Yearly Archives: 2015

The Big Rebrand.

By
Steve Poppe
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One of the cool things about my work is the propensity for decision-makers to want to rebrand. Unlike with personal names (Cecil, Muriel or Wallace) which can’t be changed — company names are easily altered or sculpted. Someone is always trying to distance the company from something.

That observation aside, there is going to be an even greater demand for new company names. All those companies or brands with words “Net” or “Web” or “Digital” in them are wasting space. To that you may even add the word “Technologies.” These words were descriptive back in the day (10 years ago); today, not so much. Apple dropped the word “Computer” from its name in 2007. An elegant move, no?

I often talk about naming and the importance of a brand’s “Is-Does.” What a brand is and what a brand does. The inflection point we’re at today is such that names no longer need to convey the obvious.  In this agile, competitive world, there is much more information and value to convey.

Let the renaming onslaught begin. Peace.

Phil Jackson, Yogi Berra and Business Strategy

By
Steve Poppe
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phil jackson quote                                                Andy Weissman, Union Square Partners

I read this quote yesterday written by Union Square Partner’s Andy Weissman. It was mentioned by Fred Wilson in his blog AVC. The point of the quote was that venture capitalists are most effective when they provide a framework for decision-making to funded companies. Having worked at a start-up with a very special product, but no framework, I can empathize. The start-up went under but the lesson stuck. It stuck hard. A billion dollars hard.

My business, What’s the Idea?, a brand and marketing consultancy, is dedicated to providing frameworks to companies –start-up or otherwise – who understand the need for business-winning structure. For business winning decision making. I’ve written scores or marketing plans; the ones that work adhere to a brand strategy framework.

Yogi Berra said “If you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there.” To that I will add, if you don’t arm your players or employees with a framework they will have a hard time performing. Peace!

My Brand Strategy Secret.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Clients pay me for two deliverables: brand strategy and marketing plans. I can’t do the latter without the former. It’s possible to pretend, even hide the brand strategy component, but without strategy the marketing planning is a little bit like paint-by-numbers.

gem miningSo how do I approach brand strategy development?  I look for proof. How does a guy walk into a company and in a matter of days or week know a brand well enough to create a strategy that will operationalize marketing success? Proof. A hunt for proof.

Proof of what, you ask? Ahhh, that’s the $64,000 question. At the beginning, it’s way too early to tell. Each brand presents a clean slate. As I trek through fact-finding, data, sales, consumer and business partner interviews, I come across lots and lots of claim-ish fluff. But when tangible proof rises up, it is easily noted. Proof may be found in behavior. In deeds, business decisions, investments. Product taste. Product experience. It’s everywhere. With enough proof arrayed and smartly clustered, the brand planner can begin to formulate the brand claim and key support planks. And that is the secret sauce of What’s The Idea?. Proof hunting.

Rest in peace David Carr.      

 

Promise Versus Claim.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Any brand planner worth his or her salt uses the word promise. I use it all the time. That said, as I codify and package my practice–trying to explain to business owners and marketing people what brand planning is–I gravitate toward the word “claim.” Branding is all about “claim and proof.”

The word promise is so much nicer it seems. Softer. More forgiving. Claim, on the other hand, feels boastful. Perhaps full of itself. The fact that most advertising is claim-based rather than promise-based is not a trivial obstacle either, when it comes to defending claim vs. promise. I am undaunted; it’s still all about the claim. Why? Because consumers want value they can count on. If consumers are let down by the claim and they really care, they will say so. They will rebel. Sales will take a hit. With a promise the whole position and sales thing is more nebulous.

A brand with a claim needs to prove it every day. A brand with a promise has leeway. Less urgency. I won a huge piece of business once by telling a multi-billion dollar company they had a great claim, but weren’t proving it. The fastest way to return on strategy (ROS) is to have a claim.

When your brand lacks real proof of value, it’s time to trot out the promise. Which is about as satisfying as bad margarine. Peace.

Storification.

By
Steve Poppe
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Is that even a word? It is now.

I was once asked to do a little talk on marketing during Take Your Child to Work Day. I was given about 10 minutes to explain to 30 kids sitting on the floor of a conference room, what marketing was. Hmm, how to package the 4Ps? And these kids had toured a customer service call center, warehouse, the repair shop, and some other kid-unfriendly departments. Story time!

“Raise your hands if you’ve ever sold lemonade in your neighborhood?” A few glassy eyes, some reluctant hands…then some smiles. “Well, then you are a marketer. You had to make decisions about whether to make instant lemonade or start with real lemons. That’s a product decision. How much did you charge for the lemonade? Where did you put the stand, in front of your house or on the corner where more neighbors passed? What did you write on your sign? Did you shout at cars as they drove buy? Did you ring doorbells?” Marketing activities all.

I didn’t actually tell a story, but I storified the explanation. And since the kids where already sitting on the floor, it was quite apt. I came at the leaning from their perspective. From a context they could understand. Too often product and service sellers rely on features and benefits in a simple text and picture mode, but by storifying, you stimulate the buyer brain. You stimulate the muscles of understanding. Feel something then do something. That’s the way marketing and communication works best. Peace!

 

 

Diplomacy in Brand Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

diplomat

Branding is not life or death. Unless you are talking about the life and death of products.

Branding is about developing a claim and proof array that brand managers use to organize product, experience, deeds and messaging. Once a brand plan is designed, brand managers are paid to manage adherence. Here’s the big tip: There is no room for diplomacy in brand planning. Diplomacy may be great when dealing with the Russians over Ukraine, but there is no room to “make everybody half happy through compromise” in branding. You are either putting deposits in the brand bank or you are making withdrawals (AT&T’s Marilyn Laurie coined this wonderful metaphor).

Brand managers are going to have to say “no” a lot as they manage their brands. And that’s a good thing. People are going to crawl out of the wood pile with requests for projects to be funded, with promotional ideas, PR events and more – many of which will be nobly intended. But if they’re not “on plan,” not making a deposit in the brand bank, they are a disservice to brand development. Even if a lost kitty farm.

If you are a brand manager and you don’t know how to say “no” or why to say “yes,” it is likely you don’t have a brand plan. If you do have a brand plan but the rest of the company can’t articulate it and use it to make daily decisions in their respective jobs, shame on you as well. Peace.

 

Brand Strategy Metrics.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

If I keep writing about ROS or return on strategy it may become a brand planning meme. First, brand planning has to become a meme (hot web topic) which may be wishful thinking. Hee hee. Anyway, Return On Strategy suggests there is something to measure. Upper case DUH.  The problem with most brand design and redesigns is that much of the money and thinking is tied up in the mark. And tagline. The mark should be the last mile of brand strategy and brand design. It’s about the paper strategy first. The idea.

If Newsday’s brand strategy is “We know where you live” (Newsday is a top 10-15 daily newspaper in the U.S.), then the value of that claim must be measureable. To do that you need support planks – planks that are of value to readers. e.g., a great source of “local entertainment” or “events and legislation affecting local taxes.” The ability to measure attitudes, actions and perceptions against these planks is the heavy lifting of brand strategy.

The Interbrands and Landors of the world don’t spend real time here. They design and deliver logos, taglines and style manuals. You may be able to measure adherence to a style manual but that’s not likely to drive revenue.

Start with your paper brand strategy and you start at the beginning. Peace!  

One Dimensional Creatives.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Creative people, sadly, tend to be really creative in one dimension. Some are great writers, others wonderful designers, some skilled idea people. There are creative people who are wonderful storytellers, musicians and artists. But it’s a rare rarity that you find someone who is crazy skilled in all dimensions.

Check out this video – the Look Up video. Wonderful poetry, average video.

In marketing the most sought after spenders of big budgets are what I call “producers.” Producers bring together strong single dimensional creative experts and choreograph the output. Not an easy job. The reason ad agencies still exist is because this choreography is what they do best. Ad agencies do it using top talent. DIYers rely on single dimensional creative people alone and it shows. And today with everyone clamoring for digital help, the tendency is to hire creative programmers, further diminishing the good work gene pool.

Great brand managers are also great producers. They are not curators – curators are plentiful – they produce selling materials and buildables that exude multi-discipline craftsmanship. And for this I say thank you hey-suess! Peace.

ROS and Price Elasticity.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Chipotle raised prices last year on its beef burrito 4-6% and consumers didn’t blink. They happily paid. Why is that? The Bain and Boston Consulting nerds might say Chipotle has great price elasticity. I say Chipotle offers great ROS, return on strategy. One of the best ways to measure return on strategy is to poll current customers about price. “Would you continue to buy Hoegaarden if the price were raised 5%?” a market question might read. If the answer is yes, one might follow up with “Why” or “What is it about Hoegaarden that makes you such a fan?” The answers to the questions are influenced by marketing. And brand strategy – defined as an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.

When a brand has a codified organizing principle, marrying what the product does well with what consumers want most, it has a strategy. Only then can return on that strategy be measured. In market share. In dollars. And in sense (sic).

As you market your products and services, please don’t forget to measure return on your strategy — not just the return on your tactical investments. Peace!

Wazzup with the state of selling.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The democratization of selling has befallen marketing. That, and search engine marketing. Was a time when outside of belly-to-belly selling, companies large and small needed agents to help them sell: ad agencies, PR firms, media companies. All made a nice livings creating and placing ads and messages paid for with money from a line on the expense ledger. Then technology introduced us to the interwebs and that expense line sprung a leak. Crazy money was sent to Google and its SEO/SEM minions as companies found the mother of all yellow pages and decided they could do it themselves.

Bad creative, good data analysis and the algorithm moved billions from Madison Avenue onto the web. Into wireframes and searchables. Pretending it didn’t hurt the business, ad agency CFO’s moved executives to long family style desks in old cheap buildings with uneven floors. Cool. And the Googleplexes multiplied.

budweiser puppy

There once was an ad agency axiom “Pictures of a puppies and babies get great readership.” Well, guess which ad won the Super Bowl people’s choice awards? Yep. The Budweiser puppy rescue. Oy.

The democratization of selling is shit-ifying selling. It’s killing innovation. With everyone owning tools to make videos, podcasts, newsletters and PDF ads (to save a buck) there’s a virus of poor selling going on. Search and DIY (do it yourself) are not helping the vision. Puppies anyone? Peace.

 

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