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Downward Lulu.

By
Steve Poppe
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lululemon pantsThe first time I heard of Lululemon I was on a weekend marketing retreat with a number of women at the invitation of Nfinity, a wonderful women’s athletic footwear company.  I was a last minute replacement for a woman who had to beg out.  Most of the ladies were aware of Lululemon and sang its praises. They loved the category (yoga), styles (great looking, great fitting) but what they spoke most about was quality. I’ve never done downward dog in my life, but to hear them talk I was ready to buy. 

Come Christmas, off I went to buy the wifus some Lululemon yoga pants. Trying to explain hip size using your own hips to a young, comely salesperson is uncomfortable. But successful I was and I opted for a yoga mat too, hedging my bet. Hee hee.

As I read about Lulu’s quality problems today, which include previous grievances about material pitting, seam unraveling and color bleeding, I see how far the company have come. Backwards. Even with sales and revenue up  thirty plus YOY, someone has taken their eye off the ball. (Not sure if their equity partners or public stock offering put undue pressure on the company, but quality has faltered, even as the brand had grown.)

Quality is a tough brand plank to build around.  It’s most important in categories where it’s not common. Otherwise, quality is the price of entry.  But in yoga, where stress and strain and exertion are part of the experience it’s not a bad play. Lululemon needs a quality facelift. And fast! Peace.

Noise cancelling.

By
Steve Poppe
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noise cancelling headphonesWhen I was a stupid kid, I had a nice office on the 14th floor overlooking Park Avenue South in NYC.  Today, I know $200,000 a year executives who work in cubes on Lex and 47th. Ten feet from their admins.  I know kids tell you they can listen to music and do their math homework, but sometimes work just needs to be quiet. Quiet outbound and quiet inbound.  That’s why God, Allah, Krishna or whomever invented noise cancelling headphones. A new way of doing business. A new solution.

We must continue to adapt, as we have with the cube vs. real estate cost scenario, though one thing is for certain: noise will never leave us. It’s a constant.  Many marketing bloggers, digital execs and analytic software salespeople love to talk about noise.  Me too.  Brand planning is a noise canceller. It provides the harmony a consumer hears that is memorable.  Like a good hook in a song, the selling ideas in a brand plan are ordered, complete, fulfilling and replicable.

Hey marketers, hey c-levels, ask yourselves “What idea do you have that cuts through the noise?” Unless you have a good brand idea and brand plan, you are the noise.  Hee hee. Peace.

The money snow globe.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand planners are architects and builders.

I once hired an architect to build a garage onto my house — with a room above. He was masterful. The front elevation looked amazing. But the builder looked at the drawings and said “It can’t be done.” Not based upon what was behind the elevation. All façade no structural depth.

Brand planners make the façade – something that looks beautiful, feels right and sells, but they also create a structure that creates the depth. The there that needs to be there. Brand design, as my friends at Starfish Brand Design like to say, is not only the strategy but the execution of the strategy.

It’s nice to determine you are “a customer service company,” but then you have to out-deliver the competition and leap and exceed consumer expectation. Claim and proof in branding is the grail. (Organized claim and proof. ) The architect is about the claim, the builder the proof. Together they build a brand. Apart they shake the money snow globe. Peace.

Drugs, Mad Men and Margin.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Generic brands are killing the marketing business.  Advertisers and marketers are letting it, thanks to poor communications and poorer strategy.  I read today that 86% of all prescription drugs are generic. Como se wake up call???  If the drugs we use to help keep us healthy and alive are allowed to be generic, why aren’t we buying generic coffee, generic spaghetti sauce, generic tires?  Oh, that’s right, we are.

Price premiums are what keeps the non-generics and the cheap white label brands at bay. What differentiates the real brands?  Special formulations, special taste, great product experience and special marketing.

Back in the day, a dude by the name of Jacoby took a billion dollar payout from Ted Bates (ad agency) and advertisers took notice. (Wait for the episode on Mad Men.)  It eviscerated agency compensation and the only way to keep the business fairly strong was to hire less expensive people.  There are still rock stars in the business, but way fewer.  And the advertising business is being led around by high paid clients who get brand building but don’t get the powerful muscle memory that is comms. That’s left to agency people who are all mirror, no smoke. And it is genericizing the agency business.  

Just like premium brands, there are premium agencies.  Those are the ones being paid higher prices. Commanding higher prices. That last mile of margin is what marketers should be looking for; one’s with a  higher margin, not a lower margin. Peace!

Our own event.

By
Steve Poppe
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The advertising and marketing business needs an annual event; a place for creative people, artists, musicians, designers and strategy people to convene and experience the love and inspiration that is our business. The NYT today referred to the just competed Annual 4As Conference as populated by “a bunch of old white guys.” As an old white guy myself, I wouldn’t want to go to a place so described.

SXSW Interactive is a pretty cool place for advertisers and marketers but they should really be at the Music part of South By – that’s where the energy and inspiration is.  Cannes is a pretty cool festival, but it’s out of most people’s price range. Elitism anyone?

Once a year there should be a show for all marketers and all of their agents. Perhaps sponsored by headhunters and  talent companies. A place for all to let their hair down. Over an I’m-not-smarter-than-you, noncompetitive couple of days where we celebrate, share, think, evolve and have some fun. Where we recharge the batteries and make new friends.   

For a group of people who invented this even marketing stuff, we are pretty dismal at celebrating it ourselves. Peace!                                                                                                          

Strategy and Stuff.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The two tools I use in brand planning are the brand strategy and the marketing communications plan. An old colleague used to refer to the education business as made up of “things and stuff.”  His logic was that things are the tangibles – something that goes thump when you drop it. The “stuff” refer to the stuff you teach. Nice idea, but poor word selection me thinks. Most people think of stuff as tangible and touchable. My brand planning tools are about the “strategy” and the “tools” (stuff).  The tools are the ads, the web, PR, promotions, etc.

Brand strategy in my hose comprises 1 claim and 3 proof planks. You can write a mission statement, messaging ephemera, tone personality and lot of other shizzle, but they tend to murky up the brand waters more often than not.  One claims and 3 supports is all you and anyone need to operationalize and organize your brand’s world.  Interbrand, Landor and all the other branding shops will agree (behind closed doors.) Once that heavy lifting is done all the stuff you make is either on or off strategy. 

So ask yourself, does you brand have a claim? And have you organized that claim’s supports into three discrete, powerful, endemic, customer care-abouts?  Few have.  It can be your edge.  Peace!

Go out and enjoy a parade this weekend!

Ego.

By
Steve Poppe
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freud

Ego is the root of all brand planning evil. Okay, will maybe not evil but it can still screw up a good insight. (For returning readers, it can also screw up a good incite.)

When you read your briefs and decks and find this nuggets that sounds and feel motivating you must ask “Is this me talking?”   Is this my point of view?  Or is it a fair and unbiased observation – supported by fact.  NY ad agencies have often been ridiculed for making ads that don’t sell between the wickets, the wickets being the east and west coasts. Are we including everyone when we observer trends, when we ideate?  That’s why testing and researching outside of the big metropolitans areas is important.  

Good planners are paid to think beyond the ego. To think beyond the subject before them. Planners catalog a lifetime of experiences and observations and use them when sorting through their day jobs and assignments at hand. They drop the ego. They drop the leash (Pearl Jam reference).

Remove the ego, the self-projection and you can begin to truly see. (It’s hard.) Peace!

 

Disappointment.

By
Steve Poppe
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For the last week or so I’ve been interviewing dieticians. They are a fascinating lot.  One of the questions I just decided to add is “Are there any disappointments in your practice area you can share?”  If I hear silence, um or no, I’ll prod “How about, have you a wish list for your business or your patients?”  

These conceptual questions draw out emotional responses, personal responses.

So, I decided to ask myself the same question and the answer might be instructive to tyro planners. My disappointments relate to not selling my brand strategies hard enough. Or well enough.  There are been a number of brand strategies (one claim, three support planks) I’ve sold I know to be powerful, business-winning organizing principles. Powerful enough to redistribute market wealth significantly — but I’ve either let marketing clients, agency creative or C-levels get in the way.  When someone is trying to get a website created or a campaign out the door, they don’t want to spend too much time on its underpinnings. That’s the mistake. That’s my mistake. If you have a solution that will change the brand for the better, don’t let go. Don’t be deterred.

Henning Mankell’s character Kurt Wallander has a father who paints.  He only paints one picture – a landscape. He does it in two flavors: with and without a grouse. That’s focus. That’s a plan. Is he crazy?  Does he see a different painting every time he puts oil to canvas?

A brand plan is not a limiting document, it’s a rich strategy consumers can remember… and consumers can foretell. Peace!

Are you brand planner material?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

Ovarian cancer kills 15,000 women in the U.S. every year. 22,000 women are newly diagnosed every year. These are statistics. Grim statistics. Typical Americans see these type of statistics daily in the news and have become somewhat inured – until it hits home, that is. Murder statistics, KIA war statistics and obesity statistics all fall into this category. Marketers, on the other hand, live on statistics: annual sales, unit sales, target pop size, share of market. Account or brand planners care not a whit about the numbers. They care about blood pressure and galvanic skin response. When we talk about saving for college with young moms are they sweating? What does that say about their choice of husband? Their self worth? Can a planner actually smell fear? It does have an aroma you know. Emotions and feelings are what planners care about…and we mine them one person at a time.

If you love statistics it’s okay to get into marketing. If you love people, get into planning. The dude from the TV show Elementary who plays Sherlock Holmes may be a great observer with a bag full of analytical tricks, but he is not good at getting people to share. So Sherlocks need not apply either.

Like people? Want to give people moments of happiness, satiety and comfort? Become a brand planner.  

 

Inciter or operational?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Who is more dangerous an inciter or someone who is operational (a doer, in other words)?  According to American anti-terrorism law, operational is more dangerous. In marketing it’s the opposite. Of course marketers aren’t really dangerous.  No one gets hurt. 

People who create strategies to alter consumer demand are inciters. Those who develop the strategies through which consumers prefer one product over another are inciters. Inciting is what strategists do. Retail channel people — people at the point of sale — are operational. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important – they can be.  Creative people — the ones who write the copy, create the pictures and edit together the selling story–  they, too, are operational. Influential at the point of communication yes, but operational nonetheless.

Good inciters touch consumers and operational people. Great creative product typically has powerful inciter behind it.  In brand planning, we often talk about insight. We should be talking about incite. Puh-zeace!

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