In order to make our strategy actionable, we needed to appeal to the two targets’ intersecting passion points: making discoveries and sharing them. To do this, I took a deeper look at the brand promise. What I realized is that we had an opportunity to focus our content and experiences on four key themes found in the brand promise—destination (“where”), occasion (“why”), differentiation (“something”), and discovery and exploration (“to be found”). Each of these themes would be represented across every potential consumer touchpoint from key cards to concierge services to social media activities to our website. Our aim was to make people who engaged with the Renaissance brand feel excited and validated by creating a sense of secrecy. If they know Renaissance and what it has to offer, then they are living the ultimate proof that they are in the know.
By focusing on four key themes taken directly from the language of the brand promise, we were able to bring the brand promise to life and create a program that helped differentiate the hotel from the competition. This program provided a means to keep pace with their guest’s nomadic curiosity by recommending new and interesting places and activities. Ultimately, Renaissance became the secret our audience was tempted to share.
DISSECTING THE ELEMENTS OF OUR CONTENT FORMULA
UNDERSTANDING THE PILLARS OF OUR CONTENT STRATEGY
Key Ways to Use Insight to Drive Creative Solutions
As you can see from Judy’s thought process, the ability to formulate relevant questions, seek the answers to those questions, and delve into what drives the behavior are key to her approach to triangulating for transferable insights.
In terms of her process on aligning the channel with the target, taking the time to develop the right concept based on the insight is just half of the problem solved. It is imperative to allow the behavior of the target to inform where to speak. A concept that is rooted in a strong insight and tailored to the target’s behavior moves the needle because relevance = response.
In making the strategy actionable, knowing how many target segments there are and what differentiates them was key to leveraging what they had in common on behalf of the brand. Judy helped translate the target’s common values into touchpoints that the brand could manifest itself in to build a relationship.
When I look at these solutions and study how Judy arrived at each one, it reinforces my belief that there is only your “right” answer and why you think it’s right. That said, you’ll also observe the way Judy formulated her own questions and went about proving her assumptions because you will always be asked to justify why you think your answer is right. Her decisions were always driven by finding the right insight, choosing the right channel, and applying the right strategy.
Turning Words Into Inspiration
You will need to try and fail on your own numerous times before you can confidently arrive at presentable solutions like Judy has in this chapter—and I’m a firm believer that practice makes presentable. So if you’ve been looking for the right answer or have the expectation that it has to be perfect, let yourself off the hook and begin failing. Think about the project that you are currently working on, are about to start, or have just finished. Write down some questions that will help you dive deeper into the three strategic questions that Judy outlined in this chapter:
What are the real underlying beliefs or behaviors of our target audience and how can we connect with those beliefs and behaviors?
What is the best way to actually reach our target audience?
How does this strategy become real and concrete?
After answering those questions, conceptualize, design and develop some creative solutions that bring the brand in contact with the target. This will take practice and you’ll have to have patience with yourself as some initial solutions will suck, but this is all a part of making your solutions presentable.
Try this: Create tactics to talk about during interviews or pitches, find a breaking news event and create awareness for a relevant cause or charity using the event as an example of why the cause is important (e.g., March Madness, climate change, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)). Create a hashtag and develop engaging tweets, curate or develop content that drives traffic to a charity committed to the cause or relevant website (examples: nwba.org, dosomething.org, alifestoryfoundation.org). As the story develops, develop your voice. Measure. See how many retweets, mentions, and people use the #hashtag over time. Repeat. Presto, you have just created a real-time case study that displays your approach to what’s trending.
PART III
The Strategy Behind the Execution: Developing and Presenting Your Work
9 Beyond “Make It Pretty”
Positioning, Pitching, and Leading the Client
David Brooks wrote an article called “The Practical University” in the New York Times (April 4, 2013). The central thesis of his article made the distinction between “technical knowledge” and “practical knowledge.” He argues that the physical university will have to contend with the rise of MOOCs (massive open online courses), which impart technical knowledge for free from a distance by becoming places where students learn what can only be absorbed in person. Brooks states, “Practical knowledge is not about what you do, but how you do it. It is the wisdom a great chef possesses that cannot be found in recipe books. Practical knowledge is not the sort of knowledge that can be taught and memorized; it can only be imparted and absorbed. It is not reducible to rules; it only exists in practice.” This is not a new concept in our profession, and though he was speaking about the university environment, I see this applying to our day-to-day growth as professionals.
Learning the trade from a master dates back to apprenticeships in printing and aesthetics when you count assistants for masters like Michelangelo. I’ve been involved with developing this practical learning environment from professional training to the high-school level as an author of the curriculum for the first advertising high school in the country. My objective with this book is the same: to offer a practical professional development in the form of sharing my experiences, tools, and processes. These are designed to aid the development of your discernment to go beyond “just make it pretty.”
This field is exciting and yet difficult to remain in because of the speed at which it moves. New devices, ways of accessing the Internet, and methods of communicating to prospects are being invented every day. What we can do, not where we went to school, matters. In this field of perpetual peer review, the ultimate vote of confidence from professionals in our field is having your portfolio selected from among the pile for the job. As my career has evolved over the years, I’ve continued to remain relevant by seeking to test my abilities through new challenges. I learn from the professional environment. Taking client problems and offering viable solutions for their businesses is where my professional growth is focused. Your ability to remain a viable expert will give you the experiences that validate your point of view in a field that values relevance over degrees. In this chapter, you will see some tools that could be a part of your new normal when asked to lead the client.
The Brand Ladder
All of the data you collected for the creative strategy framework gives you a wealth of resources for building a positioning statement. Before you write one, it’s a good idea to first “ladder” your product or service (see Chapter 1). The process will help you extract insights to inspire creatives.
For instance, let’s say you’re going to build a brand ladder for Nikon. When you choose a camera, it’s based on what you need it to do (communicate with social media, take color-accurate photos, etc.).
By now you know that you would first consider the attributes: the tangible features of the brand or product. For example, in this case, attributes could be a proprietary color technology or a Wi-Fi-enabled component in a camera.
Next, you determine the benefits: what the brand or product does for the consumer. These benefits are often intangible, but they can be traced back to a tangible product attribute that makes them pos
sible, such as that proprietary color technology or Wi-Fi component. The benefit related to those attributes would be: allowing others to see from my perspective.
Finally, you’ll want to identify the values—that’s what a brand or product means to the target. You’re looking for shared values between the brand and the target. If you can find shared passion between what a brand makes and what the target loves, those insights are the opportunity. For you to trust these values beyond any subjective qualitative hunch, they must be gleaned from sound primary or secondary research.
From the brand perspective, the value could be the passion for connecting people through shared experiences. That’s the underlying reason why camera makers research and develop new technologies to capture and share those experiences in their purest form.
For the target’s perspective, you’ll need to find some sort of primary or secondary research, such as a survey on experiences, that allows the target to tell you what they value in their own words. The value in our camera example could be anything from capturing the moment to sharing it from their point of view, so you’ll need to find out where photography enthusiasts hang out online and pay attention.
Once you have all of the necessary components—attributes, benefits, and values—you can use this as a basis to structure and create your positioning statement.
Use a Positioning Statement to Focus Creative Development
Once you as a designer, art director, copywriter, or creative services manager have a sense of the specifics of a project from a brief or your own research, it may be helpful to take a stab at a succinct articulation. Be sure you have first looked at the elements of the creative strategy framework from Chapters 6 and 7 and spent some time breaking down the product or brand features (attributes) and tying them to corresponding benefits. You can then add the relevant target values to build a positioning statement.
OUTSIDE EXPERTISE
Some of what I suggest here (research, data collection, etc.) may be outside of your expertise. That’s okay. You may need to partner with a writer or a designer in order to extract the full value of the scenario analysis. Just like when a creative hires photographers or illustrators, you may want to reach out to other professionals to get the correct information. Lastly, the principle of going beyond the transactional designer-client relationship is what I’d like to stress versus the need to use these exact tools. Whatever your specific set of circumstances, having the discernment to be able to assess what is needed and apply the appropriate strategic tool is the point. However you need to do it, get to your right answer.
BRAND LADDER
Writing a positioning statement may help focus creative development and increase the viable options that are on brand, on strategy, and on message.
Here is a widely used and time-tested framework:
Framework for a Positioning Statement:
For (target), (brand) is the (category) that is the (point of difference) so they can (end benefit) because (reason to believe based on point of difference).
Target: Define the target based on demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics.
Brand Name: This is whatever brand or product you are working on (Amazon, etc.).
Frame of reference or Category of business: BMW could be a car company . . . or the engineer of ultimate driving machines. The more creatively you can describe the frame of reference in ways that still apply, the better. An iPad is a tablet computer positioned in a differentiated way so that it is never described as a tablet computer.
Point of Difference: What can your brand or product say that no other brand can say? Qualitative and quantitative research should inform this point. An easy way to begin thinking about this is to imagine a consideration process where you had to evaluate and compare your client’s brand with others. Try to find a way to sum up the point of difference with words that aren’t generic.
End Benefit: This is where you state what this product does for the target. Qualitative and quantitative research should inform what is written here.
Reason to Believe: This cannot be an opinion statement; it must be rooted in the truth about this particular product or brand and its point of difference. Look into the details of the tangible brand or product features/attributes to craft a solid reason to believe, backed up with qualitative and quantitative research.
This is the one place where it’s safe to throw away everything you learned about run-on sentences. Try to be succinct and make every word count, but be sure you capture everything you need to capture.
If your brand already has a positioning statement, be sure to keep it handy as you work on other campaigns for the brand. If you know this statement doesn’t exist internally (either with the client or at your firm), try creating one when developing your recommendations. Remember, the tool is only as good as the information you populate it with, so be sure to plug a specific feature into the reason to believe blank and a corresponding benefit into the point of difference blank.
EXAMPLE
In our camera example, the positioning statement could sound like:
For (creative professionals with an eye for capturing and sharing beauty), (Nikon) is the (digital point and shoot) that delivers (a window to their world), so they can (experience deeper connections through a shared perspective) because (of Nikon’s 100 year history of developing new technologies that allow you to capture and share your experiences in their purest form, it’s as if you were there). Again, I’m not a writer either—but if I can take a stab at framing this, so can you. Write something first and then you can judge it. It may take some time to become comfortable with the process of articulating strategy in this way, but this is how you unlock the difference between a one-time transaction and a long-term relationship.
SEEING THE BIG PICTURE
Positioning is a process that involves in-depth research to articulate. It is not a slogan—therefore, consumers would not see it. It should be overarching on the brand level, where it would not be used short term or attached to a single campaign. This is where the impulse to be tactical is at odds with an approach rooted in strategy because it takes more than writing a witty line to create. You will no doubt find yourself in a situation or on a team where some on the team don’t value the depth needed to formulate a sound strategy. If you are a junior designer or the scope is narrowly focused on your project, save this big-picture concept for when you are on a pitch team and have the ability to participate in this process. It couldn’t hurt to ask the account team or an in-house marketing or brand strategist for this statement as well. Be tactful with these types of requests, because you don’t want to spend all your time asking for things outside your responsibilities, but it will be clear when your job is harder because there is no strategy being developed. In that case, you can write your own to inspire the work they are asking from you.
A solid positioning statement will take a few drafts to get right, but once you’ve got it, place it at the top of the whiteboard or in the communications that you give to your team (after getting any needed buy-in from key players). It may take some time to become comfortable with the process of articulating strategy in this way before executing, but rooting your creativity in strategy makes for more successful business solutions.
Choosing the Right Channel for Your Creative Solution
After taking the time and care needed to make a clear, strategically sound positioning statement that’s on brand, on strategy, and on message, you’ll next choose channels that your target pays attention to. But that’s only half of the challenge. Once you’ve chosen the right channels, the work of how to strategically position or differentiate a brand’s offering begins. This section will teach you how to figure out what channels to use and how to craft a positioning statement to focus creative development.
When I say “choose relevant channels,” this is for those of you who are in the position to make decisions on staff as creative directors. However, it is imperative that the whole team understan
d this in order to influence decisions in meetings, question decisions that don’t make sense, or propose ideas to pitch the client. In some organizations, the design or creative teams haven’t been invited to the strategy session or are not consulted at the very beginning of the project. As a result, the culture of your organization may define your role as executors (or they may not understand the benefits of injecting creativity into the initial business conversation). Whatever the case in your organization, the bottom line is that you may not have a say in where you communicate to your target. That decision may have already been made.
Even if that’s the case, you can still understand the method used by the business and marketing folks making these decisions and can suggest additional ideas that are relevant.
COMMUNICATION OR MEDIA CHANNELS
Here is a topical list:
Broadcast (TV)
Web (video)
Print (periodicals)
Mobile
Social Media
Wearables (smartwatches and fitness trackers)
Out of Home (billboards, phone booths, train platforms, bus shelters)
Digital Out of Home (such as in Times Square)
Point of Sale (counter cards, shelf talkers, end caps)
Word of Mouth (this includes in-person referrals and forwarding links)
Product placement
Guerrilla placements
Simply knowing what channels are available doesn’t equate to a sound strategy (this touches the key points from Chapter 3 on business objectives)—all of them won’t make sense on one project. You’ll want to choose the best mix of channels based on your knowledge of the target’s media consumption and the business objectives.
Creative Strategy and the Business of Design Page 11
