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    Brand Planning

    Where is the music?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was driving home from hiking yesterday and happen to be listening to Taylor Swift on a country music station. There’s a reason Ms. Swift is a superstar.  She has a great voice, fun lyrics and her music has great hooks.   It is not like she’s singing about things we haven’t heard before – she is.  High school loves, growing pains and simple little life hurdles and lessons.  But because these stories are put to music and surrounded by wholesome Americana packaging, they  jump to life. Her school bleachers are your school bleachers.

    And this got me thinking about brand planning.  Plans of the brand variety need a little music in them. The great ones do. What does that mean?  Well, they can’t just be cool, rational, business-winning directives. Readers of WTI know my brand plans consist of “one idea, supported by three planks” And the best brand plans tug at some heart strings.  They need a little art next to the science.

    Kevin Allen, in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, talks about “Generosity of Spirit” as a guiding principle his company perscribes when thinking about corporate language and direction, and I agree.  Though music come in many forms, it has an emotional wrapper that takes simple ideas and elevates them. As you look at your brand plan — the guiding principle for your brand — ask yourself “Where is the music?” Peace!

     

     

     

    Learned and earned, not told and sold.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    A great deal of brand planning revolves around observation. That’s why my anthropology major came in so handy after all these years. Who knew? Based upon observation, planners postulate and prove, then write briefs and decks which are given to others for action. Action that might be design-related, comms-related…even behavioral. The brief grows out of observations focused on creating behavior change. Want this. Buy this. Purchase more of this. That’s marketing and advertising today.

    Since working in the education category – one I find utterly fascinating – I’ve changed my MO (modus operandi, for those who don’t watch a lot of cop shows) about brand planning. Now, I am of the mind that changing behavior as an objective is not the best way forward. Rather, I like to educate consumers and let them decide if and how to change their behavior. When a consumer comes to a conclusion on their own, without the smarmy hands of the marketing gods to convince them, then a sale better made and more loyal. In other words, consumers won’t buy because they were told, they buy because it makes more sense. It rationally lights up the right parts of the cerebral cortex.

    The decision is learned and learned, not told and sold. Peace.

     

    Planners bones.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The best part about being a brand planner is that it puts you on the trail of goodness.  The world can be turbulent (as seen on TV) or it can be graceful, when grace is defined as “elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action” (thanks dictionary.com).

    bones

    It may be the aging process that makes me look out the window more during a country drive analyzing what I see, or it may be the planner in me.  I choose to think the latter.

    Planners need to be extroverts so people will share important feelings, not just what they think we want to hear. Planners must be introverts at times, so people feel comfortable sharing…believing marketers won’t use the information to do evil. But most important planners need an ear attuned to goodness.

    There was a time in my life when making fun of things, people and behavior was humorous.  And humor is something most relish. But planning has tamed this in me. I try to see more deeply into people. I look for the good. It has changed me. My son is graduating college this year. A political science major at Plattsburgh. Sometimes when we talk politics he gears up against what is unjust – what he sees as bad. Perhaps he needs a little planners bone in his exoskeleton.   Peaceful are the planners.    

    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.

    Cultural Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was listening to the Fergus O’Carroll’s On Strategy podcast with Harvard professor Douglas Holt yesterday and heard some cool insights on brand planning. Mr. Holt has this thing he calls Cultural Strategy which as a student of anthropology interested me quite a bit. Brand planners have to be cultural anthropologists, as they try to nestle their selling schema into current culture — with an eye toward creating future culture. (An academic would blast me for the last part of that statement. Culture is organic, not man-made, they would caution.)

    (Pictured here, Franz Boas, father of cultural anthropolgy.)

    One of Douglas’s thoughts is worth dissecting: “Whoever is the symbol of the dominant ideology in the category, controls the category.” (Clearly a challenger mentality, evidenced by his follow-on point that you need to disrupt the category leader who can outspend and out-media all challengers.) 

    Two differing examples, the first supports Holt’s Cultural Strategy notion: when Oatly plays its save-the-planet card in oat milk messaging, that’s not an endemic product quality sell, it’s a culture sell. When I used the word “nestle” above, my point was one needs to nestle an endemic product value into the cultural lever — not use the cultural lever as your main value. With my client Handcraft, maker of the Potty Genius Potty training kit, we didn’t position around reducing disposable diapers in landfill, a cultural lever. We led with the “joys” inherent in the accomplishment.  The landfill claim was a support, albeit a very good one.  

    Douglas Holt is certainly onto something. Most planners agree culture (and category culture) are robust insight mines.  But don’t pray tell forget what is popping off the production line. Product always needs to be at the heart of any claim or proof plank.

    Peace.

     

     

     

     

    Marketers as actors.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Acting is an interesting thing.  Big name actors who don’t have the luxury of being able to hang with “regular people” often have to study them, so they can get into character.  When in character, these actors become the regular people they mimic.  The more regular, the greater likelihood of acting awards. 

    Have you ever seen a friend, acquaintance or family member act in a movie or on TV?  They come across as stilted, odd and, well, like high school actors.  Clearly, they are just not being themselves.  To the rest of the world they may be doing a fine job, but because you know them – they’re acting.

    Marketers and their agents, when creating advertising, are like actors.  They create meta worlds for selling. Even when they are doing case studies or live consumer capture testimonials.  Ad agencies are good at telling stories, making people smile and warming a heart or two, but consumers know it is still a form of acting.  That’s why year after year, “word of mouth” and “advice from a friend” win out in terms of product influence.

    Brand planners attempt to take acting out of the equation. We try to get to the real. The truth.  The closer the story teller gets to real, and away from acting, they closer the consumer can get to brand promise.  Keep it real, me friendlies!  Peace.

    When a food writer can’t taste.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I read a headline this past weekend “When a food writer can’t taste” which got me thinking about brand strategy and marketing strategy.  How does a food writer approach an assignment when s/he can’t actually taste the food? (How did Beethoven compose after losing his hearing?)  Had the food writer the ability to taste prior to losing the sense, the experience would be muscle memory-driven.  Of course the writer would need to know how the meal was prepared, the ingredients and the amounts. And watched preparation technique.  It would also help to watch people eat the food to understand tastes, aromas and textures.

    Sadly, a good deal of strategic work in the market today is perfunctory. It lacks the hand and design of someone who has actually tasted the product or product experience.  Often there is a reliance on the muscle memory of other assignments. A reliance on demographics — and then the work is driven by nothing more than a media insight. jean-georges

    Just as creatives know when the work is done, so do planners. Planners need enough time to mine insights, experience those insights and learn deeply about their meaning. Put that level of learning into your brand plan and you are, then, ready to start tasting. Peace.     

     

    Syllabus For Brand Planners.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    A brand strategy is best delivered through a syllabus. A lesson plan for brand building by way of education.

    Teachers know the most efficacious education revolves not around rote recitation of lesson, but participation and interaction.  

    I was lucky enough to work as marketing director at an ed tech company that made most of its money selling interactive white boards. They brought me onboard to help flip the business model from hardware to professional development – that is, to teach teachers how to use technology more effectively to improve learning.  I dove into the science of teaching (pedagogy) with the goal of understanding learning. There is bad teaching but there is no bad learning.

    This whole deep dive had a vigorous impact on my brand planning practice. In my brand brief, the keys to learning were improved “classroom design,” “better teacher-student relationship” and stronger “parental/guardian involvement.” With learning the goal and teaching the vehicle how I thought about marketing was recast.

    Teaching had for too long been about broadcasting information at kids. And marketing the same. Using education as an analog for marketing, classroom design became the media or the experience (retail). The student-teacher relationship translated to consumer care-abouts and attitudes (a long-standing brand planner tool). And parental involvement aligned perfectly with marketing influencers.    

    Now these three notions are not foreign to brand planners but they aren’t always part of the syllabus. To develop brand value faster and make it more everlasting, one needs to focus on consumer learning, not marketer teaching.  That takes a new syllabus.

    Peace.  

     

    Margaret Mead and Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    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.)

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