SPEAKER_00 0:16

Brand manager, how are you? How are you? Good to see you. Welcome to session for a QA. Two very interesting modules just gone, right? Nothing more important than saying objectives, and nothing even more important than brand architecture. I'm down in Tasmania where it's cold. That's why I've got my cardigan on. I'm uh I'm uh what am I? I'm well rested. I'm about to go on planes again. I was I was smiling to myself before I got on with you. Look, look at this, right? Look, look. This is me from the QA when I was in, I think I was in Dallas, Fort Worth. Look at the st- Oh, you can't say look at it, it's like a before and after for an enema or something. Look at that. Look, that's what travel does to you. I'm not saying I look like George Clooney now, but that looks like a man who's about to have, you know, a a moment, you know what I mean? And I just feel great at the moment, and now I'm about to go on the planes again. So I'll be like, I'll be looking like that again next week. Anyway, that's not the point. That's not the point. I just got a shock when I looked at the previous QA. Anyway, where are we? Where are we? We are we're way off. We're way off. Here we are. Uh so brand objectives and architecture. We've not got you're a strange cohort. Last time round you asked me loads of questions, and the other cohort didn't ask me many, and uh this time around it's the other way around. So you're letting me off the hook, which is fine with me. Friday. You stand between uh me and a massive drinking festival, so I'm I'm ready to go. Uh Mari Paz, hey Mari Paz. When setting 12-month brand objectives, how should companies measure performance if they only conduct brand research every two years? What metrics would you recommend using in between tracking studies? Look, I think if you really can't do a very I I wouldn't advise going two years without any research, but if that's how you're doing it, I would set two-year objectives. Honestly, Mary Paz, what's the point? You don't know where you're going. You may as well just do it when you dip in the market. But I would suggest the objective should be annual. So therefore, just do a fair, you know, split your market research money up and have an annual track. Two years without a track is a long, long time. I'm not saying you have to do it more than annual. I'm a big fan of an annual track, but waiting two years seems painful. Tara Dunn, I'm not clear on how to go about creating a bespoke purchase funnel. What data is needed? From whom? How do we get it? Okay. So you start out with a bit of qualitative data. Um for many qualitative methods, talking one-on-one to consumers, focus groups, you basically ask consumers to take you through how they made a purchase. And very quickly, 10 customers will give you pretty much the story of what these steps are. Remember that with a custom funnel, it tends to be, it doesn't look, you know, there's normally an awareness, consideration, preference type stuff going on. They have different names. At some point, though, the sort of external steps turn into the internal steps. Because a custom funnel shouldn't end with, you know, it should zoom in a little bit more. It shouldn't end with, oh, I preferred that one, then I bought it. It should have preferred that one. Visited website, uh, uh, tried on three or four virtual dresses, yeah. Um, bought one thing by rate by at least one thing every three months. Yeah. That's the way to play it. Um and then to get that data, you just turn those into six or seven questions, hierarchical questions like we talked about in module three, and then you run it through the survey. And you've got yourself, not just for your brand, but for the whole market, really good custom funnel data. That makes sense. Uh, Corin Camenish. On brand objectives, let's say we discover that the leak in our funnel is conversion, and we therefore want to increase it by X percentage points by the end of the year. What data points do we need to set a realistic target? I find it quite tricky to put a number behind an increase. How much marketing budget do we need to achieve this uplifting consideration since it heavily depends on what competitors do, right? Any tips on how to do this in an ideal scenario, but also in a more scrappy way with limited historical data? Yeah, look, it comes with experience, Corinne the one thing I'd say is TrackSuit, the tracking firm, publishes free on its site an annual list of um of benchmark data for all the main steps in the funnel for different categories. I'd have a look at that. I think that might be the place to start because it shows you what a you know what a realistic awareness increase might look like. So have a look at that. I can't remember if it's been out recently. It's definitely there. I see it banded around all the time. So that gives you kind of some context for your kind of category. But at that point, you've really just got to you've just got to get expert in an objective setting achieving cycle, and you you end up teaching yourself at some point. Tyra done. Brand architecture. The company I work for, B2B Industrial Tech, recently went through, sorry, I've got a dog. Um recently went through a long and painful consolidation. We went from 20 brands to eight. Good. This was done by demoting those brands to name product lines or solutions under one of the brands that stayed, essentially stripping logos off them. I don't mind that either. So the name hasn't gone from the business. Did we go about this the wrong way? I don't think so. That's good. I mean, it looks like a very broad approach to phasing. The very fact you've cut down the number of brands from more than 20 to 8 sounds good. My only query, which you are like our is I think eight sounds too many as well. But anyway. But the company every now and then buys other companies. Here we go. We're just buying a small one and then conducting a brand study to find out how much weight it has in the market. If results come back strong, should we keep it as a brand? Or should our aim be to demote it to a product line under one of our existing eight brands to avoid growing the portfolio again? Well, I can't answer it, but you you're asking all the right questions. You don't want too many brands. You're doing the right thing. You know, what why did you buy this new brand? If you bought it for the brand, obviously you're not going to fold it in. But if you bought it because it's in a sector that works for you, and there's another brand that exists in the eight that's a better fit, fold it in. Um, I like what you're doing in this question. I think it looks good. I think it's um someone someone upstairs knows what they're doing, and we don't say that very often. Fahad. Hey Fahad, I'm really enjoying the course. This might be a bit of a long question. I'll be the judge of that. Uh, I had a question about the overlap between mini MBA in marketing and mini MBA in brand management. There's a lot of correlation between the two. So, how do you personally think about the difference? And when should someone lean more on one versus the other? Also, how would you recommend applying these frameworks to smaller companies with smaller budgets and less structure from both a marketing and brand management perspective? What are the key things smaller brands should focus on most? One thing I found really interesting in the research module was a lot of the different research methods led to similar conclusions. For me, the perceptual map ended up being the most useful because many of the other methods confirm what is already showed. Yeah. In real-world practice, do you usually anchor around one main type of research, or are there a few research methods you consider essential? I also liked that the course letters experiment and someone spent money on research that didn't end up being very useful. This felt realistic. Yeah, you're you're the only one that liked that faihat. I like that. Everyone else thought it was annoying because a lot of the research was shit, but I might your point is true. I wanted to make it realistic. All the research is coming out of your simulation. So that's why it all points to the same stuff, because it's based on a on a on a simulated reality, which I'm just plugging back through different research methods. Um, look, marketing and brand are similar, they aren't the same. In in the real world of the organization, you can never say what's marketing and what's brand because everyone defines it differently. Um for me, I think there are certain things in brand management that are unique. Brand architecture, brand diagnosis is a different kind of research, it's more self, you know, self-serving rather than market research. Uh, brand extension, brand diversification, you know, things like co-branding. There's specialist things that a brand manager does and a marketer doesn't necessarily do. Um, that that's the that's the main difference. But I'll be honest with you, you know, we have a target market of brand managers who've no training in brand management. That's what this course is for. If you're going to manage a brand and you haven't been training in brand management, that's what we're trying to do, and hopefully you're you're getting it. The market, mini MBA marketing is for marketers who who've never done a decent MBA level training in marketing. So they're they're serving quite different targets, even though in the Venn diagram, as you say, there's at least 20% overlap, maybe more. Uh, Deborah, when we get in the simulation, will we be able to change the logo and aesthetic of the sonite? Can we include that as a tactic in our brand plan? You you will get a chance to include it as a tactic in your brand plan, kind of, but the simulation is is set and it's more simple. It's like 70% as complex as the brand plan. So you won't have that option. So I wouldn't I wouldn't sweat it in this case. Uh Boris. Hi, Mark. Question regarding positioning. But but remember, back to that question, you can change the product. That's a big part of the simulation. Uh, what is the realistic probability the brand can successfully elevate a strong historical association into a key driver of consumer preference when the market currently sees it as not very important? And what would be the critical factors that determine its success? I would say it would be almost impossible, Boris. I would say to you that if the consumer doesn't see something as important, it's not impossible, but it's very difficult to change. It's much easier to take things that they think of as slightly important and make them perceive them as more important. But something that they've said, like it's just not very important at all, it's very, very difficult to change that with all the tea in China, you know. And again, the the easiest game of all is don't start with I've got this thing that I can do. How do I make it a key driver of purchase? Try it the other way around, you know. You know, rather than finding, let me get this right, uh consumers for my products. Let me try and find, you know, some products for consumers. Yeah. It's a lot easier to be market-oriented. Give it up. Abigail. The expert four-page report has been noted, purchase strongly regretted, and filed under lesson well learned. Sasha strikes again. Codes are ours. Don't let agencies tell us they should be changed. Got it. Very well played and genuinely hilarious. It still makes me laugh, Abigail. That thing. I think I did it at like two in the morning. Um, if you haven't downloaded and paid for Sasha's report yet, you're missing out. Hey Mark, another long question. Go on, Fahad. And you've got another one beneath it as well. Uh, in a previous module, we talked about surveys and questionnaires, and we ended up building one. What would you consider a good sample size before the findings become reliable? Uh, just download uh sample size calculator. You want a 95%, it'll ask you for a couple of variables, the population size of the total market, estimate it. You want a 95% confidence level and a 5% confidence interval or margin of error, 95.5. And it will tell you what you need. It's normally about 400 in a lot of cases, funnily enough, but that's how you do it. And what you're saying is if I did this research a hundred times, 95 times out of 100, I would get an answer plus or minus 5% of this number. And that's generally deemed acceptable by marketers. And most marketers should know that, even though many don't. Second question: sometimes you'll see someone follow a structured process, diagnosis, research strategy, positioning, and then someone else comes up with a random tactical idea that generates a lot of awareness or sales. The challenge isn't whether the approach is right or wrong, it's that people compare you to those results and expect the same outcome, even when you're trying to build something more sustainable. How do you deal with that comparison? How should marketers think about short-term success that may come from luck, timing, or opportunistic tactics? I think we embrace them, but it's very hard to get lightning in a bottle and try replicating it again, and you're going to struggle. I worked for 3M when they tried to replicate the success of the Post-it note, which was by and large a random incident. And um it really destroyed the company, yeah. So yeah, great, but we can't we can't we can't copy it. See what I mean? Uh fad. When writing my objectives, I realized I made a mistake with the research I purchased. I bought research that didn't provide relevant segment-specific benchmarks. So I can't set objectives for each segment. As a result, I base my objectives on the data available to me, which left me with one objective per segment. Would that what wouldn't would that be sufficient given the information available? Or would you expect us to make additional assumptions in a situation like this? No, I want you to learn what you missed from the research Farhad and make sure you get it in the real world. It's a great lesson, right? And if you don't have those benchmarks, you can still write objectives, but they're less sure. Yeah, you really it's really handy to have those benchmarks. That's the big lesson, right? That's the big lesson. Uh, Holly, in your banking funnel example in module seven, you have top of mind awareness at the top, followed by spontaneous and then prompted. Why would these not be inverted in order in the order given you are more valuable to the brand if you have Toma versus prompted? That's not my funnel, Holly. How dare you? That was the actual funnel developed by a large Australian bank that I worked on. And I'm literally changing the graphics and hiding the numbers, but giving you what they what they measured. So, you know, that all of those were real funnels that I've disguised, but they were real. Um the reason Toma is at the top, I think I can only speak for them, is it is the one that kind of sits at the top, obviously. The reality is when you ask that awareness question or questions, there's two questions, right? You do an unaided question. The first one out is Toma, the rest of them are uh unaided, and then you follow up with irrespective of a question one, which of these brands do you recognize? So you ask the questions in a certain order. I think the right answer is just to pick one of those three measures of awareness and use that only, if I'm honest with you. But the bank didn't want to do that either. Meg, quick one on codes. My company decided to mess with what wasn't broken. Yeah, great. And change its codes to suit a modern audience. Shoot them all, Meg. They have flopped. What do you know? I want to recommend we go back to the original distinctive ones that we were working just fine. So once codes are changed and in the market, only for a short period, can we revert back to the codes that actually works and what is actually true to the brand? If this is an allusion to the um to moon, I think it's the right move, but I don't think the simulation will allow it. Um, if it's a real story, yes, go back. I think it will help you tremendously. Tara, the question halves back to surveys. What's your view on including previous and or repeat customers in the brand survey? Should a brand survey actively exclude customers so that we only get a pure market view and then do something separate with customers, or is it okay to combine? We have a panel company sourcing the respondents. It's okay to combine and then you pull them out because you've asked them a question about purchase frequency. So then you can go, here's the whole market, and we've weighted our customers relative to our market size. And then what you're saying is, and this is what people have never bought us think versus those that do. Yeah, that's it. That's how you do it. Mathieu, regarding setting up objectives for the mass market, how is defining who the objective is about not in itself a form of disguise segmentation? Or is the who in this case simply all current and future users of the category? Since targeting the mass market aims at the long of it, it makes more sense to me that the objectives only try to improve top of funnel items, more distance from purchase. Is that right? Generally, yeah, it tends to be more higher. Yeah. Um, not always, there can be exceptions. And the who is, yeah, I mean, if you believe sophisticated mass marketing, you've already said it's not targeting, right? What it's saying is in a population of people, these are the people that own a dog. That's not targeting, right? Now that's that's who for the mass market. I take your point. There's a sort of cut there, but that's what we're talking about for the who for mass marketing. Shannon, I just wanted to double check, I'm not missing a trick, and that there the the moon case that he is concerned, we can only work with the purchase funnel that we've been provided. In the real world, I recognize we look to create something sort of, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want you, it doesn't really exist, Shannon. I hate to break it to you. So you can only deal with what you've got in the in the research that's for sale to keep it simple. Leandra, if brand positioning defines the associations we want consumers to build, why don't companies communicate it explicitly? Why is positioning typically kept as an internal framework rather than directly expressed in messaging? Wouldn't making it explicit, strengthen clarity and consistency. Why is it treated as a secret? It isn't always, it depends on the brand positioning. Um there's a there's a couple of explanations. First of all, you can. So you can just take the positioning and and make it the strapline. It also, though, sometimes turned. I mean, I remember with Don Perignon, we had, and I can't remember, all five or six of the genes in the DNA, but two of them were power and create creation, and we ended up with a strapline that was the power of creation for a long time. And we wanted to turn the volume up on those two for various strategic reasons. So sometimes it's more that you're choosing from the positioning the bits that you really want to ramp up, and that's why the whole thing doesn't come across. But you can do it. I mean, if you look at Kit Kat, it really is the positioning turned into a strap line. Yeah, so it's fine to do it, but sometimes we want to be selective, Leandra. Otherwise, yeah, sure, why not? Laurie, your brand management framework is fundamentally built on evidence. I would say that that's true, yeah. Uh as opposed to shit that I made up. Market research and benchmarking are what make objective setting and measurement possible. I'd say that's true as well, Laurie. Yeah, many organizations are reluctant to invest in that foundation. How do we say leaders that research isn't a nice to have, but a prerequisite for brand management? I think you have to show them subtly and with much love that what they think about the brand isn't true. And, you know, you're using the research rhetorically to say you think this, but actually what our initial research shows is that. And that worries us because we're flying this plane without proper instrumentation. So it's teasing out the fact that what they think isn't what their consumers think. That's I think that's the that's the that's the needle you have to pull. Shannon, two brand, two moon burn plan questions. When writing awareness objectives, is it important to reference a type of objective? I think it really helps. Two, is it problematic for a mass market objective to have a likelihood to purchase focus? No. You mentioned prioritizing bottom of funnel needs first when you flip it on its side. However, in this instance, would the approach be different? Thinking of the long, short, mass targeted principles. Look, never say never. What does the mass funnel say to you about the market? Just remember the mass market are not buying next year in the moon world. So the definition of the mass, or most of them aren't. The mass market is tens of millions of people, many of whom are not likely to buy a sonite yet. So by that dint, they're not down the bottom of the funnel much. So keep that in mind as well. You can ask them what they would do down there, but they're not down there. Keep that in mind. Anastasia, hi Mark. I'm now in the process of building a funnel for the moon case. Yeah. In the lecture, you advise to focus on objectives from the bottom of the funnel first. Does this real work for both target segments and mass market, or should we focus on the upper levels of the funnel for mass market? Yeah, I I upper and mass tend to work best, as you'll see, but no, it let the funnel speak to you. Don't listen to old fathead here. Listen to the funnel. What does the funnel tell you when you look at the mass market? I think it will speak. San, in the objectives module, you presented an example from banking, and it started with Toma, then spontaneous awareness, then aided. That sequence seems unusual. Oh no, no, we've done yet. Could you clarify the logic? We've already done it, Sana. That was the silly thinking of the bank that I worked for, who I love dealing. I was just presenting their funnel. You'll have to ask them, and they've all left the bank now. Uh Westpac, good people, but maybe not the best top of funnel I've ever seen. Adam Blaney, going back to the diagnosis stage, at what point and how can the case be made for the planning budget if this is not already a funded and understood part of the brand's annual planning cycle? Well, you have to put it into next year's budget. Yeah. So along with asking for money to do communication, ask for a little bit of money also for RD and research. Anastasia again, it seems I've purchased some good and some bad research for Moon. I'm missing a bit of money to buy funnel for one of the segments I want to target. I really want to practice lecture materials of looking at the funnel. Looking at conversion, is there a possibility to pitch for some extra funds? No, suck it up, Anastasia. No, you learn. No, the Italians have this great word, privazione, right? Deprivation. I want you to feel it. What did you not buy? What are you missing? And when you do this for real when it counts, I want this lesson to be burned in your mind. Spencer Wonstall. M. I've really messed up with my budget. Great. Screw you, Spencer. I don't think I don't think I bought loads of things I don't think are valuable. And now I only have 255 grand left. I really think I need to buy some of the funnels. Do I need to hold back any budget for something later in the course? Without the funnels, I think I'll struggle. You will, you will struggle. Look, Spence, I love it. I love it. You're getting in there. You have to buy some agency stuff. The good news, and I'm gonna be on that you're building a brand plan. When we get into the simulation, the clock kind of resets. And you can translate a good brand plan straight into the sim, but you will give you a little bit of room to maneuver. So yeah, buy the funnels, man. I mean, I love the fact you're getting into it. Um, I'm totally on board with the brand sub-brand consolidation of the architecture module, says Joe Marshall. One thing I've always struggled with in making these recommendations is selling it to senior stakeholders. There's always a nervousness that this approach will reduce revenue and profit, and that will not be recovered. See, hang on. It's true it will reduce revenue. My experience of this, Joe, and it would be yours as well, is it reduces revenue in year one, but profit is pretty much the same because we've cut a lot of losses out. And by year two, both revenue and profit are greater. Anyway, where I've been successful, it's usually as a result of some very time consuming time-consuming planning that that they asked for. My question is there an approach you can suggest to help land recommendations with senior teams at a strategic level that uses data and builds confidence in the approach. Yeah, I mean, the one I talked about on the uh briefly is that McKinsey chart. Y access is percent of profit contribution from 100 to actually to minus 50, because some of these guys are losing money, right? On the Y. On the X-axis, every brand from biggest to smallest, and what their profit contribution is, not revenue, profit. You show that to any CFO, because a lot of them are negative, they're down here, right? And a lot of them are more than 110. You don't need anything else, trust me. Mature. Regarding brand architecture, the need for each brand to grow might may end up in conflicts with other brands within the group. For the most efficient result for the group, do you think brand managers should only care about growing their own brand and let someone else at the higher rank attribute uh arbitrate if needed? Or should brand managers directly discuss such matters between them? No, no, I love this question. Um, your job's brand manager is to kill your sisters, yeah. If someone above you thinks that because competition is good, being part of a house of brands mature should not be a membership of weakness, yeah? So you want to keep it tight, yeah. You want to fight against everyone, including your sister brands, unless your boss comes down and goes, No, no, no, no, I don't want you guys fighting. I'll move you apart. But you should be playing the game. Internal competition is a good thing. Dan, there's some event kicking off in the Americas this week, which a lot of brands seem to be getting very excited about. Really? It's coming on, it's coming on. Everyone still thinks I'm Australian C. I don't know why. I mean, I have lived here for 20 odd years. My children are Australian, I'm Australian. I've only got one message, I'll have Paul Gascoigne to all my Australian friends and family. Screw Australia. Yeah? I'm a I'm a three lines man through and through. I've got my shirt, I've got all my family, I've got yellow shirts and all that tacky shit. I've got my white shirt and I'm ready, and it's coming home. Anyway, where are where are we? Where are we here, Dan? You see, you got me going already. Um, and it strikes me that a country's biggest brand win could come overnight by lifting the trophy. Something no brand manager can plan, budget for, deliver. Does place branding fundamentally differ from product branding, where you have more control over the narrative? You reckon you have more? In that context, is building mental availability still the primary objective, or should place brands prioritize something different? I've always been pr, I mean, tourism marketing aside, I've been pretty anti-place branding. I'll tell you why, there was an awful human being who used to do this sort of country brand index, and he had Turkey as the as the weakest country brand. And I said to him, I find it distasteful because I, you know, I'm all about saying your brand, your brand of beans is shit, you know. But when you when you render a whole country of people and their culture and their civilization as, you know, less good than another, it just felt shit and tasteless to me. And I've no connection to Turkey, but they seem like nice people, and they seem like they've got lots of attractions, you know. I've been to Bodrum. Um, so I think generally the whole tourism aside is a different thing. That whole country branding thing, don't like it. Place branding, I think, yeah, you you're the the issue is you are constrained far more by a thing you can't reposition. If we want to change the the volume size and look and feel of our bottle, we can, but you can't do that with a subcontinent, right? So I think there's a there's a lot less leverage. Let's end with Mari Paz. Hi, Mark. I work in the paint industry. Consumers typically buy paint based on a specific need. You no, you you'll blow my mind, Mari Paz. There isn't just that sort of, you know, let's get some paint. Uh, and then they choose among brands. Our company has a strong master brand, but we also have several product sub brands. Some of these sub brands have been heavily supported and are actively requested by name, while many others are simply part of the portfolio. Because paint requires different formulations, we can't realistically reduce the number of products we offer. Hmm. My question is, how would you determine which sub brand should continue to exist and which should be folded back into the master brand? Great question. What criteria would you use to distinguish a valuable subbrand from a product name? Oh, I I've got one for you here. I would I would actually uh I would use search here and I would look at search terms from a massive swathe of data. How many of them search for the sub brand name versus the parent brand name? And I would have a threshold whereby that means the sub brand is is valuable or or or not. I would use search, a weird kind of internal share of search metric. And it wouldn't cost any money, Mary Paz, just take a bit of time. Right, blink questions. It's uh clear to me that you're all geniuses, but more importantly, that the course is progressing. It's gonna get real fun now in the next week or so. So to get a brand plan of any kind done and in is my first it's not to be even be finished, we'll talk about it next time, but get something done so you can do the simulation, which is just phenomenal fun. Okay. Uh tactics next week, a lot of fun as well. We're obviously not going through every tactic on the planet, but we're gonna talk about thinking about tactics before we get to budgeting and wrapping it all up. Ready for your brand plan and then your sim. Have a lovely weekend. See you in class next week. Tactics ahead. Woohoo!