Strategy
Brand strategy focuses marketing resources
Remember when Cheney blew that guy’s ear off? That was total absence of strategy. We’re more like the kid with the magnifying glass vaporizing a (plastic) ant. A nicer way to describe our approach to strategy is a well thought out plan to murder the competition.The key to conserving dough and boring into the mind of your customer is a brilliant brand strategy. We call it Brand DNAĻ. Like real DNA, Brand DNA is encoded with all the instructions needed you need to compete for food (customers), reproduce (grow), and deal with predators (competition).
Meet the challenge of fragmented media.
The explosion of blogs, social media, web sites, buzz marketing, and conventional media pose a tough challenge for marketers. How do you get it all to work together? At Ideopia, that is the job of brand planning. Though every media requires unique strategies and creative approaches, your customer must recognize your brand and its core message across all channels. Otherwise, you're just squandering hard-earned swag.Listening to customers, not just data.
The process of developing strategy requires research, spying on competitors, listening to our clients, their employees, and stakeholders throughout distribution channels. Above all, we must here the real voice of the consumer. Not just statistics or psychographics. Whether we use social media tools, online interviews, formal focus groups, or Burger King sit downs, we need to hear the inflection, the ideas and the emotion that's bound to your product or service. From those conversations, your Brand DNA will emerge. And, because it came from customers, it will resonate with them.What brand planning delivers.
- Quantifiable objectives
- A clear and simple definition of a competitive brand message
- Strategies for delivering the brand message across social, web and offline media
- Tactical coordination, calendars
- Budgets
Do you have a winning strategy?
So what's your strategy? Answer these two questions: 1) Why should a consumer prefer your product over a competitors'? 2) Why should a consumer believe your claim. Now for the test?- Does your strategy matter to a real consumer?
- Is it true? Not kinda true, but really true?
- If you can execute this strategy, are you confident in achieving your marketing objectives?
- Does any other company in your category already claim or own the same strategy?