Home Blog Page 87

A Thought About Organizational Change.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

There are a couple of start-up companies founded by advertising ex-pats focusing on organizational design and strategy.  These companies are convinced the digital economy and digital tools are being overlooked when it comes to evolving organizational efficiency. They are not wrong.

NOBL and The Ready are two such companies whose missions are to assist legacy orgs transition to newer models, the goals being improved agility, aggressiveness, accountability and profit. (The Dachis Group operated in this space 10 years ago, but became a software company.)

I need to study some of these methodologies more before fully commenting, but here’s a quick observation. The going in premise is “the organization is the enemy.” The framework, as I understand it, begins with executive and stakeholder interviews, team workshops, feedback studies and lots of charts. No doubt, if you rub some stem cells on it, I mean add some digital productivity tools, you can move any organization forward. It’s no hocus pocus, it’s a real business and the advice is good.

But, I am a brand planner and for me brand strategy is like penicillin. A cure all. I am of the mind a well-constructed brand strategy can solve organizational problems; perhaps even better than rote org design.

An organizational design framework, can be generic. A templated approach to solving inefficiency. A brand strategy approach, though, does not view organizational structure as the problem. Rather, it studies the disconnects between customer care-abouts and brand good-ats. Organizations can and must change to remove these impediments but those changes are less about pathways and communications occlusions and more about strategy tied to brand value.

No one is arguing organizational delivery can be improved. I am just suggesting it’s better to make a cookie more moist and healthy, than making the formulary more efficient. One can do both…starting from the brand POV is all I am advocating.

Peace.

 

 

A Whole Foods Promotional Blockbuster.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Jeff Bezos is one daring dude. (Wanted to use the F-bomb, but mom might be reading.) By purchasing Whole Foods he sent a shiver through the stock market, knocking some competitive grocers down significantly. He announced yesterday that Whole Foods will cut prices beginning this Monday. Some analysts predict as much as 15-25%. Oohfah. Mr. Bezos doesn’t give a rat’s ass about profitability.  He has enough money in the bank to lose near-term so he can win long-term.  A player.

Were I Mr. Bezos, here’s what I would do. Take it a step further. Reduce prices even more for one whole month. Bring prices down to Aldi range. Costco range. But only for a month. Use it as a “trial balloon.” Trial is a promotional tool known for breaking behaviors. Once people are actually in Whole Foods and shop there a cycle or two, they will be fans.

Many people who volume shop at Costco and Sam’s Club throw away perishable food. “I can buy 20 tomatoes for the price of 6. Even if I toss out 10, I come out ahead.”  Whole Foods can and will educate shoppers about better-for-you-food, healthier shopping and less waste, something that’s not happening in a Costco or BJs.  

The promotional month will be crazy — with high traffic and supply hiccups, but it will be worth it.  “Prime” the Amazon pump, Mr. Bezos. Prime the pump.

Peace.    

 

The Provenance Factor.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

In my pre-career as a brand planner I met with then head of NY planning at BBH, Paul Matheson. BBH was on a side street in Chelsea, in a little commercial walk up, trying to find its footing in NY. As someone with little formal brand strategy training, apparently I did a rather good job of talking trade craft.  I recall Mr. Matheson saying of the 7 or so critical factors in a BBH brand strategy I mentioned 6.  Most people got 3, he offered.  Culture everyone missed, but not I — with an Anthroplogy background.

Today I’m thinking of revisiting my critical factors and adding a new one: Provenance.

A neat word provenance. It means where something comes from. Coors beer comes from the Rockies, brewed with Rocky Mountain water. Farm to table restaurant brands rely on provenance. Maine lobsters. Muscle Shoals musicians. That kind of thing. Understanding where brands physically come from is important. The people that make the brands. The materials. The design intent — Greene and Greene furniture, for instance. Endemic brand qualities are embedded in where and why products and services are made. Is an Austin app different from a Stanford app?

As my Norwegian aunt would say “Tink about it.” Think about provenance.

Peace.

 

Asheville Beer and Branding.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I am relaunching What’s The Idea? in Asheville, NC following 9 years in the NY metropolitan area. An exciting challenge.

Here, a sushi roll costs about the same. A pint of craft beer, the same-ish. The real estate market is hot and entrepreneurism high. For a brand consultant the winds are blowing in the right direction. But time will tell.  I’ll need to understand the “care-abouts” so I can sell the “good-ats.” Then price effectively.

My tongue-in-check claim “I’ve been known to work for beer,” rings even truer here, as there are a number of craft beer start-ups.  The reality of so many breweries down here can create a challenge. Can craft beer actually be considered a commodity? How does one differentiate one mountain brewery from another? Hmm.

The big guys Sierra Nevada and New Belgium have an almost theme park approach to building fealty. Challengers like Pisgah Brewery and Highland Brewery are doing smart grass roots efforts promoting on-prem and outdoor music – sometimes with big name acts like The John Butler Trio. Less loquacious brewers are using local food and pickers-on-stools.

And, of course, it’s all about the hero beer. The one unique brew that gains national attention. Google Peter Cotter and Mark Burford. I never made a penny off them, but did learn a shit ton from their journey.

Stay tuned.  Going to be fun.

Peace.

 

Measuring an Idea.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

What’s The Idea? is the name of this branding consultancy. The idea referred to in the inquiry is the idea that drives positive commerce and profitability. “What’s the idea that drives revenue?” One might ask how an idea can translate into measurable revenue.  A fine question. Few brand strategists will go on record with an answer. Every brand idea served up by WTI can pass the revenue test.

The long standing brand idea for Coke, and management might argue this with me today, is “refreshment.” Were someone to field a quantitative research study measuring the degree to which soda drinkers agree Coke is the most refreshing choice — and track that number over time to revenue, you would have a proper test. Coke wouldn’t do it, I suspect.

I wrote a brand strategy for elder care and acute rehab facility not long ago, the idea for which was “average is the enemy.” Were a research study to be fielded among patients gauging their agreement as to how the healthcare company measured everything and outperformed others, that too, could be tied to revenue growth. 

Every brand idea should be able to pass the revenue test. That’s why it’s called strategy. Return On Strategy (ROS).

If you have a brand idea see if you have a mechanism in pace to measure it.

Peace.

 

A Tactic In Search Of An Insight.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

A number of years ago, while with McCann-Erickson, I was on the new business team that pitched and won the worldwide Motorola account – at the time one of the world’s premier technology corporations. Someone smart upstairs decided it would be a good idea to put a global research project in play to tout the scale and utility of McCann’s global network. I wasn’t the developer of the research questionnaire, fielded by 10 plus offices around the globe, but the data was given to me to interpret. A tactic in search of an insight.

My insight, which we embedded into the presentation in an uneven way, was that the world was made up of 3 different segments of wireless adoption. All based on teledensity – the quantification of communications devices per person.
The creative was great, (we used a Rolling Stones song as an idea bed), there was no time left for the media portion of the presentation (common in new business at the time) and the chemistry was lovely. No one ever came out and said the segmentation insight was the deal-breaker, but all creative being equal-ish (and it never is), I’m pretty sure the Moto team from Atlanta felt a marketing depth to our pitch others lacked.

A tactic in search of an insight can work. Can be worth millions.

Peace.

 

Bai, Bai, Bai and Ad Craft.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I love Christopher Walken. I’m beginning to appreciate Justin Timberlake. And I’m a huge fan of healthier-for-you foods. Brands are my thing and as an ad rat, my senses are heightened during the Super Bowl. All of these things converged during the Super Bowl of 2017 with the fruit drink spot featuring Messrs. Walken and Timberlake. Granted, at the Super Bowl party it’s not always easy to hear, but I did get the Bai-Bai-Bai joke. “Oh, that’s the Justin Timberlake song.” Nice ad craft, if you are trying to seed a name.

In an article in the NYT two days ago, Bai brand stewards were crowing about an increase in TV ad awareness of 50% since the spot first aired. Not a metric that launched a thousand marketing directorships. Ad awareness doesn’t always equal sales — though it’s a good first step. It wasn’t until I finished the article that I realized Bai, Bai, Bai was a phonetic representation of bye, bye, bye to sugar. That was lost on me.
So this was a case where the main brand idea (no sugar) was lost in the creative translation. And that’s poor ad craft.
When you build a brand, your claim or idea must blast through. That’s brand stewardship. Sometimes ad craft gets in the way. Ad awareness should never trump message.

Peace.

An Augmented Reality App.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

It has been a while since I watched my technology hero Robert Scoble on a video. He disappeared for a while, doing some Augmented Reality work, writing a book and living his “real world” life. Also he somewhat replaced Scobleizer.com with posts to Facebook. Anyway, I received an email from him today promoting a newsletter that will aggregate his last 5 Facebook posts and he is back on the radar. And it couldn’t be a minute too soon. I’ve felt out of tech touch. When you have more Snap stock than Snaps, something is wrong.

Pixie (getpixie.com) is a new AR tool one can load onto an iPhone to scan a room for your shit. Shit to which you’ve affixed a physical tag. If you put an electronic sticker on your keys and fire up the app, you can locate them. Near field I believe.  For peeps of a certain age (me), this will be a fun app, especially when the stickers get smaller.

I just moved to Asheville, NC, having downsized. In other words I got rid of a lot of shit. But I still have a lot of shit. Trend-wise, I think we Americans are reducing our domicile footprints but accumulating more shit. The Pixie is a neat app to help. It’s probably not the killer AR app we will ultimately cultivate but it’s a start. The killer app will likely be in the marketing realm me thinks.

Stay tuned to AR and what it portends.

Peace.

There Are No Tough Brand Planning Categories.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some time during brand planning career I began looking at assignments with the glass half full. Prior, there were a number of categories I walked into and start to twitch. “How am I going to learn this stuff? It’s too complicated.  It’s dense and unappealing.  Healthcare was one such category. Financial another. Digital Signal Processors and end-of-life also come to mind.

Maybe I just thought I wasn’t smart enough to learn a new technical language. Or I would be bored to death. I don’t have that problem anymore. I’ve chilled. And I’ve been able to find light in every product or service.

When you read decks and white papers on engineering projects in Africa or river blindness in Asia, it can be daunting. But when you interview the subject matter experts – the owners of the info and insights — it’s a different ballgame. You are in control. You make it interesting. People are people. People innately want to help.  So then it’s all about the questions.

As they teach you they get excited. As they see you gain category insight they start to perk up. Then they put some of the marketing pieces together. They become marketers. There is no more exciting human pursuit than learning. Plan to learn, plan to let your SME learn, and the activity rewards.

Love this job. Peace.

 

Roy Elvove, persona non.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

My friend, Roy Elvove is EVP Worldwide Communications at arguably the best ad agency in the world, BBDO.  But to meet “Doc,” as his wife and friends call him, you’d never know he holds such a lofty job.  He has worked at BBDO since 1999 and never, ever taken the spotlight off of BBDO, it’s executives, achievements or clients. The thousands and thousands of comms and news items he’s facilitated are never about him. I’ve followed the careers of many agency communications officers — their names (as spokespeople) are almost always in the pieces.  Not Roy. You can barely find his name in the company directory.

Google him. All you’ll get is a LinkedIn profile, maybe some alma mater or special cause stuff.

Like a good baseball umpire (sorry about the tired metaphor, Doc wouldn’t stand for it), his presence is most felt by not being present. Focus the news on the news. No byline needed. That’s Roy.

I hope he writes a book someday and finally shares half of what he’s seen. But it will never happen. He doesn’t think that way. Brand first. Brand only.

Peace.

 

 

1...868788...314Page 87 of 314
© Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv