Monthly Archives: November 2013

Claim shoveling.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

This morning while washing the coffee pot the radio was tuned to a bank commercial. Some tier-two bank with “commerce” in the name (maybe) made a service claim — something like “We treat every customer with respect.” It was one of a litany of unsupported claims that typically go into ad copy these days — not unlike spring blackflies in the Connecticut woods.  Who writes this stuff?  More importantly who approves this stuff?   The bank CEO clicked the “like” button, I’m sure.

shoveling

Here’s the first rule of storytelling or copy writing: Don’t make a claim without proving it. Again, for emphasis, don’t make a claim without proving it.  By following this simple rule, you’ll find yourself with less dead air to fill – and believe me, it is dead if you are simply shoveling claims – and you just might find yourself with a strategy.

I’m a fast swimmer. Bad.
I swim a .56 in the 100 meters. Good.

Our cold pressed juices makes you healthier. Bad.
Since I started drinking cold pressed juices I haven’t had my annual cold. Good.

Filling out the application online is easy.  Bad.
Most people fill out the form in 2 minutes. Good.

Great ad writers get this premise and defend it like Davy Crockett. Unfortunately great copywriters live in very small villages and are hard to find.  Claim-shovelers are a dime a dozen. It’s bad tradecraft, it inoculates consumers against proper selling and is a blight on the business. Peace.

 

 

When a sale isn’t a sale.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I wrote a brief for a top 10 daily newspaper which, at its very core, contained an organizing principle that grew paper subscriptions and newsstand business.  The idea was intended to grow share at the expense of a much larger competitor with a grand national reputation.

The brief was presented and so well received that the paper’s marketing officer decided to use the brand strategy (with one word omitted) as the newspaper’s tagline. The omitted word was important (to me), but overall the integrity or ballast of the idea was maintained even with its absense.

It was a pyrrhic victory however, because rather than becoming the brand strategy (one claim, three support planks) it simply became a tagline. Sure the tagline governed communications and did so for many years to come, but I never had the chance to enculturate the planks into the paper’s marketing operations.  I was with an ad agency at the time – paid to deliver of ads.  The agency made lots of TV and print ads. We won awards for ourselves and for the paper. And we changed the market dynamic for a while — the real goal. But by selling a tagline not a strategy, we missed the opportunity to create a powerful brand that lived beyond paper and ink.   A sale that was not a sale, in other words.

Peace.

The power of girl talk.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

lulu

An ex-CFO colleague of mine just joined a web startup called Lulu. It’s a mobile app for girls and, smartly, anyone who wants to be.  Check out the video to see what it’s all about. It’s kind of sexually charged and hook-up focused.  

I often write about the branding Is-Does — what a brand is and what a brand does. The ability for start-ups to articulate the Is-Does is often a deal breaker – especially for VCs. You may be a great technologist but if your packaging and marketing acumen are lacking, it’s hard to get traction.

The reason videos are so prevalent in web marketing today is they’re a good way to stuff 10 lbs. of shizz in a 5 lb. bag. Back in the day, the montage was the art form of choice: We do this, this, this and this.

It’s a rarity that a tagline can capture the Is-Does in one line. “The power of girl talk” is just that line. (If not Lulu’s tag, it should be.) So good job on the app and the Is-Does Lulu!

One of my joke lines as a kid was that I always wanted to experience real girl talk. I said, as a kid. Girl talk is a thing.  And Lulu, it’s developers and biz people get it.

Lulu is going to be big.  Peace!  

Steps to a brand plan.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Here’s how I do it.

1. Observe. As a consultant, observation happens before an engagement and during. Before, observations are used in biz/dev. What’s going on in the culture? What’s going on in the selling culture? The buying culture? These nuggets are the grist for the emails that start a dialogue. Emails explaining what I do for living are “me” focused not “you” focused.

Once engaged, observations are the ebb and flow off the business tide – contextually set up by business fundamentals provided by senior client management. Research, both qual. and quant. come in at this stage, budget permitting.

2. Commune. Unlike anthropological fieldwork, in brand planning we need to commune with those we study. Plumbing, probing, storydoing (thanks Ty), making of friends. This is how we add dimension and luster to our hunting and gathering – talking to people. There are no wrong people.

3. Cull. A cull rack in Great South Bay parlance is the rack that catches the clams of legal edible size. With all observations in (one can observe forever), the cull begins. What to save. Knowing what is important is personal, subjective, objective, scientific and artful. Basically it’s a brain thing. Can’t really be explained. No algo for this.

4. Organize. In my work I often talk about brand planning as an organizing principle. Today I’m thinking about the root word organ. Yes, organ. The business winning elements of the strategy are like organs. They give life to the brand plan. I use 3 brand planks and there are three really important organs. (My brand plan contains one claim, three support planks.) With this structure, the puzzle pieces come together.

5. Package. Brand strategy doesn’t package well. It’s like an early Pearl Jam song, when they weren’t good at endings. The big reveal of a strategy (remember it’s not creative) often feels soft. It feels right, everyone is nodding, but it’s often a soft landing. If I may be crass, it’s kind of blue ballsy. Unlike creative which is more artful and has a hook, brand strategy is only a beginning. It needs great packaging to make it feel more creative. A touch of poetry helps.

This is how I do it. This is how brand strategy at What’s the Idea? is made. Have you a different approach? Peace!

Insure Product Meaning

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday I Tweeted the question “Does anyone know what the Discount Double Check is?” Everyone has heard of it; it’s all over TV.  Especially on NFL football. Aaron Rodger’s who mimes putting on a championship belt after touchdowns has sold the little dance to Allstate Insurance who has paired it with some double check insurance option and uses that as a differentiator.  I’m so interested in the humor (or lack of it), I’ve yet to figure out what the product feature means. Perhaps you do. What are we double checking and how does it work? 

It only took AFLAC half a decade to move beyond its quacking name-onic brand device until the advertising explained to customers that AFLAC is insurance that pays out if you are hurt on the job.   

In both cases we knew what the company IS but not what the product DOES. They both fail the Is-Does test. The first test of marketers, and I know it sounds fundamental and silly, is to get the Is-Does out of the way. So all you self-described lifestyle brands out there, that’s way too inside baseball. It’s too markobabble. Get your Is-Does right.

Peace.

 

Revolt Against Receipts.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

What’s up with paper receipts? Who is lobbying for them? International Paper? Weyerhaeuser? Why do we need them?  In this day and age they’re totally silly. Receipts should be opt-in. If you have a phone, a credit card and you made a purchase, your record should be in the retail computer aka the register.  

Sometimes I buy two items and my receipt is 14 inches long. Coupons, cross promotions for gas, who knows what else. Not me, I put the receipt in the trash.  Or in the front seat of the car until it blows out the window (jkjk). I am the type of consumer who does not leave a store with paper or plastic bags. No need to waste resources or add to the landfill. And I am not alone. Many shoppers feel the same way, especially the young. But retailers feel obligated to push this paper and plastic waste on us.

I went to SXSW Music one year and every attendee was given a big bag of paper and CDs.  The majority of attendees kept the bag but put all the paper and plastic on a spare table by the front window. It became a monument. Their way of saying “Stop the waste.”   What would happen if we simply dropped our receipts on the floors of our retailers…right by the counter. (Make it looks like an accident.)

Revolt against waste. One receipt at a time. Peace.

Hiring Your First Marketing Director.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s a tipping point when a small business grows up at which it recognizes the need to invest in a higher level of marketing sophistication. It’s kind of like puberty. Awkward. A bit hard to watch. Three quarters magical.

The signal moment occurs during the hiring of the company’s first marketing director. Not marketing manager, marketing director. If the marketing director is strategic, continued growth is likely. If tactical, it’s a crap shoot. One can learn from tactics (derive strategy from tactics) but it’s bass ackwards.

A good marketing director is likely to make founders and owners a bit uncomfortable. That is because s/he will be interested is everything. The money. The product. The sales team/channel. Leadership. Customers. For small growing companies this can be a little overwhelming.  But hey, it’s puberty.  You just have to stick with it.

If, as a hiring company, you are not at least a little afraid of your first marketing director – keep looking.  Peace!  

Dissecting a Brand Brief.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In my brand briefs the Living Breathing Target provides a layer of consumer insight many briefs don’t have.  The line after the target is Core Desire, a building block in the logic flow that leads to the idea. The difference between Living Breathing Target and a typical target is one of psychographic Vs. demographic. And the difference between the Living Breathing Target and the Core Desire is often depth and context. The target, typically described with a fun memorable name like Weberterians or Kings of the Castle, is a “grouping of people bound by a single shared attitude or belief.” A bit of a macro collective or people. Perhaps a bit cultural.

The Core Desire  dives into the consumers “most deeply held desire or belief that the brand can best meet or fulfill.” So it’s more product centric.  And don’t undervalue the word “deeply.” Analysis here is often quite instructive.

freud

Great planners get people. Likely, they’ve had psychotherapy or studied it. And I’m not talking school psychology stuff, I’m talking Freudian balls-out therapy. Remember, Margaret Mead while at the Museum of Natural History wanted all employees to experience psychotherapy.  

Get inside the head of your target, understand what binds members to others, and you will have wonderful groundwork for your idea. Peacely.

PS. This brief was learned, borrowed and slightly modified while I was at McCann-Erickson in the mid-90s. Its author, as best I can tell, was Peter Kim, then Chief Strategy Officer.

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