Brand Planning

    Charles de Gaulle Airport – the brand.

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    Just reading in The New York Times today that Charles de Gaulle Airport, Europe’s second most traveled, is number 34 out of 83 in flyer satisfaction. The culprit: “sprawling buildings with bewildering layouts, interminable waits, forgettable shops and restaurants, and often indifferent personnel.” 

    Sounds like something that would take hundreds of millions of Euros to fix. But maybe not.  All big airports are sprawling — they have to be.  Think about it.  Planes can’t take off and land at a good pace without sprawl.  So what needs to change is the organization of that sprawl.  Bewildering is fixable.  Good communication, good signage, ergonomic re-laying out of buildings, better transportation design and a little compromise among the airlines are fixable. Some airlines may have to consolidate space or even switch buildings. The parties need to come together. The interminable waits may require some technology upgrades, even more compromise (unions/competitors/gov’t) and once again better communication.

    And, as for forgettable shops and restaurants and indifferent personnel?  If the other fixes are made, these will fall into place.  Remember we are talking about one of the busiest locations in the world…with lots of wallets and lots of income in those wallets. And oh, it’s France. Paris, France.

    Before I picked up a shovel or an architect’s rendering, I’d create a brand strategy for Charles de Gaulle: an idea and some organizing principles. Sell that to all parties, then start to think about how to spend the money. Not easy…hard.  But very doable. Peace!      

    Symmetry.

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    We love symmetry in our lives. We love it on our design. In our music. Symmetry is balance. Order. Brand planners like order and symmetry yet they also know a strategy must not be replicable. It must be unique. Others can lay claim to the “refreshment” strategy, but when Coca-Cola says it, it has unique meaning. Why? Because nothing refreshes like a Coca-Cola. It’s doesn’t own the word, it owns the idea. That’s due to the coca bean and a special highly guarded recipe. 

    Many brand ideas are replicable as are many products (there just aren’t that many Coke’s out there), so the notion of creating an organizing principles in the form of “one idea supported by 3 brand planks” allows for that differentiation. It also allows a brand flexibility and the ability to cover new ground. Sameness is not symmetry. Geico is beginning to realize that. 

    Campaigns come and go, a powerful branding idea is indelible. And supported by symmetry and smart brand planks, a brand plan can last many lifetimes. Peace.

    Porous Marketing

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    My brand plans contain a call to arms brand promise, atop three business winning proof planks. The planks must support the promise. Separately the planks are business building, together they are business winning – market share winning.  This is the organizing principle behind banding and good marketing.  It helps define and decide the way forward.

    I often say “Marketing is simple. It’s all about claim and proof.”  Organized proof. But sometimes brand planks are aspirational — there isn’t a lot of proof yet.  In those cases it’s important to share the plank theory as well as the proof, limited though it may be. The theory sets up the plank goals and guides development of how one might productize, develop and pursue the proof. This is especially helpful in a services business.    

    Claim without proof is why advertising and marketing is often so porous. Claim and proof is how to win. See? Simple.  Peace!

    Marketers as actors.

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    Acting is an interesting thing.  Big name actors who don’t have the luxury of being able to hang with “regular people” often have to study them, so they can get into character.  When in character, these actors become the regular people they mimic.  The more regular, the greater likelihood of acting awards. 

    Have you ever seen a friend, acquaintance or family member act in a movie or on TV?  They come across as stilted, odd and, well, like high school actors.  Clearly, they are just not being themselves.  To the rest of the world they may be doing a fine job, but because you know them – they’re acting.

    Marketers and their agents, when creating advertising, are like actors.  They create meta worlds for selling. Even when they are doing case studies or live consumer capture testimonials.  Ad agencies are good at telling stories, making people smile and warming a heart or two, but consumers know it is still a form of acting.  That’s why year after year, “word of mouth” and “advice from a friend” win out in terms of product influence.

    Brand planners attempt to take acting out of the equation. We try to get to the real. The truth.  The closer the story teller gets to real, and away from acting, they closer the consumer can get to brand promise.  Keep it real, me friendlies!  Peace.

    Proof under development.

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    When developing brand strategy I look for the claim then search for 3 business-building planks that support that claim. Proof planks, in other words. Proof can be tangible or it can be developmental and additive.  What do I mean by developmental and additive? Let’s just say it’s a goal and we may not be there yet — it’s under development. From a messaging point of view we may not have the scientific proof yet, but we know how to talk about it. Sympathize with it. And celebrate it.

    Were I selling for Taco Bell and had a proof plank about using ingredients imported from South and Latin America, I might talk about the qualities of those ingredients that make for a uniquely South American taste (soil, sun, mountains).  In the meantime, while that proof is under development, the company had better be looking for real sources. Proof under development is a little like working at a start-up, it’s about what you know, not what you make – about what your mission is, not what you can deliver right now.

    This may sounds disingenuous, but it’s not. I would never suggest lying or misleading. In the Taco Bell example it would have to be known that, say, the peppers were from the arid southwestern US – but the story has a beginning, a direction and a motivation.  Peace.

    The R Word.

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    Windshield time is a great way to learn from the people who make sales happen — to travel with sales people and see how they sell and customers buy.  Everyone in a company would benefit from exposure to this type of “belly to belly” selling.

    I’ve used the windshield time over much of my career: with light bulb manufacturers, telephone companies, hardware and healthcare providers. Invariably, when you ask sales people what makes them great or what makes the company great they all agree on one thing:  It’s about relationships. Okay, maybe price too…but relationships are most talked about.

    If 50% of sales energy is invested in relationships, I say we are leaving an awful lot of product sell on the table. I’m not saying relationships aren’t important: “Hey, want to go to a Knick game?” I’m saying relationships are the price of business.  Being able to communicate, be friendly, and provide empathy (the basis of relationship-building) is not a sales strategy. 

    A sales rep who only gives good lunch is not the SME (subject matter expert) I want to have a business-building relationship with. Again, I’m not saying a sales person cannot be a friend. I’m saying relationships are not brand building blocks – the are the air surrounding those building blocks.  When brand planning, you must push past relationship speak. Peace! 

    Brand planning. Soft claim, hard proof.

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    The best definition for brand planning I’ve come up with is “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”

    The way I organized a brand plan is with one claim and three proof planks. The support or proof planks must be connected and prop up the claim.  Interestingly, the support planks don’t have to be in harmony…and often aren’t.  For instance, if one plank is “brilliantly engineered” and another is “competitively priced” those two things are often at odds. But that’s a different story.

    I’ve recently come to the conclusion that the brand claim or promise, as some call it, needs to be soft.  When soft it can cover a lot of ground — meaning nuanced things to different people. A good soft claim is friendly, strong and conveys approachable meaning.  Product cheer leading is not appropriate, but cheer leading may be. A good soft claim is like an emollient.  It should offer a bit of whimsy.

    Proof, on the other hand, must be hard.  Oak hard. Because these are the things that drive product development, company behavior and consumer perception. They are the reasons to believe the claim. They are hard because when you conceive and array demonstrations beneath each proof plank there should be no room for interpretation. They are either “on plan” or “off.”

    One soft claim, three hard proofs.  This is how we do–oo it.  Peace!

     

    The brand planning lifecycle.

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    1.    A brand is a set of consumer associations surrounding a product or service.

    2.    A brand is packaging surrounding a product or service.

    These two definitions make sense. It’s not an either/or deal.  The packaging of a product or service creates consumer associations.  One is the result of the other. In the packaging, if we are focused and consistent, appealing and important, meaningful and relevant, the associations will motivate purchase and retain ballast.

    Brand planners rarely have the opportunity to create new brands. More often than not we’re brought in to fix or recast them. The tabula rasa approach (a clean slate) to brand planning is exciting and challenging; there is no past, only context into which one introduces the new product. But when taking on an existing brand, one must deal with lots of baggage. Some good, some bad. Using my stock pot metaphor for discovery, good ingredients and bad ingredients go into the pot. Liver, mustard greens, etc.  Planners have to deal with the entire lifecycle of associations. Old ad campaigns die hard. Brand recalls don’t die. Positives may lie outside the new sweet spot. Baggage.

    In either case – new brand or old — the future is where the planner must look. In marketing wars the future holds life. The bravado, awards, metals and medallions of yesteryear or yesterday, hold no sway. There is only tomorrow in planning. (Look the word up. Hee hee). Peace.

    Selling Education and Futures.

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    There are few things harder to sell than education.  I’ve done some brand planning for universities and the academicians who approve the work are often not equipped for the job. The budgets are also low so good agencies are rarely around and in many cases students, professors and recent grads in-house are at the controls.  Brand strategy is non-existent and everyone promises the same thing: a good life after graduation. The end benefit.  The how to that end benefit is also pretty much the same: great faculty, personal teaching environment, great courses, flah, flah, flah.

    It’s ironic that college and university advertising is so poor because often the experience is one of life’s most powerful. That 4 years has the ability to create a loyalty few jobs can.  Who sleeps in their Met Life tee-shirt 20 years after working there? Two husbands later.

    As we slide out of the difficult economy with new elections upon us and technology flattening the world, the moment is nigh for some serious focus on education.  There are lots of trivial bits flying across the web these days, but only a small percentage are focusing on education. We are already using web tutorials to help us clean bathroom pipes and shower grout, why not improve our SAT scores.  Perhaps things are changing. This morning I noted on Skype an organic chemistry teacher available for $40 an hour (first hour free) and high school math assistance at $.25 a minute. (Do the math.)  

    Web-enabled academia is not the haps yet – not like geolocating your friends at Mary Carrol’s – but it’s coming. And along with that, in time, will come improvements in the branding of higher education institutions.  These times are exciting. Stay tuned. Peace!

    Officious and Dysfunctional Strategies.

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    Officious is a wonderful word and one too infrequently used in strategic planning.  An adjective, it is defined as: objectionably aggressive in offering one’s unrequested and unwanted services, help, or advice; meddlesome: an officious person.  Strategies that lead to this type of brand claim are a blight.  Conversely, strategies so soft and huggable consumers cozy up to a tangent in order to get the brand claim, are also a blight. Some might call that borrowed interest.

    What does Coke do better than any other soft drink?  Refresh. People want to be refreshed, so offering up examples of how and when Coke refreshes in not officious. Telling them Coke is more refreshing (world’s most, more people refresh, more refreshing than…) is.  As Coke and Wieden and Kennedy would have you believe today, Coke makes you Happy. That’s borrowed or tangential. It makes for nice advertising and playful Coke machines, but is an indirect sell. When Coke gets back to its core refreshment value and shows us how it refreshes, proves how it refreshes, the advertising will sell more.

    The line between officiousness and borrowed, tangential value in not a fine line, ii’s a chasm.  So what do so many brand strategies jump to one or the other? It’s dysfunction, is what it is. Peace!