Ever the metaphor hunter when posting about brand planning, today I rip language straight out of the political scene. 

With all the talk about fake news and the questioning of climate science, I thought I’d borrow suspect science for my post. Suspect science is actually an oxymoron. If it’s scientific it is provable. It should be formulaic.

Branding in my book is mostly suspect science. That is it’s not predictable in its results. Advertising is much the same but at least with advertising you can look to sales and try to work backwards. Still, most would agree it is not very scientific. Branding is, I’m afraid, even less so.

That’s why I rely heavily on the claim and proof array framework. It sets out a means by which data collectors can ponder ROS (return on strategy). When you get the proof array right, three support values for your brand claim, it’s possible to measure awareness and attitude increases and tie them directly to business success measures. It’s not a count-the-clicks measure, it’s a long term measure. And the beauty of it is the framework was developed to measure more than dollars and sales. It was developed to cover many other business building values, like employee retention, customer loyalty and most anything.

It’s science…not suspect science.

Peace.