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    claim and proof

    My Brand Strategy Secret.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Clients pay me for two deliverables: brand strategy and marketing plans. I can’t do the latter without the former. It’s possible to pretend, even hide the brand strategy component, but without strategy the marketing planning is a little bit like paint-by-numbers.

    gem miningSo how do I approach brand strategy development?  I look for proof. How does a guy walk into a company and in a matter of days or week know a brand well enough to create a strategy that will operationalize marketing success? Proof. A hunt for proof.

    Proof of what, you ask? Ahhh, that’s the $64,000 question. At the beginning, it’s way too early to tell. Each brand presents a clean slate. As I trek through fact-finding, data, sales, consumer and business partner interviews, I come across lots and lots of claim-ish fluff. But when tangible proof rises up, it is easily noted. Proof may be found in behavior. In deeds, business decisions, investments. Product taste. Product experience. It’s everywhere. With enough proof arrayed and smartly clustered, the brand planner can begin to formulate the brand claim and key support planks. And that is the secret sauce of What’s The Idea?. Proof hunting.

    Rest in peace David Carr.      

     

    Where The Real Money Is in Branding.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I read a passage in The New York Times yesterday quoting a Ukrainian soldier saying “Every yard taken felt like a mile.”  I mean no disrespect to the soldier.  I’m sitting in a comfortable chair not in a muddy foxhole. And as powerful and “real” as this sentence is, filled with life- and-death consequences it points toward something in communications and, more particularly, brand strategy worth thinking about.

    What makes my brand strategy practice different from  others is “proof.”  My framework uses one claim and three proof planks to deliver the ongoing, ever-going story. Everyone in the brand strategy business offers a claim. It’s rare to find someone who mines the proof.  If I tell you I’m it’s different than me lifting your stove. With proof you believe me. It makes an impression.

    As powerful as the “Every yard felt like a mile” reference goes it lacked proof. “I lay prone in mud for 6 hours, looking at the enemy through a 1inch window between my helmet and the mud. I urinated into a hole I dug with my thumb and forefinger. Afraid to drink water all day for fear of getting my elbow shot off.” You get the point.

    Copywriters today are the backbone of marketing.  But strategists need to give the proof with which to work. The claim is the easy part, the proof is the money.

    Peace.     

     

     

    Is-Does and Claim and Proof.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Claim and proof may be my biggest contribution to the brand planning world. But first a story about another planning tool meme: the Is-Does. I was sitting in a parlor in Brooklyn many years ago with a number of stakeholders and volunteers for Bailey’s Café a community organization designed help Bed-Stuy students. We were all there to talk about building momentum. No one knew where to start the conversation so enter the planner. “Let’s go around the room and answer these two questions,” I suggested, “What Is Bailey’s Care? and What Does Bailey’s Café Do?” And we were off. Always the get Is-Does right. Back to claim and proof.

    Claim and Proof.
    I’m currently working with a local small business trying to punch up a flagging business hurt by the coronavirus. We’re looking to use social media, unpaid media, to generate some activity and business without spending money. After zeroing in on a part of the business that seems most fertile and the quickest to triage and I asked the business owner to send me some copy points about the products. As with most marketers, I received a list of claims. Claims are the oxygen marketing runs on today. But they’re a dime a dozen. Unsupported claims riddle the airways and byways of the advertising landscape. We’re drowning in claims. So we spent our time turning those claims to proofs. Evidence. Demonstrations. The things that make claims real.

    Proofs build brands. And not random proofs. Organized, disciplined proof. Your claim directs the organizing principle but the proof gives it substance.

    Peace.

     

     

     

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