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Culture and Product.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I just received an email from Nobl a really smart, forward thinking consulting company. The email suggested that the most important advantage a company can have is its culture.  People, products, technology, customers come and go, they say, but a tight culture holds a company together. I’m not so sure this is the most important thing. It is an important thing.

For me, a great product or service is the foundation upon which a good company is built. That’s what people shell out their hard-earned for. Culture may facilitate and create mastery over a product or service but it’s not why money exchanges hands. Culture is people centric. Brand design is product or service centric. When selling a service (as oppose to a product) the lines blur a bit but I find it always better to focus first on product and service — and the people and culture will follow.

Now let’s go to the neighborhood bar and get an ice cold draft of culture.

Peace.   

 

 

Product Is Value…in Tech.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I used to say “People who talk about ROI aren’t, getting it.” Today, I amend to say company “CEOs who talk about shareholder value aren’t getting it.”  Look at HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise). They divided from HP, sold off their services business, are selling their software business and tightening the company compression shorts to make themselves even more attractive to shareholders. Consolidations of this sort are focused on Wall Street. But in technology you need the best product not the leanest business. 

Look at Apple.  Do you think Apple’s people really care about shareholder value as they drive to work?  No, they’re thinking product. Product innovation. Product woosh. Today, The NY Times Farhad Manjoo dinged Apple for lackluster product design of the iPhone 7…and you know that had to hurt. From Tim Cook all the way down to the parking garage attendant. But Apple knows the design is good and they know what’s in the pipeline. Apple cares about product, not shareholder value. Leave shareholder value to the tech companies on the way down. 

Peace.    

 

Evidence over Soft Claims.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I help companies build brands by combing their business for evidence. Evidence is also proof but doesn’t turn into proof until later in the engagement — when we know what it’s proof of. (The “proof of what” is called the claim.) So at What’s The Idea? the brand exploratory is all about evidence.

If Kitchen Magic has remodeled 50,000 kitchens, that’s evidence. If Newsday provides more news coverage of Long Island than any other news source, that’s evidence. If Northwell Health delvers 42,000 babies that’s evidence.  And, if Trail Of Bits, creates a product that makes digital passwords obsolete, that’s evidence.

Marketing and advertising is tainted and ruined by too much claim and not enough evidence. 

When doing brand discovery I’m often inundated with generalizations. “Our kitchens are of the highest quality. We offer the best obstetric care. Our newspaper covers Long Island better than any other. We’re the leader in cyber security innovation.”  

These soft claims don’t help. If we can drill down so the claims are supported by evidence, then we have a place to start.

Peace.

 

Take Your Child to Work Day.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

take your child to work day

This is a story I have posted about before but it’s worth repeating. I worked as marketing director at an Ed Tech (educational technology) company a while back had to put together a talk for “Take Your Children to Work” day. The warehouse, call center, installers, professional development departments all had to do a few minutes on what mommy and daddy did. Close your eyes and imaging 60 kids sitting on a conference room floor listing to a discussion of HR. The kids were also going to tour the departments and walk through each part of the building.  A long, long day to fill.

So how does one ‘splain marketing to a disinterested kid sitting on a floor waiting for recess or snack?

“Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a lemonade stand?”

“Marketing is all the decisions you have to make in order to sell the lemonade. Are you going to use a package mix or real lemons?  How are you going to keep the ice cold?”  That’s Product of the “Four “Ps” of marketing. “How much are you going to charge for the lemonade?  Twenty five cents or a dollar?” Price. “What should the sign say? And where should you put the sign(s)? How big should the letters be on the sign?” Promotion. And lastly, “Where should you put your stand? In front of your house or on the corner, near two streets?” Place.

Always know your audience and speak to them in terms they understand.  Not in terms you understand.  Okay, it’s cookie time.

Peace.

 

Brand Strategy for Startups.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

How do you make something out of nothing?  That’s the question for the brand planner when working on a startup. 

When I was hire #1 at Zude as marketing director, brand strategy was one of my jobs.  I didn’t start brand planning in earnest for months while the CTO and CEO were building, raising and creating the physical business.  In previous blog posts I’ve suggested the first thing one must do when developing brand strategy for a start-up is “follow the patent.”  I stand by that. 

Startups, as you know, are quite fluid. It’s product and code first, business requirements second. And what the build is one day it may not be the next. So when it comes to customer care-abouts, that’s the easy part – unless you are breaking new functional ground. It’s the brand good-ats that are hard.  There are none.

So what does the brand planner do at this stage? Keep following the patent.  Have daily observation and update sessions with development team, even for a few minutes.  Insinuate yourself into the product development process in a positive way. Offer help as needed. Do not get in the way of the creativity. Provide marketing stim to the team — subconsciously, it can help.  And continue to play back (to the dev team) any recurring patterns that smell like good-ats.

It’s a gnarly time. Work to enjoy it.

Peace.

The Big Data Oy!

By
Steve Poppe
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0

mount hood

I worked at a web start-up a few years ago that offered users a free way to build web pages without code. It was called Zude. We had two rounds of funding, about $10M, and were often covered by Tech Crunch, Scobleizer and GigaOm and ReadWrite Web. The business monetization model was tied to advertising. An afterthought really. Let’s face it, in the web world advertising is everyone’s go-to monetization.

There is an important competing force for monetization today in the start-up world and that is marketing data. Marketing data is not served, viewed, or clicked. It is sold. As behavior, demographics and proclivities. For future use.

When What’s App sold to Facebook it probably assumed advertising would be in its future. It marginally may have thought selling data would be in its future. But, now, the time has come.

Advertising is an opt-in thing. Personally data is not. Not really. Data will become more and more of a privacy issue. Millennials say “Go ahead sell my data,” now. But when they season a bit more, they’ll realize privacy is way more important than seeing advertising.

Data vs. advertising is the new battlefield.

If you put all the paper Americans receive in direct mail and catalogs in a pile, for one year, you’d create Mount Hood (I just made that up, please don’t fact check it.) Imagine what spam folders, robo calls, door knockers and TV ads will look like when data really catches on. Oy!

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Beating Seth Godin.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

seth godin

I was at a meeting in the city with one of my mentors Robin Hafitz at a coffee/chocolatier when in walks Seth Godin. Seth’s kind of a hero of mine. I attended a group seminar paid for by client Windham Mountain when Seth operated out of a building next to railroad tracks in Westchester County. Every time a train went by Seth had to stop talking…Zen Master he.

Mr. Godin has been blogging successfully about branding and marketing for a long, long time. What’s The Idea? has published daily since January 2007. He makes me look like a slacker.

One morning I decided it might be fun to do a daily dance off with Mr. Godin. That is, I’d like to ask him if we might create a site where side-by-side blog posts are published and readers vote for the preferred post. They might be organized on a similar topic, as determined by hashtags. The results are likely to be similar to that of Food Network show “Beating Bobby Flay,” but what the heck.

Now I just have to get the nerve up to ask him. I’ve started the email once or twice before and chickened out.

Peace.                                              

 

Organizing Principle.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Many people in the advertising, marketing and branding business get tongue-tied when asked to define branding.  Or brand for that matter. We come up with short pithy things such as “A brand is a vessel into which we pour meaning.”  For years, that was actually one of my favorites.   As a consultant with some clients falling into the mid-size business category, I need something more tangible. “Organizing principle” are the two words I use most often now. The extended version is “An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”  It’s a nice definition – perhaps the best I’ve come across. It defines branding – the verb for used for manage the brand (noun).

But an organizing principle as a descriptor doesn’t really provide pay-off or consummation of the act. It’s just the theory. It is the framework of the organizing principle that makes believers out of brand manager. And the frame work at Whats’s The Idea? is “one claim, three proof planks.” These are the parameters of the organizing principle. The tangible guidance.

Many brand planners love fluidity. They enjoy freedom for their ideas. I enjoy the freedom of a plan, a focus, and a finite value array for doing more business. That’s what an organizing principle does. Peace.

 

 

Marketing Voice Archetypes.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There are three marketing voice archetypes. A marketing voice being a conduit that motivates others, convincing them toward thought, position or action. The archetypes are The Smart, The Persuasive, and The Forgivably Charismatic.

The Smart voice is convincing just on the sheer power of its brains. The recall of facts and figures, the logic with which it presents views, the scientific supports for the arguments, all make believers out of us. You believe the voice and appreciated its calm and comfortable demeanor.

The Persuasive voice may not come off as brainiac but everything it says, every story it tells, augers toward reason. It lays out a point of view almost musically as it builds toward a crescendo. The persuasive voice brackets the argument from all angles so the listener feels there are no gaps. The persuader voice is great at reading the audience – knowing when to accelerate and/or when to stop.

The Forgivably Charismatic voice seems smart and is certainly persuasive, but you sometimes know it shines the truth with a special polish. And you don’t even mind. Some examples, apocryphal though they may be, are just storytelling fun. And forgivable. This archetype is the most entertaining. The listener is most engaged with this voice and feels the least manipulated. You may not buy a house from this voice or follow it into battle, but you happily appreciate the point of view and the work that went into it.

All these archetypes have their place. But they can’t be mixed and matched. Any crossover and the listeners head goes to mush. (What archetype befits this post?)

Peace.

 

 

 

 

 

Claim Right, Proof Righter.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Consumers are smart. And inured to marketing claims. Advertising, the home of the marketing claim, has become that guy at the party who talks about himself in glowing terms in order to get the girl. Full of himself, boastful and proud. But consumers have seen so many of these f shallow claims they shut them off.  That’s why good brand planning uses proof as its foundation. Proof is what people remember.

I have a past client in the healthcare space who has decided to move into the health insurance business. He begins as the rest of the industry is consolidating or retreating. A number of insurers today are pulling out of insurance exchanges fueling the Affordable Care Act. So, the big guys are complaining they’re not making money and one little guy is starting anew.  I like it.

The CEO is a physician, so I know he’ll take the physicians view of the business. This could very easily be a premium price play, but rather doubt it. The CEO is knows for efficiency, technology and driving cost out of the business (while improving outcomes). So I’m eager to see what he has up his sleeve. I’m eager to see the proof.

There is a health system insurance program called CareConnect in the NY market with a 10-15% price advantage. Proof or reason to believe that advantage comes from its parent Northwell Health. He will have a tough row to hoe but I’m betting on him. As a physician, he understands proof.

You have to get the claim right but you have to get the proofs righter.

Peace.

 

 

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