How To Affect Brand Change.

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July 19, 2017

One the fallacies of the brand planning business is that everything will change when the engagement is over. I’ve presented and sold brand strategy (an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging) to numerous clients, only to see it used to launch a tagline, logo, new website or ad campaign. And then little else.

In those cases it simply became stim for a top drawer tactic, not a strategy to work by. Not a strategy to build a brand.

I’m beginning to rethink my offering. I’m beginning to see the value of packaging a 3-month on-prem implementation phase. One whereby I supervise the marketing department and help to fit any and all marketing activities and outputs to the newly purchased brand strategy. It’s only when marketing stuff is made that the strategy takes hold. Brand strategy is not some ephemeral, cultural construct of the marketing department. It’s an activity guide.

When you have a brand claim and three proof planks to guide the work, everything has a purpose. Everything is either on or off.

(By the end of the day, I expect to be the owner of a little red house in Asheville, NC.)

Peace.

Beyond The Dashboard Idea.

By

Steve Poppe

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July 17, 2017

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Just reading an article suggesting that nearly everyone in China uses mobile devices to pay at retail. If it’s in China, it’s going to be in the US and Europe soon-ish. Marketers in R&D mode may want to start planning and productizing around ways to keep lost and stolen phones from becoming debit tsunamis. When a phone is cash, the bad guys are going to figure out how to take advantage.

Clothing companies will need to make more secure and better fitting pockets. Software cos. will need better sign-on security and/or visual ID programs. Luggage and/or millinery manufacturers will want to think about phone holsters and such — ways to secure our devices that are fashionable.

Whatever the winning solution looks like, it will be a bah-billion dollar business. Initially at least.

Beyond the dashboard planners reap higher rewards.

Peace.

Brand Building.

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Steve Poppe

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July 14, 2017

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How do you build a brand? It’s an easy question. Sadly, it has a thousand answers.

Were I to ask how to build a car, the answer would be with an engine, steering, wheels, transmission, chassis, etc. How do you build a sandwich? How do you make beer? Of course there will be variations in ingredients but the components are pretty static. Not so much in brand building.

If you ask ten brand consultancies you’ll get ten different constructs for what constitutes a brand plan. Components may include product development guidelines, packaging, a visual identity scheme, (e.g., a logo, style and usage manual) and rough communications guidelines, but for the most part the actors charged with building the brand are a federation of marketing people inside and outside the company (agencies) following a marketing plan, not a brand plan.

Marketing plans are built with line items transferable from one company to then next. Metrics include: unit sales, revenue, market share and profit plan. And lots of tactical cow bell. Brand plans, on the other hand, are devoted to building product and consumer value. Values based on care-abouts and good ats. They are not transferable line items but values endemic to the product.

The best marketers are also great brand advocates. They don’t care only about the plumbing, they care about the product and its unique value to the consumer.

Peace.

Bring Stakeholders on Board.

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Steve Poppe

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July 12, 2017

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Brand strategy is more effective when understood and acted upon internally. Frankly, it’s the best way to get brand value disseminated externally. But most companies don’t really work this way. Ninety percent of brand word is external. Typically delivered through advertising, PR and promotion.

Educating every employee in brand strategy, i.e., “claim and proof planks,” is the best and fastest way to have an impact. It multiplies the power of branding exponentially.

The claim for a healthier-for-you cookie company was “Craft cookies au naturel.” The planks were “naturally moist,” “healthier properties” and “complex flavors.” By understanding these simple values, every employee at every stage of development, manufacturing, delivery and marketing, can make easier decisions. There are no forks in the road. No room for interpretation. The talking points are set. These aren’t just words on a box but strategic selling points that add value and deflect competition.

Get the strategy right, get your internal house in order, then broadcast the brand value. Don’t ever forget the employees.

Peace.

Learn Baby Learn.

By

Steve Poppe

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July 11, 2017

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I’m all about systems. When developing a marketing plan I use my proprietary “24 Questions,” a follow-the-money rubric. When working on a brand, I have a form simply called “Fact Finding Questions.” Broken into two sections, one for C-level executives, the other for top sales people it asks generic things, e.g., “If you were to get a job at a competitor, how would you deposition your current company?” Stuff like that. Good, but generic.

When working in a new category and having to learn a new language – a language in which I am illiterate – generic doesn’t always cut it.

I’ve worked with a magician and I’ve worked with a top two professional services company. The questions that work for a teeth whitening company don’t translate. So my question framework almost always needs to go off the reservation. The off-the-rezzy questions are always works in progress. They require listening, parrying, redirection and often a good deal of bi-directional story telling.

When I ask an executive or sales person a question that spikes their blood pressure, it’s a hit. Follow that trail. If a hospice nurse is explaining how to tell whether a patient is minutes or hours away from passing, feel the mood. The sanctity.

Learning is the absolute best part of brand planning.

Peace.

What’s the idea behind What’s The Idea?

By

Steve Poppe

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July 10, 2017

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Not enough credit has been giving to the name of my business in this blog. What’s The Idea? is the name of the blog and the business. People think is a cool name even though the URL requires explanation: “Not what is the idea, what’s the idea dot com, sans apostrophe.”

What’s The Idea? perfectly describes my brand consultancy. The search for a fitting and motivating brand idea consumes me. A single idea that captures what consumers care about and what brands are good at. (Care-abouts and good-ats.)

Not every marketer thinks they need an “idea.” It’s not top of mind. But a sound brand idea helps position, sell and defend against competitors. If you market and don’t brand, you’re apt to struggle.

The funny thing is, the “ideas” I come up with are almost never mine. Sure I put the words together. I may even add some poetry. But the ideas come from others: from buyers, and sellers, and influencers. I’m actually just the curator. The prioritizer. I decide which idea best motivates selling and buying of a particular brand. The I organize under that idea, three proof planks to guide the way.

So when I say “What’s The Idea?” to a marketer, I’m not just branding, I’m asking a fundamental marketing question.

What is your brand idea?

Peace.

Fast Rapport with Michael Rapaport

By

Steve Poppe

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July 7, 2017

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So I don’t know if you follow Michael Rapaport on Twitter but the actor turned social commentator has used social media to quickly establish his brand. Marketers and brand managers can learn from him. (Save for the F-bomb every six words.) Actors are like tofu. They’re as good as their craft and roles. Mr. Rappaport is best as an actor when doing irascible characters; but because he’s an actor, you expect he can do milk toast if need be. It’s all acting after all.

On Twitter he Real. The real Michael Rapaport, albeit with a fun gangsta flourish.

I tell clients different social channels are for different things. Facebook’s for friends. LinkedIn’s for work. Instagram for one’s artistic self. And Twitter for the full-on personality. Well Mr. Rapaport uses Twitter right. It has quickly defined him for me. In a week or two.

His Twitter pic is an image of Charles Oakley sporting a crown. He tweets about St. John’s basketball. He rants in his car about Trump and he hates haters with the best or them. He defends where defense is needed. And he’s funnier than shit.

I learned more about Michael Rapaport in 10 minutes on Twitter than I would in years of watching Access Hollywood or reading journalist magazine accounts.

Brands can establish their personality on Twitter. Fast. They just have to dedicate time and work their brand strategy (one claim, three proof planks,)

Peace.

Benefit Clusters. Or Proof.

By

Steve Poppe

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July 6, 2017

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There are a lot of smart people out there in brand planning. Many work at agencies, some as consultants. I was reading a piece on LinkedIn this morning by a Toronto consultant dba Beloved-Brands. It discussed Benefit Clusters. Lots of good thinking and a number of similarities to my framework at What’s The Idea?.

Brand consultants don’t want to make the process sounds too easy or it won’t sell. Big ass consultant companies, in fact, want to make an engagement seem complicated so they can extract good margins. Beloved-Brands, as evidenced through its website, PPT presentations and perhaps RFPs, treads lightly on the complicated/easy continuum. The promotion is nicely done and quite palatable. Where I take issue with their framework (and that of many others) is in the use of the word “benefits.”

I don’t look at benefits. I spent my time instead looking for “proof.” Benefits tend to be holographic. Mass produced. Proof on the other hand is tangible. Memorable. Articulate-able. Proof accrues to benefits, but only as determined by the consumer. Don’t tell a person to be happy, make them happy.

When push comes to shove any brand consultant worth its salt is going to do discovery and insights work that helps them build a case for “an idea that drives product, employees and customers toward sustainable and profitable commerce.” (Not a bad for an on-the-fly definition.)

When you are thinking about your brand, don’t play in benefit land. Dig for proof.

Peace.

Walmart Mission.

By

Steve Poppe

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July 5, 2017

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Walmart’s mission, I just read on Forbes.com, is “We save people money so they can live better.” Is this an endemic or non-endemic mission? I would normally say non-endemic, in that anyone selling anything can talk price strategy, but since Walmart is selling just about everything it might work. It might be endemic. Nah. Not falling for it.

And the whole “live better” is so done. It’s like we help you “sleep better.” Done. The fact of the matter is much of the low cost stuff one buys at Walmart it not built to last. It’s built for now and next year. Like products at BJs. A Coleman cooler, for instance, with cheesy plastic hinges is not long for this world. You’ll be buying another in 22 months. That’s not living better.

Walmart is about the transaction. Volume. Turnover. China. It’s not about living better.

This mission is internal. It’s for the 2.2 million employees at the world’s largest private employers. To make them feel better.

Walmart has a lot to offer. It just needs to be more straightforward and perhaps smarter about its positioning. If you want to do good, do good. Especially when hawking value. Study ConAgra’s Banquet brand.

Peace.

Reverse Moore’s Law for Business.

By

Steve Poppe

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June 30, 2017

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Aetna Insurance is moving 250 top jobs and its corporate headquarters from home town Hartford, CT to Ninth Avenue, Manhattan. They are investing millions in a new space and taking advantage of the city’s digital workforce – moving to the northern vertex of what I call the Digital Triangle.

I think the insurance business sees the writing on the wall. As do many other businesses who see automation and AI cutting into future earnings. Hartford, once the center of the insurance industry, has seen jobs reduced (according to the NYT) to 37,000 from 60,000 in 1990. As we get closer to socialized medicine, there will be less need for numbers crunchers deciding on health policy and policies. We will still need to insure stuff, however, but software and intelligence is making that work less labor intensive. Slide rile anyone?

I was working on a project for Duck Creek Technologies over a decade ago to develop an “insurance policy in a day.” All built on unique data feeds.

The innovations in insurance will be tech innovations and digital in nature.

Moore’s law for business, in reverse.

Peace.