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.

—

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…

—

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

Crow Chronicle, Autumn 2023

Yes, those bikini clad days are now a receding memory. The warm evenings sipping a Piña Colada with crunchy worm wafer are – alas – gone for another year. But the upside is that Crow has been busy, busy. It’s interesting how tough times have really underlined the critical importance of innovation to businesses – not just to grow the top line, but also to refresh, revitalise and reinforce precious brand assets.

So here are a few thoughts on overcoming common innovation mistakes to help set you on a straight path to long-lasting brand success. As always, pull up a chair, pop some twig topped bread into the toaster, then smear on a generous dollop of crunchy worm butter because, yes, it’s here, it’s the Crow Chronicle Autumn 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

Hourglass Brand Planning

Brands only get built when the activity they implement is noticed and influences attitudes and behaviour of their intended.

Too often though, impacting the market falls down because brand strategy (assuming it exists) doesn’t get effectively translated through the process of a brand plan.  And great brand plans require rigour and focus to get down to the one or two things that really matter to consumer and brand. It sounds easy, but it isn’t.

At The Crow Flies, we call our approach ‘Hourglass planning’ because it goes broad in the market analysis, then narrows to ensure everything is focused on delivering for the brand, before widening again as activities are defined and agreed.

However, whatever the shape or the name, there are key elements you really need to work through to develop a plan that will actually make the difference you want.

In the analysis, go broad, and go deep. You need to ‘hear’ the different opinions in your business to sort out which are relevant, which are opinion, and which need to investigated through your consumer research. You’ve got to be consumer focused, but you’ve also got to get the plan through internal stakeholders, so you need to really hear them and deal with their concerns (or ideas).

Choose what’s important. Don’t forget in situational analysis the human act of sensemaking. Research will illuminate and inform, not make the decision. Be prepared to use judgement to choose between competing options. You’re looking for company or brand strengths that are distinctive, defensible, ownable and 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. And don’t confuse brand purpose with social purpose.

Only have 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.

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.

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.

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) 1283 295100; 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

OUT OF THE PARK!!

What a great way to end the week for us Crows! Working together with a very lovely Crow client Friend, we’ve just learnt that of the 6 concepts that went into volumetric testing with NielsenIQ BASES, we’ve scored 6 out of 6! We had 3 ‘targeted plays’, 2 x ‘Brand Growers’ and 1 x SUPERSTAR! Boom!

We’re now off for a well-earned bag of weekend Worm Treats and a pint of cold and frothy Twig Brew, but if you need some winning NPD, get in touch! (Hey! On Monday – that Twig Brew is calling… caw@thecrowflies.co.uk)

—

#innovation #success #NPD #homerun

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.

—

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

Caw! It’s the Crow Chronicle, Autumn 2022

As if by magic, the leaves are turning brown, the last flowers are blooming, and brand builders start thinking about the run into Christmas. Well, here’s some light reading, the latest Crow Chronicle in which we *cough, cough* humbly show off about some recent successes we’ve been part of helping to get to market. And, we talk about some of the considerations to be thinking about during these ‘interesting times’ we’re living in.

Make a lovely warming Twig Broth, pop some Worm Bites in the oven and put your feet up to enjoy the latest… Crow Chronicle AUTUMN 2022.