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    Brand Planning

    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!

    About Soul. About.com

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    About.com ran an ad in The New York Times (its parent company) today in honor of its 15th anniversary.  The ad also celebrates About’s 36 million monthly U.S. visitors.

    Not sure if they are launching a new tagline, but locked up with the logo at the bottom of the ad are the words “Need. Know. Accomplish.” They visited the triumvirate tagline store, apparently.

    Apparently, 15 years – which is nothing to sneeze at – is an About differentiator.  I say that because “need know accomplish” is the Bing strategy. And we know that Google owns the “need know accomplish” space.

    I want About to win because I love The New York Times. About needs some of that NYT sophistication and savvy to rub off on it. It needs to be more human, less algo, more alive. And, frankly, it’s built an okay site reflecting that. The user experience faces the right direction. Problem is, the brand is weak. The promise blah. The there is there, but the message is without ballast. The New York Times has never really had to brand plan for the paper-paper or the digital version. It has just needed to promote and sell, because brand “the package” has always been so strong.  About.com, on the other hand, needs a home in consumers’ minds. Right now it’s a word. A site. It’s has a pumping heart.  Let’s hope in 5 years it has a soul too. I wish it well. Peace.

    Best Definition of Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    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.   

    Backstory.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I know it may be sacrilege but I’m not the world’s biggest Beatles fan.  The Stones were my thing growing up. Perhaps less controversial, I was not a fan or follower of Queen. So shoot me.  But let me say this, having seen the movies “Yesterday” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I am a big Kool-Aid drinker now.  Could it be that I’m older and more accepting — more Zen-like? Maybe.  But the amazing backstories and cinematic storytelling driving those two movies turned everything for me.  In fact, I went to the see “Yesterday” thinking I wasn’t going to like it — the trailer not being its greatest sales piece.  In both cases the movie-making craft, the backstory was brilliant.

    Those in the business of selling things and building brands need to understand the craft of backstory.  Not just story. But contextual backstory. If we jump straight to advertising, you might correctly argue it’s hard to do backstory. Especially in a :30 spot or page of print. But the good ones try. And the good ones can deliver deep context quickly.

    If you want to convince someone of something new or change their opinion of something old, you can’t spend your time selling. You have to deliver some humanity. Some subject empathy. True thought stimulation. Make the viewer a participant, not a consumer. That’s what backstory does.

    Peace.

     

     

    Percent of GDP Spent on Brand Planning.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I am on a quest to figure out what part of the US GDP is spent on marketing. The current US GDP according to the World Bank website is $15.6 trillion. Healthcare in America is estimated to be about 18% of the GDP and my gut is telling me dollars spent on market are probably in the same ballpark.

    GDP is defined as “the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products” so one might say since marketing comprise all four Ps, product being one, that all of GDP is marketing, but let’s use What’s the Idea? math and remove the cost of producing goods from the equation.

    So what are we counting? Research and development of new products. Headcount of people in all marketing services; within the company and vendor.  All out of pocket for advertising, promotion, PR, research, sales, channel, web and service. Based on my seriously fuzzy math, let’s say we are spending $2.8 trillion in marketing sans production.  That’s some cheddar.

    Of that amount, what percent do you think is spent creating an organizing principle that guides marketing? That allows employees and consumers to learn the unique value of a brand…and articulate it with meaningful language. Not taglines like “Chase what matters.”

    The answer is not much. 

    Were we to take all the revenue of companies like Interbrand, Landor, Brand Union and Siegel+Gale and brand planning practices at agencies, we would find that it amounts to a milli-portion of the total. So we’re building brand with lots of people, lots of tools, lots of services and very, very little strategy. I’m having a brain freeze and not even eating ice cream. Peace.

    PS.  Getting to actual spending numbers would be a great econometric project for a business school student. 

     

    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.     

     

    BlitzLocal and brand planning.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Dennis Yu CEO of BlitzLocal is a smart dude.  He did a presentation about BlitzLocal, Facebook, data, and marketing futures last night at Hofstra University and it was eye opening. (What is Hofstra’s brand idea, by the way? Something with a right pointing arrow?) Anyway, a number of cottage industries have popped up over the years to help people market on Facebook and BlitzLocal is a good one. As is Involver.

    Sitting through the preso I was wondering what kind of company BlitzLocal was — never having heard of them. My take?  It’s an analytics company.  The BlitzLocal Is-Does?  A Facebook analytics company (Is) that implements and optimizes Facebook marketing programs (Does). 

    Mr. Yu started the evening with some really heady talk about brand building and how promotional giveaways  are a blight, then he segued into data capture, tools, and the raw power of the Facebook platform.  As an admin on a brand account, he playfully posted an offer to see how many people wanted a free pair of jeans and in minutes had 4,000 hits.

    So how does this type of real time analytics stuff rub a brand planner like me – someone in search of the big positioning ideas and planks that and drive long term value?  Well, I’m a believer and will add these tools to my arsenal.  I rail about tactics-palooza, but the insights derived from a BlitzLocal engagement are too important to cast off. This kind of data, especially at the high order level, needs to go into the boil down. One more important loci for the plan. Right brain, left brain. Yin and Tang stuff.  Can’t wait to play. Peace.

    Love. It’s What Makes a Brand Plan a Brand Plan.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    On my website and bio I let everyone know about the high-profile brands I have worked on: Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, Abbott Nutrition, Northwell Health, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, ConAgra, Newsday and Sunkist.  But that’s me showing off. 

    A lot of the work I’ve done and enjoyed has been for lesser-known brands: Excel Commercial Maintenance, Sweet Loren’s, Biz2Credit, Trail of Bits, Handcraft Manufacturing, and pro-bono Appalachian Specialty Pharmacy to name a few.  I’ve written before that a brand planner has to fall in love with the brands s/he works on…and it’s true.

    You don’t set out to love them but it just comes naturally. The more you know the more you warm up.  Knowing you are searching for ways to shed them in the most positive light helps. That’s not to say you overlook any shortcomings or negatives but it’s our job to accentuate the positive. And that becomes easier as you grow more acclimated and more predisposed. Love may sound a little over-the-top, but it’s not. It comes with time and effort.

    Sometimes the smaller brands are easier to love. They come with less baggage. Less complication. It’s all good. They are all fun. Love is love.

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Planning and the Natural Order.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    For the first time in over a century the Elwha River in Washington state is running free.  Dammed up for reasons that made sense a long time ago, the gub-ment has decided to tear down those mud walls. And the salmon and others, with mud in their eyes, are starting to reclaim the river that made them flourish. So we found a work around for the original function of the dams and are making ecological and planetary progress by letting the natural order reestablish itself.  In a few years, when we screw up, we’ll simply “stick a few stem cells on it” and all will be right – that’s not a good future.   

    Why talk about the Elwha? Because good brand planning is a bit like understanding the natural order.  If a planner truly gets the organic flow of a product and service, then s/he havs a great foundation.  Many planners, marketers, ad agency campaign makers don’t get that flow, they just get the flow of money. They manage the flow of money and mortgage the brand. This approach builds dams. And culverts.  I believed Steve Jobs when he said he wants to market things consumers will need. You can buy the market, but that’s despotism and doesn’t create good brand will. Create product consumers will need, by understating the flow.

    Brand planners need to get the natural order of their category and product before they attempt to benefit. Peace!

     

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