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    Brand Strategy

    Managing a Brand in A Pandemic.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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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.

     

     

    Unorganized Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    What is the pent-up demand for brand strategy services? What keeps company officers up at night that a brand strategy can fix? The answer: Unorganized marketing.

    The Oxford Dictionary defines organize as “give an orderly structure to, systematize.” Therefore, unorganized means the opposite — not organized or not orderly. Disorganized has a stronger connotation. It means to “destroy the system or order; throw into confusion.” It indicates a chaotic mode.

    The fact is, most companies in need of brand help suffer from unorganized marketing, not disorganized. That’s because they never had an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. They may have a logo, tagline, marketing plan, even a good ad campaign, but not a constant framework that governs everything.

    So what is the result of having unorganized marketing? Loss of time developing programs. Loss of money in poorly performing media and tactics. Lack of focus around customer care-abouts and brand good-ats. And poor accountability because marketing doesn’t know what to measure other than sales. With unorganized marketing big data becomes little data.

    My job as a brand consultant is to dig deeply into business fundamentals, determine care-abouts and good-ats and create a framework of values for presenting a brand that creates sales and loyalty.

    This is upstream planning — and too many marketers are afraid to paddle up. Ergo they lose sleep and sales.

    Peace.

     

    Made for People Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I came across a website yesterday for an electronic bicycle business opening a retail store in Asheville, NC. I’m sure the products are great but I didn’t that from the website write-up. Here’s an open letter form the CEO:

    Pedego is the best brand of electric bikes on Earth because we put people first.

    The most important part of every Pedego isn’t some high-tech gadget or fancy bicycle component – it’s the person riding it.

    Producing great eBikes is just the beginning. To be truly great, a company has to stand for something…

    Pedego stands for you.

    Don DiCostanzo

    This claim is the most-used brand position in the history of commerce. And to be honest, there’s nothing wrong with putting the customer first; I’ve written a number of strategies around ergonomics, for instance. But if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times, don’t make a claim and let it sit there. Prove it. Provide evidence. Be the claim. Live the claim.

    When Nfinity sneakers says their cheer shoes are made for women, they show an engineering drawing of the unique weight distribution radiating down the leg from womens’ hip structures. And then there show the different shoe configuration and weight bearing areas. This is claim and proof.

    Mr. DiConstanza, may make bikes that put people first (hate those dog bikes…hee hee), but he needs to build a support case. And he needs to pound it home.

    Words matter. Especially in selling. Be what you say you are and share it.

    Peace.

     

     

     

    The Fine Lines of Brand Strategy Consulting.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    When you are a consultant, you walk a fine line between telling customers and prospects what they are doing wrong while complimenting them on what they’re doing right.  You wouldn’t have a foot in the door were they doing everything right, yes?  But that’s no reason to tell them their baby is ugly.

    When a brand consultant, you walk an even finer line when interacting with prospects because you don’t really know the brand. You haven’t done discovery. You haven’t articulated the addressable business problems. You haven’t dug into the customer care-abouts or brand good-ats. Without those lines of reasoning anything you say can and will be shallow. So, you do the shallow spade work. Which often ends with discussions about process, procedures and practices. Not sexy.

    People like to talk about themselves and their frames of reference. Brands do too. Trust me, when I do brand discovery it’s fire hose time. But to get to discovery you have to a client to sign on. And even if they open up on a call or two, you can’t make any real judgements until the cake it out of the oven (Alex Bogusky).

    This is a conundrum I have yet to crack adequately. So I listen. I overlay some thoughts. I qualify my answers with a plea of brand ignorance. And I hope to build trust.

    As I said, a fine line.

    Peace.

     

    De Facto Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Brand taglines are de facto brand strategies. More specifically, they are de facto brand claims.  (An actual brand strategy comprises one claim and three proof planks. (A claim by itself is simply advertising.)

    Yesterday we had a couple of boxes of cat food delivered by Chewy. Smart ecommerce model, yes?  They’re the Amazon of petfood.  On the boxes were the following tagline “Where pet lovers shop.”  It’s a nice, warm and fuzzy advertising line but, frankly, not a powerful brand claim.

    Let’s parse the meaning. Secondly, it tells everybody Chewy is where shopping takes place. Kind of superfluous. Basically this is saying it’s a commercially available product. As for the first positioning Chewy for lovers of pets, all I can say is that the claim doesn’t speak to pet haters. Again, no real there there.

    Brand strategy informs people what a brand Is and what a brand Does. (The Is-Does.)  It also organizes for consumers discreet values derived from customers’ most pronounced care-abouts and the brand’s primary good-ats. Boiling these down to three planks is the heavy lifting of the brand strategist.

    Brand taglines must reflect the brand strategy claim. If not, it is wasted energy.  Off the top of my head, I can offer up a handful of more powerful brand claims for Chewy than where pet lovers shop.  

    My guess is this is a line developed by the ad agency. As a bow atop the end of a commercial.  Chewy and my cat Harry deserve better.

    Peace.

     

     

    Low Versus High Level Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Trail of Bits is a client along with Teq, Inc. that has made the greatest impact on my brand strategy business. I learn from everyone I consult with – that’s how the business works – but these two companies have had a powerful effect. What I learned from Trail of Bits, a software security company, is that there are two levels of security. Low level and high level. It’s a wonderful analog for branding.

    In software there is the device and the software. The device is what one uses to do stuff and the software provides the rules and process driving the effort. You can train a person to use a computer/device. It’s a completely different story to teach them how the machine works. Using it is high level, understanding how it works, low level.

    In branding, the business is flooded with people who know how to use devices, e.g., advertising, web development, PR, logo design, etc. They are all captains of their individual tactics. But at the lower level, where branding actually works to inform all tactics, there are few experts. Brand strategy is low level. It creates the framework for brand success. It creates the composition of sales and loyalty success. It creates the “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” Most importantly it integrates all the various pieces, across all devices.

    By many business definitions “low level” means simplistic and “high level” means strategic. Not in software security. And not in branding. We flip the model.

    Peace.

     

    Originality.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The problem with most marketing communications is lack of originality.  I was speaking to business owner yesterday who said he went to a seminar on branding where the speaker told the crowd everyone had to decide which of the two types of business they wanted to be: quality or service. (I hope he didn’t have to pay.)  Can you imagine, thinking there are only two types of brand or company? These are price-of-entry values. Not positioning values. And franking if you are not offering quality and service you won’t be in business very long.

    Branding is about originality. Finding new ways to convey value. Using new, ownable, believable words. New demonstrations. And I’m not talking a smiling face next to a stack of tasty pancakes. I’m talking a line out the door of the pancake house.

    Some say “nothing is original” in advertising and marketing.  And I say everything has a chance to be. Find your brand strategy (one claim, three proof planks) and invent originality every day. And then do it some more.

    Peace.

     

    Dunkin’ Cover. (As in, duck and cover.)

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The wifus loves donuts.  Her favorite is Dunkin’ Donuts Vanilla Crème. On Mother’s Day, a lil bit of powdered sugar still on her lips, she happened to mention that the donuts used to be better. Apparently, the vanilla filling used to extend right to the very end of the donut and now it takes a bite to get there. As a kid who was coaxed to go to church with a jelly donut, I appreciate her point. A donut bite without filling is a lost opportunity. A branding problem.

    Since the customer is always right, why did Dunkin’ (they officially dropped the word Donuts from the brand) decide to lighten the filling load? There might be an assortment of reasons: new filling extrusion machines, reduce sugar content for health reasons, save a few pennies, the list goes on. But if one donut lover noticed, you can bet thousands of donut lovers noticed. And of those thousands, how many consciously or subconsciously have decided to try another donut shop – perhaps a craft donut shop — or even another morning confection altogether?

    When a butterfly flaps her wings….

    When you have craving brands and you alter the recipe or the proportion, it has an effect. There had better be a very good reason for doing it. It gets noticed.

    Peace.

     

     

    The Difference Between Brand Identity and Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Is there a different between brand identity and brand strategy? Hell yeah. Most everyone has a brand identity. Very few have a codified brand strategy. I say codified because most marketers believe they have a brand strategy but can’t articulate it.

    Brand identity comprises the people, places and things presented to consumers to generate purchase and loyalty. Think of it (hopefully) as organized selling. Brand identity components include: logo, packaging, signage, color palette, retail experience, sales people, ad copy and imagery. The cleanest way to see if you have a distinct brand identity is to ask consumers to play it back. Brand identity is the state of your brand in consumers’ minds. All controlled by the various outputs (or buildables), as I like to call them.

    Brand strategy, on the other hand, is how you get there. How you get to the perception of what a brand is and what a brand does (Is-Does). Brand strategy must precede brand identity.

    The more ingredients to throw into the pot, the less flavor you have. That’s what happens when you create brand identity before brand strategy. Brand strategy is an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. That how you build a brand from the ground up.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Strategy and Altruism.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I read on Bright Planning that “People want to connect with brands that are giving back or doing something for the greater good rather than just their bottom line. Figure out how your business fits into that and share the story through your brand identity.”

    Most marketing people, especially branders, would agree with this sentiment. I mean, what’s wrong with doing good?

    Not to be contrary but this isn’t for everyone. Not doing good – that’s never a bad idea – but to make it part of your brand identity. Unless you are a nonprofit.

    At What’s The Idea?, brand strategy framework is one claim and three proof planks. The claim is a value statement built upon care-abouts and good-ats and the planks are the proofs or evidence of the claim…organized into discrete groupings. These proof planks are best when endemic product/service values. A more comfortable children’s underwear. A more fastidious building cleaning service. A healthcare system that integrates better with the community.

    Being a good corporate entity is the price of entry. It’s not your day job. It’s not a brand plank. Branding is about currying favor with consumers, meeting their needs, in indestructible productized ways. Do good, be a good corporate citizen. Use your brand wealth to share the good, but don’t make it a bolt on to your identity. Not everyone can be Patagonia.

    Peace.

     

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