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    Business Development.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I do a good deal of business development. My outbound tactic of choice is email.  It’s so much better than phone.  It’s more polite. People opt-in to email.  Like an ad, they choose to read or not to read. The outbound phone call is intrusive; it doesn’t take into consideration the recipient. Bad form, in my opinion.

    When doing outreach, I find it is best to be you-focused rather than me-focused. That is to say, attempt to find something of a compelling nature that interests the email recipient. The more strategic the better. Now I’m not going to go all “where is the pain point” on you. I never read that pop marketing book, but I can tell you the last thing a prospect wants to talk about with a stranger is her or his business pain. (Probing so is impolitic and impolite.)

    One more thing, when your first email does not get a response. Don’t be discouraged. A couple of days later, send the same one again leaving the Re. in the subject line.  You’ll be surprised how often you get a response.  It shows you are persistent and it gives readers who see the first email message on their smarties a chance to respond while at their desk.

    In my view, biz/dev emails are not spam if there is something of value in them…of value to the prospect.  The higher the value the more likely there will be a response. Be brief, be selfless and it’s okay to infuse the waters with a little personality. Peace. 

    The next selling app.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    In Berlin, they are taking the car-rental-on-demand thing to the next level. In Berlin you can use a smart phone app to find a car near you, drive it where you want to go and leave it — for an annual fee and a per minute charge.  The logistics are handled by the app.  (In the future, the renting companies may contribute to the logistics by moving cars around in response to expected demand, but for now it seems to be working fine as is.)

    Big picture.  Cities have too many cars. Too much carbon.  Lots of cars with one person in them. Limited parking spaces. This is a solution. Brilliant. (Though walking and bicycling would be better.)  In the article I read about this program someone was quoted saying this couldn’t have happened in the 90s. Smarties, GPS and apps make it happen today. This is beyond the dashboard stuff.

    It’s how marketers need to think. How do we take inefficiency out of the marketing process.  Price shopping is easy. Geo-pricing and deals are easy. Inventory is easy-ish. But how about creating preference?  We haven’t really cracked the code on that one. Sure we have friend recos, likes and reviews. We also have videos to see products in action.  But we haven’t killed that visceral selling thing yet –the moving of customers closer to a sale through unexpected. exciting means. I’m guessing this task will fall to artists — enabled by technologists. It will be born of Twitch Point Planning, but with a poetic, artful and multidimensional twist.  I’ll share as I get closer. Hope you do too. Peace.

    The Future of Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Brian Clark of GMD Studios in NYC and Winter Park, FL, home of Rollins College, is a diamond-in-the-rough marketing consultant.  He’s kind of like Jonas Salk the inventor of the polio vaccine, before the invention.  Brian gets marketing, he really gets film, his views on transmedia (the flow between media types) are prescient and he keeps his eyes open. Brian enjoys his view beyond the dashboard.

    I met him a couple of times, once while we worked as contractors for JWT on Microsoft, and he knows where we are going with this multimedia thing. A statement like that presumes I know where we are going, but follow Brian’s lead first.

    He’s a diamond-in-the-rough, I say, because this stuff is hard to fully comprehend. Selling better is hard. Experiential marketing is real but much of it is still theoretical. So when Brian does presos on phenomenology, he’s in the ballpark but it’s a bit rough. And heady. (Check it out on Slideshare.)  Transmedia, as a term, is in the ballpark too but lacks poetry. My view of the experiential and transmedia realm, using language like “fast twitch media” and “twitch point planning” is a bit more intriguing and motivating, but still theoretical.

    Thanks to technology and thanks to art forms – with more art forms to be invented – we are on the verge of major media and marketing advance. The inventions are a comin’.  And fun it will be. Do help! And watch Brian and his company.  Peace.    

    Archaeology and Brand Planning.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I wrote a brand plan for a friend who owns a commercial maintenance company. He came to me for some help redoing his website, and I told him the project required a brand brief before I could start.  His company does a couple million a year in office cleaning, snow removal, landscaping, painting, etc. He didn’t know what a brand plan or brand strategy was, but shined me on and let me do my thing. Even if it delayed his website dev.

    archeology

    The brand plan was ridiculous (kid version). The idea active, exciting and a perfect reflection of his company at its best. The planks were pristine, clean and oh so memorable. Back pat, back pat. I often use this plan as an example when talking to clients and prospects. The idea, for this plan came from the CEO. He’s a unique dude.  His approach to business and his company is pretty close to perfect. I followed his lead and packaged it in a way that consumers could remember and repeat.  But what would happen if given the same challenge and a different CEO?  Someone with less business acumen? Someone with a little lazy bone in their make-up? 

    Well, it would clearly have changed the idea.  It would have required more digging and sifting. Ultimately if may have made a case for less lazy, more active. If lazy CEO needed to do something differently as a business winning proposition, it would have to be figured into the equation. Mildy. Socratically. (Remember, the person may really have just wanted a website.) The idea must fit the business and all businesses are different. Some are harder than others and require a deep dig. Every brand has an answer and a solution.  Peace. 

    Collaborate? Collaborate? Collaborate?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    (To be read in Alan Iverson’s voice.)

    The collaborative economy is bullshit. Sorry Jeremiah.  The craft economy is not bullshit. Social business is bullshit. Social business design is not.  You see talking about talking or talking about doing isn’t doing. Doing is.  WTI readers know I’m all about organizing a brand before putting it into action, but that presumes action.

    Imagine living in a hunter and gatherer society and having to listen to a guy is sitting on a stump telling everyone how to hunt, without him ever picking up a spear or arrow.  Or listening to him tell people how to cultivate without getting his ample butt into the fields. There are tons of people today in the social media realm who love to paste other people’s stuff. Collaboration?  Tons more who love to bloviate without really giving away actionable secrets.  Collaboration economy? Is it collaborative to write a vanity press book on collaboration?

    Here’s a Benjamin Franklin rule.  Hang out with doers.  People who lead by example. Who get their hands dirty.  You will easily recognize them…they don’t talk about preparing to get their hands dirty. Or hand-dirtying processes. They don’t share charts on hands and more charts on dirty. They are too busy in the muck.  Learning by pushing and selling and talking about it to other doers. 

    Please don’t take this screed as being about autonomy and working in a vacuum. I am just suggesting a business person with a plan, a hypothesis, and a doer mentality is a faster learner, better teacher and someone who makes better decisions.  The economy is not driven by collaboration. The economy is driven by people who put the puck in the hoop/net/goal. Peace.

    (PS. Jeremiah is really, really smart. I’m leaving his last name off, because I don’t want to pizzle him off. But he knows consultants are paid for tangible recommendations, not collaboration.)

    Sub-Standard Mea Cupla?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    McGraw-Hill and Standard and Poor’s have been around for a long time. The former is best known as a publishing company, the latter a credit rating company. McGraw-Hill owns Standard and Poor’s. For those not in-the-know about the financial world S&P isn’t a company you think about often.

    Today I read a fairly benign ad by S&P in which it touted its people, purpose, practices and progress.  Depicting young to middle aged people, so we get the company is not run by 60 and 70 year olds (not that there’s anything wrong with it), the ad is quite unremarkable. The headline reads: “4 things you should know about Standard and Poors ratings.”    Why, why, why would anyone stop and read such an ad? Except me.

    I read the whole thing and the last para said “We’ve taken to heart the lessons learned during the financial crisis, improving the methodologies behind our ratings.”  Hard stop. No more copy. It got me thinking —Who was behind the wheel in this ratings company when banks, mortgage companies, car companies and other goobers were turning the country on its ear with bad debt?  Were these poorly run, insolvent companies receiving triple D or E or Z ratings? What kind of watchdog let this happen?

    If this ad is a mea culpa, it doesn’t work. Not with one sentence hidden at the end of the ad.  What happened? Do tell. If you want to help your brand strap on a pair of editorials and let us know.

    Peace!

    Up in the Brand Planning Future.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    At the end of the day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (now poorly named) has gone up, journalists and pundits are quick to say why.  Good earnings reports. Better unemployment numbers.  And when the Dow is down, there too, is always an explanation. Concerns about interest rates.  Poor weather in the spring.  This seems revisionist theory. Once the day is over someone decides what historical event made it so.  If the weather was reported like this, we’d skewer that profession less.

    Two Approached to Planning
    There are two approaches to brand planning: forecasting and reporting.  In my brand planning practice I often talk about rearview mirror planners and side view mirror planners. I’ve even begun to talk about dashboard planners. All three classifications operate in reporting mode. But it is the “beyond the dashboard planner” that I enjoy and choose to learn from. Those who see and look into the future.  Be you one?  It’s scary. You may pizzle yourself if big money is involved.  The best planners are about the future.  They are not bound to repeat the future. They are create it.

    A lot of ad agencies like to talk about culture.  Creating culture. Many people in the business scoff that the notion. Not me. I’m all up in it. It’s daring, exciting and fulfilling.  Creating a selling and buying culture is more than infusing new language into the lexicon. Where’s the beef? It goes deeper than that. That’s where anthropology meets brand planning. Where the past informs the future.

    Peace.

    PS. Is Weiner becoming more of a weiner or is it me?

    1%ers.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Strategy is foreplay.  It’s the upfront work that prepares the way for the big event. In brand planning, though, it’s about many big events. As they say in the technology business, a strategy is extensible.

    Marketers who get branding understand the role of the brand plan. (Noah Brier –name drop– once asked me “How do you define a brand plan?”)  Creating a brand plan is the most important work a marketer can do, yet ironically less than 1% of all money spent in marketing goes to it.  Go to ConAgra, Microsoft or Heineken or, or, or.  They’ll provide project plans and briefs containing lots of paper and digits on sales and targets. And one page on message.  This most important page is often not message-restrictive…it’s about tonality, goals and insights. You can drive trucks through these pages.  A good brand plan has a tight message strategy. You either hit the claim and support planks or you don’t.  If you don’t, go back to work.

    Creative people who hate strategy don’t really hate strategy, they hate bad strategy. Mealy mouthed strategy. Strategy is not about making creative people color between the lines, it’s about using a brand language that helps them speak to consumers through a brand-positive, business-building organizing principle.

    Tomorrow, marketers will go off and spend the 99% of their budgets on ads, agencies, video and interactive.  (Cannes rewards the beautiful and funny.) But the Jay Chiat Awards is where the 1%ers are headed. Peace. 

    Interviews and Brands

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Christine Draeger, VP global marketing at Safeguard World Intenational is a pal and she asked to me to post on how a brand plan can help in recruiting.  

    Here goes.  If you are involved in recruiting good people to your company (and who isn’t?), then you know what it’s like to interview someone without a clean presentation of their career arc, career goals, strengths and weaknesses and personality. (As my ad guy father Fred Poppe used to say about the latter, “If you don’t have one, don’t apply.”) When you finish conducting such an interview, the candidate has likely answered all your questions yet the presentation was jumbled — and you don’t have a sense of the person. It would be hard for you to talk about the candidate, save for an accomplishment, previous jobs, age, etc.

    This is why a proper brand plan is important for a company. Because people interview brands every day… and they are looking for a clean picture. So when people are introduced to your brand, they understand what it does, how, and why.  A simple organizing principle, codified, shared within the company and lived by employees helps this.  Some call it culture – it’s not culture. Though culture can be derived from the brand plan. A brand plan is an organizing principle, based in product strength and customer need that showcases and leverages both.  Brands without a plan are ingredients and packaging surrounded by dissociated advertising. A plan brings it all together.

    Next time you go into an interview and you are meeting with a higher up, ask them to discuss the key elements of the company brand plan. If they look at you funny be weary. Peace.

    Brand Ageism.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I saw a picture of Claire Danes in the paper today and realized I’ve grown older with her. From her first role on “My So-called Life” to “Little Women” to “Homeland,” Ms. Danes has had a nice career arc. She has not necessarily reinvented herself — she has just moved along doing the right acting thing at the right time. Patti Smith has aged in her art quite well.

    But what about brands? I know they are inanimate and don’t grow up or old, but is that truly the case? Business schoolies will tell you products have life cycles. Growth, maintain, harvest. But brands?

    Brands don’t grow old, consumers do…beside them.  Sure a brands may change formulas, packaging or distribution but they don’t degrade. What does degrade is consumers tolerance and affinity. As we get older we like refreshes and newness. Stasis is our enemy. It gives rise to brand ageism.     

    Do you remember the first time you heard the word “delicious?” Me either.  But I’m sure it was  pretty meaningful. Today the word is meaningless. Brand managers can deal with brand ageism so long as they have a plan. A brand plan to guide the refresh.  As Inga (my Norwegian aunt, RIP) would say “tink about it.” Peace.

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