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The Yoda Route.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In brand planning there’s discovery and there’s discovery. (Discovery defined as the legwork and research that precedes crafting the brand strategy.) At What’s The Idea?, I use personal interviews with C-level executive, customers, subject matter experts and influencers as well as primary and secondary research, trade shows, user’s groups and any other meetings where buyers and sellers convene.

I’ve built the economics of my engagements so that I can deliver a brand strategy in a month’s time for a fair and equitable fee. Problem is, not all of my clients are able to pay the full freight. And sometime I’ve been known to take on pro bono work. That’s when things have to get creative.

If I must shortcut my traditional process I go the Yoda Route. That is, I rely on one really smart person for all my input; usually the founder or owner. They provide all the grist for the insight mill. It can be dangerous to use only one source — one Yoda — but it can work. The brand planner’s brain is never really off so after Yoda does her/his information dump you use that to build insights which can be massaged through other shortcut piggyback research and some much needed internal combustion. Yesterday I wrote “The only truly bad research is research that misleads,” and going the Yoda Route can mislead. Be careful. Be very, very careful.

Peace.

 

Focus Groups. Opinion vs. Communication.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve done tons of focus groups and having done so know how unreliable they can be, if improperly used. Since moving to Asheville, NC I’ve spoken to many entrepreneurs, communications and branding people who love the idea of doing groups. They mean usually mean one focus group. Maybe two. Very sketchy.

Advertising exposure is a focus group type I used a lot. We’d share ads or adlobs (ad like objects) with consumers to see what they communicated. What did the ad say? Did you believe it? How did it make you feel? Did you learn anything? We didn’t want to know if they liked it or how to improve it, we just wanted to understand the communications value.

The second type of group was more opinion-based. We delved into consumer attitudes about products, competitors and the category at large. Questions got into care-abouts and perceived good-ats.

In both cases, it should be noted, findings were always directional – meaning not projectable or scientifically true. The samples were too small and the group dynamic or hive-mind effect could alter opinions.

The only truly bad research is research that misleads. And focus groups that delve into opinion can mislead. It takes a good moderator and good research design to keep it on track. So be weary. There’s a great bromide that states “opinion can make an ass of you and me”…well, um, you know what I mean.

Peace.

 

 

 

Experiential Research.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I once had a brand planning assignment for an agency that worked on Banquet Foods. Banquet is the frozen food division of Conagra, a mega producer with brands such as Duncan Hines, Birds Eye and Hunt’s under its purview. Banquet happens to be the value brand of the portfolio.

All the agencies working for Banquet, e.g., consumer advertising, PR, retail, B2B, direct marketing and digital, were to meet in Chicago for a big confab and unveiling of the new ad campaign. Everyone invited to the meeting was required to visit a grocery store in advance and plan a full week’s worth of food shopping for $50. My assignment was to shop as a lone bachelor. (I started with a case of beer and worked backward.) One big box of breakfast cereal covered breakfast for the week. Pasta, canned veggies, a frozen pizza, etc. Other shoppers weren’t so lucky, having to plan for a family of 5.

This experiment forced us to look at shopping from a different perspective. Most agency people are fairly well off. This was a visceral, important awakening for all participants. It was experiential research, a vital tool in the brand planner toolkit.

Here’s some advice for any-and-all business owners: always do experiential research. Not just paper or phone research. Get out into the land of the buyers and sellers. Buy and sell. Watch and listen. If a picture is worth a thousand words, experience is worth a million.

Peace.

 

 

Clear Idea.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Robert Scoble has a question he asks every interviewee for his video blogs: “Who are you?” Answers always included name and title, but as Mr. Scoble mostly interviews heads of start-ups, many of which are somewhat anonymous, the “Who are You?” question also elicits a brief boil down of the product or service.

If asked “Who Are Your?” my response would be Steve Poppe, brand planner. If speaking to people unfamiliar with brand strategy and brand planning I’d expand it with “I develop brand strategies that guide product development, customer experience and messaging.” 

In my branding practice, nothing starts until we identify the product Is-Does. What a product Is and what a product Does. It’s branding 101. If the Is and the Does are not clear from the get-go you have a brand strategy problem. The Is-Does is mostly a functional description. It may not seem like a hard task, but it can be. Especially with first-of-a-kind products or services. It can also be hard for products with layered value propositions and for products in mature product categories introducing a new wrinkle or feature.

David Belasco, the famous theater producer, is credited with saying “If you can’t write your idea on the back of my business card, it’s not a clear idea.”

Get the Is-Does right and we can go to brand planning.

Peace.

 

 

Brick and Mortar Reopening During Coronavirus.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

No one is shopping during these days of the Coronavirus. But everybody is buying. If you are in a store today you are not browsing the aisles, you’re looking to grab something(s) and check out. It’s a life or death pursuit, even for deniers. In brick and mortar stores today, “This ain’t no Amazon.”

So here’s how retailers should be responding on prem (sorry, in store). Help by walking around. Disinfect areas that have high likelihood of being touched. Offer hand sanitizer. Nudge people to be 6 feet apart – using an approving eye. Do everything you can to help customer know their health and safety is your biggest concern. Sure, answer where the potting soil or gnocchi are but understand your fist job is to let customers know there is a deep undercurrent of safety at your retail location.

This is how we transition customers toward more shopping, which we all know leads to even more buying.

Peace.

 

Trickle Down Brand Strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve come to the conclusion that the single most important person needed to implement brand strategy is the CEO. Not the marketing director. Ask any rank and file employee at a company what the director of marketing does and they will answer “marketing.” Ask them to elaborate and you’re likely to get “they make marketing materials.” “They make the stuff the salespeople use.” “They do the website and ads.”

Most marketing directors, even those who really understand brand strategy, are not sharing it throughout the company. It’s not even trickling down. Marketing directors guard brand strategy. And for odd, odd reasons they keep it to themselves; perhaps sharing it only with vendors as a way to keep them organized.

Getting the CEO onboard with the brand strategy framework (one claim, three proof planks) sets up an oversight litmus test that marketing must pass as they invest company money. It creates a litmus test for all other departments making changes and/or improvements. And it offers up to HR a way to gauge company fit for new hires. In short, it operationalizes the strategy well beyond the marketing bullpen.

The best brand strategies are known throughout the company. Originally applied to consumer packaged goods, today they’re crucial in services economy and B2B businesses.

At its best, brand strategy does not trickle down — it’s a force of business nature that sluices and gushes straight to the bottom line.

Peace.

 

 

A Lesson From Restauranteur Ben Benson.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

My wife read in the paper that Ben Benson just passed away. Ben was a friend of my father and an accomplished restauranteur. If you’ve ever been to a TGIF Friday, you’ve experienced some of his handiwork. According to Wikipedia, Alan Stillman opened the original TGI Fridays in 1965 as the nation’s first “singles” bar, sans Ben. After some success on First Avenue in NYC, he and Ben together opened Tuesday’s, Wednesdays, and Thursday’s, before starting Smith and Wollensky, an upscale steakhouse in the thick of the steakhouse region (East 40s) of Manhattan.

After the partners decided to break up in the early 1980s Ben found a killer piece of real estate in the Time Life Building where he opened his eponymous steakhouse. Poppe Tyson, who had done lots of work for Smith and Wollensky (saving the restaurant from closing with a single ad), helped Ben with logo design and advertising. And we ate a shit ton of steaks there. Hello atorvastatin!

One day as a tyro account handler I went to Ben with what I thought was a great idea. The idea was to give away to his best customers a Ben Benson umbrella on  days when unexpected rain storms popped up.  At the time a dry-aged sirloin steak retailed for about $30. The expense account lunches and dinners were often in the hundreds of dollars so I thought a $18 golf umbrella wasn’t out of line. Ben looked me in the eye, sample umbrella in hand, and asked “Do you know how many sirloins I have to sell to pay for that one umbrella?” The margin seared into his brain. And that really was the end of the conversation. I explained all free advertising, the good will, and the saved Brooks Brothers suits…he would not hear of it.

My lesson from Ben was a good one. Context. Context is everything when selling. I didn’t expect Ben’s answer and I should have. Good or bad, the business building idea never had a chance. Had I been prepared to undercut his margin question before he made his decision, the idea may have had legs.

Context.

Peace.

 

A Never Ending Story…

By
Steve Poppe
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0

If you haven’t read Marc Andreeson’s essay “It’s Time To Build” you should. It’s simple and extraordinarily insightful. Should America take Mr. Andreeson’s advice, which we have to eventually, it will be the challenge of a lifetime. Or two. But there is no time to start like the present.

Often we talk about building brands. I talk about it, branding shops talk about it, certainly content creators do. The best brand builders, however, are the people who work at the brand company — not the brand or marketing consultants who designed the rules. Brand building isn’t paint by numbers. As Mr. Andreeson suggests, building occurs over time. With activity. With change. Building happens every day.

When it comes to brand building, most companies set it and forget it. That is, they get all hyped up about a brand strategy and it’s delivery mechanisms, say a new ad campaign or website, then let it run. As if on autopilot. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That’s not how it works. It’s a 365 day a year thing. And everyone at the company is a contributor. No one person is the brand mouthpiece. But for this to happen, the brand strategy has to be shared with the entire company. And it need to be enculturated.

Brand building starts with brand strategy (for samples write Steve at Whatstheidea) and ends…never.

Peace.

 

 

https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

Search Me???

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Here’s a layman’s take on AI (artificial intelligence): It’s like a big, smart Google search of the world’s data, cross-connecting findings and continuing on towards answering predetermined questions. Learning from itself along the way. While reading he NYT this morning I came across a company called Benevolent AI who was searching for a cure for the coronavirus. Their work turned up a drug called baricitinib (boy, could they use a branding shop). Without stepping on my como se llama too hard, let’s just say Benevolent AI put in a parameter “find a cure for Covid19” and the search turned up among other things a drug originally meant to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

AI is amazingly cool. And we are only scratching the surface.

Search and advanced search is what the web is all about. In Benevolent AI’s situation, the algo is searching the web but also medical papers and journals. Marketers have been using web search as a tool for years. As have I, at What’s The Idea? The What’s The Idea? blog, 15 years in the making, has generated more content than most any other branding blog or consultant, save for Seth Godin who’s a beast. With about 2,700 blog posts, each keyworded with “whatstheidea” and “whats the idea,” should be pretty findable. It’s not.

I’m sure there are many Google algo reasons why. But AI should fix all of this. That’s my hope at least. Google has tweaked the algo so many times to fight off black hat SEO that worker bees like me suffer. That’s okay, that’s what worker bees do.

Come and get me AI. I’m ready.

Peace.

 

What Marketers Should Do While On Covid 19 Break?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

If you are like me, you have dialed back your marketing activity during the Coronavirus pandemic. It could be that you are shut down in a nonessential retail setting or are just leery of being with others to protect the health you and your family.

So, while home or throttled back in your marketing activities, what are you actually doing? Banking and finances are, I’m sure, first order undertakings. Secondly, there’s venting. “How are we in this mess?” “How did we not plan for this?” Perhaps you are looking at the 5 stages of grief (banking isn’t among them) and are dealing with denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I suggest adding brand planning to the mix. Brand planning is the process by which we get to a brand strategy — defined as an “organizing principle of product, experience and messaging.” No business person wants disorganization. Not one.

Most companies know their marketing is unorganized, but they think that’s how it is supposed to be. They would never use the word disorganized.

Brand strategy is a way to add organization to the work of marketing. It requires a framework that drives toward objectives. If you’d like to call them KPIs we can. In between the objectives and the unorganized work, is strategy. Marketing strategy is tactical. Brand strategy is value-based. Values that cultivate what consumers care about. Values that actually build sales and brands.

Brand strategy directs tactics. It makes things organized.

If you are sitting around grieving your business or marketing plight and care to get organized, write me at Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com and let’s look at some samples together. Examples are better than theory. Use this time to organize.

Peace.

 

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