site.

    So find a marketing meme, preferably one that is memorable, and put a little digital wood behind it. Meme metrics.

    Peace.

     

     

     

    Discovery.  

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Radhika Jones was named editor in chief of Vanity Fair magazine yesterday. Vanity Fair is a literary brand with few global peers. Magazine brands like The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have a history of long standing editors, people who sit atop the title for decades. Great magazines get branding. When asked about her plans for Vanity Fair she says she will spend her initial time in discovery.  Immersing. Acculturating. Learning the love.

    New GE CEO John Flannery, on the other hand, already has a plan.  Cut, cut, pare.  His board, unlike that of Conde Nast or parent Advanced Publications, expect action not discovery.

    Brand planning is a business about discovery. Maybe that’s why, as a business, it offers small category revenue. If you were to add up the revenue of all the branding firms in the world, you’d find maybe $95 million per annum. And if you parsed those bills the lion’s share of that money would likely fall to logo design, naming, style guides and advertising grist. The puniest slice of the pie being discovery.

    Brand churn is a result of poor discovery. Advertising and marketing directors “come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible.”  It all starts with thoughtful and committed discovery. Anyone can slap paint on a canvas. Planned, extensible relevance takes time.

    Peace.   

     

    A Trouble With Brand Strategy

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I just read an interesting study on brand recall. The methodology used saw consumers attempt to draw from memory brand logos.  Starbucks, Target, Apple, Adidas, etc. are apparently hard to recreate when asked to put pen to paper. Much easier I would imagine, would be creating logos when given marks and type from a sort board. Visual memory is better than creative memory.

    So think about how hard it must be for consumers to identify a brand strategy – the organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. The best brand strategies are embodied in taglines.  Can you sing “We are Farmers, dum, dah dum, dum, dum, dum, dum.”  Of course you can.  Is that a brand strategy? Nope. It’s advertising.

    The hard work of the brand strategist, the brand planner and brand manager is getting the value story right…and hammering it home with each dollar. Creating a focused, repeatable product-based “feeling” that endures and sells is what brand strategy is all about.

    If consumers can tell you what the brand claim is and explain how the product achieves that claim, that’s branding. Coke is refreshment. Google is instant answers. BMW is exhilarating driving.

    Not easy, but can be done with a plan.

    Peace.

     

    Trails. Brand Trails.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Before there was Google Maps, before there was Waze, before Siri, we used to be get into cars and drive to places we had never been before, without software.  Only a couple hundred years ago we navigated by trails, celestial guides and landmarks.

    Branding is a little old school like this. We create trails that over time become worn and easy to follow.  We branders provide general direction that with navigational tools-of-the-day help move individuals and masses toward our objective, e.g., sight, sounds, smell and other replicable assists.

    When there were fewer products and less media choices branding was easier. Less clutter. Also less people touching and managing the sales channel.

    Eight to ten years ago I used to rail against pop marketers who boasted how consumers were in control of brands. Not brand managers. Marketing pundits made millions touting this drivel. But consumers can only plot a map to themselves. “Follow me.” Not toward a brand.

    Brand planners study consumers, landscapes, general directions and landmarks, then put on their big boy/girl pants and set the trail. A trail that is easy to follow.

    Life and branding ain’t a grid. And in today’s digital world it can be even messier.

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Strategy is the New Black.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Organizational Design is a shiny new business thing. A number of smart brand planners and digital raconteurs have noticed that many corporations are floundering using old org charts and technology. Old infrastructural assumptions. So these new change agents are hoping to consult their way to new revenue streams as org design consultants.

    Ten years ago “Social Business Design” was an inchoate business response to poor organization. It attempted to alter business by using digital social tools.  Those tools turned into software and much of the concept was lost. Sure Slack is a cool social tool. Dashboards and marketing platforms have emerged and evolved – mostly to streamline and cut cost. But organizational design, the recasting of the modern business in a way to make it more responsive, agile and effective, though a fine pursuit has been mostly talk.

    My consulting business is a brand consultancy. I make no promised to reorganize your business. But organizational design is a likely and probable outcome. 

    Defined as “An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging,” brand strategy has the potential to touch everything: supply chain, customer care, manufacturing quality, hiring, and advertising. All are possible levers in brand strategy. 

    Brand strategy ain’t what it used to was.

    Peace.

     

    Shame on Silicon Valley.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    While Mark Zuckerberg slept in his Harvard bed dreaming about the future of Facebook, do you think he ever wondered if it might be big enough to impact a national presidential election?  I’m guessing not. But he may have.

    I was at a start-up called Zuide.com when Zuck had 18M users. Both web apps allowed users to build their own website, but with Zude you used objects. Facebook was database driven. In my dreams, it was understood that social networks could be used for good and evil.

    Social network can and will be abused. Even journalistic instruments are abused. When “the people” are in charge of content you have to know fake and manipulative information will happen. So when Twitter, Google and Facebook went to capital hill yesterday, no one should be been surprised spankings would be meted out. Not yesterday, not 10 years ago.

    Mr. Zuckerberg should have known it would happen.  Perhaps not to the extent it did. Not to the point where the world’s leading democracy would be soiled…but he knew. And now we all must fix it. People must be responsible too. Just as we now can detect phishing schemes in our email, we must learn to root out false information.  

    Shouldn’t have taken so long. Shame on Silicon Valley.

    Peace.            

     

     

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