Home Blog Page 58

Brand Strategy Tarot Card Number 1.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I am working on a presentation called Brand Strategy Tarot Cards.  My intent is to turn over 6 cards of branded content and do a reading. A reading of what these 6 fairly common pieces of content convey about the brand.  I’ve been playing with what the 6 cards are, but now will lock them down. 

Up first is brand or company Name. The name is spoken more often than not by consumers so the aural version is important. Therefore the first Tarot card will not be a card at all, but spoken words. “Pass the What’s The Idea? please.” “Hey, would you get Whats The Idea? on the phone?”  Of course, there are full spoken names and shorthand names. Coca-Cola and Coke, are famous examples.

After I evaluate the communication value of the name, we can turn over the first Tarot card which will be the packaging of the name — including the logo and tagline, if there is one. We’ll assess what the logo does to convey or reassert the name and then look to see if it conveys or furthers any particular meaning or value. When first introduced what meaning did the Nike swoosh bring to the brand communication for instance.

Lastly, we’ll evaluate the tagline. Has it resonated? Has it changed every few years? Is it an advertising tagline? Many times, when the name is bad and the mark not particularly meaningful, the tagline carries the water. It’s a bail out tactic for branding. A startup I worked at used the meaningless name Zude. The logo was colorful, original typography but to consumers it was meaningless beyond color and playfulness. The tagline “Feel Free” was broadly grounded in the product functionality (a drag and drop web authoring tool) but kind of meaningless without a communicative name and mark.

Fort Tarot Card number 2, tune in tomorrow.

Peace.

 

 

Independence and Brand Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0


My business is a private business.  I’m not a public company owned by shareholders. What does that mean?  Well, let’s imagine my partner/wife was the boss and she had to move the P&L in a constant upward direction every quarter. I’d be fucked. 

What’s The Idea? has good years and bad years. It’s not always tied to the energy I put into business development. I’m always on. A firm believer in making your own luck, I understand demand for my services is fluid. Educating marketers that brand strategy is a business winning concern is not easy. Because not many understand strategy. They understand tactics.  My board of directors, were I managing 100s of planners, would not completely get that. They would bring pressure. “Work harder. More hours. More outreach.” Pressure. “Increase visibility. Cut costs.”

As a private “single-shingle” brand planner I answer to me. My home is my office. My credit card statement is my expense manager. My checking account, the P&L. Yes, this can be a hand-to-mouth business. But there’s mad learning in that.  We learn when we operate on the edge.  We learn when we operate amongst raging success.  I’m not so sure we learn well when we have outside pressures not of our own making. Learning is the fulcrum of brand strategy.

Independence. As my kid’s used to say “I yike it.”

Peace.

 

Another Use for A Brand Brief.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I have a client with a very successful technology company. His client list is a Who’s Who of other tech companies, the likes of which anyone would be proud.  When it comes to recruiting top talent, he competes with those same companies — even though the big boys are house hold names and he has a small firm. He often wins those recruitment competitions.

I love this company. They do so many things right. They’re growing in head count. They’re giving back to the category by sharing IP. They are working hard to be inclusive in what is typically a homogenous technology landscape. And they incentivize women to enter the business through generous programs, while not paying lip service to equality.   

As part of the welcome packet, all new employees receive the What’s The Idea? brand brief.  Mark Pollard has said many times “Strategy is your words” and this client wants employees to understand why they do what they do. The brand brief is the backstory that culminates in the “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”  It guides employees throughout their daily rigors. And behaviors. And deeds.

You may call it culture. You may call it ethos. I call it brand strategy.

Peace.

 

 

How the Web Affects Marketing.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0


I am old enough to know what marketing was like before the advent of the internet. Before Google. When the telephone and printed business directories were the consumer research tools of the day. I speak to tons of marketing newbies and for most of them the “go to” tactic is search. Paid and organic.  It’s what they know, what they were weaned on.  But the web is a giant ocean with bays and tides and marshes and an array of currents that make successful search complicated and difficult.

So-called search experts, who are mostly coders and analytics nerds, some with a bit of design sense, are the primary vendors of choice for small businesses today. These experts position themselves as search scientists but are really website developers.  Certainly, not marketers. Go to their websites and sniff around. Very little marketing finesse.

Before the web, marketers had to be more strategic. People were their customers, not the algorithm, not search terms. The product and its inherent value were the foundation of marketing. Not the ebb and flow of the internet. I’m not advocating old school shit. I love the web. (It’s the only way one can collapse all the steps to a sale into a single transaction.) But it’s best used downstream as one arrow in the quiver. It’s not the quiver.

Product. Place. Price and Promotion should still rule the day. (Positioning, the key to brand planning, is a function of all four.)

Peace.

 

Backstory.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I know it may be sacrilege but I’m not the world’s biggest Beatles fan.  The Stones were my thing growing up. Perhaps less controversial, I was not a fan or follower of Queen. So shoot me.  But let me say this, having seen the movies “Yesterday” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I am a big Kool-Aid drinker now.  Could it be that I’m older and more accepting — more Zen-like? Maybe.  But the amazing backstories and cinematic storytelling driving those two movies turned everything for me.  In fact, I went to the see “Yesterday” thinking I wasn’t going to like it — the trailer not being its greatest sales piece.  In both cases the movie-making craft, the backstory was brilliant.

Those in the business of selling things and building brands need to understand the craft of backstory.  Not just story. But contextual backstory. If we jump straight to advertising, you might correctly argue it’s hard to do backstory. Especially in a :30 spot or page of print. But the good ones try. And the good ones can deliver deep context quickly.

If you want to convince someone of something new or change their opinion of something old, you can’t spend your time selling. You have to deliver some humanity. Some subject empathy. True thought stimulation. Make the viewer a participant, not a consumer. That’s what backstory does.

Peace.

 

 

An Internship Idea.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Ton of companies hire interns. Let’s face it, you get good, motivated talent for free and milk it. Sometimes you get some truly cool work that has an economic impact. Internships are the haps, as Dave Robicheaux or Cletus might say.  But is there an opportunity to do more with an internship from the company point of view? I believe so.

When the engagement is over, sponsoring companies should ask the question “What did we learn from this intern?” and do a write up. It’s a smart exercise. If the company didn’t learn much, it wasn’t trying. Interns go through a vetting process, so they were deemed capable to begin with. And if the intern wasn’t motivated to perform that’s important learning. And needs to be fixed.  But the hope is that the intern will perform. And will provide value. And that value will teach the hiring company a thing or two. After all these tyro employees are next gen consumers.   

Companies like to take pictures of their graduating interns. They promote intern fun on Instagram. They post thank you videos at the end of the summer. But what really inspires an intern is knowing they had an impact. It’s the least we can offer. Whet the way for growth.

Peace.

 

 

Master Brand Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0


On this planet there are thousands of brand planners. Most work at ad agencies. Lots work at small boutiques. And like me, hundreds and hundreds, either through ageism or salary-ism, have been pastured. No matter their station, the lions share of brand planners work on projects. That is to say, the main brand has been planned and the strategist is asked to handle a particular sub-effort: perhaps an ad campaign, service launch/relaunch, web initiative or demand generation program.

At What’s The Idea?, I/we (not a gender thing) work upstream of so-called projects. I create brand strategy for the master brand. That is, I work on the organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. The organizing principle that drives all projects.  

With the master “brand claim and proof array” out of the way, brand planners working at the project level have a big head start.  As do product development people. Product management. And more importantly, executive management. And please don’t suggest this in anyway curtails creativity. Quite the opposite.

A powerful brand claim and proof array becomes the money that goes into the bank. Revenue is revenue.  Everyone has it. But a powerful brand strategy – at the master brand level – undergirds every successful brand. For examples write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.

Peace.

 

Atmosphere and Brand Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Brand planners have to get out of the building. And they should even leave their computers home from time to time.  “Atmosphere” is one of the key tools of the planner. It’s where senses other than the ears take over and instill. You can’t smell fear in an interview. You can’t experience unbridled joy while typing interview responses. Atmosphere creates in situ observations and muscle memory for planners and ethnographers. Where deeds and proof emerge that stick with you when it comes time to write your brief or organize your thoughts.

Part of my discovery is interviewing people – absolutely with the computer at my fingertips.  I complain about my typing ability to which cohorts ask “Why don’t you use a voice reorder?” My reply: “If it’s not important enough to type, it’s probably not going to make it in the brief.”  If the interviewee is going too quickly to capture everything, I slow them down and ask for a redo. It’s the same with atmosphere. The stuff that flies by isn’t as important as the stuff that sticks. (This ability may be an innate planner good-at.) Observing what’s important versus what’s not. Things the eyes see.  The schnoz smells. The tones the ears compels.

Staring at a computer screen or paper notes is not atmosphere. Atmosphere is sensual.  Get some before you start organizing.

Peace.

 

 

The Case for Brand Strategy Investment.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Brand strategy is such a misunderstood science. And undervalued.

Here’s why: Brand strategy, as I define it, is “An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” As such, it guides all tactics — marketing and otherwise.  Because brand strategy, by this definition, impacts the product it can also impact things like operations; typically not thought of as the domain of brand strategy. So, when the brand strategy for a commercial maintenance company has “preemptive” as a brand plank, it requires all employees to looking for problems with a customer building and grounds before they occur. Blind curbs due to poorly trimmed bushes, sweating pipes that lead to burst pipes; things typically outside of the normal contract. Things commercial maintenance companies aren’t paid for. This is an example of an operational component of the brand strategy.

Preemptive is both a care-about and a good-at at Excel Commercial Maintenance in NY. It’s partly why they landed a huge cornerstone account ten year ago.

Brand strategy – unless you are hiring a multinational company – can cost less than an ad in a national magazine.  Yet it is rarely funded. It’s just not valued as much as the tactics it should be driving. That’s probably why John Wannamaker coined the phrase “I know half my advertising is working, I just don’t know which half.”

Measure twice (invest in brand strategy) and cut once.

Peace.

 

 

Chaos.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Yesterday I watched a recording of the Cannes presentation by Rob Campbell and Martin Weigel on “Chaos.”  It was lovely and refreshing. Smart men, both. During the Q&A someone asked “Isn’t chaos a lot like disruption?” Indignantly, Rob said “No.” very different, he offered  

I’m with Rob, sort of; disruption is so overused. It’s a pop marketing term to which all aspire.  Overall though, I’m not so sure I heard how chaos is that much different when it comes to heightening creativity than are many of the other pop marketing memes planners and creatives have bandied about for years.  Chaos is just a new word for it.

The big news, as I heard it, was a call for increased focus on people (not consumers) and getting out of the building — rather than relying solely on data. And frankly, getting out of the building is not that new.

Chaos in practice is recombinant culture, as Faris Yakob might say. Chaos is the mistake that invented Post-It Notes. Chaos is a bird song inspiring “Stairway To Heaven” (I made that up). Chaos it the synapses, synapsing. It’s the irony of disorganization.

I agree with all things said by Messrs. Campbell and Weigel. Be it chaos or some other descriptor. We need to think more creatively about how we think creatively. The clarion call to action they espouse is needed today.

Where I will take issue, however, is the notion of creating chaos in a complete vacuum. Brand building requires that chaotic outputs operate in conjunction with brand strategy. Rob and Martin may not agree. Then again….

Peace.

 

1...575859...314Page 58 of 314
© Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv