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De Facto Brand Strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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Brand taglines are de facto brand strategies. More specifically, they are de facto brand claims.  (An actual brand strategy comprises one claim and three proof planks. (A claim by itself is simply advertising.)

Yesterday we had a couple of boxes of cat food delivered by Chewy. Smart ecommerce model, yes?  They’re the Amazon of petfood.  On the boxes were the following tagline “Where pet lovers shop.”  It’s a nice, warm and fuzzy advertising line but, frankly, not a powerful brand claim.

Let’s parse the meaning. Secondly, it tells everybody Chewy is where shopping takes place. Kind of superfluous. Basically this is saying it’s a commercially available product. As for the first positioning Chewy for lovers of pets, all I can say is that the claim doesn’t speak to pet haters. Again, no real there there.

Brand strategy informs people what a brand Is and what a brand Does. (The Is-Does.)  It also organizes for consumers discreet values derived from customers’ most pronounced care-abouts and the brand’s primary good-ats. Boiling these down to three planks is the heavy lifting of the brand strategist.

Brand taglines must reflect the brand strategy claim. If not, it is wasted energy.  Off the top of my head, I can offer up a handful of more powerful brand claims for Chewy than where pet lovers shop.  

My guess is this is a line developed by the ad agency. As a bow atop the end of a commercial.  Chewy and my cat Harry deserve better.

Peace.

 

 

New Normal.

By
Steve Poppe
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If we have learned anything as businesses the last couple of years it’s that we have to account for the new normal. And by new normal I mean pandemic and war. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, “padded” and stockpiled money in the face of this new normal, setting aside $902 million dollars in a so-called “rainy day fund.” How many small and mid-size businesses can say the same?

As a brand strategist who designs business-building guidelines for product, experience and messaging, I understand the importance of accounting for the new normal. Brand strategy informs how a company deals with and responds to the new normal. It goes beyond setting money aside, it provides a framework for action plans and change management plans – all of which are on-brand.

Brand strategy provides a security blanket in tough times. A place of comfort from which to make difficult decisions.

Peace.

 

 

Strangers Rock

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I had a neat conversation with a dear friend of mine yesterday who shall remain nameless. He’s an alcoholic, sober for decades now.  One of the things that has kept him on the straight and narrow over the years is being a sponsor at AA.  My dude loves to help others. It gives his life big-ass purpose.

Yesterday he told me the people he speaks to in AA and those he deals with at work – he works with disabled veterans, making their homes more accessible – is that they are all strangers to him at first. And as such, they feel a freedom to open up to him. When he is dealing with peoples’ truths and important issues he can be most helpful. In fact, he joked, some of the things that come out of his mouth are advice he himself should take.  

I identified with his talking-to-strangers notion as that’s what I do in my brand strategy work. Yeah I’m mining for insights, yeah I’m studying data, yeah I observe and hypothesize consumer trends, but first and foremost I talk with people. People who are the buyers, potential buyers and influencers of buyers.

I make it easy on those strangers to tell me the truth. I never position myself as someone who needs to be impressed. I don’t judge, in fact I try to disarm with a personal numb-nuts story or two. Then shoot quickly past the niceties and jump into the work of listening and learning.

I tell truths and I expect my interviewees to tell the truth.

Strangers rock.    

 

Google and Carbon Footprints.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

On its homepage today Google promotes it is Carbon Neutral since 2007.  I believe Google. But I also Googled “Google’s carbon footprint.” The result?

“Google unleashed 12,529,953 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2019. That’s roughly equivalent to more than 2.73 million passenger vehicles’ pollution in a year.

That’s a lot of nasty gas. The fact the company has been carbon neutral since 2007 doesn’t mean they aren’t releasing CO2, it just means they are buying carbon offsets to minimize their CO2 pollution until they can meet their 2030 goal, stated as “We’re decarbonizing our energy consumption so that by 2030, we’ll operate on carbon-free energy, everywhere, 24/7.”

Being carbon neutral or, better yet, zero carbon is the goal of planetary health. Google gets that. But their server farms are causing greenhouse gases like few others. The good news is they want to fix it. Buying carbon offsets until such a time as they can actually power their farms with renewable energy is laudable. But for the next 8ish years, it’s still a spew-fest. And the globe is warming.  I would not be surprised to see parent company Alphabet get into the energy business. If they are listening, a topic for another day, I suggest they use the next 8 years researching and developing renewables. It’s a better near-term mission than colonizing Mars.

Peace.

 

 

Positive Potentialities?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I read a lot of blogs and newsletters by brand planners and it seems we index high for mental discomfort. This is not a quantitative observation, just me projecting. We’re good at reading people and their feelings. It helps us be in touch with our own mental well-being.  We are not complainers.  In general, we are willing to share our difficulties with others for the greater good. It helps us by not keeping things bottled up, which in turn can help others.

Yesterday, I wrote about shining light when creating brand strategy. Aspire rather than dispire (sic). But sometimes it’s important to look at the full spectrum of attitudes and feelings when brand planning. Knowing consumer anxieties and their depth can help with the light. Small business loans can be stressful. Small business loans for the BIPOC community or the under-banked can be really stressful. It wouldn’t be smart to think that all loan customers are looking to build a dream business with their newfound capital. Some are looking to get out from under. Yet most ads about small business loans focus on the positive potentialities. It can be tone-deafening.

You can still shine light while being real. While understanding the totality of emotions that go into borrowing money. That’s good art. And that’s good brand craft.

Peace.

 

 

Aspire. Don’t Dispire.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

As a group, I think brand planners are pretty good at delving into feelings and psyches. Reading people. Especially excitements, highs, lows and anxieties.

The best of our questions when doing brand planning interviews hit personal hot buttons. Not just likes and dislikes but prides and prejudices, favorites and heroes. I personally like to inject my excitement into an interview to trigger others’ enjoyments.  Downer or negative interviews are the wrong footing for good brand planning. We aspire, we don’t dispire (new word). Brand planners do best when shining light.

Brand strategy done right creates muscle memory around positive attitudes. Attitudes that create brand predisposition.  That’s my secret.  Don’t pass it on.  Hee hee.

Peace.

 

 

 

Benefit Stringing.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I often rant about advertising that is 90 percent claim, 10 percent proof…a bad ratio. But today I’m going to chat about ads that make a claim but don’t take time to explain the benefit.  They just jump on to the next claim – stringing benefits.

Mathnasium is a national chain of math tutors. I heard a billboard of theirs yesterday on National Public Radio. Billboards are hard because they are only 15 seconds long. They tend to fall prey to benefit stringing.

In the Mathnasium billboard they claimed “customized learning plans,” then jumped to something else. Having worked on a brand plan for a math tutoring organization, I know how textured customized learning plans can be. If Mathnasium were smart marketers and wanted to get meaningful attention of parents, they could have used the full 15 seconds on the topic. Instead, they tried to jam as much shallow information into the billboard as they could. And it rendered a “we’re here” ad — nothing more than name recognition and contact info.

If you are trying to convince parents your math tutoring firm is better than others, you need to educate them.  Customized learning plans unexplained are about as differentiating as “qualified math tutors.”

The best advertising and the best brand plans understand education is the key to preference not sales copy by the pound.

Peace.

 

Meaning.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

About a year ago I developed a brand strategy lite document for a local math tutor I was mentoring through the Venture Asheville Elevate program. Here are the first two slides from that presentation:

(Slide 1)

Caveats:

  • The brand claim is not a tagline.
  • (Brand name) is well-named but not well understood. It’s our job to add meaning.
  • Lastly, the work has only just begun. You need to build the brand through deeds, proof(s) and culture…and new service offerings.

(Slide 2)

Precis:

  • A brand strategy, carried out effectively, is easily played back in research by customers thanks to its clarity, succinctness and endemic values.
  • Marketing’s job is to deliver the strategy through product and tactics.
  • All tactics and communications should make deposits in the brand bank (not withdrawals).              

I must have been having a good day because these couple of slides, with the exception of the well-named bullet, apply to all my clients — large and small. 

(Just to level-set, my definition of brand strategy is “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” And my brand strategy framework is “1 claim and 3 proof planks.”)

People on Quora often ask what’s the difference between a brand and a product. Someone smart once said “a brand is an empty vessel into which we pour meaning.” Adding meaning is what a brand strategist does. Organizing and prioritizing meaning. How do you do that?  Not through words which is the most common mistake of marketers. You add meaning through deeds, proof and culture (which enables more deeds and proof.)

The end result of brand work is consumer understanding.  Not awareness. Understanding that is programed in by the brand manager. When consumers play back the specific brand values you promote (via research), you and your agents are doing your job.

Frankly, it’s quite easy.  Once you have a plan. A brand plan.

Peace.

 

Strategy. Tactics. Flow.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The marketing world is overwrought with tactics. Tactics get budgets and we all know budgets are the oxygen that drive marketing.  

The total universe of marketing people, including those in allied industries advertising, web development, publishing and retailing, probably amounts to just under 75 million people globally. While I’m placing educated bets, I’d venture to say 98% of those people are involved in tactics – leaving 2% for strategy. If my math is correct that 1.5M strategists worldwide. 

Of that number what percent of people are mostly concerned with the strategy of tactics? Things like “open rate,” “CTR,” “A/B tests,” and “Advertising-to-Sales Ratio?” The analytics of success and failure? A big chunk is my guess.

Early in my career while working on AT&T I learned the organizing principle that is brand strategy can be measured scientifically and plotted in a way that explains sales. No really! People’s attitudes, beliefs, and loyalties toward a brand can be tracked directly to sales. Ergo a return on brand strategy (ROBS). Returns on tactics is what concerns most marketers but doesn’t take into account consumers’ psychological proclivities. Return on tactics is all plumbing. ROBS is about the flow.  And flow is what master brand strategists care mostly about.

Love to chat you up about improving your flow. Contact Steve@whatstheidea.com

Peace.

 

 

 

A Powerful Brand Idea is Indelible.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Mining consumer insights and understanding human behavior are the key tools of the brand planner. It’s our day job. How we mine varies from planner to planner. The secret sauce and what we get paid for, though, is using those insights and behaviors to position a product in a way that increases sales conviction among consumers.  

In my case, positioning is laid out as a single brand claim, supported by three proof planks. That’s my methodology.

Knowing which insights to develop into a claim and proof array is the money maker.  Most purchasers of brand strategy are looking for a strategic and maybe creative spark to ignite consumer sales conviction.  A pithy line perhaps. A magnetic logo visual. A campaign idea. Or a disruptive retail approach. Metaphorically, many sell the dressing on the salad or the icing on the cake. I sell the base idea. And the supporting science for the idea (the planks).

There’s a saying at What’s The Idea?, “Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible.”  And that idea is simply conveyed in words.  It’s the result of a boil-down of insights and behaviors stated in a clear but hopefully poetic way.  Steak not sizzle.  For examples please write Steve at WhatsTheIdea.

Peace.

 

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