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Wendy’s Latest Brand Mistake.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

wendys_mascot_logo“Quality is our recipe” is the new tagline for fats food chain Wendy’s. It adorns all the stores. Quality is an industrial word. It’s not a food word. If you go to a Lidia Bastianich or Eric Ripert restaurant you’re not going to savor a meal and talk quality.

The key to branding is finding the right “claim” and proving it every day. I use three proof planks to support the claim. Three provides focus. Were I to parse the quality claim for Wendy’s I might select “ripeness” for vegetables, “natural” for ingredients, e.g., less additives, few GMOs, real sugar, and “immaculate facilities.” I’m just riffing here but you might actually build a nice story with this strategy. The problem, however, is the word quality. A far as claims go, it’s in the neighborhood, but a Norwegian neighborhood.  Quick, name a tasty Norwegian food.

Brand strategy claims need poetry. Humanity. They need aspiration and emotion. Wendy’s can do better. This is a company that has always been ad campaign driven, not brand strategy driven.      

Peace.           

 

Service Company Branding.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Over the last 30-40 years the business environment has evolved from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. We are making a lot less things and selling a lot more service, software and subscription. If you ask a small service economy business owner, say, in the financial planning business, if her company has brand, she is likely to say “yes.” On probe, she’ll offer up her company name. Maybe logo. Even $75 million companies in the service sector would agree they have a brand. But ask the CEO or marketing director and you’d get the same answer: name and logo.

The fact is, most service companies don’t get branding. Sure, they understand signage, advertising and graphic standards, but they don’t know it to be the “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging” branding really is.

When your business, as my dad used to say, goes up and down in the elevator every day, it’s hard to see it as a brand rather than a group of people. But, oh, it is. Service companies have a leg up on product companies, because unlike products, people are living, breathing, intelligent beings with friends. But service economy companies need strategies. Brand strategies.

For examples of service economy brand strategies, please email steve@whatstheidea.com

Peace.                                                                

 

 

Brand Crest.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

coat-of-armsCenturies ago, well-to-do European families had family crests. Crests were actually helmet ornaments for you historians, but for the purpose of this post I’m going to make synonymous crests with heraldry or paper heraldry. Here is a Wikipedia definition of Heraldry.

The beauty and pageantry of heraldic designs allowed them to survive the gradual abandonment of armour on the battlefield during the seventeenth century. Heraldry has been described poetically as “the handmaid of history”, “the shorthand of history”, and “the floral border in the garden of history”. In m bit more modesty. Hee hee.

Brand managers, ask yourselves to develop a crest for your brand. What pictures would you use? What are your brands’ most famous and motivatinodern times, heraldry is used by individuals, public and private organizations, corporations, cities, towns, and regions to symbolize their heritage, achievements, and aspirations.

The brand planning rigor here at What’s The Idea? works hard to identify “heritage, achievement and aspiration.”  These things are the groundwork for brand planning and contribute to the “one claim and three proof plank” strategy construct. The claim and proof array align nicely with the crests and heraldic designs of yore…but, perhaps, with ag achievements?

Peace.   

 

Insights and Briefs.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

tighty-whitiesI love my briefs.  Not tighty whities  or bike shorts. Brand briefs.  I’ve got a million of them on the hard drive. What gets my engine going when reading old briefs are the insights.  Insights about targets, consumer desires, claims and proof arrays.  Insights are the stim creative people crave.  When well done, insights wrapped in a poetic, meme-able packages, light fires under art directors, copywriters and creative directors.  

Insights are catalysts supporting the brand idea. A good brief will offer up multiple insights – but it’s the creatives who figure out which are most actionable, motivating and fanciful. 

Early on I recognized I’m only about 15% creative. I’ve worked with, studied, and stalked some of the great creative minds in the business. I’m not them and never will be. Being a diagnostician and insight doctor is the next best thing.

My old briefs remind me of the love. Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible.

Peace, in this “post truth” campaign world.

 

 

Breaking a Brand Strategy Rule.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

A few years ago I worked with a single store retail engagement ring outlet to develop a brand strategy. After much digging, discussion and thought it occurred to me that for this particular brand “amazing engagement rings are born (not bought).” That was the idea.

The target on my brief was “couturing brides to be” because they were not the type to want an off-the-shelf ring.  They were more emotional, even fussy. For them the ring was a deep symbol of their love.

This ring purveyor had developed a process that was broken down into three stages – which I liked to a baby’s birth: conception, gestation and delivery. The one hour conception or consultation stage was like foreplay, filled with desire and intimacy. The gestation period included stages of viewing, understanding and nurturing – between woman and designer. It included trying on wax ring molds for fit, stone placement and style. And delivery was a celebration of the actual casting and stones. Always ready for complications, the birth of the rings was seen as life-changing. Amazement was key to this part of the process.

The brand strategy claim (amazing engagement rings are born) and planks (conception, gestation and birth) focus on  a process. The strategy positioned around a process.

Mostly when I talk about brand strategy, I talk about care-abouts and good-ats. This one was unique. Though the process was a brand good-at, consumers weren’t sure it was a care-about. Sometimes you have to go off-piste in brand strategy. This was one of those times.

Peace.

 

Tossing Arrowheads.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

arrowhead

90% of brand strategies are arrowheads.  They have a points, are sharp, and are usually well crafted.  In most cases, brand strategies are ad agency crafted.  In the agency creative process – the building of the ads – the last thing often completed is the tagline. Taglines are summations of all the creative work.  In the case of Northwell Health, a huge NY area health system, the wan tagline “Look North,” is not a brand strategy. It’s a bow on the present.  In the case of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, tagline “More Science. Less Fear.” is both a tagline and brand strategy.  It’s provable.

Arrowheads are pretty and last a long time in the dirt as any archeologist will tell you but as a tool they are worthless without a shaft and flights (feathers providing stability.)  Ever try throwing an arrowhead?

Brand strategies un-complicate complication. As an organizing principle “One claim and three proof planks” transform pages and pages of product, positioning, segmentation and experience folderol into a workable business-building system.  Carrying the metaphor forward, brand strategy puts aerodynamics behind the tagline.   

Look at your marketing documents and outputs and see if you can put onto paper your claim and proof array. If you can’t, you are tossing arrowheads.

Peace.  

 

Recall of a Recall.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

As I settled into my seat on Jet Blue last week a passing stewardess mentioned that all Samsung Galaxy Note 7s were barred from the plane. Glad I wasn’t a Samsung brand manager that day. That was on a Jet Blue flight. I suspect all airlines were making similar announcements. Hourly. Daily. For as long as it will take to eradicate the potential threat. That’s like 20 Super Bowl ads a week in terms of reach. (Please don’t fact-check, I’m riffing.)

All of this could have been avoided – yes, at quite an expense I know – by simply recalling the phones at first light (poor pun). Rather than doing the right thing, Samsung put a blight on its brand that will take a long, long time to quiet.  Especially for those who travel on airplanes.

That ROS (return on strategy) will be negative for quite some time.

Peace.                         

 

 

Facebook Ad Rates.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Facebook announced earnings yesterday and crushed it.  Then it announced it would reduce ad load on its feed thereby reducing the volume of advertising on Facebook — a good thing in most consumer/users mind — and the stock price tanked 8% after hours.  Fickle those investors.  If you ask me, the stock price should have risen. While the stock of marketers and advertisers should have been hit. Less volume means one thing. Thaaat’s right. Higher ad prices.   If the Facebook experience is improved, thanks to less and, perhaps, better ads, advertisers will pay whatever it takes to get in the feed.

This is a simple example of the law of supply and demand. All other things being equal, rates will go up. And things won’t be equal because Mr. Z is investing in the data side of the advertising house, which will make ads more predictive and effective.

Tink about it, as my Norwegian aunt would have said.

Peace!    

 

Product TV.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

hgtv-logo

HGTV is a hot property on television right now.  I say this not because I’m reading the ratings but because I often speak to consumers at the point of sale. When a young home owner I watched This Old House with a vengeance. As we begin to think about downsizing to a smaller house, along with many other boomers, I’ve caught the bug again. This time around, compared to 25 years ago, there are hundreds of TV channels to choose from. This suggests to me an interesting and emerging opportunity for marketers: Product channels.  Consumerism and technology being what they are, it won’t be long before we have TV channels dedicated to specific product categories.  Think a YouTube channel writ large. An appliance channel. A garage remodeling channel. Light fixture channel. All live, all with subject matter experts as  talking heads.  It won’t just be JD Power live, it will have personality. Not simply ranking and rating but real footage, reportage and modest production value.

This is our future. The economics will be dicey at first but eventually will pay out. Imagine you are going to buy a midsize all-wheel drive car on Thursday and get to binge watch 3 hours of TV on it Wednesday night. Three hours well spend I suspect. (It will save 20 hours of work at the back end.) Advertisers will love it.

Peace.

 

Dumbing Down the Proof

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The foundation of the What’s The Idea? brand strategy framework is “claim and proof.” Say what you are good at and what consumers want, then prove it every day. Get the claim and proof right and you won’t have to reinvent the marketing wheel every year.

I don’t mean to pick on Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center whose claim “More Science (actual claim), Less Fear (marketing benefit)” is terrific, but they provide a good example of my dumbing down the proof point. In a print ad that ran this weekend, MSKCC supported its claim with their history of breaking new ground in immunotherapy. But then they dropped the ball in providing proof of how it works. Perhaps they thought we weren’t smart enough to read longer copy. (“People don’t read copy,” I’ve heard more than once.) I am aware of a home improvement company who cautions field reps to “keep it simple.” “Don’t give consumers too much to think about, you may talk them out of an appointment.”

Whether MSKCC or a home remodeler, it’s important to find proof that allows consumers to believe you. To trust you. To remember you. Good proof (read yesterday’s post for an example) is the fastest way to sales conviction.

Peace.

 

 

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