Brand Building: A Path To "Good Things"

It’s Monday. Welcome to the 3rd Quarter. How was your debate performance?

Also, are we surprised that Kevin Bacon is surprised that not being a celebrity isn’t all that great.

So, in other news, the magazine Fast Company - that bastion of deep business thinking - has issued the New Rules of Marketing and Advertising . I’d largely agree with most of them - though I think you could probably sum it up in three words:

Brand is important.

Okay, before I go on - speaking of “important” (see what I did there)… Before we move on…

<cue debate introduction music - and my soft raspy voice> Here at TCA, we just finished a project with a small media company. We helped them put a new brand architecture together, as well as helped them implement a new content marketing operation, calendaring technology, and editorial guidelines.

We’re staying in this race! Okay… Let’s get back to it…. In this edition.

• Brand Strategy = Good things
• AI Companies continually fail to “read the market space room”
• Toys-R-Us dives head first into the Uncanny Valley

Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: BRAND = GOOD THINGS

A long time ago (so long ago that Nickelback still had hits), my boss would ask me how we could measure brand strategy. He would ask what value my brand-building programs added to the business.

My answer to him was always the same: “Good things.”

Now, I was being a smart ass of course - and I was lucky not to get fired. But I did actually mean it. I didn’t want to bother with the short term measurement of brand - but was rather chasing the long game of building something of value.

Marketers that try to build a case for brand strategy often default to the short-term view because they believe that the CFO (or whoever the approvers of such things like budget are) must associate metrics (pageviews, click-throughs, comments, etc.) as a means of saying “yes, you are approved to go do that.”

In that way, brand strategy is like exercise. We all know it’s good for long-term health. But the incremental changes in metrics that prove (or even improve) our chances to that result are hard to spot.

And that, ironically, makes brand-building programs really difficult to justify in a performance-driven culture.

Transactions are easy; triggers are hard

It’s not that real brand strategy metrics don’t exist. Myriad articles, classes, best-practice guides, tech products, and consultants (waves “hi” from the cheap seats ) claim to help you associate transactional data with brand value.

Now, they’re not wrong. But, anyone who has argued for more money for brand strategy (or content marketing as a lever to build a brand) will tell you those metrics won’t typically get you very far without one incredibly important ingredient: agreement..

Wait a minute, what does that mean?

All those metrics – even the vanity metrics can actually be a fine measure whether brand-building with content is working. The key (as with all measurement ) is you have to get stakeholders to agree on the measurable objective, and then design for testable measurability that you will all agree on. So, when we actually ask “how do we build a better business case for brand marketing?” what we are really asking is “how do we get our colleagues/bosses to agree on a measurable goal on which we will all agree we are making progress toward building a stronger brand?”

In other words, coming back to the fitness metaphor, you must measure your fitness level first, then get everyone to agree on your fitness assessment and how much change would equal “good progress.” Then, you can design an exercise plan to improve your fitness level.

Now, can you self delude yourself and agree on things that don’t matter. Well, of course you can. I can also define my fitness level by how many pizzas I ate in the last six months.

Remember, agreement doesn’t assure accuracy – but it’s the only way that you can assure tangible learning and progress.

Brand Strategy = Good Things

For example, one of my clients - an enterprise financial services organization wanted to increase brand?trust?among its existing investors and financial advisors. To measure the increase, we first agreed on – and then conducted – a trust survey to compare trust in that brand with trust in the brand’s competitors and mainstream news media outlets that covered financial services. The agreed-upon idea would be that it would set the foundation for brand trust.

One year later, we conducted the same study again. This time, we surveyed the same kind of audience but also added a segment of the brand’s customer base — subscribers to their blog and thought leadership platform that had been launched a year earlier.

The organization performed better than its competitors on the previous survey. So, yay, its integrated branding efforts (such as TV, print, and online ads) worked. And then when we surveyed the customer subscribers to their blog, that segment ranked my client’s brand as even more trusted than some mainstream financial news sources. Goal reached: the blog contributed in a big way to brand value.

“Hold on,” I hear you saying. “You proved that brand strategy with content was working, but the question may still be, ‘So what? What value does that provide for the business? What happens as a result?’”

That’s when you’ve earned the “okay” to be a smart ass. The answer: “Good things.”

Just accept the ‘good things’

“Good things” can be hard to accept until you have agreement on the small things. I’ve learned over 32 years of marriage that doing good things for my wife provides good things in return. I could easily measure the transactions, but I don’t. How could I even begin to connect them to the value of the good things I get in return?

Think for a moment about the love you have for someone special in your life. Maybe it’s your partner, mom, dad, children, or even a dog. How much love is there? Have you measured it lately? If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count, right?

Sometimes, the most accurate answer to the question of what comes from brand-building activities is simply: “Good things.”

Yes, more revenue, more savings, better customers, more trust, more brand equity, and more profitability. But beyond quantifying those things - when it comes to the value of building brand they all just lead to “good things”.

So, how much brand-building should you do?

My answer? Enough. Do enough. Just don’t spend so much time arguing over “how much” good it will do that you never end up doing any.

Do enough. I promise, good things will happen.

WIDE ANGLE LENS: MARKETING SNAPS

Let’s get it all in frame. Shall we?

?? AI Tech companies just can’t read the brand room - I mean just ick. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati was (once again) recently interviewed and stated that in the future, AI may kill some creative jobs, but “they probably shouldn’t have been there to begin with”. This is just yet another example of how Enterprise AI companies are just failing to read the room when it comes to the marketplace. They may win. But at what cost? When will they learn: creativity is not a problem to be solved.

I ranted a bit about this on our latest podcast.

?? And yet more AI - as Toys-R-Us launched their new advertisement which is (claimed by them) 100% generated by AI. Here’s the thing. It’s not bad - nor is it good. It’s just average creative. So - it’s actually the worst of all news. It’s not that they made me love the ad, or hate the ad. They actually made me not care at all.

PS> If you want to hear about how we’re seeing brands actually derive value and real use cases from AI, let us know . We’d be glad to chat more about it.

LENS FLARE: - TCA Events & Happenings For You

Boca Bound I’ll be headed to Boca Raton Florida in two weeks to speak at Canon’s thINK Ahead 2024 conference in a week. You all know how much I love Florida. But the event should be wonderful - several hundred commercial print professionals - and we’re talking what a modern marketing strategy looks like.

Did you miss any of our Webinars We’ve got a new page that features our last four months of webinars. So, if you missed any - check out the on-demand versions.

LENS CAP: Let’s Finish With A Flourish

Do you know what tightrope walkers say is the most difficult step?

Most people believe it’s the first step out on the rope. But that’s not the case, according to the tightrope walker who narrates one of the short stories in the collection “Vigilantes of Love”:

“The hardest was the step after the first. That’s where you gained or lost your balance. That’s where it becomes a walk or a fall. After the second step, there is no going back.”

Taking that first step in a way that helps us feel confident about the essence we’re trying to achieve is critical. But it’s not the hardest one. When implementing a new brand or any new big project, taking the second step is the hardest.

Then, the tightrope walker says “the third step is the beginning. It’s the complete motion forward on a new course.”

From there,“the fourth step is an affirmation. And after the fifth step – it’s just walking.”

You’re on your way.

It’s your story. Tell it well.

Oh and by the way - we can help with that second step.

See you next week!