Monthly Archives: July 2024

Reinvention.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand planners are reinventors. Faris Yakob, a leader of the pack, rightly says “all ideas are recombinant.” Meaning, there’s nothing new. Only new packaging. I like to think we are reinventors. Invention being the mother of necessity and all. He just said it better.

Brand planning is like peeling an onion. Layers. And more layers. But at some point you need to put a stake in the ground and deliver a strategy. At What’s The Idea? I deliver a brief and a more operative Claim and Proof array (a single sheeter). The array is a living breathing list of proofs, organized under three key values (planks). The time prior to the strategy being delivered is BS. Before Strategy. Anything after is aftermarket discovery, is AS. After Strategy.

The beauty of my framework (claim and proof) is that all people involved are always on the prowl for more ways to prove the claim. With every proof unearthed we make another deposit in the brand bank. We are also giving the ad agency and agency-ettes fodder for new and exciting work.

Brand strategies are like children to me. Whenever I see a potential new proof point for one of my brands I light up. And pass it on. Brand strategies are 20% BS and 80% AS. And then you die.  Hee hee.

Peace.

 

Wage War on Cliches.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand strategists are in a battle against cliches. A great copywriter (Walter Weir?) once wrote “If it sounds like copy, it’s good copy.”  Well, that’s antithetical to brand strategy work. Though brand planners are not in the business of producing creative, we are in the business of inspiring creative. And if a copywriter or art director doesn’t appreciate an inspirational idea, who does?  The problem with brand strategy is it’s often poorly articulated. Poorly evangelized. And cliched.

Consumers, btw, are so used to cliches in advertising they shut down. And today, one trillion ad messages in, that’s a recipe for extinction.  Can you say AI?  

I am of the mind that cliched brand strategies are more deadly than cliched ads. That’s not to say “different for different’s sake” is right.  “Coke is refreshment” – still one the of most powerful brand strategy claims extant — may sound a bit clichéd for a soft drink, but refreshment is so replete with inspirational it crackles off the creative pen.

Cliches are verboten in brand planning work. But tying inherent, endemic brand values to your brand strategy is what success really looks like. Flame broiled. The world’s information in one click.

Wage war against cliches, but always, always mine the endemic values.

Peace.

 

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