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    Nike Water Down.

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    Boiler Plate.

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    The Web’s Specialty.

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    Brand Strategy

    Build a Brand or Buy A Brand.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    (photo by NY Times)

    There is a story in The New York Times today about the accelerating pace of change in plant-based burgers, sausages and chicken. It’s not just about Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods any more, it’s about Hormel, Tyson, Smithfield, Perdue and Nestle among others.  The battleships are a-coming.  Lucky for Impossible and Beyond, the big boys and girls were slow to react allowing for a big head start and funding from VCs, angels and now the public as Impossible has a stock offering. (Tyson invested early in Beyond.) This head start and money have helped Beyond and Impossible create powerful, well-known brands. The brand managers have done their jobs well.

    Let’s not lose sight of the little guys in the business, though. No Evil Foods, in Asheville, comes to mind. They were an early entrant into the plant-based meat category. In fact, as savvy branders they were among the first to use the language “plant-based meat” in their marketing. Even the NYT story is afraid to call these products meat. Someone can smell a law-suit.

    But No Evil is not afraid, they are small and on a mission. A mum and pup company run by crunchy millennials, they’re elbow deep in sausage casings, construction build-outs and child-rearing – all things that prepare them to build a brand from the ground up. And as such, even though they don’t have the investors or the insulation of the huge conglomerates, they are creating a brand to go with their products. They are building their brand by doing.

    It will be fun to watch how this category evolves. I’m betting on the builders (Beyond, Impossible, No Evil), not the buyers.

    Peace.

     

    Neutrogena Tagline.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Yesterday I posted about high-flying Oatly and the tagline “It’s like milk but made for humans.” I said I wasn’t a fan of the line. One reason being it identified the target as all of humanity rather attempting to carve out a special segment most likely to partake — thereby creating a bit of a tribe.  Well, last night I watched a Neutrogena commercial with a similarly crafted tagline: “Neutrogena, for people with skin.” Doh!

    This one wins. Though it offers a bit of a smile, it massifies the target into an amorphous blob of consumers. No one is special. No one is unique. None share a reason for buying Neutrogena.

    Branding is about creating differentiation. It’s about consumers identifying products as different.  

    Imagine a brand planner trying to do customer journey work for people with skin. Step 1. You wake up in the morning. Step 8. You go to bed.    

    Neutrogena and Oatly have created taglines meant to be fun and humorous. But, sadly, that’s the creative people talking not the strategy people.

    Peace.

     

     

    The Service Company Conundrum.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Service companies, commercial organizations that do not sell CPG retail products, are the least likely to have a brand strategy, yet are the most likely to need one.  I worked at ad agencies for many years and as my dad used to say about the business “the overhead went up and down in the elevator every day,” meaning it’s a people business.  When you’re selling people and their output, it’s hard to differentiate one company from another.

    A brand strategy (an organizing framework for product, experience and messaging) helps service company owners and chiefs put into place a codified service delivery that elevates customer experience. One that is replicable.  

    The conundrum occurs when the brand planner discovers that the customer care-abouts don’t align with the brand good-ats. If the brand is really good at say “expensive food” and the local customers want “inexpensive food,” something has to give. Either with the targeting or the cost of goods.

    Problem is, most service economy brands just focus on with good-ats, not particularly caring about the care-abouts. And service companies can’t easily reformulate, not the way a packaged goods company might.

    Understanding good-ats and care-abouts in the service industry is sometimes more akin to anthropological field work than business planning.  Certainly pairing the findings down to brand strategy size (one claim, three proof planks) is.

    Service company brand strategy is the future of brand planning and the field is wide open.

    Peace.

     

     

    The B word.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Bravery is big these days. A lot of agencies and marketers have tied their brand promises to the word, including David and Goliath and Mondelez – a couple of forerunners. And why not? Who doesn’t want to be brave? It’s as American as apple pie. I, too, rely on the word in my practice. A boast I proudly share with clients (after signing them) is that there will likely be one word in the brand strategy they may find objectionable. They’ll love the sentiment. Feel the strategy. Know in their bones I get them. They’ll proudly nod at the defensible claim. Yet often, they will sheepishly ask “Do we have to use that one word?”

    A $5B health care system asked “Do we have to use the word systematized?”

    The world’s largest tech portal asked “Do we have to call consumers browsers?”

    The country’s 10th largest daily newspaper asked “Do we have to say ‘We know where you live?’”

    The list goes on.

    The point is, brand strategy needs to be brave.  If it’s not, is it really strategic? If your brand strategy is not bold, it will be a long, expensive build toward effectiveness. And may weaken your brand planks. (Three planks support your claim.) This brave approach takes brand strategy out of insight land and into claim land. Out of observation mode, into prideful attack mode.

    Oh, and the answer to my clients one-word objection? “No, you don’t have to use the word. The creative people will create the words. But you must use the strategy.” And everybody, myself included, bobble-head in relief. Peace.

    Doritos Entertaining Superb0wl Spot.

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    Steve Poppe
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    In advertising entertainment is a strategy but it’s not a brand strategy. Entertainment is always a tactic. But unless tied to a strategy it’s wasteful. The hands down winner at my Superb0wl party last night was the Sam Elliot/Lil Nas X Doritos ad. When I saw it coming I shushed the room and everyone watched. (I’d seen a preview.) The casting was great, the music terrific, I particularly loved the hip-hopping horse. Great entertainment. Upon a second view I see they were promoting Cool Ranch flavored chip – which was lost on me in my original viewing.

    As for offering a visual, audible or emotional reason to buy the chips, there was none. And this has been Doritos MO for years on the Superb0wl. Entertain where the entertainers are.

    The media and production for the spot must have cost $7.5M. I bet more people rent Sam Elliot movies and download Old Town Road than buy Cool Ranch Doritos this week.

    But, hey, that’s Entertainment.

    Peace.

     

     

    The Difference Between a Startup and a Give-Up.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Why should an entrepreneur consider developing a brand strategy while the product or service is still incubating. Or being built out? Perhaps, even before the product requirements document is complete.

    Here’s why.  Because startups are targeting people. Targeting buying publics. And while product requirement documents are built for engineers, a brand strategy is created to meet the needs of those willing to part with their hard-earned.  

    Most entrepreneurs are also consumers. But it’s not their day job. If it weren’t for nerdy tech entrepreneurs we wouldn’t have Bitcoin and Etherium. We’d have banks with more robots. So I love nerdy entrepreneurs. But what I am counselling here is to have your product requirements doc but also a brand strategy — built upon customer care abouts and brand good-ats.  Only then can you begin to measure true demand and effectiveness.

    I’ve worked at a startup. I have worked with a number of startups. And I am currently advising startups. Makers and builders love product requirement documents. It gets the cash flowing. It gets the there there. But without an “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging,” your startup is likely to become a Give-up.

    Peace.   

     

     

    More Science in Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Yesterday I wrote about a famous ad campaign for Dawn Dishwasher Detergent and its use degreasing ducks following oil spills.  I mentioned that the key ingredient in Dawn, the one that cuts the grease, is a surfactant. (When a kid in the ad business I did advertising for Union Carbide Corporation surfactants.)

    As a brand consultant that touts proof in its strategy framework, you can expect I would lock on to surfactants as the proof of grease cutting. A surfactant being defined by Wikipedia as: “Compounds that lower the surface tension between two liquids, between a gas and a liquid, or between a liquid and a solid.” But the fact is, in the Dawn commercials there was no mention of surfactants. Likely, there were not even scrubbing bubbles diagrams or animations about surface tensions being broken down. Someone decided to remove the science from the spots. Just greasy ducklings then clean, happy ducklings for our viewing pleasure.

    As smart and creative as those spots were, there was a missed opportunity to educate the dishwashing public about the solution (pun intended). When someone asks why Dawn degreases better than other competitors, a reason why is always a good thing to convey.

    Science is the new black. And it will only continue to get stronger…ahem.

    Peace.

     

    Tania

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I wrote this ad in 2012 while marketing director at TEQ.  I never showed it to anyone…until now.  It was meant to be produced as a handwritten letter from a student named Tania.  Hope you like it.   

    The roof in my kitchen fell in last night.  Me and mom and my little brother had to sleep across the hall at Mrs. Junez.  Mom was so tired she fell asleep on the couch with the remote under her. I had to pull the plug on the TV to get to sleep. It took me a long time to figure out how find the TV plug without turning the lights on. Mrs Junez doesn’t like mom but she sometimes gives me molasses cookies. She always asks me if I’m doing my homework. Always.  Sometimes I fib. I don’t want to make her sad.

    School makes me feel normal, but it doesn’t last long enough. I wish they had it until after dinner. I love reading and gym and recess. And Friday is churros day.

    Sometimes I walk home from school and look at the buildings and wonder who made them. It all started with a piece of paper.  Who is that smart? I like dreaming like that.

    My teacher sometimes says I don’t pay attention to what he’s saying. I try to. It’s hard.

    I do like it when I can go to the Smartboard, though. It’s like I’m the teacher.

    Tania

    Everything you need to know to teach a child is in their eyes.

    Teq. The eyes have it.

    An Educational Development company.

    Interactive White Boards, Professional Development, Usability Training

    You don’t have to be  great writer to create a connection. Oh, and this ad was on strategy: Illuminating Learning.

    Peace.

    Brand Identity…or Ornamentation?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Wikipedia defines a brand as an identity.  Many years ago, while excavating a late woodland Indian shell midden on Moshier Island for the University of Southern Maine, I came across a piece of deer rib bone I assumed was some type of weaving shuttle. (It wasn’t my day job.)  It had some notches on the bone which gave it a unique appearance and I wondered if they were ornamental or a personal identifier. 

    Outside branding nerds, many in marketing today don’t quite know the difference between identifier brands and ornamental brands.   What’s the Idea? builds and rebuilds identifier brands.  Only then do we allow them to be ornamented.  And that dress up, as beautiful as it may be, must add to the identification story.  Go into a room, turn off the lights and listen to the voices of your friends and family. You can identify them.  But if you feel their clothes, not so much.

    The big girls and boys know this.  Whenever an Interbrand, Landor or Wolff Olin starts a new  logo project they create a brief; one that sets the identity direction.  Recently for a commercial maintenance company I developed a strategy suggesting they were the  “Navy seals” of maintenance.  Preemptive, fast and fastidious.  When the art director went off to do logo designs, he had a directive. When the client reviewed designs, he knew “how to buy” and “what to approve.”  Of course some ornamentation got in the way and he wanted to be a “green” company and, and, and.  But the CEO ran his group with navy seal precision – it was the company. It was his identifier.   The mark and brand organizing principles where hard to debate.  This is how we do-oo it!.  Peace.

    Chase What Brand Strategy.?.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Question: What is a brand strategy? 

    Answer: A brand strategy comprises a strategic idea or claim and three support planks that vivify the claim.  Three planks, because two don’t always allow for a complete, differentiated story. Getting the idea right is key. Selling it to consumers day after day is the heavy lifting…called brand management.

    Chase What Matters.

    JPMorgan Chase has a very identifiable idea: “Chase what matters.”  It’s a consumer directive from a very big company that knows how to make, save and invest money. Something they already get credit for.  The idea has ballast, but so far it is only an idea. Banks have been making promises without backing them up for decades. I’m not getting a read on the Chase support planks yet – the planks that allow me to believe Chase “knows what matters” to me and that they are the bank best equipped to deliver.   

    One of Chase’s neater tactical ideas lately is the “Chase Loan For Hire” program, through which it decreases small business loans by a quarter point for every new employee hired, up to three. Though I have no idea what Chase’s planks are, forensically, I might assume this tactic supports a plank titled “Meaningful borrowing matters.”  I’m not talking buy a hot tub meaningful, I’m talking something that relates to what popular culture views as meaningful. Today that’s jobs.  Nice touch.

    Banking is a tough category. In my bones I feel Chase has an idea, but the jury is still out on the organization of the proof.  I’ll continue to map its planks as they become evident and share them here at What’s The Idea? Peace!

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