DIG INTO THE BRAND
The Facts column is going to force you to really study the brand, product, or service. Are the individual brands more prominent—such as P&G’s Bounty, Cheer, Dawn, Puffs, Tide, Pampers, Swiffer, Luvs, Febreze etc.—or is it more of a master-brand sub-brand structure, like Kellogg’s: Corn Flakes, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini Wheats, Raisin Bran, Rice Krispies, Special K, etc. Understanding this company structure will give you insight into the approach they are using to manage the brand you are pitching and will help you formulate options—some that are in line with what they are doing, and some that depart.
If you are designing for a brand with multiple products, then you’ll need to list their products in the Facts column. If you are creating for just one product within the brand’s portfolio, you’ll place general brand information in the Facts column. This will become important when we speak about features and benefits later and when developing the copy for the executions.
Essentially, you’re looking for any and all information on the brand. Here are some angles to research:
Historical information on the brand
Brand perception in the marketplace
Positive information on the brand
Negative information on the brand
Information from the brand’s website
Information about the brand from independent (and reputable) blogs
Customer service ratings
Any spoof videos
Information about the brand’s product lines
Parent company information
Brand partnerships or associations
Sponsorship information
Events sponsored by the brand
SPLIT UP THE WORK
If you’re working in a team, try breaking down this column into tasks for several different people to research—one of you looks at the brand’s websites and press releases; one of you looks at industry blogs and publications; and so on. Your goal here is to amass as much information as you can. What you are looking for is any interesting tidbit of information that could be the gold nugget that we could build a campaign on. Keep two things in mind:
This should be exhaustive and your inquisitive creative curiosity should really kick in.
You will not know what you are looking for but will recognize it when you come across something interesting while digging.
COMPANY HISTORY
This is the place to dig up and list everything factual you can find about the heritage of the brand, product, or service. You might find stories, or just bits of info such as when the company was founded. Did the brand have a doll in its brand heritage like Buddy Lee for Lee Jeans? Write it down and find out why. Was the product developed by 39 failures in the formula like WD-40 (water displacement, 40th try)? Write that down.
If you were serving a client with a long heritage, such as an Ivy League university that wanted to leverage its equity into building an online MOOC presence, you would need to be sure to delve into that heritage to find all the potential elements you could start the conversation with or build a campaign on.
HOW TO RESEARCH THE BRAND
To research the brand, go beyond the corporate website into places where you can find what people say about the brand versus what the brand says about itself: blogs, forums, etc. You’ll want to learn about any negative or positive recent press or recalls in order to know what areas, approaches, or visual subject matter to avoid. In the case of the Fire TV Stick, I found out from several sales associates when I asked them which product they recommended and why that you can jailbreak it. What people are actually doing with the product is essential to understand because it may help you formulate your solutions in the context of neutralizing what the brand could perceive as a threat.
Having a wealth of knowledge in this column not only helps frame the creative approach, it aids the verbal setup when talking through methodology. You get the boardroom’s attention when you can tell the story of the brand or product with information the client didn’t give you. That’s why the time and effort it takes to populate the Facts column is worth it.
FIRE TV STICK EXAMPLE: THE FACTS
In this scenario, we are focused on a product from the Amazon brand, the Fire TV Stick, versus the Amazon Prime service itself. If you were using this framework for a new product launch there may not be much history, but list whatever you find anyway. A quick search of the Amazon website, tech reviews of the Fire TV Stick, and user reviews would populate this column. Since this section is focused on quality of information, for demonstration purposes I’d recommend whittling down the facts to those that enable the behavior the target exhibited in the trend research. Facts like:
The vast amount of content available on Amazon that includes video/entertainment/music/games
Consolidated access to both an existing Prime Video library and multiple streaming services on their big screen
Any specifics on the Fire TV Stick technology that enables faster streaming of content without buffering
The Feature/Benefit Column
We talked a lot about features and benefits in Chapter 5. Now’s the time to use those skills. Remember to think of them as one-to-one propositions—one tangible feature connected to one intangible benefit. Again, quantity is the objective of the first pass, so list all features and corresponding benefits and then isolate the most important feature/benefit combinations on the second quality pass. Keep in mind that the same feature can enable multiple benefits. Write out every feature you think of. Then determine which are most important and what should be eliminated/consolidated on the second quality pass. When cleaning for quality, I’ve found it best to approach the research with a hunch and let the information prove or disprove what I thought. For example, this hunch could be a point of view on what you believe each target segment is looking for.
This column is where you will be pulling inspiration to write compelling feature- or benefit-oriented headlines and body copy that would resonate with the target. Naturally, some of these combinations will be points of information and others will be what compels the target to buy. This will be determined by the objectives (awareness, engagement, education, etc.) as well as your ability to recognize connections between the target and the brand.
FIRE TV STICK EXAMPLE: FEATURES AND BENEFITS
Here are some features and benefits of the Fire TV Stick. These features range from information to imperative according to target behavior and preference (features are from Amazon’s website at the time of printing):
Feature Benefit
Amazon Prime Video library Gateway to unlimited streaming “250,000 TV episodes and movies” (added value: free with Prime membership)
Amazon Prime Video library Access to exclusive Amazon Original content (binging enabled)
ASAP technology Uninterrupted entertainment experience (without buffering)
The Apps “Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO GO, and Hulu, plus games, music, and more”
HDMI Access travels with you
The Objectives or Messages Column
This column will house both the business objectives and the consumer-messaging takeaways. Make this easier by placing an O: or M: before each point to distinguish what’s an objective and what’s a message. This is where the flexibility of the tool comes in. If you are pitching new business, you could propose objectives to the client and build creative solutions around accomplishing those. Or, if you are working on a product launch or rebrand, you could develop and highlight the takeaway messaging. Let’s discuss each in more detail.
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OBJECTIVES
Try to determine your recommendation on what are the primary and secondary objectives for the brand, product, or service you are working on and why. You’ll need a rationale if you are heading into a pitch to justify the overall strategy, tactics, and action plan you recommend. The 10-K statement, along with market analysis and competition, will help you build your recommendations.
NEXT-LEVEL OBJE
CTIVE CREATION
In the first pass of populating the chart, you could include general objectives (such as “increase sales”), but when refining the content, you’ll want to be as specific as possible when stating the objectives (such as “increase sales by 15 percent”). Keep in mind that when you propose double-digit growth, you’ll need to be specific about the metrics that you’ll capture to measure this. (This is an undertaking you’d do after you’ve become very comfortable using this material or when you have a team member focused on this alone.) Your strategy to achieve this goal could be to focus on the behavior or life stage of the target when they move or upgrade. The tactics could focus on mapping this to the months or weeks with the highest sales numbers or on a new product launch. The action plan will have the specifics on what the promotion name would be (for example, Shift could be a metaphor for changing addresses or shifting from the old product to new ones) and how you would recommend that the brand implement the strategy. Visualizing this is what we would design to show in the pitch, and could include the logo or typography for the promotion and mockups of the event, in store displays, microsites, apps, or digital ads.
If the kickoff meeting or marketing team received a specific objective (such as “increase downloads”), the creative strategy framework will help you determine the most viable target segment. More advanced teams will be able to find out at what percentage the app is currently being downloaded and then use that as a benchmark to get even more specific about the objective (“we would aim to increase downloads 8 to 10 percent”). It’s all a hunch at this point until we can prove these quantitatively based on research.
FIRE TV STICK EXAMPLE: OBJECTIVES
To build more specific objectives, we may even need to triangulate these “awareness” numbers and the number of Prime members with Fire TV Sticks. This takes reputable information that may have to be cobbled together to be convincing. For example, we could find the number of Prime members from the 10-K statement or another source and layer that over Fire TV Stick sales. From there, the interesting question is how many of those members also have sticks. Since their existing Prime subscription would give them access to the Prime Video streaming, then it would also increase the probability that they would purchase media from Amazon. In this scenario, the Fire TV Stick is the razor and the media purchases are the blades. As we dig deeper, these hunches will either be proven or evolve based on the research. If you are in a client meeting and you hear phrases that begin with words like Acquire, Drive, Build, Reduce, Gain, Engage, Retain, or Win Back, jot those down in the Message or Objective column. These elements are what we are being asked to accomplish.
Back to our example. An objective of a Fire TV Stick campaign could be to increase awareness and sales among existing Amazon Prime members with HDTVs.
First, let’s discuss awareness, a.k.a. as many eyeballs as possible. What are the other opportunities we have within the Amazon Prime webspace to cross-sell this segment on a new product that will allow them to utilize their streaming experience within the context of their HDTVs? We could assume that developing mockups within the existing ad spaces and promotional spaces the prospects are already engaged in would be fair game. Our pitch could include Amazon Prime shipping box mockups, and promotional tiles within the Amazon Prime website ad spaces or within the context of the Amazon streaming app interface on the HDTV.
Moving onto sales now. When you look at these examples of how to boost awareness, we’ve chosen the type of execution we are proposing based on what we know about the target’s behavior. We know they order from Amazon enough to subscribe to Prime. Therefore, we know that they have Internet access, purchase items online, own or rent in a particular area, etc. With a bit more thought and research on Amazon Prime ordering stats, we could further drill down our segments based on behavior and target those that have purchased a certain dollar amount or brand of electronics, and then determine the recency of their last purchase, frequency of the purchases, and monetary amount of those purchases. From there, we can determine what metrics we would seek to move the needle on. This enables creative people like us to develop executions based on increasing the frequency of the segment’s purchase habits by a specific percentage or number. Drive sales with a targeted creative concept or message aimed at the recency of the last purchase—such as getting those who usually purchase a movie once a month to do so twice a month, or getting someone who usually spends a certain dollar amount each month to spend more next month. Since we are now drilling down to specific primary or secondary objectives, making creative recommendations based on the target’s behavior and channels they pay attention in, we increase the probability of success for our client.
A second objective of a Fire TV Stick campaign could be to become the preferred streaming device among binge-watching cord-cutters who are light gamers. We can try to do that through education and research. We can assume that this segment also has high-speed Internet access, and binge-watches shows through services like Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and HBO NOW. We will need to develop multiple channels within the campaign to address the various stages of the customer journey that the target will need to go through in order to arrive at a purchase. For example, this group may need a website that outlines in black and white the head math on features and benefits of each streaming product. An education objective could include information on how many apps one product has versus another one. Could the website have the ability to make recommendations on individual preference and suggest additional products to purchase? It is up to us to create concepts based on accomplishing these goals, utilizing the information we have on the target’s behavior and purchase history, then selecting the appropriate channel to mention the features and benefits that are of interest.
When we are successful, we increase the probability of the customer tweeting about his or her new purchase and expressing preference through becoming an advocate. If our research determines that people find the process of researching exhausting, our creative recommendations could include a concept in a channel to simplify the decision-making process. If customers do tell a friend or two about the brand, product, or service because the creative concepts were developed in a way that facilitates sharing, it gives us an opportunity to convert some qualified prospects already interested but on the fence.
MESSAGING
So what are we saying to the target? That’s messaging. Messaging is what you want the target group to understand about you and your product, brand, or service after watching the video, webisode, reading the poster, attending the event, seeing the ad, or using the app.
Remember that these are broad-based messages that the target will be able to glean from the visuals and verbal messaging in your work. This will be helpful when you have to direct a writer or are putting this together and thinking but I’m not a writer. That’s fine; just communicate the idea here, and the scribe or wordsmith will polish it. Articulate the message clearly and then refine the way you say it through rewrites or getting a writer.
FIRE TV STICK EXAMPLE: MESSAGING
Other low-hanging-fruit messaging we can glean from the Amazon website could include things like:
The vast number of movies available on Amazon to stream
Original exclusive content developed by Amazon
The streaming or processing technology that enables speed (no buffering)
More targeted messaging ideas will come about after you establish the target or target groups.
Think, What will the brand, product, or service give me in exchange for what I will give them? It’s broader than quid pro quo. Companies give us free content or items in exchange for information about ourselves, discounts when we recommend the service to our friends, and reward points for keeping their payment method top-of-mind in our own wallets. Our attention and endorsement by tweet or video review are all forms of currency. In our Fire TV Stick example, there are free promotional episodes, Amazon original content, and the ability to access your Amazon content across platform
s. Your target messaging should be based on the overall value proposition, which could be defined in various ways, including “The portal to vast high-quality Prime Video entertainment, music, apps, and games.” Regardless of how you frame it, messaging should be focused on what is most compelling to the target (visually and verbally).
This is particularly important for a new service or technology, because if the perception is that it’s too complicated, that would be a drawback. You’ll remember the launch ads when the iPhone came out; the communications had to explain each detail or feature and its corresponding benefit to the user as well as the overall concept of an all-in-one, touch screen, one-button device (Ooh, what’s an app, sounds cool).
As the product or service matures, copycat products enter the market, and the masses begin to adopt the product in its incremental changes; the next phases of the campaign or communications will have different objectives. For example, our Amazon Fire TV Stick example has three major players in its competitive set: Apple TV, Roku Streaming Stick, and Chromecast along with others, such as DVD players, game consoles, and smart TVs with app and streaming capability.
Categories and products mature, so that means that there will be increased storage space, faster streaming speed, a changing or increased number of apps and games (before you read these words). So the second phase of this campaign could be to increase the number of people loyal enough to upgrade to newer versions of the same product. If we do a great job on the initial conversion, we could get that business in the future as well.
Creative Strategy and the Business of Design Page 9