Random

    Brand Planning

    Aspire. Don’t Dispire.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    As a group, I think brand planners are pretty good at delving into feelings and psyches. Reading people. Especially excitements, highs, lows and anxieties.

    The best of our questions when doing brand planning interviews hit personal hot buttons. Not just likes and dislikes but prides and prejudices, favorites and heroes. I personally like to inject my excitement into an interview to trigger others’ enjoyments.  Downer or negative interviews are the wrong footing for good brand planning. We aspire, we don’t dispire (new word). Brand planners do best when shining light.

    Brand strategy done right creates muscle memory around positive attitudes. Attitudes that create brand predisposition.  That’s my secret.  Don’t pass it on.  Hee hee.

    Peace.

     

     

     

    New Normal.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    If we have learned anything as businesses the last couple of years it’s that we have to account for the new normal. And by new normal I mean pandemic and war. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, “padded” and stockpiled money in the face of this new normal, setting aside $902 million dollars in a so-called “rainy day fund.” How many small and mid-size businesses can say the same?

    As a brand strategist who designs business-building guidelines for product, experience and messaging, I understand the importance of accounting for the new normal. Brand strategy informs how a company deals with and responds to the new normal. It goes beyond setting money aside, it provides a framework for action plans and change management plans – all of which are on-brand.

    Brand strategy provides a security blanket in tough times. A place of comfort from which to make difficult decisions.

    Peace.

     

     

    Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    There are two factions in online marketing these days: Cashiers and Conversationalists. 

    Cashiers

    Cashiers care about the sale. They have the small dashboard that tracks click-to-sale and spits out an ROI calculations. Cashiers can’t wait to wake up in the morning to see the new numbers. They are in to usability testing, shopping cart abandonment, media optimization and other measures but their interest and energy pretty much stops at the sale. The buck stops there.

    Conversationalists

    Conversationalists are a daintier.  They immerse themselves in the process.  They want to make friends.  (Like the kid with the runny nose in grade school, sometimes they just walk right up to you and ask “Do you want be my friend?”)  In my world, conversationalists are actually more likely to find truths and insights about their products and win in the long term.  All the pop marketing gurus today are into the conversation. They are not technologists, thank God, so they are easy to listen to and learn from but their failing is that they’re a little too caught up in the sausage making, not the sausage tasting.

    CMOs

    For a CMO it’s great to have both types of people on staff.  A Yin and Yang thing. Cashiers are imperative for sales now. Conversationalists care about future sales, and loyalty and sale predisposition. But it’s hard to take predisposition to the bank. Good CMOs have a brand plan in place that gives direction to the factions.  A brand plan is informed by the work and findings of both factions, but it drives them.  A brand plan helps Cashiers and Conversationalist organize “claim and proof” in a way that creates Return on Strategy near and long term. Peace!

    Brand Promises and Stereotypes.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Stereotypes are important in marketing because they are patterns.  Many feel that if you play to the patterns, you will win.  Creative directors, on the other hand, have made a living going the other way — staying away from patterns, which is a pattern in itself.

    Stereotyping Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, might suggest she was more likely to assist in the EU bailout because she’s a woman – a mom.  Stereotyping a Long Island Rail Road worker who took retirement with disability at age 50, might portray him as a golf-playing aerobicist, while the reality is he is an arthritic thanks to 30 years keeping the trains moving during winter snowstorms.

    Is someone in Aspen, CO who opens a retailer door and shouts in “Which way to Little Nells?” a New Yorker?   Okay, that one might be accurate – but the reality is stereotypes are nothing more than learning for a brand planner. And as planners if we know “no one wants to be a stereotype.”  It doesn’t mean the consumer wants to be the pioneer who takes the arrows  or the Beta User whose machine gets crapped – it just means when being sold, we want to feel individualized.  The promise has to have promise…not an explicit benefit.  Let consumers’ minds work and process things in their own way. Europeans are better at this type of selling than Americans.  In the U.S. we are very explicit with our ads and social media.

    Sometimes being broad with a promise works harder.  Peace.  

    Aol. vs. Yahoo

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Aol. and Yahoo have both finally figured out that good content begets readership, viewership, referral, and participation which begets — the same.  These two seminal online brands will be dooking it out for years to come. They both took different paths to get here and both have CEOs with unique perspectives, but the battle should be fun to watch. Coke and Pepsi, AT&T and Verizon fun.

    Armstrong vs. Bartz

    My bet is on Aol. Tim Armstrong hitched his ride to a rising star (Google) and got that success smell on him — but I think he created some of that smell with his focus and good leadership. Carol Bartz’s career advanced by good blocking and tackling and good business decisions, something Yahoo hadn’t had for a while prior to her arrival.  Yahoo made lots of decisions, just not with a solid brand idea driving them. Until proven otherwise, I’ll give Mr. Armstrong the edge and write it off to “derring do.”

    Ad dollars are moving online, no doubt, but those in the know will tell you the lion’s share are going to Google thanks to AdWords and their direct-to-consumer, DIY, analytics-powered ad model. As Aol. and Yahoo re-create their online brands and lead the market in the generation of original content (paid and contributed), search will stay a powerful, lucrative utility, but won’t be the best way to find good content. That will be the domain of Aol and, hopefully, Yahoo. Peace!

    Margaret Mead and Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was lost at college until I found anthropology:  The study of man.  In college I loved reading how sexually repressed we were and how other cultures found sex with someone other than your spouse healthy.  Primitive?  I think not.  Have I ever cheated on the wifus?  I think not. Freakin’ culture!

    Who knew anthropology would end up shaping my career 30 years later?  I certainly didn’t.  My senior year I went to Washington D.C. on Rollins College’s dime to the annual convention of the American Anthropological Association where I had the absolute privilege of seeing Margaret Mead.   I could tell she was one of those special earthlings, but didn’t then conceive she would impact my career, unless I worked in a museum or became a teacher.

    After years in account management, I became a brand planner. Planners care about culture. Not brand culture, people culture.  Good planners must assess the product. They need to understand how it’s made, of what it’s made, where and why.  Then they must map that learning into patterns — trying to find the love.  Where culture comes in is delving into how consumers and non-consumers intersect with the product. Deeply understanding the how, when and why. Becoming intimate with the feelings, needs, and the fulfillments. Weighing these intersections, culling, then prioritizing them.  

    What comes out at the back end is a brand plan.  A brand plan has two things: A brand idea or claim.  (The claim doesn’t have to be unique, it just has to be true.) And 3 support planks or proof planks.  The organizing principle for proving the claim. When combined, these three planks must be unique.

    The brand plan is the way forward. It guides future product development, creates the map for marketing, and allows employees to understand product culture. I’m not sure Margaret Mead would approve of me name dropping in a marketing blog but I bet I could get her to buy something. Peace! (On that she would agree.)

    Brand Plan as Immune System.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    immune system

    Always on the lookout for metaphors that help marketers understand branding, I’ve come upon a new one: the immune system.  When a marketing entity has a brand plan (defined in my practice as one claim and three support planks) it has created an immune system designed to deflect all non-essential forces. Maintaining a healthy immune system takes work. It must be cared for and fed.  If the immune system has to work overtime, because the brand is constantly being attacked by outside forces, or it is spending time on off-plan activities, it weakens the immune system.

    And let us not forget the immune system is a system. It is not separate unrelated functions or activities. Brand planks, discrete parts of the value proposition working together to increase brand meaning and loyalty, are not always organically aligned. Too much price message might negatively impact the quality message, say. Too much focus on tasty, may impact the healthy message.  Each brand needs its own balance because every brand is different.  But the quick story here is that “a tight, focused organizing principle for product, product experience and messaging” can create an impervious barrier for your brand to ward off evil.  

    What are the parts of your brand’s immune system? Peace.   

    Corporate Social Media Departments.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I met with someone smart yesterday and shared my view that in the future large corporations will have their own social media departments — staffed with writers, videographers, photographers, coders and digital editors.  This senior strategy and innovation officer processed the thought, nodded in partial agreement, then noted that the level of creativity likely to come out of this type of group would be modest.  He was right. 

    An internal social media department will do a good job of relating the corporate viewpoint, organizing proof and demonstrations of product value, and it will do so accurately… but in the end it will lack that creative oomph provided by an agency. And here, I mean a digital or a brand agency. 

    That’s not to say internal social media departments won’t happen, they will. They already are.  But the talent level required to do it BIG, won’t be found on staff.  Sure, some implementation can be handled inside, but not the big honkin’ creative idea. Not the polished sight and sound. And agencies need to figure out how to charge for that idea? Beyond production and mark-up that is.  Does the answer reside within Google?  Hmmmm. Peace!

    Brand Mixology.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    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!

    What does success look like?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    One of the problems with many brand planners is their laser-ike focus on the now. On the current tactical objective. And who can blame them?  Stuff has to work. And be measured. But true brand plans are for the long term, setting direction for all the tactical efforts. The micro measures of success as it were.  Think of a brand plan as the architecture of the house and the individual tactical projects as the decorated rooms. The architecture is the real strategy; the business-winning, business building proposition or organizing principle that drives commerce.

    One of the reasons I love Thomas Friedman, an Op-Ed columnist, is he looks at geopolitical, geo-religious problems before and after the now. He delves into what history has contributing to getting a region where it is (a rearview mirror approach well-worn in brand planning) but also looks into the future. With Syria, for instance, he wonders what the country will look like after the conflagration. He goes straight to a reasonable result and lives there in his mind. Brand planners don’t do this enough. Once you see the future, it helps create a more contextual present.  So the future of healthcare is what? The future of the energy drink category is what? The future of the mobile device operating system is what?

    I’d be a gypsy if I promised the future as a brand planning. But I’d be a goober if I didn’t operate there on behalf of my brands. Peace.

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