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    Brand Strategy

    Poetry in Notion.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Sean Boyle, a really smart Publicis brand planner, once told me good brand strategies offer a poetic appeal. To understand his point, I suspect it is much easier to look at a brand strategy and notice a lack of poetry than is to articulate  a poetic frame.  I’ve tried poetry. When my pops died, I wrote one. Following powerful relationships, others. They weren’t “There once was a man from Nantucket” ditties, they were home-grown and from the heart. Without rhyme or perfect tempo.  They were my tempo.    

    Poetry and what is poetic is in the eyes of the beholder I reckon, so Sean’s notion about good strategy will be different to each planner. But let’s agree to say poetic ideas are pregnant ideas. And dimensional. Ideas that strike up emotion. Certainly they can provide rational context — it is the real world after all. Perhaps this is why “storytelling” is such a pop marketing topic of the day. But storytelling and the journey and all that other brand-speak, is only as good at the strategy that gave it birth. Only as good as the morals of those stories.  “A closer shave” is not poetic, “a softer rough” just might be. Peace.    

    Defense of a Brand Name.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    My business is called What’s The Idea? I rather like it. Following my own advice to have a brand name with a strong Is-Does, What’s Thea Idea? puts me in the idea business. The logo lock-up uses the descriptor “A Brand Consultancy” adding further context. (Perhaps I should have said brand strategy consultancy since I’m a words person not a graphic designer, but that’s a discussion for another time.) 

    Now the idea business could pigeon-hole me into an innovation bucket or a creative bucket. Don’t mind being there. Though, another way to parse the name is that I’m in the indignance business. “Hey, what the hell are you doing? What’s the idea?” Another bullseye. Another call for focus.

    At its simplest, the name asks businesses what is their single idea. Their single brand position the minds of consumers.  Their single consumer magnet.  The company is not called “Whats Are The Ideas?”, a common branding problem for many brands/companies that want to be many things to many people. AKA the “fruit cocktail effect.”

    One of my favorite quotes is from David Belasco a renowned Broadway producer. He said “If you can’t put your idea on the back of my card, you don’t have a clear idea.” Bravo!

    Find your brand idea and you’ve reached the first step in brand strategy.

    Peace.

     

     

    John Hegarty and the Levi Strauss Brand.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    While watching a video yesterday on Sir John Hegarty, one of the guiding lights of advertising over the last 50 years, I was made to realize how BBH (Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty) was fundamental to the brand building of Levi Strauss & Co.  As a huge fan and consumer of Levi’s jeans and also of their advertising, oddly, I have never studied the brand strategy up close. Yesterday in the movie, John offered up the brand idea: Toughness. And he’s so right. Even as I sit in a pair now with a hole in the nether area, I completely understand this position. Toughness.

    Admittedly, a good deal of advertising has hit the market, especially in the U.S. that has been off-idea. In fact, when stone washed jeans and tight-fitting jeans came to market, to expand the market, it become harder to support toughness. Stone washing made jeans less tough. Form-fitting jeans for women, reduced the toughness needed in the jeans and its appeal to younger women.

    The rivets that made Levy’s tough, the mega-durable stitching, and the hearty denim fabric, all contributed to the main claim. But cowboys in stretchy jeans don’t really fit the brand. Or do they? Toughness is expected of Levi’s.  Even when the models are dancing in the club. Toughness is as toughness does. We evolve, brands evolve,

    Starts with a good product. Build it with a good brand strategy. Then, as Hegarty might say, it’s time for the magic.

    Peace.

     

    Smarten-up.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’m not the smartest guy on the planet. Sometimes it takes me a beat to get a joke. I didn’t get As in college until my senior year.  I can’t finish the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle (but I do help my wife finish it). This somewhat average acumen serves me well in my brand strategy practice.    

    I can tell a story, I have an ear for consumer likes and language, and have good taste in styles – all assets that contribute to my business. So there’s that.

    H.L Mencken once wrote:

    “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

    You’ve heard the expression “dumb down?” Well, when crafting brand strategy for the masses, you don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. Brand planners who are off-the-charts smart sometimes overthink and overcomplicate brand strategy. Whether challenging themselves or making points with the client or creative team it hurts the work.  Conversely, other planners who get that 330 million Americans come in all shapes, sizes and aptitudes, work to “dumb down” brand strategy to a lowest common denominator.

    I take issue with both these approaches.

    The opposite if dumb down is smarten-up. In my planning rigor, I boil down brand strategy to one claim and three proof planks.  The claim may border on common but the proof planks are certainly the “textures of belief” that appeal to consumer smarts.   

    So brand people, smarten-up your strategies. And H.L. Mencken be darned.

    Peace.    

     

    Best Buy Oops.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I say Best Buy, you say what?  “Lot’s or products.” (Good) “Low prices” (A core value.) “Twelpforce and Twitter.” (Oooh, sorry.)  That’s right.  Best Buy and CMO Barry Judge have been in the spotlight and awards show klieg lights for months due to its so-called leadership in social media.   Best Buy used to was (Southernism) all about being the best buy.  Well they took their eye off the brand prize, found technology, and have now lost market share in laptops, TVs and videogame software in the quarter just reported.

    I looove social media, but it’s not a brand strategy. It’s a media strategy and a marketing tactics. Had Mr. Judge focused more of his efforts on ways to provide a more competitively priced product than Walmart, Target and Amazon, the klieg lights would still be shining.

    Alas.  Peace!

    Advertising and the commodity slurry.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Advertising agencies have allowed themselves to become commoditized.  In product marketing there are luxury goods, mid-priced challengers and bargain goods, but in the agency business everyone is more or less priced the same. 

    Sure, if you hire BBDO or Ogilvy your top line creative people will be more expensive than someone from the no-name middle tier but you get what you pay for and after a year or so the profitability equation seeps in and both type of shops meet in the middle. The commoditized middle.

    This is because ad agencies sell labor and stuff (pictures, video, writing, music and coding).  The valuable part – strategy – more often than not is given away.  Strategy and creative win new business but brand strategy often disappears after the contract is signed leaving creative to carry the day.  At that point middle-managers-on-the-rise start to take control.  And tactics take over. That’s when air starts seeping out of the balloon.  Tactics are commodities in the ad business. Apple wouldn’t put up with this. 

    What’s the way out?

    Ad agencies need to strengthen their commitment to strategy over tactics. They need to build incentives into their contracts tied to the strategic product.  If a client approves work that is off strategy, the client should have to fund a kicker to the fee. A – because it will cause more work.  And B – because the work will be off-piste.  Campaigns come and go…and that’s okay.  But brand strategy should not. Agencies known for their strategic work will emerge from the commodity slurry. Peace!   

    Brand Discovery.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’ve been on a little discovery jag lately.  When you are a consultant and freelance for ad or branding agencies, you must often use discovery methodologies with which you are unfamiliar. You do it then calibrate your brain to cill the insights needed to write the brief. A brief that may, also, not be yours.

    My discovery questions are somewhat static. But when I work for start-ups, there is nothing to discovery about the existing brand – it’s a start up. Other times, I’m working in a category I must learn anew , so I’m learning a business and language while mining brand values. In these cases the discovery question sets have to be developed on the fly.  When I learned about accountable care organizations in a transforming healthcare system, it was for a startup and new type of organizational category.

    I’m always on the lookout for new discovery questions and today I’m wondering about a brand weakness question that goes down the “honesty” trail. It will work in any discovery scenario.

    “When you are being perfectly honest with yourself, what one _______ (fill in the blank) worries you most.”  The cue of the question is more psychologist than business consultant.  It’s a strengths and weaknesses Q with a more powerful landing strip.

    I’ll try it and report back.

    Peace.

     

     

    Newsday Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Over a decade ago, I wrote a creative brief for Newsday, a large metropolitan newspaper covering Long Island and Queens New York, using the insight “We know where you live.”   Newsday liked the notion but didn’t completely get the insight. They reframed it and turned the words into their tagline of many years “Newsday. It’s where you live.” 

    “We Know Where You Live” was meant to provide residents of Long Island  — a diverse, but captive audience – with a reason to buy the paper in addition to The New York Times…and in place of The New York Post and The NY Daily News. Many of LI’s hundred thousand plus train commuters buy these other 3 papers every day for world news and sports and “We Know Where You Live” was intended to make them feel a bit out of touch with their local community news and home lives. (Sneaky, but true.)  It was also a means to create greater loyalty among current readers.   

    This brand idea, if properly acculturated throughout Newsday, would have made every employee hypersensitive to providing an editorial experience that only a LI-based paper could deliver.  

    Fast forward to 2010 and the underperforming Newsday.com.  “We Know Where You Live”, though long gone, is still a powerful rallying cry for building online readership and participation.  The owners, architects and builders of the website, should be brainstorming how to deliver that experience. Instead, I submit, they are probably in brainstorming meetings chasing the latest social media twist, the next community promotion and the October program intended to build time on site. These are tactics, not strategy.  “How” is tactical. “Why” is strategic.  Newsday and Newsday.com need to revisit their brand strategy.  And let those 34 new reporters they’re hiring in on it. Peace!

    A Brand Plan Example.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I often use an example of my brand planning rigor when explaining to prospects how I work and what I create. Brand plans are many things to many different people. Mine contain one claim and three support planks. The example:

    For a commercial maintenance company, one that does office cleaning, building upkeep, snow removal and lawn service among other things, the claim is “the navy seals of commercial maintenance.” This is strategy remember, not a tagline or creative. The support planks are: fast, fastidious and preemptive. These are qualities buyers want. These are also things the company is good at.

    navy seal

    Clients, big and small, often get the outbound nature of the plan, seeing how this organizing principle can drive communications. Yet sometimes they have a hard time seeing how it can influence the company internally. For a C-level executive or a marketing person who is truly influencial in the product, the internal part of the equation is easily understood. For this level thinker it’s easy to see how one can productize and build experiences around the brand planks — that’s what they are for.

    Back to the example — anyone can say they are fast, and in commercial maintenance most do. Anyone can say they are fastidious and many do, using words like “attention to detail.” But preemptive, that’s not so common. Taken together this value prop is unbeatable. And by proving these qualities every day, not just saying or printing them on a website, it is business-winning. Claim and proof…ladies and gentlemen I give you a brand plan.

    Peace.

    Brand Strategy vs. Tactics.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I was working with a company recently where the main deliverables were a marketing plan and brand plan.  One of the company’s other needs was a revised website.  The ability to deliver the brand plan — a brand strategy and three supporting brand planks — in the form of a website was new territory for the company. It was a break from the past where their mindset was to create easy navigation to the diverse and changing offerings of the company. Since the company was expanding into new markets and changing the composition of its product set, its brand meaning and value were not well known and misunderstood. Rather than create an information architecture, this company needed a clean Is-Does and a succinct brand organizing principle. In other words…a strategy.

    Part of the assignment was to affect change in the social space. The company, with a good blogging culture, some really smart people and lots of deeds and stories to share, unfortunately gravitated toward Pasting rather than Posting. (Pasting is sending forth other people’s content, with a yay or a nay; Posting is creating original content.)  My admonition was to provide more analysis, and less curating…and to do so on brief.  This takes time. It takes thought and context.  But it’s what readers and users are looking for in their social – in their media.

    Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group posted yesterday about a lack of strategy in social media. Though I haven’t always agreed with Ms. Li, I love that she studies and commits to points of view. Charlene is a thought-leader. A Poster. She is worth way more than the price of admission. Find influential Posters and follow them. Question them, exchange ideas with them — don’t “like” them. Peace.

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