Posts tagged "strategy"

It’s been a week of pitches, proposals and lots of thinking. The week has nearly exhausted a roll of Magic whiteboard paper my preferred method of kicking the hell out of something.

I thought that I had run the course of this weeks of boxes, arrows and discussions when a great pitch rocked in, and kicked it all off again. Tough problem, great brand and a brief that requires us to “challenge, challenge, challenge”. Problems to solve always seem to be like London buses. Nothing for ages, then dozens of 139s all in a row.

For me next week sees implementation kick off across a number of projects  proposed. Getting beyond the thinking and getting to the nitty gritty of getting it done, tested and out there.

On the way into the office this morning I was sat opposite a  tube ad that seemed to speak to me. Cheers Engels – clearly an agency man through and through.

Just finished reading Rob Walkers book Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are that delves into the attitudes of the global consumer in the age of plenty, and, didn’t making us look at all good.

This amphetamine paced tour of senseless consumption spans Viking cookers to custom high-tops.  And along the way  walk I been introduced to a diverse cast of characters like Red bull entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz, and an assortment of white guys without any discernable urban credibility who’ve managed to build clothing empires around hip-hop and street culture, and even viral marketers who pretend to be customers, proselytizing to others about the merits of products (and apparently not always disclosing their affiliations).

By presenting both uber-consumers and the professionals who deal with trying to sell us the stuff to fill our endless appetites, or the holes in our souls, Walker indirectly addresses what he coins the “pretty good” problem: What distinguishes a product when assembly lines or underpaid third-world workers can make even the cheapest products “pretty good?” Since quality really isn’t much of a criterion any more, there must be other signifiers, and that’s where our subconscious steps in.

Walker’s key point echoes many in the intangible brand benefit camp often written about in the planning world. Most of us have been inundated with advertising for our whole lives, so on some level we know that we’re being sold … which is why some hipster crowds gathered around PBR (a cheap red neck beer – cheers Google) precisely because they weren’t being given the hard sell. So if somebody cracks open a can now, knowing that the trend is played out, what does that act of consumer disobedience say about them? Now that PBR is so “yesterday,” shouldn’t that make it cool again? If a hipster cracks open a can in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, are they still being cool?” It all gets pretty meta.

And that’s Walkers thesis. He coins his own portmanteau for the way that advertisers can take advantage of that and calls it “murketing.” Murketing, then is that nexus between murkiness and marketing where buyers can project their own desires or aspirations on to the products that they buy. In examining the psychological motivations that drive this rampant consumerism, Walker references some of the best psychologists and researchers on the subject, including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who’s Flow should be required reading for anyone with an interest in being happy and who’s The Meaning of Things happens to be a little more topical.

The conclusion is that objects are only as totemic as we let them be. Walker even begins to hint at what might be a really interesting corollary, but it is left largely unexplored. For us, as product and communications guys, if we’re pondering the future, one must wonder what sort of value we can add to society.

In a potential post-consumer future, where we’ve harnessed algae to transform sunlight into electricity and where every home has a rapid prototype machine that uses organic compounds, how will we define wealth? Suddenly when everyone has access to flawless and pristine stuff, it’s that scuffed up and worn armchair that has real value. Because even though I may love my sleek modernist furniture in ways that might not quite be healthy, if my house was burning down I’d rescue the painting I found in a junk shop.

All ‘new’ industries strive for legitimacy, a movement that is often accompanied by an entire lexicon of terminology and process. For a long time we have been developing terminology and processes that seek to formulate an approach, clarify our position and differentiate our offer. The world of  demand chains,  brand onions and disruption is one that all clients and agencies occupy.

Case in point is the numerous phrases that describe essentially the same thing — brand essence. Some networks have gone so far as to trademark their terms and the processes they use for determination. End result = terminology galore and as much process explanation as strategic clarification.

Spending some time on holiday last week – I revisited Kotler (it was this or be left with a book about a girl in love with a complex man she couldn’t love in the world within which she had to live and her struggle to make do with an empty life with a simple but good man who provided everything he could but not enough for her to be happy) – a comparitively magnificent book on marketing that I first brought to enlighten me when I first came into the industry. It’s a dry read and although wanders into the theoretical it’s pretty refreshing in its lack of terms.

I like Kotler’s steadfast use of the term Unique Selling Proposition (in my mind a potential forerunner of brand essence), a concept developed and named by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. A 50 year old term that has stood the test of time and been universally adopted. Some argue that with the advent of product parity it has evolved into the Emotional Selling Proposition. ESP is certainly a concept much closer to our common understanding of “brand essence,” as its focus is on the brand’s intangible differentiator. Although I find it hard to believe that me-too products are a recent phenomenon I think that the ‘U’ still stands up whether that be a feature led ‘portability’ or due to some emotional unmet need like ‘popularity’. Either way to be unique emotionally or functionally is still to be different.

This book seems to either have been penned prior to or has ignored the multitude of copyrighted verbs describing the logical processes for develop brands by agencies needing with some irony, you guessed it – a USP. I would love to see each agencies model worked through with their own brand – please someone in procurement construct this legend! Two birds (process understanding & agency offer) with 1 stone. Please, please, discounted please.

Reviewing the alternatives to Rosser’s, here is a collection of words and phrases used to describe what is unique about a brand:  Brand Essence, Brand Soul, Brand Heart, Brand Mantra, Brand Promise, Signature Strength, Core Strength, Core Attribute, Brand Description, Brand Differentiator, Brand Uniqueness, Brand Individuality, Brand Meaning, Brand’s Central Nature, Brand Proposition…

Any more?

 As usual Tom Fishburne’s nailed the process here.

Ps. A note to purists: I admit that there may be shades of difference between some of these terms. You could make a case that brand personality and brand promise, for example, mean two completely different things. My point is that the differences are largely semantical and do little to advance the clarity of the branding process.

Being alright at business and communication strategy paid off this week.

Ian and I have worked together for years, our relationship is based upon a love of business, strategy, people, solving problems and a really good wrangle. It’s this that got us to Hive – thank god for the wrangle and gardening leave! 

Every now and then one of us gets an invite to help a mate out with a business. It usually starts off with – ‘I am a bit stuck with growth/selling/marketing/what we do/core offers/branding etc’. What follows is often a moderately informed conversation taking what we have learnt from pharma strategy and transferring this knowledge to their industry. It’s good for them, and really helps us look at our core skills and apply them to different business – its business case studies in the flesh. The best type of learning.

This time around the company in case was a Helicopter management company. Ian and I invited to an afternoon session with the management team. We were tasked with helping them crystallise sources of growth, audience segmentation, prioritisation and marketing. This company manages a load of £6-11 million choppers owned by big billionaires who are flown all over Europe, or even flown into town to do some shopping.

It’s afternoons like this that I really enjoy and learn loads from. But also it leads to an appreciation of pharma. We often kid ourselves that our industry is very different to others that we forget that we are packed with transferable skills. Knowing how to market to patients and HCPs is pretty much exactly like any consumer or business to business world. What we know is useful to so many.

Anyway, the thoroughly interesting meeting finished, we with a new found understanding of the billionaire aircraft market, and the management team with load of decisions made/avenues to explore. I was getting slightly nervous about trains from Surrey as I needed to get to Camden for a birthday do.  Across the table came the best offer I have had for a while, ‘we are flying up to town to pick up X’s girlfriend, who is doing some shopping – we could drop you off on the way’. No sooner had it been said I was packed and stuffing diagram filled flipchart paper in my bag.

I left Ian driving back to Hampshire as I boarded the £6 millon Eurocopter,  sat reclined in grey leather, followed the river at 165mph and was dropped off just in time to make the first pint in Camden.

Got to love healthcare.

Currently doing the rounds is a bizarre document, supposedly produced by the Arnell Group during their recent redesign of the Pepsi logo. It employs complex SCIENCE to justify the logo’s redesign, including (but not limited to): the Golden Ratio, the Earth’s geodynamo, magnetic fields and magnetic dynamics, the analysis of multiple perspectives, and colour theory. Oh, and somehow the relativity of space and time are involved.

Every page of this document is more ridiculous than the last, culminating with an explanation of a process whereby Pepsi’s new logo will manifest its own gravitational pull (see above). Incredible. Some argue the document is authentic, others that it’s a hoax. I think it’s an extremely successful viral marketing campaign, run by the Arnell Group on behalf of Pepsi. Probably.

This might be a good time to mention that the new logo is basically the same as the old one, except that it now looks a bit more like a lopsided grin.

Having hit the brand planning season, with flipcharts and by post-it notes a weekly occurrence I met with a strategist mate who suggested with much mirth that informed dictatorship is by far and away the best way of coming up with battle plans.

He is a military strategist, quotes Von Clausewitz  a lot, and never had to work in primary care – so I am sure he doesn’t know what tough is!

These conversations always get me thinking, our terminology is military, our challenges (resources, prioritisation, superiority) pretty similar, perhaps we have something in common. In his world having non-strategists risk being the rate limiting step to your campaign success is a fear well founded. The use of strategic development time to drive interdepartmental buy-in made him visibly nervous, and prompted him to suggest we should settle on a good old game of Rock, Paper, Scissors when approaching “strategy by consensus”.

His tips were as follows;
1. Play paper first. Rookies tend to lead with rock, so paper is the safest opener. (A savvy opponent will try the same, causing a tie.) If you win, claim victory; if not, start the next throw right away, because of course it’s two out of three.
2. Exploit copycats. Casual players often switch to the object that just beat them. You can encourage them to do this by shouting, “Paper wins!” when you defeat their rock. Then throw scissors on the next round.
3. Watch for doubles. People rarely throw the same hand three times in a row; if they play scissors twice, your next move is paper. Also, keep up the pace so they have less time to think and instead fall into patterns.

So that’s all solved then!

It had been a few months since we worked with a client running a competitor Wargaming session. Finishing one this week reminded us of a great way to get a team of multidisciplined experts aligned and agreed for a common purpose.

Wargaming can achieve a number of different outcomes. There is a conversion of data and information (e.g. on market or competitors) into actionable intelligence that adds real quality to the strategic planning process. It also delivers a result that could not be arrived at by any individual present alone. It demands collaboration and a fresh perspective. Role playing brings colleagues closer together, juggling insights and skills. It’s a productive day’s work for the whole team.

You can achieve a lot in a planned and well-paced day. Spending the morning getting under the skin of your foe, planning their launch, and agreeing the likely story to the market can not only be fun, but really sharpens the mind in preparation for the afternoon. That’s when you plan your defence and the activities you can do to protect your equity.

And another thing: wargaming provides your agency with an opportunity to show you creativity that’s not restricted to an A4 page.