Brand Strategy

    The Purpose Of Branding Is Not Purpose. 

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    Purpose is a word brands and marketers are using to cudgel positive brand values. It has been co-opted by many companies to convey ideals like sustainability, education, anti-poverty, LGBTQ and an assortment of other worthwhile causes.

    Purpose-driven initiatives are brilliant. IRL (in real life). I’m wary, however, of making them part of your brand strategy. Unless there is an endemic product feature or value that accrue, stay away.  

    Brand strategy, in the What’s The Idea? framework, forges three product values under a single brand claim. Those values are culled from the most powerful customer care-abouts and brand good-ats.  These three values are the ones most likely to impact a sale. They must not be borrowed-interest values, which is often what “purpose” driven values are.

    Say you are a kayak maker in the mountains of Colorado and you donate 1% of your profits to water conservation. Excellent.  But that doesn’t make you a conservation company. You are a kayak company.

    Branding is your purpose. Your only purpose.  It’s what will allow you the largesse to donate.

    PSFK a smart brand and marketing consultancy has an upcoming event called Retailing with Purpose. The event description says “Where we investigate ways to respond to the needs of the community – from sustainability to inclusion.” Off-piste my friends. Topical yes, but a side trail. Worthy of attention but tactical…not a branding play.

    I have a presentation on social media with a slide “Care about what your customers care about.” I live by it.  But tie that care-about to something deeply embedded in your product features, functions and experience. Don’t piggy back. Not in branding.

    Peace.

     

     

     

     

    Turning Data Into Insights.

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    I’m a big data guy.  Especially today when so many are treating data and science like the plaque. “My data trumps your data.  My statistics are better than yours.” But data feeds objectives. And though objectives are the metrics by which we measure success in business, they are really paint by numbers sans strategy. And a chaotic paint by numbers at that. 

    It’s okay to judge marketing activity using data reports. Drink cases sold. Percentage of beds filled at the hotel. Readmissions to the hospital for the same diagnosis. But without written, codified and adhered to strategies, what are you really measuring? And how can you monitor and affect change.

    What’s The Idea? is in the strategy business. Make no mistake.  This branding practice is not in the tactics business. Not until the master brand strategy is developed and approved. I will not create a marketing plan without a brand strategy to drive it. Brand strategy is the driver of marketing.  Without a driver, a car is on autopilot. Without a driver a car is a machine. Without a driver a brand is a random tactics generator.

    Insights are the fulcrum of data. Properly packaged and culled, insights are the fastest way to successful data.

    Peace.

     

    Amazon Brand Strategy Eval.

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    I was doing some reading on the Amazon brand strategy and came across a nice piece by Shah Mohammed. Using Shah’s piece, here’s what I’ve come up with related to the Amazon value proposition.  I have organized things into my own framework.

    Amazon’s claim is the “Everything Store.” And the three proof planks are: extraordinary convenience, comprehensive selections, and low prices.

    Reverse engineering in brand strategy is not a fool’s errand but it isn’t really fair; especially since brand strategy is best designed for nascent brands. That said, let’s look at how the proof planks support the Everything Store. Certainly comprehensive selections is perfectly linked.  Extraordinary convenience can be assumed since it’s the only store you will have to visit for all your shopping. Mental imagery might suggest there will be a lot of hunting around for things, but since part of the Amazon’s Is-Does is that it’s an online store, we assume convenience so long as usability is good. (Remember, we are looking at this from Amazon’s beginnings as a brand. The last proof plank is low price. One might infer low price because of the store’s scale. One might also infer low price because the only physical footprint is warehousing and shipping. But assumption and inference are not a brand strategy’s best friend so they may have left some brand bank on the table

    Looking at the brand strategy construct I would have to say Everything Store, though apt and simple, underdelivers as a brand claim. Tune in tomorrow and we’ll see if we can find one a little richer and more exciting.

    Peace.  

     

     

     

     

    Politics, Bias and Branding.

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    Has “political” become a bad word? If you follow the press these days it has. When something has become politicized it takes on the aura of an agenda. And today a political agenda is either left leaning or right leaning. Moe Davis, running in NC’s 11th district to replace Mark Meadows pointed out recently that the armed services isn’t republican or democrat. Not everything has to be political.

    In branding, the word “strategy” (nice segue, huh?) is not a bad word. Yet brand strategy is all about creating bias. Bias toward your product. The best brand strategies, however, are built upon strengths. Positives. If a positive implies another brand negative that’s fine, but brand building is not brand tearing down of a competitor.

    Brand strategy, unlike politics, is a build-up business. It’s why I love it. We delve into customer care-abouts and brand good-ats and stay away from the blood lust that has become politics. I’ve cherry picked things from the political game to use in my branding practice. There are a lot of similarities. One thing I have not borrowed though is negativism. For me “bias” is a positive. Creating bias toward.

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Strategy Is Business Strategy

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    I spend most of my waking business hours talking about brand strategy. A topic so obfuscated and buried in marko-babble no one really understands it. It’s tough going. 

    The fact is, brand strategy is business strategy. Simplified. And packaged to be easily undertstood.  It’s business strategy boiled down, memorable and shareable.  One of the drivers of a good brand strategy is that is can be activated by everyone in the company. A good brand strategy in the hands of the receptionist or delivery driver or CEO is one that empowers business-building decisions.   

    If you work at a company where you don’t want anyone else to know how to make business advancing decisions, because you are fearful they’ll make mistakes, you don’t need a brand strategy. You need Xanax and blood pressure meds. But of you want your employees and as a result, customers and influencers, to understand why you are a better company than the competition, thanks to meaningful product and operating values, then you do want a brand strategy. Because it’s good for business.

    Imagine a retail package goods brand that changes its packaging every day. That’s kind of what happens to companies that operate sans brand strategy – AKA “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”

    Peace.

     

     

    Free Day Of Planning.

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    I was talking to a brand planner at a big agency in NYC a while back and offered him a “free day of planning,” a way to introduce my skillset. The hope was to pick up some additional work.  His response, and I paraphrase, was “What can anyone learn about a brand in one day?” His firm digs very deep and he couldn’t see any one turning up any value in a single day.  Looking back, I find it hard to disagree with him. Though rules are made to be broken. And if a planner can uncover a key insight in a day, imagine what s/he can uncover in a week.

    Recently, I offered some folks a free day of planning and it worked out just fine. It was a small but complicated business and the stakeholders found it very hard to explain their model in a few words, especially to potential investors. So they explained in paragraphs. Long paragraphs. They agreed they needed focus and a boiling down of their value proposition.

    When I started the clock, I interviewed one of the stakeholders for about an hour and a half. On another day, I interviewed the second stakeholder for an hour and a half. I also interviewed a key software vendor of theirs, someone with hundreds of hours on the street – so as to get an unabashed view of the business. About half an hour. Then I cleaned up all my notes, I’m a horrible typist. Half hour.

    Following a review of some competitor websites, another hour, I slept on it. These efforts took place over the course of a week or so, due to others calendars.

    When time to begin planning, I read all my notes and started to circle any activities, stories or evidence of value. I call this proof of value. As clusters of value became clear I broke out the colored highlighters. Add two more hours.

    Then I slept on in. Early one morning I woke up with an idea. An idea that was the beginning of the brand claim. I can’t count sleeping hours, so this was a freebie.

    Over the next day or so I began to craft a few slides of a PPT presentation while massaging the brand claim. The proof planks, organized while doing the value clusters, in the earlier session already existed.  All totaled about an hour and a half to put the PPT together. Total time was 8.5 hours. A day of planning according to the clock.

    This piece of pro bono work was strong. The clients were effusive in their praise and thanks.  I never wrote a brand brief — a no-no — but time did not allow for it.

    Had I the 3-4 weeks typically needed to do this work it may have been different, certainly more nuanced. And deeper. But is was a job well done. And a brand strategy well received.

    Who said Rome wasn’t built in a day? Peace.

     

    Love. It’s what makes a brand strategy a brand strategy.

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    Much has been written lately about empathy in brand planning. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Empathy makes us humans. Or good humans, at least.  Without empathy we’re disorganized personalities. The fact that we need to write about dialing up empathy in brand planning suggests there may be a problem somewhere. But I’d like to take, actually, take empathy to the next level. And that is love. Not “It’s what makes Subaru a Subaru love,” for I don’t really know what that brand claim means – and I’m an owner.

    When working on a brand strategy I tell clients that I need to fall in love with their brand. Sounds corny, but it’s true. I work past any and all negatives and search for things to love. It’s only when I find the good in a brand, be they superlatives, great-to-haves, or other endearing qualities, that I can begin to develop an attraction. And then I work to expand that attraction to a kind of love.

    That’s how I work.  It’s not how consumer’s work. In fact, many consumers are more glass half empty, so it is up to the brand planner to position a product or service in a way that fills that half empty glass.  So we must search for positivity.

    If you can’t find a way to love the brand for which you are planning, either don’t take the job or explain to your client what impedes your love and give them their money back.

    Peace.

     

    Walking the Planks During a Pandemic.

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    Yesterday I spoke of using brand strategy to help mitigate business disruptions associated with the pandemic. Readers know my brand strategy framework comprises “one claim and three proof planks,” the so-called organizing principle to guide business.

    When making tough decisions about cutbacks and reducing business expenses you must stay true to your claim. Back in the day, working with AT&T’s business services, the claim was “creating business certainly.” Much of business then, as now, ran on phones and data line. During a pandemic, this message would still be powerful. The proof planks were network reliability, competitive price, and tech tools to grow your business.  Science suggested these three measures moved positive revenue. When cutting back on personnel, promotion and other during a major business discontinuity, it is the planks that have to give. They all work together, much like a recipe, but some offer more value to customers than others. Managing cutback by plank is how you make business decisions. Don’t invent new planks. Don’t reinvent your claim.

    Stick to the plan. Manage strategically. Manage to brand science.

    Peace

     

     

    Managing a Brand in A Pandemic.

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    Managing a brand in a pandemic starts with having a brand plan. And at the foundation of a brand plan is a brand strategy.  If you don’t have a brand strategy and you are under financial duress, you are likely flailing at the software books and ledger line items, as if at black flies. Everything is important, financially, but it’s the big line items that can bring your business down.

    With a brand strategy in place your business decisions are at least grounded in the things that are of value to you and of value to your customers. If the pandemic requires that you reduce operations, the brand strategy will help you decide which operations.  It will help you focus.  For one client it was decided to focus on one high-margin area of production, and let scores of other SKUs sit fallow. It was a bit of a re-po (re-position) but helped muster resources.  This small business owner, after furloughing a number of people, scaled down and managed solvency. 

    Companies under duress during the pandemic need to make business-saving decisions almost hourly. And they must do so with frayed nerves.  With a brand strategy to organize their efforts, decisions are based on business value and science. 

    Peace.

     

     

    Your Biggest Business Decision.

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    Let’s face it, most business decisions are relatively mundane, shaped by the degree to which they affect making money. Will the pay out pay in?  Other’s are rote supply and demand  choices.  But the big decisions are the ones that keep you up at night.  Personnel. Real estate. Infrastructure investments. Marketing strategy. 

    These big decisions haunt small and mid-size business owners because pass or fail the weight comes down on them.  Sometimes the weight is so heavy it keeps decision from being made. And stasis occurs. Insert shark metaphor here.

    Well I’m here to tell you the biggest business decision you can make – one that will make all other tough decision easier – is to have a brand strategy in place.  With “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging” in place big go/no-go decisions are easier.

    The organizing principle derives from the most important customer care-abouts and the strongest most compelling brand good-ats.  These agreed upon planks (only 3) are the fuel for brands and the fuel that builds businesses.

    Tired of filling in an a lengthy pros and cons Excel chart before flipping a coin? 

    Peace.