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    Brand Strategy

    Strategy Is The Cool.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When I was a kid in advertising someone suggested I take a copywriting course. Not always one in love with advice based on a criticism, I still took it to heart. After spending a couple of years with writers I decided that nothing would be cooler that to tell people I was a writer. Life didn’t work out that way. Today I’m a strategist.  A very cool title.

    In marketing you are either a strategist or a tactician. In marketing, tactics are what make the world turn. What makes the cash register ring. Tactics are the ballast of budgets.  Heroes are made through tactics. But strategy — strategy is the air tactics breathe. The water that feeds the cells. The protein for the amino acids.

    Strategy is the real cool.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Strategy vs. Tactics.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was working with a company recently where the main deliverables were a marketing plan and brand plan.  One of the company’s other needs was a revised website.  The ability to deliver the brand plan — a brand strategy and three supporting brand planks — in the form of a website was new territory for the company. It was a break from the past where their mindset was to create easy navigation to the diverse and changing offerings of the company. Since the company was expanding into new markets and changing the composition of its product set, its brand meaning and value were not well known and misunderstood. Rather than create an information architecture, this company needed a clean Is-Does and a succinct brand organizing principle. In other words…a strategy.

    Part of the assignment was to affect change in the social space. The company, with a good blogging culture, some really smart people and lots of deeds and stories to share, unfortunately gravitated toward Pasting rather than Posting. (Pasting is sending forth other people’s content, with a yay or a nay; Posting is creating original content.)  My admonition was to provide more analysis, and less curating…and to do so on brief.  This takes time. It takes thought and context.  But it’s what readers and users are looking for in their social – in their media.

    Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group posted yesterday about a lack of strategy in social media. Though I haven’t always agreed with Ms. Li, I love that she studies and commits to points of view. Charlene is a thought-leader. A Poster. She is worth way more than the price of admission. Find influential Posters and follow them. Question them, exchange ideas with them — don’t “like” them. Peace.

    Wren Brand Idea.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Sometimes I enjoy watching ads and trying to back out the brand strategy. While watching the viral video from clothing retailer Wren, entitled “First Kiss,” the desire to figure out the strategy never popped up. The idea was too wonderful, too perplexing; getting total strangers to kiss on video camera for the first time.  Shot in black and white pretty much from the waste up, the video showed the discomfort and comfort of this most intimate act.

    first kiss

    Watching the video you spend most of your time looking for visual cues as to the couple’s affinity, e.g., their looks, nerves, sexual attraction, etc. Then you start to asking yourself about the act of kissing itself? Is it an act of love? A greeting? Something strangers should share?  Is it alive? Meaning, can it begin one way and end another? You debate the culture of kissing. Fascinating.

    And after all of these thoughts, only then do you really notice the clothes…and the style. And stylish many of these people are. (The stylist for the shoot was wonderful.)

    Maybe the next day you think about the brand strategy — when you’re back to work.

    My take on the the selling idea? It shows how one can make the uncomfortable comfortable. Through intimacy. Through trust. The idea felt like a game of dare…a game of spin the bottle. Wear clothes you like but also clothes that make you feel a little uncomfortable. And to me that’s the brand idea.  Wren…if it feels good.

    Peace.                          

         

     

     

    A Question for Stuart Elliott.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Ask any Chief Marketing Office or Marketing Director what their annual sales are and you’ll get an answer. Ask about the annual marketing budget. Quick answer. Cost of goods, manufactures suggested retail price, market share? These are questions for which marketing leads all have answers.

    Two questions likely to baffle CMOs and marketing directors, however, are: What is your brand strategy (claim)? And what are your brand planks (proofs of claim)? Most marketers know their business KPIs, but don’t have them translated into brand-benefit language. The language that give them life and memorability. CMOs use business school phrases like “low cost provider,” “more for more,” “innovation leader”, “customer at center of flah flah flah…”, but that’s not how consumers speak.  

    claim and proof

    The key to brand planning is knowing what consumers want and what the brand is good at. (“Good ats” and “care-abouts”.) Combining these things into a poetic claim and three discrete support planks is the organizing principle that focuses marketing and makes it more accountable. Across every expense line on the Excel chart.

    Stuart Elliott, advertising columnist of The New York Times should make this a requisite question in all his interviews. “What is your brand strategy?” If he gets any semblance of a claim and proof array, I’ll be surprised. Peace!

    Newsday Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Over a decade ago, I wrote a creative brief for Newsday, a large metropolitan newspaper covering Long Island and Queens New York, using the insight “We know where you live.”   Newsday liked the notion but didn’t completely get the insight. They reframed it and turned the words into their tagline of many years “Newsday. It’s where you live.” 

    “We Know Where You Live” was meant to provide residents of Long Island  — a diverse, but captive audience – with a reason to buy the paper in addition to The New York Times…and in place of The New York Post and The NY Daily News. Many of LI’s hundred thousand plus train commuters buy these other 3 papers every day for world news and sports and “We Know Where You Live” was intended to make them feel a bit out of touch with their local community news and home lives. (Sneaky, but true.)  It was also a means to create greater loyalty among current readers.   

    This brand idea, if properly acculturated throughout Newsday, would have made every employee hypersensitive to providing an editorial experience that only a LI-based paper could deliver.  

    Fast forward to 2010 and the underperforming Newsday.com.  “We Know Where You Live”, though long gone, is still a powerful rallying cry for building online readership and participation.  The owners, architects and builders of the website, should be brainstorming how to deliver that experience. Instead, I submit, they are probably in brainstorming meetings chasing the latest social media twist, the next community promotion and the October program intended to build time on site. These are tactics, not strategy.  “How” is tactical. “Why” is strategic.  Newsday and Newsday.com need to revisit their brand strategy.  And let those 34 new reporters they’re hiring in on it. Peace!

    Taglines Gone Wild.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The tagline is a very misunderstood communications and branding device.  A tagline should be the de facto brand claim.  Beside the product itself, it is the single most important thing consumers should remember about your offering.  While a brand strategy is actually one claim and three proof planks, the claim element is the one indelible thought or value that motivates preference, consumption and repeat consumption.  I would say loyalty, but one can be loyal and not consume.

    Many marketers go wrong when they confuse branding with advertising. This happens when the advertising campaign line or tagline drives branding. KFC’s “Finger Lickin’ Good” is a great example an advertising tagline that brilliantly reflects the brand claim. “That’s My Mission,” the tagline for Mission Health, is way too ad driven — and not even close to a meaningful, powerful brand claim.

    Unless your tagline can reflect a coherent, endemic brand value, you are wasting branding dollars. And ad dollars.

    Brand strategy first then advertising. Not the other way around.

    Peace.

     

     

    The Tutor and the Brand Planner.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’m working with a startup in the math tutoring space.  I did a Q&A interview yesterday of the key company stakeholder.  Having done a deep dive in the K12 education space in a prior engagement, I was eager to hear how this young man approached the problem of educating kids in need of improved math skills.

    A critical starting point for his organization is to get a level-set on where the student is in the learning process.  That is, what they know, what don’t they know, and what type of learner they are. Good pedagogy tells us not all students are the same and not all students learn at the same rate.  Makes sense. The best teachers teach to the student’s aptitude and place on the learning curve. It requires a lot of listening on the part of the teacher/tutor.   

    The approach is not dissimilar to that of the brand planner. We don’t just begin outlining some formula for brand positioning and success.  We begin by plumbing the depths of the brand owner’s understanding of the product/service.  Then we gather information on their aptitude and ability to deliver key value(s). We listen. We learn. And we build trust. Ultimately, we use the foundation of that learning to guide our planning rigor. That’s not to say we’re changing the algebra. Or our formulas. But we are learning who the brand owner is and taking our cues from him/her.  Only when they trust us, will they follow us. Trust the process. Understand the pupil.

    Peace.

     

    Consulting For A Consultant.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    A couple of years ago a smallish branding shop contacted me about helping creating a strategy for a division of a top 5 consulting company.  The master brand is known to all and likely has a brand strategy (maybe not) but the division we were helping offered a very complicated, layered value proposition in health and security.  Read security as in homeland security, not home and property protection.

    The ultimate deliverable was a long form brochure, changes to the division website content and some presentation pages explaining in somewhat lay terns, what the group did and did so well.

    I read all their decks, interviewed a number of consultants from around the world, performed the due diligence one does when sanity checking the Kool-Aid drinkers, and came up with a tight idea and organizing principle – a division brand strategy.

    But then came the hard part. Consulting the consultants. Getting them to organize their “product, experience and messaging” around a claim and 3 proof planks (a division brand strategy).  Consultants are great at giving advice, but are they any good at taking it?  

    Momma never said this job would be easy!  She was right.

    Peace.                                                                  

     

    An Example of Marko-babble.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I often use the term marko-babble to describe some of the effluvia being shared on the web about brand craft. Or marketing craft. It’s my mission to get rid of mark-babble. 

    At a panel discussion the other day, I was close to nauseous by the constant use of the word “authentic.” Rather than babble about marko-babble I wanted to cite some content that actually fits the bill.  The brand services company that posted these words will remain nameless.  And I’ve Googled the entire sentences and the posting company name did not come up, so I’m in the clear.     

    Let it rain:

    Brand
    We build modern, digital-first brands designed to lead through market change and create long-term value for shareholders, customers, employees, and wider society.

    Culture
    We build purpose-driven cultures that drive employee behaviour and accelerate business growth.

    Experience
    We develop powerful, multi-channel creative communications, and intelligent, user-centric digital solutions designed to create lasting impact.

    So, do you have a good idea now of what these girls and boys do? Specifically? Uh…they build, build and develop.

    As famous Broadway producer David Belasco once said “If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.”

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Planning and Brand Strategy. Perfect Together.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Lately, I’ve been hearing a little undercurrent that brand strategies are almost secondary to brand planning — the act of preparing a brand strategy.  The act of preparing insights, observations and conducting research is more important, so the implication goes, than the actual strategy itself.

    Martin Weigel recently tweeted to @phil_adams, who had posted that he had done a particular strategy, “Yeah, but did you do the planning?”  Suggesting that anyone can poop out a strategy but the hard work is the foundation – in the planning. 

    It would be had to disagree having a smart rigor to get you to a brand strategy is important. But conversely, you can rigor your ass off for months and come up with a goofy, off-piste strategy. Both are needed.

    Foundation is critical. And so is the idea. And the “proof planks” that create evidence in support of the idea.

    Good prep leads to good work product. It doesn’t insure it.

    Peace.

     

     

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