Facebook Instagram X Youtube
    Latest

    Marketing

    The Secret Sauce Of Brand Discovery.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    At What’s The Idea? discovery is the secret to developing a brand strategy. Discovery being short hand for people talking about the product or service. And when I say talking, it can mean people talking to reporters — who do a nice job of capturing compelling thoughts, opinions and stories. (Tip: Find the best journalists or bloggers rather than the also rans.)  When immersing in a new category I like to ask people who their favorite “read” is. I once asked the publisher of Time Magazine who he thought America’s best editorial writer. William Safire he offered quite quickly. Even over his own columnists. I love truth.


    Where rubber meets the road in brand planning is what one does with all the discovery.  It’s nice to have a lot of different paint colors but you can’t add them all together.  I was reading a recipe for remoulade this morning and dismissed it out of hand. Too much stuff in the recipe.  And I love remoulade. It’s a nice analog for brand strategy. Too much stuff kills brand strategy so the planner must prioritize. In my case, I organize into a claim and proof array. I can’t promise you the claim emerges first, sometimes if does. The scientist in me wants to suggest once the proof array is decided, the claim emerges – but that, too, is not always the case. It’s a little bit art, a little bit science.

    But fear not — organize your proof into the most compelling care-abouts and good-ats (3 proof planks in total) and you’ll be well on your way. Back to the remoulade analogy, you’ll also be able to understand what you are tasting and why.

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Strategy Informs Product and Product Handlers.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Brand strategy, in this age of service marketing and the internet, where not everything sold has a label, is not as it used-to-was. Here’s a new worldview.

    At What’s The Idea? brand strategy is defined as “an organizational framework for product, experience and messaging.”  The existential function of branding to date has been naming, logos and labeling — followed by the design of marketing materials. But a huge percentage of sales these days come not from labeled products and goods, but from services and digital; things that are malleable and easily changed. Today it’s okay – no preferred – for brand strategy to inform the product, not just the other way around.  

    It’s a strategic palindrome: the product/service informs the brand strategy and the brand strategy informs the product/service. That’s step one. Brand strategy informs the product.

    Step two is brand strategy informs product handlers. This allows everyone instrumental in selling, marketing and product-consumer interface (experience) to do so in a non-random, value-based way. Not cookie cutter. Strategic.

    From metaphor land, product handlers are making deposits in the brand bank.

    Once the product is right and the product handlers are indoctrinated, then we can start to think about messaging. 

    Sadly, branding dollars are mostly spent on naming, signage, collateral design and ads – without a deeper codified thought.  A paper strategy or strategy of words is the brand building fundamental today. It can be measured. And, overlaid with revenue numbers. Try doing that with a logo.

    (Rest in peace mama. You were a treasure.)

    Peace.   

     

     

    First Get The Brand Right.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Here’s my pitch to people who manage small and mid-size companies. Also, to large companies in technology, considered purchase and B2B categories – most of whom think marketing is the main tool of growth. Marketing being defined as creating demand, proper pricing and good distribution.  I explain that marketing today is mostly practiced as a downstream pursuit with time spent on buildables. On tactics and execution. “Update the website. Generate more social engagement. Put on a promotional event.”

    I counsel these people, these builders, to first get the brand strategy right. First and foremost.  Because the brand strategy sets the parameters of winning in the marketplace. It establishes a framework for product, experience and messaging. The irony of my job is that I often have to look and product, experience and messaging, after the fact, to help create the framework.  It’s a little bass-ackwards.

    Get the brand right and it’s so much easier to get the marketing right.  “Ready, fire, aim” it’s not.

    Peace.

     

     

    Chaos.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Yesterday I watched a recording of the Cannes presentation by Rob Campbell and Martin Weigel on “Chaos.”  It was lovely and refreshing. Smart men, both. During the Q&A someone asked “Isn’t chaos a lot like disruption?” Indignantly, Rob said “No.” very different, he offered  

    I’m with Rob, sort of; disruption is so overused. It’s a pop marketing term to which all aspire.  Overall though, I’m not so sure I heard how chaos is that much different when it comes to heightening creativity than are many of the other pop marketing memes planners and creatives have bandied about for years.  Chaos is just a new word for it.

    The big news, as I heard it, was a call for increased focus on people (not consumers) and getting out of the building — rather than relying solely on data. And frankly, getting out of the building is not that new.

    Chaos in practice is recombinant culture, as Faris Yakob might say. Chaos is the mistake that invented Post-It Notes. Chaos is a bird song inspiring “Stairway To Heaven” (I made that up). Chaos it the synapses, synapsing. It’s the irony of disorganization.

    I agree with all things said by Messrs. Campbell and Weigel. Be it chaos or some other descriptor. We need to think more creatively about how we think creatively. The clarion call to action they espouse is needed today.

    Where I will take issue, however, is the notion of creating chaos in a complete vacuum. Brand building requires that chaotic outputs operate in conjunction with brand strategy. Rob and Martin may not agree. Then again….

    Peace.

     

    The Branding Supply Chain.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    The branding supply chain is not a thing, but it should be. A supply chain is a chain of custody of manufactured elements that go into a finished product. In electronics, it’s not abnormal for a component to ship across the ocean three or four times before finding its way into Best Buy.  The comms chip is made in the U.S., sent to China to be put onto a circuit board, sent back to Mexico to be assembled into TV guts before being shipped back to Asia for its screen or glass.  Then onto a huge ship to cross the Pacific in 2 weeks.

    In branding, the supply chain can be similarly messy. First a brand strategy is created (hopefully). Then it’s approved by the CEO and C-suite. The marketing department (often in flux) internalizes the brand brief and puts their own imprimaturs on it. Bring on the vendors. The web people turn it into a home page. The user experience leads finesse it into a lovely journey. The search people seek out clicks. The ad agency develops a campaign. HR massages it into the welcome packet for new employees – 18 months in the making.  And frankly, few of the aforementioned have really read the brand brief. And those who have are probably the department heads, not the workers.

    By the time all the work is assembled by hands inside and outside the company, the words and images have traveled over too many oceans. Then the new chief marketing officer comes in (every 18 months) and says, “So, what’s our brand message?”

    Tighten up!

    Peace.

     

    Brand Planners Are Not In The Ad and Sign Business.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Ask a SMB (small or mid-size business) owner “What do you want consumers to think or feel about your product as a result of using it?”  Brand-centric marketers might call this the “net take-away.”  The usual answer will be some contorted, ramble of about 45 seconds, with an occasional heavenward look and a smile. If a brand planner asks the question the smile is apt to be more self-conscious.

    The point of the exercise is to see if the product’s value proposition is refined. Not raw. Not piecemeal. Not at all fickle.

    If a business owner can’t settle on a good description of his/her business or product, then that owner needs a brand assist.  If they can’t agree on a fairly static brand value statement, something is not fully baked. And usually it’s not the product, it’s the owner.

    It is the job of the brand planner to extract the brand value statement that gives comfort to the business owner. One that through a claim and proof array, creates an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.

    Some think brand strategy is not product strategy. It is. Many are not aware that brand strategy is about the retail or service experience. It is. Yet everyone will agree messaging is the brand strategy reason-for-being. And it’s this latter, singular view that most hurts brands. Brands planners are not in the advertising and sign business.

    McPeace. (Not autofill for make peace.)

     

     

     

     

     

    Brand Glossary

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I started my first big boy job at a top advertising agency in NYC, McCann-Erickson. Working on AT&T. While most of the team was handling TV work and producing print ads for The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Time Magazine, I was hired to do the technical products: data lines, network management and software defined networks. I was the B2B guy, which suited me. It’s from whence I came. But AT&T and McCann were the real deal and I was scrambling.

    At my first meeting in Bridgewater, NJ, I became inundated with acronyms and telecom terms I’d never heard before.  It was like moving to the Ukraine.  My head spun.  I had to quickly invent a game plan in the pre-internet era.  Laptops were few and far between. First step was to create an acronym glossary. One based upon AT&T jargon. When complete the glossary was probably 20 pages long filled with paragraphs of arcane descriptions. I brought that baby with me everywhere. As my team grew, it became a shared resource.

    When the Bell Labs and AT&T marketing people saw me with my glossary they giggled but appreciated that I cared. I asked lots of questions; they never held back.

    I write a lot about learning the language of the target. In account or project management, learning the language of the client is the first step. Only then can you translate that into the consumer dialect.

    Peace.

     

    Rage Against The Alphabet.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Google has built its enormous search business by creating “ads that are helpful.” The advertising industry, on the other hand, creates ads meant to sell. One business is shrinking, the other growing. Many consumers would agree they prefer to be helped rather than sold.

    If you add machine learning to Google’s laser focus on marketing as evidenced at yesterday’s Google Marketing Live Conference, you might place career bets on Google rather than Droga 5 or RGA. But wait!

    At the nexus of “helping” and “selling” is brand planning. Advertising agents more often than not sell. Clients make them. But advertising agencies, both digital and traditional, guided by proper brand strategy can’t avoid being helpful — because a brand strategy is built upon customer care-abouts. (Balanced by brand good-ats.) With a brand strategy as your guide, the advertising work can’t help but be helpful. It’s hard to be self-serving when being helpful.

    So let’s all learn from Google and capture the essence of helpfulness, then wrap it in powerful product and consumer insights and beat the machine. Zack de la Rocha had it right.

    Peace.

     

     

    Free Briefs

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0


    I’ve run a few promotions over the years and the most popular has been the “Free Day of Planning.” 

    Promotions are typically used on new products to promote trial.  I have been in Asheville, NC for a year and a half and have yet to pick up any paying clients, so it’s time to break out the big promotional guns.

    Last night while attending the Asheville Design Salon it came to me that in this market (and most markets) most people don’t wake up saying “Damn, I need a brand strategy.” They need customers, a website, and certainly logos and design work – but an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging, not so much.

    Existentially, what is a brand strategy?  It’s a brief – a piece of paper with a positioning idea, based on customer care-abouts and brand good-ats.  So today I am offering all businesses in Ashville and the surrounding towns a free brief. (I’d insert nomenclature here about limited time offer and first-come-first served, but don’t think it necessary.)

    Caveat: I will not be able to go crazy deep on your brand, but way more than deep enough to open eyes. Deep enough to help prioritize values. And focus. And to an extent, to wrap it all up in a little poetry.

    So have at it Asheville. Write Steve@whatstheidea.com and order up your free brief.  

     

    1...8910...208Page 9 of 208
    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv