Yearly Archives: 2017

Cracking Tough Brand Strategy Nuts.

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Every once in a while I am asked to work on a tough piece of business. Cracking a tough piece of brand strategy code.  Businesses with complicated targeting, multiple value propositions, never-been-done-before product or service make ups.  This is my sweet spot.

The toughest part of brand strategy is what I call the Boil Down. Taking all that is discovered (the care-abouts and good ats) and reducing it to a more manageable level. Sometimes, before I can do that I just need to go back at my client stakeholders. One tool I developed as a waypoint in the process is The 7 Conundrums.  

Before I’m comfortable writing the brand brief I create a presentation identifying behavioral or product observations that seem contradictory. Conundrums are tension points that when discussed with stakeholders and subject matter experts can reveal important insights. And/or also may move stakeholders closer to accepting possible brand strategies.

For an online art gallery marketplace client, here was a conundrum:    

Walking into an art gallery can be intimidating but also freeing.  

I’ve always found that fertile discussions about marketing and branding tension points get me closer to cracking the toughest nuts.

Peace.

 

 

Harmonious Brands.

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The second most important and difficult task in brand building is adherence. The most important task is actually developing a brand strategy.  I’ve written about adherence before, a borrow from the medical community, because it is so, so important.  The initial adherence task for the marketing and brand team is to get senior management on board.  A marketing team who feels others in the company won’t understand brand strategy, who thinks it’s too inside baseball, is setting itself up for failure. It’s not that complicated.  (FYI, a brand strategy comprises one claim, three proof planks.)  

Once company owners and c-levels are behind the brand strategy (not the ad campaign, not the website redesign, they are different), then the heavy lifting can begin: getting all company stakeholders into the fold.  You can opertionalize this through a training class, educational material, a video, an annual CEO address…there are many ways. But commitment to sharing with all employees is key.

What results is a wonderful harmony throughout the company. There are few things more beautiful than perfect harmony. You don’t need instruments, you needed even understand the words to the song. When you hear voices in perfect pitch, tone and harmony it is mesmerizing.

Mesmerize your employees and you can mesmerize your consuming publics. 
Peace.  

 

 

Brand Leaders Educate.

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A couple of years ago I wrote a brand strategy for an accountable care organization. An ACO is a physician group, the rules for which are shaped by the Affordable Care Act.  It was an exciting project and one I felt was quite political in nature. The brand strategy captured and celebrated the best of the Affordable Care Act – turning the systems from curative (treating sick patients) to preventative (prior to sick) a la well-baby.

Disclosure: The ACA built financial incentives into the system so that docs are paid to keep us well – sharing with the insurance companies the savings accrued thanks to wellness.

The Claim for the brand strategy was “Intensive Primary Care.” By telling targets (patients, physicians and payers) the primary care physicians or general practitioners (GP), as some know them, are going to treat patients more preemptively and exhaustively, rather than turning them over to specialists when really sick, it changes the calculus of medicine.

Managing healthy people is less costly than treating sick people.

This brand claim was a first to market claim. It sold the accountable care organization category. Being first to market is a leadership position. And leaders educate, someone smart once told me.

Peace.

 

 

Branding is Tangible.

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One of the things I dislike about advertising can be summed up by the words of an ex-client many years ago. He killed an ad made by some reasonable craftsman at FCB/Leber Katz saying “It just doesn’t do it for me.” Client’s prerogative, but not helpful. I coined the term “like-ometer” after that meeting.

Judgmental responses don’t help. They aren’t constructive.

When I speak to marketers and some of their paid agents I often get the feeling they think branding is a judgmental business — where color, name, shape and package are all easements to purchase. Where arts and crafts people make a likeable product visage.

To these people, I say no. No-no-no.

In brand strategy everything is tangible. The What’s The Idea? framework is based on claim and proof. Claim is the promise. Proof is why a sane mind can believe it.  It is proof that makes branding work and it is proof that supports the tangible claim. (You can’t support a claim with another claim. Sadly, many practitioners don’t adhere.)

With claim and proof there is no blow hole advertising. No off-kilter design. No hollow, fuzzy copy. No approvals solely tied to the like-ometer.

And for brand planners who say brand managers aren’t the brand police, I feel you. They are instructors. If brand managers convey the need for proper proof of brand claim they’ve flipped their job calculus…and the likelihood of brand success.

Peace.

 

 

Brand Strategy Trumps Brand Architecture.

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I was reading about the NY Public Library yesterday and its Beaux Arts design, which led me to look up Beaux Arts (pronounced Boh-Zahr) in Wikipedia. Love Wikipedia. The Parisian Beaux Arts school was big in the late 1800s lasting until the first quarter of the 1900s in the U.S. As architecture goes this stuff blows away today’s glass and steel.  As I read I wondered why the word is so often used in brand strategy.

Brand Architecture, me thinks, borrows too much from its building architecture paternity. In building architectural classifications are a somewhat open set of guidelines and schemes and materials.  In brand planner, practitioners also have guidelines and tools. Many individualized.  

I work in master brand planning, the one that drives subsequent briefs and tactics so I like to stay away from this interpretive guideline thing. I like to be extremely explicit. Brand Strategy in my practice is one claim, three proof planks.  The marketing and comms are either on claim or they are not. It support a proof planks or it does not. Brand strategy is either open or closed. No room for interpretation. No schools. No architecture within which to operate. Is and 0s. On or off.  

This marketing environment is not limited. It does not lack for creativity. All buildings do not look the same. They are just built to last. Flourishes yes. Ephemera no.

Peace.

 

 

Open Strategy Begets Open Business.

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A number of years ago I subscribed to an advertising magazine called Lurzer’s International Archive.  It showcased the best ads in the world every month. I often found creative people thumbing through Archive looking at pictures and ideas inspiration.

M advertising work in those days was in technology. Often with Bell Labs engineers.  When they didn’t have an answer they would call-a-friend. Sometimes at Bell Labs, other times at PARC, a Xerox research lab in Palo Alto.  Back then engineers were a collegial bunch and helped one another. I loved this science-first worldview. Ad guys and girls would never have reached out to competitive peers to help solve problems.

Now I’m a brand strategist. We are more like Bell Labs engineers than creatives. The science of strategy, for many, comes first. Thanks to social media platforms such as Stack and Facebook, strategists can post questions and have 10 answers by noon. It’s wonderful. Looking for a framework for behavior change? You’ll have editorials, white papers, snark and frivolity from around the world.

Social business design today offers an exciting openness.

It’s a human trait. So is jealousy and greed. Openness is winning me thinks. Enjoy.

Peace.

 

Climb Around Promotion.

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Every business needs a promotion, something to jump start revenue when things are slow. My go-to promotion for the last few years has been a “Free Day of Planning.”   I offer up my services for one day, free of charge.  Try before you buy.

I had an opportunity to do some strategy work on Heineken Light during one of these free days. In ideation, I came up with a very cool “idea” for activation; it was on target, on culture and had mad finesse.

Since moving to Asheville, I’ve been thinking anew about promotions. While the free day of planning tended to target agencies, the new promo will target marketers. I’m thinking of calling the new promo  the “Climb Around,” a reference to climbing all over the product from my B2B days. A 2-dayer, the Climb Around will have me on-premise observing various business practices; understanding the 4 Ps (product, price, promotion and place), while observing organizational structure, management and culture.  

What will make the Climb Around unique will be my quietude. With only 2 days, the time will be best spent watching and listening — much as if undertaken by a cultural anthropologist. Field workers only observe — they never should they insinuate themselves into the cultural tableau. It changes the dynamic.

Using my stock pot/boil down metaphor, the output of the Climb Around will be only three observations. Three for free.

Any Beta testers out there?

Peace.

 

Zaxby’s and the Fruit Cocktail Effect.

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There’s a fast food chicken restaurant chain in NC called Zaxby’s. I’ve yet to eat there but sure it’s competitive with others in the space. I’ll have to do some research. Yesterday, I had a couple of meetings and presentations in which I discussed the “Fruit Cocktail Effect.” When a brand tries to be too many things it becomes none. Fruit cocktail is a sweet sugary mess rather than a mélange of grapes, peaches, pear and cherries.

I watched a Zaxby’s TV spot last night and noted how very plain it was. Pictures of humans, steaming chicken, nature, nurture – the ad could have been for any product. The culprit? Fruit Cocktail.  

Zaxby’s tagline (de facto brand strategy) is “Friends. Family. Flavor.”  That’s three claims – if they can even be called claims. Flavor might be the closest thing to a claim.

No doubt Zaxby’s gets the chicken right — they are a successful business.  Now they need to get the brand right. Zaxby’s needs a single claim behind which it can load up its proof. Make a claim…and prove it every day.

Peace.

 

Proof. Or Bluff and Bluster.

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Yesterday I went off a bit on Trout and Ries, saying a brand Claim is akin to a brand Position, but the process, pre-idea and post-idea are different. You can plot a position. You can only cultivate a claim. A claim requires care and feeding. Marketing either strengthens or weakens a claim. A position is less animate.

When Marilyn Laurie a famous AT&T marketer used to say advertising either put a “deposit in the brand bank or a “withdrawal,” she was referring to an animated process.

Branding is simple. Don’t let brand nerds marko-babble you into thinking it’s this complex “only we understand” science.  If you land on the right “Claim” and support it with the right “Proof” planks (3), you can easily build your brand — knowing when you’re making deposits and withdrawals.  

Claim gets the branding glory but Proof is the work horse. Proof is the day job of a brand strategy. Proof is the day job of brand managers. And agents. (The guys hanging off the I-beam with his helmet attached by Super Glue is Proof.) Proof is what convinces consumers. Bluff and bluster do not.

Peace.  

 

Position Versus Claim.

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Trout and Ries turned me on to Positioning with their book Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind. It’s very hard to disagree with Jack and Al.  The logic is dead on. It addresses many marketing ills. But the thing about strategy is it is best when reverse engineered – a wonderful practice for book writers and theory writers.  It’s easy-ish to look in the rearview mirror and ‘splain why success happened. Positioning does work for some forward thinkers, but it’s a practice and process. An activity. Find a position in the minds of customers.

I prefer to rally around Claim rather than Position. A brand Claim is a strategic statement of customer value married to brand feature or function.  While Claims are malleable and organic, Positions are finite and immobile. If you Position a house by the river and the river moves, you’re toast.  If you Claim fertile soil and rich yield, that’s future-friendly.

One can argue that Coke’s brand claim of “refreshment” is both claim and position. I would agree.  So it’s not like they can’t work together. But mostly Positioning is process-focused. And Claim is product-focused. Therein lies the difference.

Peace.