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    Whistles.

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    Brand Strategy

    The Science of Brand Purchase.

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    Steve Poppe
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    Asking people if they will buy a product is a form of quantitative marketing research. It’s directional but flawed.

    We launched a web page development product in 2007 that quantitative research told us was something people would use like crazy. The functionality of the tool: uploading pictures, video, audio, original text and other digital objects, like Facebook and MySpace yet without the restrictions of a design template, was universally desired. Projections were for 60% adoption of adult targets. On paper.

    When the product launched, usability was poor. Not intuitive to the non-techie prospect. The startup failed — even though the research suggested otherwise.

    Asking people why they bought a product after purchase is a more accurate form of market research. And a better predictor of future results. But for startups it becomes a chicken and egg thing.

    When a brand strategy client is having a poor sales swing, it’s my job to understand why. It’s my job to get inside consumer heads and reason out the buy/no buy behaviors. In my world – the brand strategy world – I look for the three most important reasons a person prefers a product, typically found among customer care-abouts and brand good-ats.  Then I package those three things under brand claim closely tethered to the three benefits. This becomes the organizing principle for product, experience and messaging aka the brand strategy.

    This organizing principle becomes the science of purchase upon which to build quantitative research. That’s the chicken. Quantitative research sans strategy is science without a hypothesis.

    Peace.   

     

     

    How Brand Strategy Works.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I worked at an ad agency a while back that did the advertising for the North Shore-LIJ Health System, now known as Northwell Health. The brand strategy for the work used the word “systematized” as part of the claim — a word some of senior hospital management people felt was cold and impersonal.  It was the job of the creative team to warm up the claim, but there was no denying North Shore was a system and that constant measurement and improvement was their secret sauce. Still is.

    Anyway, no matter who I met with at the system, no matter the clinical practice, the way to the particular ad topic was through a discussion of the systematized way the group improved care. No sidebars about how much they “cared” or deep dives into what they called “the highest quality of care,” we hunkered down in the measures and processes and, hopefully, unique practices. You see the tagline for the system was “Setting New Standards in Healthcare” and for every ad that was our mission — always show the standards and practices North Shore used to improve care.

    Having that brand strategy in place made our job easy.  It made the jobs easier for the doctors, nurses and administrators we interviewed. In fact, over time they would know the questions we would ask, before we asked them.  A great brand strategy is enculturated into an organization. Same hymnal, same pew.

    For examples of how this enculturation works in other categories, write Steve at WhatsTheIdea dot com

    Peace.    

     

    Tabula Rasa In Brand Planning.

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    Steve Poppe
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    I have a hypothesis that marketing directors or CMOs who work for brands for a long time and move to work on new brands are at a disadvantage.  Their worldviews or market views are colored by the strategies and value cultures of their previous brand. They can make assumptions born of previous brandscapes.  Every brand has its own unique fingerprint. Sure, every brand has hands, fingers, knuckles and nails, but each fingerprint is a unique selling premise. And when a new sheriff is in town, and her/his market view is colored by brands past, it camouflages the reality.

    If this hypothesis is correct, how does a new market leader go all tabula rasa on their new assignment?  Drum roll. With a brand strategy engagement.

    If a market director without true power goes takes a new assignment and asks the CEO for funds to conduct a brand strategy deep-dive and the response is, “That’s why we hired you,” it’s a bad sign.  Or if the CEO says, “I know everything about the brand, don’t waste the money,” another bad sign.

    As any good psychotherapist will tell you, no one ever got sicker because they looked inward and had better understanding of themselves.

    New brand leaders can go off the rails when they make assumptions about customer care-abouts and brand good-ats based upon previous knowledge and products. 

    Peace.

     

    Words To Live Mas By?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The word “brave” has been used a lot in the advertising and strategy world of late. Friend Dave Angelo of David & Goliath has centered his business around brave.  A synonym for brave is daring.  Daring takes brave up a notch introducing a smidgen of danger to the equation.

    When Taco Bell hired Lil NasX as “chief impact officer,” that was brave. The question was, would they be daring enough to do cool stuff with it? Well, the answer is yes. Taco Bell’s 5 City Drag Brunch tour elevates Taco Bell above all fast food restaurants. The brand has always preached a “live mas” mentality but beyond mixing some crunchy salty snacks into its fare hasn’t always delivered. Drag Brunch does that. So as a next act, how about being daring with other demo-, ethno-, psychographic groups? Do LBGTQ’s get to have all the fun?

    I’ve written about how my brand strategies often make clients just a little bit discomfited. Usually, it centers around one word in the claim. My response is it’s not about the word, it’s about the strategy. “If I use a synonym, will you be okay?” Almost always the response is “yes.”

    Brave? Daring? The best strategies live a little mas themselves.

    Peace.

     

    Trust.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I hear a lot of service brands talk about trust. There’s nothing wrong with being a trusted brand. Hell, it’s the same in the brand strategy world. Clients need to trust. Especially when marketers are not buying something existential, like a logo or name. They’re buying “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” But I digress.

    When trust becomes a problem in a category, say car dealerships or low-cost lawyers, marketers sometimes default to using the “T” word in their advertising. It may sound like marko-babble but it’s reality: You can’t sell trust, you earn trust. Using the word trust in an ad is flawed craft. Proving you can be trusted is the only way to approach it. Through deeds. And actions.

    Trust Pilot has built a business on codifying trust. Yelp, to an extent, has done the same collecting customer comments.

    Whenever I read an ad that contains the word trust I lose interest. It’s worse than canned laughter on TV. Don’t tell me how to feel, make me feel.

    Peace.

     

    New Age Agency Searches.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I have been going through an agency search with one of my clients. It has been quite a learning curve.  It has been a while since I pitched a piece of business as an agency.  I mean a while in like dog years. When digital advertising is part of the solution set, performance marketing and measurement is almost as important as the big idea/big show of the pitch.

    Algo over personality.

    Being a strategist, it’s imperative that I stay up to date with culture. And when some companies today are using 80-90% of their media budgets on search, that’s a culture change. When brand awareness can be judged in a geography by counting Google search queries of a brand name (relative to other brands), that’s a sea change.

    But clicks alone are not what the marketing and advertising business is about. I deal in brand strategy. The organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. I am not the maker of generic dashboards.

    A better click rate for digital ads that are off-strategy aren’t better clicks. They are more clicks. So better isn’t always better. Not if it isn’t hewing to the values that predispose and post-dispose customers to purchase your product, aka brand values.  

    Selling clicks isn’t selling product.

    Peace!  

     

     

    A Loose Assemblage of Tactics…

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    A logo is not a business. Marketing is not strategy.

    I don’t mean to go all geezer on you but there are a lot of digital natives who think as long as they have a logo, they have a business. Well, any biped with a couple of fingers now adays can create a logo.  And thanks to Google, reinventor of the advertising business, any biped with some digits can also jump into marketing with little forethought. Keywords anyone? Marketing is not strategy. Sadly, in many cases today marketing is a loose assemblage of tactics.

    As someone in the strategy business, I find this concerning. I don’t mean to paint all digital natives with the same brush. Many get the value of a finely tuned business idea and business-building strategic plan. But a business plan that is simply a loose assemblage of tactics is not a strategy.

    Strategy is the linkage between a business goal and accountability. Strategy is the lens one looks through when determining tactical success or failure. Without strategy marketing is binary. It works or it doesn’t. It is off or on. One or zero.

    Brand strategy allows marketers to measure effectiveness beyond the tactic. It maps consumer attitudes and beliefs to business success. It’s long term.

    Happy to explain more. Write Steve@whatstheidea.com

     

     

    De Facto Brand Strategy.

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    Steve Poppe
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    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.

     

     

    New Normal.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    If we have learned anything as businesses the last couple of years it’s that we have to account for the new normal. And by new normal I mean pandemic and war. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, “padded” and stockpiled money in the face of this new normal, setting aside $902 million dollars in a so-called “rainy day fund.” How many small and mid-size businesses can say the same?

    As a brand strategist who designs business-building guidelines for product, experience and messaging, I understand the importance of accounting for the new normal. Brand strategy informs how a company deals with and responds to the new normal. It goes beyond setting money aside, it provides a framework for action plans and change management plans – all of which are on-brand.

    Brand strategy provides a security blanket in tough times. A place of comfort from which to make difficult decisions.

    Peace.

     

     

    Positive Potentialities?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I read a lot of blogs and newsletters by brand planners and it seems we index high for mental discomfort. This is not a quantitative observation, just me projecting. We’re good at reading people and their feelings. It helps us be in touch with our own mental well-being.  We are not complainers.  In general, we are willing to share our difficulties with others for the greater good. It helps us by not keeping things bottled up, which in turn can help others.

    Yesterday, I wrote about shining light when creating brand strategy. Aspire rather than dispire (sic). But sometimes it’s important to look at the full spectrum of attitudes and feelings when brand planning. Knowing consumer anxieties and their depth can help with the light. Small business loans can be stressful. Small business loans for the BIPOC community or the under-banked can be really stressful. It wouldn’t be smart to think that all loan customers are looking to build a dream business with their newfound capital. Some are looking to get out from under. Yet most ads about small business loans focus on the positive potentialities. It can be tone-deafening.

    You can still shine light while being real. While understanding the totality of emotions that go into borrowing money. That’s good art. And that’s good brand craft.

    Peace.

     

     

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