Like what's the vision like for where I'm going with this and is this something ultimately that I want

Sometimes we're so driven to achieve a goal that we're not even questioning if that goal

is something worth achieving right And maybe that's where strategy comes in that's where an outside consultant

can come in and see things with fresh eyes and say given what you just said and

what you told me about your childhood and the mission of the company these things are not in alignment maybe

I misheard it Hi I'm Alan from Noble Digital and today we're gonna talk about branding Uh sitting

next to me I got Chris Doe from Blind Uh we went to Art Center together and learned the trade

of design and branding and advertising And he's got a very successful company for over 20

years now 22 years A lot of the principles that apply to the biggest brands on the

planet still apply to the smallest startup that's just getting started The principles don't change Would you agree with

that I totally agree Awesome We're on the same page already so that's a good sign So let's take

it from here Right Let's start with what is branding branding well we can maybe take a step

backwards because branding sounds like a verb something that you do Let's talk about what a brand is

and a lot of people mistakenly think of a brand as a logo on identity system and it's not

that A brand is basically a person's gut feeling about a company organization service or product and that's

what it is so it's not what you say it is it's what people say it is but typically when

a company comes to us there's a brand gap there's a gap that exists between what they feel internally reflects

what they stand for it could be a strategy it could just be their market

valuation as opposed to what the external people see So when people see that your your

site says a certain thing the messaging and the way it looks and feels is discordant with the way

you feel there's that gap So what we're trying to do is to close that gap

We're trying to make million dollar companies look like billion dollar brands or and it just goes

up like that So if you're a 1 thousandaire you wanna look like a millionaire

and this is where Designers excel designers filmmakers storytellers this is what we're really good at

doing We're very capable of making things look a lot more expensive than they are a lot higher

quality and that's the magic of design People think if I slap a shiny coat of paint on things

if I change out the logo type if I switch out the type based on

the color palette that we've changed the brand That in my experience rarely ever moves the

needle in the direction you want it to go It requires a complete reengineering especially if you're not meeting

your marketing goals your business objectives or conversion goals right exactly So how does branding uh work with

strategy How do those two things integrate with each other Well in order for you

to figure out what to do you got to learn why you're doing it how you should do

it and that's where strategy comes into play We're big believers in doing the work

up front so that we don't go down to the the goalpost if you will and realize we've

we're on the wrong field to begin with and so having strategy down up front I

think is a very wise investment of time and money to make sure everybody's on the same page

that we're solving the correct problem to begin with Before we marshal our forces and resources

to go out and execute and so you know Chris works with really large brands and

these are really like big strategic decisions uh but we start talking about like a startup who doesn't

have any data has no history Uh and maybe they're in I've even seen startups that

have identity and within a year they're rebranding and they haven't even launched they're not even that

big yet They're already rebranding What does that look like compared to like these other brands we're talking

about OK I don't have a ton of experience working with startups but what I would recommend to anybody

that doesn't have a lot of historical data or customer information is to Look at your closest

competitor We're always gunning after somebody right So in this case I'm gonna assume you're a challenger brand that you're

not creating an entire new vertical uh brand new market As a Challenger brand you can look

at who the market leaders are see what they're doing look at their customers and

profile their customers and see if you can gain any insight Chances are There's an opening for

you if you can recognize where the big companies are dropping the ball maybe they're a little out

of touch with the times Maybe their messaging is alienating some people or maybe there's an

area for innovation but because they're spread so thin trying to conquer the world you can step in that one

thing and solve that problem Now Apple is famous for disrupting what the sleeping giants

have neglected for a really long time The cell phone company should have innovated on the smartphone They didn't

The previous uh hardware manufacturers that were doing music plays should have been the one who created

the iPod They didn't so Apple steps in and creates these things If you're a

startup look at the brand leaders think of yourself as a challenger brand and find something in there The other

thing that you can do I I think there are two parts to your questions I can't

remember the second part now Before I I don't remember I don't remember either but here's what I wanna

play off what you just said like that because I I agree that it is

about your competitors because you cannot conquer the world when you're a start up and you have to

take a piece of what you can You're really just trying to fight for market share now there

are some startups I I see they're like hey we're not we're so new like we're we have no competitors

because we're a new product like think like Airbnb but it's not true because even Airbnb it's

it's hotels They they what you want is a a piece of that market of the hotel industry so

it's Although your technology might be innovative it goes back to what you said which is all about

the users and the audience so your competitive analysis is gonna be about what brands or products or

services or movements have the exact same audience that you were that you wanna go after right

Yeah well before Airbnb there was vacation homes for rental for rent and there are

something that exists out there very seldomly does something come out of nowhere and I remember now the other part

that I wanted to talk about which was why is it that startups Early stage companies software companies wind

up reinventing and redesigning their identity so many times redoing their brand messaging It's because I think in the

software world they work with the MVP model which is minimum viable product just get

what we need done Let's not spend a lot of money Let's prove the model Let's listen to our customers

and then we adjust accordingly So that means at the very early stages you're gonna spend money and you're

gonna keep redoing this a couple of times I can't make an argument to change that You gotta do what

you gotta do and you know your business best but if you want to try to get

it right now some companies even in the start up phase want to create an image that's much bigger than

what it is that might be the time when you kind of reallocate resources to

working with a branding firm to help you find A really great brand platform to

build off of so that you're not doing it in 6 months and then a year and 2

years and 5 years because once people attached to your company and we've seen this happen with

um was it Airbnb with Uber with even with Lyft all these companies change their logos people

become attached to it there's it's part of their story and when you change that they have a

reaction Why and when should a brand consider a rebranding I think When you feel like there's

that gap that exists between what you see yourself as and how the world sees you

that's a good time so are there times when I I know and we've talked about this

before There's times when you can see how you can help a company but I as we agree

like we don't wanna sell anybody anything we want you to tell us but sometimes they need help and

so uh when you can see a way to help a brand look better come off better

uh how do you pull it out without feel like you're you're selling them something like

you're trying to help them out right there's uh a term that I've been Introduced

to it's called selling through curiosity it's a consultative selling process and what you wanna do is

you wanna just help the person see what they need to see and it's just through a

series of asking them very smart questions about what their objectives are what their challenges might be and

what they think the solutions are and all you wanna do is help them to think through

the problem that's the best way I know how to sell It's not to sell It's like I'm

genuinely here to see if I can help you solve a problem with and without me

most of the time I don't even think about me I just think about you but

don't you find there's situations where and I again I'm talking about smaller brands maybe

not so much a huge enterprise uh that need that help and they need a nudge

because they really don't know where to start and and maybe not so much they They're not afraid to

ask It's like they don't even know what to ask because maybe there's not a marketing head

in their department you have to almost become that so you can play this role if you're sophisticated enough

in terms of how you understand business to ask the big business questions about your sales

funnels where you're performing really well where your growth opportunities are where your threats are coming from and

just uh guide them through some kind of framework and understand what the problems are and then hopefully by doing

that you surface the where some Actionable insight might exist some patterns that you've noticed and then let them make

the decision what's what's what's the right path Uh I've gone to see a therapist before Therapists

do not come in talk to you for two minutes and start prescribing all kinds of

solutions to you Like they don't they're not gonna say take a Vicodin do this and whatever the

Adderall they sit there and they just talk you through it They're gonna ask you lots of questions

and check your logic They dig into your soul Like here's another great question that you can

ask somebody and a friend of mine taught me this and and they said what are some of

the blind spots that you're not aware of Just that one question makes you think Well if it's

a blind spot I don't know what it is so then you start to think about what

aren't you thinking about And that just opens up the conversation and that's what I mean when I

talk about selling through curiosity about being a consultative sales person to ask these kind of questions and say What's

gonna ultimately be our demise right I I don't know what I don't know kind

of yeah like what don't you know Well how do I answer that question It causes a a moment

of reflection My feeling is this that inside our brains especially if you're running an organization obviously

you're very intelligent you're hard working and all those kinds of things but you're distracted by

that stuff to crawl inside of your own brain and kind of figure out what do

I need to be doing like what's the vision like for where I'm going with this and is this

something ultimately that I want Sometimes we're so driven to achieve a goal that we're not even

questioning if that goal is something worth achieving right And maybe that's where strategy comes in that's where

an outside consultant can come in and see things with fresh eyes and say given what you just said and

what you told me about your childhood and the mission of the company these things are not in alignment

maybe I misheard it So at Noble Digital we do audits uh we do it from maybe

different perspective I've seen some of your audits and we'll talk about that in a second We do

it from the data actually like Google Analytics and seeing where things are flowing or if your e-commerce

company be the back end of your Shopify Um now what is a blind uh audit uh look

like because I know it's more qualitative than quantitative for most We're not we're not sophisticated as you guys are

with the data and stuff We're not data one so we don't look at it

like that If we're doing an audit what we're doing is we're making sure the direction we're heading in

terms of where we're taking the brand is not in direct competition or repeating things that people in this

space are already doing that makes no sense because it's all about differentiation So what we need

to do is just to inform ourselves and our clients about what's been done in this

space and then we like to look a little bit wider in a horizontal versus a vertical

the things that are very inspirational to us because that's when you can innovate when you pull

something from a completely different field and you bring it in you make it connect and you make it

work that's where it's like wow this is a very fresh approach and we haven't seen this done in our

space before we're looking at in no particular order here we're looking at how It looks and feels

so color typeface is it dark is it like does it have a lot of negative space We're looking at

the way they navigate call to action language that they use the value proposition Do you go to feelings

like I wanna feel this way when it comes Does that sometimes work that can be

is it how do you that can be really elusive How do you help a client get to that

I know how we I know how we do I'm just I wanted you to kind of

just well one of one of one of the components in our framework is to ask

them what is the look and feel of your brand We're gonna wipe the slate clean What's the brand

that you feel best embodies your values your beliefs and so now now we need to

know your values values and your beliefs And then how does this relate to your customers So once we understand

those things it's like that Venn diagram yeah the triangulation of putting all these components together and finding a sweet

spot in the middle that solves all those problems So most of what we're doing

is visual um and it's not looking at the data yeah that's great and just

to be clear like at Noble we do this process as well but we typically

start with it depends we start with data typically and then back into visual but sometimes we can start with

visual and go back to data It really depends on the maturity of the company

and how much data they actually have to dig into This issue about branding and the brand gap that exists

between what you think of yourself and what your customers see social media and social

media marketing is a very good way to close that gap So what you have out there right

now almost every single brand that's out there and it has been in existence for at least 6 to 12

months they have brand advocates the people who champion your product service your community whatever they're the most vocal

they're most likely to share and engage with their content So what you wanna do is you want to engage

with them and so when you see that they bite down on a piece of

content where they it's being shared a lot and it's not not necessarily going viral but your engagement is

very high relative to everything else you might start to think OK we we want to try 5

to 6 pieces of content on different platforms and see What kind of reaction we get and

based on that you form a hypothesis and then you get rid of the the other bits

and you make more of this to see if this is what they want Was it

a one off optimization right Was it a one off If it wasn't then you might wanna repeat

this and then sooner than later you you turn into this whole thing now I believe it

was Is it Wendy's Yes it's Wendy's Wendy's social campaign completely changed at a certain point in

time Wendy's Twitter campaign became really sassy right You you know what I'm talking about when Wendy's started taking

some attitude All of a sudden it was a touch point like Taco Bell It's like a lightning

rod Does Taco Bell do the same thing now Taco Bell's Carl's Junior have a lot

of attitude I think for fast food compared to the others yeah because I think they have to you

have to differentiate and so they're going yeah what's your point of view and and

they're going to try to attract a younger audience to kind of Make them more familiar with their products and

KFC right They got the Colonel Sanders game they're going all kinds of wacky things yeah

they have to go personality Yeah they're they're they're selling you pieces of entertainment now versus saying it's $599 a

bucket of chicken right I know some part of that is there but so when you find the

voice for the brand and it works and it resonates you double down you quadruple down you

keep going all in if it works for you right Sure you're gonna alienate some people Some people find the

Wendy's person too sassy a little bit too offensive right And some of them even Um say Wendy

Wendy's uh roast me They wanna be roasted They they they want to be beat down

and when they do it's it's like a pretty it's it's yeah it's a big down is a

beat down I haven't seen that Chris thanks so much for your time Uh I really hope this has

been helpful for you Uh I know it has for me Uh it's great to see your perspective

and your growth in the past couple of years and how you're just moving with where the marketing is going

which is awesome and uh I just wanna say thank you for joining us Thanks man cool