Branding & Pitch Decks

 

I have found that my experience in crafting brand strategy and positioning has helped me immensely in coaching startups in their pitch deck creation. Startups use pitch decks to raise funds and other support for their nascent businesses. Just like brands, pitch decks need to tell a story. By definition, stories have plots and characters. The characters are the target customers and the plot is how the nascent business will uniquely solve a significant problem that those customers have. The story needs to outline the company’s unique value proposition and the business model that will enable it to deliver on that unique value proposition. The value needs to be defined in terms of customer benefits rather than product functions or features.

 

The business must demonstrate that it has done due diligence in understanding who its target customers are demographically and psychographically and what their functional and emotional needs are. It needs to show how it will deliver a unique and superior solution in meeting its customer’s needs. This requires a thorough understanding of the competition. Further, the business will want to illustrate what its product is and how it will be used, including how the customer will experience using it. Ultimately, the business will want to share its long-term vision, which is very similar to the vision that would be a part of a mission | vision | values statement. 

 

Sure, there are some other elements in a pitch deck that are not typically a part of brand strategy or messaging, including an overview of the market, the startup team and its advisors, the potential risks, the finances and why they are pitching to a particular investor. But, whether one is creating a new product concept statement, a brand positioning statement, a brand ‘elevator speech,’ a startup pitch deck or even a grant application, the following components are essential:

·      Detailed customer description,

·      Customer insight including an understanding of their unmet needs or pain points,

·      Unique value proposition,

·      Which includes an articulation of the unique benefits that will be delivered to the customer,

·      And an understanding of the competition,

·      And finally, proof points and “reasons to believe” that you can deliver on your unique value proposition; put another way an indication of how the organization’s business model supports delivery of its unique value proposition.

And, if there is additional space for description, the messaging would benefit from being told in the form of a story with a happy ending.

My experience in new product development, brand positioning and strategy, not-for-profit grant writing and now new venture coaching has allowed me to identify the similarities between these activities. It all boils down to understanding an unmet customer need and developing a solution that uniquely meets that need. Further, it requires proof points that one is capable of uniquely delivering against that need. Finally, this message can be delivered in a more compelling way through storytelling. It’s that simple and it is also that complicated. 

Research Must Precede Strategy

Marketing research must precede brand strategy -- period. The best strategies are based on extensive research. Qualitative research can provide insights regarding beliefs, values, attitudes, hopes, fears, anxieties, dreams and other core motivations. It can also help you understand how the category is perceived and how each of the brands in the category are perceived. Customer segmentation studies can help you dimensionalise your market and discover the most lucrative customer segments for your brand. Brand positioning research can help you understand what your brand stands for and whether and to whom that matters. It can also help you discover competitors' vulnerabilities and brand positioning gaps and opportunities. There is also brand equity research, brand asset mapping, brand extension studies, logo research, advertising effectiveness studies, and more. 

I have successfully crafted strategy for more than 200 well-known brands. From that experience, I can tell you that there is a direct correlation between the quality of a brand's strategy and the amount and quality of research that preceded it. It's that simple. Sometimes clients want me to help them craft the strategy without the research. That is a mistake. So, consider this to be an admonition from a veteran of the process. 

For a complete course on brand research, follow this LINK. 

Comprehensive Brand Positioning Course

This course will provide you with everything you need to position your brand to win. It is based on a proprietary process and set of tools that have been used to successfully position hundreds of brands throughout the world. 

This unparalleled brand positioning process was refined over 30 years and has been used by more than 200 highly successful brands in almost every product and service category.

To unleash your brand's full power, you must create a unique value proposition that is emotionally compelling. This requires a rigorous brand positioning process based on deep customer insight. And it requires an understanding of how brands can connect with customers through shared values and exceptional experiences.

This brand positioning process is part art and part science, using both the left and right sides of your brain. 

The course includes examples from many world-class brands and all the tools, templates and information you will need to position your brand to win.

The course is comprised of a video, seven handouts and links to 28 relevant blog posts. I will instruct you to use the handouts at appropriate points throughout the video. 

While the video is an hour and a quarter in length, the total course length with exercises and blog post readings will require between two and four hours to complete. You can stop and restart the course at any time based on your schedule. 

You can take the course here: Positioning Your Brand to Win

Positioning Your Brand to Win!

I am pleased to announce that I am now offering an online version of my highly acclaimed brand positioning workshop. The workshop provides you with everything you need to create a unique and emotionally compelling brand promise along with every other element of a comprehensive brand positioning statement. For more information, click here.

Brands and Distribution Strategy

When I am advising start-ups and rapidly growing brands, often distribution strategy is critical to the success of the brand. Choosing the right distribution channels in the right order can make a big difference in three ways: (a) brand awareness building, (2) brand accessibility and (3) brand positioning and quality perceptions. 

Usually, start-up brands have little to no awareness. If the brand in question has a first mover advantage in its category, rapid distribution expansion is critical to its success. If it is an industry disruptive brand, it sometimes needs to choose a new distribution method that circumvents prevailing distribution methods.

If the brand has only slight advantages over its competition, accessibility advantages will make a huge difference in sales and market share. 

Brands that want to be perceived as luxury brands may choose more limited distribution options, focusing on those channels that will reinforce their luxury status. Sometimes a brand that eventually intends to be an aspirational luxury brand with a wider audience starts out as being very exclusive at first to establish itself among the affluent influencers first before expanding distribution to a wider audience. 

Sometimes distribution expansion is sequenced based on early adoption by the most important influencer groups first. 

There are many considerations in choosing the sequence of distribution expansion. It can make a difference in quality perceptions, pricing, exclusivity perceptions, perceived popularity and momentum, speed of adoption and even the ultimate success of the brand. Related issues to be considered are retailer leverage, the ability to control price discounts and perceptions, exclusivity, brand association transfer (between retailer and manufacturer), service and technical support levels, ability to control brand identity and customer experience, access to end consumer data and channel conflict. 

I hope this helps you think about distribution in a more strategic way as it relates to brands and branding. 

The Elements of Business and Marketing Strategy

The terms "business strategy" and "marketing strategy" are used a lot, which begs the question, "What are the components of these strategies?" Here are some of the strategic questions that businesses should be asking.

BUSINESS STRATEGY

• What is our mission?
• What is our vision?
• What are our values?
• Who will we serve?
• What is the most advantageous business model for us?
• What will our sources of revenues be?
• What products and services will we offer?
• How will we source and deliver these products and services - manufacturing, strategic partnerships, licensing agreements, M&A, etc.?

ORGANIZATION STRATEGY

• What should the organization structure look like?
• How should we distribute power throughout the organization?
• Where in the organization will planning occur?
• What will our decision making processes be?
• What types of positions and individuals are required to support the organization's goals?
• Where should ideation and innovation reside in the organization?

FINANCIAL STRATEGY

• What are our financial goals?
• What are our revenue, profitability and growth targets?
• How will we manage our growth?
• How will we manage our cash flow?
• What will our sources of financing be?

BRAND STRATEGY

• Again, who is our target customer?
• For what will our brand stand? What are its values?
• What types of benefits will our brand deliver to its customers?
• What is our brand's unique value proposition?
• What is our brand's promise?
• What is our brand's archetype and personality?
• What identity will we give our brand? What is its name and what are the other elements of its identity system?
• What is our brand's story?
• What sort of customer experience do we want to create?

MARKETING STRATEGY

• What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats vis-a-vis our competition?
• How broad will our product range be?
• What functions and features should our products have?
• What is the optimal pricing strategy?
• How bundled or unbundled will our products and services be?
• What will our distribution strategy be?
• How will we present our products and services to our customers?
• What mix of marketing tactics shall we use?
• What are the dimensions of each tactic - advertising, promotion, publicity, event marketing, sponsorships, CRM, Internet, mobile, etc.?

MARKETING COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

• What are our key messages?
• How will we communicate those messages?

MEDIA STRATEGY

• What media vehicles will we use to communicate our messages?
• How much should we spend on each vehicle and in what pattern over time?

SALES STRATEGY

• What is our sales model? Direct, tele-sales, retail focused teams, major accounts management, consultative sales, organized by line of business or geography, independent sales reps, outsourced sales, etc.?
• How will we configure our compensation packages for our salespeople? What percent of compensation is incentive-based? What behaviors do we want to drive?

While there is some overlap between the questions, they roughly fall into these strategy "buckets." And there is a rough hierarchy of strategies too. For instance, business strategies should be determined first, while marketing communication and media strategies are generally the last to be determined. And each "tactic" has its own supporting strategies. For instance, the Internet tactic might have its own strategies including website design, search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging, content management and social media marketing.

I hope this helps you as you think about business and marketing strategies.

Brands, Mystery & Exclusivity

Mystery and exclusivity are two very powerful human motivators. Let's take one at a time.

A partial reveal is always more powerful than a full reveal. And the more often one is exposed to the partial reveal, the more one craves the full reveal. It's human nature. Whether it is in a new product unveiling or a television series plot line, people get hooked based on the mystery and not knowing. I have witnessed many successful new product introductions in which outdoor advertising reveals a little bit at a time in each subsequent iteration until the buzz reaches a very high level. In dating, playing "hard to get" is often a very successful strategy. 

Which leads to exclusivity. If a brand is only available in certain places, especially a limited number of upscale places, it usually has significantly more cache. For instance, if you can only purchase the brand on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Upper Fifth Avenue in New York, Hong Kong's Causeway Bay, New Bond Street in London, Champs Elysees in Paris, Orchard Road in Singapore or The Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey, then your brand likely has significant luxury cache. 

A brand is even more exclusive if the vast majority of people in developed countries have never even heard of it. Such a brand can serve as a badge to inner circle members. These brands might be found in enclaves such as Aspen (Colorado), Costa Smeralda (Sardinia), Côte d’Azur (France), Monaco, Northeast Harbor (Maine), St. Moritz (Switzerland) and Yellowstone Club (Montana). 

Sometimes being mysterious and playing "hard to get" creates even more demand. Some brands might want to choose this strategy.

In case you are wondering, the image at the top of this blog post is of a Maybach Exelero. It's a very nice car with a top speed of 218 mph. You can purchase one for $7.8 million.

In a Way, It's All the Same

I live in the world of brand promises and brand positioning. I help people determine their brand's essence. And I help them determine their brand's mission, vision and values. And their brand's archetype and personality. Some consultants help people discover their brand's "true north," while others help people determine their brand's mantra. One consultant I know helps people answer their brand's "why." And brands have tag lines and slogans and elevator speeches. Is this all word mumbo-jumbo or is there something behind each of these terms?

There are certainly subtle and not-so-sublte differences between each of these terms, however, at a more macro level, they are all used to gain clarity on one thing - Why does this brand exist? What makes it different from other brands? What does it stand for? How does it make a difference in the world? Why should people care? 

It is about strategic thinking and clarity and "fire in the belly." It is about getting the brand's leadership team "on the same page." It is about rallying employees around the brand's purpose. It is about energizing the brand and making it relevant and vital. And it is about making the brand stand out.

So yes, these terms might seem like jargon or marketing mumbo-jumbo, but they drive a strategic process that is critical to a brand's success. So regardless of which terms you decide to use, you must do the strategic work that they represent to put your brand on a successful trajectory. 

For definitions of each of these terms, refer to Brand Aid, chapter 2 (Understanding the Language of Branding) available here. 

Is This a Branding Problem?

I have been a brand strategy consultant for 18 years and have worked with over 200 brands. And I have been approached by many other brand owners who were seeking help. Here is a dirty little secret - not all of the problems I have been asked to solve as a brand consultant have been branding problems. 

While seventy to eighty percent of the time, the problems have been branding problems, the rest of the time they have been other problems that the management teams thought could be solved by repositioning their brands or giving their brands new identities.

Here are the other types of problems that I have uncovered in the course of my brand strategy consulting:

• Inferior products
• Sub-par business models
• Significant flaws in customer service training
• A divisive CEO
• Extreme management team in-fighting
• A toxic organizational culture
• Disruptive technologies that have made their products obsolete
• Customer-facing computer systems that undermine delivery against the brand promise

And even if the problem is a brand-related problem, when asked to refresh the brand's identity, often the problem extends well beyond a brand identity problem. These are some of the brand-related problems that I frequently encounter:

• An out-of-control and confusing brand architecture due to multiple mergers and acquisitions
• A unique value proposition that is no longer unique in the industry
• A "me too" product and brand strategy
• Poor brand identity controls
• A lack of understanding of the customer and his or her needs
• Market share being taken away by an increasing number of niche brands
• Focusing too much on functional needs rather than emotional, experiential or self-expressive needs
• Inefficient and ineffective marketing spending
• Marketing department skill set gaps
• Incompetent marketers
• Poorly performing marketing agency partners
• Need to recover from a brand crisis
• Inadequate marketing spending and extremely low brand awareness
• Salesforces running amuck in improperly positioning or messaging their brands to make a sale
• Inconsistent positioning of brands across geographic markets
• Brand extension failures
• Inconsistent target markets for the same brand
• Financial decisions that substantially compromise the customer brand experience

So when someone jumps to the conclusion that a new logo is required to revive the brand, dig deeper. The problem is likely to the much more complicated than that.

Strategies before Tactics

I get a lot of my blog post ideas from interacting with clients. I was recently reminded again how important it is to approach brand management and marketing at a strategic level before identifying and executing the supporting tactics. 

What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to increase brand awareness, change brand perceptions or behaviors, introduce the brand to new market segments, increase the perceived value of the brand, create more emotional connection to the brand, move the brand more upscale, extend the brand into new product or service categories or something else? What are you trying to accomplish?

Bosses who want marketers to jump right into "actionable" tactics without providing the strategic direction first do the brand a great disservice. 

Run in the other direction if you hear any of the following requests outside the context of a specific brand management or marketing strategy (or, better yet, ask what objectives or strategies these are intended to support):

• I want you to run some ads in [a specific medium].
• Come up with some "out of the box" marketing ideas and execute them.
• Create a new marketing campaign.
• Start advertising on Facebook.
• We need to start using QR codes. 
• We need to come up with a new logo. This one has been around for too long.
• Just do something different. The other stuff hasn't been working.
• Create a campaign for Millennials. Baby Boomers are starting to die out.
• I'd like to see some big outdoor advertising.
• You need to decrease your marketing budget by 30%.
• I would like you to run an ad featuring me. Work me in somehow.
• I got a great deal with the [call letters] radio station for some advertising. Reach out to them to buy some ad time.

You may laugh at some or all of these or maybe you have experienced one or more of them yourself. Either way, make sure that every brand management and marketing plan or action is based on some carefully thought through objective. 

This may seem basic, but I am surprised by how many organizations seem to jump straight to the tactics before thinking through what they are trying to accomplish with the tactics. 

Eight Common Brand Problems

In my fifteen years as a brand strategy consultant, I have interacted with the managers of several hundred different brands. This is often in a client/consultant relationship. At other times, it is in the context of an educational workshop or conference. Either way, I have been made aware of many brand problems. Here are the brand problems that organizations seem to encounter most often:

1. The competition has gotten intense and we have not kept up. Our products are no better than anyone else's and our brand no longer delivers a unique value proposition.
2. We have grown through multiple mergers and acquisitions and now have a very large and messy portfolio of brands that is confusing to our customers and expensive to maintain. 
3. Our new owner is changing the strategic direction of our business. Our current brand position will no longer work for the business' new direction.
4. Our new CEO has a new vision for the business and needs to change the brand to match that new vision.
5. We are launching a new product, service or business and it requires a brand strategy and identity.
6. We are expanding our brand to include new product or service categories or new customer segments and the old brand strategy or identity will no longer work. 
7. A disruptive technology has made our business obsolete. We need to change our business model and our brand.
8. Our new marketing vice president or CMO wants to refresh the brand based on his or her vision for the brand.

Integrating Brand Strategy with Business Strategy

Not much has been written about the intersection of business strategy and brand strategy. It is surprising to me because this is the arena in which I most often find myself consulting. When I was at Harvard Business School my largest concentration was in business strategy. I was weaned on Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage and The Competitive Advantage of Nations. I am a firm believer that brand strategy, business strategy, business model strategy and competitive strategy need to be a finely woven tapestry. But to begin to envision this, we must understand the key components of each of these.

Organization/business strategy considers many things – mission, vision and values, organization culture, product/service portfolio, bundling/unbundling, market structure, entry barriers, exit barriers, market segmentation, market focus, proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, accessibility/distribution channels, value proposition, sources of differentiation, branding, business model/revenue sources, cost structure (including fixed vs. variable vs. semi-variable costs), vertical and horizontal integration, strategic partnerships, supply and demand, substitute products, disruptive technologies, societal trends, cash flow, organization structure, organizational agility, keys for executional success and sequencing of moves.

Related to this is an assessment of core competencies and value chain analysis. In what ways does your organization add value to the end product and in what ways are you spending money that does not affect the end product’s value? And are you capturing the value that you are generating?

Business model strategy considers how a variety of factors come together to create a profitable business model. Key to this are how you are going to generate revenue (target customers/customer base, revenue sources, distribution channels, etc.), what your gross margins will be (pricing strategy, cost structure, etc.), how you will operate the business, what your working capital will be (cash flow, reinvestment strategies, etc.) and your sources and costs of financing.

Competitive strategy focuses on achieving competitive advantage in the long run, often via one of these three approaches: cost leadership, competitive differentiation or customer segment focus.

Another discipline that can applied to strategy formulation is game theory. This fascinating branch of mathematics has real-world practical applications. If you can structure the competitive environment properly, you can insure a maximally positive outcome for your business. Another area that can inform strategy formulation is behavioral economics, that is, the study of human psychology and behavior as they relate to economic decision making.

Brand strategy should include target customer definition (including prioritization of need segments), competitive frame of reference, differentiating benefits, pricing strategy, distribution strategy and how one will achieve awareness, relevant differentiation, customer value, brand accessibility and emotional connection to the brand. Brand strategy can also include the brand archetype and personality, which are highly correlated with the organization’s culture.

As you can see, there are several points of intersection between these types of strategy. Here are just some examples:

• Mission, vision and values are closely related to brand essence and promise
• Organization culture generally has some alignment with brand archetype and personality
• Competitive frame of reference, market structure, market segments and target customers are fundamentally important to most of these strategies
• Product/service portfolio is the way the brand delivers on its promise
• The value proposition and sources of differentiation are closely related to brand positioning
• Business and brand strategy should consider accessibility and distribution
• Business model strategy, competitive strategy and brand strategy must consider pricing strategy
• Brand extension sometimes requires strategic partnerships
• All of these must consider societal trends to be viable in the long run

So, how does one insure that these strategies dovetail properly? Business strategy and business model strategy belong in the executive suite perhaps with the help of business strategy consultants. Competitive strategy links these to brand strategy.

Here are a few things that can help with integration. The brand strategy function should exist at a very high level in the organization. Graphic designers, copywriters and ad agency teams should not be crafting high-level brand strategy. They are too far removed from the work and discipline of business, business model and competitive strategy formulation. Marketing communication strategy and advertising campaign strategy are the appropriate level of strategy formulation for these functions.

Another integrating mechanism is the careful consideration of the nesting and sequencing of the strategic plans. That is, where does the brand plan fit into business planning?

One should also consider the role of brand metrics in a balanced scorecard.

Some organizations find that it is useful to use the brand as a way to rally the organization around its high level strategies. In this way, the brand positioning work may closely follow the establishment of the organization’s mission, vision and values.

Finally, it is important to have strategic thinkers and people firmly grounded in marketing research and analytical thought to be a part of the brand management team.  Brand management is a left brain/right brand activity. Strategic thought is as important as creative capacity.  And sometimes foundational research such as market assessment, attitude and usage studies, market segmentation studies, price sensitivity studies, volumetric forecasting and other types of predictive analysis inform strategy formulation in many of these spheres.

I wish you great success in integrating your business and brand strategies.

Recommended reading:

• Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim
• Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter
• Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
• Co-Opetition by Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff
• Crafting and Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage by Margaret Peteraf, John Gamble and A. J. Strickland III
• Creating Strategic Leverage by Milind M. Lele
• On Competition by Michael Porter
• Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
• The Art of Strategy by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff
• The Business Model Navigator by Oliver Gassmann, Karolin Frankenberger and Michaela Csik
• The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
• Value Proposition Design by Alexander Osterwalder
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Brand Architecture Questions

We have worked with a large number of organizations that have needed help addressing brand architecture issues. Here are some of the issues that our clients have asked us to help solve:

• Should we have one brand or two?
• How should our brand promise play out at each level of branding?
• How many levels of branding should there be, and how does each level manifest itself?
• How can we reduce our brand architecture down from five levels of branding to two levels of branding?
• What is the architecture that creates the most coherent portfolio?
• How is each subbrand positioned against every other subbrand?
• How do we transition a product out of the architecture?
• How should category descriptors and product descriptors be handled vis-à-vis the architecture?
• How do we create more consistency in brand endorsement?
• Should these two brands be combined?
• Which brand’s identity system should be dominant?
• How will we determine the identities of new products, services, and programs?
• How do we create naming coherence across our brands?
• Should our organization build a dominant umbrella brand?
• If so, should there be other subbrands?
• If so, which ones?
• What should the dominant umbrella brand be?
• If there is a transition in the umbrella brand, how should this transition occur?
• Should we combine these subbrands into one brand?
• Should we change our subbrand structure to better match the way our consumer segments are evolving?
• How do we address naming of internal programs?
• What do we do with our newly acquired brands? How should they fit into our portfolio?
• How do donor-named entities (supported by large donations) fit into the brand architecture?
• How should we cobrand with strategic partners?
• How do we express ingredient brands?

Considerations in Crafting Brand Strategy

These are just some of the considerations when crafting brand strategy:

• Who are this brand’s target customers and other audiences and why?
• Which customer groups are the largest, fastest growing, most profitable and most loyal to the brand?
• How aware are target customers of this brand within its most relevant product/service categories? Is it the first brand recalled within these categories?
• Have we defined the brand’s product/service categories in the most beneficial ways?
• How are the categories in which the brand operates changing? What are the brand strategy implications of this?
• What is this brand's competitive set? How are those brands positioned?
• What is this brand's mindshare?
• What does this brand stand for in the minds of its target audiences?
• Is the brand unique and highly desirable to the most important target customer groups? That is, does it have a unique value proposition?
• Is the unique value proposition sustainable? Can its value proposition be expanded upon and protected?
• What are the proof points for the brand’s promise or unique value proposition? What are the opportunities for additional proof points and reasons to believe?
• Does the brand connect with people emotionally?
• Does the brand stand for something?
• Does the brand have a unique set of values that align with its customers’ values?
• Does the brand’s meaning allow for growth across relevant new product and service categories?
• Are there also sub-brands, endorsed brands and named products in the brand’s architecture? Does each of these other entities serve a useful purpose?
• Can the brand architecture be simplified?
• Have we articulated the brand’s unique value proposition in a pithy tagline?
• Does the brand have a well-crafted story and elevator speech?
• Is the brand’s identity system powerful, nuanced, robust and flexible?
• Does the brand’s organization design reinforce the brand’s promise or work against it? If the latter, what must change?

As one can see from this list of considerations, brand strategy is much more than brand identity or communication strategy. I wish you great success in crafting your brand strategy.