One of my jobs as a brand planner is to help companies focus. When a brand is focused, consumers can focus.

The opposite of focus in brand planning is The Fruit Cocktail Effect. That’s what happens when you try to promote yourself as too many things. With fruit cocktail, the peach tastes like the pear which tastes like the grape and the pineapple and the cherry. There is no differentiation, it’s just one sugary mess. That’s what happens to brands that don’t focus.

Lots of marketers today talk about KPIs or key performance indicators. They are a great way to manage business. (You can’t manage what you don’t measure.) But in brand planning we are not measuring Excel charts of KPIs, we are managing attitudes, beliefs and biases — and a limited few, at that. For the sake of this discussion let’s call them KBIs or key brand indicators.  To avoid The Fruit Cocktail Effect, What’s The Idea? dictates a One Claim, Three Proof Plank brand strategy. Effectively, measuring four things. 

(One prominent phone company understood it could maintain market share if price perception was within 10% of the nearest competitor. That’s a proof plank. That’s a KBI. And that’s a business winning measure.)  

For more information and elucidation, write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com

Peace.