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The Brand Strategy Fence.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand strategists are often defined by the quality of their insights. Over the years I’ve found that insights can be either supply side (what a brand does well) or demand side (what customers want most). Planners tend to work mostly in the latter space. I preach working in the middle. At the nexus. Where supply and demand come together.

For ZDNet  “For Doers, Not Browsers” was the brand strategy. It sat up there on the supply and demand fence.

For Teq, an educational development company, “Illuminating Learning” spoke to buyers and seller. At their cores.

For Sweet Loren’s Cookies “Craft Cookies Au Naturel” defined the product and consumer benefit in 4 words.

These brand strategies may sound like taglines but they aren’t; they are organizing principles. Each supported by 3 proof planks that give depth and direction to the ongoing narrative.

Brand briefs differ from creative briefs in their output. The output must hit both supply side and demand side insights. Turning communications and experiences into selling freaking machines.

Peace it up.

 

Ya-Who?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Digital magazines? Search? Buying traffic? Mobile advertising? Alibaba? These are the things discussed yesterday on Yahoo!’s earnings call. A call that announced revenue up 14% but break even earnings.

A couple of years ago Marissa Mayer developed a strategy I thought was on the right track: Make Yahoo! a daily habit. Well it seems the habit is more like a nun’s head cover than a web business. Mobile apps are a good path but I’m not feeling any results. People with mobile phones have hourly not daily habits — and frankly those habits are wearing thin. How many Facebook and Instagram posts can a body look at during the day. Yahoo needs to find enthralling apps. Mobile apps than haven’t been done before. Content served in ways never seen before.

Yahoo is chasing TV (Fantasy Football Live) and magazines (Yahoo Food or something) which is just repackaging old stuff with some new sheen. Ms. Mayer needs to innovate. Not cross over. Not repackage. She must start with behaviors that are habit forming. She was on the right track but hasn’t landed on a breathtaking innovation. Keep after it Ms. Mayer. You are probably closer than you know. Peace.

 

 

Branding Impressionism

By
Steve Poppe
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0

femmes d alger

Ninety percent of branding is plan driven: understanding what customers want most (related to your product and category) and what you do best. You find a strategic claim and three proof planks, then you build equity using that claim and proof array until its hard as steel. But…but.

Just when you think you know something about the business, someone comes along and proves you wrong. And therein lies the other 10%.

Every one once in a while an idea comes along that is off brief, off strategy, and is just too good to pass up. It may be tangential to a strategy. It may be in the neighborhood but not on the right block,. You just feel in your bones it’s a business winner. That’s the 10 percent. And you have to go for it. As Eddie Vedder says “It’s evolution baby.”  It may help morph the strategy. It may not. This is a creative business plus we are dealing with people; so you have to try things that speak to you. Strategy is mellifluous. Impressionistic.

Show a person on the street a copy of Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger, which BTW recently sold at auction for $180M, and they might think it childlike. Brand planners are in the business of creating positive product impressions. Impressions that draw consumers closer to a brand, not just closer to a sale. It’s so “not science” alone.  Cut the leash 10% of the time and allow in a little impressionism.

Peace.

 

Blog Better.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve written over 1,800 blog posts here at What’s The Idea? I would love to tell you it has made me rich, or famous, or a better writer. Perhaps I’m a marginally better writer. The reality is, I do this for all the above reasons yet the main reason I blog is because I like to. I like brand building. I like communications. Marketing. And I believe in the thesis that an “organizing principle for product, communications and experience” is a sound way to drive improved sales and profitability. I’m not going to go all “passion play” on you. The word is overused today.

Many blogs today are chores. They are shared by numerous writers. They are simply writing and posting. Searchable tags under the guise of an idea. Some social media tools are a lazy man’s blog. Poop out simple short snippets and drive traffic. A blog is best when an ongoing narrative with connective tissue.

To companies who feel the need to blog I say find a writer who loves the company, topic or category. Someone close enough to actually have a sense of humor about it, a sense of indignation, love and feelings. As much as I talk about good marketing being educatory, don’t use teachers to blog.

Blogs become good if they are interesting. Interesting, contextually relevant, alive and immediate. I miss Steve Rubel. Robert Scoble. Joseph Jaffe. Come back to blogging sirs. Kandee Johnson never left and her work moves the world for her readers.

Peace.

 

The Gray Hairbnb?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

When I was a stupid twenty something (as opposed to a stupid 50 something) I had to wipe my friend Andy’s ass. He had been stricken by some debilitating muscle disease – his family wasn’t in the city hospital at the time – and I was visiting. This was pre kids so I’d never wiped a foreign ass before. Andy, who had always been nice to me, though a marginal buddy, in his high-pitched, muscle depleted voice asked for my help and I complied. No problem. As if he was asking me to pass milk. What’s an ass wiping among friends?

My latest idea for life in my 80s and 90s is to create a group home of friends, all of whom are willing to wipe one another’s asses. Giggle not! If you are willing to wipe, you are definitely willing to help a pal into the shower, soap a nether region, and do all the other things it takes to live independent. Nurses do, what’s the big deal?

The notion of putting a number of seniors friends together to share a home, resources, living tasks and chores makes sense to me. I’m not sure it’s something that has been done before. One person may still be able to drive, another a great cook, one the “super mother,” another a fixer/tradesman. Of course there will be personalities that clash. Crankiness that old age begets. And refrigerator bandits. So there will have to be rules, lots of TVs and a mediator. But if the idea works, it may be a wonderful way for lifelong friends to be self-sufficient and perhaps even thrive for another 10 years. The next Gray Hair BNB?

Peace.

 

Buying Versus Selling.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve written before about the marketer’s easiest sale being one where there’s pent up demand for a product, service or function. When people want what you offer, selling is easy. At the polar opposite is selling something people don’t want. Then selling is hard. I don’t want to get sick, so selling remedies beforehand, for instance. I don’t want to buy a condo in the Berkshires, is another example.  Then there is the third approach: selling something a customer doesn’t know about. They may want it, if educated about the product, but the need is not on their radar. This is an expensive marketing challenge because first the seller has to explain the product, then explain the problem/function, and lastly close the deal. It’s a 3 stepper, if you will.

With pent up demand selling you can almost take a “we’re here” approach. There is demand — you are the supply. Like Pearl Jam tickets. With a product that had little demand you are best segmenting your target and focusing on those who do want it or profile closest to wanting it. For the latter group the best way forward is to take an educational approach. Don’t preach-teach. Engage, find common contextual ground, then bait several hooks and learn what works.

If all people were the same, selling would be easy. They are not. Remember, it is buying you should be focused on not selling. Peace.

 

A Bold Long Term Move By CVS.

By
Steve Poppe
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1

In Mark Ames important Pando article “Shillers for Killers” he states tobacco killed 100 million people last century and is on track to kill another billion this century. The point of his article is that PR and third party advocates have greatly furthered tobacco’s cause – the shillers in the article’s title.

It was announced yesterday, CVS Pharmacy has decided to drop out of the Chamber of Commerce because the Chamber is against anti-smoking efforts outside the U.S.  This is freakin’ weeken’ awesome. Que huevos?

When CVS made the decision to drop butts from its store a while back, it no doubt calculated the loss of revenue. But the CVS brand idea “Health Means Everything” means nothing unless they walk the walk. And CVS has walked the walk. These are not only a brand strategy moves they are big ass, newsworthy proofs of claim.  And the payout over time, will way exceed the loss of a million Marlboro Lights sold.

The reality is, Walgreens and others will follow but CVS is doing the hard, dirty work and breaking the new ground. And they will continue to I suspect. The leadership at CVS and the head of marketing/public relations should win the 2015 Ad Age Marketer of the Year Award.

Peace.

 

Brand Planning Memes.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m a meme-alist. That’s someone who likes to create memes. In my area of business — brand strategy — I own a few memes. Twitch Point Planning. Posters and Pasters. Brand Planners Prayer. Well actually, no one ever owns a meme, so let’s just say I started them. And they point to What’s The Idea?

My biggest business building meme (or it should be) is Claim and Proof. It’s undergirds every aspect of my work. The idea referred to in What’s the Idea? is the claim. The proof array or proof planks are the reasons to believe. The reasons to remember. 

claim and proof art

If you Google Claim and Proof you won’t find What’s the Idea? You’ll get lots of pages of bankruptcy links about proof of claim (claim and proof inverted). Google “Claim and Proof” in quotes and you will only find a picture from my deck on brand strategy. Above the fold. It will get you to my stuff, but it’s a picture not a link. Seems there’s a paucity of art related to Claim and Proof. Hint, hint.

For my business, the order of claim and proof is important. The words cannot be flopped.

If you Google Claim and Proof Planks you get What’s The Idea? in living color. It’s not as meme-able as claim and proof sans quotes, but it’s a bullseye. As a meme-alist, I help clients find their idea then develop ways to meme-alate it. Hee hee…I can’t stop!!!$%%.

Peace.

 

MSKCC and Proof.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The new advertising for Memorial Sloan Kettering has great potential yet under-delivers. The idea or promise is “More Science. Less Fear.” MSKCC the CC stands for Cancer Center) is known for its best-in-class cancer outcomes. If ever you have a chance to speak with someone who has been treated there, you know that they understand the science. Intimately. So the promise (brand idea) is dead on. But if you read or listen to ads on the radio you get no science. You get generalities. “We treat every cancer patient differently.” We us a team of specialist.” Flah flah. I was doing ads like that as a kid.

I’m not sure where the breakdown is. MSKCC has the proof. They have the science to educate consumers – they just don’t seem to use it. Perhaps they believe we’re not all science majors and won’t be able to process the info. Not so. The narrative doesn’t have to be in chemistry 401 language.

Branding and advertising is all about claim and proof. MSKCC has the claim…it’s the proof they’re having difficulty with. Proof of more science, should be the easiest part of the equation.

It will get better. There are smart people at the helm. Peace.

 

Brand Culture Vs. Operating System.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I think it was UnderCurrent or Nobl (Bud Cadell’s new consulting effort) who came up with the notion of an operating system for a company. It may be someone else…I need to dump the brain cache. Anyway the metaphor of an operating system for a company or brand is similar to language I use in brand planning “an organizing principle.”

One of the most overused words in business and brand consulting is “culture.” Just as companies that talk the most about ROI are the one’s who don’t have it, companies that speak of culture most often don’t have it. Back in the 90s John Dooner spoke of culture at McCann-Erickson. When I finally got through the blather about “entrepreneurship,” someone finally described it to me as “Do what you want until someone says stop.” Culture needs a motivation. It needs articulation. And it needs behavioral tenets. Culture is like the mama on your shoulder who tells you how to behave and what to do at any given moment.

Brand Culture may be a good way of repackaging what I do as a brand consultant. Brand strategy at What’s The Idea? is defined as 1 idea, 3 proof planks. (I find a motivation or claim — one that customers want most and that the brand does best – and arrange that atop 3 behaviors that are business winning.) Not a particularly sexy or in-demand sale, it works.  Yet it doesn’t often get past the c-suite.  I’m thinking of packaging it as a brand culture exploratory; it may clear up the misunderstandings around the words brand and culture. Operating system ain’t bad, but it’s a little bit like organizing principle.

Stay very tuned. Peace.

 

 

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