Layers

There are many routes to a great meal. It could be through bringing together exceptional courses, it could be through well balanced flavor profile, or through a fantastically curated environment - great conversation and ambiance.

But at it's core, a great meal has things should clearly fit together, progression from one course to the next should feel natural, the accompaniment should complement the flavors of each dish.

Think of all the choices - and skills - required to pull off that experience.

Ingredient quality and freshness. Cooking method and timing. Temperature when it reaches the table. How flavors are layered together, finished and presented. Good company, conversation, and of course, vibes. All of which need to be designed and executed to be in balance - a meal doesn't get better just from being more sweet, or loud, or longer - these attributes need to be appropriately in balance. The choice isn't to be one thing, it's in how the different pieces fit together effectively.

There's no single perfect recipe. A great meal is a series of choices, assembled with a vision of how the parts make a greater whole - often leaning on inherited knowledge of different global cuisines and traditions, interpreted with creativity and respect - work together to heighten the experience of a meal.

Brand growth requires a balanced recipe, a skilled chef, or both.

Ingredients

The components required to make a meal - without which, there's nothing to serve. There are many ways to determine what a "good" meal should include - nutritionally dense, sourced ethically, in season produce, etc. The same holds true for the "ingredients" of brand growth - these are the basic building blocks of future sales & revenue. Brands are memories, so the ingredients of brand building are all different ways of codifying strong, coherent, consistent memories among a large group of people.

Active Memories & Cultural Context at Scale - the ability to reach and influence group of buyers large enough to deliver upon a determined sales/revenue goal + a wider audience of people who are becoming warmly familiar with the brand should a future need arise.

Memory "Activators" (CEP Links) - no reasonable human thinks about brands all day, every day. There are specific triggers that force people to recall brands that may answer a need. Future brand growth comes from memories that link the brand with specific "memory activators" or CEPs; think: prompts that bring a reason to need the brand to mind, ideally ahead of any alternatives.

Distinctive Assets - the "codes" that clearly and consistently reference the brand. These are visual, audible, tactile, and representational, but consciously curated over time to build meaning in them.

Resonance & Relevance - beyond simply being known, this is a higher order driving long-term memory; brands that have meaning beyond their product have more opportunities to be warmly remembered and easily recalled. This meaning can be personal (a brand my grandmother used), (sub)cultural (this is a brand people like me buy), or global (the brand has a tension/POV beyond it's role for each individual customer).

These are ingredients of future value for brands. however, unlike recipes, these ingredients are the end-point of our process rather than the beginning - our Method, Craft, and Composition are all in service of building towards these final ingredients that deliver brand growth.

Method

Cooking method refers to how are ingredients transformed into the coherent set of dishes - think mincing, whisking, sauteing, sous vide, baking, cooling - the actions we take to convert raw ingredient into a blended component of a dish. Some cooking methods accomplish more than one thing - braising meat both brings up the temperature, tenderizes it, and adds depth of flavor. Choices we make in Method for brand building can similarly build towards multiple brand growth ingredients.

This is where more traditional "Marketing Tactics" and choices typically fall. Importantly, it's essential to understand which ingredient we are attempting to deliver with each method - are we designing for resonance or scale? Both? Are we properly linking to a CEP while using distinctive assets? Which type of distinctive asset - visual or representational?

For examples, think of choices to be made media mix to represent our Methods. There are higher order choices (saute) and subsequent decisions (burner temp and cooking duration) - both decisions contribute dramaticall the quality of the final output.

Higher Order Decision: Choice of Audience to Engage (where they live, attributes)

Subsequent Decision: Type of Media & Channel Selection (e.g. Paid Media vs. Earned; CTV vs. CRM)

Follow-on Decision: Content Type (format)

Don't mistake making single choice on Method with making an effective choice. "Social" is the easiest way to illustrate this error. A social-first campaign does not just run on social channels, it comes from an understanding of how attention is earned and spread by humans. Look at any of the recent work from Goldfish, Canva, Ikea, PopTarts, USCellular, New Balance, CeraVe, and on and on. These brands understand that attention earned through social is not based on assets running on social. It's intentionally identifying and subverting audience norms & expectations, then amplifying that dissonance for secondary attention and engagement.

In my opinion, this is the next frontier of creativity in brand growth - new and novel ways of orchestrating Methods that appropriately deliver on the brand growth ingredients.

Composition

With all apologies to "Girl Dinner" (RIP the trend if not the concept), most quality meals come from the combination of components. Whether that's in staged courses or simply well balanced mains and sides. This would be the composition of a meal as a whole rather than a single dish.

Brand growth similarly requires effective composition. No marketing plan, growth model, or brand strategy is built on a single choice, a lone component. How each thing layers together - not just adjacent to one another, but systematically in a way that complements and strengthens the other, is brand composition in action.

This requires an understanding of true integration. Just because a marketing plan marries together messaging and medium, doesnt mean they are effectively working together. Just because two tactics launch at the same time doesnt mean they work to amplify eachother. Composition is how we blend together choices to deliver each of the different brand growth ingredients as a part of a coherent whole - audience meaning at scale, memory activators, resonance & relevance, and distinctive assets. We're building a portfolio of effects, working together.

Craft

No one would ever compare me and Thomas Keller in the kitchen. He could make cereal for breakfast that far outstrips anything I could ever make. Craft matters.

In building the recipe for brand growth, there are basic tenets that give less experienced and less confident marketers a pathway to making a serviceable brand, something that delivers modest growth over time and is resilient against challenges to the category.

But there are also opportunities for showcasing craft in brand building at multiple levels. Craft is most apparent in creative expression - design, story, emotion. Beyond creative expression, there is craft deployed in how Methods are stretched, layered together in novel ways for effect. There is craft in identifying meaning for a brand to latch on to - with individuals or among communities. Craft is the extra talent that gives a brand a substantial advantage, of building future growth with less resources, effort, or time to grow.

The recipes are not always simple. And great chefs can clearly elevate even the most challenging of ingredients. But at the end of the day the best meals, and strongest brands, are built through an effective blending of different components. Clearly articulating a vision, executed with craft.