Random

    Brand Strategy

    Made for People Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    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.

     

     

     

    Oatly. In a Fallow Field?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’ve been following Oatly for a while.  Not long ago it was a hot, topical oat milk company.  Based in Malmo Sweden, it has great distribution in the states. In fact, Oatly cartons are all over my High Five coffee shop here in Asheville.

    Oatly IPOed, hired a smart chief creative officer and ran what was arguably one of the better TV commercial on the 20121 Super Bowl — at least in terms of watchability. Sadly, Oatly stock has languished around $4 for the better part of this year, far from its high $28 in the early days.

    So what’s wrong?  Smart people at Oatly are asking that same question, yet nothing seems to be happening. Certainly not on the stock front. Or brand front.

    Oatly once couldn’t keep up with demand. Now, it says it has fallen prey to a poor economy.  Oatly had a brand that captivated.  That is no longer the case. It became a commodity according to some pundits.  I don’t believe that. Strong brands cannot be commoditized. They have valued meaning. Just because the company is on its heels does not mean it cannot capture the world’s attention again.

    I cannot figure out the company brand strategy and I study these things.  So, if I don’t know what it is, consumers certainly won’t.  Oatly will make a comeback. Or they won’t. But if the former they need a brand strategy to wrap around their products. And they had better start quickly. The world’s turning…

    Peace.

     

     

    Brand Strategy is Business Strategy Requited.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    “Decision making filter” are words Ana Andjelic uses to describe brand. I wonder if we are kin from another mother.  When I read her newsletter post “Why VCs should pay attention to brands,” I felt a special kinship. My descriptor for brand strategy is “An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” And if you boil down my words or ladder them down, it yields decision-making filter. Take action based upon a strategy.

    When we use words the brand rather than business, business people get uncomfortable.  They think we’re talking brand ephemera: logo, color palette, tagline, voice, and such. HELL NO. We are talking strategy. Strategy that is bi-directional. Or full duplex. That means we are not just leveling a strategy at consumers, but we are bringing consumers into the strategy, so they can play it back to us. So they believe they are the participants and propagators of the mission.

    Business strategy is one way. Brand strategy is two-way. Love can be unrequited, but it’s not fulsome love. Brand strategy is business strategy requited.

    Why Ana’s post is important is VCs tend to stop at business strategy – at financial viability and ferocious growth.  Branding is about completing the circle. Creating a fertile, long-term garden. One that fertilizes itself.

    Peace.

     

     

    Sticky Brands

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    In a piece of 2014 research conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on the subject of customer experience, the top box response to the question below was about message uniformity.

    I know to the hammer everything looks like a nail and to the brand planner everything marketing thing looks like brand strategy, but this one made my day. Brand strategy, defined here at  What’s The Idea? as “An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging,” is the key to message uniformity. Sure “voice,” “tone” and “personality” are important (ish) but the substance of the message is how one builds brands.

    Find your claim. Identify your three proof planks, make sure they are key care-abouts and brand good-ats, and you have a strategy.

    Stick to it and it will stick to your customers. And prospects.  

    Happy holidays to all. Peace.

     

    Swimming With the Tide.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    When meeting with a new client, one should not jump right into the water and evaluate pricing, distribution and promotion — not without first understanding the product. If you begin with the first three components of marketing without fully understanding he product/service, you’re likely to observe, form insights and think about suggestions based upon “generic” category understandings.

    Generic category information is what consumers default to, it’s what they believe about your product if they don’t know you.  You are simply a product swimming in the tide of public opinion.

    It is imperative, I repeat, it is imperative, to fully understand the product before forming any sort of suggestion about marketing.  It’s a strategy first, tactics last approach.  

    Brand strategy is about differentiation. It’s about positioning around heightened value. It is about proving that value with every breath. With every dollar. Mic drop.

    Swimming with the marketing tide does not make you Tide. It makes you menhaden.  (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?)

    Peace.

     

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    Under-complicate Your Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I am a simple man.  It’s something I often say at the beginning of introductory meetings with perspective What’s The Idea? clients. What are the negative implications of this lead in? I’m not smart. I don’t think things through all the way. Perhaps my education is lacking? It may not be the best foot forward, yet it works for me. You see, it is an everyman, everywomen, everythey statement that fits nicely into brand strategy.

    The US collective consumer does not have time to overthink every purchase.  In fact that statement has given rise to branding itself: consumers attach value to brands so they don’t have to examine every purchase.  It simplifies their lives.

    My brand strategy framework (one claim, three proof planks) simplifies branding so consumers make quicker assignations of brand values. They don’t have to overthink a purchase. Consumers get what the product is — something particularly important in the digital/technology age. And, they quickly get the product value/advantage.  Moreover, they get that advantage and can articulate it with proof…not advertising superlatives. Proof is the fuel on which What’s The Idea runs.

    If you make your brand simple to understand, then give consumers a clear array of reasons to believe its value, you win.

    Under-complicate. Be clear. Be selective in your key values. See? Simple.

    Peace.   

     

     

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

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    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.

     

     

    When Brand Equity Doesn’t Travel.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Bob Gilbreath’s book Marketing With Meaning is an important read for all marketing strategists and executives. Without “meaning” in marketing deliverables we are simply singing. Not that good songs don’t sometimes work, they do; but a meaningful selling premise motivates.

    Meaning is an imperative for brand planners, when creating an organizing principle for a brand. Finding a pent up demand consumers desire – one that your product can fulfill —  is hard enough.  Landing on a desire that extends across buying targets is some seriously heavy lifting.  This is a problem for most brand marketers.  

    As one’s planning audience grows in size and complexity, the focus of the desire has to lessen. And the meaning delivered even more so. 

    This is why many brand extensions fail. A company that has meaning with one target and adds a new one, often finds out the brand equity doesn’t travel.  I once blamed Google for its “culture of technological obesity.”  It was eating everything in its way, independent of its palette.  Marketers need to know what businesses not to get in to.  He happy with your meaning.  Unfortunately, it’s that money thing, that stockholder thing that turns us crazy. So we expand, lose focus and add fish to the burger menu. 

    Let’s be happy with success marketers. Don’t hedge your bets by adding more targets; get better at what you do. Protect your meaning. Peace!

     

    Marmot’s super bowl spot.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    (This post originaly appeared February 10, 2016, then was taken down die to a hack.)

    I love the Marmot brand. I ski in Marmot, I sleep in Marmot, I do outdoors stuff in Marmot. I want to own more of it.  The gear is well-designed, engineered-to-the-max and good looking.  They’ve done a wonderful job with branding and marketing. (I have tend pole that bent, and it doesn’t even bother me. Why? Because Marmot is like family.)

    Then, before the Super Bowl, I saw a Marmot teaser ad campaign and knew I wasn’t going to like. Super Sunday I saw the real thing.  It’s a Goodby, Silverstein and Partners spot, focusing around, you guessed it, a marmot. Were this toilet tissue or insurance, maybe. But cuddly talking Marmot? Oy. I can only imagine the 2 other campaigns the agency pitched to beat this one. It should never have been presented. Lazy ass trade craft. It is so unfitting of the brand.

    I can just imagine the engineers in the goose down research center, breathing feathers all day, watching the game on TV with their friends. “A talking marmot, really?” No wonder advertising and marketing people have a bad name in engineering focused companies.

    As a brand strategy guy and Marmot fan it was a sad day. Even if the spot tested off the charts with the teens and tweens – the next generation of buyers – it was a brand mistake. A 5 million dollar mistake. And that’s a lot of feathers.

    Peace.    

     

     

     

    Brand Science.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    There has been so much talk this past few years about fake news and fake facts that I thought I’d slide that discussion into the business I am in and the business of most commercial products: Branding. Lots has been written and discussed about brands. An entire lexicon has developed about the art of branding. The processes. The journeys. The architectures, components and touchpoints. But all if it is for naught if, to borrow some words from Sergio Zyman, the efforts don’t sell more, to more, more times at higher prices.

    Sadly, there’s tons of fake branding and there shouldn’t be. Because done properly branding is a science. In marketing and communications, you are either putting deposits in the brand bank or you are making withdrawals. You are either adding value – organized value – or removing it.

    Branding as a science is provable. Replicable. It’s binary. Off or on. It’s also formulaic.  That is to say, once a brand strategy is established (one claim three proof planks), the way forward — the way to establish value in the minds of consumer — is clear. But in order for everything to work, you have to get the formula right. And once the formula is right it shouldn’t change, not until the product changes.

    You don’t build a house without a foundation. You shouldn’t build a brand without a strategy.

    Peace.

     

     

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