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My Take On Twitter.

By
Steve Poppe
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twitter

Twitter is right, one of its great advantages at the moment is its ubiquity and lovely harmony with mobile.  My gut tells me though, that if it starts putting spammy ads into the flow, more so than what it’s doing now, twitter will be dinged by consumers.  And I’m a guy with a house paid for by ads. I believe Twitter will create its greatest value by being in the data business. Why?  Because words matter. The words we use in our twitter feeds, more than pictures, videos and song are what deeply define us. People who use the word “should” a lot are bossy. Users of the word “hate” tend toward intolerance. Even those , for instance, who hate Oreos.

What Twitter knows is words. And if they sell those words, translated into customer insights, they will sell at a premium. I’m not talking about buying keywords here – I’m talking customer profile and customer insight stuff. Think Nielsen.

As the data world abounds and we figure out privacy issues (invest in those companies) we will land on some important positive applications, e.g., electronic medical records.  Once we crest that wave and look past advertising in the stream, we’ll see that the data Twitter can provide will provide weighty real-time and long-time selling insights worth billions. Peace-ful.

A brand strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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If I were to try to determine the brand strategy for REI, a camping and outdoor store, I’d have to say it was “Get Out.”  I saw one of their print ads today and it made me want to get out of my chair and hit the mountains.  The ad showed snow covered peaks in the background. Sodden green grass field in the fore. A small open, netted tent postage size in the middle of the picture and some other gear, perhaps a drying sleeping bag, nearby.  My brain was snapping internal pictures.

If good advertising makes you feel something then do something (Ford’s Jim Farley quote), this is great work.  My mom might fly by this ad.  Not me.

The brand strategy Get Out is active. The double meaning of Get Out suggests “no way” or unreal.  Also the unseen, the vastly alive.  Any brand manager, creative director, or retail POP manager, selecting pictures for ads, home pages or displays, would know what criteria to use to make a selection with this this strategy.

Yesterday I posted about an offer to do a brand audit — looking at work and backing out what I believe to be the brand strategy. For some companies – companies with good consumer awareness—this will be an easy task for me. REI is one such company.  Peace.

 

A “Tough Love” Brand Strategy Offer.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Does your company or product have a brand brief? Also known as a brand plan. It is a piece of paper outlining for senior officers, marketing and sales teams what your strategy is.  I’m not talking mission and voice and personality — all that agency gobble-di-gook; I am talking about a piece of paper on which there is an actionable plan that drives product development, consumer experience and messaging. Think brain, not words and actions.

I pretty much know you don’t.

Why do I know that? Because I study this stuff for a living. Because in my years of doing this work, I’ve seen very few with articulate brand plans?  I’ve read strategy documents from large Fortune 100 companies with hundred million dollar marketing budgets and you can drive trucks through them.  They’re like maps with myriad roads and routes leading everywhere.  Frankly, you can almost flip-flop brand names on these plans and manage the products with little negative impact on market share. 

And that’s the big boys and girls.  Imagine what happens to mid-size companies and small companies?  SMBs reach out to the only marketing partners they can afford (C and D level players), falling for some Svengali charm and marko-babble, and pay out $50,000 or $100,000 for some web design, brochures and pretty ads. But they have no strategy to measure, just tactics.

The Offer.

So here’s my offer.  For 3 companies I will conduct an audit of materials, product, packaging, web presence and stated marketing strategy. Learning and findings will be presented in the form of an assumed brand strategy, within 48 hours of the beginning of the audit.  The presentation will show how you really look to your consumers and the public, not how you see yourself.  The first 3 companies, with sales in excess of $750,000 will be awarded an audit. I’ll happily sign a nondisclosure agreement.  The offer does not apply to agencies and marketing consultancies. Tough love this brand work. Offer ends 10/31/13.

PS. Certain rules apply, e.g., cost of travel not covered. For more information, please write steve@whatstheidea.com

Teach and Tool

By
Steve Poppe
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0

teaching

So I was reading yesterday about the Green Giant Anti-Bullying Campaign and clapped out loud (COL).  Cause marketing is a wonderful thing so long as it doesn’t try too hard to come off as product promotion. In this case the “Raise a Giant” idea is intended to inform parents they need to educate their kids about bullying and root it out.

I’m of the mind that “education” can solve many societal ills if done correctly, but it can also be a useful marketing device.  Sy Sims famously said “And educated consumer is our best customer.”  Finding the things about which to educate consumers that predisposes them to your product is the key to successful marketing.  But teaching alone is not enough. Back to the anti-bullying example, it’s not enough to teach kids bullying is bad.  We need to give them the tools to do something about it.  Too much advertising and marketing is all teach no tool.   And in retail, a tool is not a coupon or a purchase source.  

To prove the taste of a healthy snack, a super food like Smooch Snacks for instance you need a sampling program. If super foods are supposed to taste like kale, the tool has to be about taste. If all natural cookies are typically dry as cardboard and “moisture” is part of your brand plan a la Sweet Loren’s cookies, consumers need a tool to prove moisture.

You don’t have to do everything in one ad or one digital experience, but you do need to teach and tool as part of your long term plan.  The difference between teaching and learning is often the tool.  Peace it out!

 

The power of brand.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Tomorrow, October 1st, is the first day of sign-ups for the new Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges. It will be a messy day for those organizations new to the insurance business. Nay, new to the customer care business. Think of these insurance exchanges kind of as big new libraries where people can go, learn about, pay for, and sign up for new health insurance policies. Online. Continuing the metaphor, the places will not always be manned by librarians, the card catalog and book aisles won’t be well organized or complete and there will be a lot of people milling around, some semi-literate, some semi-informed.

Enter the brand.

bue cross blue shield

In 30 of our 50 states, there will be one health insurance brand that many people have heard of and trust: Blue Cross and Blue Shield.  Even with over 150 policies – way too many – in the Blue Cross portfolio (variations by state) the Blue Cross name will carry the day. It is familiar, known for insurance and BIG. In the midst of all the confusion, it is also trusted. I’m not sure if it was the federal gov’t that made this happen or some smart people at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, but those decision makers understand the power of branding and delivered. Peace!

Pregnant Context

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

pregnant-red-apeWhenever I try to explain to business people what a brand strategy is, I find it often better to just show them a few strategies. When I go on about “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging” eyes glaze over and I fall into the marko-babble trap. But when I display the brand idea and 3 proof planks, the synapses start to fire and they begin thinking about their own business.  Practice and a modeling (as they say in .edu) are brain sparking. Theory not so much.  

Then I typically walk prospects through the hard part of brand strategy: what we need to throw out. As in, what we needn’t say. The iPhone was positioned as a phone, not a camera-email-text-app device. The “i” carried all of that. The “i” was pregnant with all innovative things Apple.  

Pregnant context is what you get credit for even when you don’t say it.  Select your brand strategy words with precision and you’ll get way more than you ask for. In the recent tyro brand planner event at BBH, celebrating the life of Griffin Farley, the winning idea for the Citibike assignment was “Bikes with Benefits.”  The idea was pregnant with target information, aspiration, vitality and value.  The best brand strategies live a long, long time. First they borrow context then they create their own.  Peace in The House (of Representatives). 

 

Hallowed Brand Strategy Ground.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The best way to get to good insights is to ask great questions. That’s after the “How do you make money ?” questions, of course. When asking C-level executives you often get answers that feel polished and rehearsed – “handled” information that might be written by corporate PR people. When asking managers, many of the answers feel guarded, as if the bosses will read them. I try to protect the names of salespeople and managers when they are really opening up, if the insights are helpful and business-building. (One trick is to always interview the company’s best sales person. S/he is typically a fearless rock star.)

Where I tend to get the real good stuff is not when I’m asking less about business success and failure but about emotions and feelings. The questions are hard to defend against. Hard to see coming. And they tend to be answered from the heart. When the guard comes down, the probes following the line of questioning are fluid. And by the time you back someone into the corner and they refuse to answer or waffle, your answer is obvious. Often accompanied by a wry smile. As the kids might say “awk-waaard.”

Pride is a good word to play with in your questions and probes. Admire another good one. Think feelings rather than behaviors. When the overall vibe is one of discussion and interest rather than probe and judgment you’ll find yourself in hallowed planning ground. Peace.

 

RIP Aggregators.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

When I am late, as they say in Africa, I do not want my obituary to say Steve Poppe, a leading marketing and branding aggregator of his time. My first business impression of the word “aggregator” was in the telecom business.  Some smart people decided that if they bought a huge company telephone plan and resold it to small companies they could offer these smaller companies better prices and make lots of money.  They were called aggregators.

These days aggregators, especially in the social web, are people and applications that take other people’s content, package it up and offer it to consumers – usually supported by advertising. This “paster” behavior, different from “poster” behavior, is big business.  Just as plumbing is big business on the internet, providing the pipes and devices through which information is shared, pasting is also a huge money mover. The sharing of other people’s content, however, is a convenience business and I hope short lived. I heard an executive of top tier TV media company refer to Henry Blodget’s Business Insider franchise as an aggregator of other people’s content.

Aggregation will start to peter out.  The content marketing trend is recognizing this.  Good content, be it music (not mash-ups and remixes), video, or writing or analysis is what makes the business world turn. Brands and marketers know they need to be original. Let’s do it.  Peace.

 

A new kind of ad agency.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In the business world today, putting operations and applications into the cloud is a business-winning idea.  Companies who do so don’t have to spend money on hardware, software upgrades, and training.

In the advertising business, agencies haven’t yet figured out to cloud-ify their services so that small and mid-size companies can partake. You see there is s tipping point at which many smaller companies decide it is cheaper to have an in-house group do their advertising, collateral and digital.  And agencies are leaving a lot of money on the table as a result. And we all know in-house groups are average at best.

So how do agencies use the cloud-based approach? How to they provide great work and a favorable price for clients unwilling to fork over $15-20,000 in monthly fees?  

I think the answer lies in jettisoning the relationship building part of the equation. It’s overrated. If we let fewer people touch an assignment, if we have a tighter brand strategy so the craftswomen aren’t staring at a blank pieces of paper, if we collapse the process the right way, efficiency will happen. As will better work. Perhaps electronic market records (think  electronic medical record) would also improve understanding and value.

I’m not talking crowdsourcing here, I’m talking about a fluid, cloud-based shop, with great people, less hands, less cost and better work.  Tink about it (as my Norwegian aunt might say.)Peace.

Brown. Not the University.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

At the Social Business Summit 2013 in NYC yesterday Brian Solis said many smart things. My favorite was, and I paraphrase, “It’s 2013 and we still haven’t figured out how to make a website look good.”  It tickled me because of all the marketing tools in the world, the website and the home page are two of the least effective, dumbed-down tools of all.  Were we to take a glass and pour in all our favorite colors – as we know from being kids – the color would turn brown.  Ninety percent of website home pages today are brown. Providing everything for everybody.

Mr. Solis also reminded us that every Google search done (and there are about 2 million search engine queries per minute) points to a what?  A web page. That’s a lot of brown.

And now most big time web designers and coders are worried about responsive design and how to get that brown to look good on all platforms: mobile, tablets, PCs, Macs, TVs and soon wrist watches.

In my opinon website home pages should look less like pretty tables of contents and more like what the brand stands for. Homepages need to be alive and real time. And they need to further the journey…and prove the journey. They should market. Let’s get rid of the all the brown.  Peace.

 

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