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    Brand Planning

    Context and Brand Planning.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was reading today about Robert Rauschenberg’s mixed media piece of art, entitled “Canyon”, and its donation to the MoMA.  One of the arguments by MoMA to the donor family for putting it there vs. The Met was that ther Rauschenberg “combines” were on display there along with combines by other important artists of the period. The logic being MoMA would provide a more contextual setting.

    Context is a keyword for brand planners. We use it when budgets are low. We use it when it’s pregnant with emotional meaning. We mold it sometime, just for the poetry.  As a fairly newly minted brand planner, I look at the craft in context. When I think about the pursuit, I muse over its history, its future, the tools and best practitioners.  I’ve been a brand planner at agencies and as a director of marketing. In both situations the job is to create stimulants for selling. Sustained selling. That takes organization, tough decisions and a tight plan. It also takes oversight. At agencies the stim. is the brief,and oversight of the creative product.  (The latter often doesn’t go well.)  Client side, the stim. is the brief, the selling in and oversight of executive management, direct reports and agents (nicer word than vendors). Can you say herding cats in a marble hallway?    

    My hope as a brand planner is to alter the context of the discipline in marketing.  Just as Margaret Mead insisted that all of her direct reports at the American Museum of Natural Art had psychotherapy – she argued knowing more about yourself has to be healthy – I believe marketing is healthiest when driven by a brand plan. And evolving the marketing craft in that direction, where brand plans are not an afterthought or side-thought, but the fundamental building block is my mission.  In the historic context that is brand planning, my aim is to make it the major organ in the marketing body. Peace!

    PS.  If you don’t comment, I can’t learn.

    Brand Planner’s Create Awe.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I once volunteered at the Fort Michilimackinac archeological excavation at  at the “tip of the mitt” in Michigan. (Not that Mitt.) For a week I sat on my heels and removed soil with a mason’s trowel and paint brush, centimeter by centimeter, marking the depth from a line tacked above each pit. I found a hand-made straight pin, the type you throw away when opening a new shirt — the “find” highlight of my week.

    Most co-workers were locals and I remember leaving Michigan feeling I knew a lot more about the local community – certainly its history – than those who live there. All from digging in the dirt.  Sometimes we live places and don’t get it place in history, save for a few stories taught in school and a landmark sign or two. “Marconi broadcast the first radio signal from this lot.”

    Brand planning is a lot like archeology: digging, uncovering, cleaning (archeologists have this tendency to lick their finds to remove dirt) and analyzing. Putting finds into context, then patterns and finally doing something smart with their work.  That’s what brand planners do. Both endeavors require taking what may seem mundane or prosaic and displaying it in ways that create awe, or near awe. If you are a market strategist and your selling insights do not move you,  then you are not a brand planner you’re a researcher.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Peace!

    The mind of a brand planner.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Ask me the title of the book I’m reading and you’ll mostly get  “I nah know.”  Ask me the name of the bespectacled, nerdy character from TV show Revolution. “Sorry.”  But ask the most important thing told to me by the head of marketing at Kinney Drugs in 2008 while planning on a protein drink and not only will I recite the sentence, I’ll build a new store around it.

    I once got a meeting with MT Carney, an original partner at Naked Comms, by telling her I have a good ear…that I hear things other don’t.  Like the dog that hears abba dabba do abba dabba do Wannagofor a WALK?

    This is no curse, it’s a blessing.  It was born, not of an account planning manual from the UK, or a year of quant in the research dept. at P&G, it was born of the crucible that is advertising.  Studying how it’s make, its results and consumer attitudes toward it. (Okay, throw in some amazing anthropology instruction at Rollins College and seeing Margaret Mead at the annual convention. )

    The mind of a planner sorts, compartmentalizes, after seeing and hearing everything.  It is always on. That’s why we smile a lot.  We’re the sober dudes and dudettes smiling on the street when there’s no reason.

    Lastly, we are not horders.  We remember the important stuff – the big stuff – but we know what to keep. To act upon.  To celebrate. Then we make the paper. For some sample paper in your category, please give a call. Peace.

    Solution for the CMO Lifespan.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The lifespan of a CMO is somewhere in the neighborhood 18-22 months.  Who would want that job?  I guess it pays well. The reality is chief marketing officers tend to be judged harshly by other C-level executives. They are Cs, but judged as Ds.  Would you like to know why? (I bet you saw this one coming.)  It is because they don’t have a brand plan and are judged based upon subjective criteria. 

    Many think a brand plan is a color scheme, or new logo and signage. Or a new ad campaign from the new agency. 

    A brand plan is so not those things. A brand plan is an organizing principle for doing business. As an organizing principle it provides direction for everything done on behalf of a brand. (Even hiring.) If a CMO has a plan understood and blessed by the CEO, then everything created by the CMO is pre-approved.  No more looking at a blank piece of paper for marketing program inspiration. No more trotting out last year’s program and for updating. There is a strategic plan in place that gives form to all 4Ps.  But most CMOs don’t have this tool.  They have an Excel spreadsheet with a budget, sales goals and deltas (the diff between goal and actual).  They have a marketing plan with line items for tools, functions and a KPI or two. If they are lucky the budget sheet and the marketing plans resolve to some sort of accountability (ROI), but that’s a rarity. 

     A brand without a plan metaphorically is like looking at a new home construction and blaming an ugly, dysfunctional house on the nails. “Less nails, next time.”

    I know firsthand what CMOs face. And without a brand plan, sold in and sold firm, the clock on CMO tenure continues to tick. Peace! 

     

     

    Brand smitten or brand love?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I had an exploratory meeting with a smart brand planner yesterday morning on Bond Street. Quite an epi (epipen, epicenter) neighborhood.  I want to be her when I grow up/down. We talked about brands and freelance, the Sioux, NYC and Mari Sandoz. I suggested I need to love a brand before really doing it planning justice.  Smitten is good, but it’s not love. My planner friend mentioned agencies that rely on freelance planners often don’t want them to have face time with clients. Ouch, but understandable.  Sure one can read research, troll (the fishing troll) the web, talk to editors, study consumers and arrive at stimulating insights. But from these interactions and insights can love grow?  Smitten can grow. Idea lust can grow. Love however takes time.

    So here’s a problem. Freelance planners doing project work are actually killing in today’s marketplace.  At least the good ones are. (Mostly thanks to didge.) They know what questions to ask, whose pulse to take and their bullshit meters are nicely calibrated. Plus they have great ears.  The work they generate is very good. But unless, this project work is grounded in a tight, instructive brand brief it is temporal and tactical.  This is smitten work.  Think building rooms, not homes.  

    I never read Kevin Roberts Lovemarks, but maybe I should. Nah. Finding love is much more fun than reading about it. Puh-eace!

     

    Good growth and bad growth.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    It was just announced that two scientists won Nobel Prizes for their work in regenerative medicine.  Cloning and stem cell science were their life’s work. 

    Regeneration is an intended outcome of good brand planning. (You saw that one coming.) Creating an environment where new things grow, in the pursuit of product sales and loyalty, is a marketing strategy of the highest order. But the new things that grow must not be untamed…we know how that turns out. Conversely, we also know what repetitive “same old, same old” growth produces: boredom, lethargy and value dissipation. So we need to constantly regenerate, feed and care for our brands.

    A tight brand plan (strategy+planks) can keep a brand fresh, vital and vibrant. It can do so over time, across agencies, CMOs and market changes. As I like to say Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible.

    If you would like to see brand plan examples, please let me know at Steve@whatstheidea.com. I would be happy to share. Peace.

    ROI Hugging vs. Movements.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When I was a kid, there was your metropolitan newspaper and three TV news channels.  You couldn’t change public opinion with a bulldozer (settle your shit down Steven Doescher). Today there are scads of news channels, podcasts, blogs, feeds and streams all of which update by the minute.  One silly statement by a presidential candidate can be captured on a Canon video camera, edited on a Macbook Air and PAC’ed onto the evening news before the sun rises again.

    Marketing is a little bit this way.  There is macro marketing, one big idea (or as Strawberry Frog calls it a “movement”) and there is micro marketing, use of media and messaging dashboards designed for instant wins. The ROI huggers love the latter.  Big picture people don’t.

    The divisiveness between macro and micro marketing is not dissimilar to that of democrats and republicans. Or Hatfields and McCoys. But it’s in the middle that we must and will land.  You might think a brand planner (me) would favor the big honkin’ idea – and I do.  But I also favor proving that idea and its supporting principles, every day through effective, on-plan tactics.  

    Those jockeying the dashboard without a brand plan are likely to fail. If you have a brand plan you have a voice.  Otherwise, you are likely speaking in tongues.  Peace!

    Brand Mixology.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Brand planning is going to be huge.  Brand plan is an organizing principle for product and messaging and the need for it is growing exponentially as we turn brands over to the Web…and to consumers.  This came to me after driving home from Higbie Bagel Saturday morning listening to a “Coors Light Night Rules” radio promotion. “Send us your night rules” the spot asked.  Coors is asking people to sign up on their website and enter a fun idea about evening drinking behavior. Oooh. Tactics-palooza. Do it on the Facebook page, I’m sure, and all-the-better.

    Coors Light has fallen into a cycle of promotions that is watering down (pun) brand meaning by using by non-endemic brand values and it is confusing consumers. When everything is a promotion, game, or boutique campaign, the brand loses essential meaning. And web and digital agencies, left unmanaged, are contributing to this fast twitch, near term brand mixology.

    I was reading a recipe recently for a chicken dish.  There were so many spices in the dish it lost its taste focus. Like adding too many paint colors and coming up with brown. The mixology of brands needs to be well thought out, simple, compelling and most importantly managed.  Think Steve Jobs.

    The soap box is yours. Peace!

    Poetry and Brand Planning.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Most marketing strategists, especially those of the digital variety, are all about the science. Success and failure are things that can be quantified and measured.  Well ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I’m here to tell you that science is the price of admission. Como se duh? The dashboard is important – especially that “sales” metric – but every marketing organization is better off if they have a handle on the softer side of selling. The tone and poetry of a brand.

    I was sharing coffee with a behavioral planner at BBDO a while ago, I believed he worked on Gillette, and he said something that really stayed with me.  It spoke to me planning brain (he was Irish). He said most planners don’t have a sense of poetry. And I agree. Wholeheartedly. They may appreciate poetry, they may even seek it out in their insights, but when it becomes paper time, time to make the brief, the words become rational and the emotions are simply reported. The brief must provide the poetry.  

    When science is the price of admission and poetry is the voice of brand reason, great things can happen. Because poetry is what moves creative people to greatness, not logic. Poetry is the fertile ground that makes writers and art directors (and yes, even coders) feel and spark and sing. And, oh yes, laugh out loud.

    So whoever you are, if you are looking at a brief (even your ouwn) ask yourself “Where is the poetry here?” The poetry that warms the brand. Peace!

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