While CPG led the way on TV advertising, they trail dramatically on Social Media

20 October 2013

From the 1950s to the 1990s, CPG brand marketing teams had perfected the 30 second TV commercial. Advertising was all about awareness and creating purchase intent by taking what you do better than your competitor and shouting it at consumers over and over again until you could gain market share. Now in this new world of social media, the CPG brands seem to be struggling the most. The CPG brands were starting to master that 30 second TV ad, with positioning work, a creative brief, animatic copy testing, full-scale production and then a steady media plan of GRPs.

But, with digital media and social media, the CPG brands are the brands that are struggling the most.

I grew up in the CPG space, working for J&J, Coke and General Mills, and I love CPG marketing because in that space the brands aren’t all that exciting so it always took marketing genius to make the most of them and bring a bit of magic to them.

But as the media mix has dramatically changed over the last decade, CPG Brand Leaders have to recognize the change in the marketing model. For generations, they talked AT the consumer, but now they have to talk WITH the consumer. In the old school marketing, CPG Brand Leaders were trained to try to INTERRUPT the consumer in a busy part of their day and then YELL at them over and over again. It was all about AWARENESS-PURCHASE-LOYALTY where Awareness leads to conversion to Purchase which then the brand experience leads to Loyalty. The new school of marketing is all about LOYALTY-AWARENESS-PURCHASE where the most loyal users will be the ones driving Awareness and the influence of the conversion to purchase. It’s no longer about yelling at strangers on TV. Instead, you have to engage your most loyal consumers, and they become the medium for reaching new users as they WHISPER advice to their friends.

But that’s where the problem lays: how do you get consumers to talk about brands that have very little talk value? Yes, doing social media for Apple, Whole Foods or Mercedes relies on the fact that consumers are already talking about these brands at the lunch table.

Types of Brands

But the reason why CPG brands used the type of interruptive style marketing style is because it suited the type of brand it is: low involvement and low importance. Looking at the chart below, I call this a COMMODITY type brand. The other three types of brands are: Essentials which are lower on involvement but high on importance like banking, pharma or insurance. Indulgence brands, like beer, chocolate or bubble gum, are the opposite of essentials as they have high involvement but really little importance. And finally, there are high-profile brands, which are high on importance and involvement. These brands are your favorite part of you every day life such as your iPhone, your latte from Starbucks, the restaurant you want to go or the latest movie coming this weekend. These brands are the opposite of CPG, they are talked about at lunch constantly and they find it easy to work social media with a huge following and constant news.

With CPG brands, the tendency is to put the effort into the brand messaging more than the effort into the creative/media. However, if you think about it, maybe it should be the opposite. Yes, messaging is always safer and more predictive, but if you need to counter the lack of involvement by making it a higher involvement brand, then it might have to come from the creative.

Take the Dove brand for example. For years, they did a good job behind the litmus test and talking about not being a soap. They were a good brand, still relatively lost in sea of crowded soaps and hand creams. Dove’s “real beauty” campaign took the brand to a new level far beyond what anyone could expect and is no longer just a soap but a brand that stands for the modern woman. The real beauty TV campaign is one of the biggest viral ads in history. And they have been able to get consumers to keep talking about the brand, through social media vehicles mainly through Facebook with 19 million consumers following the Dove brand. Ten years later Dove is a legendary CPG brand. While it’s still just a soap, that didn’t prevent the marketers at Dove from creating an idea for the brand.

What is your Brand IDEA?

I define a Beloved Brand as “an idea worth loving”. It’s no longer about a product, but an idea you can convey into the marketplace. If you can’t get anyone talking about you, maybe the problem is It’s all too easy to sit there with your brand and say “who would ever want to talk about us?”. That’s a cop-out if you ask me. The challenge for CPG Brand Leaders is to re-think your brand. Can you create an idea, a brand purpose and find ways to drive up involvement and importance for what your brand stands for. Here are three challenges for you:

How do you stop trying to make a big deal out of your little points of difference and try to create a Brand Idea for your brand that connects with consumers? Start with the consumer and find real benefits, both rational and emotional that you can stand behind, rather than just shouting out your product features through the TV.
How do you drive up involvement and importance for what you stand for so that your get talked about at the lunch room table? You have to understand who are your most influential consumers, the respected mavens within their circle of friends, and allow them to project your brand to their following.
Can you build a Brand Purpose so that you can leverage that purpose as an idea to elevate your brand? Purpose driven brands (The why) are a growing phenomena and a perfect fit for connecting with consumers through social media.

While your product might not generate talk value at the lunch table, maybe your idea can be big enough that it will. And when it’s no longer about just your product, maybe your own idea will inspire you in the social media space.

Maybe the issue isn’t just media. But have you created an IDEA for your brand to stand behind?

To see a training presentation on getting better Media Plans

ABOUT BELOVED BRANDS INC.: At Beloved Brands, we are only focused on making brands better and making brand leaders better.Our motivation is that we love knowing we were part of helping someone to unleash their full potential. We promise to challenge you to Think Different. We believe the thinking that got you here, will not get you where you want to go. Our President and Chief Marketing Officer, Graham Robertson is a brand leader at heart, who loves everything about brands. He comes with 20 years of experience at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke, where he was always able to find and drive growth. Graham has won numerous new product and advertising awards. Graham brings his experience to your table, strong on leadership and facilitation at very high levels and training of Brand Leaders around the world. To reach out directly, email me at graham.robertson@beloved-brands.com or follow on Twitter @grayrobertson1

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How good do your Brand Plans look for next year?

17 October 2013

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As many of you hit Q4 and pushing as hard as you can to drive sales as hard as you can to make the year or at least make your latest estimate, it might be time to wonder how good your plans are for next year.

A well-written Brand Plan helps to align an organization around the direction, the choices and the tactics that need implementing for a brand to achieve their goals. The Brand Plan unites functions such as marketing, sales, product development outlining what each group needs to do for the brand to be successful, while setting goals that operations and finance need to support. The Brand Plan gains approval from senior management around spending options, strategic choices and sets forth the tactics that will be implemented. It holds senior management accountable to the plan. The Brand Plan helps frame the execution for internal stakeholders and for the various agencies who will implement programs within the plan. Execution is an expression of the strategy, and the plan must hold agencies accountable to delivering work that is on strategy. And lastly, the Brand Plan helps the Brand Manager who wrote it, stay focused to deliver what they said they would. It helps them to refer back to the strategy and the intention to ensure the Brand Manager “stays on strategy” the entire year.

The questions you should be asking when you look at your plan:

Are you trying to do too much?

The biggest flaw of most plans is they try to do everything, which just spreads your limited resources–both financial and people resources–across too many projects. You end up doing OK in everything, yet never great at anything. So you never really see a return on that investment. If you went to Vegas and put a chip on every number, you’d walk away broke. With your plan, you have to make the choices on those activities that will drive the biggest return on your limited resources. My rule of thumb for a one year plan is to have a maximum of 3 strategies with 3 tactics per strategy, which means you’ve got only 9 key projects you need to do next year to be successful. Contrary to that, if you had 5 strategies and 5 tactics per, you’d now have 25 projects that just deplete your resources and exhaust your team’s efforts. One of the biggest flaws in a plan is trying to drive both penetration for new customers and getting current customers to use more. Of course you want that, but getting that in the same brand plan will never happen.

How aligned is your plan?

Too many times, plans are a disjointed collection of small projects that don’t really add up to a strategy. The vision helps guide where you want your brand to be in the next 5-10 years. You should brainstorm things that are getting in the way of that vision, which helps align you around the top key issues your business is facing. Your strategies should directly line up to these key issues and then have tactics line up to your strategies. There should be a flow to a well-written plan so that everything sings to the same song-sheet. Every part of that plan that is not aligned to that flow, should stand out as a sore thumb. The importance of good flow to a plan is more pronounced when you realize the entire organization has to align behind the plan, not just the marketing team, but every functional area–especially sales, product development, executional agencies and every employee working on that plan.

How Deep was the Thinking?

I’m a big believer in using my instincts. But equally so, I’m a big believer in digging in deep and uncovering the real issues on the brand. My biggest pet peeve is when we make too many assumptions. A great analysis you should be doing before writing a plan is to figure out the drivers and inhibitors that are happening now on your business as well as the risks and opportunities that could happen in the future on your business. Look at your market data, listen to your customers and consumers, do the needed market research and challenge everything. I love doing Brand Funnels because it helps you see what’s slightly beneath the surface on your business. It’s the equivalent of blood pressure and cholesterol where you can–the health measures in our body you can’t see. The same thing with Brand Funnels where you can see how well you’re doing on converting your awareness into purchase and your purchase into repeat business–relative to how you were doing last year and relative to your competitors.

How many B.S. Buzz words are in your plan?

Too many times, plans are a disjointed collection of small projects that don’t really add up to a strategy. As a brand leader, you should be the first to call B.S. when you see “drive awareness” and “be relevant” and “create more loyalty”. All those are great ideas, but let’s be real. Driving awareness gets you no revenue. What do you get when you drive awareness? You get in the consideration set to purchase. Put that instead. Every brand should be trying to be relevant, but that is the fattest word in marketing. It’s like saying “nice”. My best friend is “nice” but Jessica Alba is “nice”. But not the same type of nice. I banned the use of the word relevant because once a marketer uses that word, their brain shuts off. Drill down beyond the buzz word and tell me what your type of relevant you want is, and then put that in your plan. Loyalty takes more than just marketing–you have to align your entire organization to delivering a brand promise, a story, innovation and an experience. It goes beyond a marketing tactic, so yes it’s good to have as part of your plan, but if its just a program then I call “BS”.

If you are not happy with your plan, what do you plan to do about it?

Here are some tips to help you to get to a better plan.

Writing the Plan

Most people get stuck in writing a Brand Plan, because they sit at the computer frozen with writers cramp, over-thinking what to put down, uncertain how to frame it all and unsure how to even write. In the most simplistic of terms, here are the main elements of a Brand Plan and how simple you should keep it:

We have some long-term thoughts on where the brand can go (vision) and the special assignment to get us on our way. (mission) And that help shape the things we want to achieve with our brand. (goals) To get started, the brand has different options (strategies) for how to get there and programs that most effectively deliver the choice you make (tactics)
We try to find a slice of the population (target) to get them to take an action (expected result) that makes our brand bigger. We then find out what to say and how to talk to them to trigger that action (main message) We need to re-enforce why we can do it and others can’t (support)
We then create the most motivating stimulus (product, advertising, sales promotion etc.) to get them to take action and put it in part of their life where they are most likely to hear it and act on it (the medium, launch or channel etc.)

If it is that easy, why do we struggle and how do we screw it up. Maybe it is the fancy buzz words that get in our way of our intention. Instead, start with what you want to do in the plan, not the buzz words of vision, mission or strategy, because those words can get in your way.

One thing I like to do is use 5 key questions to help frame the Brand Plan, the answers help frame everything you need in a brand plan. The five questions to ask yourself are: 1) Where are we? 2) Why are we here? 3) Where could we be? 4) How can we get there? and 5) What do we need to do to get ready? With these 5 questions answered, it can get you on your way towards a situation analysis, mapping of the key issues, statements of vision, mission and goals, choices around strategies and tactics as well as the execution and measurements:

From there, you could easily write a Brand Plan as matched up and outlined below:

In terms of analysis, there are so many ways to do it but my preference is to use a force-field analysis of Drivers and Inhibitors. Basically, drivers are what is pushing the brand and inhibitors is what’s holding it back. These are happening NOW. Then add in the a future looking analysis of Risks and Opportunities. These could happen in the future. The simplicity of this analysis helps the next stage of your brand plan, and set up the Key Issues which are focused on finding ways to continue/enhance the growth drivers, minimize or reverse the inhibitors, avoid the risks and take advantage of the opportunities.

I like to put the Key Issues into question format, as a rhetorical question (eg. Key Issue: How do I drive more distribution for Listerine?), because the answer to these questions becomes my strategies (Leverage New products to gain added Distribution in the Food channel). The better the questions, the better the strategies.

Not enough plans use a vision and mission statement. They are essential in helping to frame the direction of the brand. Think of the Vision Statement as the end in Mind Achievement, thinking 5-10 years out of what do you want your brand to become. It can be a balance of qualitative and quantitative. And it should be motivating and enticing enough to motivate people to get behind it. The Mission Statement becomes the “special assignment” and is tightly connected to the vision, but is more likely a 1-3 year direction—if a vision is a destination, then a mission is a major milestone on the path towards that vision. While a vision focuses on the future state, the mission focuses on the movement the brand must undertake to go from present day to future state.

In terms of writing of the Brand Plan, my recommendation is focus on the top 3 strategies and then map out 3 tactics per strategy. That’s a total of 9 tactics per year, which is plenty to put all your money behind. Having only 9, allows you to do a great job at each of the tactics, focuses your money on the top tactics that will drive the highest return on investment and effort. Just imagine if you had 5 strategies and 5 tactics per–you’ve just gone from the top 9 tactics up to the top 25 tactics. It might feel like you are covering more, but really you’re just spreading your money too thin and not really doing a great job at any of them. Too many brands end up with a “To Do” list that’s long at the start of the year and mysteriously unfinished at the end of the year.

A good brand plan should have a consistency from the vision all the way down to the execution. It should flow. Think of a band playing in perfect harmony. When you write something that does not fit, it should stand out like a “Tuba” player, trying to play his own song. It’s misfit to the plan. As you near completion of your plan, go through your document and see if you can spot misfits. Find the Tubas!

Lastly, I recommend organizations come up with a common format for plans across all plans. Freedom in formats just forces Brand Managers to try to come up with the coolest of power point slides. I’d rather have my Brand Managers putting their creative juices into tactics that get into the marketplace rather than doing cool slides. And while Brand Plans might use 10 or 20 slides (no more than that) ideally you can find a way to get your entire “Plan on one page” making it easier for everyone to follow along.

Use the Plan to Guide Everyone, including Yourself

To read more on How to Write a Brand Plan, read the presentation below:

Ask Beloved Brands to run a workshop to do your Brand Plan or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

How to Prioritize your Portfolio of Brands

15 September 2013

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When you have a group of brands and you need to sort through the focus, the temptation is to try to hedge your bets and spread a little love to each brand. As I managed 15 brands at Johnson and Johnson, I finally came up with a very simple rule that I affectionately called “a third, a third, a third”. No matter how good the year was, a third of the brands would do amazing, a third would do ok and a third would struggle. To win in the market, and hit my plan, I had to make sure the third that did amazing out-paced the third that struggled.

Some leaders would see that situation and want to spread their resources to that bottom performing brands, just in case the high performing brands didn’t come through. But hedging your bet just means you never fully realize the full potential of those high performers. Here’s the rule: Focus your resources on those brands that can offer the fastest growth and allow them to outpace those that are slower growth.

First Look Externally at the Market

For decades, people used the BCG priority grid, a simple two by two matrix with market growth on one axis and market share on the other. The simplicity of the grid works: how healthy is where you play and what is the opportunity to win where you play? Stars are where you want to invest and dogs are you want to divest.

A very simple improvement on this grid was to go to a 3×3 version of the grid that gives you more flexibility in choices. Plus calling it market attractiveness goes beyond just growth and competitive strength goes beyond just market share. If you want to go deep, I’d encourage you to come up with 3-5 criteria for what each axes can mean. Market Attractiveness can be a combination of growth, size, profitability, ease of servicing, future growth, manageable barriers to entry. Your competitive strength could be a combination of growth, size, aligned resources and assets, competitive advantage (technology, patents, positioning), brand loyalty and strength of the connection to consumers. Each of the 9 boxes has a recommendation for either increasing the market attractiveness or increasing your own brand power.

From the grid, you can see three green investment boxes. Where you have high competitive strength but in a moderately attractive category, it might be worth your while to invest to grow the category. Conversely, where you have moderate strength in a highly attractive category, you want to invest to strengthen your brand. The yellow boxes are moderate investment options and the red boxes represent minimal investment or divest situation.

Then Look Internally at the Market

Once you feel comfortable with how the brands line up externally, it might be worth a second look to compare how they look internally. As you line up your portfolio, the goal is to maximize the longer term profitability of those brands. Here you want to look at Brand Growth rates and Margin percentages. And for each box, there is a recommended action. For instance if you are a high growth brand with lower margins you want to find a way to take the power associated with the growth and look to increase prices where possible either through a price increase or by trading them up to a premium version of the offering. Conversely, a medium growth brand in the same low margin box might have less brand power to warrant the price increase, so you should be looking at reducing COGs or marketing spend.

You’ll see the same colour combinations, greening meaning invest in growth, yellow is maintain and red means divest. Each of the 9 boxes has a recommendation of how to optimize the P&L for that brand and the overall portfolio.

To read more about Brand Analysis, I’d encourage you read: How to Go Deeper on Analysis

Focus on the growth Brands and they’ll outpace the decline of the weaker brands

To read more on How to Analyze Your Brand, read the presentation below:

Ask Beloved Brands to run a deep dive brand analysis or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader

Six Key Principles of Good Analytics for Brand Leaders to Follow

10 September 2013

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For Brand Leaders to keep moving up, you need to be good at all parts of marketing. When I’m assessing talent, I break it up into skills, behaviors and experiences. As you manage your career, try to close gaps in each. Yes, we all end up with leader behavior gaps even as we make the highest levels, but you can’t or at least you shouldn’t have a skill gap. You have to be solid in all aspects of strategic thinking and planning, all types of implementation whether thats advertising, new product innovation or working through the sales channels, you have to be able to manage and run your business including budgeting, forecasting and running the projects.

People generally advance in marketing careers through one of four means:

great at thinking
great at doing
great at presenting their thinking or doing
great at leading others to think, do or present.

But eventually, at some level, you have to be good at all four. And that’s what makes you a great marketing leader.

As people move up, the biggest skill gap I see is Analytics. They either don’t know how to dig in or when they dig in, they struggle to tell the story from all the data they’ve gathered.

To challenge you on your Analytical Skills, here are some key principles that might help you to close that gap.

Principle #1: Opinions without fact to back them up are just opinions and can leave a room divided.

A great tool to Ask yourself 5 times “so what does this mean” and you’ll get a little deeper and start to see the opinion turn into a fact based insight that can align a team and drive action.

Principle #2: Absolute Numbers by themselves are Useless

Back in the early 1900s, there was a famous baseball player whose name was Frank “Home Run” Baker. Yet, oddly enough, the most Home Runs he ever hit in a year was 12. So how the heck can he get the nickname “Home Run”. Because in a relative dead ball era of baseball, he won the home run crown four consecutive seasons with 11 home runs in 1911, 10 in 1912, 12 in 1913 and nine in 1914. Yes Babe Ruth would hit 54 and 60 home runs less than 10 years later but the ball had changed. The absolute number of home runs does not matter–relatively speaking, Frank Baker was the best home run hitter of his generation and deserves to be called “Home Run” Baker.

Only when given a relative nature to something important do you find the data break that tells a story. You have to ground the data with a comparison, whether that’s versus prior periods, competitors, norms or the category. Every time you talk about a number, you have to talk about in relative terms—comparing it to something that is grounded: vs last year, vs last month, vs another brand, vs norm or vs England’s share. Is it up down, or flat? Never give a number without a relative nature—or your listener will not have a clue.

Principle #3: The analytical story comes to life when you see a break in the data.

Comparative indexes and cross tabulations can really bring out the data breaks and gaps that can really tell a story.

Use the “so what” technique to dig around and twist the data in unique ways until you find the point in which the data actually breaks and clear meaningful differences start to show. This is where the trend is exposed and you can draw a conclusion.

Example of Finding the point where the data breaks

Distribution overall held at 82% throughout the year. At the macro level, it looks like there is no issue at distribution at all.
Distribution on 16 count fell only a little bit over the year going from 74% to 71%. Even at one layer down—the count size—there’s still very little break in the data
Distribution on 16 count at Convenience stores went from 84% to 38% in the last 2 months. As we are starting to twist the data, it shows a dramatic and quick drop at the Convenience channel. As you start to dig around you might find out that the biggest Convenience Customer, 7-11, delisted the brand recently.

You need to keep breaking the data points down to see if they start to tell a story.

Principle #4: Like an Old School Reporter, two source of data help frame the story.

Avoid taking one piece of data and making it the basis of your entire brand strategy. Make sure it’s a real trend. Dig around until you can find a convergence of data that leads to an answer. Look to find 2-3 facts that start to tell a story, and allows you to draw a conclusion. The good pure logic in a philosophical argument they teach you is “premise, premise conclusion” so if you see one trend line, look for a second before drawing a conclusion.

Principle #5: Deep Analysis requires thinking time

One of the best ways to separate your analysis is to divide things into:

What do we know? This should be fact based and you know it for sure.
What do we assume? Your educated/knowledge based conclusion that helps us bridge between fact, and speculation.
What we think? Based on facts, and assumptions, you should be able to say what we think will happen.
What do we need to find out? There may be unknowns still.
What are we going to do? It’s the action that comes out of this thinking.

One of the best analysis you can do is the simple “where are we” page. It has 5 simple questions that make you think:

Where are we?
Why are we here?
Where could we be?
How can we get there?
What do we need to do to get there?

This page can be very useful at the start of your brand planning—while it forces your thinking, it also focuses your writing of the document. My challenge to you: update it every 3-6 months, or every time you do something major. You’ll be surprised that doing something can actually alter where we are?

Principle #6: Use Tools that can help organize and force Deep Dive thinking in Key Areas.

A Force Field analysis is best served for those brands in a sustaining position where marketing plays the role of driving innovation and creativity within a box. Always keep in mind that Drivers and Inhibitors are happening now. You can see the impact in the current year. Anything in the future gets moved down to Opportunities and Threats which are not happening but could happen. Invariably, people mix this up and things that could happen move up when they really shouldn’t.

The best thing about the force field is you can easily take it into an action plan, because you want to keep the drivers going and overcome the inhibitors Then take advantage of the opportunities and minimize or eliminate any serious threats. It’s a great simple management tool.

To read more about Brand Analysis, i’d encourage you read: How to Go Deeper on Analysis

The Final Principle is that Good Analysis Only Gets you to the point “So what do you think”

To read more on How to Analyze Your Brand, read the presentation below:

Ask Beloved Brands to run a deep dive brand analysis or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

What comes first, the media choice or the creative idea?

25 August 2013

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When I started in marketing, way back in the mid 90s, life was a little simpler because the media and the creative were both under one agency roof. The meetings were simple: you’d see your various TV script options, give some feedback and then the room would go silent and the account person would say “now let’s look at the media plan” and the media person would take you through a 15 page presentation on where else the idea of your TV script could go. You’d see some magazine, OOH and even some sampling idea. There was no internet advertising yet.

Then one day, our media folks from our agency were spun off, had a new name, moved offices and had a new President. But still owned by WPP. It now just meant we had two presentations and the Brand Leader now had to make sense of things and try to piece it together. About a year into that new relationship, I was sitting there confused and asked the question: “So what comes first, the media choice or the creative idea?” The room went silent for about 5 minutes. Then of course both sides talked over each other, both saying it was them that came first.

Media is an investment against your strategy and creative is an expression of your strategy. But both media and creative are only useful if they connect with consumers. Great advertising must connect through very insightful creative that expresses the brand’s positioning and told in a way that matters to those who care the most. And yet, great advertising must be placed within the consumers’ life where it will capture their attention and motivate them in the expressed desired way to meet the strategy. So really, the consumer comes first and strategy comes second. But media and creative need to work to jointly capture the consumer and deliver the strategy.

The Problem now rests with Brand Leaders. While one could theoretically argue that if the Big Idea of the advertising is so big, it should work in every medium, that’s just not true in reality. Some ideas just work better in certain mediums. And yet the media people could also theoretically argue that if you go for the most efficient and effective media option, the media will do the work for you. That’s also not true. It’s too bad that ad agencies broke apart. Because agencies could make a lot more money if they continued to answer this question on behalf of their clients.

Here’s a solution for Brand Leaders

The three questions you always need to keep in your head at all times: 1) where is your consumer 2) where is your brand and 3) how does the creative idea work?

1. Where is your consumer?

You should really understand who your consumer is, and who they are not. You need to make sure you understand the insights about them, because it’s those insights within your creative that allow you to connect with them. They’ll say “they get me”. You should always be mapping out a day in the life of your consumer. Get in their shoes and say “what does my consumer’s day look like and how will my message fit or interrupt their life?” Take a “be where they are approach” to your media.

2. Where is the Brand?

First thing you have to do is consider where your brand is on the Brand Love Curve where brands go from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved. At INDIFFERENT, it’s about announcement style such as mass media, LIKE IT becomes about separating yourself from the competition while LOVE IT and BELOVED you’ll start to see the growing importance of event marketing to core users or social media as a badge of honor to share with others.

3. How does the Creative work?

The best advertising should draw ATTENTION, be about the BRAND, COMMUNICATE the main message and STICK in the consumers head long beyond the ad.

Attention: You have to get noticed in a crowded world of advertising. Consumers see 6000 ads per day, and will likely only engage in a few. If your brand doesn’t draw attention naturally, then you’ll have to force it into the limelight.
Branding: Ads that tell the story of the relationship between the consumer and the brand will link best. Even more powerful are ads that are from the consumers view of the brand. It’s not how much branding there is, but how close the brand fits to the climax of the ad.
Communication: Tapping into the truths of the consumer and the brand, helps you to tell the brand’s life story. Keep your story easy to understand. Communication is not just about what you say, but how you say it—because that says just as much.
Stickiness: Sticky ads help to build a consistent brand/consumer experience over time. In the end, brands are really about “consistency” of the promise you want to own. Brands have exist in the minds of the consumer.

But in the reality of advertising, not every ad execution will be able to do all four of the ABC’S. When I’m in the creative room, I try to think about which of the two ABC’S are the most critical to my strategy. If it’s a new product, I need Attention and Communication, if it’s in a competitive battle I need Brand and Communication, and if I’m the leader with a beloved brand, I need to make sure it’s about the Brand and it Sticks.

What I recommend you do:

I hold off on making any media decisions until I see the creative idea and how it is expressed in a few media options. With all the potential media now available, I ask for 3 executions of each big idea. I want to see it in:

Video Version
Billboard
Long Copy Print

Sounds simple, but once I see all 3, it helps me to know that the idea has legs beyond one medium. It also enables me to begin matching up creative elements to the most optimized media options on the table.

The “Video” ask would work in TV, movie theatre, viral video or even on a website. The “Billboard” could be traditional billboard on on-line billboard, website cover or even on the back of a magazine. The “Long Print” would help with a print ad, social media stories or even a blog on your website.

With 3 simple asks against each creative idea, I would cover off most of the traditional media options. Now I can engage with the Media Agency, knowing how the creative idea would work against any of their recommendations. I’ve done the work that the agency would have done back in the 1990s before they broke apart.

Client Media Math

While the media agency owns the media math that blows your mind, here is some simple client side media math.

Your production budget should be around 5-10% of your overall advertising plan. If you have small budgets, that may creep up to 20%, but that’s it. Every time you do a new piece of creative, the production dollars go up and the media dollars go down. I’d recommend you focus on one main traditional media and have only one secondary option. This keeps your spend focused.
When it comes to social media, keep in mind there is no free media options. Instead of financial capital, you are now exhausting people capital. Just like the traditional options, I would recommend one lead social media and one secondary focus. Do not try to be all things to all people.
The other reason to focus is to ensure you do great executions and not just “ok”. Pick the media that maximizes the power of the creative. And don’t exhaust the team by spreading them against too many activities.
Allow 80 to 90% of your media spend be on the highly effective highly efficient media plan. That means 10-20% of your media spend can now go against high IMPACT creative ideas that you know will break through.

Ask your creative team to deliver a Video, Billboard and Long Copy Print

To see a training presentation on Get Better Advertising:

To see a training presentation on getting better Media Plans

Ask Beloved Brands to help you with your advertising or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader

How to work the Five types of Media to your advantage

28 July 2013

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Back in the 1990s, we would have thought the 5 types of media would have been TV, newspaper, magazine, out of home and radio. Life was simpler back then. But since 2000, media has exploded and shifted dramatically. Now Brand Leaders are confused as to what to do and how to leverage media to drive their brands.

New way to think about the 5 types of media: Paid, Earned, Search, Social and Home media.

PAID media is the Traditional (TV, Print, OOH, Radio) and the new Digital options. While paid might look like an equal opportunity to the equal spender, its not always the case. The more Beloved brands win in this space because they get asked first, they get better slots, lower rates, and more integrations.

With EARNED media, you need to create and manage the news cycle with mainstream news, expert reviews and blogs. Beloved Brands are newsworthy and new Products are a story. My own belief is that every brand should have a PR plan. News is such a ubiquitous part of our current lives–you need to be part of that news cycle.

SEARCH Engine Optimization balances earned, key words and paid search. Being a famous Beloved Brand helps to bypass paid SEO. So if you are fighting against the power of those beloved brands, you need to leverage search as a way to break through. On more complicated purchases (cars, electronics, travel) search is an essential tool for the consumer to gain more information before they get comfortable with the purchase options.

For SOCIAL media, we need to first stop thinking that it’s free. It’s not. It’s resource intensive to do it right. And the more Beloved Brands have advocates that follow, put their views forward and share news on the brand that creates positive interactions that helps to influence others. While you can build up your social, you might need to first build your brand so that the effort you do via social media pays off. Nothing worse than an embarrassing social following. I drove past a gravel pit last year that said “Like us on Facebook”. What a waste of effort to get 19 people–mostly employees and friends. How about “Rocks $9 a pound” would have been a better option.

HOME media is your landing page. It’s a destination for some brands or could be a complete waste of time for others. Depends on the type of brand you have. Your website where you can use as a source of information, influence or even closing the sale. If e-commerce makes sense for your business.

Where is your Brand?

Before deciding what type of media you want, you need to first understand where your brand is. I’m a big believer in the Brand Love Curve where brands go from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved. If you start to look at how media might match up to that love curve and framed through a consumer buying system, we can see that when your brand is INDIFFERENT, your main focus should be using awareness and consideration to drive trial for your brand. That would mean announcement style media (mass, targeted digital, event) as well as starting to play in the search area so you can help facilitate consumers looking for more information.

As you move to the LIKE IT stage, you want to begin separating yourself at the store level. Yes, you still need the awareness, but you want to make sure that you drive at the crowded retail level to separate yourself from your competitors. This could mean point of sale signage or even the influence of experts at the store level. If consumers are satisfied, you should be pushing them to share that positive experience with others. Here’s where social media plays a large role, whether it’s traditional social media (Facebook or twitter) or the more influential social media such as YELP or IMDB. As you move along the curve to LOVED and BELOVED brands as well as matching to the buying system, you’ll start to see the growing importance of event marketing to core users or social media as a badge of honor to share with others.

The problem I have with many media options, is people at the INDIFFERENT stage think they need a Facebook page. Well, once all your relatives like that page, you might have 46 followers, which might expose how little people care about you. On the flip side, I still am seeing LOVED brands pounding out 30 second TV ads that tell the consumers what they already know, all but forgetting the other media options available to them.

What Type of Brand are you?

When it comes to brands, you should understand where your brand sits on the degree of involvement vs importance.

For instance if your brand sits in the low involvement, low importance quadrant, it would be a COMMODITY brands. This is where many of the CPG brands fit, always trying extra hard to take a marginal point of difference and making it a huge deal. With commodity brands, the tendency is to put the effort into messaging more than creative/media. However, if you think about it, maybe it should be the opposite. Yes, messaging is always safer, but if you need to counter the lack of involvement by making it a higher involvement brand. Dove has done an amazing job in taking a basic soap and making it stand for the modern woman. It’s still likely a mass play, but you can begin using social and earned media here to break through the clutter. The best marketers reside in these areas, because the work they do is essential to driving increased involvement and increased importance in a category that doesn’t naturally warrant either.

ESSENTIALS are high importance but still lower on the involvement side. With my experience in healthcare and banking, we’ve looked at ways to drive up the involvement through Search, Earned and Social Media that’s targeted to influencers as well as those who might motivate others. Many of these brands need routine to help substitute for the falling involvement. For instance, the biggest issue with getting people to take life-saving heart medication is getting them to take it as prescribed. The more work the marketer can do against routine here, the better.

INDULGENCE brands have high involvement but really little importance. This is where beer, chocolate, and bubble gum reside. The problem with this category is you’ve got rather large budgets driving against some of the most loved brands in the world. (Coke, Bud, Mars). You need concentrated and heavy mass media to break through the clutter. In the new world, earned and social can be ways to break through, high on creativity to keep consumers engaged.

HIGH PROFILE brands are those that are high on importance and involvement. These brands are your favorite part of you every day life. Your iPhone, your latte from Starbucks, the restaurant you want to go or the latest movie coming this weekend. With these brands, you should be perfecting all five of the media: paid, earned, search, social and home.

Where is Your Consumer?

I know I know. Everyone is so excited about the new media options, we tend to forget about the consumer. But call me old-school, but I still like to start with the consumer. The fundamentals of marketing always start with where the consumer is before you look at where the media is. You can see how the buying system above might match up to where the consumer is on that Love Curve. But even more so, you should always be mapping out a day in the life of your consumer. Get in their shoes and say “what does my consumers day look like and how will my message fit or interrupt their life?”

In the spirit of “Be Where They Are”, you need to think about a Total Branding experience to the “Many Me’s of Me”. While we are the same person, we do have various moods through the day, and your brand needs to fit my mood. For instance, that rock quarry example of “Like Us on Facebook”, I was out for a nice drive in the country with my wife, in a mood to relax with no pen and no paper. I might not be back to my computer for six more hours. How would I remember to like a rock quarry on Facebook? Not a chance. This is a great tool for putting you into the shoes of your consumer and maybe seeing how your brand’s messaging might fit into their busy lives. I see ads and signs all day long that really showcase how little Brand Leaders are thinking about how the consumer lives their busy lives.

As a brand leader, are you using the five types of media to your full advantage? Use the tools above to begin mapping out your choices, based on where your brand sits, what type of brand you have and how your consumer’s life might influence your choices. To read more on media planning, click on this link: How to Build Your Media Plans

Are you Using the Five types of media your Brand’s full advantage?

To see a training presentation on getting better Media Plans

Ask Beloved Brands to help you improve your brand or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

Is Social Media is the new “Invisible Hand”?

10 June 2013

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Well, today is a picture perfect weather day. Sunny, which is rare, no humidity even rarer this spring, and likely 80 degrees. It’s a sunday, a lazy one after a few tough weeks of work. I feel like it’s a rejuvenation day. where we can shut down our brain. That’s why I’ve picked the geekiest of topics to write about comparing an 18th century economist in Adam Smith with the modern-day world of Social Media.

The Original “Invisible Hand”

The concept of Adam’s Smith’s “Invisible Hand” can be summarized to say that the individuals’ efforts to maximize their own gains in a free market benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions. In economics, the “invisible hand” of the market is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. This is a metaphor first coined by the economist Adam Smith. The exact phrase is used just three times in his writings, but has come to capture his important claim that by trying to maximize their own gains in a free market, individual ambition benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions. My economics professor once said “economics is the practice of proving what happens in real life can also happen in theory”. I love that line. So how we as marketers spin the invisible hand is that we have to know that consumers are greedy, and if we satisfy that greed better than others, our brand will be more powerful and more profitable.

Consumers have the right to be greedy because they have money and options for how to spend that money. Like Gordon Ghekko said “GREED IS GOOD”. It’s this greed and the ability of some brands to satisfy that greed better than other brands which separates “likeable” brands from “beloved” brands. As a marketer, I think greed helps you understand the needs of the customer, it forces you to rise and meet their expectations and it pushes you to beat your competitor for that almighty dollar the consumer could use on either you or them. Fight for it.

Is Social Media the new “Invisible Hand”?

Over the last 5-10 years, Social Media has been the obvious marketing phenomena. But do we fully understand it yet? For most Brand Leaders, it still seems hit and miss. I mean some of the leading cooler brands like Coke, Nike, Starbucks and Whole Foods are doing an amazing job. But we see others not doing so well. Arguably if Facebook hasn’t even figured out how to fully monetize itself, then how would Brand Leaders be able to figure it out.

The “invisible hand” of social media is actually hard to explain. Just like it took Adam Smith 20= years of research, it might be the same for social media. By no means am I a social media expert guru. I’m as confused as the rest. But what I do preach is the more love you can generate for your brand, the more power you can command and then you can turn that power in profit.

So my new message to every brand leader, if you want to be loved, you need to engage. You need to be telling your story, your purpose, your passion and do so in a way that the consumer know you are genuine. if you have no voice then you give control of you brand to the consumer. We have seen so many bad cases like Motrin or Kitchen Aid to see what happens when a brand loses control.

Take someone like Whole Foods who has an amazing brand. They use Twitter to perfection, offering constant recipes and engaging with their most loyal of consumers. They don’t have any real off-line advertising. All the energy is generated through on-line word of mouth. Starbucks, a brand built on word of mouth seemed confused by social media a few years ago has now picked up tremendous steam the last year to where they are also a huge success story. And Apple does such an amazing job they get 2.5 billion of free media a year.

Brand Leaders View of Social Media

A few thoughts from one brand leader to another. Forget all the social media experts just for one minute. We can approach them once we figure things out. So here goes:

Your media choice has to be influenced by your brand strategy. This was true in 1920 when we only had print and signs. It’s still true now that we have 3,000 media options. You don’t just randomly select activities. What other part of your life do you do that? So then why would you do it in marketing. Let the tactics match up to the strategy, not just do a bunch of random activities and then try to write a strategy to it.
Media Plans should also map out the life of your consumer and the media choices be driven by where the consumer is, not where the media is. A great day in the life analysis has always helped find where to interrupt your consumer with your message. If you knew that the consumer was awake for 16 hours a day and sees 6,000 messages each day, that means we see a new message every 10 seconds. Which 10 seconds do you think would be the best of the day for you?
Don’t put out crap. Please don’t. Please hire a professional to help you. It seems people are in more of a rush than ever to put stuff out. But sometimes when you go too fast, it takes longer. Please do a strategic creative brief. Give the creative people enough time to do great work. If you are going to get into story telling, you should have a purpose driven strategy at the anchor. You should really know why you come to work every day and once you do, bring that purpose into all your stories you tell. The “why” is such a powerful message.
Be Interesting, but equally you should be interested. If you’re going to engage with consumers, don’t just talk about yourself. Ask them questions that get them talking about themselves. Instead of serving up what you do constantly, speak in the voice of the consumer and tell them what they get. No one cares what you do until you care about what they get.
You need to focus. A brands resources are confined by money, time and people. That’s still true. Social Media IS NOT free. Because it takes time and it takes people resources to do it right. You don’t have to be on Facebook because your nephew thinks you’re a loser. You should be on it because it’s where your consumer is likely to be motivated the most to engage with your consumer. Focus on those social media options that most make sense for your brand.

Now, and only now should you go approach a social media “expert” who will help you figure out how to translate your brand strategy at the social media area, who will map out where your consumer is so you know where/when and how to interact with them. Make sure you put out quality still. Crap is always crap. If you’re going to tell stories and engage, then make sure it’s from the heart. Honestly means knowing your real purpose of why you chose this business and the struggles you went through. And finally, I want you to focus. I know I sound like a broken record. But if you focus on every other part of your life, then why when it comes to marketing do you all of a sudden thing “it’s ok to cover everything”. When the discipline of marketing is all about focus.

If you want your brand to be loved, then you have to be engaged in Social Media. If you are not involved in the conversation about your brand, you’re giving up control to the pack. And who knows what they’ll say.

Social Media is more likely the “Invisible Voice” we can’t always hear, but we better start realizing it is there and engaging our own voice.

Follow me on Twitter at @grayrobertson1

Here’s a presentation that can help Brand Leaders to get better Media Plans.

How will Brand Leaders Win with Media in the Future?

26 April 2013

2 Comments

I’m not a media expert at all. So there will be no answers here, just questions about where I might be confused about the future or where I might see an impact to my media thinking. I come at everything through the lens of the Brand Leader. My questions are more about the impact on consumer behaviour and how the brand can win through media in the future. If you’re a media expert, feel free to add solutions. At this point, like most Brand Leaders, I’m a bit confused and I just have questions, not really solutions!

1. Will people watch even more TV in the future?

I love asking this question because it usually confuses people, because of the expected downward trend of TV viewership over the last 10 years. At first, this question might sound crazy, but with more tablets and instant internet access everywhere, we should expect a shift to watching more TV, not less. This year, books are up 13% due to increased readership via tablets. Will we see that impact to TV? More access means more use. If you’re on the subway, an airplane, waiting to pick up your kids or on your lunch hour, wouldn’t it be great just to catch an episode of Modern Family? Now you can. And while this is at the early stages with early adopters, we’ll quickly see it going mass over the next few years. But the TV model will have to change. Consumers won’t want to be watching 8 minutes of TV ads. It seems people see their computer as their personal space and they find intrusive advertising even more annoying on their computer than they do their TV. We need a new model for TV advertising–I haven’t seen it yet.

As a Brand Leader, I recommend that you don’t give up on TV just yet. Maybe it will be on a tablet or a phone. Just be a bit more creative. Maybe you need to make your spots more interesting to take advantage of viral shares. Make sure your spots are more engaging so people want to watch rather than just tolerate. Be open to integrating your brand right into the shows, or maybe go back to the past when brand sponsorship kicked off every 1950s TV show.

2. How can Advertisers Capture the Internet Babies (12-22 years old) as they move into adulthood?

As someone said, this segment never “goes on-line” because they are “always on-line”. They are never “off-line”. Last year, my 14-year-old daughter had 3 friends over and when teens visit, you have to expect a bit of excess noise. All of a sudden, there was silence for 20 minutes. I thought they must have left but then I see four teenagers all sitting at the kitchen table texting away, not a word being said. Complete silence. This generation lives on-line and put their lives on-line. It remains confusing as to their true view of privacy–do they want more or do they just figure their lives are an open book.

This group has their priorities shaped by the age of instant access. They want everything now–sports scores, rumours, or videos of what they just saw on TV. They are multi-tasking so much it’s arguable they never give anything complete focus. When they watch TV, they have the laptop up, their cell phone in hand–navigating Facebook, twitter, texting, instagram and Skype all at once. No wonder ADD is growing. They choose Apps over software, expecting an App solution for any problem they have. They see advertising as completely ubiquitous and are more open to brands than other generations. But how they consume media is completely different. E-Commerce is an expectation, as they buy songs, games and movies or a new phone case at a whim.

As a Brand Leader, we need help to figure out how to win with this group when they turn 25? I know as a parent of this age group, I have no wisdom I can pass on. Maybe someone in this age group can help us out, because I’m utterly confused.

3. Can Newspapers even Survive?

So far, newspapers haven’t figured out the profit model between the traditional broadsheet and the on-line versions. Making it free was likely a mistake, and makes it hard to turn back. If your newspaper has been free on-line since 1997, I’ll be pissed off if you now expect me to pay for it. If I’m interested in the topic, I’ll just Google the same headline and find a free version. As long as newspaper publishers see a direct link between the actual broadsheet and the newspaper they run the risk of extinction. If you think a newspaper is a collection of amazing journalists, you’re off to a good start. But if you think it has to be a broadsheet, then you’re completely lost.

News now is instant, ubiquitous and more casual/social. The tweeting that went on during the US presidential debate (e.g. Big Bird) is evidence of how social media drives the story. I don’t need to read a journalists take on it. I already know. By the time the broadsheet version of the newspaper is ready, this story is now old news and even has had 12-18 more hours to evolve into a completely new story line. The broadsheet can’t keep up. I love the business model for the Huffington Post. What started as on-line political opinion is becoming a source for broader news–entertainment, sports and lifestyle stories. With more publishers going without a printed version (e.g. Newsweek just announced they’re cancelling their printed version), this has to be the future.

As a Brand Leader, I’d recommend moving your Newspaper spend on-line or even choose other mainstream media options. You’ve put up with the bad production quality for 100 years–is there really anyone under 50 still reading.

4. Can Advertisers Figure Out how to Win in the New World?

The Commodity Brands that have funded mainstream media remain completely confused.

Traditional media has always been funded by advertisers whether that means TV ads for 8-12 minutes per hour, newspapers and magazines with 25-40% of the space for ads and radio with ads every second song. Traditional Media has been free as long as you were willing to put up with advertising interrupting your usage of the media. That ability to interrupt consumers allowed the Commodity Brands (dish soap, diapers, toothpaste, razor blades and batteries) to break through to consumers, as they sat captive and watching their favourite TV show.

But New Media is free, unbridled and fairly commercial free. In general, a lot of the advertising still just sits there along the sidelines where we don’t click. While the high interest and high involvement brands have started to figure out how to use the New Media, the Commodities remain in a state of confusion. If you want to see what confusion looks like, go see Head and Shoulder’s twitter page with 320 followers or Bounce’s Facebook page “where they talk about fresh laundry” (their words, not mine)

These Commodity brands need to either get people more involved, which Dove is the best in class brand, or they need dial-up the potential importance for a core target which Tide has done a good job. As we see many of the new media companies (Facebook) struggling to figure out how to make more money from Advertisers, there needs to be a step up in creativity to find new solutions. Banner ads that just sit along the side aren’t going to do much for the advertiser or the media owner. If social media sites want to win over these commodity brands, they need find that right balance of interrupting consumers without annoying their membership.

5. Are there too many Social Media Options?

I know there are still new social media options every month, but most of these feel fairly niche. In the mainstream social media sites, we are seeing that winners have emerged and they are turning into leaders as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linked In and Wikipedia all now dominant in their given area. It looks impossible for a new entrant to really challenge them. If a new entrant were to try for leap-frog strategy, these leaders would just duplicate the innovation and kill the challenger. Every industry has gone through a similar pattern: early innovation, divergence of brand options, then a few power brands emerge, and then a power play where the strong squeeze out the weak through mergers and acquisitions until there are a handful of brand owners remaining.

As these Social Media sites look to turn their power into wealth, we will see a shift from fighting for members to fighting for advertiser dollars. This will likely force a convergence of social media options where the strongest brands try to squeeze out the smaller sites. There are already small signs in Google’s strategy they are thinking this way–trying to be the one stop shop. Mergers are always tend to surprise us, almost the unimaginable. Can you imagine Facebook buying LinkedIn? Who knows, maybe we’ll even see a merger between social media brands and mainstream networks. AOL already tried it with Time-Warner. But can you imagine Google buying CNN, Facebook buying MTV or NBC buying the Huffington Post? If you’re an Advertiser, expect some uncertainty in the next few years and expect a few mergers.

6. Will New Media people ever be able to Convince Brand Leaders of what they Should do?

Marketers love what they know. It feels safe. The people who spend 100% of their lives living and breathing new media know what Brand Leaders don’t know. The problem is there is no bridge between the Brand Leader and New Media. New Media don’t really get the marketers, don’t understand their motivations and how they think. So they just keep barking and no one is listening. Here are some tips: Start with the consumer and map out how they interact. Don’t start with the media. Demonstrate to me that you understand my brand: who is my target, how do they shop, what is my main benefit, the key issues I face, strategic options available and how my brand makes money. Show me things other brands in my predicament have done and the results. Be fundamental in the way you talk with me. Look at how I was trained, strategy first, tactics second, execution third. Go in that order so I can follow along. Don’t show me what Bud did on the Super Bowl. Teach me as much as you can, because if I have more knowledge I’ll be more comfortable. And help me to sell it in, because everyone above me is even more confused than I am. Right now, we are a little scared and we’re doing this because we know we should, not because we know what we’re doing. Help us.

When It Comes to New Media, Brand Leaders still need to be Fundamentally Sound

For a Media Overview that can help Brand Leaders get better media plans by learning more about both traditional and digital options, read the following presentation:

10 Annoying Things that give Marketers a Bad Reputation. STOP IT!

12 April 2013

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I’m a marketer at heart. In terms of career, it’s all I know and all I am. I claim to love everything about marketing. Well, nearly everything. Here are 10 things i despise and even more importantly I believe give us marketers a bad reputation. As Mike Ditka would say “STOP IT”.

The price of popcorn at the Movie Theatre. At the grocery store, a single bag of Orville’s popcorn goes for 29 cents a bag. Yet at the movie theatre, it costs $5.99. I get that the movie is using popcorn to cover the overhead. But it really is blatantly treating your consumer like a hostage. “Combos” (popcorn plus pop or candy) are even worse. At my theatre, one night while I was 9th in line, I added them up and there is zero savings. So I asked the kid at the front. And the answer the poor kid had to give was “the combos are more convenience than savings”. Wow.
Freight and PDI on a New Car. If you’ve ever bought a car, you have to pay something called freight and PDI. It’s really an admin fee for shipping and preparing the car. What’s frustrating is the negotiation process in buying a car. This is just one more tool at the disposal of the sales people. I know Saturn tried the “no price negotiation” strategy and it backfired. Negotiations with so many moving parts can be a brutal experience. And many times, you start off day 1 with such a negative experience that you’re mad at the brand. Why would you want that?
“That’s not all, if you call now…’ Yes, telemarketing is a necessary evil of the marketing game. I’m not a fan. The worst line ever invented is “that’s not all”. That just means we’ve taken this low-cost item we’re trying to sell you and give you a second one for free. But the rip-off is the “you just pay the shipping and handling” line. You’re likely paying an extra $8=10 in shipping and handling, where the company makes a huge profit on that amount. It’s never double the price to ship two items in the same parcel. And the handling? I wish these guys would stop preying on the defense-less consumer. These techniques make us look bad.
100% Money Back Warranty…’except for’: Last year, I decided to buy a Toshiba Ultrabook, as it was slightly cheaper than the Mac version. While the Toshiba was a bit flimsy, I decided to buy the 3 year extra service plan from Best Buy. I was told “don’t worry, this warranty covers everything, and while it’s being repaired, we’ll even give you a loaner version”. I figured OK, I”m covered. Six months in, the flimsy screen caught up to me and all of a sudden I couldn’t see anything. Confidently, I took it back to Best Buy. They gave me a loaner and a week later said “we can fix it, but the cost to you will be $400” I said “but I have the full warranty”. And they said “yes, but the warranty does not cover software, hardware or battery”. HUH? What else is there? There is nothing else but software, hardware or battery to a computer. Anyway, I bought the Mac. No wonder Apple does so well in an industry like this.
Paying $3 for headphones on the Airplane. I know pretty much every airline is nearly bankrupt. And I’d never invest a penny into an airline. But the shift to charging the consumer for everything seems like the wrong way to go. There have to be more creative ways than charging $3 for headphones. I was recently on a flight that cost me $1700, which makes that headphone fee about 0.18% of the overall price. Is it really making a dent in the balance sheet of your airline? Or is giving the consumer a small token a bad thing?
Email Lists you didn’t know you signed up for. I manage my email as best I can. For about 2 months now, I’m getting weekly Hilton Honors email blasts. I finally un-subscribed. Some of the un-subscribes are easy. But others are painful with 3 or 4 steps to confirm I really want to un-subscribe and I’m not “mistaken”. Email marketing is just the new form of junk mail. I guess it works for 3% of customers so to get the money from those guys, let’s bug the 97% of customers who don’t want emails cluttering up their inbox. Let’s make it so hard to tick off that “no email thank you” box that we can annoy our most loyal consumers.
Paying more for a large hot tea versus a Small: There are 3 component costs in hot tea. The cup, the bag and the water. The only thing that changes with a larger size is more water. Any chance to rip-off the consumer.
3-year Cell Phone Contracts: When the technology changes every six months and you’re teenager drops (or throws) their phone at least once a week, having that long contract feels like a prison sentence. I get the whole it’s the only way we can cover the cost. But it puts all these phone companies into a position where they get the sale but lose the customer’s loyalty. it’s not a way to build a long-term love affair but rather a growing hatred for one another.
Gas Price Games. I want one simple rule for gas prices. You have to set them on the first day of the month and leave that price the entire month. Have you ever noticed that the price of gas goes up immediately at the start of a crisis–in anticipation of prices going up. So a hurricane hits, prices jump up that day just in case the oil industry is affected. Not because it’s been affected. Just in case. Yet the prices don’t come down in anticipation of the world crisis ending,
Call Center Cold Calls at home. Even worse than junk email cluttering up my inbox are the phone calls coming from overseas. I’ve signed up for the “Do Not Call”, but I guess the loophole is to now call from overseas. You’re in the middle of cooking dinner and the phone rings. And there is some 7 second delay before someone says “Hi Mr Robertson”.

These 10 things are very common to most consumers causing great frustration but also lack of respect for the marketing profession. And yes, it is a profession. What are the things about marketing that annoy you and damage our reputation?

How do we Get these guys to “Stop It”?

To read more about how the love for a brand creates more power and profits:

Ask Beloved Brands to help you improve your brand or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

Forget the 4 P’s. Build Your Brand through the 5 sources of Connectivity

5 March 2013

1 Comment

The Evolution of Brands Beyond the Product

Most of us started learning about marketing by looking at the 4 P’s: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. While I’ve seen people adding P’s, a fifth one and even have seen up to eight P’s. I guess it’s a fairly easy way to teach marketing. It’s an OK way to learn, but it seems to treat marketing like an activity and not really a strategy. You get a product and then figure out where to sell it, what to charge and how to promote it and voila, now you are a marketing guru.

It’s true that most brands do start off as a product or service that helps to address some type of problem the consumer has in their lives. Early on it’s about a selling activity where you push your brand onto the target market and hope they buy. As the brand evolves, you start to establish an identity for the brand that gets well-known, you start narrowing what you’re naturally best at down to a promise and begin executing and building your experience around the promise. As you keep evolving, the Brand starts to shift towards becoming an Idea that helps solve the consumer’s emotional problems.

Apple is not just a computer or cell phone. It’s based on an idea of “simplicity that deals with the frustration over technology”.
Dove is not just a soap or hand cream, but all about the idea of “real beauty that allows women to feel comfortable with who they are”.
Starbucks is not just a coffee and pastries, but an “escape from a hectic day”

While a lot of the Beloved Brands have taken 20 years or even 90 years to earn their status, you can advance your brand faster by starting off as an idea. It becomes less about product and more about the big idea from day 1. It becomes less about hopeful tactics and more about insightful strategy. You’ll be able to build around the idea rather than getting stuck in the constraints of what your product does. An idea helps you connect with consumers and that connection gives your brand added power, and the power can be used to drive higher growth and profits.

A Beloved Brand is based on an idea that’s worth loving.

The Brand Love Curve

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on a hypothetical Brand Love Curve, where brands go from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved Brand for Life.

At the Beloved Brand stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s this connection that helps drive power for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand.

A Beloved Brand uses the love consumers have for the brand to replicate the power of a Monopoly. And from that power, it drives stronger growth and higher profits.

The Five Sources of Connectivity: Promise, Strategy, Story, Freshness, Culture

Under the Brand Idea are 5 sources of connectivity that help connect the brand with consumers and drive Brand Love, including the brand promise, the strategic choices you make, the brand’s ability to tell their story, the freshness of the product or service and the overall experience and impressions it leaves with you. Everyone wants to debate what makes a great brand–whether it’s the product, the advertising, the experience or through consumers. It is not just one or the other–it’s the collective connection of all these things that make a brand beloved.

The brand’s promise sets up the positioning and comes directly out of the idea you have for your brand. You have to focus on a key target with one main benefit you offer. Brands need to be either better, different or cheaper. Or else not around for very long. “Me-too” brands have a short window before being squeezed out. How relevant, simple and compelling the brand positioning is impacts the potential love for the brand. Force yourself to find that point of difference, and balance the rational and emotional benefits in your promise. Even if you feel the desire to start with a rational promise, wrap it in an emotional package. And as your brand strengthens, layer in more and more emotion. But even at the most emotional stage of a brand, back it up with rational thoughts. It’s about balance. People will stay loyal, pay higher prices and follow a brand they are connected with. More and more, brands are leveraging purpose (the why) into their brand promise, because people buy why you do it, more than just want you do. Push yourself to make your promise the same as why you get up in the morning and you’ll make a fortune.
The strategic choices that brands make can make a world of difference. Most brands get stuck in thinking 3 months ahead. They miss out on the bigger picture of where you want to be in 5-10 years. To figure out where you want to go starts with where you are today. Map out what’s getting in your way and let those define your strategies. Identifying where the brand is on the Brand Love Curve (see above) helps focus your choice in strategies as you want to look for ways that tighten the connection with consumers. Bring an ROI mindset, with a pathway that has a focus, early win and a leverage to a gateway to something bigger.
Beloved brands can tell the brand story through five types of media: Paid (traditional and digital advertising) earned (PR, news, events, influencers) search (Search Engine Optimization), social media (facebook, twitter, linked in) and home (website, blog, e-commerce). Beloved Brands find creative ways use each of these media choices to enable your brand to connect emotionally with consumers and they have a bit of magic to the communication. Great advertising helps to separate the brand from the pack, telling the brand promise in a compelling and relevant way.
The most beloved brands have a freshness of innovation, staying one-step ahead of the consumers–giving them something they’d never have imagined. Having a steady stream of new products helps keep the consumer excited about the brand. The idea of the brand helps acting as an internal beacon to help frame the R&D. Every new product has to back that idea. At Apple, every new product must deliver simplicity and at Volvo, it must focus on safety.
The most beloved brands create an experience that over-delivers the promise. How your culture and organization are set up can make or break that experience. Hiring the best people, creating service values that employees can deliver against and having processes that eliminate service leakage. The culture attacks the brand’s weaknesses and fixes them before the competition can attack. With a Beloved Brand, the culture and brand become one.

The Most Beloved Brands Are Strong on All 5 Sources of Connectivity

To read more about how the love for a brand creates more power and profits:

Start a “Hate” page for your Brand, and See if People Show Up

6 February 2013

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If you are serious about the hearing the Voice of the Customer, than start a hate page about your brand. You might be shocked at how many people show up, and you might find richness in what they have to say about your brand.

In sports, they say people learn more from losing than from winning. When you lose, you can look at what exactly you did wrong, and from that you can see what you need to do in order to change, so that in the future you will be more able to win. While it’s more fun to win, no one really learns anything.

Are you serious about Voice of Customer?

If you are serious, ask yourself why you are gathering the data? Is it to find out how wonderful you are or is to find the flaws you can fix. I have sat in research collected Voice of Customer (VOC) meetings, and have seen people get so excited when the score goes up from 38% to 39%. Everyone starts to smile, mainly because these are connected to the goals for the year-end bonus. A few of the positive verbatims are read and people beam with pride. Then a few of the negatives are read, there is silence the room. And then it’s back to how great the 39% feels. Click on that Rogers page http://www.facebook.com/CanadiansAgainstRogers and read some of the stories that consumers are have taken the time to post about the Rogers brand. Every Rogers executive should start their day off by reading these stories and figuring out what they are going to do about it. Before their competitors do something about it.

Isn’t it better to Attack Yourself on Facebook Before Your Competitor Attacks You in the Market?

I know it sounds a bit crazy, but imagine the richness you can get from starting a “Hate” page for your own brand on Facebook and hearing what’s wrong so that you can attack yourself and fix your flaws faster than your competitor can find them and expose them in the marketplace. It’s the modern-day version of manning the Call centre for a day. One tool I love using is the Leaky Bucket. A great exercise in exposing your flaws–your leaks–so that you can attack them. The learning you might get from your “Hate” page on Facebook might help you populate. It adds richness to the data of a VOC study.

It’s a great tool for a Brain Storming off-site meeting. The way the tool works is go through every stage that a consumer goes through as they interact with your brand, as they move from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved Brand. Write down what you think it is that people like about your brand at each stage, and then start writing down why they leave your brand at each stage. This is where the richness of attacking yourself comes into play. ATTACK!!! You’ll likely begin seeing “leaks” that you can fix. These leaks are what you can attack and close, so that you’ll retain these consumers rather than lose them.

Attack Yourself Before Others Attack You

To read more on How to Create a Beloved Brand, read the following presentation:

To read other stories on Brand Leadership, click on any of the topics below:

There is a Facebook page called “Brand Leadership Learning Center” at

If you or team has any interest in a training program, please contact me at graham.robertson@beloved-brands.com

About Graham Robertson: I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. My background includes 20 years of CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke. The reason why I started Beloved Brands Inc. is to help brands realize their full potential value by generating more love for the brand. I only do two things: 1) Make Brands Better or 2) Make Brand Leaders Better. I have a reputation as someone who can find growth where others can’t, whether that’s on a turnaround, re-positioning, new launch or a sustaining high growth. And I love to make Brand Leaders better by sharing my knowledge. My promise to you is that I will get your brand and your team in a better position for future growth. To read more about Beloved Brands Inc., visit http://beloved-brands.com/inc/ or visit my Slideshare site at http://www.slideshare.net/GrahamRobertson/presentations where you can find numerous presentations on How to be a Great Brand Leader. Feel free to add me on Linked In at http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamrobertson1 or on follow me on Twitter at @GrayRobertson1

10 things that Good Advertising Should Do

2 February 2013

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People always ask me “So what is it that makes a Brand Leader good at advertising?”

I used to think they must be more creative. Or they are more in touch with creative people. Or better yet, they are a visionary.

I never really thought these answers satisfied me. Advertising is so much more than that.

In fact there are many things around advertising that have nothing to do with the creative. There needs to be a great Brand Plan, the Creative Brief should be tight yet rich with insight. Brand Leaders have to manage the process and stay on strategy and they should have an ability to select the right media. They should take risks. They have to be able to handle the stress of ambiguity against deadlines, and the pressure to make the numbers in the face of art. Advertising is half art, half science. They have to be able to give some freedom on execution, yet maintain a tight control on the strategy.

Brand Leaders must be good at giving good feedback, maybe even a bit fussy on details. Be nice though. They have to love the work and bring that emotion to the table. What about motivating the team? Not just motivating the creatives, but the planners, the account people, the editors and even the directors. Someone who is great at Advertising has to make decisions. They have to be able to walk in the shoes of the consumer, yet still live at the desk of the brand. They must have the ability to gain alignment with their own team and yet gain approval from the senior management of the company. They have to be able to sell the work. At all stages. The list goes on and on.

There are just so many things that are required to get good advertising. Being creative is a great start. But it is more.

So after thinking about this question for a few years, I finally nailed it:

A Brand Leader that is good at advertising is able to consistently get good advertising on the air, and keep bad advertising off the air.

It’s such a simple yet complicated answer. Almost as simple and complicated as David Ogilvy’s line “Clients get the work they deserve”. I know that is true, in every way that it is meant. I always ask Brand Leaders, “if you knew that how you showed up actually impacts the advertising, do you think you might show up differently?” I hope the answer is yes. But I’m not sure they do. Those great at advertising get it.

Sadly, there is an equally long list of things that make Brand Leaders bad at advertising. These days, there is so much learning on the job that people end up as the decision-maker in the room, sitting there trying to lead the advertising when they haven’t even properly trained on how to do it. Malcolm Gladwell says you’re an expert when you’ve had 10,000 hours. And yet, there are Brand Leaders are thrust into leading an Ad Campaign with 20, 30 or maybe 100 hours. And no training. Even those who are supposed to teach you haven’t been trained. So you are both learning. How can you consistently get good advertising on the air, managing such a complicated process when you’re still learning. On the job.

The 10 Things Good Advertising Should Do

Here’s a starting point for you when you’re judging creative.

Set Yourself Apart. Beloved Brands must be different, better, cheaper. Or they are not around for very long. The story telling of the brand’s promise should help to separate the brand from the clutter of other brands that are stuck in our minds. And that starts with creative that feels different and of course makes the brand seem different.
Focused! A focused target, a focused message, a focused strategy against a focused communication idea, a focused media. The whole discipline of marketing is founded on focus, and yet Brand Leaders struggle most in this area. They always want that “just in case” option.
Keep the Idea and Communication very simple. Communication is not what is said, but what is heard. Too many people try to shout as many messages as they can in one ad. What does the consumer hear? A confusing mess. By throwing multiple messages you are just making the consumer do the work of deciding the most important message, because you couldn’t figure it out. My challenge to you is to stand up on a chair and yell your main message as though you are standing on top of a mountain. If you can’t YELL it out in one breath, then your idea is too complex. Or just too long. The Volvo Brand Manager gets to yell “Safety” in one clean simple breath. Can you do that?
Have a Good Selling Idea. While Big Ideas break through, they also help you to be consistent, because you have to align your thinking to the Big Idea. You’ll see consistency over time, across mediums–paid, earned, social and search–and you’ll see it throughout the entire brand line up of sub brands. Consumers will start to connect to the big idea and they’ll begin to relate your brand with that big idea. Look at your ad: does it have a big idea?
Drive Engagement: Too many Brand Leaders forget to engage the consumer. They get so fixated on saying their 7 messages that they figure the ability capture attention is just advertising fluff. But it all starts with Attention. The consumer sees 5,000 ads a day and will likely only engage in a handful. If you don’t capture their attention, no one will remember the brand name, your main message or any other reason to believe you might have.
Let the Visuals do the talking. With so many ads, you need to have a key visual that can capture the attention, link to your brand and communicate your message. The ‘see-say’ of advertising helps the consumers brain to engage, follow along and remember. As kids, we always love the pictures. We still do.
Sell the solution, not the product. Consumers use brands to solve problems in their lives. Your brand will be more powerful if it solves the problems of life. Figure out the consumers’ enemy and conquer it on their behalf. Consumers don’t care about what you do, until you care about what they need. No one has ever wanted a quarter-inch drill, they just need a quarter-inch hole.
Be Relevant with the Consumer. A beloved brand finds a way to matter to those who really care. It’s not only the right brand promise that matters, but the right communication of that promise. You can’t sell carpet cleaning to someone who only has hard wood floors. And you can’t sell a golf ball that goes 20 yards farther to someone who despises golf.
Make Ads that are based on a consumer Insight. Insights are not facts about your brand. That’s just you talking AT the consumer. Insights are something the consumer already knows but they didn’t realize that everyone felt that way. Insights enable consumers to see themselves in the situation and once you do that, the consumers might then figure the brand must be for them. Insights allow you to connect and turn the ad into a conversation.
Tell the story behind the brand. There should be richness in your brand’s purpose. Why did you start this brand? How does your brand help people? Why do you get up in the morning? Remember: people don’t buy what you do as much as they buy why you do it.

The ABC’S of Advertising

Another way to rephrase this list is through the ABC’S: Attention Branding Communication and Stickiness.

Attention: You have to get noticed in a crowded world of advertising. Consumers see 6000 ads per day, and will likely only engage in a few. If your brand doesn’t draw attention naturally, then you’ll have to force it into the limelight.
Branding: Ads that tell the story of the relationship between the consumer and the brand will link best. Even more powerful are ads that are from the consumers view of the brand. It’s not how much branding there is, but how close the brand fits to the climax of the ad.
Communication: Tapping into the truths of the consumer and the brand, helps you to tell the brand’s life story. Keep your story easy to understand. Communication is not just about what you say, but how you say it—because that says just as much.
Stickiness: Sticky ads help to build a consistent brand/consumer experience over time. In the end, brands are really about “consistency” of the promise you want to own. Brands have exist in the minds of the consumer.

To read more on How to get Better Advertising, here’s a presentation to follow:

Be a Better Client

If how you show up to the agency will produce better advertising work Then show up right.

Agencies should be treated like trusted partners, not suppliers. Engage them early asking for advice, not just telling them what to do and when. If you tell an agency what to do, there will only be one answer “YES”. But if you ask them what to do, there are three answers: yes, no or maybe. Seek their advice beyond advertising. Build a relationship directly with the creative teams. Be more than “just another client”.

Getting great advertising is a balance of freedom and control. Most Marketers allow too much FREEDOM on the strategy but want to exhibit CONTROL on the creative. It should be the reverse, you should control the strategy and give freedom on creative. Don’t go into a creative meeting with a pre-conceived notion as to what the ad should look like. Creative people are “in the box” problem solvers. What they don’t want a) blank canvas b) unclear problem and c) your solutions to the problem. Let them be in the box and find the solution for you. That’s what motivates them the most.

Here’s a presentation to help you be a better client.

If you are in the mood to see other great advertising, here’s a few other stories:

To see a training presentation on getting Better Advertising:

Brand Management: How to Be a Great Brand Leader

31 January 2013

6 Comments

It seems that marketing these days is more about “doing” than it is about “thinking”.

“Activity Based Marketing” has replaced strategic brand management. Marketers are content if they are doing something, regardless if it is the right something. Everyone I interact with is too busy doing stuff, running from meeting to meeting, chasing the to do list. Marketers today are so busy, that they don’t have time to think. If you want to be a great marketer, you need to be carving out time to sit back in your chair and say “what’s next”.

Are you Strategic?

I know you want to say yes. And I’m sure it’s on your Linked In profile. So you must be. But if you are doing more activity than you are doing the thinking, then you aren’t really operating strategically. You are too busy chasing your own tail. Strategic Thinkers see “what if” questions before they see solutions. They map out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play out. They reflect and plan before they act. They are thinkers and planners who can see connections. Non Strategic Thinkers see answers before questions. They get to answers quickly, and will get frustrated in delays. They opt for action over thinking, believing that doing something is better than doing nothing. They are impulsive and doers who see tasks. They can be frustrated by strategic thinkers. Look back at the past week and ask “are you acting strategically?”

Are You a Fundamentally Sound Marketer?

No matter how bright you are, if you haven’t been properly trained, then you aren’t realizing your full potential. You likely are struggling with writing your brand plan, you aren’t quite sure what has to go onto the creative brief and you aren’t sure how to give an agency feedback. You’re not sure which media option makes the most sense for your brand. These days, marketing has become a completely “on the job” training ground. There’s very few fundamentals being taught. You are given a desk and a brand and told that “we think marketers learn on the job” and “we think it’s your boss who should be teaching you”. Since there has been a few generation of marketers who haven’t been trained, it’s very likely that your boss isn’t quite sure of the fundamentals of brand management.

If you are a bright, but you think you are lacking the fundamentals, you are not alone.

Are you Running the Brand? Do you act like an Owner?

Brand Manager has to have a mindset that reflects the CEO, accountable for growth, costs, profit and shareholder wealth. A great marketer runs the brand, rather than letting the brand run them. The starting ground for running the brand is to have your finger on the pulse of the brand and make sure everything revolves around that pulse. Everything in the company should feed off the Brand DNA. The Brand DNA (many call it the Brand Essence) is the most succinct definition of the Brand. For Volvo, it’s Safety, while BMW might be Performance and Mercedes is Luxury. The Brand’s DNA has an external and an internal. Externally, you should be looking at the consumers’ view and the brand personality you’re trying to project outward to them. Internally, the products and the internal brand beacon should help align everyone working on the brand.

The classic role of Brand Management is that the Brand Leader is at the hub and everything revolves around that Brand Leader. But in reality, they aren’t really revolving around the Brand Leader. They are revolving around the Brand DNA and it’s just that the Brand Leader owns that DNA and uses it as a lens to judge all the activity around the Brand. That is the starting point of strategy.

Everything Revolves around the Brand DNA

The Brand DNA should help frame

Brand Plan that drives the business for the upcoming year or the next 5 years
Brand Positioning that connects to the consumer through marketing communications
Customer Value Proposition that links the consumer needs to the benefits of the brand
Go-To-Market strategy that frames the distribution and the selling process
Cultural Beacons that help define the brand internally through values, inspiration and challenge and finally
Business Results, with each brand offering a unique way that it makes money. Each of these six needs feed off the Brand DNA, look to the definition as a guideline for how to align to the brand.

When you begin to blow this out one step further, you can start to see where the complexity comes into play with each of the six areas have their own needs that should still feed off that Brand DNA.

Use the Brand Plan to Drive the Direction of the Brand

The planning area should help to frame the Brand Plan, which is a combination of a one year Brand Plan and a 3-5 year strategic plan. The Vision and Mission provide the future direction, objectives align to the Business needs and Brand Funnel objectives and Strategies and Tactics help to drive towards those objectives. Included as well should be a Calendar and Budgets. For a tutorial on how to write a Brand Plan, click on the following link: How to Write a Brand Plan

From the DNA, map out a positioning statement that can help frame the Marketing Communications plan. That includes the creative big idea, the media mix, earned media (PR, Events) social media, key influencers (e.g. Doctors or Contractors or Bloggers). As well, the positioning frames the identity which could include logo, language, look and feel and brand book. My hope is that you don’t change this very often. Looking at the complexity of the Brand Management system outlined here, it baffles me that Brands facing tough times reach for changing their logo so quickly when so many other factors could be driving the issues. For a tutorial on writing Creative Briefs, click on: How to Write an Effective Creative Brief

Staying on Strategy is just as Hard as Coming up with the Strategy

If you don’t have time to think, then how do you know what you’re doing is the right thing to do? The Go-To-Market plan should also feed off the Brand DNA and come out of the Brand Plan. The Distribution strategy and needs should match up to the needs of the brand, including decisions around Key Account focus, pricing, sku mix, promotion and the possible role of new products. In a fast-moving category like cereal or gum, or a high technology driving category like computers, phones or TVs, both share a high need for product innovation. For brands that require in store selling, you should also include the In-store experience which could be demonstration, signage or trial as well as possible selling messages for sales people on the floor of the distribution channel. These messages should feed directly from the brand messages.

The R&D plan should feed off the Brand DNA and develop products that match the brand. Too many times, R&D is in their own world, trying to invent things that have nothing to do with where the brand sits. They expect marketing to be able to sell their inventions. Even in a technology driven business, Apple is driven first by the consumer. Steve Jobs really understood that you don’t just sell what you have.

Brand also drives the Culture and the DNA should provide a beacon for the People to follow. The brand story told within the company is even more important than what you might tell the market through your advertising. Talent management means hiring the right people and providing the right training. Too many companies are cutting back on training. Remember that better people produce better work that drives better results. Keep investing in your people and the business results will come. Empower your people to get the most from their ideas. Leverage values, inspirational touch points and processes to inspire and challenge them on achieving greatness.

Managing the Brand

Brand drives the Business Results. The more loved a brand, the more tightly the connection it has with their consumers. This connection becomes a source of power that the brand can wield in the market to drive higher growth rate and profitability. The Brand Leader is responsible for driving the P&L, driving sales and share, managing the forecast and costs for an efficiently run brand. The Brand Leader must figure out the levers of the P&L it can use to drive more profits. For a tutorial on driving profits through your brand, click on: How to Drive Profits through Your Brand

Leading the Brand

Putting the Brand Leader front and centre will allow you to leverage the Brand DNA into each of the areas of your business, whether that’s marketing, sales, R&D, finance or human resources. The Brand Leader should be at the centre of this hub, with each area looking to the Brand DNA as a beacon of how they can do their job most effectively in helping the brand drive long-term growth and profitability.

Here’s a robust summary on Brand Management that looks at it through 8 areas:

Beloved = Power = Growth = Profit
Brand DNA and Vision
Brand Promise
Brand Analytics
Brand Plan
Execution
Managing
Leading

Everything Starts and Ends with the Consumer in Mind

22 January 2013

31 Comments

As Brand Leaders, our days get busy, running from meeting to meeting, trying to deliver our numbers, gain share and hit our forecasts. We have a few new products that are long over due and now we’re trying to make the most of them. Finance has found a potential cost savings from the plant but it’s unsure if it will be off-set by a one time surcharge. We have a presentation at Wal-Mart next week and think we’ll walk away with a new listing. We have a new claim from the R&D team that we think delivers superiority versus our closest competitor. And finally, we have the go-ahead to do a new ad, but we think our senior managers will insist that we make the ad to their exact requirements and that it delivers their new vision statement. This is an average day in marketing. Except, we have not thought once about the consumer. Maybe that’s the norm when we get so busy or face pressures to make the numbers.

I always like to ask Brand Leaders: “Do you represent your brand to your consumer or do you represent your consumer to the brand?” Yes, I get stunned looks of confusion when I ask that. But it’s an important question as to your mindset of how you do your job. My challenge to you is to start thinking like your consumer and be their representative to your brand. You’ll notice the work gets better, you’ll see clearer paths to growth and you’ll start to create a brand that the consumer loves rather than just likes. When this happens, sales go up and the P&L spits out higher profitability. Because the more loved the brand, the more powerful position it occupies and the more profit it can generate from that source of power.

Take a Walk In The Shoes of Your Consumer With most of us, when we first fell in love with marketing, there were two key elements that got our juices going: strategic thinking and consumer behavior. Marketing brings these two elements together in a very challenging way. You should be thinking about your consumer every day, all day. Yes, you need to hit your sales and share goals. But your consumers are your only source of revenue and you have to know them intimately. Solving a consumer challenge feels like the biggest Rubik’s Cube we can find. The reason I mention this is if you want to connect with your team and motivate them, then start talking about the consumer and you’ll see their engagement go up. This is what they love. Be curious about your consumer, constantly watching changes in the marketplace.

Live and breathe insights about your consumers. Insight is not something you just do when you’re spending the hour that you write your creative brief. You should be gathering insight at every chance you can, and unleashing that knowledge throughout every day. Insight is not something that your consumers never knew before. That would be knowledge not insight. It’s not data or fact about your brand that you want to tell. That helps, but you have to go a layer deeper to find your insights. Oddly enough, Insight is something that everyone already knows. Insight comes to life when it’s told in such a captivating way that makes consumers stop and say “hmm, I thought I was the only who felt like that”. That’s why we laugh when see the way that insight is projected with humor, why we get goose bumps when insight is projected with inspiration and why we cry when the insight comes alive through real-life drama.

Get in the shoes of those Consumers and you’ll quickly realize that consumers do not care about what you do, until you care about what they want. Instead of mentioning a feature, force yourself to ask “If I’m the consumer so what do I get” five times to see if you can get to the richness of the functional benefits. Then look at that functional benefit and ask “so how does that make me feel”. Stop talking features and start talking benefits–both the rational and emotional. No one has ever wanted a 1/4 inch drill, they just want a 1/4 inch hole.

Consumers are busier than ever. Whether it’s working late, trying to balance everything or doing too much, they have so little time. People are multi-tasking, texting while driving or on the TV while watching TV—which is up 35% this year. Traditional ways with a 30 second ad and a billboard aren’t having the same effect in today’s world. The average consumer is exposed to over 6,000 advertising message per day. The consumers’ brain sorts through the clutter until finds something that might fill their needs. Imagine your boring logical message, well thought and all, breaking through to that consumer. Even with the fast paced life, most consumers are bored with life and just want something to entice them. The simplest way to challenge boredom is to like everything you do unconditionally, but if this bored consumer meets up with a boring brand, it will be rejected very quickly. You have to matter to those consumers that really care. And you have to know what connects with them to get the way to stand out.

Living in the Consumers Shoes is Contagious. When you start asking about how the consumer buys, what they are thinking about now or what do we want them to think, you’ll notice others on your team following your cues and start thinking like a consumer. It will be energizing. When you ask “will our consumer love this” it sets the bar very high. Here’s my simple challenge for you: If you don’t love the work you do, how do you expect the consumer to love your Brand. The best filter for your work is the consumer. It’s more important than what Wal-Mart thinks or what your boss likes/doesn’t like. When looking at new products, the R&D team should be more obsessed with what the consumer wants than what they might be capable of coming up in their lab. As Steve Jobs famously said “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.”

Brand Leaders Play It Far Too Safe to Find True Love. Brand Leaders choose the safety of logic and facts instead of getting too deep or going all emotional with their consumer. And, most brands end up liked but never end loved. My Mom Wanted Me to Be an Actuary. Apparently, an Actuary has one of the longest life expectancies, can make quite a bit of money and they live the ideal work-life balance. Sounds like the perfect job, but I just couldn’t do it. What’s lacking in the life of an actuary is the ability to have fun at work or drive all your passion into your work to create something big. You can make a real difference. So if you’re not going to be an Actuary…then stop acting like one when you’re the Brand Leader. We can’t afford to keep doing just the usual, we can’t get stuck in logic and we can’t just satisfy needs. We need to push to go beyond greatness at every touch point with our selfish and bored consumers. We need to cultivate a deep emotional relationship with our consumer and we need to entice craving and desire.

Everything starts and ends with the consumer in mind.

To read about how to Create Beloved Brands, read this:

Ask Beloved Brands to run a workshop to find your brand positioning or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

How to ask Big Questions that get to Big Strategic Answers

12 December 2012

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In our marketing careers, we start off in a doing-role and get completely swamped in execution. We think “if only I had a higher level job, I’d actually have time to think, rather than just do”. The problem for many of us, is not only do we get good at the doing, we get so good that we can’t get past it and we never end getting to the real strategic thinking. We just become a do-er at a higher level and drive everyone crazy beneath us.

When I talk to many of the senior Brand Leaders, at the VP and Director level, I hear 3 common things:

“I am too busy and I have no time for strategic thinking”
“My team lacks the experience so I have to jump in resolve issues myself”
“If I didn’t jump in, it just wouldn’t get done right”

Are you really Strategic?

Everyone out there claims to be a strategic thinker, but I would guess that really only half of us really are strategic.

Strategic Thinkers see “what if” questions before they see solutions. They map out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play out. They reflect and plan before they act. They are thinkers and planning who can see connections. This is PLANNING!
Non Strategic Thinkers see answers before questions. They get to answers quickly, and will get frustrated in the delays of thinking. They think doing something is better then doing nothing. They opt for action over thinking. They are impulsive and doers who see tasks. They are frustrated by strategic thinkers. This is EXECUTING!

As a senior Brand Leader, it is easy to get so wrapped up in the details of the execution that you’re making the non-strategic decisions on behalf of the team. You have just really become the “senior” Senior Brand Manager that really annoys your team. Instead of providing the team with a vision, challenging on strategy or teaching the team, you’re telling them to make the flash bigger and change the sell sheet to purple.

If you speak in a telling voice, you leave your team with one answer: YES. If you speak in an asking voice you leave your team with 3 answers: YES, NO or let me dig in a bit more and find out.

Instead of telling people what to do, why not challenge yourself to sit back slightly and ask the really tough challenging questions. You’ll know you’ve asked a really tough question when you don’t even know the answer. There’s nothing wrong with stumping the team, because you’re even stumping yourself in the process.

So What are the Tough Questions to Ask?

As your team might be at the beginning stage of digging in on analysis, here’s are 10 great questions to ask your team:

How do we make money? This focuses them on figuring out the pathway from the activities on the brand to the results in the market and the profitability on the balance sheets. The most beloved brands use the consumer connection to create a source of power that they can use on various areas of the market and then use that power to drive the brand’s profitability. Your team should be able to map this out and use it as a roadmap for the brand’s future. If you’re not focused on power and profit, then you’re not strategic.
What is it that makes us different? The best of brands are either better, different or cheaper. Or not around for very long. If you can’t answer this question, then how do you expect your consumer to be able to answer. You’re likely just a me-too brand and once that’s discovered, you’ll be on a downward spiral.
Why are we here? How did we get here? Where could we be? It’s great for getting to the vision, without writing the word “vision” up on the board and saying to everyone “ok go”. That gets you no-where. Pick a magical date of 5-10 years from now and say “if you got everything you wanted, what would the brand look like in 5 years?” Push them hard on the where to, because that’s when the brand starts to transform itself.
What’s holding us back from being where we want to be? Once you get the team focused on the vision of 5 to 10 years from now. This allows you to start attacking your brand, to find the inhibitors that you can try to unleash or course correct.
Which would be easier: getting our most loyal users to use more, moving up those who have already bought into the brand to start using regularly or getting a new user? This is pushing them towards a strategic choice, whether to focus on base users or new users–penetration or usage frequency. It also should start to force you to look at your brand funnel to see where you have strength and where you have gaps. Every brand should be utilizing a brand funnel. It’s almost negligent to not use one. That’s like working out at the gym and not knowing your blood pressure or cholesterol scores. When you layer in What would make us more Money, you might start to see the ROI impact of the same decision.
What would our consumer say about our brand? This shifts the focus of the discussion from a myopic brand focus into thinking about the consumer first. Everything you do should be start and end with the consumer in mind. After all, if you figure out how to win over the consumer, you become more powerfully connected and can drive greater growth and profits through that power
For Strategy, what choices are on the table that helps you gain a foothold into the market but also helps to drive the long-term win? A test for any great strategy is whether it has all 4 key elements. FOCUS: all your energy to a particular strategic point or purpose. Match up your brand assets to pressure points you can break through, maximizing your limited resources—either financial resources or effort. Pick a tight target market of those who can love you, and pick a unique position that you can stand behind and win. You want that EARLY WIN, to kick-start of some momentum. Early Wins are about slicing off parts of the business or population where you can build further. Find that connection with your consumer—moving them along the love curve. LEVERAGE everything to gain positional advantage or power that helps exert even greater pressure and gains the tipping point of the business that helps lead to something bigger. Your brand finds a way to turn the consumer connectivity into a source of power the brand can leverage.Seeing beyond the early win, there has to be a GATEWAY point, which is the entrance or a means of access to something even bigger. It could be getting to the masses, changing opinions or behaviours. Return on Investment or Effort, where you can translate all the power you’ve earned into profits and brand value.
For any choice related to brand positioning and go-to-market, whether it’s target market, main message, media choices or activities, force their hand by asking a few questions to ask: 1) which one gets us on our way to vision faster? 2) which one helps us grow faster 3) which one makes us more money? Always push your team to focus by making them use the word “or” instead of “and”. If you think you are a strategic decision maker, then whenever you choose both, you’ve failed. When you go into a casino, and put one chip on each of the 38 choices on the roulette wheel, it might be fun, but you’ll never win. By targeting everyone then you’re not making the choice, you’re just depleting your resources. And you run the risk that no consumer ever says “wow, that brand is really speaking to me.”
When seeing new creative execution of anything, ask “DO YOU LOVE IT?” and then watch their eyes. Do you think our costumer will love it? Is this connected to personal pride or are they just passing the buck filling in forms. Getting something to market, big or small takes a herculean effort to overcome obstacles. I want to know on day 1, will they fight for it? A great idea that falls on the vine is worth less than an OK idea executed with passion. If we don’t love the work we do, then how do we expect the consumer to love the brand? OK is the enemy of greatness.
Why do you want to spend this money? If you are about to spend millions of dollars, I want to hear the reason why you think it’s crucial, why it will pay back even greater than the resources we put forward. Understanding and aligning to one key objective allows everyone to focus on the outcome.

And finally, the most important question of all: What do your instincts think we should do? And then listen. You might be surprised by the good thinking on your team and you might be surprised that their answer is better than the one that is in your head.

This might be most obvious of questions, but how many times per week do you ask this? Imagine the responses you might get from that. Imagine how motivated your team would be. As a leader, I want you to start exhibiting more patience. You have to learn the art of questioning that sets up the listening. If you learn this skill you’ll start to realize that you can still control the direction of the brand through questions, even more than through direction. On the plus side, you’ll have a fully engaged, motivated team that’s ready to deliver.

As a Brand Leader at the executive level, you should walk into every meeting telling yourself “I know less about this than anyone in the room” and that puts you in the most powerful position to ask the right strategic questions and listen for the right strategic answers.

The bigger the question, the bigger the answer.

To help improve your strategic thinking, read the following presentation:

If you or team has any interest in a training program, please contact me at graham.robertson@beloved-brands.com

I run Brand Leader Training programs on this very subject as well as a variety of others that are all designed to make better Brand Leaders. Click on any of the topics below:

Volvo Brand in One Word: Safety

31 October 2012

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“If you want to build a brand, you must focus your efforts on owning a word in the prospects’ mind. A word nobody else owns” – Al Ries

I went to see Al Ries speak a few years ago and he challenged all marketers to get your brand down to one word. It sounded great, until I went back to my desk and started trying it out on my brands. At best I was able to get it down to a few words or a quick catch phrase. As I sat there frustrated, I realized that the effort to try to get it down to one word is a great catalyst that gets you down to a few words. That’s a hell of a lot better than the excessively long-winded 5-page briefs or the long list of RTB’s (Reason to Believe) people want to jam in a TV ad.

For a long time, we’ve thought that brands just exist to convey a degree of consistency in the consumers mind. Yes, that helps to own a position in the marketplace. But more and more, we are also starting to realize that consistency of message acts as an internal beacon for everyone in the organization to follow.

I am always pushing everyone to focus: focus on a tight target, own one main benefit area that no one else can own and then shout it from the mountain top. The challenge here of getting what your brand stands down to one word would be the ultimate. I’d encourage you to take this on a test run and see where you get. But the bigger point is to, learn from how obsessed Volvo is around safety.

When you ask consumers one word to describe Volvo, without hesitation they say “Safety”.

I am yet to see any other brand that is so focused against one word like Volvo is with safety. For Volvo safety is not just a claim or demo in their TV ads, but is everything they do. But the real beauty for Volvo is their obsession with safety.

Volvo was long ahead of the marketplace. Volvo first started the safety angle in the 1940s and became completely obsessed in through the 1960s long before consumers cared about safety when no one was even wearing seat belts. But the market place has since caught up. This year, Car and Driver reports safety as the #1 benefit that consumers are looking for in a new car.
Volvo’s purpose in making safety a priority. In 1958, Volvo came up with the 3-point seat belt. Even with a patent they could have enforced and made millions, Volvo decided to share the technology with all the other car manufacturers because they believed so strongly in it. That really speaks to Volvo’s conviction and authenticity.
Volvo has always been way ahead of car safety regulations. In fact, as safety became a priority with consumers, regulators looked at what Volvo was doing as the standard and then made Volvo’s advancements mandatory across other companies. In the 1990s, Volvo was ahead of the curve on the introduction of air bags and side-air bags. In TV ads, we got so used to seeing the crash test dummy ads re-enforcing Volvo’s ownership over safety.
Volvo continues to set the standard for safety today. The 2012 IIHS (Insurance Institute of Highway Safety) had 3 Volvo models in the 10 Top Safety Picks, the most of any car brand. The Euro NCAP collision test has recognize 2012 Volvo V40 as the best car they’ve ever tested, giving it the top rating of five stars in the Euro NCAP collision test.

Most impressive to me that highlights Volvo’s obsession with safety is to look internally at the long list of R&D advancements over the past 70 years.

1944 Safety cage
1944 Laminated windscreen
1957 Anchor points for 2–point safety belts front
1958 Anchor points for 2–point safety belts rear
1959 3–point front safety belts standard
1964 First rearward–facing child safety seat prototype tested
1966 Crumple zones front and rear
1966 Safety door–locks
1969 Inertia reel safety belts
1971 Reminder safety belt
1972 3–point safety belts – rear
1972 Rearward–facing child safety seat
1974 Multi-stage impact absorbing steering column
1974 Bulb integrity sensor
1975 Braking system with stepped bore master cylinder
1978 Child safety booster cushion
1982 “Anti–submarining” protection
1986 Three–point safety belt centre rear seat
1990 Integrated child safety cushion in centre rear seat
1991 Side Impact Protection System
1991 Automatic height adjusting safety belt
1992 Reinforced rear seats in estate models
1995 Integrated child safety cushion outer rear seats
1997 Roll Over Protection System
1998 Whiplash Protection System
1998 Inflatable Curtain
2001 Volvo Safety Concept Car
2002 Roll Stability Control
2003 New Front Structure called Volvo Intelligent Vehicle Architecture
2003 Rear seat belt reminders
2003 Intelligent Driver Information System
2003 Inauguration of Volvo’s Traffic Accident Research Team in Bangkok
2004 Blind Spot Information System
2005 Door Mounted Inflatable Curtain
2006 Personal Car Communicator
2006 Collision Warning with Brake Support
2007 Power Park Brake
2007 Driver Alert Control
2009 City Safety – Automatically stop car at speeds below 19 mph (31 km/h) if obstruction is detected in front of car
2010 Pedestrian Detection with auto brake
2012 Pedestrian airbag

True leader push themselves by attacking the brand even before competitors have a chance. Volvo is continuing to push themselves with a very visionary challenge for the year 2020 that’s squarely directed internally within Volvo.

Nobody should die or be seriously injured in a Volvo.

That speaks volumes to the obsession they’ve had for the past 70 years and to the obsessive focus for the future of Volvo!

What can you learn from this for your brand?

About Graham Robertson: I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do. I have walked a mile in your shoes. My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke. I’m now a marketing consultant helping brands find their love and find growth for their brands. I do executive training and coaching of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability. I’m the President of Beloved Brands Inc. and can help you find the love for your brand. To read more about Beloved Brands Inc., visit http://beloved-brands.com/inc/ Feel free to add me on Linked In at http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamrobertson1 or on Twitter at @GrayRobertson1

Five Questions about Media in the Future

20 October 2012

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1. Will people watch even more TV in the future?

2. How can Advertisers Capture the Internet Babies (12-22 years old) as they move into adulthood?

3. Can Newspapers even Survive?

4. Can Advertisers Figure Out how to Win in the New World?

The Commodity Brands that have funded mainstream media remain completely confused.

5. Are there too many Social Media Options?

If you have any solutions to these questions or if you have other questions, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

For a Media Overview that can help Brand Leaders get better media plans by learning more about both traditional and digital options, read the following presentation:

Does a Brand Vision Statement Matter?

14 October 2012

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The Vision for the Toronto Maple Leafs

I love asking people “Do you think the Toronto Maple Leafs had a good year last year?”. For non-hockey fans, the Leafs would be like the Chicago Cubs in baseball or Aston Villa in the English Premier League. My beloved Leafs are the only NHL team who has not made the playoffs since 2004, and they have not won a championship since 1967. The last two seasons they finished 29th and 25th out of 30 teams. That’s really pathetic.

So did the Leafs have a good year? It depends on what you think the brand vision is? If you think the Leafs Vision is to Win the Stanley Cup, then it’s been an obvious disaster. But if you think the Leafs Vision is to be the Most Valued Sports Franchise, then it’s been an amazing year, just like the past 8 years. In those eight years of hockey despair, overall revenue has gone up from $117 million to $190 million while costs have gone down from $69 million to $57 million. That’s a P&L the people of Price Waterhouse dream about. The resulting brand value has seen the Leafs go from $263 million in 2003 up to $521 million–making it the #1 value valued team in hockey. Eight years of missing the playoffs and the value of the team has nearly doubled. Instead of firing everyone, they should be handing out the bonus cheques. They still have a long way to reach the NY Yankees Value of $2.2 Billion.

Does a Vision Statement Pay Out?

Companies that have Vision Statements have a better sense of where they are going. And the proof is there that it pays off for companies with a Vision.

Harvard Study across 20 industries looking at businesses showed that companies with Vision Statements saw their revenue grew more than four times faster; job creation was seven times higher; their stock price grew 12 times faster; and profit performance was 750% higher.
Newsweek looked at 1000 companies with Vision Statements had an average return on stockholder equity of 16.1%, while firms without them had only a 7.9% average return.
“Built to Last” showed that for companies with Vision Statements, that a $1 investment in 1926 would have returned $6,350 compared to only a return of $950 for comparable companies without a Vision.

The Vision and Mission help to Frame the Overall Brand Plan

Think of the Vision as the End in Mind Achievement towards your purpose. What do you want the brand to become? Think 10 years out: if you became this one thing, you would know that you are successful. Ideally it is Qualitative (yet grounded in something) and quantitative (measurable) It should be motivating and enticing to get people focused. It should be personal and speak to why you get up in the morning—why you got into this business.

The Mission is the Special Assignment. It should be tightly connected to the vision, but is more likely a 1-3 year direction—if a vision is a destination, then a mission is the how or the major milestone on the path towards that vision. A mission statement focuses on a company’s present state while a vision statement focuses on a company’s future.

Things that Make a Good vision:

Easy for employees and partners to understand and rally around
Think about something that can last 5-10 years or more
Balance between aspiration (stretch) and reality (achievement)
It’s ok to embed a financial ($x) or share position (#1) element into it as long as it’s important for framing the vision.

The watch outs for vision statements:

It’s not a positioning statement. Almost positioning neutral Let the positioning come out in the strategy.
Make sure we haven’t achieved it already. If you are #1, then don’t put “be #1”.
Don’t put strategic statements. Vision answers “where could we be” rather than “how can we get there”
Try to be single-minded: Tighten it up and don’t include everything!! Can you say it in an elevator. Can you actually remember it? Can you yell it at a Sales meeting?

Purpose Driven Visions: The Power of Why

More companies are reaching for their purpose answering the simple question: “why do we do what we do”. Why do you exist? What’s your Purpose or Cause? Start with what’s in you. Why do you wake up in the morning or why did you start this company long ago? Simon Sinek, the Author “The Power of Why” says the most successful brands start with a purpose driven vision (why) and match the strategies (how) and the execution (what) to the vision.

Using the Apple brand as an example, Sinek talks about the “Why” for Apple as challenging the status quo, and thinking differently. People at Apple want to make a dent in the universe. The “How” is making sure our products are all beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly. Since people buy into the why and the how of Apple and want to be a part of it, it matters less “What” they do and they’ll follow them as they move to new categories. As Sinek says “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.

Vision and Employees

A well-articulated vision can really make a difference for employees, giving them both a challenge and focus to what they do each day. For service driven companies, where people are the brand it becomes essential. Adding in brand values and even service values can assist people in knowing what they should be doing each day and how they should be doing it. For a product driven brand, it can help all drive focus for all those working around the brand whether that’s ad agencies, R&D, sales or operations.

To see how a Brand Vision helps to frame the brand plan, read the following presentation:

I run Brand Leader Training programs on this very subject as well as a variety of others that are all designed to make better Brand Leaders. Click on any of the topics below:

To see the training presentations, visit the Beloved Brands Slideshare site at: http://www.slideshare.net/GrahamRobertson/presentations

If you or team has any interest in a training program, please contact me at graham.robertson@beloved-brands.com

How to Get Fired as a Brand Manager

16 September 2012

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There’s been a lot of great Assistant Brand Managers to be fired at the Brand Manager level. So that would beg the question: why were they mistakenly promoted? Just like in sports where they are fooled by size, we sometimes get fooled by Charisma. They seem impressive to us–whether it’s how they speak in the hallways or answer questions in a plans meeting. We think Charisma is a great starting ground for a leader, so hopefully they can learn to be analytical, strategic, creative and organized. Hopefully that Charismatic leader can get stuff done, stay on track, hand in their budgets on time, know how to turn a brand around, can write great brand plans, work with agencies and motivate the sales team etc…etc… But then we find out that they can’t do all that stuff. And after 18 months as a Brand Manager, we see they really are “just charismatic” and we remind ourselves of what we already knew: Being a Brand Manager really is hard.

Brand Managers don’t really get fired because they can’t deliver the results. That might happen at Director or VP level. But at the Brand Manager level, we’d look for other Blind Spots that might be leading to the poor results.

I don’t want to see anyone get fired, so use this list to avoid it. I’ve provided advice for each reason, hopefully helping you to address it pro-actively.

Top 10 Reasons why Brand Managers get fired:

Struggle to Make Decisions: When these Brand Managers were ABMs they shined because they are the “super doer’s”, who can work the system, get things done on time and under budget. All the subject matter experts (forecasting, production, promotions) love them. But then get them into the Brand Manager seat and they freeze. They can do, but they can’t decide. They can easily execute someone else’s project list with flare, but they can’t come up with a project list of their own. For you to succeed, you have to work better on your decision-making process. You have to find methods for narrowing down the decisions. When you’re new to decisions, take the time to map out your thinking whether it’s pros and cons or a decision tree. It will eventually get faster for you and train your mind to make decisions.
Not Analytical Enough: Those that can’t do the deep dive analytical thinking. They might have great instincts, but they only scratch the surface on the analytics, and it eventually catches them when they make a poor decision and they can’t explain why they went against the obvious data points. The real reason is they never saw those data points. When a senior leader questions you, they can usually tell if they have struggled enough with a problem to get to the rich solution or whether they just did the adequate thinking to get to an “ok” solution. Just because you are now a Brand Manager doesn’t mean you stop digging into the data. The analytical skills you learned as an ABM should be used at every level in your career right up to VP. As I moved up, I felt out of touch with the data so at every level up to VP, I used to do my own monthly share report just to ensure I was digging in and getting my hands mucky with the data. Because I had dug around in the data, I knew which of my Brand Managers had dug in as well and which Brand Managers hadn’t even read their ABM’s monthly report yet. Take the time to know the details of your business. Dig into the data and make decisions based on the depth of analysis you do.
Can’t Get Along: Conflicts, teamwork issues, communication. These Brand Managers struggle with sales colleagues or the subject matter experts (SME’s). They might be the type who speaks first, listens second. They go head-to-head to get their own way instead of looking for compromise. Yes, they might be so smart they think faster than everyone, but they forget to bring people along with their thinking. They start to leave a trail of those they burned and when the trail gets too big they get labelled as “tough to deal with”. Listen more–hear them out. The collection of SME’s will likely teach you more about marketing than your boss will. If you don’t use these people to enhance your skill, you’ll eventually crash and burn. And if they can’t work with you, they’ll also be the first to destroy your career. You aren’t the first superstar they’ve seen. And likely not the last. My recommendation to you is to remember that Leadership is not just about you being out front, but about you turning around and actually seeing people following you. In fact, it should be called “Follower-ship”.
Not good with Ambiguity: Some Brand Managers opt for the safety of the easy and well-known answers. They struggle with the unknown and get scared of ambiguity. Brand Managers that become too predictable to their team create work in the market that also becomes predictable and fails to drive the brand. These Brand Managers are OK–they don’t really have a lot of wrong, but they don’t have a lot of right. You can put them on safe easy businesses, but you wouldn’t put them on the turn around or new products. Ambiguity is a type of pressure that not all of us are capable of handling easily, especially when they see Ambiguity and Time Pressure working against each other. Don’t ever settle for “ok” just because of a deadline. Always push for great. You have to learn to handle ambiguity. In fact revel in ambiguity. Have fun with it. Be Patient with Ideas. Never be afraid of an idea and never kill it quickly. As a leader, find ways to ask great questions instead of giving quick answers. Watch the signals you send that may suck the creativity energy out of your team. When you find a way to stay comfortable in the “ambiguity zone”, the ideas get better whether it’s the time pressure that forces the thinking to be simpler or whether it’s the performance pressure forces us to push for the best idea. So my recommendation to you is to just hold your breath sometimes and see if the work gets better.
Too slow and stiff: The type of Brand Manager that is methodical to the extreme and they think everything through to the point of “Analysis Paralysis”. They never use instincts–and have the counter analytical answer to every “gut feel” solution that gets recommended. They have every reason why something won’t work but no answers for what will work. I have to admit that this type frustrates me to no end, because nothing ever gets done. They struggle to make it happen: they are indecisive, not productive, disorganized or can’t work through others. They are frustratingly slow for others to deal with. They keep missing opportunities or small milestones that causes the team to look slow and miss the deadlines. You have to start to show more flexibility in your approach. Borrow some of the thinking from dealing with ambiguity and making decisions. Realize there are options for every solution, no one perfect answer.
Bad people Manager: Most first time people managers screw up a few of their first 5 direct reports. It’s only natural. One of the biggest flaws for new Managers is to think “Hey it will take me longer to explain it to you, so why don’t I just do it myself this one time and you can do it next time”. They repeat this every month until we realized they aren’t teaching their ABM anything. And they became the Manager that none of the ABMs wanted to work for because you never learn anything. But as we keep watching great ABMs crashing and burning while under them, we start to wonder “you are really smart, but can you actually manage people?”. To be a great Brand Manager, you have to work on being a better people leader. We expect you to develop talent. Be more patient with your ABM. Become a teacher. Be more selfless in your approach to coaching. Take time to give them feedback that helps them, not feedback that helps you. If you don’t become a better people manager, you’ve just hit your peak in your career.
Poor communicators, with manager, senior management or partners. They fail to adequately warn when there are potential problems. They leave their manager in the dark and the information comes their manager from someone else. They confuse partners because they don’t keep them aware of what’s going on. You have to become a better communicator. Make it a habit that as soon as you know something, your boss does as well–especially with negative news. It’s normal that we get fixated on solving the problem at hand that we forget to tell people. But that opens you up to risk–so cover your bases.
Never Follow Their Instincts: They forget that marketing also has a “Gut Feel” to it, taking all the data, making decisions and then getting to the execution and believing it by taking a risk. Too many times people fail because “they went along with it even though they didn’t like it”. You have to find ways to use your instincts. The problem is that sometimes your instincts are hidden away. You get confused, you feel the pressure to get things done and you’ve got everyone telling you to go for it. You get scared because you’re worried about your career and you want to do the ‘right thing’. But your gut is telling you it’s just not right. My rule is simple: if you don’t love the work, how do you expect the consumer to love your brand. The worst type of marketer is someone who says “I never liked the brief” or “I never liked the ad”. At every touch point, keep reaching for those instincts and bring them out on the table.
Can’t Think Strategically or Write Strategically: As you move up to Brand Manager, we expect you to be able to think conceptually, strategically and in an organized fashion. We also expect that to come through in your writing–whether that’s your Annual Brand Plan, monthly share report or just an email that you send. Be organized in your thinking–map it out. I do believe that every good strategy has four key elements: 1) Focus in either target or messaging 2) an Early win where you can see results 3) a Leverage point where you can take that early win and achieve a position power for your brand and finally 4) a Gateway to something even bigger for the brand. Every six months, I would find a quiet time to answer five key questions that would help me stay aware: 1) Where are we? 2) Why are we here? 3) Where could we be? 4) How can we get there? and 5) What do we have to do to get started? In an odd way, the more planning you do, the more agile you’ll be, because you’ll know when it’s ok to “go off plan”
They Don’t Run the Brand, they Let The Brand Run Them. Some Brand Managers end up in the spin zone where they are disorganized, frantic and not in touch with their business. They miss deadlines, look out of control and things just stockpile on one another. They may take pride in how long they work or how many things they are getting done on their to-do list. But they are out of control and the business is absolutely killing them. They just don’t know it yet. My advice to you is to stay in Control so you hit the deadlines and stay on budget. Dig in and know your business so you don’t get caught off-guard. Make sure you are asking the questions and carrying forward the knowledge. Instil processes that organize and enable you and your team, so that it frees you up your time to push projects through and for doing the needed strategic thinking. Stay conceptual–avoid getting stuck in the pennies or decimals–so you can continue to drive the strategy of your brand.

Now let’s be honest: You likely won’t be fired for just one of these. You likely will see 3 or 4 of these come together and begin to showcase that you’re just not up for being a Brand Manager. But even 1 or 2 will keep you stuck at the Brand Manager level and you’ll notice your bosses are hesitant to put you on the tough assignments.

But the big question is what do you do about it. My hope is that you can use the list as a way to course correct on something you might already be doing. We each have a few of these de-railers, some that you can easily over-come but others that will take a few years to really fix. Those who seek out feedback, welcome it and act on it will be the successful ones. I hope that your company has a process of giving feedback or that you get lucky to have a manager that cares about your career and is willing to give you the tough feedback. But if not, seek it. Be honest with yourself and try to fix one of these per quarter.

I hope you can figure out the blind spots before your manager does.

Use this list to ensure that you will be a successful Brand Manager career.

Ask Beloved Brands how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

Read more about marketing careers in the following presentation:

A Brand Leader’s View of Social Media

19 August 2012

4 Comments

There’s been lots of talk lately about how much marketing and brand management has changed. I’m not sure it’s changed at all. As Brand Leaders, we still need to start with the consumer, drive for insights, match up their need states to your brand’s offering and then create a competitive offering that you can own so that no else can. A great brand has to be either better, different or cheaper. That still holds true, and we still aren’t at the media decision.

Yes, the media options have changed, but there is so much more to running a brand than just the media options. The average consumer now sees 6,000 ads per day, and likely only engages and acts on a few each day. Not just social media, but every little space to and from work each day. Media is ubiquitous, making it even more important to choose a media plan that makes sense for your brand. Before we get into the role of social media for brands, let’s review where Media options fit into the Brand Planning process. Here’s the fastest 130 word summary of the planning process.

We have some long-term thoughts on where the brand can go and the special assignment to get us on our way. And that helps shape the things we want to achieve with our brand. To get started, the brand has different options for how to get there

We try to find a slice of the population to get them to take an action that makes our brand bigger. We then find out what to say and how to talk to them to trigger that action we need to re-enforce why we can do it and others can’t.

We then create the most motivating stimulus to get them to take action and put it in part of their life where they are most likely to hear it and act on it.

So the media choice is all about finding a part of the Target Market’s life where they are most likely to hear the message and act on it. As I’ve always looked at media plans from the vantage of the Brand Leader, I’ve always looked at a balance of strategy, media efficiency, the link in with the creative and finally, the mood of the consumer at the time of the media exposure. So with TV, while day parts matter to the efficiency, the day of the week also matters to the mind and mood of the consumer. How receptive will they be to your message at the time of exposure? When I worked on serious healthcare brands that wanted to deliver serious news about the brand, we wanted to own Sunday nights when people’s brains were working full-speed as they get ready for work. But we would avoid Thursday night when we knew they were thinking about the weekend. When I worked in confectionery, the reverse was true, as we wanted to own the weekend slots.

So as we look at Social Media and where is their mood and emotional state as they engage certain social media options? I started with the 8 emotional need states that Hotspex as mapped out:

I seek knowledge
I want to be in control
I want to be myself
I’d like to be comfortable
I feel liked
I want to be noticed
I want to feel free
I feel optimistic

I then mapped out the consumer’s mood and emotional state while they are using the various social media tools.

For instance, when the consumer is seeking knowledge, they might use google, slideshare, wikipedia, TD Ameritrade or Harvard Business Review, depending on what knowledge they seek. But when they in the mood to be noticed or liked, the same consumer might then choose Facebook, foursquare, meebo, twitter or even Pinterest to express their personality on-line and connect with friends. The same consumer seeks out various social media tools to fuel their emotional needs at different points of the day. I know at lunch, I sneak away from the seriousness of work and read gossip on People.com or check for sports trades on ESPN.

From a Brand Leaders view, as you try to win with consumers,the first thing to do is understand where your brand stands emotionally with consumers. Using the Brand Love Curve, most brands start off at Indifferent, then move to Like It, then to Love It and finally to becoming a Beloved Brand. Be honest in your evaluation, use data to support your view, because it impacts the mood and emotional feelings of your consumer about your brand. For instance, at the Indifferent stage, where consumers have little or no opinion, I’d recommend using display ads that create awareness and in places that match up to your brand’s main strategy, positioning and messaging. You might not want to create a Facebook page that only 17 people like–which re-enforces that consumers are indifferent to your brand. Last month, I saw a rock quarry with a sign that says “Like Us on Facebook”. That’s crazy! Conversely, if you are a Beloved Brand, it becomes more about opinion and less about the pure facts. Engage on Facebook and twitter to continue the conversation and fuel the love of your consumers, use your popularity in those mediums to influence the feeling of a movement and popularity for your brand.

Whenever I talk to Social Media experts, they rarely talk about anything that involves the consumer. When I ask about the consumer, they blow me off, as though I don’t really understand Social Media and how powerful it will be in the future. They tell me I’m old school. But, regardless, I keep asking about the consumer because that’s what old school marketers are told to do. I need to know how my consumers interact with the medium because I need to match up the behaviour of my target so that I can get my message to them in a way that matches up with my strategic needs–whether that’s connected to the stage of my brand, any strengths and weaknesses in my brand funnel or a large opportunity in the market that plays into my brand’s natural strengths. Wait a second, that’s the same thing that great marketers have been doing since the 1920s. So while the execution of media has dramatically changed with the internet, the strategic thinking of really good marketers has not.

So next time you sit with a media expert, as they present ideas ask

How does my target consumer use this medium?
What is their mood and emotional state when they use that medium?
How receptive will they be with my brand’s strategy, positioning and message when they are engaged with that medium?

About Graham Robertson: I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do. I have walked a mile in your shoes. My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke. I’m now a marketing consultant helping brands find their love and find growth for their brands. I do executive training and coaching of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability. I’m the President of Beloved Brands Inc. and can help you find the love for your brand. To read more about Beloved Brands Inc, visithttp://beloved-brands.com/inc/

But, with digital media and social media, the CPG brands are the brands that are struggling the most.

Types of Brands

What is your Brand IDEA?

Maybe the issue isn’t just media. But have you created an IDEA for your brand to stand behind?

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Are you trying to do too much?

How aligned is your plan?

How Deep was the Thinking?

How many B.S. Buzz words are in your plan?

Writing the Plan

Use the Plan to Guide Everyone, including Yourself

Ask Beloved Brands to run a workshop to do your Brand Plan or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

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First Look Externally at the Market

Then Look Internally at the Market

Focus on the growth Brands and they’ll outpace the decline of the weaker brands

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Principle #1: Opinions without fact to back them up are just opinions and can leave a room divided.

Principle #2: Absolute Numbers by themselves are Useless

Principle #3: The analytical story comes to life when you see a break in the data.

Principle #4: Like an Old School Reporter, two source of data help frame the story.

Principle #5: Deep Analysis requires thinking time

Principle #6: Use Tools that can help organize and force Deep Dive thinking in Key Areas.

The Final Principle is that Good Analysis Only Gets you to the point “So what do you think”

Ask Beloved Brands to run a deep dive brand analysis or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

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Here’s a solution for Brand Leaders

What I recommend you do:

Client Media Math

Ask your creative team to deliver a Video, Billboard and Long Copy Print

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New way to think about the 5 types of media: Paid, Earned, Search, Social and Home media.

Where is your Brand?

What Type of Brand are you?

Where is Your Consumer?

Are you Using the Five types of media your Brand’s full advantage?

Ask Beloved Brands to help you improve your brand or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

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The Original “Invisible Hand”

Is Social Media the new “Invisible Hand”?

Brand Leaders View of Social Media

Social Media is more likely the “Invisible Voice” we can’t always hear, but we better start realizing it is there and engaging our own voice.

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1. Will people watch even more TV in the future?

2. How can Advertisers Capture the Internet Babies (12-22 years old) as they move into adulthood?

3. Can Newspapers even Survive?

4. Can Advertisers Figure Out how to Win in the New World?

5. Are there too many Social Media Options?

6. Will New Media people ever be able to Convince Brand Leaders of what they Should do?

When It Comes to New Media, Brand Leaders still need to be Fundamentally Sound

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How do we Get these guys to “Stop It”?

Ask Beloved Brands to help you improve your brand or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

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The Evolution of Brands Beyond the Product

The Brand Love Curve

The Five Sources of Connectivity: Promise, Strategy, Story, Freshness, Culture

The Most Beloved Brands Are Strong on All 5 Sources of Connectivity

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Are you serious about Voice of Customer?

Isn’t it better to Attack Yourself on Facebook Before Your Competitor Attacks You in the Market?

Attack Yourself Before Others Attack You

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The 10 Things Good Advertising Should Do

The ABC’S of Advertising

Be a Better Client

Other Stories You Might Like

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It seems that marketing these days is more about “doing” than it is about “thinking”.

Are you Strategic?

Are You a Fundamentally Sound Marketer?

Are you Running the Brand? Do you act like an Owner?

Everything Revolves around the Brand DNA

Use the Brand Plan to Drive the Direction of the Brand