How to ‘zag’ in media planning and strategy

Bec Drummond
Aug 27, 2017 · 5 min read

In my last fast-take, The Purple Cow explored separating brands/companies from the clutter through remarkable thinking. Still interested in the theory, I picked up my next book, Zag by Marty Neumeier which explores the importance of “zagging” when everyone else was “zigging” and how brands can harness the power of differentiation.

What is this book about?

In an age of “me-too” products and instant communication, keeping up with the competition isn’t a winning strategy. Neumeier argues that today you must out-position, out-manoeuvre, and out-design them. That radical differentiation should be considered the number one strategy of brands. His rule?

“When everybody zigs, zag.” — Marty Neumeier

Marty Neumeier defines “zag” as being focused and differentiated, while riding on a trend. That “a brand’s “zag” will be dynamic as it is grounded on what’s cool at the moment”.

Giving a view of integrating “zagging” into brand strategies, he explores how brands can harness the power of differentiation. Similar to Seth Godin, Neumeier argues that traditional differentiation is no longer enough — today companies need “radical differentiation” to create lasting value for their shareholders and customers.

There are three aspects of “zag” which Marty focuses on in this book — Finding your zag, designing your zag, and renewing your zag. Neumeier uses case studies and examples to prompt readers to think about:

  • The deadly dangers faced by brand portfolios in today’s marketplace and why “me-too” brands are doomed to fail,
  • Reading between the lines of customer feedback on new products and advertising messaging,
  • An interactive section that provides activities and guides to start designing “difference” into your brand,
  • How to “stretch” your brand without breaking it,
  • Secrets of successful brands in naming products/services/companies.

The one big thing I took from it…

One of Neumeier’s principles is around the importance of branding to develop a reputation and relationship with consumers.

“If the word brand didn’t exist, we’d have to invent a new one, because no other word captures the complexity and richness of this concept. The only word that comes close, is “reputation”. Your personal reputation, like a company’s brand, lies outside of your control. It’s not what you say it is — it’s what they say it is. The best you can do is influence it.” — Marty Neumeier

From a customer or consumer perspective, branding is important because simply, they want to understand you — your point of difference — and how it gives meaning to them in context. Again, according to Neumeier, your ‘brand’ is what people say you are, not what you say you are.

An activity in this section is to complete this sentence — your brands “only” sentence:

“I’m the only __ that __

And if you can’t say you are the ‘only’, Marty suggests that you go back and start over. This activity will help to single-mindedly show your brand/product point of difference and the reason your brand/product matters to customers.

Getting customers to understand the ‘real you’ as a brand means going beneath the tangible surface, and having a grounded sense of what you stand for. My favourite TED Talk is The Golden Circle by Simon Sinek, where he explains the importance of starting with ‘why’. “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” — Humans are more likely to resonate and act with emotion rather than rational reasoning. Sinek demonstrates how if some of the most successful brands started with the what, how, why” instead of “why, how, what”, then there may have been a very different outcome to the way consumers resonate with them.

“When most think, act or communicate they do so from the outside in, from WHAT to WHY. And for good reason — they go from the tangible to the intangible. We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do.” Simon Sinek

A great example of a brand who started with ‘why’ is US creative company, MailChimp, who at the core is a company that gives other companies digital tools to grow their own businesses in their own creative ways. In their Cannes winning campaign “Did You Mean MailChimp?”, they produced a series of eclectic activations across food, film, fashion, beauty and music that didn’t directly reference the brand in any significant way, but instead showed viewers who they were as a brand.

With a history of their brand name being mispronounced, MailChimp created a line of chips called “FailChips”, a beauty treatment “SnailPrimp” and a song called “Hymn” by “VeilHymn” among other video content “JailBlimp”, “MailShrimp” and “KaleLimp”.

To get the activations out there, they released each piece into the right context to give it the right meaning to the right consumer. The one thing that tied all 9 together was that they all directed people to MailChimp’s website. When people typed in things like “MailShrimp” or “FailChips” into Google, the search engine would ask if they meant “MailChimp.”

So why did they do this? As Neumeier explored, a brand is what people say you are, not what you say you are — and that’s exactly what this campaign did. MailChimp wasn’t concerned with what people called them; they preferred to show people who they were — a brand that is creative; and has some fun along the way — because they believe that’s the best way to grow a business.

“We believe that doing things your way isn’t just easier — it’s also better for business. In fact, that’s why we’re here. Whether you’re looking to up your email game, sell your stuff, or find your people, we’ve got tools that give you the confidence to grow your company in a way that feels right for you.” — MailChimp

What does this mean for how we think and plan?

Roping everything back into what we do in AdLand, I’ll leave you with a great graphic from Marty Neumeier’s book that has many synergies to the way we already think and plan in agencies.

  1. Understanding your brand’s ‘only statement’ and the ‘why’ when you are hacking the brief will help you form some interesting hypothesis’ at the very start of planning your campaign that has meaning and reason at the very heart,
  2. Understanding category norms and competition will help you find spaces of differentiation, and having a point of view on where category trends are going will help you to think forward with radical differentiation,
  3. Understanding your consumers, their cultural behaviour, and their channel journey will help you land the message in the right context to generate meaning among the right people.

Following the journey through category, consumer, insight, channel and understanding the role in context will help your brand start to find interesting spaces of opportunities that haven’t been tapped into by anyone else…yet — happy zagging!

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