Brand Planning

    Love What You Do.

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    I went to see Tom Morello last night at the Orange Peel in Asheville – his third visit. By the evening’s end I was 8 feet from the stage.  I’d seen Tom at Jones Beach, the Garden, Randall’s Island and the City Winery – the latter from maybe 30 yards away.

    The man can play guitar. At one point he pulled the amplifier jack out, held it over his head and banged it against his hand. Didn’t know you could make music that way. Every song was amazing but The Ghost of Tom Joad may have delivered the night in terms of tone.

    Tom has always been an angry advocate for the working class. He hates racism. Jeers the 1%. And cheers equality at every level. Tom sees these things as his mission. And music is his vehicle. Up close you can see Tom, at this age, loves what he does. You can see it on his face.  I’m on record as believing “A musician is never more in touch with his/her art then when standing in front of an audience.” This goes both ways with Tom Morello.  Audiences are never more in touch with their humanity then when in front of The Nightwatchman.

    If you do what you love for a living, you are giving back. I love brand planning and I’m using it to give back. Changing minds for the positive, one lyric at a time. Do what you love, if you can.

    Peace.

     

    Focus Your Roll.

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    I went to a networking event last night called Mojo Connect. One of those speed dating deals where you sit and talk with people for 5 minutes before moving to the next station.  People aren’t brands but when a brand planner you tend to do discovery on them. Especially, if looking for talent, opportunity and/or to lend some assistance – all brand planning modus operandi.

    One person I met stated she was a travel writer.  Then she said she spent a good deal of her career in corporate communications. She added consultant to the list of good-ats. Business consultant. But also a lover of photography, which went nicely with travel writing.  Very nice women mind you. And I’m sure she was good at all these things. But focus was not her strongest suit. The net she cast was wide.

    This reminds me of a time when I was a pup in the ad business and asked by my dad to interview a soon-to-be college graduate who happened to be the son of our biggest client Youngs Drugs, makers of Trojan Condoms. Perhaps this foretold of my career in brand planning.  The young man said he was good with people (account). He also liked to write (creative). He added an aptitude for numbers (media) and the list went on. A fledgling myself, I offered up the supreme strategy of focus. Pick a spot.

    What goes around…

    Peace

     

     

    Social Media and the Brand Planning Hammer

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    Who handles social media at large companies? Corporate Communications? Public Relations? Investor Relations? Marketing? Website? Customer Service? Human Relations.  Yes.  And at large companies there are often regional and international offices. Yes and yes. Most large corporations have a number of agency partners, as well: ad agencies, PR shops, digital, retail, B2B, promotion shops – you get the idea.  And God forbid, some of the people on payroll are career climbers trying to do some new things, new ways and name a name for themselves? So who is orchestrating all of this stuff? Is it the CMO? That wo/man with the 19 month shelf life?

    Social media, one component of marketing, is creating a dilution of corporate brands and products similar to what global warming is doing to the glaciers and icecaps. We know it’s happening, we just don’t believe it. And we are having too much fun with our carbons. I mean social tools.

    So what’s the fix Mr. Steve Poppe (as my friend Rachel might say)? An organizing principle that governs the product, its experience, and all facets of marketing. A brand plan: one idea (strategy), three planks.

    Customer service, guided by a brand plan is better customer service. Pricing supporting a brand plan, better pricing. These are the words of the brand planner. Peace!

    PS. Thanks to Altimeter Group’s Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang for the thought starter. 

     

    Why I like brand planners.

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    Brand planners are always observing. Always willing to learn. They crave learning. Part anthropologists – students of mankind – brand planners are also creative; it rubs off on them being around art directors, writers and creative directors. In addition to learning about consumers they must learn how to eroticize ideas for creative people.

    margaret meadBrand planners are always on. They can’t afford to be depressed. They love brands, the lifeblood of commerce. They are always friendly, even in the face of haters. There are lessons to be learned from hating. (Brand Spanking, in fact, enables negative discussions.) Brand planners are good lovers. They’re exocentric – caring about others. They are not academics. They are humanists, realizing it’s not always about being right…more about being. Environments are of great interest to planners. Stim in any form.

    Brand planners are paid to make money (for others) but are not motivated by money.

    I didn’t know it at the time, but seeing Margaret Mead speak at the American Anthropology convention as a college kid, cast the die.

    When was the die cast for you? Peace.

    Downward Lulu.

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    lululemon pantsThe first time I heard of Lululemon I was on a weekend marketing retreat with a number of women at the invitation of Nfinity, a wonderful women’s athletic footwear company.  I was a last minute replacement for a woman who had to beg out.  Most of the ladies were aware of Lululemon and sang its praises. They loved the category (yoga), styles (great looking, great fitting) but what they spoke most about was quality. I’ve never done downward dog in my life, but to hear them talk I was ready to buy. 

    Come Christmas, off I went to buy the wifus some Lululemon yoga pants. Trying to explain hip size using your own hips to a young, comely salesperson is uncomfortable. But successful I was and I opted for a yoga mat too, hedging my bet. Hee hee.

    As I read about Lulu’s quality problems today, which include previous grievances about material pitting, seam unraveling and color bleeding, I see how far the company have come. Backwards. Even with sales and revenue up  thirty plus YOY, someone has taken their eye off the ball. (Not sure if their equity partners or public stock offering put undue pressure on the company, but quality has faltered, even as the brand had grown.)

    Quality is a tough brand plank to build around.  It’s most important in categories where it’s not common. Otherwise, quality is the price of entry.  But in yoga, where stress and strain and exertion are part of the experience it’s not a bad play. Lululemon needs a quality facelift. And fast! Peace.

    About Soul. About.com

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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.

    Selling Education and Futures.

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    There are few things harder to sell than education.  I’ve done some brand planning for universities and the academicians who approve the work are often not equipped for the job. The budgets are also low so good agencies are rarely around and in many cases students, professors and recent grads in-house are at the controls.  Brand strategy is non-existent and everyone promises the same thing: a good life after graduation. The end benefit.  The how to that end benefit is also pretty much the same: great faculty, personal teaching environment, great courses, flah, flah, flah.

    It’s ironic that college and university advertising is so poor because often the experience is one of life’s most powerful. That 4 years has the ability to create a loyalty few jobs can.  Who sleeps in their Met Life tee-shirt 20 years after working there? Two husbands later.

    As we slide out of the difficult economy with new elections upon us and technology flattening the world, the moment is nigh for some serious focus on education.  There are lots of trivial bits flying across the web these days, but only a small percentage are focusing on education. We are already using web tutorials to help us clean bathroom pipes and shower grout, why not improve our SAT scores.  Perhaps things are changing. This morning I noted on Skype an organic chemistry teacher available for $40 an hour (first hour free) and high school math assistance at $.25 a minute. (Do the math.)  

    Web-enabled academia is not the haps yet – not like geolocating your friends at Mary Carrol’s – but it’s coming. And along with that, in time, will come improvements in the branding of higher education institutions.  These times are exciting. Stay tuned. Peace!

    Brand Planning. The Clarity Cure.

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    claim and proof

    In meetings I love to say “I am a simple man.”  Not sure how much good it does me, but it is me nonetheless. My whole brand planning shtick is tied to the simplification of branding. Readers know that means a brand plan is One Claim, Three Planks. The claim is not a tagline, it’s the strategy that drives business. The planks are the array of proof that give consumers permission to believe the claim. Simply put, a brand plan is a coming together of what consumers want most and what a brand does best. Period.

    I love brand planners, but some are so wound up in inside baseball terms and theory, they lose sight of the goal: Creating an idea in the mind of consumers that predisposes (and post-disposes) them to a sale.

    A brand plan is an upstream thing. Once done, all the follow-on expression of the plan – the tactics – need to be planned as well.  And that, too, is the provenance of the planner. However in all of my travels in the space, I’ve yet to come across one SlideShare presentation, one Plannersphere deck, one Planning Salon video, one Planningness talk that simplifies the upstream brand plan into this 1+3 recipe. So either I’m tripping or we haven’t found the clarity cure yet.  

    One claim, three planks is the cure, he said humbly. Peace!