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Again, you went out of diagnosis, which is a very big module but essential, and you went into targeting. So you moved that diagnosis into strategy, and you should have felt that change, yeah? From like trying to understand into what are we gonna do from a strategic point of view, and and really that key question of targeting tricky, tricky, tricky. Um, so we're we're on the strategic journey now. We're trying to make our strategic choices, and by now, also, hopefully, you're starting to get a little bit around that moon case study, and you're trying to build uh exactly in parallel what we're doing in the course during the moon simulation uh brand planning exercise. You can do it right at the end, but I think you're in a better place if you can just find half an hour each week and go, right, I've done targeting. Let me have a look at what the targeting options are and let me fill out that template. You can always change it later. I just think it's an it's a lovely way to progress. And remember with the moon stuff, you're meant to get it wrong. It's meant to be a cock-up. That's the point. It's safe, you know? So it doesn't matter how you're doing the moon thing. No one's judging you. We're we're we're trying we're trying to get you to learn, right? Anyway, anyway, got some good questions. Uh let's uh let's get on with them, eh? Uh Nick, in the diagnosis module, you mentioned that we don't really build new ideas. We dig for what is already within the brand and pull out the good stuff that has led the brand to exist for so long. Yeah, yeah. But if working on a newer early stage brand that doesn't have longevity and maybe hasn't been built as a foundation of brand and is rather built on strong performance marketing for a good product, how does this change the work to be done? Look, obviously, you don't have as much richness to dig into. But I had an old boss who used to say that heritage starts every morning. And and I think what you'll find, Nick, is all right, you're working on a on a good product that's been built out of strong marketing, performance performance marketing. There's still shit there already, Nick. If if it's been a success, it there's already stuff there. It just doesn't come with a capital B. You know what I mean? Um it really starts starts taking off almost straight away. I I've worked for many years with Sephora, and they give me their big beauty brands that are about to become big. And often those guys could be three, four years old, and they often say the same thing to me. Oh, we're not, you know, we're not like Hennessy, we're not, you know, we're still a young brand. And I'll say to them, no, no, no, no. You're already doing X amount of sales, you've got a founder, you've got a couple of key products, things are already starting to move. Now, you have to have more flexibility, but don't overlook the the things that are already starting to drop into place. That's my only advice. Now, if you are a genuinely new brand, none of this is relevant. You've got to position your product. You have to get to three, four years in and a bit of profit before this stuff really coalesces. So it's more product positioning. But it sounds like from your question, there's some stuff there. Not complete, but but but don't ignore it either, is my point. Uh Ben, when it comes to the early stages of diagnosis, specifically location and founders, I'm curious what your view is when this is applied to what are perhaps slightly less historically rich brands. Same question. Taking a category like utilities for a telco or energy brand, there may not be a huge sense of location or an iconic figure to hang your hat on. Do you see it as a valid outcome for this stage of diagnosis to hold your hands up and say, yeah, there's nothing here that's going to feed into the brand? Or would you view that finding and tiny scrap of legacy to carry forward would be a better outcome? Um, and Alex says, just adding to that, I've worked on utilities like telcos, uh, but there are gems that can still be found. Yeah, yeah, spot on, Alex. Um, it look, the point of the diagnosis phase is yeah, sometimes you don't have that stuff. I'm I'm giving you all the stones you can look under. Sometimes you look under them or the stone isn't there and there's nothing there. It's fine, it's fine. If you've got something, use it. If you don't, absolutely move on. Just check, just check, you know, before you move. Uh, Pauline, you mentioned in the first QA that you're working on an AI tool to support brand planning. Yeah. I'm currently doing an AI training in parallel with the mini MBA and thinking about how to streamline the process for my team. Do you mind sharing a top-line view of your ambition, expected timeline, and if mini MBA alumni will have access to it? Um, and there's a sideline, she says, What do you think of the markets and GPTs already created? Yeah, a few people have have created that. I think it's very flattering, you know. I don't mind. Um, yeah, so I'm a big skeptic, Pauline, and this is not a criticism of you. You tell me how it is. I don't think you need a course in AI and marketing. I think that's rubbish. I think what we need is a course in marketing like this one, and then an AI planning tool that will allow you to take the brand management knowledge you have and basically arm you with all of that stuff. So we've been working for two years, long before it became cool, with Evi Denza in the States, who are the masters of synthetic data, to create essentially a tool that goes out, builds extraordinarily complex synthetic data, both qual and quant, pulls it in, analyze it in a way that I've been training the team to do, uh, and and with extraordinarily complex series of steps, essentially give you everything. We think it's a world-beating tool. I would say to you, it's 65% done. And what it means is uh every every year you can essentially you can do it as many times as you like, but I'd only do it once. You pay your money for the for the the tool, it runs its uh analyses, and it then produces not just analysis, you've got that, but essentially your whole plan and insight onto pricing, product, brand extension, budgeting, excess share of voice, target segments, portrait, positioning, distinctive brand assets, everything. And um yeah, I think it's a world-breaking thing because you know, Claude can do all of that sort of stuff, but but not at the level that um the Evidenza can do with synthetic data, and not, frankly, with my brain putting it all together. It's like the perfect brand plan with unlimited data. So we're very excited um by it, albeit tempered by the fact we're not there yet. The goal is to pilot it in um Q4 of this year. We are on track. I'll be in New York next month, but I think we're on track, and you will absolutely be offered the chance to pilot it. It's for us, it's for you. Um, we don't know how we're gonna do it yet. The tool itself, we haven't worked out how we're gonna price it. Ironically, we'll need the tool finished because it will do our brand plan for the brand planning tool. Um, but some kind of very small fee, because it still costs money, will allow you to get access to the tool. Um, you absolutely will get it. Uh, we'll eventually sell it as an alumni tool, yeah, an annual alumni tool. And we'll also sell it to our B2B clients as well. Um so yeah, you'll get it. You'll be the first person to get it, Pauline. And if you want it, you can have it. Um it more of that towards the end of the course. Yeah, you'll absolutely be updated. And the idea is we take brand managers like you guys, we we charge you a small amount of money, you run the tool and you give us some feedback, and then we improve it and you buy it next year and you smash the world. Yeah. In and we're close. It's exciting. It's exciting. Uh, Rob, how should the brand diagnosis phase adapt in low frequency, one-time purchase categories like home improvement, garage doors, where traditional metrics like loyalty and repeat purchase aren't as relevant? Um, yeah, look, it's a it's a good question, Rob. We're gonna talk later in the course about building custom funnels. Your funnel is gonna end uh with purchase rather than going in, as you say, to repeat purchase or anything else. I mean, I've worked in things like uh kidney transplants, right? Where, you know, with end-stage renal disease, there isn't another transplant. There's just death or more life. Do you know what I mean? That's the bottom of the patient, the patient flow. Um, so yeah, it's not that difficult to accommodate. It just means that when we get to your um uh your customer funnel, your buying path, you end an old-fashioned way with purchase. That's it. And that's fine. That's fine. And also you say when conducting diagnosis for a national brand that's been acquired by private equity, how relevant are its original location and founder? Super relevant. You're looking at one, right? I'm officially owned by Brave Bison now, even though I'm the major shareholder in it all. It makes no difference to mini MBA because of brand architecture. Yeah. So if if if the brand is going to declare the private equity to the consumer, which it's obviously not, then things will change. But your brand architecture remains the same. So, you know, it's what we present to the consumer. And we'll cover that in brand architecture. So, no, don't worry about that at all. Um, Mazda was briefly co-owned by Ford for a while. They didn't Mazda didn't talk about Ford. Do you know what I'm saying? That's that's the thing. Uh Thibaut, in the last brand module, you explained the importance of investing in both sales for short-term results and brand building for long-term growth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need both. While also mentioning that many organizations overestimate in short-term. They do. In practice, how can a company progressively move from 70-30 short long to something that's closer to 40-60 without sacrificing immediate growth objectives, losing market share, or putting short-term business business at risk? Okay, okay, okay. There's two ways to think about this. The first way, well, there's three ways, Thibaut. The first and it's it is the question, right? Um, so uh I wrote an article called The Question, which summarized a lot of CMOs and how they've handled this challenge. That's the first thing. It's worth looking up. We're gonna use it later in the course, but you might want to read it now. It's called The Question in Marketing Week. But the main answers are first of all, start with the 6040 rule. Uh sorry, with the 95.5 rule. The 95.5 rule, which we've already talked about, sets up beautifully the stupidity of putting too much money in performance aimed at the 5%. Yeah. You've got to go the 95% so that when they come into the 5%, we've already primed them and that makes you more money. And it does. Second, field of Minette's work isn't theoretical, it's based on actual data, on looking at what was spent versus what what returned. So you can quote their data sets from their particular from your particular category and say, look, they've looked at 100 companies in our sector. The ones that spent more on brand made more money. And if you need to do that in an easy way, again, we've talked about it. The track suit brand tracking firm has a calculator on their website where you can answer a bunch of questions about your product and category, and it will tell you the optimum split. It may not be 60-40, but it'll tell you based on all the other examples what would pay you the most money. Yeah. So it isn't 6040 or 70-30 long short because it's cool, or that's what the theory says. That's what will make you the most money. And the final key point, and we will get to this as well in the course. Remember the reason that they called it the long and the short of it isn't because it takes a long time for brand building to work. It's true that it lasts longer, but actually that stuff often works just as quickly as performance. It's just it lasts a much, much longer. You run a good brand building TV ad, you start selling more product the next day. So we tend to overestimate this length of impact thing and use it as an excuse. They're the main arguments, yeah, that I would be utilizing. But the big one that you've got to use, Thibaut, is we're losing money because of this obsession with ROI. Yeah. That's the key one. And no one has ever disagreed with the point that the optimum level is whatever it might be when you run that calculator. No one has ever disproved it. It's the stupidity of business, right? When corporate finance guys value businesses, most of it is long-term. It's the stupidity of the business thinking, you know, short term is somehow the only thing that matters, right? We, you know, we keep reinvesting in short term as if the world's going to end by Christmas. And provided it doesn't, it's the dumbest move in business. So they would be the avenues I would explore. Nick, if my picking up of the context clues is correct, this content was made in 2020. No, no, that's not true. That's not true. I would love to hear some of this would change if updated for 26, specifically looking at things like the perfect brand diagnosis. Could we or should we update this with new tools like synthetic research? Um and any other areas you think we should have changed meaningfully. No, no, we we do update. You'll know I'm getting fatter and thinner and grayer and not grayer throughout throughout the section. So it is it is it we are differentiately done. Um on the topic though of synthetic data, um, we're gonna have a special module. Uh, I wasn't gonna tell you about this till later on. We'll do a special um uh module 11 when before we go into the sim. Uh things I work a lot in this area, right? And I think within diagnosis, I'm skeptical still of how much you can say when we film the the diagnosis module. In the last eight, nine months, things have changed dramatically again. So it's gonna be easier for me when we when we finish the course. We're actually doing it in a couple of weeks' time. We're filming a special module on AI, and the point of the module is to update you on that particular topic, which is moving much quicker than anything else. So you'll so it was gonna be a surprise, but I'll tell you now, there'll be a module 11, which is about so what does AI currently, as in the middle of 2026, do and not do for your brands? We'll get to that. Okay, we'll get to that. Mitchell, is there a non-profit budget version of Diagnosis, e.g. 10 to 15k? Yeah, yes and no. So you so there's a couple of routes here. We've just talked about it with Nick a little bit. It's entirely possible, and we will talk about it at the end of the course in this special module, to run synthetic data with Claude or Chat GPT. It's very, very unreliable, but very, very, very interesting. Um, it's more possible that you decide either not to do the quant research or do very, very basic quant research, just secondary data basically, and you do all the qualitative yourself. That has massive drawbacks. You just don't have a representative sample, but it is possible to do it that way. The probably the best path if you if you have 15,000 bucks, is to very carefully and gingerly do your own synthetic data. Um, it's probably the only the only way you can get anything like quant data. The problem is, you know, the reason I would always recommend a company like Evidence, I was working on a rebrand this week for a very large B2B firm, and they're using exclusively synthetic data from a synthetic firm, but it cost 100 grand. Do you know what I mean? Like it's still amazing what we had, but it isn't, you know, generated for free in 13 seconds from Claude. I I'd certainly have used a lot of free Claude synthetic data, and there's a big difference between saying, What do you think of this product, Claude, and saying run synthetic data, run conjoint, run a trade-off analysis, you know, um, and so on and so on. That is a different level. It's just that that data comes out different each time, and it scares me a little bit. It's so certain, but it's also so unreliable. But that's probably the easiest way to get some quant data. Um, the the the traditional route, Mitchell, was always do the qual yourself. Um, it's free, it just takes time. And if you can cobble together 15, 20 grand, you've got enough to do a very basic panel survey with a limited number of questions from a representative sample. And as we go through the program, particularly during the moon exercise, I think you'll begin to realize which of the questions you've got to have. I mean, one of the points of the moon exercise is you're not gonna ask all the, you're not gonna buy all the right research. And as a result, when you don't, you're gonna go, oh, why didn't I have that? And that's the point. By the time we end the course, you'll know what the bare essentials are that you really need for the program, right? And I think that's that that that's a big benefit. Uh and you want a non-profit one, that's tricky, yeah. Non-profit, not just 10 to 15. That well, the non-profit doesn't matter, right? I mean, profit or non-profit, it's the 15 grand limit that you've got to get around. Andrew, I never thought I'd see a Ritz and Byron Sharp collaboration. So this is a memorable moment. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. Anyway, onto the more important matter. My question. I think you're referring to Cannes. Yeah, we're doing a session together at Cannes. It was their idea, it wasn't our idea. What do we agree on? I'm sure it'll quickly turn into what we don't, but anyway. Uh, my question on the concept of a custom funnel, I can see the value in tailoring it to better reflect the real customer journey rather than a generic model. However, for businesses with multiple segments that have meaningfully different behaviors, needs, and paths to purchase, would you recommend creating distinct funnels for each segment, or does that level of segmentation risk adding unnecessary complexity? Look, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. The general advice is you always build a custom funnel, and we'll cover that when we get to the objectives module in a few weeks' time. I'll show you how to build them. I'll show you what they look like, I'll give you examples. In the meantime, just be aware that at the very least you want your custom funnel. You don't want to have awareness, you know, consideration, preference, because they're textbook stages. So you want to you want your custom funnel. The next step from that is you want the custom funnel for each segment with different numbers, which is what you've got in the moon case, right? Because the segments are going to have different conversion rates. And to your point, in some cases, they may well even have completely different decision journeys. If they're really that different and the mark markets are important, yes, you can quite elegantly without any extra cost ask different questions and build different funnels. Just, you know, don't do it for the sake of doing it. There's really got to be differences in the steps. But yeah, you should follow that logic all the way. Most of the time, what you find is custom funnel with different numbers per segment will handle it. But let's see. Uh D. Hey D. I work in a professional services business. So much of what we do is relationship-led rather than product-based. A lot of the examples in the course are centered around products so far. Are the core principles you're teaching 95-5, mental availability, transferable to services? Yes. And linked to that, when it comes to brand diagnosis, should we be applying the same frameworks in a service context? Yes. Or are there any nuances I should be thinking about? No. Don't worry about it, D. The big difference is you've got a different brand. Yeah? As I said, I was working on a big B2B services brand. There's absolutely nothing different about the process, the data, the, you know, everything's different because it's its own special brand. But there isn't, there aren't these different categories. People try and invent these, oh, but services marketing needs its own textbook. No, it doesn't. Not for branding. Okay. So you can happily straddle with these tools or B2B, B2C, services, product, it's fine. It's always different because every brand's different, but there isn't some special clause here that you need to worry about. It really, really, uh you'll be fine. Kristen, you make clear that segmentation should proceed targeting. No shit. And that competitors in the same market should arrive at the same segments. Well, look, I wouldn't say should. There's there's a multitude of almost an infinite number of segments you can create from a market, right? Segmentations. So it very rarely happens. It's happened to me a couple of times in my life. I've realized that my competitor pretty much is working off the same map. The point I'm trying to make is theoretically, it could happen and it wouldn't be wrong. It's just that everyone builds different maps, but they're building the map of the same thing. You know when people paint at these classes an oil painting of the same model and they're all looking slightly different because of different perspective? That's kind of it. But it's this, it shouldn't be basically the same. It isn't because everyone does it differently, but it should be in theory. Anyway, carry on. For a marketer working with an early, oh, sorry, um, but you didn't cover the mechanics of how to do segmentation. For a marketer working with an early mid market consumer brand that doesn't have the necessary budget for a full segmentation study, what's the minimum credible method for building a segment map that you'd feel confident bringing into a brand survey and targeting decision? Yeah, we kind of assume as a brand manager, You do have your segmentation skills. Uh I've had an evil idea which I sometimes have. I reckon my my uh CEO will be angry about this. But I reckon what I could do is we could make the segmentation module we teach it in the mini MBA in marketing, yeah? And it's a really rather it's a really rather good module and it covers the whole caboodle. How about if I make it available just for a week? Just so those of you that most of you have got if you've got good segmentation skills, you don't have to bother with it. But for those of you that are like, I don't know, what what what's that exactly Kristen's point? All right, leave it with me. Uh next week I'll send out a message and we'll put the segmentation module somewhere safe. And if you need a segmentation refresher or input, you could do that quicker. It's a different module, it's a different red and me, you know, it's the same concept. We'll just we'll put the class in there, okay? All right, leave it with me. Chris, we spend a lot of time pitching to a mix of marketers and senior non-marketers alike, most of the latter. Not to treat this like a Baptist church, but how do you qualify with someone whether they are indoctrinated into the principles of brand marketing or not? What questions do you ask to see if they get it and value it? And when they get it, we can talk happily about how sports partnerships can fit into this. Yeah, it's a it's a sad situation, but it's a good question, Chris. You know, it doesn't happen in finance, you know, or consulting. You kind of assume everyone kind of gets the basics. I think for me, it's probably two things. I don't know how you work this out, but these are the things you have to work out. Are they market-oriented? And what I mean by that is are they are they trusting data or have they already formed an opinion based on their own take on things? That's question number one. If they're shooting from the hip and just like they think they know what the good logos are and all of that stuff, we're in trouble. And the second thing is, do they think it's all communications? So my general estimate is communications are about 8% of the whole challenge. An important 8%, but 8%. And most of the people I deal with, like you, think that it's 100%. Yeah. They don't see strategy, they don't see research, they don't see targeting, they don't see pricing, they don't look at that. So they'd be my they'd be my two go-to things. They're the things you want to be probing for. Uh Kate, I work for a B2B travel risk management firm. So brand surveys are a bit more specific, yeah, and difficult to set up than a consumer UGOV thing. It's true that panels don't really exist in your world. They do for SME, but not in your world. Any other routes to carry out brand surveys that won't cost the earth for B2B and more niche sectors? The challenge I have is tracking versus budget. Our C-suite are interested in tracking and the ROI of marketing, which is more difficult to quantitatively track compared to sales. As such, it's long cycles or intangible results. However, the company as a whole is cutting costs to streamline, so can't see them wanting to spend on a brand survey. Yeah, look, there's well, well, well, there's probably two options you got. Again, we've talked about it already. The synthetic data option is open to you. Um, so for synthetics, um, it it is the I mean, this is the sector, your sector is where the B2B revolution of data is really happening. Companies that didn't have the data have got data thanks to synthetic firms, and the data is good when it's done at that level. Whether you can afford it's cheaper than doing a survey, but it still costs a bit of money. It isn't free. So the first thing is investigate synthetic market research done by some of these bigger firms. I I own, as I've said to you before, a tiny proportion of evidenza. So I'm compromised. There are other firms, but I, you know, I own a tiny share of evidenza because I'm so impressed with them. They're worth approaching to get a budget, right? Uh, the other option is you track excess share of voice and you use that as your proxy for growth, and you don't get into actually tracking impact. What you're saying is we know that excess share of voice has a massive correlation with growth, and we're not spending enough, or we are spending enough. It's a much more blunt measure, but have a look at excess share of voice tracking. It could be the it could be the way that you you do it for for less money, okay? Oh we've got a special guest star here. Hey, uh help please, Connor! Hello, you want to say hello? Sorry, guys. Britton Jr. Come and say hello, you can say hello. Hey Connor, need some help, babe. Hey, hey guys, he's he's in matching blue. What do you want to say, right? Look, daddy, uh Mike. There we go. Special performers from Richardson Jr. Here you go. He he might be we call him Rangers, Gingers, or he might be blonde. He goes back and forth. He's a big one, though. He's only two and he's a big one. Um girls, much easier. Uh I'm a trained marketer now, Sam. Uh I'm I'm a trained marketer now, working in a more corporate communications role at a biotech company. And your framework for brand benchmarking has made me acutely aware of a gap we need to close. Our stakeholder landscape spans three distinct groups: physicians who adopt our products, academic investigators who run our clinical trials, and institutional investors who track our pipeline. Each holds a meaningfully different perception of our brand. And I want to measure and benchmark all three. The problem is these are extremely narrow, hard-to-reach segments. A standard online panel won't work. What approach would you recommend for conducting brand benchmarking research across niche customer groups? And how do you collect the data cost-effectively without sacrificing rigor? Man, all roads are leading to the synthetic roam this time around. Yeah, I mean, with biotech, yeah. I mean, again, we're seeing a big, enormous transition to synthetic data for exactly the reasons you've said. It's very hard to get the data without it, and the data can be very strong. So, first port of call is look at synthetics. The second is just to take qual as your it it isn't really good enough because obviously you're missing the quantitative sample, but at least you get the qualitative insights that can be extraordinarily useful, Sam. But really, these days, if I have to be honest with you, the the world of biotech and medical research, you know, for that level of data, given how much regulatory issues you have, is all yeah, moving to synthetic data. So I would look, that's that's the area to look at. It really does provide something we haven't had before. Well, the answer is always the same at the moment. Ben Fuller, in the first module, you gave the example of the infamous Burger King burger campaign. Yeah, the moldy burger. How do we avoid falling into the trap of LinkedIn marketing campaigns? Is there a checklist or particular watchouts to ensure we're driving salience with our key customers rather than something that drives intellectual debate on a corporate social media channel? I think, Ben, by asking the question, you've kind of passed the test. Yeah. Um, I think we have to be very conscious of it. I think LinkedIn is such a bubble. I'll give you a good example. I'm always conscious, even in marketing, when I write a column, I have no interest in the LinkedIn population. Because they're even within marketing, they're not, you know, there's a whole 99% of marketers that don't contribute on LinkedIn, but who read stuff and think about stuff, they're kind of like the silent majority. And never mind when we get to B2C. So I think, yeah, you've just got to be cognizant of the LinkedIn bubble. And the other one is the general unimportance of your brand. Yeah. Um, it can be very easy to start to fall into the thing that everyone's interested in brands and everyone's interested in ads. You really need to get down the pub with a family member to see what utter lack of interest there is outside of our little peculiar world. So I think, you know, by asking the question, you've passed the test. Ren, when it comes to measuring conversion rates through the funnel, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute argues that data will reflect the double jeopardy law. It will. In other words, bigger brands will have slightly better conversion rates than smaller brands. Point being, with the conversion rates entirely dependent on brand size. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what they say. Be careful. Don't drink all the Kool-Aid Ren. What they say is that the conversions uh down the funnel will reflect double jeopardy. Or basically, big brands will get bigger conversion scores. I think that's that's a given and it's true. It's not the only factor that drives it. And second of all, it doesn't negate the conversion. This is my big point, which I'm, you know, they never get. Yeah, a bigger brand will get better conversion rates. Still the conversion rates. We still got to do something about it. We've still got to, you know, if you're a small brand or a big brand, there's those are the conversion rates. That's the reality of the market. It's not a negation of why we need to look at conversion rates, it's accepting they're baked in, even to the point where you can strip out this the effect of brand size. But my point is, why would you do that? That's a, you know, it's it's it's a factor of the market we need to take into account. So, yeah, it's not the only reason, right? The you know, it isn't uniformly uh correlated just to brand size, it has an impact. Uh, but that impact is in endogenous in the in in the strategy. Um, I think that's that's part of it, right? Anyway, carry on. Uh uh, what do you say? With the conversion rates entirely dependent on brand size, they're not. There is little a brand manager can do to influence them besides just no, listen, listen, you can't drink the Kool-Aid too much, friend. You're absolutely right. The problem with Ehrenberg bass, as wonderful as they are, is they over-eg all of their omelets, right? You have to do distinctiveness because differentiation doesn't work, right? That's not true, as you'll see. You know, yeah, well, I get it. Big brands get better conversion rates. Yep, okay, fine. We still can't, trust me, you can have a big impact on the funnel, irrespective of brand size. Strategy, tactics, focus, execution. Um and Nick says the opposite is true. Well, I wouldn't go that far either, Nick. I've worked in performance marketing, and when you've got smaller brands and smaller budgets, you lose a disproportionate amount of upper funnel and less qualified traffic coming through and kicking the tires. This drops the conversion rate, but that is not a bad thing. It's a sign that your brand awareness is increasing. Yeah, but that's a good point, too. Look, you're right, Ren, first of all, but don't go all the way down the church of Ehrenberg Bass. You there's nothing gonna be having a custom funnel with conversion rates, even though uh Dirjelay Double Jeopardy is gonna absolutely give the big brands better rates. It's still gonna be, as you'll see, a strategic challenge. Oh, and Ren's back. Maybe have a good disc have a good debate there. Stephen, uh, you mentioned in the last session about asking loyalists why they love the brand. Yeah, I'm currently activating a new brand for a product which has been available in small quantities for trial and testing, but without very little brand accompaniment. The people who've tested the product are the closest community I have to loyalists. Would you treat their feedback in a similar way to loyalist groups, even though the feedback might not be built on brand connection? Yeah, yeah, look, it's whatever you can get, practically, Steve. And I I think that that any insight is good insight. Let's see what it gives you. It certainly ticks a few boxes. I think it's great. Any insight is good insight. You don't have to accept it, but you can certainly collect it. Sophie, I'm thinking about location for diagnosis. My brand is a 20-year-old recruitment company in the education sector. There's a locational heritage of one city where it started, but we focus on localization of the brand in towns and cities across the country. How would you play this into my diagnosis? Well, it's not in your diagnosis, it's in your strategy, yeah. Do you play it or do you not play it? Is a different question. It is it part of the personality of the brand. And remember, it doesn't have to be as explicit as, you know, Glasgow, we're a Glaswegian, we're glad we're a Glaswegian recruitment company. It could be that because we're from Glasgow, we're much more plain-spoken and straight about these things. And that filters in to how our brand operates in the recruitment sector. Do you see what I mean? It doesn't have to be the physical location itself, it can be that, but it can be something that comes from that. You know, we talked about the example from Champagne. It can be just the location seeps into the way that the brand plays the game. You know, when I worked on Benefit Cosmetics, being from Haight Asbury in San Francisco was about 40% of the personality. It's not like it was just like, oh, we're from San Francisco, man. It was like it was this crazy cosmopolitan, you know, switched on, don't take yourself too seriously, funky brand because of where it came from. There's a little bit more nuance there, I think. Yeah. Uh Sarah, in the diagnosis module, you mentioned that a perfect diagnosis would include looking at location, heritage, and founders. How does this work when there's no location or little or no heritage or founder? Like when a retailer group launches a new brand. Yeah, look, sometimes if it's not there, what you have to do is position the product kind of freshly. And as time goes on, you'll find that this stuff like algae kind of grows around the brand and you get something if it's successful. If you ain't got it, you ain't got it, right? And in many cases, at the start, you're positioning a product. Yeah. Ben, obviously, when it comes to heritage of founders, the associations there can work as both a positive and a negative. Oh, yeah. Do any examples come to mind where you think a brand has dealt well with problematic history or founder? And also any brands that have handled this badly? I think De Beers was possibly given the world's most evil man as a founder. I think if you look into Cecil Rhodes, brilliant, but a literal Nazi before Nazis exist, you know, like an absolute abysmal human being. Um and I think the way De Beers skirted around it over the century was pretty good. Uh who was who has Chanel. So Chanel dodged a bullet too. So Madame Chanel disappears for 25 years because she's during the war, you know, she's on the wrong side. That's all I'm gonna say. She's very much on the wrong side, and and and as a result, French uh society rejected her after the war. And it's only in this triumphant return that she comes back and saves the brand. There's young Chanel and there's old Chanel. If you notice, there's nothing in the middle. That was the war, that was the Nazis. Um I'm doing a uh podcast series, and and I'm absolutely going after that particular the interesting Chanel isn't Young Chanel, it's the old girl that comes back covered in scandal to save her house. That's what fantastic. Anyway, um, yeah, they uh and probably Hugo Boss and Volkswagen have handled it well too. I mean, most of the German brands, through no fault of their own, or not completely their fault of their own, were tied up in events that happened during World War II. And history, you know, doesn't think kindly of the losing force. So I think that yeah, that those brands have kind of handled it well. They'd be the ones to study. Uh Cecilia, what uh what do we do if we join the brand just as the financial year has started or is about to start? Yeah, um, would you recommend to continue the strategy and tactic mix that your predecessor laid out? Uh yeah, I would. Look, I think there's two things there. The first job is to signal this is not my plan, these are not my tactics, I'm gonna run them for you. You'll only see my stuff next year. Uh and you need to signal that so everyone gets it, right? Because you're buying time. During that time, then you can go off and do diagnosis and strategy and learn. Yeah, you don't want to hit the ground running either. So I think that the right course of action is going, listen, I've already got a plan, I've already got this, or I've already got tactics. I'm gonna run them. Uh, they're already in field. It's a mature conversation to have upstairs and say within a year we'll be on it. Now, if there's nothing in place, and sometimes there isn't, you say, look, there's nothing in place, it's chaos. Let me do something quick this year, it'll be next year, you'll see a proper plan. It's all about managing expectations at the start, Cecilia. Uh Vabka, hi there. Similar to what Andrew asked, I was wondering about segments. What if you have one brand but different customer segments with different needs and behaviors, e.g., automotive versus flexgo printing? Do we always do things per segment? Well, no, the long and the short, Vebka, it works on both both sides. So on long is mass, right? So the long brand is focused at everyone in the market. But yeah, for segments, you can then go after them with short, product-faced, positioned activation. And for me, long and short isn't just long and short, it's also the mass and target segments, yeah? And I think you can you should approach it that way. Your brand plan that you build for moon, for example, has a little bit of mass marketing in it. You know, what do we want the overall moon brand to stand for? But it's also got positioning to specific target segments if you go after them. It's a good model to follow. Ren, when launching a new brand, what is the preferred way to think of benchmarking brand image attributes? Obviously, the new brand has no existing associations. Should we assemble the 10 attributes we wish to be associated with? Yeah. And then look for white space. And similar for the funnel, should we just be looking at conversion rates for the competitive set? Yeah, you've nailed it there, Ren. I mean, you could even just be benchmarking in year one, but I think you've got a mature approach there. You choose your 10 attributes. I think the first year is about suggesting some stretch targets that are pretty much pulled out of the sky. And then I think for your funnel, brilliant to say, look, these are you can either pick one competitor that's a target competitor or similar size, or do an average, or whatever you choose. It, you know, give yourself a year. You need some benchmarks, then it then it locks in. Marciano, dear Mr. Ritson, you indicate when starting the brand survey, it's necessary to know which segments exist and ideally which segments you want to target. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you you can do that, but really the assumption is as a brand manager, you've kind of got target segments. How do you do this when you are new to a brand or when your brand is new? Do you rely on research conducted by your predecessor or from Google or secondary data? Isn't there a pitfall here? Yeah, look, we'll as I say, I'm gonna give you a free module in segmentation. I we normally expect most of you to A, know about segmentation and B, have a pretty decent segmentation already in place, as many of the questions suggest. But I'll work out how to do it for next week and get you a segmentation module so you can do that as well. It's a lot of work on top, but it can be done. And Marciano says, in module three, in the survey, there is measured awareness, all three forms. Why don't you choose to measure salience? Would that be more appropriate? It might be. The problem with salience is it takes us down a totally different path in which we identify category entry points and go down that place. It's certainly becoming a genuine alternative now to the traditional choices of the three flavors of awareness. If we go down that path, we go down an Ehrenberg bath path, an Ehrenberg-based path, which takes us into a different universe. And there's nothing wrong with that universe, but it's not our universe. And Ehrenberg Bass don't give a lot of uh clues to how they would like you to do it unless you join their group. You know what I mean? So we mention it, but we don't go down it. And maybe that's something we have to change as it becomes more popularized, or at least do a cheap version of it. Something I should think about. Uh, Tina, do companies grow that keep investing 70% and beyond in the short of it? How does their margin develop? Um it depends on the competitive set, Tina. Um and also there are cases where 70% on performance is not the worst thing you can do. Usually it is. So it depends on whether there are other brands in the category that are actually spending the right amount on brand and performance, and then in which case, all things being equal, there tends to be a change in the water uh over time. So, yeah, it does eventually have a negative impact. The the the variable that that challenges all that is often there are a lot of dumb competitors also spending everything on performance. It's only when a brand goes, you know, okay, let's build a brand here that suddenly it goes. Tina, in brand building, we want to go for sophisticated mass marketing. However, our budget is limited, so we cannot reach the full audience. How do we go about it? So there's two other cuts you can make, Teen. If you want to target everyone, you can say, right, but I'm gonna do it, for example, geographically. So we're gonna target everyone, but only everyone in the north of England. Yeah. And in that sense, you've you're still going after everyone, but you've created a geographic border. Or some other basic segment border, right? We're only gonna go after yoga. We're not gonna go after everyone in sports. But everyone in yoga, we're gonna go after them. It's still kind of a target segment, but not really, because you're saying everyone in this sort of box. The other way is you go subcategory. And you know, the famous example is um Chabani saying we're gonna go into yogurt, but we're and we're gonna target everyone, but we're gonna sell Greek yogurt to everyone. So you effectively cut it down by the subcategory, and you go, right, we're targeting everyone, but only in a niche category, which we think we can control and be more specialized in. For me, they're the two that work the best if you want to go down that path. Tom, you were clear in the first QA about discount promotions. No shit. What do you think prize draws, competitions, and giveaways sit? Oh no, I like them. I like them. I'm I'm I'm it's all about discounting and price promotions, Tom. I'm absolutely super cool with any value add, non-price-based promotion. It does it totally changes. So yeah, no, no, promotion's good, price promotions problem. And I would encourage everyone to think that way. Natalie, couple of questions. Are there any good segmentation tools? Yeah, we'll do a module on it for free. Second, any pointers on managing a brand equity transition from one brand to another after acquisition? Yeah, it's called phasing. We're gonna cover it in the architecture module. Um, hold fire for that, Natalie. It's coming. Pooya. I missed the first QA. Well, you can still watch it. Oh, you missed putting the question in. Okay. Are there any case studies where I can understand better the successful use of salience by brands? Look, it's uh, as I said to you, it's an Ehrenberg-based kind of protected realm for all their scientific stuff. It's like, yeah, but you can only you can only access the approved method if you join our uh our religion. Um the the article uh I've got is an old one by them talking about salience. Let me see if I can find something else and I'll post it. But it it tends to be, you know, it's a closed universe. If anyone has anything, let's also volunteer it, please. Laura, I love with the 6040 long versus short principle. How should this be applied to early stage brands that lack the budget for mass reach, particularly when competing against brands with higher share of voice and budget? Should they prioritize short-term activation uh and uh for future brand building, or does that risk undermining brand equity? Alternatively, is it more effective to invest disproportionately in brand building from the outset? No, no, no. So if you look at Field and Burnett's later work, they start out by going 60-40, but that was for the consumer goods industry with established brands. They've since gone out and done a whole bunch of qualifying work in different categories, different brand ages. And your first hypothesis is correct. In the early stages of a brand's life, performance should have a greater proportion of investment. But rather than me tell you that, Laura, visit tracksuit, the brand tracking firm, and search for tracksuit calculator. And that calculator asks a lot of questions, category, but also how old the brand is, how it sells, etc. And it will give you, based on Field and Bernetswork, what the right split is. But you'll find as a younger brand, yeah, performance will be uh a greater proportion. Oh, Pauline. Apologies for multiple questions. Okay, we'll go fast, Pauline, but I'll do them. What if financial years don't align? When managing European brands in Australia, financial year calendars rarely align with local retailer cycles. I assume the recommendation is still to anchor on the company's financial year. Yeah, I know it creates friction, but the CFO is still in charge of the disco. Two, when and how should you audit a custom buying funnel? Most funnels I've worked with follow a standard awareness consideration purchase structure. What signal should prompt a brand team to question whether their funnel accurately reflects customers? It doesn't. Your funnel's wrong, Pauline. You don't need to look, let's cover it in the objectives module. You need to customize the shit out of it and you'll see why when we do the module. You don't want that generic funnel at all, and you'll see why when we get to it. Three, how do you navigate secondary data without getting lost? Secondary data can quickly become overwhelming. What filtering criteria do you apply to prioritize what's what's worth pursuing? What types of insights that you you you have to you have to just get it all? I mean, AI is now able to filter it and produce a report, but I still think it's wonderful just to lose yourself in it, Pauline, and then you decide what's relevant. It's all to some degree off, but it's still free data. So that's the downside is yeah, filtering through it, but it's a great source of data and it's where you should begin. How do you measure the long-term ROI of brand building? Sales activation always looks more effective in a 12 or even 24-month window. But what methodologies would you recommend? I mean, the ultimate methodology is still to use econometrics, which almost instantly demonstrates that brand building is giving you a better payoff and a better ROI, but most of that ROI appears to come out of the short-term performance. So running econometrics is the only real way to demonstrate it other than experimentation. Oh, what's your view on MMM? Another word for econometrics, you need it. Five, uh following the money on the positioning, uh, short-term activation logic points towards the largest, highest spending segment for the best ROI. It doesn't, it doesn't. It depends on competition. However, when managing multiple brands, should portfolio logic override that to minimize cannibalization? Or do you still chase the highest revenue segment? It depends on the category, Pauline. Sometimes you want portfolios to compete with each other so you absorb all of the demand because it's a variable frequent purchase. Sometimes you want to divide up the segments. It's a it's a big corporate strategy decision that normally happens above the payroll of marketing. You had one last question there. Is there a structured way to integrate lenses or does one systematically take precedence? Oh, yeah, that's the same question. There isn't a structured way, and it's normally a corporate strategy question that comes from above, but there are two legitimate roles, and we'll cover it more in positioning. Jane, in a less than ideal world where there isn't a budget to do proper brand research, is there a place for in-house brand perception research? No. What approaches or questions should you suggest? Uh oh no, oh no, sorry. I thought that was you guys sitting around asking what you thought of the brand. You mean talking to existing customers? Yeah, look, um, I don't think it's worth doing it quantitatively. You can do an exit survey, but it's never going to be representative. I'd probably go more qualitative, Jane, and do one-on-ones with consumers and ask them what they think. I think that's maybe the best you'll get from smaller samples of in uh of existing customers. You can do quantitative research, but the sample isn't the sample of the whole market. It's very skewed, right? So it might throw you off. Better to do qual. Kayla, all of this has been really helpful so far, and I'm excited to implement the things we've learned. Do you think it's worth the time to do a dirty diagnosis to help shape the rest of the year? Or is this year a wash and we should dedicate resources to the big diagnosis next year? Is there anything we can do this year? I think what you'll find is the strategy part of the course as we begin to go on, it can help you. And then I think a bigger diagnosis, feeding everything next year is the way to go. Pauline, you mentioned in your week three reading, brand diagnosis is the brand manager's first job. Use a funnel, not a generic one that tracks from awareness to consideration, but a relevant one for your business. Can you give examples? Yes, we're gonna do it. Funnels are used to set objectives. We'll get there. And you're gonna get them in the moon case as well. They're coming in lots of detail. Just hold on. We're gonna do them at the right time, I promise. Rob, I'm playing catch up. Uh, the three elements of brand management diagnosis, strategy, and tactics are very similar to the Sostac marketing planning framework, especially segmentation, targeting, positioning. So, my question is, how should the brand plan and marketing plan align interact given the commonality between the two? Yeah, I don't mind a bit of Sostach. It's just a little bit more prescriptive uh than I like. Um but but it's the same principle, right? It's one, two, three. Um, you know, so yeah, Sostac can you can use it if you want. Um, it's for me, it's a little peculiar. I like it to be a little bit more open. Uh, but yeah, if you want to use Sustack, use Sustack. It's fine. It's it's it's probably not the best thing for branding either. But anyway, it's your call. Jerry, when interacting with loyalists, do you care about and explore any wishes they may express, what they may not be getting from the brand, or do you strictly focus on how they describe the current state? Sure, it's all good stuff, Jerry. It's all good stuff. Yui. Hey Mark, for the moon sim, can I leave some budget and buy more research later? Yes, good question. You can buy it now or you can keep it and keep buying as you learn more and more. I would spread it out a little bit, but I would get spending now. Mitchell, do you recommend any resources that offer the best practical advice for creating target segments? Yeah, have a look at the module I'm going to give you for free. Lily Hicks, this is probably getting a bit ahead. Okay. Does it matter if your target market likes the specific word choice of your brand value? For example, should we see if targets resonate more with innovative or entrepreneurial? Nah, no, no, no. It doesn't matter. The key thing is what do we want to stand for, and then tactically we'll work out how we execute it later. So don't worry about wordsmithing at this point, Lily. It's about deciding what do we want to stand for, and then later on we can worry about execution. Sophie, I'd love your perspective on naming rights and brand equity. I work on a long extended long established outdoor entertainment brand with strong category associations. While we're very much a media-led property with our product offerings, the core master brand has been retained and protected against that time across that time. This year there is a business push to move from a presented by sponsor to full naming rights, e.g., sponsor name our brand. My instinct is that this materially changes the master brand relationship. Yeah, and it's transferring long-time memory structures and equity away from the property brand itself, particularly as we already sit in that category shorthand territory. I'd be really interested if there are any frameworks or studies or examples that you'd point to around when naming rights clearly dilute or strengthen long-term value, ideally for entertainment brands. I'll have a look. That's a very specialist request. Uh naming rights. But I'll have a look, all right? Leave that one with me. I'll have a little look for a salience thing and a little one for naming rights that I'll put on our LinkedIn discussion. That'll take a bit of time, but that's an interesting question. Maria, during previous mini MBA in marketing in September, you mentioned that you're working on a career website portal. Is the official launch anytime soon? Yep, yeah, it's coming. So we our idea is if you're ever unemployed as a mini MBA alumnus, you can come on our website. We're doing it with a very famous uh HR recruitment company in the UK. And basically, we will promote with a bit of our money um the trained marketers that you are looking for a job. I I can't weekly I get a marketing company wanting to know if I have any good people, and weekly some of you guys are trying to find a job. So we're trying to join the dots. It's common, Maria. Sorry, it's we're a small team, very stretched, but we I'm committed to doing it, and um we'll have it ready. I I dare say this year. This year. Alexandra, for an FMCG brand launching in a new market, does the 6040 rule all hold up, or would you spend more of your budget towards activation? Yeah, you're right. And again, check it out at the track suit site. Uh why don't I put a link to that as well? I thought I had. I'll put a link to the tracksuit site. Uh, so we can have a look at that too. Uh, but yeah, you're right. There's a bit more of an emphasis on performance in years one to four from memory when a brand is begun. And we end with Natalie. I'm on my journey to becoming a brand manager. My experience is minimal at this stage, so excuse what may seem obvious. No, no, no. One of the brands that the company I work for has a low-carb alcohol product that has become significantly more successful than the original full carb beer variant, largely aligning with the growing better for me trend. The low carb offering has also attracted new consumer segments that differ from the brand's traditional audience. As a result, the team is feeling increasing pressure to communicate to two different consumer groups, and the brand positioning and taglines have been changing. Uh, how would you approach the brand architecture positioning and communication? Very good. I'll tell you what I would do in a nutshell. A, I wouldn't worry too much about it, but B, I would definitely if there's one, I mean, obviously, you're positioning them differently. You've got a master brand, you've got different positions for your is it a sub brand? Yeah, for the low carb brand. I would really look when we get to brand architecture, Natalie, I would look at endorsement. So the tendency is to have beer, low carb sub brand. What would really help, and you'll see why when we get to this section, is having low carb from beer and giving this a bit more brand identity and a bit more room to maneuver, but still giving it parent brand injection. That would be a really uh normally that's a really smart play. But if it's working, it's working. All right, very good questions, good work, and we did it within the hour by two minutes. Uh, so what I'd like you to do now is progress into a very important part of the course. Positioning next week and then brand codes the week after. Differentiation, then distinctiveness. Huge two modules. So focus on those and at the same time work on your moon brand at the same time. You know, get the research, you don't have to buy all the research, but get the research you need so you can do targeting, then you're up to speed. We'll do positioning next week, and we'll do codes the week after. And and then we're really starting to cook through strategy. Okay. I'll follow up on LinkedIn on Monday. Have a lovely weekend. Bye for now, you can't get it.