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UCONN. All proof no idea.

By
Steve Poppe
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Advertising is a funny thing. It’s hard to do well. Many ads contain great copy yet support wan ideas. Others possess a neat idea but surround it with blather. Today I stopped to read a UCONN ad in The New York Times with some great copy points. Great proof points. To wit:

  • Investing $3.6 billion to create breakthrough in areas such as additive manufacturing, genomic medicine, and cybersecurity.
  • Hiring 300 faculty who will advance the fields of cognitive science and creativity, pursue scholarship in law and human rights, and develop new areas of intellectual property.
  • Recruiting 6,500 additional students who will lead their generation in addressing the most important challenges of our time: sustainability, global heath, and social justice.

How can you argue that UCONN is doing smart, cool stuff? You can’t.

But the ad headline “Dear UCON, Thank you. Sincerely, The Future.”, dropped out of a blue background of celestial stars and universe laid an egg. The tagline “Innovation. Unleashed.” didn’t help.

This ad falls under the great proof, no idea category. And any glimmer of an idea (Reports from the future?) was hidden behind lazy execution. No brand planner watching over this work. Brand planners find the proof. Array the proof. Demonstrate the proof. They seed the idea and educate practitioners.  Bad advertising agents and clients ask for the proof to be put in a big old bucket and tossed hither and thither. Peace.

Just Another Tuesday.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday I had two meetings that excited the heck out of me. The first one was in NYC with a geotechnical and foundational engineering firm nobody knows. Okay, maybe 10,000 people know them.  The office looks like any other: water coolers, file cabinets, a library, cubicles, some offices, an oversized printer. Young men and women tread the halls with folders and laptops in hand. You might think your were at Razorfish or JWT. What is cool about the place is that this firm is the premier engineering firm for what goes below ground to undergird huge building structures like the new Freedom Tower. There’s very little they don’t know about soil, pressure, rock and water. If you are taking a building down and you are afraid the neighbor’s building might be compromised, these guys are your first call. With over 100 year history in NYC, their foundations are keeping the city standing upright. To walk through the offices? Just a bunch of smart people.

My other meeting was with a healthcare company that is changing the way healthcare is ministered. The current model of healthcare is to pay physician to treat the sick. This group is paid to keep patients healthy. Before you get diabetes, this group of physicians wants to catch it. Before your grandma falls and breaks her hip, this group wants to remove the loose rugs. Walk through their office and you’ll see PCs, coffee machines, cubicles and other nondescript equipment. Just a bunch of smart people. Saving lives.

The first company was a hundred plus years old, the second about 4. One company is rock steady, the other fluid and evolving. Both have strong leadership, good culture and serve markets with pend up demand. There is an amazing amount of good in the commercial world, you just have to pay close attention. Peace!

 

Natural vs. Marketing Language.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I have often wondered how difficult it must be to go work in a country with a different culture and language and do brand planning. I worked with a smart 20-something planner at JWT-NY who picked up and moved to Shanghai. Daring. I follow a really smart Brit planner who works at Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai. He’s killing it. How do they communicate? How do they feel? How to they see patterns and interpolate?

In an ideation session last week with some brand planning colleagues, all of whom had done customer interviews for a specific B2B client, we established some guard rails, talked about buying logic, purchase station, recited stories and delved into emotion. It wasn’t until this morning, however, that I realized what was missing. Language. We were speaking in marketing-ese. I was with smart people with great marko-babble radar, but we were missing the cues that come from natural business language. In B2B it’s important to know the language that cues the target to really listen. That gives them permission to listen. That is what was missing. That’s what must happen next. Peace.  

Couple of things.

By
Steve Poppe
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There is a new tech writer gaining momentum. His name is Farhad Manjoo and he writes the “State Of The Art” column in The New York Times. Read him, you will get smarter.  Since the half-funny, very good tech analyst David Poque left the confines of the Times for Yahoo, I’ve been seeking a Walter Mossberg-like writer at the Times. Mr. Manjoo may be it. He’s bold, thoughtful, not averse to homework and understands the tech user. Great writers are prescient when it comes to trends and usability, so let’s see if he can keep it up.

His column today was about Amazon. And that’s the second thing. Everybody knows Jeff Bezos is a tech top dog. Amazon’s journey has been fun to watch. Unlike Microsoft, whose cash cow(s) allowed it to buy and launch a number of public duds, Mr. Bezos has launched a luncheonette’s worth of products with varying degrees of success. From books to retail to devises to video and shipping, Amazon touches more consumers in more ways than most brands. Add to that Mr. Bezos move into publishing and one can assume the data he retrieves and the behaviors he notes are preparation for other very interesting plays. But unlike Microsoft, Amazon doesn’t get dinged in the press and among tech elites. 

The difference between Amazon and Microsoft is that Microsoft pizzled away money on new endeavors but always kept a huge bank — Amazon on the other hand continues to lack any meaningful profit.

As a brand planner, Amazon confounds me. As a consumer and business dude I really like them. For a first-to-market company, they do a lot of second-to-market things.

Messrs. Manjoo and Bezos are players. And both are going to be exciting to watch. Peace.

 

NYIT Ad Campaign Fail.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

NYIT is running a new print campaign encouraging people to get into the hi-tech fields. A worthy undertaking indeed. The U.S. is falling behind the world when it comes to educating students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Especially women. So reminding students what lies ahead at colleges and universities that provide these programs is a good idea. Making fun of — no, insulting — people who work in retail, however, is not the way to do it.  Not cool. NYIT has used just such a ploy in its latest ads.

NYIT ads

 

The largest company in the world is Wal-Mart. NYIT makes fun of them. One of the most powerful brands on the planet is McDonald’s? NYIT makes fun of them. Not by name, by association. But more than just tweaking companies whose riches abound, NYIT makes fun of their employees. And that’s two clicks from vile. Fun is fun. A joke is a joke. Belittling hard workings employees in the retail business…not something a well-educated institution should be doing. Peace.

 

Marketing Inequality.

By
Steve Poppe
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blog action day badge

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is inequality. If the problem with society in America is poverty, the cause is inequality. There are other causes of course: poor parenting, inadequate education, drugs… but inequality is a root cause.

In recent brand and marketing plans developed for a new weight loss modality, I realized a strong component of the obesity epidemic is inequality. Bad eating habits in poor communities make for high indexing of obesity in lower socio-economic communities. That’s not to say obesity is not a problem among other classes of society (I feel dirty using the word classes), it is.  So in this marketing plan, I outlined two distinct targets based upon inequality. One I called the “Helplessly Obese,” the other “Weight Challenged.” Guess which one was the middle/upper class target?  Though they shared psychological similarities, there were enough noticeable differences to warrant separate tactics – media and otherwise.

The thing about understanding inequality is that it should be used for good, not exploitation. Pushing 32 oz. drinks to poor kids is wrong. Marketers who understand inequality for helpful reasons, will win customers hearts and minds. Marketers spending money to sell to middle and upper class consumers could take a page from this playbook. Peace!

Foundation in Brand Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
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geotech

Mining is actually a good brand planning analogy. During the planning process where one combs research and interviews stakeholders and consumers planners are searching for nuggets of ore. Ore that might direct one to a vein or the mother lode. In my planning rigor, my ore is proof. Examples of acts. Facts. Actions. It’s ironic that while searching for proof, I don’t know yet know the claim. In my consultancy a brand strategy consists of 1 claim and 3 proof planks. At this stage, I’m nugget hunting.

(Just to level set, here are examples of things that are not proof: exception care, innovative design, tailored-to-meet-your-needs. These fall into the area of claim; and as claims they are a little wan. A little over used.)

Discovery in brand planning is listening, watching, paying attention to detail – almost being a human Galvinic Skin Response test – then categorizing the proof into clusters. It may sounds a little backwards, hunting for proof before identifying the claim, but it’s not. People can tell stories about proof. People light up citing proof. People are reticent, however, when it comes to claim. Reticent because it sounds like bragging. Because it is not always true.

Mine for proof first and your plan will have a stable foundation. Peace. 

If I did a TED Talk.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

If invited to do a TED Talk, I’m sure it would be about branding. In an age where 70% of college educated kids start sentences off with “Me and Jessica are…”, where athletes refer to themselves as brands, entertainment shows dumb down baby and couple names into syllables, and Twitter handles are more globally recognized than Hollywood names, the person-as-brand is not too far-fetched.

Well, I’m not going there. I’m a purist. I am still debating whether a service can be a brand. Or a company. My brands are consumables. So shoot me.

Now Branding, brand with a ding on the end, that I can talk about. How to create a brand in the minds of consumers.  It is an act. A pursuit. And pursuits need plans. Branding is “an organizing principle, anchored to an idea.” Everything starts with the product. Then the product features and benefits. Wash those with consumer care-abouts – the most important first. Then combine what the product does well with the most compelling needs of the consumer and create a claim and proof of claim array (4 things). These are the things that drive perception and memory. Branding is not a song. But a tune may contribute. It’s not a color but may be a feeling.

The longer the “what is a brand debate goes on” the more brand planners will be in business. And the more TED Talks there will be on the subject.  Brands may be misunderstood but making them doesn’t have to be.

Is North Korea a brand? They follow an organizing principle. Hmmm.

 

Different AND Desired.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In just about every marketing consulting meeting I attend the word “differentiated” comes up. It’s a word marketing directors love. Sadly, most think messaging can differentiate their products. True differentiation in marketing, positioning and branding comes straight from the product.

What I do as a brand planner, in my search for things that are “different and desired,” is to diagnose. Webster’s defines the word as “to know apart from” or “to distinguish.” Most look at the word diagnose and think medical. In a meeting this week someone said about my work “You are really like a detective, aren’t you?” Good strategic planners are diagnosticians and detectives. Both look for problems. But brand planners must look, too, for positives. The Coke Happiness campaign, being the ultimate positive. We know positive is better than negative, though B2B clients don’t always roll that way.

Good brand briefs serve up the positive by understanding the negative. A smart card marketer selling to K12 schools, for instance, knows security is a major issue today. It also knows that proper attendance and every hour spent in a class room can improve learning – an educational positive. Finding an idea that works both angles is the heavy lifting. A company like that wants differentiation. A line. A website. The planner wants the strategy. One that diagnoses the problem yet serves up the proper positive medicine.

Peace you all.

Out of body brand planning.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Sometimes brand planners do not have the budget, time, or resources required to do a complete job learning and understanding their targets. Hey, welcome to the real world. The last thing a good planner does is impose his or her perceptions on the assignment. Perceptions soiled by previous assignments, individual experiences with a product, and pop cultural observations. Just as a good anthropologist knows not to insinuate him/herself into the fieldwork and only observe, brand planners should acknowledge they don’t know everything and attempt to “out-of-body” whatever they can. Here’s a tip: 

acting class

To help gain an deeper understanding of the target, identify a prototypical target persona, get into character and interview yourself. Of course it’s play-acting — and the DILO (day in the life of) you use to understand the target is made up — but as a creative exercise it is much better than the alternative.  Write out the questions in advance, put on your creative acting hat, dream daily activities (perhaps even do them), and observe signs, rituals and behaviors the target will experience. If not actually doing the behaviors in-situ, play act and interview yourself in a dark room. 

The key is to really leave yourself and your belief system at the door. Open your mind. Note activity function and structure. Sounds weird, I know, but it’s doable and a wonderful learning opportunity. Learn on, plan one. Peace.

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