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Naming, Religion and Terrorism.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

This is a political commentary and a branding commentary. I was reading an article in The New York Times on ISIS-Syria-Iraq and noticed how the words Islamic State were being used to refer to ISIS, ISIL and the lands occupied thereby. I believe it’s time to stop. If a terrorist organization of Christians were lazily called the Christian State, it would be deemed off-putting and unfair.

Words are important — and if we lazily say Islamic State rather than ISIS or ISIL aren’t we fostering disregard for the 1.6 billion peace loving members of Islam?

I understand using short hand in branding and naming. I plan for it and strategize about it. But you have to look at the downside. From the POV of fair non-Islamic peoples worldwide, we cannot afford to be careless and misleading in how refer to this small group of outliers.

Let’s stop today. Are you listening New York Times?

Peace.

 

Yahoo! Too Much Mouth.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I don’t like being a brand commentator, sitting on the sidelines sharing what’s wrong with brands, without offering something positive. And I feel that way with Yahoo! As a brand consultant, people hire me to help create brand strategy. Were Yahoo! to hire me, here’s what I’d do. (Earlier in the month I wrote about What’s The Idea? process which covers Discovery, Fermentation and Boil Down. Here’s how I’d handle Discovery.

I was watching cyber security conference video last week and a senior level Yahoo! Security officer was leading the talk. He was smart, witty, believable, and committed. He is what I call a Poster – someone willing to share and help the public learn. Sadly, this gentleman who has since moved on to a big job at Facebook, was stowed away at corporate not seeing the public light of day. With Yahoo!, often all we get as the viewing, investing and using public, is Marissa Meyer playing offense and defense. Mostly from a stage.

I suspect there are scores of people like this security office at Yahoo! and these are the people I would speak to in Discovery. These are the body organs that drive a brand. That fuel the brain. That feed the mouth.

At Yahoo! we’ve been getting a modicum of brain and a lot of mouth. A good brand discovery would help go all deep dish on the company.

Peace.

 

 

Cars and Legs.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I always admired Fiat as a car company that made,what I call meep-meep cars. Little four wheelers that zoom around Europe, emitting cartoonish horn bleats. I love how Fiat bought Chrysler bringing a small car mentality to the Jeep and Chrysler brands. But as gas prices have come down, America’s addiction to SUVs and trucks has ticked up.

There is a direct correlation between American’s health and their use of cars. The number of obese Americans and the number of cars per family are aligned. We don’t walk anymore – not until we’ve had a heart attack. Or some other sort of health scare.

God forbid a mom or dad should walk to the store with a wheelie basket and shop for groceries. If s/he does s/he’s either destitute or a hippie. We need a making walking cool again. It is cool. You get to interact with people. You get fresh air which is good for lung health. You’re doing aerobic exercise.

Two things that will help individual and planetary health are smaller cars and walking. No brainers. I think we’re shopping for smaller car this weekend. Perhaps we’ll walk.

Peace.     

 

Brand Lift-Off.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

One of the goals of What’s The Idea? is to create for clients explicit guidance for “product, experience and messaging.” It’s not easy but it’s doable. The real hard part is turning that explicit brand strategy into implicit company actions. Brand actions, behaviors and deeds enculturated through the company or brand group are the Holy Grail. When this happens consumers learn and follow. As brand strategy permeates a company and the using masses, brands begin to thrive. You can feel it.

Brand strategy training is a key component of brand management. When the receptionist knows the brand claim and proof array (3 proof planks) and is able to espouse and act on it as well as the CEO and CMO, we have lift off.

When explicit turns implicit, we have brand lift off.

Peace.

 

 

When Brand Building Isn’t Brand Building.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I ran across a company today whose boilerplate description reads thus (the name has been changed):

ABC Communications is a creative marketing partner to our clients. We are experts in building brands and promoting product across all media channels. Our ability to seamlessly integrate online and offline communications in a compelling, unique and effective manner has given us recognition in the quickly growing online community. Providing inspired ideas and compelling creative that empowers and optimizes market presence is our passion!

It’s an agency. Their specialty seems to be integrating off- and online work. So 2009, don’t you think. But let’s not be catty.

My problem here is with the use of the words “brand building.”  Copy the first para. of every agency website extant and paste it into a file then search for “brand building” and you’ll get an 80%+ hit rate. Why? Because every tactic can be seen as brand building, so say the unwashed agency masses.

Real brand strategists know otherwise. Brand building starts with a real brand strategy. A claim or promise and unique proof array. All the marko-babble about “mission” and “values” and “personas” and an assortment of similar agency taxon used to create a halo of understanding between agency and brand marketer really just comes down to “Is there an organizing principle in place that allows for brand building, in a measurable way, that ties to sales.”  With measures that are discrete and finite. In a way that allows brand managers to say “no.” If so, you have a brand strategy. And you can build brands. Otherwise your tactics are nothing more. A loose federation of acts to increase awareness, interest and sales. Simple templates for action.

Peace.

 

Discovery, Fermentation, Boil Down.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The What’s The Idea? brand strategy development process can best be explained in three stages. They are quite serial in nature but can overlap. Discovery is discovery. Conduct category research, ask a lot of questions of stakeholders, customers and prospects and be in thorough learn mode. Learn language, customer care-abouts and brand good-ats. Part fact-finding exercise, part search for feelings and attitudes (pal Megan Kent counsels “Feelings trump reason”). discovery fills the brain and content receptacle with lots of stuff.

Fermentation is just as it sounds. It’s the part of the process where there is active, unbridled growth. Action and reaction. Some bubbles. Lots of churn. It’s the most creative part of the process. Sometimes fermentation occurs during REM sleep, other times it takes place in the shower, or while mowing the lawn. It’s where ideas beget ideas. The fermentation process is nature and random. Serendipitous and planned.

stock-pot

Lastly we have the boil down. This is where everything from Discovery and Fermentation goes into a large metaphoric stock pot. Heat is applied and evaporation starts. Water and non-essential information, data, proof, care-abouts and good-ats are boiled away. This is where the tough decision are made and priorities established. What comes out of the boil down, with the help of a brand brief, is One Claim and 3 Proof Planks, AKA the brand strategy.

And there, ladies and gentlefellows is how we make the sausage. Peace.

 

Stale is Bad for Business.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Can brands get stale? B-school professors will tell you companies go through maturation stages: growth, mature, harvest. Investment spending is heaviest during the growth period while milking profits and low investment occurs in the harvest period. Mature is the middle period where all the hard decisions are made. Mature is where real money happens and success is fickle. This is the period where brands can get stale.

(First off, let me acknowledge that brands aren’t companies and companies aren’t brands. Though sometimes they are. IBM is a company and also a brand. P&G is a company but not a brand. It’s complicated.) For this discussion let’s just say B2B companies are brands.

I’m a big proponent of a brand strategy: Once claim and three proof planks. This framework provides an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. It works for tooth whitener, wholesale fish purveyors and billion dollar healthcare systems. Unlike a tagline, graphics style manual and ad campaign (the drivers of most brands), a brand strategy allows for freshness and flexibility. And it works in all the life stages of a brand. A brand strategy provides business winning strategy directives. It fights staleness when in the hands of smart brand managers.

Brands can get stale. Business executives become most sensitive to it when sales are down. When the campaign becomes too familiar. If business fundies are without flaw, e.g., headcount, distribution, pricing, then I always suggest getting the brand strategy right. It’s how businesses and brands flourish. Peace.

 

Big Moves.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Great marketers use big moves to get an unfair share of the market. Amazon Prime is one such. For $99 a year an Amazon Prime member gets free 2-day shipping in the U.S. During one week in December 3 million customers signed up for Prime. Do the math. That’s not fuzzy math, that’s Zuckerberg money. There are some projections that half of American households will have a Prime account by 2020. Is Amazon losing money with prime? Have you shipped a package across country lately? I suspect so. They’re buying share with this amazing big move but it is tilting the market even further toward them.

Another big move was made by Hyundai a number of years ago. It was the 100,000 mile, 10 year power train (whatever that means) warranty. Smart consumers could hardly turn down an offer like that. My bet is it hit the coasts and Chicago as a quick win then seeped into other parts of the country. Especially young families. The price point was good, the 10 years unparalleled. Did it cost Hyundai a lot of money? Prob. Did it make them rely more heavily on quality? Def. Did it buy market share? Oh yeah. Big move.

Big moves are not for the weak-kneed. Can you think of any big moves that went sour? Please share with Steve at WhatsTheIdea.

Peace.

 

 

 

Twitter Is the News.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Twitter is an important company. When Iraq took back Ramadi the day before yesterday, prime minister Haider al-Abadi, took to Twitter to make the announcement. In real time. A few years ago when China underwent a massive earthquake, the world was notified on Twitter. In real time. The Arab Spring took place, in great part, on Twitter.

Twitter isn’t ready yet for Facebook size masses. It hasn’t settled. Maybe it’s currently stuck at a couple hundred million users. (Am I listening to myself? Did I say stuck?) Shareholders and Wall Street want Twitter to be a bullion user application. And it will be, but right now people need to chill. Twitter is important in ways we haven’t yet figured. I have my own beliefs about Twitter’s place in the social ecosystem, but they are not shared by everyone.

Twitter is the Google of conversation. It is earth flattening. It will do more to create one global language than any other product.

Twitter is in the news for a number of reasons: leadership, growth, diversity to name a few. Let’s fix the diversity-in-the-corporate ranks problem, then take a breath. And let this gangly adolescent grow. Peace.

 

The language. A brand planner tip.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

A critical component of brand planning is understanding the special language of the seller and buyer. In the tech sector, the language can be quite unique, with many words to learn. As a young strategist working with AT&T’s Business Communications Services, I developed an acronym dictionary I kept with me every day. One could sit in a technical marketing meeting at AT&T back then and hear 10 acronyms in 10 minutes. In other technical businesses, e.g., healthcare, finance, and insurance learning the seller language is equally important. On the buyer side it isn’t as critical because the technical stuff goes thought a translation filter before it hits a consumer. (But if language is dumbed down too much, it comes out as marko-babble.)

When you learn the language of the seller, you hear things you couldn’t otherwise. Nuance. Emotion. It makes it so the sellers don’t have to teach, they can communicate. If you speak their language you also become more trusted.

Consultants and freelancers who don’t have a lot of time to learn the language are handicapped. It’s the first thing one needs to do on a new assignment. You need a good ear. No foreign word is unimportant. Study the language by reading trades magazines. Learning the language makes the first few meetings a bit clunky, but it’s necessary.

Peace.

 

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