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Politics, Bias and Branding.

By
Steve Poppe
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Has “political” become a bad word? If you follow the press these days it has. When something has become politicized it takes on the aura of an agenda. And today a political agenda is either left leaning or right leaning. Moe Davis, running in NC’s 11th district to replace Mark Meadows pointed out recently that the armed services isn’t republican or democrat. Not everything has to be political.

In branding, the word “strategy” (nice segue, huh?) is not a bad word. Yet brand strategy is all about creating bias. Bias toward your product. The best brand strategies, however, are built upon strengths. Positives. If a positive implies another brand negative that’s fine, but brand building is not brand tearing down of a competitor.

Brand strategy, unlike politics, is a build-up business. It’s why I love it. We delve into customer care-abouts and brand good-ats and stay away from the blood lust that has become politics. I’ve cherry picked things from the political game to use in my branding practice. There are a lot of similarities. One thing I have not borrowed though is negativism. For me “bias” is a positive. Creating bias toward.

Peace.

 

 

Brand Taglines.

By
Steve Poppe
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At What’s The Idea?, the framework for brand building is one claim and three proof planks. The claim is the fulcrum for all branding activities. It’s the one thing you can say about a brand that distinguishes it from all others. And marketing goes to war each day to proof it and bring it to life. Any marketing breath not supporting the claim is wasted.

For most companies the brand tagline is synonymous with the claim. Sometimes and this happens more often than it should, the tagline is the work product of the ad agency. Usually siphoned off of the advertising. If the adverting is on brand strategy and the adverting is good, it works fine.  Other times, the tagline is the result of brand planning prior to advertising. 

Let’s look at a tagline gone wrong.

Evan Williams. Bourbon Done Right.

The construct “done right” has been used in taglines in every product category since modern marketing began.  It’s so overused it has lost all marketing flavor. Plus, it presumes there are lots of bourbons done wrong. In addition to using a commodity tagline, “done right” is hard to prove. With a cursory look at the Evan Williams website, the only proof laid out to support the claim is aged in charred oak barrels. And aged for 4 years. Kentucky’s first bourbon doesn’t directly support the claim, though it’s a proof (of something). 

I’m sure Evan Williams is a wonderful product. It deserves a wonderful position in the minds and mouths of consumers. Letting a 32 year old copywriter, who probably drinks kombucha, write your tagline is a mistake. (At least that’s what this one feels like to me.)

Find your proof. Find your claim. Then find your distinction.

Peace.

 

Brand Strategy Is Business Strategy

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I spend most of my waking business hours talking about brand strategy. A topic so obfuscated and buried in marko-babble no one really understands it. It’s tough going. 

The fact is, brand strategy is business strategy. Simplified. And packaged to be easily undertstood.  It’s business strategy boiled down, memorable and shareable.  One of the drivers of a good brand strategy is that is can be activated by everyone in the company. A good brand strategy in the hands of the receptionist or delivery driver or CEO is one that empowers business-building decisions.   

If you work at a company where you don’t want anyone else to know how to make business advancing decisions, because you are fearful they’ll make mistakes, you don’t need a brand strategy. You need Xanax and blood pressure meds. But of you want your employees and as a result, customers and influencers, to understand why you are a better company than the competition, thanks to meaningful product and operating values, then you do want a brand strategy. Because it’s good for business.

Imagine a retail package goods brand that changes its packaging every day. That’s kind of what happens to companies that operate sans brand strategy – AKA “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”

Peace.

 

 

Free Day Of Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
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I was talking to a brand planner at a big agency in NYC a while back and offered him a “free day of planning,” a way to introduce my skillset. The hope was to pick up some additional work.  His response, and I paraphrase, was “What can anyone learn about a brand in one day?” His firm digs very deep and he couldn’t see any one turning up any value in a single day.  Looking back, I find it hard to disagree with him. Though rules are made to be broken. And if a planner can uncover a key insight in a day, imagine what s/he can uncover in a week.

Recently, I offered some folks a free day of planning and it worked out just fine. It was a small but complicated business and the stakeholders found it very hard to explain their model in a few words, especially to potential investors. So they explained in paragraphs. Long paragraphs. They agreed they needed focus and a boiling down of their value proposition.

When I started the clock, I interviewed one of the stakeholders for about an hour and a half. On another day, I interviewed the second stakeholder for an hour and a half. I also interviewed a key software vendor of theirs, someone with hundreds of hours on the street – so as to get an unabashed view of the business. About half an hour. Then I cleaned up all my notes, I’m a horrible typist. Half hour.

Following a review of some competitor websites, another hour, I slept on it. These efforts took place over the course of a week or so, due to others calendars.

When time to begin planning, I read all my notes and started to circle any activities, stories or evidence of value. I call this proof of value. As clusters of value became clear I broke out the colored highlighters. Add two more hours.

Then I slept on in. Early one morning I woke up with an idea. An idea that was the beginning of the brand claim. I can’t count sleeping hours, so this was a freebie.

Over the next day or so I began to craft a few slides of a PPT presentation while massaging the brand claim. The proof planks, organized while doing the value clusters, in the earlier session already existed.  All totaled about an hour and a half to put the PPT together. Total time was 8.5 hours. A day of planning according to the clock.

This piece of pro bono work was strong. The clients were effusive in their praise and thanks.  I never wrote a brand brief — a no-no — but time did not allow for it.

Had I the 3-4 weeks typically needed to do this work it may have been different, certainly more nuanced. And deeper. But is was a job well done. And a brand strategy well received.

Who said Rome wasn’t built in a day? Peace.

 

Flaccid Marketing Plans.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I would venture a guess that the majority of marketing plans find their way into an Excel spreadsheet that sits on the desk or computer of the company’s financial officer — and from year to year that spreadsheet doesn’t change very much.  The numbers associated with each line may scooch up or down and the cumulative number may as well, but the plan items stay relatively the same. Just as likely, the total budget may go up or down by percentage points with the individual lines correspondingly so.

Static marketing plans, with immovable tactics are the result of not having a vibrant brand strategy. It’s paint by numbers.  When driven by a brand strategy a marketing plan is tied to brand values not line items. That’s because the marketing objectives are tied to brand values, tethered to business winning strategies.

For a very successful billion dollar health care system, the marketing plan was built around business winning values like “better surgeons,” “superior protocols,” and “faster recovery and discharge” not brand recall, procedures logged or time-on-website.

When building a marketing plan, budget by brand values not line items.

Oh, it helps to have brand values, Codified. Explicit. And in writing.

Peace.  

 

How To Build A Brand Strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday I wrote about brand insights, oxygen for the brand planner. I also explained the difference between a master brand strategy and individual tactical strategies driving marketing communications tactics.

When creating a master brand strategy, the planner must amass many, many insights.  Insights broken out primarily into customer care-abouts and brand good-ats.  Where the heavy lifting comes in and also the magic, is culling through those care-abouts and good-ats, and render a single-minded value proposition or claim. The claim is the foundation of brand strategy. (Some have called it a promise.)

I often denigrate claims in advertising, saying that most ads are all claim, no proof. And that’s true. But in brand building the claim is the key memory device. It’s the key take-away of all marketing efforts. The way to set the claim — to create an indelible understanding of the brand claim — is through proof. In master brand planning, part of the culling process is selecting three proof planks that support the claim.  Not 4. Not 5. And there must be tight linkage between the claim and proof planks.

For brand planners or marketers interested in seeing real life claim and proof arrays, please write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com.

Peace.

 

Insights.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Insights are the oxygen of brand planning. Insights about the target. Insights about product features. Insights about the competition. I could go on…and I will. Insights about the market. Insights about prevailing category attitudes. And insights about culture.

Every planner mines insights. It’s what we do. And it drives the brand planning sector of the business. The fact is though, 95% of current planners’ jobs revolve around insights that drive tactical successes. By the project. By the pound.

At What’s The Idea?, the job is upstream of marketing tactics. We set master brand strategy. That is, we establish an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. Once that organizing principle (read, brand strategy) is developed – our job is done. It can effectively remove the need for brand planners to oversee much subsequent tactical work.  Now, I wouldn’t recommend that — brand planners are still the people most likely to find deeper strategy insights to refine important tactical executions, but it’s a thought.  

I was once at meeting of Conagra’s Banquet brand with all of its agencies. Must have been 40 people in the room. Maybe 8-10 strategy/planner types. Far be it for ConAgra to tell its agencies who to bring to a meeting, but a tight, defined brand strategy would have saved them some time, money and danish.  

Peace.

 

 

A New Offer.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

One of my best promotional offers is a “Free Day of Planning.”  It’s a bit of a try-me-before-you-buy-me thing which has opened a number of doors. But I’m looking for a refresh and thought I might create new promotion a little more specific to brand planning outputs. By the end of this post I’ll probably have a name for the offer, but for now I’ll just ‘splain it. Can you tell I’m an “I Love Lucy” fan?  

My brand consulting practice offers two serial products: 1. Brand Strategy and 2. Marketing Communications Plans. I won’t do the latter without doing the former.  Strategy first. While few people really know what an actual brand strategy framework is, most everyone knows what a marketing communications plan is.  What’s The Idea? clients are privy to how closely knit together these two things are. That is, the marcom tactics all and always support the brand claim and proof planks. Nothing is untethered.

But seeing is believing so the free offer is to present to inquiring prospects a presentation brand strategy and an accompanying marketing communications plan. 

People who just want a brand strategy sometimes want to know what to do with it. What to do next.  Well, you have to build marketing stuff. Marketing programs. The new “No Tactic Left Behind” offer will demonstrate just that.  

For your free presentation of this new offer, please write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com. (Some discretion may be involved in selecting recipients.) A thousand thanks.

Peace.

 

Love. It’s what makes a brand strategy a brand strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Much has been written lately about empathy in brand planning. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Empathy makes us humans. Or good humans, at least.  Without empathy we’re disorganized personalities. The fact that we need to write about dialing up empathy in brand planning suggests there may be a problem somewhere. But I’d like to take, actually, take empathy to the next level. And that is love. Not “It’s what makes Subaru a Subaru love,” for I don’t really know what that brand claim means – and I’m an owner.

When working on a brand strategy I tell clients that I need to fall in love with their brand. Sounds corny, but it’s true. I work past any and all negatives and search for things to love. It’s only when I find the good in a brand, be they superlatives, great-to-haves, or other endearing qualities, that I can begin to develop an attraction. And then I work to expand that attraction to a kind of love.

That’s how I work.  It’s not how consumer’s work. In fact, many consumers are more glass half empty, so it is up to the brand planner to position a product or service in a way that fills that half empty glass.  So we must search for positivity.

If you can’t find a way to love the brand for which you are planning, either don’t take the job or explain to your client what impedes your love and give them their money back.

Peace.

 

Walking the Planks During a Pandemic.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday I spoke of using brand strategy to help mitigate business disruptions associated with the pandemic. Readers know my brand strategy framework comprises “one claim and three proof planks,” the so-called organizing principle to guide business.

When making tough decisions about cutbacks and reducing business expenses you must stay true to your claim. Back in the day, working with AT&T’s business services, the claim was “creating business certainly.” Much of business then, as now, ran on phones and data line. During a pandemic, this message would still be powerful. The proof planks were network reliability, competitive price, and tech tools to grow your business.  Science suggested these three measures moved positive revenue. When cutting back on personnel, promotion and other during a major business discontinuity, it is the planks that have to give. They all work together, much like a recipe, but some offer more value to customers than others. Managing cutback by plank is how you make business decisions. Don’t invent new planks. Don’t reinvent your claim.

Stick to the plan. Manage strategically. Manage to brand science.

Peace

 

 

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