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Gartner’s 2020 Annual CMO Spend Survey Research

By
Steve Poppe
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I love this chart.  I freakin’ love this chart.  For CMOs to acknowledge the importance of brand strategy, overtaking analytics and all other measures, is a powerful endorsement of brand work. Gartner’s study queried 432 CMOs.

I could get caught in the weeds asking questions like “How do the CMOs define brand strategy?”  or “What does your brand strategy framework look like?” but I won’t. I’ll just bask in the glow.

Apparently, brand strategy was near the bottom of this list when asked in the 2019 Annual CMO Spend Survey Research, so this is quite a leap up in importance.  Now, one could say the Covid-19 Pandemic is playing a role in this leap; the logic being, when marketers cut budgets and activity, strategy becomes more important — but I am going to take the win here.

Great job Gartner. Great job CMOs.

Peace.   

 

 

Resist Templates.

By
Steve Poppe
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I hate templates. I love templates. There you have it. Shit ain’t always binary. 

I built my business around four key tools. The 24 Questions. A Fact Finding questionnaire for brand discovery. A brand/creative brief taken with me from McCann-Erickson, NY. And a marketing communications plan bequeathed me by Mark Pritchard (not the P&G one) who himself took it from Ammirati and Puris.  All are fill-in-the-blank templates.

That said, it’s what goes on between the ears, using these templates, that makes the money — but a man has to start somewhere.

I tried to build another business (Zude.com) doing the opposite: allowing online users to build websites without templates. My heart was in the right place but it didn’t work. Facebook used databases and a template in the background to kick our ass.  You have to pick the right battles.

Templates are what humans want. It’s how they organize and get started. Even a musician creating music must have a template in his/her head. A template of something.

If you ask me, templates are diminishing creativity. And as our heads and machines are getting more and more filled with data, we must resort to templates for order.  Resist. Invent. Resist. Invent.  This is how we get to better work. This is how we get to more artful work.

Peace.

 

When is Bias Positive?

By
Steve Poppe
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A friend and early mentor of mine, Eric Keshin, used to talk about creating “bias” for a product or service.  Bias has a bit of a negative connotation today but as a strategy in branding it is spot on.  One can attempt to position a competitor by denigrating them, creating a negative bias — or, stay closer to home, and elevate one’s own product, creating a positive bias.

Done well one can accomplish both.  That is, focus on elevating your brand and by inference diminish the competition. Don’t spend time talking about your competition, but attempt to find a perceived weak spot and play to it. Burger King did this so well with Flame Broiled. Everyone knows McDonalds grills. Coors did it with mountain fresh water. Everyone knows Budweiser and Miller aren’t brewed in the mountains.

Finding ways to create positive bias toward your product or service is the primary job of the brand planner.

C’est fini.

Peace.  

 

 

Working From Home.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

A lot has been written about working from home since the pandemic began. So much so, that it now has its own acronym WFH. We’ll as a brand planner, working from home is a poor substitute for working at large.  I, too, sit at my compute most of the day like many WFHers. We gather our information from screens, organize it and package it for use, guidance or sales.  But the brand planner in me looses alacrity staring at videos, reports, and even live talking heads, out of context.

I need fresh air. I need to see and study people in situ. Observation of behavior is best done not in a chair in your home. 

The definition of noun is a “person, place or thing.” These are best experienced in person.

And definition of verb is an “action, state, or occurrence.” Again, best experienced in person.

Working from home for the brand planner dulls the senses. Working from home may be more comfortable but it’s less conducive to what Faris (need I say Yakob?) would call recombinant thought.

Get yourself out of the home as quickly as you can and back into the business jungle. Safely. With a mask, But git!

Peace.

 

A Letter to the VC Community.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I recently read a business plan for a new company which, I suspect, was based upon a templet someone developed for people trying to raise money for a startup. Below are the sections:

Mission
Product
Customer base
Competition
Industry Overview
Market Analysis and Competition
Sales and Marketing
Ownership and Management
Operating Plan
Financial Plan

It looks like all the bases are covered and I’ve little doubt a lender who reads all the sections would be better prepared to make a funding decision. Ish. You see, a business plan is not a true indicator of success. What it lacks is a deep dive into consumer values, behaviors and biases. That’s where a brand plan comes in. These two elements of marketing need to be interconnected. Without the business plan you’re overlooking product, manufacturing, distribution, pricing and cash flow. But without a brand plan you are not understanding demand, emotion, psychology and humanity.

This is not an “art and science” discussion. Branding is not all art. There’s a degree of reflexology involved.

If you are in the venture capital business, you would do well with your investments to require a brand plan in addition to the business plan.

Peace.

 

 

 

A Brand by Any Other Name Is Not a…

By
Steve Poppe
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One the newer questions in my fact-finding battery used in brand discovery is “How did you come upon the name of your brand or company?” If the answer is a simplified, shallow or sentimental one, e.g., named after my first dog, that is telling. Conversely, if the stakeholder sweated the details, as one might when naming a child, then it sets up a more fertile ground for learning. It can offer a deep preview of strategy.

If the story about the name is convoluted and/or meandering, one can expect a similar environment in brand planning. And that’s okay. It’s the master brand planner’s job to prioritize direction. To make decisions easier for the stakeholder. Not unlike which lens is clearer at the eye doctor.

I know a brand is an “empty vessel into which we pour meaning” but knowing where a brand name came from can provide critical info. Either from a content and strategy point of view, or a psychological/Jungian view.

A name by any other name is not your brand.

Peace.

 

 

Things We Remember

By
Steve Poppe
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We remember beauty.

We remember new.

We remember rich.

We remember melody.

We remember funny.

We remember nature.

We remember poetry.

We remember pain.

We remember educators.

We remember warmth.

We remember charity.

We remember happy.

We remember love.

We remember triumph.

These are the things we remember.

These are the things consumers remember.

(I post this brand planner’s prayer once a year…as a reminder.)

The Brand Brief.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

When a creative person looks at a blank screen or page, and tryies to come up with an idea for a piece of marketing, there’s often an uneasy feeling. Because creativity and selling are dissimilar activities.

That’s why God invented the brief. Often called the creative brief: a project doc that outlines the business problem, target, and hopefully some stimulating insight that can act as a catalyst for the idea. If the creative brief is too proscriptive, the creative person finds it limiting. An idea buzz kill.

That’s why brand briefs are better for creative people. A brand brief provides a macro view of the selling premise. It introduces the environment, the language of the consumer and his/her perceptions and attitudes toward the category. It’s broad enough so as to make a creative person feel less confined. And done well a brand brief provides a fecund field in which to plant and cultivate ideas.

The brand brief is the operative strategy and stimulus doc a creative person needs before beginning work. Each content assignment should also include a short project description outlining the chore and goal.

Stimulate your creative team, don’t scare them off.

For a look at a some actual brand briefs, write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com

Peace.

 

 

Services Delivered Through Screens.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

A few years ago I did some contract work at ad agency JWT on the Microsoft business. While there that I met Josh Shabtai. Josh had a digital title but his thing was gaming and coding. You could tell he wasn’t one of those guys you easily could put a label on or fit into a box. He was just Josh and you knew he could invent and solve problems. Fast forward a few years and lo-and-behold he is living in the NC piedmont working at Lowe’s. Didn’t see that coming.

His title is Sr. Director | Ecosystem, Lowe’s Innovation Labs at Lowe’s Companies, Inc. and yesterday I had a chance to see him online at a PSFK event (thanks Piers Fawkes) entitled Future of Retailing, something/something.

I shop at Lowes because it is closer, but I’ve always thought of it as Burger King to Home-Depot’s McDonald’s. Well, I’m not so sure anymore.

Josh and Lowe’s understand that a real opportunity zone for Lowe’s is service — for consumers and professionals. Tool geeks want to geek-out with other tool geeks. Pretenders like me want to learn without embarrassment. Tyros want their hands held. And for all DIYers, YouTube is the go-to platform. Josh sees a future in which “services are delivered through screens” and his job is to make the Lowe’s Innovation Labs ground zero. Why cede the home improvement service to YouTube? So he’s building.

The journey should be an exciting one. Watch out for it.

Peace.

 

Coty’s Latest Marketing Bet.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Coty Inc. has not been doing very well of late. It’s stock is down 66% according to the NYT. Coty just announced buying a 20% stake in Kim Kardashian West’s cosmetics company. In January, it purchased a chunk of Kardashian’s half-sister Kylie Jenner’s cosmetics company. Seems they are smitten with the beautiful, broadcast and social media stars.

Coty, the highly-leveraged owner of Max Factor and Covergirl, has not shown an ability to market with the times and now has decided to “buy, watch and learn.” I worked at McCann during L’Oreal’s heyday and as most brands were churning out TV spots, L’Oreal worked on one spot all year. Brand building was a complete and total art form. “Let’s track down the designer of the dress, Marisa Tomei wore, in___.”

Today with fast twitch media, cheap digital video and a fickle news cycle, everything is different. Looks like Coty has thrown in the towel and plans to learn from the entertainment industry. Progress?

Advertising and branding have always been part art and part science. If Coty can extract the science from the success of the Kardashian/Jenner ventures, hopefully it can recapture some of the art. 

Peace.

 

 

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