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Writing an Effective NPR Billboard Part 2.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday I explained what a 15 second radio billboard had to accomplish in order for it to be effective. The key tasks were five-fold. Doing the math that’s about 3 seconds per task. Let’s get started then maybe we can massage the flow later.

  • Explain what the business is.
  • Establish what the business does.
  • Explain what brand strategy is.
  • Explain why prospective clients need a brand strategy.
  • Lastly, establish why What’s The Idea? is a good choice.

What’s The Idea? is a brand consultancy (1). Fairly clear. A subset of marketing to do with branding. What’s The Idea? consults on brand strategy (2). We don’t do logos, packaging, style guides or websites. Task three is to explain what brand strategy is. An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging (3). At What’s The Idea? strategy is delivered as words alone. Words that offers explicit direction. When following a brand strategy, content makers know if they are making a deposit in the brand bank or a withdrawal (Hint: Don’t make a withdrawal).

Most marketers don’t wake up in the morning saying I need a brand strategy. Especially those outside of the packaged goods business. But everyone needs a brand strategy. Marketing without a brand strategy is like knitting without a pattern (4)… you are just making marketing knots.

And lastly, why should a marketer buy brand strategy from What’s The Idea? rather than say Atlas Branding, Interbrand or Brandtuitive? Well, it’s all we do. While many use brand strategy as a lost leader to sell other forms of art and content, What’s The Idea? is only about the idea. And idea that drives consumer value and business value (5).

Stop by tomorrow to see how all this is assembled into a ready-for-primetime NPR billboard.

Peace.

 

Writing An Effective NRP Billboard.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m getting ready to do my first ever paid billboard ad promoting What’s The Idea? on NPR. Though I’ve written over 2,600 blog posts about branding and marketing, I’ve never actually done an ad for this business. Nor have I written for it a brand strategy. Clearly some cobbler’s children shit going on here.

An NPR billboard these days is anywhere from 10-15 seconds of copy read on the radio by an NPR announcer. Recorded but sans any overt production value. Just words. If they are still holding to form, NPR will not allow any superlatives or overly salesy copy.

This is going to be a wonderful exercise. Boiling down What’s The Idea? and its value proposition to a scarce few words.

Here’s what copy must do:

  • Explain what the business is. (Brand consultancy.)
  • Establish what the business does. (Brand strategy.)
  • Explain what brand strategy is. (Organizing   principle.)
  • Explain why prospective clients need a brand strategy.
  • Lastly, establish why What’s The Idea? is a good choice.

And all this must be accomplished with panache in less than 15 seconds.

It could be worse. I could be writing an actual roadside billboard, where you are limited to 5 words and a picture.

For the next few days, I’ll be putting my thinking cap on and drafting a billboard. Stay tuned.

Peace!

 

Problem Vs. Insight.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

So, many brand planners will tell you to start out looking for the main business or brand problem as you begin your planning efforts. It’s a great place to start. Brand planning savant Mark Pollard of Sweathead is a big advocate of identifying the problem. And it’s hard to argue with Mark. But another approach is to simply mine business, brand and behavioral insights in a more free-form way. The issue is, most brands seek help when there is a business problem. Conundrum much? 

For me the latter approach wins out. Ever the optimist, I like to think the brand strategy needn’t be built on a problem. Better to seek an opportunity. A positive. It can open more doors. Reading the faces of consumers is always more fun when they are juiced and smiling than when harangued and frowny (afrown is not a word?). Also, riffing and pursuing the positive is a way to extend the interview, maybe make it even more creative. We aren’t psychiatrists after all.

Any good listener knows people will go to complaint land. That’s okay. Let them. But if there’s an opportunity to go all Pollyanna, take it and fly.

Peace.

 

 

Small Businesses Success.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Ask a small business owner if they have a “business strategy” and they can’t help but answer yes. Probe a little and they’ll answer you with superlatives about product and service such as “to provide the best food and dining experience in the area” or “offer an uncompromised level of tax return service to the community,” “help improve lead generation thru web search tools at the lowest cost.” These are make-more-money explanations – perhaps mixed in with a little bit of strategy.

Ask that same small business owner if s/he has a “brand strategy” and you get a different response. Most will say yes, but it will be attached to slightly quizzical expression. The brain lights up with synapses popping around name, logo, packaging and ads, but the word “strategy” confuses. They don’t really know what a brand strategy is.

A brand strategy is “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”

A brand strategy is a set of words that provide a litmus for product marketing success. You are either on brand strategy or off. With brand strategy before marketing happens everyone agrees with what success looks like. It’s binary. It’s measurable. It’s scientific.

With science in the house, the creative process can begin. Small businesses often forget the science. They just start making. Invest in brand strategy and divest of random marketing and business tactics.

Peace.

 

Insight Beast.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Let’s face it, brand strategy is all about what Trout and Ries labelled positioning. Owning a place in the mind of the consumer that is of high value and defensible. I would add to that a place that is universally recognized as “you” – offering something you do really well and are constantly perfecting.

There are many flavors of brand planner just as there are many flavors of writer. We all have different slants on what we deliver.

Let’s just start by saying making a living selling an organizing principle, AKA a strategy, is hard. It’s easier selling logos, names and taglines. Logos, names and taglines, out of context though, are hard to sell so most branding shops spend time on the set up. What do I have to say to sell my money-making buildable? At What’s The Idea? there are no brand buildables just a paper strategy. A piece of paper using a framework of one claim and three proof planks. It is the framework that creates a position in the mind of consumers.

The way all brand planners get to strategy (the paper kind) is through insights. What one observation, both scientific and behavioral, can power the idea that is the brand claim? Of course there can be multiple insights, but only one can truly light up the (brand manager’s) amygdala. Like the hogs that smells the truffle, the Insight Beast is branding’s best friend. Insight Beasts build the world’s most powerful brands.

And no, the URL is not available.

Peace.

 

CRM for the Restavus.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) grew up in the aughts. It was a process by which customer data records were mined to maximize repeat sales. As an AT&T client once reckoned “take the data and do something smart with it.” CRM then grew from a process to a software, which Saleforce.com extended to include management of sales prospects – making some serious B2B Benjamins.

But what about the rest of us?

I’ve been blogging since 2007 with over 2,600 posts, hundreds of thousands of clicks and social media impressions up the wah-zoo. But they aren’t stored anywhere. I’ve done noting smart with that data that doesn’t exist.

But who is positioned to help target prospects that are most inclined to buy? Who has that data? And who can help small and mid-size businesses do something smart with that data, i.e., create the catnip or bait?

Google Analytics arrays one’s web clicks, but due to privacy issues, it’s not that useful – not unless someone buys something. You can’t manage a customer relationship until someone buys something. But with AI the tools are there.

Google’s next big business idea, the one that will really hyper monetize the web, is to create a means by which businesses can identify prospects, not by zip, age, browser and search term, but by intent. Predictive intent. This is the mapping the data genome shit that will really alter the marketing landscape.

This, me droogies, is CRM for the Restavus.

Peace.

 

 

 

Excellent Relationships.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve read a number of ads for marketing directors over the years and one of my favorite job specs is:

Proven experience in building effective relationships (with internal and external customers).

I love this one. It makes a person ruminate. Everyone thinks they’re good at relationships. If we are all being honest with ourselves, though, we have to admit some bad interpersonal situations are just inevitable. You may be able to count on one hand the people you’ve been unable to deal effectively with but everyone must realize nobody is perfect. Not even Gandhi.

If you find yourself telling cohorts, prospects or hiring agents you get along with everyone, you’re putting up a red flag. Because even the most perfect manager can’t account for the disorganized personalities of some people. And/or our own imperfections.

The best way to build a case for getting along with everybody is to be truthful. Recognize it’s impossible. Explain we are all human, all fallible and 99.9 percent success is our goal. If we know we can’t be perfect all the time, it gives us the humility to strive.

All we can do is strive.

Peace.

 

 

Unbridled Proof Needs to Be Organized.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

My alma mater Rollins College recently posted a marketing video on YouTube. Set to violin music it is a visual listing of accomplishments over the course of the year. Lots of number 1 rankings followed by certain student honors, awards, social initiatives, celebrations of students past and a recap of campus investments and improvements. Had I done discovery on the brand I’m sure many of these things would have been circled as proofs. (I run an evidence-based brand planning shop.)

But what must happen with proof in brand strategy and marketing efforts is it needs to be organized. Rollins tried to organize it but the vid just came off as a sophomoric listicle. All attenuated at the end of the video with a line “Make Tomorrow Happen.”

Marketing videos are not an amalgam of randomized brush strokes, they’re an organized equation of value. Some might say a story. Something that creates a lasting and indelible memory.

Brand strategy is an “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” The operative word is organized. Sans organization the proof is a marketing list. Sans proof, the marketing list becomes advertising.

Peace.

The Brand Claim.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is credited with saying “Prose = words in their best order; Poetry = the best words in the best order.”

One of the nicest things ever said by a fellow brand planner about my work product was there was a sense of poesy about it. I like to think he was referring to my brand claims. Typically, they are brief. And they are always pregnant. A number of claims have ended up being taglines because to the ear they sounded memorable. I rather not label them creative. If they smack of a creative spin they clank when shared with a real creative team.

Landing on the best words in the best order is how you know you are done with a brand claim.

“Campaigns come and go…a powerful brand idea is indelible” is a phrase that best embodies brand strategy. And that powerful brand idea is the claim.

As a brand strategy consultant, I’m not in the business of creating ad campaigns. I’m in the business of directing creative conception. The brand claim is the best, most lucrative, most efficient means by which to create good marketing work and judge good marketing work. It is the single most important element of brand strategy.

The best words in the best order.

Peace.

(For examples of What’s The Idea? brand claims, please write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com)

 

Experiential Marketing.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Experiential branding is a thing. It’s a big thing. Any good K12 teacher will tell you that broadcasting a lesson at kids is not the best away to teach — let alone, sending them home with a few chapters to read. The best way to get kids to learn is to engage them with sight, sound and thought-provoking experience. In science they do experiments.

Brand strategy is an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. But the main drivers of brand strategy spending today seem to be naming, packaging and messaging. Experience, more often than not, a still a second class citizen.

Brand strategists doing discovery understand experience. It’s how we learn. Consume the product. Tag along with sales people. Observe consumers and users. Experience the experience. When Annie Proulx prepared to write The Shipping News, she spent weeks in diners drinking coffee and listening to the local patois of Newfoundlanders. It informed her analytical mind.

In a recent biz/dev email sent to experiential company I noted how experiential companies market their services using email and websites rather than experiential modes. Experiential is the sharpest tool in the branding kit. We need to pay it better mind.

Peace.

 

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