Yearly Archives: 2015

Avoidance Planning.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Readers know I’m an advocate of Twitch Point Planning; a twitch being is a media move from one online device to another. Typically in search of clarification. Under closer inspection, I’m willing to expand the definition of a twitch to include a move from the real world to a device, e.g. “Who was the lead actress in Vampire Diaries, with the funny name?” Twitches can also happen on the same device, a la “How do you spell “hor d’oeuvres?”, a twitch while writing on a laptop to a Google search.  Twitch Point Planning is a comms planning rigor that ask your to understand, map and manipulate a consumer closer to a sale by interrupting twitches with value brand related content.

This post is not about Twitch Point Planning. It’s about Avoidance Planning. A way to reach consumers when they’re avoiding typical media plays. For instance, I couldn’t read the sports section yesterday or today after the Mets loss. I watched the game and there wasn’t anything anyone could say about it to console me. I also stayed away from sports talk radio. And may for another day. My Mets mind has shut down.

A friend, Cory Treffiletti, started an avoidance planning group a number of years ago on Facebook called, “After Pearl Jam Tour Depression.” Cory gets it.

To properly take marketing advantage of avoidance behavior, you need to figure out a secondary or replacement behavior. Most likely this is an experiential marketing undertaking. What’s the opposite of a World Series celebration parade? How to you deal with a lost election? A poor health diagnosis? How does a marketer comfort consumers and show empathy? The answer: avoidance planning.

Tink about it, as my Norwegian aunt would have said. Peace.

Purple Carrot’s Latest Hire

By
Steve Poppe
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0

purple carrot

Mark Bittman makes my mouth water. As a New York Times critic he excited the food world for many years. It was just announced he’s moving to start-up Purple Carrot as content creator. In this case the content will be recipes and comms. Purple Carrot is a meal delivery and some-assembly-required service.

What I like about Mr. Bittman, along with his recipes and writing, is his current mission. Quoted in today’s NYT his goal is to get “people to eat more plants.” Can’t get more focused than that. Great brand strategy.

He and start-up founder Andrew Levitt are smart marketers and brand builders. Purple carrots sounds intriguing. The “meal kit,” is an awful and un-tasty food classification, but it’s descriptive and appropriate for the time.

I spend a good deal of time in Costco and BJs and must tell you the percentage of overweight people with poor feeding habits is appalling. Obesity may be a class thing and a money thing, but if the price point of these vegan meal kits can be made elastic enough, it may open up new markets for Purple Carrot and do some real good.  I’ve done enough marketing strategy in the obesity space to know that good tasting plant-based fare has a nice economic upside. I believe Mr. Bittman’s hire will be a good one.

Peace.

The Three Adjectives.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Adjectives are a dime a dozen in marketing. Here are three that are easy to toss about: simple, revolutionary and disruptive. But these are the words used to describe Theranos, perhaps the most successful start-up ever launched. Theranos uses a small draw of blood, accessed by a pin prick, to provide a broad range of lab tests – where before multiple draws were needed.

No one, especially a brand person, will argue with the need for simplicity. Modern man likes simple. We also like the fulfillment of hard work, buy in our consumables, simple is golden.  Revolutionary is a consumerists dream as well. While evolution is the way of life, revolution gets noticed. And celebrated. Lastly, disruptive. New products and services that take massive market share and revenue from competitors or other categories are considered disruptive. Reality TV shows were for a while disruptive for scripted dramas and comedies.

It’s hard to be a marketer and hit all three adjectives. Commerce today is often built around commoditization. But success lies in these 3 adjectives. View product development this way. View marketing and communications this way. You will see the payouts sooner than you think.

Peace.                             

 

What’s Next in POS?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

POS stand for point of sale. It used to mean in-store displays. Today it covers a lot more. It covers ecommerce and some online advertising — certainly online ads that put a customer one click from purchase.

Not too long ago the vast majority of advertising reached customers while nowhere near shopping. TV and radio hit consumers with ads that molded opinion and attitude for a future purchase.  Then 800 numbers on TV ads allowed custies to dial-up a sale from the couch, as so did shopping networks like QVC. But the real breakthrough in POS was the web, where people actually go to shop. 

POS advertising online and POS advertising in-store are too similar for my taste. The online version should be richer. In-store you can experience the product through touch and feel — through sampling. Online all you have is video. I’m thinking virtual reality will alter this in the next couple of years and I can’t wait.  Buckle the seatbelts of your self-driving cars.

Thoughts? Peace.

 

 

 

Rootable Proof.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Great journalists can write a story about a person and make you root for them. The short TV vignettes produced for the Olympics about athletes you never heard of is a great example of the craft. When a cauliflower eared, over-muscled Syrian weightlifter can be turned into a “rooted for” softy you have created the right back story. The parts of the back story that make you root for the athlete are the realities of hardship, underdog-ness, and courage. Not platitudes, proofs.    

This is a craft people in the ad biz don’t get. Ads are created using an opposite strategy. Rather than find a rootable quality for a product or service, we trot out its riches. “Best this, first that, only this.…”

At What’s The Idea? the brand strategy framework identifies “a claim and 3 proof planks” for a brand. This organizing principle — developed to build a simple array of memorable values that influence preference – focuses on rational and emotional proofs.

(Rootable proofs are often conveyed in story form. This is where the power of storytelling lies in branding and advertising.)

Peace.

 

 

Dangerous Marketers. The Bad Kind.

By
Steve Poppe
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2

When a latent adult working at McCann-Erickson NY, I was lieutenant in charge of all the AT&T data products. These were the data lines, the network software services and whatever other B2B things that were not particularly sexy — during a very competitive time when phone companies were spending like drunken sailors. My services eventually became the internet so I had a grand time. And managed a great team.

Anyway, I had this idea that if ever the agency president (John Dooner) was asked to go to a meeting in Bridgewater NJ on some of these non-big sexy products (sorry Bartolo) he would need a primer. So the Fact Book was born. The idea was to put all the relevant facts into a binder that could be read in 60 minutes (on the way to the client), giving the reader a foundation of knowledge, e.g., overall market universe, market share, competition, product explanations, YOY sales trends and futures. I stole the idea from Marian Harper, a McCann and IPG CEO, from back in the 60s.

At What’s The Idea?, my current business, a key deliverable is the marketing plan. The first step in its development is a document called the 24 Question. It is much like the Fact Book. Anyone, at any company, in the marketing department should know the answers to the 24 Questions. They are the financial and marketing fundamentals of business. If you don’t know the answers as a marketer, you are a danger to the company.

If you are interested in seeing these questions, email me Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com. And we’ll talk.

Peace.

PS. Go see Steve Jobs.

 

Brand eXperience.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

X. Where Experience Meets Design is Brian Solis’s new book, one I suspect will be a big seller. Why? Because product and brand experience are critical customer care-abouts. Another reason? Advertising and marketing agencies can bill for it; it’s a business. Brand experience was a smart business the first time I ran into it at Megan Kent and David Kessler’s Starfish Brand Design. They were, and are, big fans of what Mr. Solis is now branding X.

Dare I say brand experience will become the pop marketing term of the 20 teens? Maybe not a whirlwind term such as “transparency” or “authenticity,” but it’ll be a thing. Bet on it.

That said, anyone can talk experience. Anyone can even build an experience. But for it to be meaningful and make deposits in the brand bank, it cannot be random. A brand experience needs to be on brand strategy – defined as an “organizing principle containing a claim and three support planks.”

Experience in brick and mortar and online are manageable, but certainly not easy. Without a brand strategy it will not only be messy — it may be counterproductive. Let’s see where Mr. Solis takes us. Off to order the book.

Peace.

Wal-Mart Blasts Past Amazon…in 2027.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Fast forward 12 years to a time when Amazon is an online geezer and Wal-Mart is the young, hip tech retailer.  Am I tripping? Nope. How can it happen? Through strategy. Only through strategy.

What can Wal-Mart do to trump world-beater Amazon in online retail? First, it must look at customer care-abouts. Customers want fair prices. They want good value — products that will last. They want product accessibility: same day, same hour, delivered to any address. They’d like to be rewarded for loyalty. Predictive refills would be nice. Lastly, they’d love to remove some carbons from the earth’s footprint.

If Wal-Mart wants to out-Amazon Amazon, it needs to start thinking about these strategies. While Mr. Bezos is playing media mogul, cloud jockey and Steve Jobs, Wal-Mart should focus on the above care-abouts and blaze a new retail trail. Create a new retail equation.

The future is up for grabs. For everybody. Always has been.

Peace.

 

Value-Loading.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The human mind does the work of the brand planner on a daily basis. We experience people, places and things, a multiplicity of experiences, and boil them down to their essence — retaining a fairly single minded impression. Or we don’t, because we are confused and no single quality sticks out. I refer to this inability to land on an impression as the “fruit cocktail effect.”

Great brand managers understand this. They get how the “cull” of product and service values is one of the most important parts of their job. They understand you can’t be all things to all people. Sadly, many marketers don’t get it. They “value-load” to the point where consumers don’t know what to think.

Yesterday I was reading a point of purchase display for a remodeling company and they listed 10 different values or claims.  All were good claims but created quite a cacophony. What about this display would the consumer remember in day after recall testing? Probably the main picture used.  If really lucky they might remember the value most important dear to them, buried among the others…their key care-about. Most likely they’ll remember fruit cocktail.

Peace.

 

Brand Strategy Secret.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Not every product or service is perfect. Some have warts. Better alternatives are often available. So how do imperfect marketers move on? Well, they can and should try to improve the product; that said, Pepsi will never learn Coke’s secret formula. So what do they do?

When called in as a brand strategist in these imperfect product cases, I dive in looking for all that is good. My framework is about customer “care-abouts” and brand “good-ats.” When the two are aligned, we have a plan. When not we have work to do.

Have you ever walked past a person on the street with a magnetic sense of style? Attractive but not pretty or handsome? They are accentuating the positives. They’re not hiding unattractive qualities, they’re celebrating what they have. With panache. That’s what brand planners do. They find an organizing principle for product or service that is loveable and admirable. And they help find ways to celebrate it. Experience it.

As a child, I was not a fan of clams. My west coast uncle came to town and with a few slurps, some facial expressions and a excited description or two, changed my whole perception. His love came through.

This is how we do-oo it!

Peace.

 

 

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