Marty Neumeier‘s ZAG is my kind of book. Diagrams, large font, well-designed page layout. Though I am notorious for starting books and never finishing them, ZAG is digestible enough to knock out in a single sitting (okay, maybe two).

ZAG takes a “whiteboard overview” approach to explaining the process of creating a successful (or, at the very least, impactful) brand for your company and/or product(s) through identifying opportunities to differentiate. Or, as Neumeier would put it:

When focus is paired with differentiation, supported by a trend, and surrounded by compelling communications, you have the basic ingredients of a ZAG.

Simple, right?

In an attempt to lure you into reading the book, below you’ll find the 17-step process for “zagging” with a few of my own notes that I am in the process of using to better define my company’s brand, as well as the brand of a few of our offerings.

There are a lot of steps, so I’ll be signing off here. Happy reading!

– RP

ZAG BRAND DESIGN: 17-STEP PROCESS

I’ll take this opportune moment to declare that I have totally plagiarized the vast majority of the following content. Ahhh… I feel so much better.

1/ WHO ARE YOU?

Questions:

• Where do you have the most credibility?
• Where do you have the most experience?
• Where does your passion lie?

Action Items:

• Write a future obituary for your brand

Notes:

• The first step in building a brand is to look inside and see where the raw energy will come from
• “White space has little value without the experience, credibility, and passion needed to fuel success…”

2/ WHAT DO YOU DO?

Questions:

• What business are you in?

Action Items:

• Decide what your purpose is, beyond selling a product / service
• State your purpose in 12 words or less (e.g. Coca-Cola: “To refresh the world.”)

Notes:

• Core purpose is the fundamental reason your company exists beyond making money

3/ WHAT’S YOUR VISION?

Questions:

• What do you want to accomplish in 5, 10, and 20 years?
• How can you make this vision palpable and exciting?

Action Items:

• Paint a vivid picture of your future
• Test it on a real piece of communication
• Go back and refine it further
• Use it repeatedly to illustrate the direction of your business

Notes:

• True vision leads to commitment rather than compliance, confidence rather than caution
• Without a clearly drawn vision, it’s dangerous to empower people

4/ WHAT WAVE ARE YOU RIDING?

Questions:

• What trend is powering your business?
• How powerful is it?
• Can you ride more than one trend at a time?

Action Items:

• Make a list of trends that will power your success

Notes:

• When you look under the hood of a high-performance brand, you almost always find it’s powered by a trend
• Trends are the tides that lift all boats

5/ WHO SHARES THE BRANDSCAPE?

Questions:

• Who else competes in your category?
• Who comes first, second and third in customers’ minds?

Action Items:

• Find out how your brand ranks with customers
• Design a strategy to become number one or two
• Or, become the first mover in a new category

Notes:

• “ZAGGING” requires that a company define itself by what makes it unique, not what makes it admirable.”

6/ WHAT MAKES YOU THE “ONLY”?

Questions:

• What’s the one thing that make your brand different and compelling?

Action Items:

• Complete a simple “onliness” statement
• Add detail and pinpoint your “onliness” by answering “What, How, Who, Where, When, Why”

Notes:

• Our brand is the ONLY [category; e.g. frozen pizza] that [describe your ZAG; e.g. tastes like Naples]
• If you can’t say you’re the “only,” go back and start over
• “Notice the detail yielded by this format. You not only get the category (WHAT) and the pinpoint (HOW), but you also get the segment of audience (WHO), narrow your market geography (WHERE), focus on a need state (WHY), and define the underlying trend (WHEN).”

7/ WHAT SHOULD YOU ADD OR SUBTRACT?

Questions:

• What existing brand elements are undermining your onliness?
• What new brand elements could strengthen your onliness?
• How do the remaining elements align with your vision?

Action Items:

• Make a list of all current and planned offering and brand elements
• Decide which offerings to keep, sacrifice, or add
• Be brutal – it’s better to err on the side of sacrifice

Notes:

• Brand alignment is the practice of linking your business strategy to customer experience, aligning all your company behaviors behind a clearly articulated ZAG
• Prune back the brand to its core meaning by removing unaligned elements
• If adding an element to your brand brings you into competition with a stronger competitor, think twice

8/ WHO LOVES YOU?

Questions:

• Who makes up your brand community?
• How can you manage the “gives and gets” so everyone’s happy?

Action Items:

• Diagram your brand’s ecosystem
• Decide how each participant will contribute and benefit

9/ WHO’S THE ENEMY?

Questions:

• Which competitor can you paint as the bad guy?

Action Items:

• Tell your customers what your not, in no uncertain terms

Notes:

• Sometimes the enemy is the old way of doing things

10/ WHAT DO THEY CALL YOU?

Questions:

• Is your name helping or hurting your brand?
• If it is hurting, is there an opportunity to change it?
• If it is too late to change it, is there a way to work around it?
• Is it suitable for brandplay? Does it have creative “legs”?

Action Items:

• Choose a name that is different, brief, appropriate
• Make sure it is easy to spell and pronounce
• Find out if the name can be used as a URL
• Determine how easy or difficult it will be to legally defend

Notes:

• View ZAG naming tips here

11/ HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN YOURSELF?

Questions:

• What is the one true statement you can make about your brand?

Action Items:

• Craft a trueline that tells why your brand is compelling
• Avoid commas or “ands”
• Turn your trueline into a tagline to use with customers

Notes:

• Citibank example…
  • Trueline: “Citibank knows that money is only a means to happiness.”
  • Tagline: “Live Richly.”

12/ HOW DO YOU SPREAD THE WORD?

Questions:

• How can you unpack your name, trueline, and tagline?
• How can you enroll brand advocates through messaging?
• How can you align all your communications with your ZAG?

Action Items:

• Make sure your messaging is as different as your brand
• Only compete at the touchpoints where you can win

13/ HOW DO PEOPLE ENGAGE WITH YOU?

Questions:

• What are you selling and how are you selling it?
• Which touchpoints will let you compete in white space?

Action Items:

• Map you value proposition against those of your competitors
• See which competitive areas you can avoid entirely
• Discover customer touchpoints where you’ll be unopposed

Notes:

• “Best Practices” are usually common practices; common practices never add up to a ZAG

14/ WHAT DO THEY EXPERIENCE?

Questions:

• How will customers learn about you?
• How can you “enroll” them in your brand?
• Who will be your competition at each touch point?
• Where should you put your marketing resources?

Action Items:

• Map the customer journey from non-awareness to full enjoyment
• Bet your resources on the experiences that ZAG

15/ HOW DO YOU EARN THEIR LOYALTY?

Questions:

• How can you help customers build barriers to competition?
• How can you avoid creating a “disloyalty program”?

Action Items:

• Start by being loyal to customers
• Don’t make new customers feel punished or excluded
• Give loyal customers the tools to introduce new customers

16/ HOW DO YOU EXTEND YOUR SUCCESS?

Questions:

• How do you keep growing the brand year after year?

Action Items:

• Choose between a house of brands or a branded house
• Add extensions that reinforce the brand’s meaning
• Avoid extensions that unfocus the brand’s meaning
• Avoid extensions that bring you into competition with leaders

17/ HOW DO YOU PROTECT YOUR PORTFOLIO?

Questions:

• How can the whole be worth more than the parts?
• How can you stay focused under short-term profit pressure?

Action Items:

• Avoid C-Sickness – contagion, confusion, contradiction, and complexity
• Understand the longterm effects of brand extensions

Notes:

• Brand confusion can be avoided by understanding the trade-off between stickiness and stretchiness
• Stickiness: is a brand’s ability to own a distinct meaning in peoples’ minds
• Stretchiness: is a brands ability to extend its meaning without breaking

You want to read it now, don’t you? Order ZAG here.