Monthly Archives: March 2016

24 Questions Plus 2.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s a business planning tool I’ve relied on for 20 years called the 24 Questions. It came from an AT&T/McCann-Erickson task force I was appointed to.  We used the questions to help determine what it would cost to properly fund a number of new and emerging business lines, one of which was AT&T’s business internet offering.  I’ve morphed some of the questions over the years to better help me understand a business’s fundies and to grow with the times.

Always on the lookout for new questions, today I think I’ve come up with one or two.  I may also use them in my other battery of questions  — the one used with executive management and sales people to help with the brand brief.

“If given the task of reorganizing the company into a smaller more profitable entity, what would you do?” 

If this questions doesn’t land well, you are either interviewing the wrong person, or that person is too politically correct. If that’s the case, try:

“If given the task of improving company performance through the purchase of another company, who would you buy and why?”

I haven’t used these questions yet but I promise to do so. And when I do, I’ll report in.

Peace.

 

 

Why Some Brand Strategy Is Left At The Altar.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

No early stage venture capital investor worth her salt would put millions into a company without feeling the focus of the founders.  If there’s a good Is-Does, unfettered by objective sprawl and feature-phoria, early stage investors act quickly.  It is focus that makes the investment attractive.   Focus makes naming easy. Hiring easy. Patent search easy. It is focus that makes code more elegant.

The reason What’s The Idea? is in business is because many mature companies lack focus. It’s hard to have a restaurant when you can’t figure out your cuisine.

Brand strategy starts with an assessment of business strategy then it slides into marketing and positioning strategy. Not marketing and positioning strategies – strategy, singular. Many mature companies have meandered in their growth and attempt at growth. 

When mature companies come to me for brand strategy, they’re admitting they need more focus (We’re like a cat in a marble hallway.”). The paper solution, oddly, is the easiest part. Mustering the fortitude to actuate that focus is hard.  It’s why some brand strategy is left at the altar.

Peace.                                    

 

Patagonia’s Real Passion.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Patagonia is a clothing company with one of the biggest hearts on the planet. It certainly wears its heart on its sleeve. But the issues about which it cares most, the health of the planet, are perhaps not best served by making jackets, parkas and anoraks. This company’s passion might be best served by getting into the business of manufacturing products, services and technologies that actually save the planet: solar panels, transportation devises that aren’t fossil fuel powered, water bottles that dissipate in months, not decades, etc.  If anyone can create Silicon Valley of sustainable planetary practices, it’s these guys.

Style is cultural and ephemeral. Planetary health is epochal.

This is what they loves. This is where Patagonia’s heads are. This type of passion and love provide the best nesting ground for innovation.  Come on Patagonia, get out of the schmatta business and get into the planet health business.

Peace.                                                                

 

 

Brand Strategy Uptake.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I have reading a lot of articles lately about U.S. Military being used in an “advisory” role with allies.  In Syria, in Africa… it is a good way to keep our men and women out of harm’s way and improve the chances of ally success. Yesterday American soldiers accompanied Somalian solders on a raid but did not participate. They stayed on or by the helicopters, no doubt providing logistical, intelligence and strategic assistance.

Implementing brand strategy — affecting an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging – requires similar advisory support before truly turned over the plan to the owner. Brand strategy is never a total culture change for a product, it’s more a refinement, but the refinement requires strong commitment and oversight.  Brand strategy in the marketing department alone, is only a start. It is not until every employee gets the “claim and proof” strategy can true change occur.

The first year is the roughest. It is a learning year. It is a teaching year. It is the year of “no.” Training is key. Advisors are key. This is how you affect brand strategy uptake. And, dare I say, win marketing wars.

Peace.

 

Marketing Commodity Products.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The three most important words in marketing are “pent up demand.”  Not “supply and demand.”  Pent up demand comes about when there is not enough supply — so the two concepts are linked. When there’s great demand for a product or service, it’s easy to sell. When there is over-supply, not so much. In the case of an over-supply situation, good marketers will find a feature or quality of the product that is under supplied and use it as a differentiation. Advertising alone is not a differentiator. Good ads help in a commodity business but real differentiation makes for better sales.

Marketing in a commodity world is the toughest form. It requires lots of research, data and anthropological study. When you find a feature for which there is pent-up demand, pound it. These features are typically found in the brand strategy under the headings “care abouts” and good-ats.”

Peace.

 

Brand Riffs Are Important.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Here’s the unbridled truth about brand strategy.  Brand strategy is not easy to implement. And oddly, many marketing directors don’t know how to do it.  Brand strategies are more apt to be employed by CEOs. They get strategy.  

My framework for brand strategy — one claim and three proof planks — is brain dead simple to employ. But it has to be shared and enculturated throughout the company. When well crafted there are already major hints of the strategy within the company. But there are also hints of many other things – too many things. Brand strategy culls out the non-essentials.

If brand strategy is hard to operationalize at a large company, what’s the point?  Here’s the point: Think of the output of brand strategy as a song – a song made up of notes, phrases and riffs.  Brand strategy, even at less than 100% compliance, still offers riffs that can improve company performance. Elements of the brand brief, understood and implemented can make a huge difference.  

I developed a target in a brand brief for a high-end Northwell Health home care company. I called the target “Kings of the Castle.” These so-called kings were rich males who used to be captains of industry, but now were infirm of body…not mind. They were actually still owners of the family purse strings.  This one element of the strategy, by itself, was enough to propel powerful “product, experience and messaging.” It was not the full strategy, just a few notes. A riff.

The best brand strategies are all or nothing. But this is the real world. So every riff matters.

Peace.

 

Snack Snack. Who’s There?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Mondelez International has a new line of snack foods called “Good Thins.” I suspect the name cost close to a million dollars to develop yet it is quite wan. It feels like it’s been around for years. Mondelez is a smart company with some seriously smart marketers, but this name says bup.  

Snacks are a $6B business. Salty snacks a huge chunk. Everyone is trying to replace bad-for-you with good-for-you snacks but it’s hard to find things to replace chips, pop-corm and chocolate infused goodies. Smart Thins are innovative in that they have offerings contain garlic, sweet potatoes, rice, spinach and other healthier ingredients – and the thin profile keeps calories down and snap/crunch up. Perhaps these goodies can help quench some of America’s need for salty snacks, but the name is going to hinder sales growth.

Abbott Laboratories, is launching a new line of snack products called “Curate.” (Labs guys.)  The NYT says these products will contain “flavor combinations like fig and balsamic vinegar, and apricot and Marcona almond.”   This feels like a better way to go, in that it at least has a specific regional ingredient slant as opposed to a haphazard grocery store shelf profile, but the name is goofy.

The snack business needs a big punch in the gut. It feels like there is movement but as is the case with Just Mayo, it needs a new innovative champion brand in the category.  Who will step up? And let us not forget the all-important name.

Peace.

 

Fiction in Brand Strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Fiction is a big seller in today’s arts and entertainment world. Watch all the trailers before a movie the next time you go and see what we are pumping money into. Look at top selling books today and winning TV programming.

Fiction also plays a heavy hand in marketing these days. And it’s up to brand planners to quell the movement.  In my brand strategy practice, as in the majority of fellow practices, I look for truths about the product. Truths that radiate from what consumers “care about” and product is “good-at.” Every once in a while, I run into a care-about that is so important to a decision making process that it must find its way into the brand strategy (one claim, three proof planks), even if not a key brand strength. (I will never create a brand plank unless there is a least a middling strength in the area.) For example, in K-12 education it is known that active parents, who lord over their children’s work and effort, produce better academic outcomes. For a brand with great strength in classroom technology and teacher professional development, I recommended strengthening “parent involvement” activities and tools. Was it fiction?  No. A bit of a stretch maybe but the company already had some tools; this was a strategic decision to evolve further.

In brand strategy never leave the truth for fiction. When you do, brands get lost.

Peace.                                                             

 

 

How To Write a Brand Strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I manufacture brand ideas for a living. But each client that signs me on is only looking for one idea. A brand claim.

secret sauce

A lot goes into that claim. Hours of interviews. Days of observation. Book learning, article reading, blog scouring and research development. There comes a point during all of this discovery when I must start to boil down the learning and gleanings and circle the idea.  It’s a little Sherlock Holmes-esque, frankly, with deduction and gut instinct – but it’s the money making part of the business.

So how do 60 pages of typed and mistyped notes,  5 yards of OneNote links, copy, pictures and videos and a brain filled with stories, emotions and competitive brand noise reduce itself to one claim? Via two roads.

The Planks.

Brand planks for me are areas of proof that stand out for a company, product or service — a marriage of “good ats” and “care abouts.”  As I go through my material, I find “proofs” and highlight them. Proofs are actions, deeds, activities and results.  As these proofs begin to hang together or cluster they become planks. The planks, together, can inform the claim.

The Brief.                                                                

The brand brief is the document — actually a serial story — that explains the product, what it does, for whom, and why. When I write the brief I start at the beginning and, like a form, fill out one section before I move to the next. If there is dissonance in this serial story, it needs to be re-cobbled.  Only when the story hangs together can I write the final chapter: The claim. Once the claim is created, and once it fits like a glove with the three planks we’re done. Sometimes the planks need adjustment. Sometimes the claim. But it all must fit. It must be easy to understand. Contain sound logic. And a bit of artful poetry in the claim doesn’t hurt.

This is how I come up with a brand strategy. This is how I come up with an “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”  Peace.

 

 

Naming. And brands.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I was driving to Rhode Island last week and happened to notice that a number of really rural road names were quite descriptive. Niatic River Road. Stone Heights Turnpike. Waterford Parkway. Sunset Drive.  It got me thinking about naming. Back in the 1600s and 1700s (and before) when there weren’t a lot of maps and people didn’t travel that far, thoroughfares were named based upon features and geographic realities. Heartbreak hill. Point O’Woods. Tip of the mitt.

Names that were easy to remember and descriptive were the strongest names. They added value. Names with no endemic meaning, less so.

The best brand names today follow this old maxim. They are descriptive. They are descriptive of product, value, and uniqueness. The strongest brands in the world are not silly constructs of Madison Avenue, they are like packaging…part of the selling fabric. Coca-Cola used cola beans to build its brand.

Naming is hard work. Just look at all the silly pharmaceutical brand names on TV today. It’s like we ran out of words to use. So the naming companies put the alphabet in the blender and BAM.     

While director of marketing at a web start-up, I wanted to name the drag and drop web creation tool Mash Pan. The Chief Technology Officer who used to say “dude” a lot, opted for Zude.

Opt for communication value. Consumers don’t need to work so hard.

Peace.                                                                                                       

 

 

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