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Apple’s Product Diaspora.

By
Steve Poppe
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I have not spent a lot of my hard-earned buying Apple products. I have a fallow iTunes account, had an iPod, and I worked on a Mac for a year while at an ad agency. I’ve not read any books about Steve Jobs, but did go to see the recent movie – which was fab. I love Apple marketing. I love its sensibility and design. Cool company indeed. But I wonder about its product diaspora — something I’m reading about every day. There’s Apple Pay, also a new peer-to-peer payment system in the offing, Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Radio…the list goes on.

Is this a device company?  A platform company?  A transaction or app company? I know not. It’s certainly a rich company. A successful company.  It is one of the world’s most admired companies. The big question is, is the brand more important than the products? It seems so. And that’s a great place for a brand to be. But with this product diaspora, I’m beginning to wonder what will happen to the brand in 5, 10 and 20 years?  When the word Apple and the mind do not synch up. What will teens and tweens associate with the brand? Apple is an overdog. A great one. But what will this product/service/app creep do to it?

Time will tell. Perhaps on an Apple Watch. Peace.

 

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Quiet Period.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Sorry for my snark yesterday concerning the BBDO advertising for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I’m sure the people who worked on the campaign are very nice. I worked on the Lucent Technologies launch in the 90s when AT&T and Lucent spun apart, and the execution was superb. From the logo design to the launch ads and the subsequent follow-on advertising — that was McCann-Erickson at its best. Lucent was only an $11B company at the time. Hewlett Packard enterprise is $53B.

Launching multi-billion dollar spin offs should be a big thing. Not a pedestrian effort. HP is an American brand of great import. It should carry itself that way. The company deserved fanfare. It deserved a great launch. A big budget.

An ad is an expression of a company. My hope is that moving forward Ms. Whitman and her executives put great effort into the new brand and company, and this “quiet period” will be over soon.

Peace.

 

Advertising By Bot.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

HP split into two companies recently, one of which is called Hewlett Packard Enterprise. It is a $53B company. I’ve been picking on pre-break up company HP for its idea-less advertising for a couple of years, trying to learn more about the advertising by writing planners at BBDO, a terrific shop that know some advertising. To no avail.

hp enterprise

The launch advertising for Hewlett Packard Enterprise is preposterous in this day and age. It’s poor 1990 technology advertising. The brand strategy revolves around “accelerate next.” as in accelerate the speed with which customers use and benefit from technology. Say whaaat? The print work I saw this week is high school- like. The TV ad feels like as if it was directed by an ad bot.

I know Hewlett Packard Enterprise makes some serious technology and does amazing things. But ads are not one of them. Meg Whitman must be asleep at the switch. And BBDO? This is C team stuff. David Lubars can’t have an excuse. The brand brief must have been written by a temp. And I’m not even cranky this morning. This whole advertising cluster fork is amazing to me.

And the Siegle+Gale logo and naming project?  Also sophomoric. I can only hope the teams had about 10 days to do everything and that this the result. Accelerating Next can sometimes be a mistake.

Peace.                                                                                                  

 

 

 

What Comes First in Branding?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There is Brand Design, the creating of logos, packaging and style manuals, there is Brand Experience Design, the creation of product or service journey delivery across existential consumer touch points, and there is what I do at What’s The Idea?, Brand Strategy.

It’s nice in my world because brand strategy is the precursor to all other brand building initiatives. It’s the starting point.

The North Shore-LIJ Health System is in the midst of changing its name and logo. They’ve decided on Northwell Health as a name and a multicolor, multi-pixilated logo. Before Monigle Associates, their design house, started work they needed a brief. A brand strategy brief.

When Dunkin’ Donuts redesigned its stores to improve experience and dial up profitability, Starfish, their partner, needed a brand strategy brief.

When you decouple the brand strategy brief from the logo, package or experience design you get a cleaner, no lobbying approach. Brand strategy is the starting place for all things brand. It should not be part of another process, but a process in and of itself.

The design of the brand strategy is not a means to an end, it’s THE means to an end. Not an extra process, it’s the most important process. If you need some help with your brand strategy before building things, let’s chat.

Steve at whatstheidea.

Peace.

 

 

On Marketing Innovation.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Fred Wilson VC from Union Square Partners and a blogging hero of mine was quoted today on AVC as saying “…it hasn’t been that easy for a seller to be creative on social networks. Posting a link to their shop on facebook, or tweeting or pinning their latest item is fine. But doing that over and over quickly gets boring for everyone.”

Social networks are template based mediums. You know what else is a template based media? Broadcast advertising: TV and radio. And they tend to suffer a similar fate. So how do advertising agents break the broadcast template? I think we try to make it twitch-able. (A twitch being a media move from one device to another in search of clarification.) Shazam is something that can do this. Twitter too. But no one has done a great, breakthrough job with these technologies in broadcast yet. It’s coming.

So what’s the Idea? Send me your thoughts (steve@whatstheidea.com) so we can break out of this broadcast boredom cycle.

Peace.

 

 

Google Glass Next Generation.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There will be a time in the future when virtual reality glasses will be as common as mobile phones. Perhaps more so. We’ll look back at the failed Google Glass project and whatever first generation of Oculus VR goggles are released and see what we saw when we look back at the AT&T EO and Apple Newton. It won’t be just a virtual reality device, it will offer lots of comms and locational services. These devices will be small, unobtrusive and agile.

How soon will they be here? I’m guessing 2020. Who will devise them? Facebook, Samsung, maybe Sony, and possibly Microsoft. They will probably be free, paid for by advertising. But ads won’t look like they do today, they will more likely be on-demand, Siri-like request and response services.

It’s going to be wild. Count on it.

Peace.

 

 

 

Brand Craft.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

carbonsPlease don’t kill me for this poor metaphor, but China is pumping 1 million more tons of carbon into the atmosphere than previously reported. And Greenland is melting. It’s worth a big fat ulcer. And we’d better do something about it.

The state of the advertising and marketing business is not much better. We are pumping billions of dollars into the advertising atmosphere, filled with not much more than “we’re here ads” and other cultural blather. “We’re here” advertising works when awareness is all that is needed to stim a sale but its poor tradecraft. Blather is not only poor tradecraft, it creates a pool of murky water through which consumers cannot see the good work. It uses and re-uses words like “quality” and “innovation” and “best” to the point where advertising is melting. This is exacerbated by online messaging.

Great brand strategy creates a map of acceptable “good ats” and “care abouts.” It organizes them in such a way that the collective story stands out. A brand strategy is easy to follow. You are either on strategy (one claim, three proof planks) or you are not. When the brand craft is good, the advertising tradecraft is good. Even if part blather. Let’s start practicing brand craft to improve our tradecraft.

Peace.

 

Avoidance Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Readers know I’m an advocate of Twitch Point Planning; a twitch being is a media move from one online device to another. Typically in search of clarification. Under closer inspection, I’m willing to expand the definition of a twitch to include a move from the real world to a device, e.g. “Who was the lead actress in Vampire Diaries, with the funny name?” Twitches can also happen on the same device, a la “How do you spell “hor d’oeuvres?”, a twitch while writing on a laptop to a Google search.  Twitch Point Planning is a comms planning rigor that ask your to understand, map and manipulate a consumer closer to a sale by interrupting twitches with value brand related content.

This post is not about Twitch Point Planning. It’s about Avoidance Planning. A way to reach consumers when they’re avoiding typical media plays. For instance, I couldn’t read the sports section yesterday or today after the Mets loss. I watched the game and there wasn’t anything anyone could say about it to console me. I also stayed away from sports talk radio. And may for another day. My Mets mind has shut down.

A friend, Cory Treffiletti, started an avoidance planning group a number of years ago on Facebook called, “After Pearl Jam Tour Depression.” Cory gets it.

To properly take marketing advantage of avoidance behavior, you need to figure out a secondary or replacement behavior. Most likely this is an experiential marketing undertaking. What’s the opposite of a World Series celebration parade? How to you deal with a lost election? A poor health diagnosis? How does a marketer comfort consumers and show empathy? The answer: avoidance planning.

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

Purple Carrot’s Latest Hire

By
Steve Poppe
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0

purple carrot

Mark Bittman makes my mouth water. As a New York Times critic he excited the food world for many years. It was just announced he’s moving to start-up Purple Carrot as content creator. In this case the content will be recipes and comms. Purple Carrot is a meal delivery and some-assembly-required service.

What I like about Mr. Bittman, along with his recipes and writing, is his current mission. Quoted in today’s NYT his goal is to get “people to eat more plants.” Can’t get more focused than that. Great brand strategy.

He and start-up founder Andrew Levitt are smart marketers and brand builders. Purple carrots sounds intriguing. The “meal kit,” is an awful and un-tasty food classification, but it’s descriptive and appropriate for the time.

I spend a good deal of time in Costco and BJs and must tell you the percentage of overweight people with poor feeding habits is appalling. Obesity may be a class thing and a money thing, but if the price point of these vegan meal kits can be made elastic enough, it may open up new markets for Purple Carrot and do some real good.  I’ve done enough marketing strategy in the obesity space to know that good tasting plant-based fare has a nice economic upside. I believe Mr. Bittman’s hire will be a good one.

Peace.

The Three Adjectives.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Adjectives are a dime a dozen in marketing. Here are three that are easy to toss about: simple, revolutionary and disruptive. But these are the words used to describe Theranos, perhaps the most successful start-up ever launched. Theranos uses a small draw of blood, accessed by a pin prick, to provide a broad range of lab tests – where before multiple draws were needed.

No one, especially a brand person, will argue with the need for simplicity. Modern man likes simple. We also like the fulfillment of hard work, buy in our consumables, simple is golden.  Revolutionary is a consumerists dream as well. While evolution is the way of life, revolution gets noticed. And celebrated. Lastly, disruptive. New products and services that take massive market share and revenue from competitors or other categories are considered disruptive. Reality TV shows were for a while disruptive for scripted dramas and comedies.

It’s hard to be a marketer and hit all three adjectives. Commerce today is often built around commoditization. But success lies in these 3 adjectives. View product development this way. View marketing and communications this way. You will see the payouts sooner than you think.

Peace.                             

 

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