Random

    Brand Design

    Asheville Design Salon.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I attended my first Asheville Design Salon last night and enjoyed it immensely. It was held at The Antidote, a cool cocktail bar (order the Daiquiri), attended by maybe 20-30 designers.  There was a very smart presentation on the development of new local spirits brand called Chemist Gin. The brand design was near impeccable: the bottle, mark, the typeface, coloration – very tight and well-knit. The second presentation was a bit broader, conducted by Big Bridge Design, showing some nice work in beer packaging plus some smart experiential thingies.

    What I took away from the presentations — and yes to a hammer everything looks like a nail — was the fact that there is a lot of talk about brands but little discussion of brand strategy. Or brand briefs. The discovery and strategy, prior to stylus to tablet, was all conducted by the client and designer. No independent middle ground. No real paper strategy that I could tell.

    What do they say about criminals being their own lawyers? (Okay, bad analogy.) And designers are geniuses at grabbing consumers by the eyeballs but neither client or designer really schooled in creating an “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”

    Can’t wait for my next Design Salon. 

    Peace.

     

    Brand Identity…or Ornamentation?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Wikipedia defines a brand as an identity.  Many years ago, while excavating a late woodland Indian shell midden on Moshier Island for the University of Southern Maine, I came across a piece of deer rib bone I assumed was some type of weaving shuttle. (It wasn’t my day job.)  It had some notches on the bone which gave it a unique appearance and I wondered if they were ornamental or a personal identifier. 

    Outside branding nerds, many in marketing today don’t quite know the difference between identifier brands and ornamental brands.   What’s the Idea? builds and rebuilds identifier brands.  Only then do we allow them to be ornamented.  And that dress up, as beautiful as it may be, must add to the identification story.  Go into a room, turn off the lights and listen to the voices of your friends and family. You can identify them.  But if you feel their clothes, not so much.

    The big girls and boys know this.  Whenever an Interbrand, Landor or Wolff Olin starts a new  logo project they create a brief; one that sets the identity direction.  Recently for a commercial maintenance company I developed a strategy suggesting they were the  “Navy seals” of maintenance.  Preemptive, fast and fastidious.  When the art director went off to do logo designs, he had a directive. When the client reviewed designs, he knew “how to buy” and “what to approve.”  Of course some ornamentation got in the way and he wanted to be a “green” company and, and, and.  But the CEO ran his group with navy seal precision – it was the company. It was his identifier.   The mark and brand organizing principles where hard to debate.  This is how we do-oo it!.  Peace.

    The Wix Logo Maker.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was watching TV the other day and a Wix ad asked “Need a professional looking logo for your brand? Then Try the new Wix logo maker.” Oy.

    I made a career out of working in emerging technologies. I love the digital age. Google’s brand promise “the world’s information one click away” shows me that digital companies are good marketers and branders too. But marketing and, especially, brand building are not Do It Yourself pursuits. A logo making machine, come on!

    Trademarkia has made it cheap and easy to establish a brand name. Wix has made it cheap and easy to create websites. Google Adwords has made it cheap and easy for small business owners to advertise. But building a business or growing and scaling a business is not a just an add water process.

    Here’s the strategic input required to create a new Wix logo.

    Enter Your Brand Name – Add the name of your brand, business or organization, and tell us what you do.

    Tell Us What Your Logo Is For – Describe your business, so our logo maker can create a logo that fits your brand.

    Share Your Design Style- Let us know more about your personal style—from colors and fonts, to icons and more.

    Customize Your Logo Design – Edit and polish your logo online till it looks exactly the way you want.

    Abracadabra, out pops a logo.

    This is the most narcistic marketing tools known to man. The business world will be littered with Wix logos in 20 years. Why? Because these logos have nothing to do with the consuming public. It’s all me-centric strategy. And more importantly, machines aren’t designers. They’re machines. Oh, the horror.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Plan First.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Last year, I did some consulting for a really smart athletic wear company. The CEO grew up in a niche, understood the market opening and built a company to fill that opening. Focus is a critical component of marketing and this CEO had it. Brand planners and brand experience consultants are always on the lookout for focus.  

    Marketers sometimes fall into a trap to expand that focus beyond what they know (and love) which can be the beginning of the end.  Line extensions – endemic line extensions, that is – are okay, but things like sales growth numbers and market growth data can intoxicate a leader.

    During this consulting gig the company owner brought me in to help create an “insanely great” retail shopping experience.  Since the owner already had the focus down, this “ask” was a brilliant next step. As brand experts Megan Kent and David Kessler would tell you, building a strong brand is not about just about the creative, it’s about the total experience.  And that’s execution.  That’s deeds not messages.  

    One is most likely to build an insanely great retail brand experience if s/he follows the brand idea. Go generic, e.g., customer care above and beyond, and you have no muscle memory.  Or you are compared to Nordstrom.

    Of course, production and pricing must also come in to play but they, too, are decisions informed by the brand plan.  Peace.

    Brand Strategy Trumps Formula.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When is faster not faster?  And when does modular, formulaic construction create an inferior product?   The answer is in marketing communications. Here’s how this shizz should work.  After all the money discussions are complete, after the bosses shake hands, and proprietary company information is exchanged, someone with strategic  bone at an agency should write a brief.   Brand brief, creative brief, project brief, call it what you will. If there is not a strategic idea within the brief that feels right (and I do mean feel), that inspires pictures and music in the heads of the creators and developers, then the brief is poor and should be rewritten.

    Time to market.

    Once a brief is right and approved (and be prepared for some fighting, fear and diplomacy), only then should creative work begin. A tight brief is the fastest way to good work. For those who like metrics, a tight brief gets to approved work faster.  Approved work gets produced faster. Produced work gets seen faster. And organized, singular work – be it banner, website, promotion, direct, promotion or advertising – gets acted upon by consumers faster.

    Where the system breaks down is when the strategic idea is unclear. As creators of marketing deliverables become more process focused and less idea focused, as they become more formula driven, the work suffers. Formula replaces the cerebral cortex when creators are uninspired.  I wrote a brief for a friend’s commercial maintenance company that took some real digging.  The brief likened his operation to that of a team of Navy Seals.  That’s who they were.  That’s who they will be. The company is  “fast, preemptive and fastidious.” That’s a plan creators can get behind – without formula or module. That’s brand design. Peace.

    Sneaker brands lack diff.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Do you have a favorite sneaker brand?  What is it and why. 

    I love Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars, though I have to look to see how you spell Taylor. Black, high tops.  I like the style, the weight, the cost and for me they are a roots product.  As for my basketball sneakers, frankly Scarlett I don’t give a damn.  Probably more often than not I buy Nike, but that is more a function of what’s at the store.  I want to pay $50-100, I want them to last and not smell after a few months (good luck with that) but my allegiances are not strong.

    I watch a lot of sports.  You’d think the advertising would have made an impression on me.  I recognize the Michal Jordan logo and like Michael Jordan. That said, I  have no interest in buying his shoes over any other.  That’s like 50 billion dollars of advertising later.  Why am I not a Nike or Jordan fan?  You tell me.  I suppose it is because they have not built anything meaningful in to the design, and patented it, that I care to invest in.  They have a great creative shop in Wieden+Kennedy. The ad craft is wonderful (I still love Mars Blackman) however there is nothing as a consumer I can tell you from a product standpoint that differentiates the sneaker beside the logo. (Not like nfinity with its “designed for women” cheerleading sneaker, for instance.)

    Do you have a favorite sneaker?  If so, please tell me why. Peace!

    Market Like It’s A Craft.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was reading Ana Andjelic’s  newsletter, The Sociology of Business, this morning and came across a dinnerware company called Caskata. My first introduction to the company was through the website. There is lots to like about this company.

    First, the products are exquisite. The colors and designs are candy for the eyes. Second, they are front and center on each page. Celebrated. Photographed brilliantly, with accents like a crusty baguette on a rough-hewn, spalted maple table.  The beautiful dinnerware is the hero. There is a level of taste here that few websites achieve. And where there’s taste in art direction and photography, there has to be taste in product – so the consumer mind goes.

    This is how you build a website. You herald the product. Don’t overdo it with pictures of smiling, happy people. Bleed the product shots to the fullest extend of the page. Use empty space as an accent. In other words, art-direct your product and home page like it’s your first and only baby.

    But what I like the best about Caskata is the product designs themselves. They are amazing. They get the product right first. It’s hard to herald a plain product.  

    We throw around words like “brand” (verb) and “creative” and “design” too easily these days. They are crafts. Expensive crafts. You can’t buy them on the web by the pound.

    You don’t have top be a craftsperson to use a craftsperson. You just have to respect the craft.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Design

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    What I do for a living is Brand Design. Not with a color palette or artist’s eye, but with words, deeds and strategy. Building an infrastructure upon which strong, powerful brands are built is the collective goal. Only when the infrastructure is solid does it make sense to start fueling the commerce engine. 

    Midtown, NY is one of the easiest megalopolises in the world to navigate because it was designed. It uses a grid system with numbers and compass points to help people find their way. Greenwich Village, on the other hand, is laid out with curves and bends and family names and nary a navigational design element to be found. It’s like it was pasted together with available parts one year at a time. 

    Many people in the startup world today, especially those without B-school educations, begin their quest with a product and Google. A search consultant will cast a net into the ether, filled with random search words, looking to see what comes back. Efficiency and cost per click do not a brand or business build.

    It takes a plan. And brand design is an elegant and savvy place to begin.

    Peace.

     

     

     

    The junk economy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I like to write about trends that impact marketing. One such, is the craft economy. It’s an exciting movement that is slowly taking hold and can be seen in craft beer, home-made pasta, woodworking and the neat site Etsy.  What makes the craft economy a trend worthy of notice is the bigger phenomenon that has lived here for too long: the junk economy.  Junk food, junk games, mass produced-low quality gear. When ladies can go to Target and pick up a blouse for $6.00, something is wrong.  When it makes more sense to buy a new laptop than fix the old one, something is wrong. When a TV only lasts 5-6 years rather than 15, something is wrong.

    I love old stuff.  I am old stuff. I have tee-shirts older than my 20 something kids.  My old Poppe Tyson softball tee just ripped.  Pissed I didn’t buy a better weight of cotton Hanes back in the 80s.

    Junk is bad, craft is good. Market with that thought in mind and the messages and customers will follow.  Eric Ripert has built an empire on fighting the junk economy. He is an inspiring hero.  Lose the junk. (Not that junk Terrence. Oh, and Terrence, Pearl Jam is coming to Philly.) Peace.

     

     

    Best Definition of Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Were I to guess, I’d say 90% of people who use the word “branding” misuse it.  Designers use it to define packaging. Art directors to describe “look and feel.”  For P&G brand managers it’s a reference to budget size. Direct marketers think it means synergy with general advertising. Copywriters don’t really know what it means. The digiterati try not to use it. And agency principals think it is whatever makes the bank deposits flow. 

    Noah Brier while a head strategist at the Barbarian Group once asked me “There are lots of definitions of brand plan, what is yours?” That’s a question every marketer who hires an agency should ask. There would be a lot of Rick Perry answers, me thinks.

    Branding is an organizing principle. Locked onto the right organizing principle one can build a brand with ease and sharp measurement. Brand strategy as an organizing principle can guides all the other strategies you will hear during the course of the marketing day: the product strategy, sales strategy, retail strategy, channel strategy, pricing strategy, media strategy, messaging strategy.  I could go on.  

    The organizing principle defines how a product is built, cared for, presented and nurtured. It’s one simple piece of paper that organizes the others. It organizes leadership, employees and the hard to manage consumer. 

    I always wanted to create an ad agency named Foster, Bias and Sales. It’s where the rubber meets the road in marketing. But without an organizing principle to guide these steps to a sale, you are simply a tactics jockey.   

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