Brand Rants

What, exactly, is a market insight?

If you work in marketing, particularly on the strategy or account planning side, then you probably use the word “insight” a dozen times a day. Either in framing your own thoughts  (The main insight is...)  or in demanding it of others (Where is the insight here?). Perhaps you have listened to people arguing over “insights” in the same intangible manner people argue over abstract concepts like “beauty” or “spirit” — usually without resolution. 

It wasn't until I attended a talk by  Morgan Shorey that I ever tried to define the term myself. Morgan is Director of Business Development at Berlin Cameron United, an ad agency in New York. She is considered one of the best in the business and recently spoke at our TAAN (transworld advertising agency network) meeting in Reykjavik. Her presentation on how to approach new business was brilliant. But it was her definition of “insight” that was a key take-away for me. She said she had picked it up at a seminar some weeks before.  Hope you find it useful.

“Insight: A truth which until now has not been leveraged, but if leveraged will generate revenue.”

How do you define a market "insight"? If you have an alternate definition let me know.

4 quick steps towards a unified marketing vocabulary

THE GREATEST ENEMY OF COMMUNICATION IS THE ILLUSION OF IT

Marketing professional share an extensive vocabulary of marketing terms. Unfortunately they don't share common definitions for many of those terms. In day-to-day office chatter the differences don't reveal themselves. But the minute you start trying to do any real strategic work it becomes an obstacle. This causes a lot of miscommunication and misunderstand that can burden a company's marketing and brand development efforts.

At Duffy Consult, we've tackled this problem with a pretty quick four-step process at the outset of any branding assignment.

STEP 1: Demonstrate (5 minutes)
First we demonstrate to senior managers that they do not share common definitions for most of the marketing vocabulary they use each day (e.g. words like "position", "brand essence", "key selling point" - even "marketing" itself). It's pretty easy to do.

We get the group together and give them two index cards. We ask for a show of hands for anyone who works with the brand. They all raise their hands. We ask who works with Marketing. They all raise their hands. We then  ask them to define the work "brand" on one index card and the word "marketing" on the other.  We collect the cards and list all the definitions. After eight years of running this exercise in scores of companies I have yet to see any meaningful correlation between the definitions I get back from any one group. The same goes for other common marketing terms like position, marketing mix, or brand architecture.

STEP 2: Decide (5 minutes)
Once we establish that we do not share common definitions to central marketing terms we explore the impact that could be having on their organization and on its ability to achieve its marketing and brand development goals. Usually, it is acknowledged that the impact is significant enough to do something about.

STEP 3: Define (a week)
Many marketing dictionaries exist. It's just a shame that no one of them is used in practice. Some companies have their own definitions of marketing terms written down. Usually these are larger market-focused companies like P&G. They train their marketing people in each terms meaning and proper use. For less market-focused  companies its usually an odd-ball collection of terms that people have brought with them from previous jobs. We create a custom glossary of the terms and concepts the company will need to use most. This usually involves incorporating those phrases that are entrenched, adding new terms, redefining others and eliminating scores of dysfunctional terms. 

STEP 4: Disseminate (ongoing)
Changing people's vocabulary is not an easy task. It's also not something that is very high on most executives priority list. We have tried to make the topic more palatable by incorporating the new vocabulary in workshops focused around more interesting topics like "Getting the most from web 2.0". Its the Mary Poppins approach (i.e. "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down"). We also publish an online glossary. This can be done as a Wiki but must then be closely monitored. As follow-through we go through the company intranet to ensure the proper terminology is used.  We highlight and hyperlink all key terms on online documents so people can click and get the definition on the spot.

Some online resources for arriving at your marketing terms (no particular order):
Monash University
American Marketing Association
Brand Channel
Westburn Publishers
Answers.com
University of Texas / Austin
Gloss Artist

Coming to terms: What is a brand? What is branding?

LIKE BLIND MEN DESCRIBING AN ELEPHANT

Christopher Kenton is one of my favorite writers on the topic of brands. I first got hooked when I read his  Business Week article “What, exactly, is a brand?” It was said to have sparked the sharpest response of any marketing article they’d published. So its not just you and I, the whole world seems to be asking this question: What is a brand and what is branding?

There’s little wonder where the confusion comes from with one brand expert telling us that branding is all about graphic guidelines while others saying it’s a promise, or a covenant, or a look, or a feel, or an attitude, or an emotion, or an association, or a perception, or a bond, or an experience, or even a religion.

Like blind monks feeling an elephant for the first time, each expert has their own take depending on the their perspective.  It does not mean their perceptions are wrong, but their conjuncture and theory is not helping the rest of us work with our brands on an operational level. In fact, it would seem as if each expert feels compelled to raise the issue to a new level of complexity.  And if you ask any five marketing professionals to define "branding" you’ll see that the experts are doing a pretty good job.

The result of this confusion?  We can’t talk about building our brands with any real precision because none of us are speaking the same language.  And its not just that we have different words, we have entirely different ideas about the concepts that surround and govern our brands. We lack a common understanding and vocabulary with our staff, our superiors, our vendors, our boards and our stockholders.

So if none us know and/or can agree on what the activity called “branding” is, then it stands to reason that we’re probably not doing a very good job at it. Without a coherent definition one would expect that:

• it would be difficult to get people to cooperate with brand building programs;
• those programs would generate more confusion, misunderstanding and ill-will than unity and focus;
• people would place unrealistic expectations on those programs;
• it would also be difficult to measure the results of our brand building efforts and therefore difficult to justify the effort in the first place.

It would also stand to reason that if we can’t agree on what a brand is and what branding is then we’re probably not very convincing when we ask our CEOs and boards to take us seriously and fund our efforts adequately. All of which seems to be the case in many companies today.

So what do we do about this? In my next post I'll share an approach I've used.