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Brand Planner’s Create Awe.

By
Steve Poppe
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I once volunteered at the Fort Michilimackinac archeological excavation at  at the “tip of the mitt” in Michigan. (Not that Mitt.) For a week I sat on my heels and removed soil with a mason’s trowel and paint brush, centimeter by centimeter, marking the depth from a line tacked above each pit. I found a hand-made straight pin, the type you throw away when opening a new shirt — the “find” highlight of my week.

Most co-workers were locals and I remember leaving Michigan feeling I knew a lot more about the local community – certainly its history – than those who live there. All from digging in the dirt.  Sometimes we live places and don’t get it place in history, save for a few stories taught in school and a landmark sign or two. “Marconi broadcast the first radio signal from this lot.”

Brand planning is a lot like archeology: digging, uncovering, cleaning (archeologists have this tendency to lick their finds to remove dirt) and analyzing. Putting finds into context, then patterns and finally doing something smart with their work.  That’s what brand planners do. Both endeavors require taking what may seem mundane or prosaic and displaying it in ways that create awe, or near awe. If you are a market strategist and your selling insights do not move you,  then you are not a brand planner you’re a researcher.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Peace!

Brand Strategy vs. Tactics.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I was working with a company recently where the main deliverables were a marketing plan and brand plan.  One of the company’s other needs was a revised website.  The ability to deliver the brand plan — a brand strategy and three supporting brand planks — in the form of a website was new territory for the company. It was a break from the past where their mindset was to create easy navigation to the diverse and changing offerings of the company. Since the company was expanding into new markets and changing the composition of its product set, its brand meaning and value were not well known and misunderstood. Rather than create an information architecture, this company needed a clean Is-Does and a succinct brand organizing principle. In other words…a strategy.

Part of the assignment was to affect change in the social space. The company, with a good blogging culture, some really smart people and lots of deeds and stories to share, unfortunately gravitated toward Pasting rather than Posting. (Pasting is sending forth other people’s content, with a yay or a nay; Posting is creating original content.)  My admonition was to provide more analysis, and less curating…and to do so on brief.  This takes time. It takes thought and context.  But it’s what readers and users are looking for in their social – in their media.

Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group posted yesterday about a lack of strategy in social media. Though I haven’t always agreed with Ms. Li, I love that she studies and commits to points of view. Charlene is a thought-leader. A Poster. She is worth way more than the price of admission. Find influential Posters and follow them. Question them, exchange ideas with them — don’t “like” them. Peace.

Post-election Ramble.

By
Steve Poppe
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(As if all my posts aren’t rambles. Hee hee.) 

The election is over.  The polemic and political bullshit should be put to rest for a while and the economy is moving in the right direction.   The craft economy has been growing the last couple of years during these very harsh financial times, affected a cultural change. What is the craft economy? It’s a mindset where people take pride cooking for their family rather than paying others to do so. It’s fixing gutters rather than hiring contractors. Knitting sweaters just to see what hand-made looks like. Putting less by the curb and refurbishing the old stuff. Some of this is influenced by the sustainability movement. As the country gets older demographically, roots become more important. We all get waste is bad.

As for the business economy, companies have cut to the bone; felt the bone, tendons and muscle. Sure companies have made some retrenchment mistakes, e.g., replace marketing blocking and tackling with low cost social marketing, free interns and search engine advertising.  But that’s settling down. The cottage industries that have grown up around social and digital are shaking out and will continue to be important (for other reasons) yet will shrink and make corporate marketing performance stronger.

With 35+% of the country impacted by Sandy (Can we please rename this piece-of-shit storm something other than “Superstorm Sandy?”  What are we 4th graders?), the masses have learned how blessed we really are for all the creature comforts we have—for what it means to be a neighbor.  When George, the cranky old German guy next door, turns into a huffing and puffing 84 year old in need, we are seeing life more selflessly.

Lastly, the country’s new-found focus on education, especially that of the K12 variety an exciting new technology overlay, will inch us away from poverty and toward a flatter country. These four things are a good perfect storm.

These are the words of the typist.  Now go in PEACE!    

Chest deep and sunny.

By
Steve Poppe
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It was a little bit like the TV show Revolution out here this last week – without the pre-blackout flashbacks. Blackouts are still all over the south shore of LI, including my mom’s place in Bay Shore. No electricity is not non-trivial but it feels so when compared to salt water that pervades everything by the water’s edge.  If you live next door to a home with its carpet still tacked down you can smell/feel it. And though the sun has shined for 3 days there is dampness that just won’t go away.

The “vill,” as I like to call Babylon, has come together like a dookie. People in and out of the America Legion Hall have been cooking, cleaning, meals-on-wheels-ing, and volunteering like nothing I’ve seen before.  Clothes are stacked to the rafters.  And I’ve not even been to First Pres. or St. Joseph, where good’s work is also 24/7.

Mobile devices are helping save the day, but so are old school signs, hand painted and tacked to telephone poles. These signs, for some, are the only way people are learning of services. Many are still sitting on wet couches, on wet carpets, without power, waiting for the piles of wood, construction bags and furniture to recede, so they can ask for help…almost embarrassed to take an egg sandwich, from the many cars driving by. “We’re okay, go help someone else,” they say. I’ve been brought to tears, for no and every reason.

Never have I been prouder to live in Babylon. Every day is a new day. Every face a neighbor. And what is that on that blip on the weather map?  That forecast for tomorrow? A mosquito?  Keep your furniture high and your friends and neighbors higher.  (Not a pot reference. How dare you?!)  

Peace. Vote.

Closed for business.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Due to Hurricane Sandy, Whats the Idea? will be down for a bit.  We are safe. Peace!

Future Friday…Thoughts.

By
Steve Poppe
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Mailboxes on homes will go the way of the public telephone booth.

Amazon will purchase a package delivery organization: FedEx, UPS or perhaps even the United State Postal Service.

20% of the U.S. GDP will goes through Apple.

A twenty year old will become president.

The functionality and user experience of TVs, PCs, pads and phones will all be the same…and  sync.

Peace? A smidgen more so.

(Anything to add?)

The mind of a brand planner.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Ask me the title of the book I’m reading and you’ll mostly get  “I nah know.”  Ask me the name of the bespectacled, nerdy character from TV show Revolution. “Sorry.”  But ask the most important thing told to me by the head of marketing at Kinney Drugs in 2008 while planning on a protein drink and not only will I recite the sentence, I’ll build a new store around it.

I once got a meeting with MT Carney, an original partner at Naked Comms, by telling her I have a good ear…that I hear things other don’t.  Like the dog that hears abba dabba do abba dabba do Wannagofor a WALK?

This is no curse, it’s a blessing.  It was born, not of an account planning manual from the UK, or a year of quant in the research dept. at P&G, it was born of the crucible that is advertising.  Studying how it’s make, its results and consumer attitudes toward it. (Okay, throw in some amazing anthropology instruction at Rollins College and seeing Margaret Mead at the annual convention. )

The mind of a planner sorts, compartmentalizes, after seeing and hearing everything.  It is always on. That’s why we smile a lot.  We’re the sober dudes and dudettes smiling on the street when there’s no reason.

Lastly, we are not horders.  We remember the important stuff – the big stuff – but we know what to keep. To act upon.  To celebrate. Then we make the paper. For some sample paper in your category, please give a call. Peace.

Facebook’s toughest decision.

By
Steve Poppe
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Facebook had some nice earning yesterday.  50% of Facebook log-ons occur via mobile devices and mobile is hot. Facebook’s mobile ads accounted for 14% of rev. Nice news indeed. 

As someone who is a member and student of the marketing community, I’ve marveled at Facebook’s user growth. (While with Zude.com (who?) I competed with Facebook when they had only 18 million users.)  FB has spawned whole new industries of social and digital ad agencies. It has created a head down behavior for teens and millennials that will give birth to millions in chiropractic business. Facebook is of the moment and the masses love it. For now.

Some financial analysts are predicting the way for Facebook to capture mad new revenue is to sell the data it collects via user clicks and behavior.  That data will be used to plan media buys on other platforms.  So beyond making money selling ads on its own site, a la Google, it will make money selling our data. (I’m guessing these same analysts are not heavy Facebook users.)  If Facebook takes its eyes off the “communications utility for friends” prize (the brand Is-Does) and follows this rev gen trail, it will begin to lose face. And faces.

When you confide in a friend and that friend sells those secrets, trust is lost.  Were the phone able to hear your conversations and send you ads based on what was said, that would be bad right?

Fotchbook can make money many other ways.  Selling our data, behind our backs, is not a good long term strategy. Mr. Zuckerberg do not listed to those portfolio hounds. Peace.     

Yahoo’s new brand strategy?

By
Steve Poppe
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On Sept 7, 2011 I predicted Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo! would be out within a year. It happened in July 2012. I’ve followed and blogged about Yahoo since the beginning of What’s the Idea? and was internet raised on Yahoo.  I want it to succeed, but it has been a messy go the last 5 years. Perhaps that is changing.

According to new CEO Marissa Mayer in an article from today’s New York Times, Yahoo’s top priority is to “Make the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining.”  I smell a brand strategy.

Over the years, Yahoo has had many leaders, many missions and many goals: Become the Internet starting point for the most consumers. Become a ‘must buy’ for the most advertisers. Become an open technology platform for developers.  Become an innovative content company. A mobile leader. And and and…

“Make the world’s habits inspiring and entertaining” is a brand strategy that has ballast.  Remember it’s not the creative, it’s a strategy. Support it with three endemic and meaningful brand planks and you have the start of something – a brand plan. 

I’m not going to parse the sentence yet and frankly a brand strategy with a conjunction (“and”) is a bit of a weasel, but the exciting keywords are: world, habits, daily, inspire, entertain.  Were I a Yahoo brand manager, CMO, or VP and if someone brought me a new mobile app or content idea, I could easily use this strategy as a litmus test for approval.  It’s still broad and in need of refinement but it’s a start. As my daughter used to say “I yike it!”  Peace.

Solution for the CMO Lifespan.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The lifespan of a CMO is somewhere in the neighborhood 18-22 months.  Who would want that job?  I guess it pays well. The reality is chief marketing officers tend to be judged harshly by other C-level executives. They are Cs, but judged as Ds.  Would you like to know why? (I bet you saw this one coming.)  It is because they don’t have a brand plan and are judged based upon subjective criteria. 

Many think a brand plan is a color scheme, or new logo and signage. Or a new ad campaign from the new agency. 

A brand plan is so not those things. A brand plan is an organizing principle for doing business. As an organizing principle it provides direction for everything done on behalf of a brand. (Even hiring.) If a CMO has a plan understood and blessed by the CEO, then everything created by the CMO is pre-approved.  No more looking at a blank piece of paper for marketing program inspiration. No more trotting out last year’s program and for updating. There is a strategic plan in place that gives form to all 4Ps.  But most CMOs don’t have this tool.  They have an Excel spreadsheet with a budget, sales goals and deltas (the diff between goal and actual).  They have a marketing plan with line items for tools, functions and a KPI or two. If they are lucky the budget sheet and the marketing plans resolve to some sort of accountability (ROI), but that’s a rarity. 

 A brand without a plan metaphorically is like looking at a new home construction and blaming an ugly, dysfunctional house on the nails. “Less nails, next time.”

I know firsthand what CMOs face. And without a brand plan, sold in and sold firm, the clock on CMO tenure continues to tick. Peace! 

 

 

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