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The Lake House

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s a wonderful restaurant in Bay Shore, NY called The Lake House.  Bay Shore is where the Fire Island Ferries take vacationers across the Great South Bay to a number of lovely Fire Island communities.  The Lake House used to be a small, cozy fine dining eatery perched on a lake. The Lake House serves great food and with business being good the owners decided to move to a bigger location. Smart business idea.  

I’m sure they invested millions to update the old mainland “Flynn’s,” located on a prime location on the Bay — a location that laid fallow for decades. The new building looks great. That said, The Lake House is not on a lake anymore. It’s on a saline body of water the rivals the Chesapeake in its richness and local glory. The Lake House is on the bay.

I understand brand equity. I really do. But the owners are not looking beyond the dashboard with their brand strategy they are doing rearview mirror planning. I wish the establishment the best, they deserve it. But the restaurant and brand also deserve a new, more fitting name.  Happy to help.  I’ve been known to work for beer and appetizers.

Peace.

 

 

 

Competition and the Agency Holding Company.

By
Steve Poppe
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The other day I read AT&T was moving all of its advertising business to Omnicom. No doubt the reason undergirding the move was economies of scale. One of the public explanations for Omnicom winning the business was “integration” of programs and ideas. That is to say the new media agency “nuts and honey” or some such and super shop BBDO will work together closely, in an aligned fashion, to insure the ideas they presented as a team in the pitch are structurally recreated IRL (in real life).

This age old strategy sounds great on paper. And as we get more mature as an industry the strategy will actually work. But there are two conflicting forces against a move like this. Ferocious competition and complacence. When one entity is in charge, time and comfort engender complacence. BBDO will churn out nice work, great work even…Hearts and Science (the media company) will plan and digitize its ass off…to a point. The paranoia, however, that keeps shops on their toes dissipates.

The energy that has shops like Anomaly, Droga and Preacher slamming, is lost.  Not a fan of the big consolidation move. Competition is what marketers thrive on. So must its shops.

Peace.    

 

 

Brand Strategy Tarot Cards.

By
Steve Poppe
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0


tarot cards

I have a neat idea for a “What’s The Idea?” promotion.  (Disclosure: What’s The Idea? is an open source company, believing strategy frameworks should be open and shared.) The promotion is called “Brand Strategy Tarot Cards”  but the idea needs a little help from friends and friendettes, as Rohsaan Roland Kirk might have put it. So feel free to weigh in.

The promotion offers a free 1-hour brand strategy assessment to help marketers better understand their current brand position – or lack thereof.

In a traditional tarot card reading, three cards are turned over. In a Brand Strategy Tarot Card reading, I will turn over 6 cards. But they won’t actually be cards, they’ll be pieces of marketing content. 

Here are a couple of content types I’m thinking about:

  1. Press release boiler plate (first sentence and About paragraph). 
  2. Website Homepage and About page copy. (We’ll use the home page if About is the same as boilerplate.)
  3. Text from a CEO speech or introductory sales presentation.
  4. Most famous ad or blog post. 
  5. LinkedIn posts or last company Tweet.  
  6. Company mission statement.

My intent is to turn these content pieces over in front of the CMO, one at a time, read them aloud and interpret them in real time. At the end of the reading, aggregate observations will be shared and if I’m able to see a pattern, a meme-able brand position will be offered.

So planners, any thoughts as to other brand strategy tarot cards I might use? 

Peace.                

 

 

How to Build a Business With One Idea.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve never really parsed the brand name of my consultancy “What’s The Idea?”  While developing the company, which actually started out just as a blog, I wanted to name it What’s The Big Idea?, but I chose against it for URL and simplicity’s sake.  A big idea is better than an idea, one might think, yet it also seemed a big self-aggrandizing. So What’s The Idea it was.

What’s neat about the name is that it is a call to action. If a brand manager or stakeholder can answer the question, it probably has an idea. If the idea can’t be put into a succinct explanation, then un-uh.  If you have no brand idea you have no idea how hard it is to convey value to the consumer world.

Most sane women and men who are captains of industry would respond “How can I maintain a business beneath one idea?” The answer is “By using proof planks.” Proof planks (3 in total) drive business value, consumer value and shareholder value.

You want metrics, I’ll give you metrics. Write me. Steve at Whatstheidea.

Peace.

 

Droning on To a Point.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I read Farhad Manjoo’s tech piece in the NYT today about Amazon’s drone plans. He seems to be coming around to believing it will happen. Drones will be delivering goods in the next 5 years, reports Amazon in the article. Certainly in the wilds of Africa.  

I was at a wedding the other day and the bride and groom decided a drone’s eye camera angle would be a nice-to-have during the outdoor vows. Have you ever hiked in the woods on a humid day? ‘Nough said.

I’m no geeze when it comes to tech but drones over Babylon or Bumpus Mills are not going to happen as envisioned.  For safety reasons (read security, etc.) home deliveries are not in our future. Not for a couple hundred years.  Perhaps there will be designated delivery posts or lots, like PO boxes, where we can pick up drone deliveries but drones will not be buzzing around our hoods and cities at all hours of the day and night. The idea to have an idea will work in this case. Drones will happen. We just haven’t quite figured out how they will contribute to “last mile” delivery. I’m guessing the last half mile will be more like the 1970s paper boy than a drone drop-off.

Peace.   

 

 

An Educational Idea for Successful Learning.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In 2012 I worked on a brand strategy for a company in what I called the “educational development” space.  The company sold classroom technology and professional development – in effect teaching the teachers how to use the technology. It was one of the coolest companies I’ve ever worked for. For those unfamiliar with my brand strategy framework, it comprises one claim and three proof planks. One of the proof planks in the brand strategy had to do with changing the paradigm in the “student-teacher relationship.”

During the  engagement Mark Zuckerberg announced he was going to donate $100 million to the Newark, NJ school system.  Throwing money at teaching and learning sounded like a good idea at the time; it was not.  As far as I can tell, Newark ain’t no Mooresville, NC.

Today, Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerberg are championing, along with Facebook, a new learning management system with Summit Public Schools, a charter school partner, to reinvent the student-teacher relationship. It’s a software system and that lets students direct their learning roadmap and pace supported by intense one-on-one mentoring.  It is the student teacher relationship plank in action. And it is already paying dividends in Oakland.

It seems to me allowing Newark to design its own learning plan with a pot full of money doesn’t work but allowing students to do so, with some newfound supervision and software does. Ms. Carmen Farina, are you watching?

Peace.

 

Lose the Walmart.com brand.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I don’t begin to know the complicated ins and outs of Walmart.com’s business model. Jet’s or Amazon’s either for that matter. But I do know a thing about brands and brand focus.  And it is my opinion that Walmart’s purchase of Jet.com was a smart, smart move, however, the idea to keep the two brands separate is a colossal mistake. Jet CEO Marc Lore will now run both companies, offering him economies of scale and scope which will improve supply chain performance.  But he’ll be doing double duty in his customer facing job. Way too much work.

Walmart.com has to go away and Jet.com needs to be the face of the single entity. The Walton family needs to let go and allow Jet to really ramp up. Mr. Lore will sleep better at night, he’ll dream better on weekends and his employees will have one team to play and root for.  One of the stupidest things I did as a parent was to think my two teenagers could share a car.  Two brands can’t share a business.

Rip off the Band-Aid Mr. Lore and Walton family. This is Amazon you’re trying to take share from. This ain’t no Mudd Club, no Sears or Macy’s.

Peace.                                              

 

The new OS.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Riddle me this. When does an operating system really become an operating system?   When it truly delivers a digital assistant that manages all devices by voice activation. As Amazon’s Alexa intends to do.

Operating systems today are made up of software that undergirds other software and applications, e.g., iOS, Windows, and Android. In 20 years voice commands that direct “ons,” “offs” and other device and system activations will be the operating systems.  These assistants will compete with each other for supremacy.  There will be systems by Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and one or two start-ups. None will integrate (at first) but mark my words, these are the operating systems of the future. Because they operate real life things…including cars.

These operating systems will be the battleground of the next 50 years. Will they be free?  Will they be as expensive as cars? Will consumers be paid to use them? Time will tell.

Peace.

 

Strategy Bounty.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m in a hurry this morning. Heading to Orient Point for a ferry to Connecticut then on to see Pearl Jam at Fenway Park in Boston, MA, It’s great being human.  Anyway, I will only post a short one today (as if they aren’t all short.) 

Apple has decided to offer bug bounties to hackers for any software glitches found in their software. Very contrary to Apple’s position of bug-free software it has been lauding over Microsoft for so many years. Still it’s a good move.  

I’m going to riff on the idea and ask companies to offer “strategy bounties” to brand planners. I’d love to look at a brand strategy for a company and ID any anomalies for money. Who will my first payor?

Peace.

Itty Bitty Data Club.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

So what’s up in marketing strategy these days? Two words: BIG DATA. I’m okay around big data but am much more facile around LITTLE DATA. I use data often in planning: sales, margins, target penetration, adds, moves and deletes but I loves me some little data. Info that  resides between consumers’ ears. What they say they like. What they don’t say they like. What they dislike and why. And, of course, the culture into which products and services fits. This is the softer side of planning.

My two previous posts were about “proof.” One might think that proof, evidence and tangibles are not the softer side. Sometimes they’re not. But honestly, new unexpected proofs can be found while delving into the softer side. Contrary, market-busting proofs.

mike piazza blond

There was a cultural moment 15 years ago when the Mets Mike Piazza stepped out of the dugout with blond hair — giving permission to 100 million American men to color their hair — effectively doubling the size of the hair color market. That was a softer side or little data proof. Something that could have made a big data woosh had it overcame cultural stasis. It did not happen and here the hair color market sits.

Don’t overlook the itty bitty data club. As Yogi might have said, it’s big.

Peace.

 

 

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