Brand Strategy Exercise. The Claim.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There are two components to brand strategy. That’s right, two. The brand claim and the proof planks. All of which can fit onto a single sheet of paper.

Ideally a claim is an all-encompassing master value which distinguishes your brand. Arriving at a single statement – conjunctions and commas not allowed – is not easy. That said, it’s okay if the claim is pregnant with meaning or a double entendre, but singularity is ideal. (“Sewing Joy” is a claim I used for a market leader in the children’s apparel business.)

Today’s post on the claim is actually more of an exercise.  I encourage brand owners, business owners and/or CMOs to try to find two words that convey their brand’s unique value.  The words don’t even need to work as a meaningful statement, though if they do it’s ideal. The exercise is really about “boiling down” all the good-ats and care-abouts into two words that most efficiently and enthusiastically represent your brand.

Not easy.

I rarely present brand strategy claims that are two words but when I do a la “Sewing Joy,” they can be home runs.  Last point, brand claims are not meant to steal the creative team’s thunder. They are meant to inspire. In ways that governs successful, on-strategy marketing and tactics.

I often say, Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand strategy is indelible.

Try the exercise, you’ll benefit.

Peace.

 

Brand Planning Effluvia.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Many practicing brand planners are well-meaning and talk a good game. But they don’t always deliver the goods. And when I say goods, I mean brand strategy: An organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. A brand strategy’s only measurable job is to win business.

Brand planners who talk about “story” aren’t providing strategy. Those who pepper their brand plans with the words like “mission,” “personality,” “values” and “vision” aren’t delivering strategy. Important planning tools though they may be, they are really the effluvia of the strategy process. CEOs don’t like to sit still for the effluvia, they want the strategy. And the rationale. Not the circuitous route to the strategy.

Strategy is a directive.  One that “sells more, to more, more often, at higher process (Sergio Zyman).  Makers who use brand strategy are charged with creating communications and tactics that helps a brand win in the marketplace. Great makers move markets. But it’s strategist who points the Makers in the business-winning direction. You can give a Maker a story. A voice. Or a vision. But they really need a strategy.  

Peace.

 

 

A Brand Strategy Regret.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

It’s funny when “work stuff” resurfaces years later. Especially in strategy. 

A while back I worked for a reseller of interactive classroom white boards. I trod the halls of many K-12 schools, interviewing teachers, principals, administrators and technology professionals. After much discovery on a once-in-a-lifetime assignment, I landed on a cool brand strategy. “Leading The Educational Spring.” The CEO didn’t buy it.  Timewise it was during the Arab Spring and just after the famous Broadway play Spring Awakening. Contextually and culturally it carried a good deal of meaning. The strategy intent: classroom and learning was in need of reform after 50 years of chalkboard teaching.

The new brand strategy, the one the CEO agreed to, was “Illuminating Learning.” Not bad and certainly endemic. However today, many years later, while reading something in the NYT I’m struck that I may have let the brand down. I should have fought harder.

Movements you see – Strawberry Frog’s Scott Goodson and Chip Walker would agree – are stronger than claims.  If you can keep them. (Thanks Ben Franklin.) And the Educational Spring had a chance to be a movement. A movement with a single brand as champion.

(Caveat: Saying you’re going to create a movement and doing it are two different things.)

Sometimes you need to fight for a strategy. The brand planners’ dilemma. 

Peace.

 

 

 

Cobbler’s Children Part 2.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

One of the first things one must align in brand building is the brand name with the strategy.  It’s not always possible. In the case of What’s The Idea?, the name came first. Ergo the name has to be an asset that goes into the stock pot (metaphor) to be boiled down into the brand claim and proof array (the framework).  Not ideal but certainly real world. A child needs a name.

What’s The Idea? suggests locking onto a single business-winning value.  I repeat a single, motivating value. The brand name is not What Are the Many Ideas?. The single idea derives from customer care-abouts and brand good-ats. The baby stays, the bathwater not so much. Sometimes there is informational nuance in the idea; it might be a pregnant idea. As in, say one thing, get credit for more. Typically, this one thing offers an endemic brand quality/value. Coke is refreshment. Volvo about safety.  

I like to say that the brand claim is an inelegant, non-creative tagline — to be interpreted by the creative agency. All comms should support the claim. The last part of the framework is the proof array, the three planks that support the claim. The planks must be tightly tethered to the claim so as to create believability and logic. Enough about the framework. Onto the actual brand strategy of What’s The Idea?.

For that tune in to the next posts. The cobbler’s children’s shoe will hit the bench beginning tomorrow.

Peace.

 

Cobbler’s Children.

By
Steve Poppe
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0
Cartoon shoemaker (cobbler), isolated on white background. Coloring book design for kids and children.

Have you heard the story about the cobbler’s children? The children in town with the poorest shoes?  The cobbler is so busy he forgets to take care of his family’s footwear. Talk about a bad experiential branding move.  Ironically, it begs the question what is the brand strategy for What’s The Idea?

You mean to say Steve you have never used your tools to create a “claim and proof array” for What’s The Idea?  You douche! 

So where do I start?

Why not with the name? What is the idea?  The name presupposes a lot.  I mean, what cognitive effort is not about an idea?  The reason the question resonates with brand planners and to a lesser extend senior marketing professionals is that there are so many, many ideas in marketing and branding that there are effectively none. It’s like marketers and advertisers are paid by the idea pound, rather than finding a business-winning claim and loading up on it.  Google “Fruit Cocktail Effect.”

Ergo, the first objective of a What’s the Idea? brand strategy is to educate marketing prospects to stake a claim to an idea. More’s the pity. More’s the pithy.

Stay tuned for more on the strategy itself.

Peace.

 

 

 

Perspicuity.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Perspicuous is an adjective derived from the noun perspicuity, it’s defined by Merriam-Webster as

: plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation

In brand planning and brand strategy there’ s not a lot of it going around. Clarity of brand strategy design and presentation are quite lacking. It’s not like it’s string theory or anything, it’s just that most planners are very deep in the roots — deep in the ingredients — and have a hard time ‘splaining what they are actually delivering. Brand strategy is not a bunch of value-laden verses or a brand poetry to be handed off to a client as a muse for creating a brand. It’s not ethereal guidelines for the creation of marketing stuff. It’s an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging. An organizing principle with boundaries, dictates and evidence.

Boiled down, brand strategy is a framework for marketing work. It’s binary and measurable. Yet it is also creative. Better said, it allows for wonderful creativity.

And it all starts with Perspicuity. A clean directive.

Happy to share some samples. Write Steve at WhatsTheIdea.

Peace.

 

Observe, Interpret and Imagine.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve written a lot lately about frameworks and tools used in brand planning but I haven’t really discussed the behavioral drivers of good brand planning. So, let’s have at it.

Back in my anthropology days at Rollins College, I was taught never to insinuate yourself into the culture you are studying. Just Observe. It’s okay to ask for clarification and an explanation as to why people studied do what they do but the idea is to not bring bias into observed behaviors.  One could argue the simple act of asking questions introduces bias. That’s cultural anthropology fieldwork, not brand planning. I am of the mind that good questions beget good answers. Caring, thoughtful, energizing even fun questions get people to open up. Therefore, in brand planning it is okay to insinuate oneself — so long as you don’t lead the witness and you play the interested student.

Interpret is the key behavior. Gather information and as I once heard an AT&T product manager say, “Do something smart with it.”  This requires gut. Not guts. Gut.  What are the most important consumer care-abouts and brand good-ats? Plot them, organize them, and most importantly prioritized them.

Lastly, there is Imagine. Use your imagination to project what will come to pass if everything went right. If you created a strategy that was in sync with the product’s truest value, but also delivered a warm predisposition toward the product. An indelible one. Imagine what it looks like to make consumers love you. And why.

Observe. Interpret. Imagine.  These are the behaviors of great brand planners.

Peace.

 

 

Frame The Work.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The Miriam Webster Dictionary defines the word framework as “a basic conceptional structure (as of ideas).” Also, “a skeletal, openwork, or structural frame.” As mentioned before in this blog if you Google brand strategy framework you’ll uncover over 100 million results. Results that comprise charts, diagrams, stair steps, serial thought bubbles and a mish mash of other marko-babble.

Simple man me, over the last two/tree decades I’ve worked to come up with what I believe to be a reductive framework for brand strategy: One brand claim, three proof planks. Some argue this is an over-simplification. I would argue, others are making things too complicated. Somewhere in the Art of War, I’m betting Sun Tsu skewers overcomplicating one’s foray.

Consumers often remember commercials more than they remember the product. Why is that? The entertainment complicates the pitch.  And when the pitch delivered as one claim, and one of three proof planks, it’s easy to focuses.

Moreover, often brand strategy isn’t even strategy.  It’s a bunch or words, insights and emotional directives that open the door to advertising. Advertising sans proof. Sure, it might move ad awareness. Sure, it might win awards and garner press. Or drive some clicks. But does the advertising predispose the consumer to purchase? And for the right reasons?

Don’t misidentify brand planning tools for strategy. More on that next time.

Peace.

Reinvention.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand planners are reinventors. Faris Yakob, a leader of the pack, rightly says “all ideas are recombinant.” Meaning, there’s nothing new. Only new packaging. I like to think we are reinventors. Invention being the mother of necessity and all. He just said it better.

Brand planning is like peeling an onion. Layers. And more layers. But at some point you need to put a stake in the ground and deliver a strategy. At What’s The Idea? I deliver a brief and a more operative Claim and Proof array (a single sheeter). The array is a living breathing list of proofs, organized under three key values (planks). The time prior to the strategy being delivered is BS. Before Strategy. Anything after is aftermarket discovery, is AS. After Strategy.

The beauty of my framework (claim and proof) is that all people involved are always on the prowl for more ways to prove the claim. With every proof unearthed we make another deposit in the brand bank. We are also giving the ad agency and agency-ettes fodder for new and exciting work.

Brand strategies are like children to me. Whenever I see a potential new proof point for one of my brands I light up. And pass it on. Brand strategies are 20% BS and 80% AS. And then you die.  Hee hee.

Peace.

 

Wage War on Cliches.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brand strategists are in a battle against cliches. A great copywriter (Walter Weir?) once wrote “If it sounds like copy, it’s good copy.”  Well, that’s antithetical to brand strategy work. Though brand planners are not in the business of producing creative, we are in the business of inspiring creative. And if a copywriter or art director doesn’t appreciate an inspirational idea, who does?  The problem with brand strategy is it’s often poorly articulated. Poorly evangelized. And cliched.

Consumers, btw, are so used to cliches in advertising they shut down. And today, one trillion ad messages in, that’s a recipe for extinction.  Can you say AI?  

I am of the mind that cliched brand strategies are more deadly than cliched ads. That’s not to say “different for different’s sake” is right.  “Coke is refreshment” – still one the of most powerful brand strategy claims extant — may sound a bit clichéd for a soft drink, but refreshment is so replete with inspirational it crackles off the creative pen.

Cliches are verboten in brand planning work. But tying inherent, endemic brand values to your brand strategy is what success really looks like. Flame broiled. The world’s information in one click.

Wage war against cliches, but always, always mine the endemic values.

Peace.

 

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