Strategy

Magnet or Mirror?

There is a balance to be struck when building a brand. On the one hand, there are brands that have come into being on the back of an experienced eye seeing or sensing a gap in the market. Often this coincides with the belief system of their founder – and the brand becomes a way to fulfil that belief. We call these Magnet brands.  On the other, there are brands that are created through a research process, by spotting patterns in the data, by seeing what people are saying or how they’re behaving and working from there – these are Mirror brands.

Both Magnet and Mirror brands are built from a market orientation, but reflect different approaches, different attitudes to risk and different cultures too.

Magnet brands have a confidence in their beliefs. They act with an inner confidence and are set on shaking up or disrupting their market because they believe there is a better way. And these brands aren’t solely ‘purpose’ brands – a purpose may be articulated, it may not, but it’s more about an attitude of if you like what we stand for, how we do things, and what we believe in you’ll be attracted to us. Magnet can be seen across the spectrum from smaller, fleet-of-foot start-ups to some big old behemoths.

BrewDog was built from a manifesto that beer should be interesting, tasty, different and a bit ‘punk’. Dyson believed that vacuum cleaners should actually be able to suck up dust effectively and new technology was needed. Patagonia want to save our home planet. Fat Lad At The Back believe that cycling is for everyone no matter your size. Dacia believe that simpler is better and that you don’t need all the bells and whistles that most cars have.

Crucially, Magnet brands have market orientation; they undertake market research and seek consumer feedback – but they do this through the lens of their principles and red lines. A Magnet brand recognises that because it is forsomething, it is not for everyone. It wants to understand how it is used, perceived, how it is trending, but also is clear around what can flex and what can’t.

A Mirror brand conversely reflects the market. Again, market orientation is crucial, but here the usage is different – Mirror brands look to understand what’s trending, what’s on the way up and build it into their mix. It will want to know the attitudes and perceptions of its current and potential consumers are positive or becoming so. And crucially, a Mirror brand responds to the feedback by altering its course – perhaps only slightly, perhaps quite markedly – and usually because it is following the short-term money. Most household name brands are Mirror brands, and they have been incredibly successful meeting our needs for years and years. Whether this is Persil launching a new variant, Mars stretching their incredible confectionery brands up or down in size to meet different occasions or whether this is Tesco extending their offer so that every little helps.

And this isn’t a case of ‘one is right’. Both directions have validity. Both can lead to success, or failure; both indeed have risk attached. For every Who Gives A Crap there are 10 copy cats struggling to cut through. For every Warburton’s Toastie there’s a competitor covering its packaging in baked beans because ‘that’s when our customers use it’.

It’s best to be honest and upfront about what your brand is. If you have a clear point of view on the world leverage it. It doesn’t have to be grandiose; it just has to be something that the business really believes in. And if you’re a Mirror brand, that regularly audits what consumer think and how they use your category good for you, because you’ll be many steps ahead of those who think that market research is unnecessary.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670 or +44 (0) 7885 408367; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2024

Brand Myth Busting

Companies have more data to hand than ever before; multiple sources, multiple dashboards enabling them to look at any one performance data point from a multiple of different angles. And every sale resulting in jillions of tonnes of data to the analysis pile.

Yet, despite this seeming richness, brand myths still abound in many companies. Brand myths that no amount of rational analysis seems to be able to shift. Brand myths that people either willingly accept, grudgingly accept, or circumnavigate. Myths that are are wasteful and potentially dangerous, because they can become a smoke screen, behind which the slow tides of change in the market place can go unnoticed, or false truths can become anchors that prevent necessary action, or channel investment and resource into the wrong things.

How, then, do brands and companies remove the myths? How do they allow the truth to shine through and future opportunities be seen and realised?  As with many things in life it involves going back to basics, in this case brand basics:

  1. Know your core target versus your source of business. This is really important to get right. Miss the bullseye of your core target and you will miss the fertile ground that understanding their attitudes and needs feed. And whilst consumer behaviour does not change overnight, subtle shifts can happen over time that if you are not checking in with your consumers can be missed and false assumptions can manifest in sub-optimal executions. This doesn’t mean ignoring your source of business – they are commercially important, but are likely to be more transient and focusing on them will dilute your brand proposition and strategy where it can really make a difference.

Action 1: generate and test alternative hypothesis to whom your core consumer is – age, needs, attitudes, occasions for engaging with your product based on clues you are seeing and have gathered from; other research you have done, trends, performance data or simply speaking to people you know.

Action 2: Identify and have a clear understanding of your source of business – subtle shifts in action planning can ensure this bucket remains topped up and you can focus on that part of them that can become the habitual consumers of the future.

  1. Being clear what your brand is. Everyone thinks they are clear on what their brand offers. But, with pressure to grow, incremental creep can mean that internal views of what the brand is can be very different to how a consumer sees it.  Just because your brand can launch into multiple categories doesn’t mean it should. Indeed, by being clear on what your brand is means it can be more successful and selective in the categories it extends in to.

Action: does the consumer view on what your brand is match the interval view? If not, why not, and take the action to align them. Brands can only be built successfully when all audiences agree on what the brand is.

  1. Brand thinking and understanding never stops but the final brand basic is knowing the benefits and ‘reasons to believe’ that really resonate with your core audience, and are properly grounded in a product truth.

Action: understand whether your brand benefits and RTB’s are as compelling as they should be. Are they expressed in the right way, do they really deliver against the wants and needs of your target audience?

If you need help cutting through the data, or challenging the brand myths that have built up in your business over time, get in touch. They can often be the biggest impediment to future growth – get your house in order however, and you have a chance.

Gael Laurie is Brand Building Director of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  gael@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1283 295100; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2024

What’s in a name?

Peter Andre doesn’t often make me ponder, but recent headlines about how long he took to announce the naming of his baby daughter did just that. The importance and diligence behind naming children today;  the myriad influences of cultural references from film characters, royalty, pop stars and even politicians… all leave a  heightened sense of loading names with meaning and sentiment. Did people used to put this much thought into naming their child?

Naming a brand or company is arguably just as hard and serious in this highly competitive world. The name chosen will be at the centre of the base of mental associations that the brand or company will be building up; it will help steer or navigate people towards  -or away from – the brand; it will, over time, become loaded with meaning which helps or hinders it commercially (and beyond – it could help or hinder employee recruitment or engagement too).

So, naming requires some careful thought, a rationale consideration of the alternatives and a clear fit to the business’ strategic intent.

It’s also alchemy.

There are no rules, no playbook – but you can consider whether you want your glass full, half full or empty in terms of giving you a helping hand – and trends undoubtedly do influence this.

  • The obvious place to start is to name after a founder. Some would argue it is the least creative approach, yet it may be perfectly serviceable (in, say, a smaller independent business) and it has traditionally been the most common approach in that most creative of industries – advertising. Ogilvy; Saatchi & Saatchi; Doyle Dane Bernbach; White, Collins, Rutherford, Scott – take your pick.Naming after the founder can mean the naming ‘glass’ is empty: you have to fill it with meaning over time. Equally, though, in many professional fields naming after the founder brings gravitas, expertise and a confidence in who and what you are buying into. (This is why celebrity spin offs rely heavily on carrying their name).
  • Likewise making up a name entirely, which conversely, often seems like the most creative approach is also, typically a ‘glass empty’ start point. Whether you’re ‘Diageo’ or ‘Velcro’ or ‘Wii’ you’ve got to invest to create meaning.
  • A slightly more ‘glass half full’ approach is when you choose to use a strong cue from the category you are entering (assuming the category is established): e.g. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, Dairy Milk, Home Bargains…
  • …but when suggestion of the product benefits is added, with a sprinkle of emotion the glass fills a little more. Take the soft furnishings and curtain company, ‘A Room with a View’ for example.
  • Recent trends include single word names that are weighty and loaded e.g. Loaf, Gusto, Guu as well as interesting pairings e.g. Wolf & Badger, Fable & Eve, Bricks & Stitches that work well together and the more personal approach where the consumer is made to feel intrinsic to the name, such as Bio & Me or Me&Em.
  • And layer over this whether you’re creating a new master brand, or a brand extension, or if you’re rebranding…. it really becomes alchemy not science.

So, where you should start?

Firstly, and most importantly you have to remember that any name, no matter how wonderful is a fairly empty vessel that has to be filled with all the things you want associated with it. Brands are built not born fully formed.

Second, start from a clear positioning. This will give you a broad direction and help you understand the best approaches to consider – half empty, empty or full.

Third, be realistic about time and investment. The name is a critical part of creating a company or brand, but it will only become known as you invest hard graft and your not-so-filthy-lucre in it.

The Crow Flies can help build your brand’s strategic foundations – be it creating a brand from scratch, or deciding where to go in the future. Get this right, and the naming pathway becomes a little easier to see.

 

Gael Laurie is Brand Building Director of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. If naming is perplexing you, get in touch: gael@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. Copyright 2024

Contenders READY! Brand Builders READY!

Sometimes my heart sinks when a Linked In post begins with something like ’10 Things Marketeers Can Learn From …’ BUT there are times when a cultural moment is instructive for brands – and such a moment happened with the rebirth of Gladiators,  a show that finished on ITV in 2000 – almost a quarter of a century ago – was one such moment.

Whoever decided the time was right to bring the programme back was not astute because they spotted the opportunity.  They weren’t astute because they forecasted the ratings success. They weren’t even astute because they believed it could be programme to bring multiple generations together.

No, what was really astute is that they didn’t fiddle with it.

It was striking how little the programme had changed in fact. Sure, no more Ulrika and the Fash. And there was a little more Premiership Refereeing than the original. But honestly, beyond that, not much.

And in that, there are some lessons.

What made your brand famous was probably done by your predecessors. 
Creating something new is beguiling. Feeling you’ve made ‘your mark’ on a brand warms the ego.
But the real strength in great brand building is admitting that you are just one leg in an on-going relay. You accept the baton, and your job is to run your leg, pull ahead a touch more, and pass the baton on, securely, to the next incumbent.  It took real bravery to leave Gladiators alone.

Brands areas much about a consistent experience as they are a consistent message.
Great brands are multi-dimensional and (often) multi-sensorial – they live both in the real world and as a set of mental associations too. After a 24 year hiatus, it would have been easier to keep the name but change the ‘offer’ and experience of Gladiators. Again though, (as far as I could tell) the format of the programme, the challenges – all the same.  The skimpy lycra – the same.  The music – the same. The catchphrases – ah, let’s get to that.

Consistent signs, symbols and semiotics
I bet Mark Clattenburg was wishing he could have shouted at Premier League players like can on the programme – and as far getting his dentures around his one important line – spot on. ‘Contenders, ready? Gladiators, ready?’ – and for a large swathe of the 7m viewing audience, a mental gateway is opened up and a smile spreads across their face. Consistency of touchpoints – the small number of distinctive assets – have been retained too.

This isn’t to say brands can’t and shouldn’t change. Every brand needs to get the balance right between their hard won familiarity and the freshness needed to keep people coming for more. Too often though, the freshness dominates and the core withers. Gladiators showed us how it should be done.

Brand builders….ready!

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2024

 

Why Corporate Claptrap is really bad for brands

Whilst doom-scrolling on Linked In early one morning, an article from The Economist caught my eye. It’s a theme we’ve been coming back to over many years – how company employees begin to talk utter claptrap very quickly after starting in the business world, and how, viewing this through a marketing lens, this is really bad for brands (it’s bad, full stop, but that’s for another post).  We wrote about in 2018, and the post is presented again below.

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We’ve been ‘peeling back the onion’, we’ve had a bit of an ‘idea shower’ and we’ve got something we want to ‘run up the flagpole’ – something that we’re ‘110% frustrated’ by. This post is about the terrible curse of Corporate Claptrap.

The truth is that using corporate language is almost inescapable and virtually unavoidable given how much time we spend at work. It’s engrained in organisations’ cultures. The first time we hear it we’re confused – it makes no sense – but before we know it we find ourselves ‘road mapping’, ‘shifting paradigms’ and ‘burning the boats’.

However, finally, thankfully, a few organisations are beginning to call it out for what it is: an issue that negatively impacts business and the engagement of those working within it… but we’d go further. We’ve ‘touched base offline’ with brand owners taken a ‘helicopter view’ of the research and concluded that it’s also damaging for brands and brand building. Why? Well as management Professor Jennifer Chatman of Haas School of Business recently wrote, “jargon masks real meaning”. And when it comes to brand building, establishing real meaning is what it’s all about…

The heart of the issue lies in the complexity of the human language. Unlike other animals, our language is more than systematic noise grunted to one another (teenagers excepted). It contains cultural meaning and, critically, spoken words also communicate unspoken meaning. Our language therefore becomes a filter that processes our understanding and influences how we behave beyond our conscious awareness. That sounds high-fallutin’, but consider these three brand-damaging implications.

Claptrap is a barrier to understanding
Claptrap stops us from being close enough to our consumers. As corporate language becomes engrained in a business, the culture of that business shifts with it. With every reference to ‘building a strawman’, every generous delivery of a ‘heads up’ or ‘reach out’, with every meeting that starts with ‘getting people aligned’ and finishes with a ‘hard close’ at ‘the end of play’; for every ‘mission critical’ task, for every concept that gets ‘dropped in the pan to see if it floats’; for every ‘deck of slides’, ‘turd polisher’, ‘clocksucker’ or ‘boiling of the ocean’ and every ‘re-stage’, ‘re-purpose’ or resodding anything… we move further and further away from the people that really matter: consumers.

The key to brand building lies in truly understanding your consumer, their needs, their frustrations, their problems, their hopes and their motivations. When you’re engrained in a business this is tough at the best of times. Why, then, would we accept the use of a language that further divorces us from the world our consumers live in and cements an ivory-tower world- view?

Claptrap prevents action
Claptrap delays action and excuses procrastination. We would never undervalue the need for stakeholder alignment. However, the business language often becomes the hiding place for inaction as the need to ‘onboard decision makers’ is used to excuse the adding of weeks or months of unnecessary delay into business. And as inaction becomes the norm, the business language explains it away: we need to ‘put our foot on the ball’ in order to deliver a plan that will ‘move the needle’ or, we need to ‘deep dive’ further to ensure that the sales team’s concerns are ‘on the radar’. Yes, debate is needed; of course we shouldn’t rush into action without consideration; but great brands never forget that impacting their end consumer is the only thing that counts. Anything that stops that is a waste.

Claptrap creates groupthink
Claptrap creates unwritten rules about behaviour that hinder progress. Next time you hear a presentation from the company owner or CEO, listen out for how many of the phrases that they use quickly enter common parlance. People adopt the same language to show support, to tow the line and to fit in. People naturally shy away from standing out (unwittingly or not). This can be a great and powerful thing. However, if the language used is convoluted and idiosyncratic (Corporate Claptrap) then nobody asks the simple, basic brand building questions for fear of looking stupid.

This is so dangerous for brands because the questions that make the biggest difference in marketing are the childish ones, the ones that are brutally simple and disarming. The language that drives the greatest change is often the Bluntest, yet in Corporate Claptrap Land, people are inadvertently dissuaded from using it.

So try binning the business language, pick up your brand plan and embrace your inner-child. Ask the simplest questions:

Will this make a difference?
Do we really have to do that?
What would happen if we didn’t do it?
Why can’t we do it now?
Why can’t we do it bigger?

You’ll be amazed how quickly you release the ‘sleeping giant’ in your brand…

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If you want help cutting through the B.S. and getting to the heart of it, get in touch.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2023

Brand humility

When managing brands client-side, I used to advise every new starter in the marketing team to write down all their associations with the brand on their starting day, particularly so if they were new to the company, and keep it for future reference.

Because from that day forward, their immersion into a biased world would begin – both overtly, being professional and getting thoroughly up to speed with the brand, and tacitly, taking on (typically non-consciously) the cultural or group beliefs, myths, opinions and legends of that brand, like layers accreting one upon the next.

Much of the immersion is required to run the brand of course. And much is positive; after all, if a Brand Manager can’t champion a brand, who the heck can? But many of those layers – and it can be difficult to spot which – become biases or curved lenses which distort the truth. And distortions of the truth mean that you can’t easily stand back and have an honest, objective, critical awareness of the brand and how it’s really standing relative to the other players and competitors.

So view your brand with humility. Ensure that you are researching the brand well and researching it with dispassion and regularity, giving yourself the tools to more accurately wear your target consumers’ shoes, even if they do whiff a bit. Yes, publicly beat the drum; but privately be tough on the brand. That’s the path to making the best decisions.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2023

Don’t Slice Your Salami

I heard the expression ‘salami slicing’ a few years ago by someone describing the effect of small cost cutting steps on a product’s cost of goods, one then another, again and again, over a long period of time. Individually consumers didn’t notice, and research response was broadly neutral, so internally they got approved… again and again. But, fast forward a few years; now consumers have noticed the aggregate effect and have been slowly drifting away. And now, the stark reality of a poor product spiralling irreversibly downwards is a much bigger challenge.

Reflecting on this experience, it seems the lesson is more relevant than ever today. Brands are being battered on two sides; on the one hand, consumers prioritising value and price and switching to own label brands and discounter offerings; on the other, soaring cost of goods that aren’t easily passed on to consumers.

And time and again in our research, we’re seeing consumers increasingly suspicious of manufacturers and retailers, expecting them to cut product quality, or offer less, to make cost savings. They recognise it, but they’re certainly not happy about it

As a brand owner, what to do then? Faced with short term pressures to find ways to cut costs and continue to grow a brand, how can a marketeer achieve not undermine long-term brand strengthening and with it, a sustainable, profitable growth? Here’s what we’ve learnt through our research:

  1. It may come as a surprise, but consumers are open to change on some product areas, so long as they don’t compromise its performance. Of all the Marketing ‘P’s’ – packaging materials and formats (Product ‘P’) are one that if done right can open up new usage occasions, new distribution outlets and even new audiences as well as providing an opportunity to improve a product’s carbon footprint at the same time.
  2. Packaging design, whilst rarely the white knight in shining armour we’d like it to be, in combination with clever pack format changes, on-position refreshed design can really enhance brand perceptions
  3. There are areas where you should never compromise – and most certainly Positioning. Ensure you are crystal clear what your brand stands for in consumers’ minds and what makes it distinctive  from its’ competitors – this should be where your guardrails go up and the investment in dramatizing the positioning (communications for example) protected.
  4. Don’t be tempted to grow your brand by product category stretch – this is a big risk with questionable returns and could easily result in ‘salami slicing’ your resource, your focus, and your product, sacrificing the core of what your brand stands for bit by bit, slice by slice.

If you’re looking for more insight in diagnosing how your brand is seen today, what the options are for the future and then what to do, do get in touch. We’ll help you resist the temptation to slice the salami ever thinner.

Gael Laurie is Brand Building Director at The Crow Flies, a research, brand strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. gael@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh.

© The Crow Flies, 2023

Marketing responsibly

“What do you do?”

Having spent virtually my whole career in marketing you would think that when asked this question I would have my answer down to a quick, well, honed response.  Instead, I used to say quite glibly “I make people buy things they don’t really need,” having learnt that trying to explain the ins and outs of what I do often results in polite vacant expressions and conversation soon moving on to another topic.

However, in today’s reality of the cost-of-living crisis coupled with climate breakdown my answer of old isn’t one that sits well with me, nor I imagine an ever-growing number of people, and neither should it. What, then, should be the answer to the real question of “What is marketing?” Or better “How do we do marketing responsibly?”

This isn’t about all brands having to have a “social purpose” – but about brand owners and retailers stepping up to ensure people can close the intention gap between wanting to buy sustainably and the reality of what they actually do or can afford.

As marketeers this is, something we’re adjusting to in the moment – still, here are 5 pointers to how we can be more responsible marketeers.

(1) Mean it. Really mean it. Most of us now agree with the science on human-accelerated climate breakdown and recognise the need to act, at pace and scale. But as a brand you’ve got to mean it. If you’re treating it as a tactic, or just sugar-coating a real lack of sustainable action, or if it’s just a way of sneaking out some new-news to attract some focus, then prepare to reap a poor harvest.

(2) Be honest and realistic about where you are and where you want to be. All companies and brands will be at different stages. Be honest about where you are today and confront the brutal truth about what it will take to change. You’re not alone. From talking to consumers in research two things stand out like sore thumbs.

Firstly, brands that are in catch-up and make a raft of sustainable claims without fully owning them get found out. Are they really substantiated? Are they what consumers want? Are they ownable and leverageable? Do they reinforce the positioning and associations consumers know of you? Rather than being an opportunity, it’ll be wasted effort.

Secondly, people want brands to do. You don’t have to solve the world’s problems in one go and no one is expecting you to. Tell people the journey you’re on, where you’re falling short and what you’re doing about it.

(3) Think of all your stakeholders. Ultimately, brands are created when your different stakeholder groups all know what you’re about. Your 30% plastic packaging reduction might shift the needle a touch, but the real win may be in corporate reputation, or a retailer being more willing to back you over someone who isn’t taking action. And this is important, because your immediate return on a sustainability investment may not add up in the short term – you’re going to have to evaluate it against your long-term brand and commercial goals.

(4) Keep it short, keep it simple, stand out. It’s always sobering, but vital, to remember how little people think about your brand, how little it actually means to them. Shopping is done in autopilot, the focus of attention is elsewhere and the world of sustainability – a complex and confusing soup of claims and strange terms, and sadly, hype – makes it even more difficult. Whatever you do needs to be easy to makes sense of, fast. It needs to be consistent against what consumers already know about you. Declutter your pack. Focus on what’s important. Shout it, don’t whisper it.

(5) It’s about ‘and…’ Again and again in research we’re hearing that people don’t want to have to compromise, be it on product quality, convenience, or their favourite brands unless they really have to. But this isn’t about fitting a round peg into a square hole – the ultimate act of marketing responsibly is to see that being sustainably offers us new ways to deliver what consumers want, but better and with fewer negative impacts…. if we’re willing to embrace the challenge to get there.

The Crow Flies are presenting at the Soil Association Organic Trade Conference on 19th October, including on themes of greenwashing and marketing sustainable products during the cost-of-living crisis. If your brand is facing these challenges, do get in touch.

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Gael Laurie is Brand Building Director of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  gael@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2022

The Perils of Penny The Pen Portrait

Bringing to life your target consumer or customer in a way that’s useful and meaningful to your marketing efforts, whilst also acting as an empowering guide in the business is a big question. It’s one we face a lot on many projects from research, positioning and often business strategy too.

It’s an really important question too. Bringing to life consumer segments effectively can focus the business and aid execution and commercial delivery. But too often we reach for the ‘Pen Portrait’ solution – you know, ‘Penny’ or ‘Ethan’, ‘Sanjit’ or ‘Olivia’.

The principles of targeting are well established (if debated and not always agreed with) but whatever your view on it, it’s always a big mistake to confuse ‘targeting’ with ‘micro-targeting’ which is what frequently happens. Targeting can be empowering, but micro-targeting can give the perception of being focused whilst actually restricting your commercial potential. So it’s important to tread carefully…. we see five traps that can catch the unwary marketeer:

  • Too personalised or over specified. This is trap we most often see. By making something very individual (‘This is Dan, he’s 28, lives an apartment in Greenwich with his partner…’) the receiver’s decoding of the targeting becomes personal (He’s not like any Dan I know) and may have the opposite to intended effect – making it unrelatable. The idea of the Pen Portraits here is find a central representation of the target group, but in making it too personal the opposite happens and the target narrows and becomes too singular – when you go out looking for the target you can’t find them.
  • Too broad. Breadth is, counter-intuitively, important in targeting. You want to find a meaningful commercial prize to aim at after all. But too broad becomes useless. Millennials anyone? Yes, that’s right! Let’s assume every one of the 14 million “millennials” in the UK share the same attitudes, characteristics and behaviours. It’s lazy and worse, largely useless in helping a brand.
  • Too stereotyped which may have initial appeal inside the business, but when you actually try and recruit, you find it’s hard to find your targets. The hidden biases inherent in identifying may have some very broad-brush recognition from the audience but in the detail they’re not there – in reality, people just don’t fit the mould.
  • Too unrelatable – a big challenge when you have a business that isn’t particularly customer or consumer orientated. Leadership can often feel that they represent the customer. You need a strong argument and commercial case to dislodge these deep set opinions. And some bravery too – hence, teams often roll with it a bit or don’t nip the problem in the bud at source.

There isn’t a perfect answer but equally, there’s no doubt that building up a set of target audience typologies is useful for helping the business (and decision makers in particular) be clear on who we’re going after, who we’re not, and why. But what’s important in the Pen Portrait is likely to vary by category and you may need different elements depending on your category or brand situation. For example, although broad, life stage may be discriminating for you. Or, perhaps, you want to target everyone but only on specific occasions or moments.

We’ve bags of experience working out through research who to target and how to best bring them to life and set them to productive work in a business. If we can help you with your targeting, drop us a line.

 

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2022

Brand Planning: the bridge from strategy to action

If you’re a marketeer in one of the many businesses, who, courtesy of HMRC, are approaching your year end at the end of March, you’re now thinking about brand planning. Brand planning is a vital building block of all business as well as marketing, but it is often treated as something that ‘just happens’, for which common sense alone is good enough to do an adequate job, and gets steered by finance or strategy.

Unless marketeers apply greater rigour and ownership to the discipline of planning, we will limit our ability to deliver the primary aim of brand building companies, to positive impact target customers to effect successful change. And if we can’t do this, we won’t be taken seriously by others in the business.

As it is, sadly, most brand plans don’t get implemented. Why?

Confusing tactics with strategy. Getting excited by and jumping straight to the things you want to do. “Strategy” is an amplifying word, added to other terms to give them a sense of greater importance. Planning embraces three phases, each with a specific goal, sequentially linked and each distinct.

  1. Diagnosis: understanding the situation the brand (or company) is in, and why.
  2. Decide: working out how do we deal with the situation we face. Where do we want to be? What are the options for getting there cognisant of our competitive situation? This is the strategy.
  3. Do: the plans or tactics. Working out what the few, high impact, activities are that we need to execute in order to achieve our strategy. Being clear on what the distractions are.

Getting the diagnosis wrong based on the situational analysis, likely caused by data gaps, overbearing opinions or underplaying owned strengths of the brand or a competitor

Derailed process due to misalignment. Mid-way through the process an intervention from a senior leader questions the work so far, losing momentum and bursting the precious bubble of confidence that had been created.

Choosing the wrong competitive strategy e.g. not leveraging a real strength or perhaps taking on a competitor in the wrong way.

Failing to unite, align or enthuse key stakeholders involved in signing off or implementing.

In response to these issues, we have developed ‘Hourglass’ brand planning, reflecting the shape of the process planning needs to follow. Starting broad, narrow at the centre when focusing on the needs of the customer and the business and then flowing out again to the actions.

Hourglass planning is built off a small number of critical foundations, themselves rooted in the insight that cause planning to trip up:

  • Start by going broad in analysis; not just in terms of the content and approach to gathering data and making sense of it, but also in listening to the perspectives, opinions or strongly held views of key stakeholders in the process.
  • Make sense and choose what’s important. There are lots of tools available to aid with situational analysis but what’s missed is the human act of sensemaking and choice. You don’t want to end up with a very comprehensive but utterly useless synthesis of the current state. It’s what you choose to pull out and take action on that’s important. You’re looking for company or brand strengths that are distinctive, defensible, ownable, leverageable or competitor weakness that are the same. Boil it all down. Focus on the few enablers and blockers of growth because these will be at the heart of your action plan.
  • Be clear on who you’re competing for and evaluate and test everything through their lens.
  • Ensure you have long term foundations in place. Purpose, mission, vision are not interchangeable. You need to know the role of each and how it helps you make clear decisions that more often than not, are right.
  • A small number of action platforms that flow directly out of the diagnosis. If you can’t see the insight threads from the diagnosis at the top of the process to the actions at the end, then your plan is likely misdirected and you’ll struggle to get buy in and engagement.
  • Brand activities that deliver against the essentials: we have yet to see an effective brand plan that does not deal with three themes: the brand’s ‘mental availability’, its ‘physical availability’ and bridge between the two, trial & repeat. The 4P’s fit here.
  • Great brand plans sacrifice. Don’t confuse this with prioritisation. Too often, prioritisation is a pretence that some things are more important but, through sleight of hand, we can still do everything. You can’t. Kill stuff properly and just focus on what’s really important.

Our experience in brand planning is built from both client side and agency experience. If we can help you with your planning challenge, get in touch.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2022