Random

    Marketing

    Brand Strategy Alignment.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When I ask new clients “What is your product strategy?” I get a funny look. Typically, they respond with something like “Make the best possible product, meet the specific needs of the customer, and provide it with a level of service the exceeds their expectation.” Or some such goulash.

    Even service companies will use similar words.

    Once that gibberish is out of the way, I dig down deep on product (or service) — past the derma to the muscle, the circulatory system and bone. I’m looking for tangibility. What makes your beer taste different? And don’t say the natural ingredients. We always get there, but it takes time. There is always a leverageable differentiator…or four.   

    Once the client and I agree on a product strategy, it’s time to ask about the experience strategy. And finally the messaging strategy. Some teeth-pulling may be required to get actual answers, but it’s necessary. When all three strategies are on the table we look to see if there is alignment.

    Once misalignment is acknowledged, work can begin. Organization can begin. Brand strategy can begin.

    Peace.

     

    Are you brand planner material?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    Ovarian cancer kills 15,000 women in the U.S. every year. 22,000 women are newly diagnosed every year. These are statistics. Grim statistics. Typical Americans see these type of statistics daily in the news and have become somewhat inured – until it hits home, that is. Murder statistics, KIA war statistics and obesity statistics all fall into this category. Marketers, on the other hand, live on statistics: annual sales, unit sales, target pop size, share of market. Account or brand planners care not a whit about the numbers. They care about blood pressure and galvanic skin response. When we talk about saving for college with young moms are they sweating? What does that say about their choice of husband? Their self worth? Can a planner actually smell fear? It does have an aroma you know. Emotions and feelings are what planners care about…and we mine them one person at a time.

    If you love statistics it’s okay to get into marketing. If you love people, get into planning. The dude from the TV show Elementary who plays Sherlock Holmes may be a great observer with a bag full of analytical tricks, but he is not good at getting people to share. So Sherlocks need not apply either.

    Like people? Want to give people moments of happiness, satiety and comfort? Become a brand planner.  

     

    A View From HR

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Paul Gumbinner, a NYC recruiter, writes the great blog entitled View From Madison Avenue. He published a piece yesterday suggesting job seekers should never take career advice from parents or friends; the best advice comes people who study companies and “employee fit” for a living.  Brilliant counsel.

    As a brand planner, one trick I use to understand the market place I’m working in is to interview senior competing HR people in that category.  As Mr. Gumbinner I’m sure will attest, this technique generates lots of qualitative data about the market, the people, competitive set and chatter on the street. An HR person who interviews scores of mid-level and senior people a week in, say, the enterprise software business, tends to know who’s hot and what’s hot. You planners out there should try it. Nice shortcut. Peace!

    The Channel and the Ear.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    A bar that sells Hoegaarden (pronounced Hoo- Garden) is a bar I can appreciate.  As a kid in college when I met someone new I went straight to their record collection to gauge their taste in music.  Any Airplane? Rashaan Roland Kirk? Doc Watson?

    When Brooklyn Brewery introduces a beer outside the states it carefully selects the bars it introduces in.  The bars have to fit the Brooklyn mold. The barkeeps must be conversant in beer, the owner has to understand the Brooklyn taste profile. Brooklyn, when introduced to a new customer, requires a narrative. And the bar itself, must bespeak of the Brooklyn Brewery vibe. These select bars, in effect, become spokespeople of the brand.  The channel helps define the new product experience.  Outside the US, Brooklyn is a premium beer.  Beyond the hipster-ish name, the brand does not convey a lot. So a selling hand is required.

    This is how Brooklyn gets a foot hold in a new market.

    This is how good marketers need to look at their launches. While I’m doing brand research for clients, I look beyond the corporate boilerplate. Beyond the quarterly financial reports. I dig past the trade journalists and category consultants – I look to the channel. And I sniff around for passionate users who I feel understand the language of the product. The language of the consumer. (Depending on the category, these special consumers are often Posters – content creators who spend time on the web.)  Annie Prouxl, before she wrote The Shipping News spent a good deal of time in Newfoundland breakfast joints listening to the locals.  That book didn’t come out of a travel guide or Wikipedia, it came from listening. Peace. 

     

    Kid Rock Blowin’ Smart Bubbles

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    Kid Rock is an American treasure. The real deal. Whether raunchy or mellifluous (listen to “Picture" with Sheryl Crow,) Kid sings his ass off. He also cares about and understands the music business. Read some of his exchanges with noted music blogger Bob Lefsetz as proof. Yesterday Kid ended his long hold-out allowing Rhapsody to sell his music digitally. Until this deal, you had to buy Kid Rock music … bawitdaba da bang a dang diggy diggy… on CDs.  

     

    One provision of the the deal is that you must buy full albums. Very smart. The single cut is killing artist loyalty.  If you don’t listen to a whole album you can’t truly get an artist. Plus burn-out on a song and artist is more likely when listening only to select cuts.  The single digital download why more and more one-hit-wonders are emerging. Kid Rock knows this. Peace!

     

      

    Let’s Rid Twitter of the Effluvia.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    One of the criteria I use for deciding whether to follow someone on Twitter is the degree to which they post original content. If they tend to repost or point to others’ content I tend to stay away. In other words, I favor Posters over Pasters. For me, Twitter reflects a person, place or thing’s personality. Capturing passions, sentiments, humorous moments, or likes and dislikes in 140 characters, is a wonderful way to experience people.

    Done poorly, Twitter is a bunch of people pointing to other people’s stuff. It may be well-meaning but it’s still curation. Any time I look at someone’s feed and see numbers, as in “7 rules for…” or “the 4 best places…,” I know I am in Paster land. Pasters think they are making us smarter. Pasters think they are helping us with our careers. Pasters think we’ll buy their pasta because we’re “friends.” Nuh uh.

    Twitter is the fastest way to get to know someone. Bar none. (Great HR people know this.) But not if that someone is pasting other’s content. That’s effluvia. Peace.

    Moto

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0
    Motorola, a company that has had its ups and downs over the past 15 years, made the cover of the Wall Street Journal today for its rather sudden fall from earnings grace. This was attributed to Moto’s not having a big hardware winner after the amazing run of the Razr cell phone line.  The article cites how the company didn’t properly anticipate and prepare for next generation cell service. For a company that used to build and market cell infrastructure switches, this is a bit surprising. In the consumer marketing business, you always have to look forward, it seems Moto didn’t.
     
    In a couple of days, my company’s first big product launch, Zude, will go off and I’m expecting it to be huge. The Internet being what it is, we may have millions of users in a matter of days, weeks or months. But what’s next? That’s the truly exciting question. 
     
    I’m already looking ahead. May 1st 2007 (our beta launch date) is so 2006.
     

    Gossip Girl doesn’t do Richie Rich.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

     
    A friend and co-worker of mine is an investor in a trendy clothing company called Heatherette. Heatherette’s key designers, Richie Rich and Traver Rains, throw a runway show during New York Fashion Week that one is unlikely to forget. The Fall show had on its runway Lil Mama, Jenna Jameson and Kim Kardashian. Anyway, I’m a big Gossip Girl fan and Richie (especially) and Travers are quite camera friendly and animated, so I told my friend he should contact the show producers and try and get a Heatherette product placement or, better yet, Richie and Travers written into a show storyline.
     
    Apparently the PR person didn’t think it a good idea. Too bad.
     
     
    It seems that though the TV show isn’t off the charts in terms of weekly viewers, its loyal followers are buying the fashions worn on the show ass-over-tea-kettle; some kids and young women, in fact, are walking into stores with magazine pages showing the kilts, blazers, etc. they can’t live without.
     
    This fish definitely got away.
     
     

    The Future of Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Brian Clark of GMD Studios in NYC and Winter Park, FL, home of Rollins College, is a diamond-in-the-rough marketing consultant.  He’s kind of like Jonas Salk the inventor of the polio vaccine, before the invention.  Brian gets marketing, he really gets film, his views on transmedia (the flow between media types) are prescient and he keeps his eyes open. Brian enjoys his view beyond the dashboard.

    I met him a couple of times, once while we worked as contractors for JWT on Microsoft, and he knows where we are going with this multimedia thing. A statement like that presumes I know where we are going, but follow Brian’s lead first.

    He’s a diamond-in-the-rough, I say, because this stuff is hard to fully comprehend. Selling better is hard. Experiential marketing is real but much of it is still theoretical. So when Brian does presos on phenomenology, he’s in the ballpark but it’s a bit rough. And heady. (Check it out on Slideshare.)  Transmedia, as a term, is in the ballpark too but lacks poetry. My view of the experiential and transmedia realm, using language like “fast twitch media” and “twitch point planning” is a bit more intriguing and motivating, but still theoretical.

    Thanks to technology and thanks to art forms – with more art forms to be invented – we are on the verge of major media and marketing advance. The inventions are a comin’.  And fun it will be. Do help! And watch Brian and his company.  Peace.    

    The Is-Does and Branding Fundies.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I came up with the branding Is-Does a while back because while operating in the technology sector I realized many start-ups don’t always know what their company “is.”  Oddly, it’s also true in some Fortune 500 companies. Case in point: the CEO of the world’s largest home care company for whom I did some consulting went around the room at an executive gathering asking each officer “What business do you think we’re in?” He was referring to the managed care part of the business, but it was still a billion dollar revenue stream. And the “is” is the easy stuff. The “does” is what gives people fits.

    A chief technology officer at software company I worked for could not answer the “What the business does?” question in a half hour.   

    The Is-Does is a wonderful brand planning starting point.  It’s not a mission, or a brand promise, elevator speech or brief. It answers the question what a brand “is” and what a brand “does.”  Keith Hernandez might call them fundies. 

    I was invited into a meeting at an important non-profit.  I say important because it was a community center in a under-served neighborhood trying to save lives and build lives. The meeting had close to 25 people including a song writer, teachers, web-o-files, marketers, community advocates, nutritionists and more.  The facilitator (a branding dude) had a huge pad, a marker and as he was getting ready to lay down some marketing rhymes, you could tell he didn’t know exactly where to start.  So I suggested the Is-Does. And off we went. Peace!

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