Two Pairs

Today I want to talk about two pairs. In marketing when we’re building brands at Tepfu, we have a methodology and at the top of that methodology around the actual key components or architecture of the brand, we use a specific method around creating two pairs, and the two pairs are really important. 

The first pair, if you like, are the Aces.

This is your brand and your strap line. 

These are the most important part of any brand, because it’s the bit that people see most of the time apart from a pure graphic logo. So the name of your brand, and the strap line that people most associate or the tagline that people most associate with your brand. 

This first pair really are the Aces, if you get these in your hand, you have a very strong possibility of beating away the competition and winning the customer for short-term and longer. 

When it comes to building a brand and a strap line the reason we pair them together is because they both have to do one job or another. They can’t both do the same job, it doesn’t work when they both do the same thing. They have to do one of two things;

One (of the brand and strapline) has to be operational. It has to be about the execution, about a delivery. 

The other part of the pair (either the brand or the strap-line) has to be aspirational. It has to be about the promise, where you’re taking people. 

Let’s just look at that from the reverse. We have to have one aspirational part, and we have to have one operational part. We have to talk about the promise and the delivery. So the brand and the strap-line for us form that first pair, that allow us to really focus on creating in the reader’s mind or the viewers mind a perspective of our brand that gives them in a very quick hit the reality around what we’re promising and what we’re delivering. If you do that, when you get it right, it works very very well. 

Just to reiterate you can’t have a brand and a strapline that are both aspirational, because then it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone. It just wouldn’t make any sense. Nobody would really know just from the brand and the strapline what it is you’re going to do for them. 

Equally you could have two pieces that were operational, but it’d be very unimaginative. So you can have a brand and a strap-line that were very very bland, operational, structural, about the execution, about the delivery, but the reality there is it’d be really easy for a competitor to out position you. To really come at it from a more imaginative aspirational perspective. So we always advocate to our clients, you’ve got to have one half operational, one half aspirational in the brand and the strap-line. That’s the first pair. 

Remember we said there were two pairs. 

So we’ve talked about our aces; brand and strap-line. 

Let’s talk about the second pair. 

These are the kings because we want to end up with a hand with aces and kings. That’s a very very strong hand, it gives you great capability to move in multiple directions, and do multiple things. 

What do we mean by kings?

What’s the second pairing we’re talking about? 

The second pairing when you’re building brand architecture for us, after brand and strap-line, is really about the USP and the WoW. 

USP stands for unique sales proposition. Most people have heard of USP and when we speak to companies most of them think they have a USP. Sometimes they think they have a strong USP. In all honesty 99.99999% of USPs that we hear are not strong and they’re not unique. Very rarely are they truly unique. 

The way you can test whether a USP is unique is by putting another company name alongside it. If it’s truly unique, it won’t make sens to have another company name alongside it. 

So the bottom line with the USP is, if anybody else could say the same thing about their business, it’s not really unique is it? Coming up with something unique’s really, really tricky. 

We do that through our brand pyramid process which builds out the the brand, the strap-line, the USP, the Wow, into the content strategy and everything else. We unearth, through very clever empathic mechanisms that we have in working with our clients, we unearth really powerful USPs. Truly genuine USPs, or as close as physically possible one is ever going to get to truly unique. 

So the USP has to be truly unique! 

The Wow then is the emotional connection, the bit that really resonates with people on a human level. 

Again we’ve got a pair. They have to do two different things. The USP has to be very real, again, if you like operational, and the Wow has to be very ethereal, aspirational, it has to be very emotional. 

There’s a reason for all of this, and that’s because the USP speaks to logic, money and value, and the WoW speaks to heart, the feelings and the emotions. And it’s really important to have both working really well. 

When you get the brand, the strapline, the USP and the Wow aligned brilliantly, when it all is really strong, when those two pairings are working really well, it’s a really powerful set of pieces, they come together form what we call the brand pyramid. 

This one last thing I want to give to you, and that is that not only is the USP, and the Wow the second pair, but there is an order of dominance through this entire brand pyramid. The most important thing you get right is your Wow! You have to get the heart, the feelings, and the emotions right from the start. 

The best way, and the only way we know to do that is through story. (Which we do very well, of course.) But the reason for that is, if you take people into emotion, and they buy into you, then the reality is they will buy into the aspiration of what you’re offering. The feelings that you’ve unearthed and created in them mean that they will be less worried about price. They’ll be more price elastic. 

However if you start people in the USP, in logic and money and value, then they will start in a much tougher place when it comes to pricing. We always say to people, if you start in the USP, we’ve got to convince you to buy, but if you start in emotion, you have to be talked out of buying. So in emotion you’re there, you’re ready, you’re bought in, which is where lots of people buy Apple. Because we’re bought in. We just love it. We love the whole ethos of the company and everything about it. But if you start with the USP, it becomes very factual and logical. 

I hope that makes sense? A quick recap.

There’s two pairs; Aces and Kings. Brand and strap line, and the USP and the Wow, and they’ve all got different jobs to do. And if you get them right, it works really well. 

If you want to know more, I run a fantastic webinar every couple of weeks. You’re welcome to join. It’s totally FREE. Just go to wwww.Tepfu.com/webinar it’s tons of value with a 15 minute Q&A; at the end and I’ll happily answer as many questions as I can.