(gentle inspirational music) - Welcome to Business Forward.

I'm your host, Matt George.

Tonight's a first.

This is the second part of a two part series on branding.

Joining me, David Brier.

Chief Gravity Defyer, rising above the noise and an author.

Welcome.

- Thanks very, very much.

I decided for the, for part two, I wanted to make sure that you, that you graduate from my masterclass and they sent me this and it blew my mind and I was like, well, what the heck is that?

That's amazing, so.

- That's awesome.

That is awesome.

You know, if, this is the second part, you can go to wtvp.org and go to Business Forward and, and be sure to watch both episodes, because this is a really, really fun topic.

So let's start with Chief Gravity Defyer.

before we get into our topic.

What does that even mean?

- Well, for quite a few years now, I basically talked about the factor of, you know, defying gravity and rising above the noise, right?

And so that was the concept of what I felt that I was doing for my clients, helping them defy gravity and rise above the noise.

- Gotcha.

- And you know, it corresponds with my website, risingabovethenoise.com and, and all that.

And so when people go like, well, what's the title, I'm going well, am I going to say something ordinary and predictable, like president creative director?

I mean, that sounds like what everybody else says.

- Right.

- I'm right there, I'm in violation of what I'm talking about.

So I was like, what can I do?

I was like Chief Gravity Defyer I'm like, that's so like, what are you talking about?

And I'm like, well, I'm glad you asked, you know?

So it just, it's a door opener.

I'm always, I'm always wanting to throw something that makes people go, what do you mean by that?

You know, and I'm not saying this because you're on the show, but your website, like it has content that's readable and quickly.

Like it, it just gives you nugget after nugget.

That's what I love about it.

I, you're not giving me a 17 page summary of garbage that I'm not going to scroll through.

And so go to your website, everybody, please go to it, because you want to talk marketing versus branding, David's the guy.

So we'll, we'll give that at the end of the show.

But so let's go to the topic because I wanted to discuss the big lie in branding.

And it's costing businesses, customers, business, probably more importantly growth.

And you know, in this day and age you can't be stagnant.

What is the big lie?

What do you mean by that?

- Okay.

So the big lie is this.

We see a lot of gurus and experts saying ah, we have the perfect formula, template, blueprint, and you just do boom and boom and boom and boom, and you will now make riches and attract customers and you'll be the cat's meow.

Here's the deal.

Branding comes down to four words.

Branding is the art of differentiation.

So if you, as a company, are using the same template and structure as all of these other companies, how are you ever going to arrive at that place where you're actually differentiating rather than looking like, sounding like and smelling like what's come before.

If you sound like what's come before, you're not going to be seen or heard as different.

If you're not seen or heard as different, no will, no one will take notice of you and you'll blend in.

So that's the big lie in branding.

Big lie in branding is that there are some shortcuts that can actually stand in place of you actually knowing what the heck you're doing.

You need to understand it doesn't need, it doesn't mean that you need to be me, doesn't, you don't need my 41 years of experience to do it, but you've got to understand the fundamentals.

Why is branding done?

I can't believe someone actually opted to call.

We were hearing, they probably, you know what?

- This is par for the course.

- Well, you know, I'm just going to tell him right now.

Look, I'm answering your question with regard to branding.

Just, just tune into the show.

Alright.

- That's right.

That's right.

There they go.

All right, there, they just, the next thing it's going to happen.

Someone's going to walk into my office and say, Hey, David, will you, get to the point faster.

I'll say, hold on, take a seat.

- Get in line.

- Get in line.

Take a number.

- That's right.

- But the thing is, but that's the thing is you don't want to blend in.

You cannot blend in and, and hope to actually, and hope to actually achieve the necessary amount of differentiation that's going to actually move the dial.

- Yep.

Well, let me ask you this.

So take a very, very small business.

And let's say that person's known in the community and, or knows a lot of people, but they're in the haircut businesses, as an example, how can someone make that separation from everybody else?

Like where do they learn that?

How, how do they, how do they sit here and say, my place is called A Cut Above, and I am going to go on Facebook and go on to Instagram and do all of that and be different than the place down the street.

- Right.

So, okay.

So I covered, I do cover this in my book.

I cover, I cover this exhaustively in my masterclass, which I've mentioned, but I will tell you this, the first thing, if an entrepreneur were to do this, your starting point is you need to look at the noise out there.

You don't need to look at, how are we different?

How are we wonderful?

How are we special?

How do we get others to understand our amazingness and awesomeness in the world?

Because after all we are great, because I thought of it, you know, that kind of mentality, right?

So the thing is, is you need to look out in the world.

We need to recognize first and foremost, there's no shortage of answers, okay?

There's no shortage of opportunities.

Anybody offering anything right now, we can just Google it and we will have hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands or more of options to what you're offering in the world.

So there's noise.

So you need to look at, okay, what's the noise out there.

And I've done, I literally just completed doing exactly what you're saying for a hairstylist in Toronto and amazing the transformation.

We did that for a company in Massachusetts that sold premium dog food that's, it's uncooked, it's fresh, incredibly made, but you know, they literally went, I'll give you a perfect example, you know, they were like, oh, you know, we have this farm and they have this amazing, amazing kennels and a whole bunch of, of these beautifully, like twenty-two Borzois, which are these beautiful Russian bloodhounds.

And they're just beautiful dogs.

Anyway, they have this incredible facility and they make this great food and they discover this great food because some of their dogs were unhealthy and this helped them to help them restore them back to health.

But they were calling it high, Highmmeadow Farms.

What's a Highmeadow Farms?

What, does that do anything for anybody?

Did that tell me anything as far as the quality of food?

Didn't that, I mean, the words are fine, but didn't move the dial.

So we came in, I came in and worked with them, found out, looked at the competition, looked at what the offerings were available.

And instead we named it Napa Fresh Food for Dogs.

Now, when you hear Napa Fresh, we, what, what do you, I mean, it immediately, connotes freshness, space, rolling Hills, deliciousness, a quality of life.

And literally, I just got a text, like an hour and a half ago, during the entire year of 2020, by the way, they tripled, they three X their business, okay?

That's because they attributed totally to the brand because they were not blending in trying to try to make a dent with a very tired message.

So, but, and they just texted me saying, this will be their highest month ever, this month that that we're in.

So, so that's the power of it.

You can take something ordinary, anything ordinary, you have to know anything ordinary can be made extraordinary.

That's the first thing you have to know.

It's true.

And then, and then, but you have to look at the noise and then seeing what's out there, you can contribute to that noise.

Cause you have two options.

You're either going to contribute and add to the noise, or you're going to rise above the noise.

My job and the job of branding is to rise above the noise.

- Do you, do you see, that's a great example.

Do you see, like, a lot of businesses put together their marketing budgets or their marketing strategies and never use the word brand.

Is that.

- Dumb ones.

- Dumb ones, ones that are going belly.

You know, I say that, I say that because you know, in talking to entrepreneurs, a lot of times, they're, they're always thinking money first and I got to get money for this business, but they're really not putting together the business plan or the brand strategy or anything like that.

It's almost, I need the money to start this vision.

- It's a short, it's a short term mentality And they're thinking they either, they think they need the money or they think, or they need some transactions that they can now invest into branding later.

No, you can't.

You need a brand.

It's, like, the thing that moves the dial is the story.

The companies that move dials that we, that, that stick with us, that we, that connect with us are based on a story, a story that connects them, brings the whole brand and gives it meaning and relevance, connects to my values.

I mean, I mean, just as a case in point, just to give you a very specific case in point the two most well-known brands in the world, Apple and Nike.

If you look at their brand promise, their brand promise is based on something that connects to our values.

It's not saying better operating system, cooler software, nicer design.

I mean, yeah, those are features, but those aren't the things driving it.

And Nike isn't saying better synthetic rubber, cooler, cooler soles on the sneakers.

No we have, what is, what is Nike known for?

Just do it.

A timeless set of values.

What is Apple about?

Apple, think different.

You see, they connected it to something timeless.

And that's why, you know, and that's why Netflix won and Blockbuster lost, because Blockbuster was married to the wrong thing.

Blockbuster was married to their business model, brick and mortar.

You will come in and here's a fact that very few people know, do you know, from a revenue stream standpoint, Blockbuster's major revenue driver was the late fees.

- Yeah.

- So you and I got penalized for having a life and that's how they, what a great business model.

- And, and the big candy bars at the end, when you're paying your late fees.

- The law, the malt balls, the Twizzlers and the, yeah.

- Do good businesses, both have a strategy, but also a branding strategy.

Is it separate or is it part of an actual strategy?

I don't know if that makes sense, but like do do like, like, you know, you have a marketing budget.

So if I work with a bank in town, they have a marketing budget and they have a marketing strategy.

Is there a branding strategy that compliments, or is married to the marketing strategy?

- There's a brand, there's a brand that guides the, marketing is there to execute on the brand.

That's kind of like, it's, it's, it's kind of, I'll, I'll give you this as a, as an analogy, it's kind of like, you go, what are we having for dinner?

Well, what's the food that we have and who are, who are the guests that are gonna, that we're having over to eat that food.

If we don't know those things, it's like, well, what kind of meal we're going to make?

I have no idea.

I don't know what the ingredients are.

That would be like, well, marketing, marketing, if it's a good marketing department, marketing will go when they're told, promote something.

We'll say, well, what's our, what's our brand differentiator?

What's our brand message?

What's the reason we exist in the world?

Why should someone choose us versus one of our competitors?

If we understand that we can now start formulating marketing, because we know we start having the ingredients to the recipe.

Without that, it's literally like, oh, what are we going to cook for tonight?

Well, what are the ingredients?

What do we have to cook with?

- Yeah.

So let me ask you this, you see companies small and large, Fortune 500, they rebrand.

So how do you, like if I, I think in the financial terms, so if, if I'm doing something and have, I'll have an auditor come in and, and do the audit, is there a, how do you assess your branding that you had?

Do you audit it in a sense, like how do you know it's time to rebrand or to freshen your brand?

- Hmm.

Okay.

Great question.

Great question.

So there's some, there's some red flags that I look for.

One is, is, have you plateaued?

Have you just sort of, oh, it's like, okay.

We were going through some growth and it's like, and now we kind of, we plateau.

That's one metric.

Another metric is okay.

Yeah, we might, we might look fine on paper.

But when we look at our competitors, they're growing at a more rapid rate.

So comparatively, we might be, we might look fine on paper, but you can't, you can't look at anything, iso, isolated island.

So you go, well, wait a second.

Well, we're going through a 25% growth.

We're happy.

We'll go through a 45% growth.

We're thrilled.

Wait a second.

If your competition is doing 150% growth, I'd be miserable, okay?

So that's, that's, that's another thing.

Another, another point is, are we pigeonholed?

This is very true for companies that, typically, have been in business for 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

Great example, Radio Shack, one of the most dismal and horrendous brands, and the rebrand was a joke.

First of all, why would you ever call a company Radio Shack?

Where's the value?

I mean, just to name alone, Radio Shack, what does that have to do with anything?

Besides that, then the brand is pigeonhole, right?

It's offering is pretty terrible.

Their customer service was pretty terrible as, as a, as a brand, customer experience was just lousy and dismal.

So what do people go in there for?

They went in there to buy the, the, the, the speaker plugs.

They went in there to buy the wire.

Wow.

What a business model to have, right?

So, you know, so they were pigeonholed.

That's the thing I look at is I look at a, company's that been in business for 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

Are they pigeonholed into something they used to do?

And what I found, find a lot of the time, is that the company, what they were known for, that was making them a lot of money at one point, and they were doing brilliantly well, now only represents, because of changing technologies, changing cultures, changing customer preferences and needs, that only represents 25% of their business and 75% of their business is no longer, not even mentioned or even known about.

Oh, you do that too?

Really?

Yeah.

We've been doing that for 20 years.

Really?

I didn't know that.

You know what I mean?

I've heard conversations like that.

So those are a few red flags that I look for.

- Yeah.

So like a company like Kodak.

I mean, they were a huge brand.

- Kodak or Polaroid should be the ones that own the smartphone market.

Give me a break.

- Well, that's what I, I kind of thought that too, the other brand that, that has been tarnished over the years seems like, like a GE, like how does a company brand that is so big lose so much value?

Is, is it just, is it leadership and bad decisions or is it, is it, is it the brands outdated?

- Tell, tell me, tell me, tell me a story that, that GE the GE has told anyway.

I mean, I, what do I have to talk about with, with, with them in any way, shape or form?

What's the story?

What's next to me?

I have no story to connect with them.

Even Starbucks, which a lot of people don't like, I mean, I'm not a fan of Starbucks, because it's, it's over roasted coffee.

I love, I love the culture that Howard Schultz brought to America with those little bubbles, those little oasis of coffee getaways, right?

You can leave the office, you go down and it's like, oh, it's nice rustic tones and it's cool and it's, everything's the, there's music and there's people talking and you're chilling and there's wood and it's cool and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But for a coffee standpoint, you know, I mean, on a scale of one to 10, I'd rank it very low.

- But the brand is huge.

- But the brand is huge because we have experiences there.

The customer experience was that, they were the first and they were the forerunners, okay?

You know, it's like, but they, you know, but they came in, what, what were we dealing with before?

And we were dealing with chock full of nuts and, and diner coffee, you know, that was 50 cents.

And they came in and they're like, you know, $2.85, right?

And you go, was it that much better?

Was it, you know, was it, was it four times better, five times, six times better?

No.

- You know, it's, it's, maybe these questions are silly, but you know, I go back to being, I'm 51 years old now.

I go back to being a kid, and I think of the brands that, that I liked.

And I, and having these conversations with you in the past, I just kind of rehash these brands and think about where did they go?

Like, where did, what happened to A&W Root Beer?

That was a huge brand.

What happened to Baskin Robbins?

What happened to, you know, how, Long John Silver's, and these places that have brands.

What sets them apart from a Wendy's weathering the storm and now they're back or, or something like that.

You know, it's just crazy.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, well, look, I mean the bottom line is you take a brand like Coca-Cola, I mean, it's like, you know?

It's, you know a lack of complacency is vital for any brand, you know, but let's, let's look at this.

Did Jeff Bezos, Bezos, did he ever, did he do anything breakthrough?

No.

He was just very observant.

Very astute, smart and observant.

He looked at, if you would, all he did was exactly what Sears did before the internet.

It has to be.

And for those, not knowing your, all your listeners, age groups, I mean, here's just like a little, little lesson in history that we can all learn from.

So Sears saw and noticed at the time, there were smaller cities, smaller, you know, small cities with just a few shops.

There weren't some of these big, big department stores where you can find anything under the sun.

So it was like someone, if they wanted something outside of these few shops of their, in their town, they'd have to drive 200, 300, 400, 500 miles.

So now all of a sudden Sears has the bright idea, wait a second, everybody has a mailbox.

Wait a second, What if we brought shopping to their mailbox?

Instead of them having to drive to a destination to shop, we bring shopping to their mailbox.

And so that's when that was the beginning and the Genesis of the 500 page Sears catalog.

Sears, even it got to the point, very few people know this, they actually sold homes.

You could buy a home and it could actually be brought to you and you guys, you'd buy a home.

But the thing is, is that, what did they do?

They notice something that was hiding in plain sight?

What did Jeff Bezos do?

The same thing, only digitally.

Everybody's got desktops and computers.

What if we brought the ability of them to do that?

So he looked at a category that had a wide variety, that wide variety was books.

It was a very narrow, it was a very vertical column in terms of category, but underneath that, you can have romance and you can have fiction and you can have legal thrillers, and you can have novels and you could have all kinds of, anything under the sun.

And then it widened to music and then it widened to this and widened to that and widened to that.

So the bottom line is, he brought the world to our desktop just the way Sears did.

So he didn't introduce something new.

He just did it for the current age and technological advancement.

And that's the thing.

You gotta be able to look and be willing to look.

Sears could have done the same thing.

If Sears was on the ball, just like Polaroid and Kodak could have done the smartphone and they should have, cause they had the, they had the brand footprint, they were known for photography.

Ugh, don't you remember those Kodak, Kodak moment location, where they would be these little, little places on the road and you would stop with your family.

- You know, I think it's the only thing.

I mean, when we were kids, you and I were kids, you getting that Sears catalog.

You're exactly right.

It's just funny rehashing some of that stuff.

We have a lot of small business owners that watch the show and I get asked questions all the time about social media.

How can you misuse social media?

How can you miss the mark on your brand?

- You can rush to it.

It's the same way that we, we, all of us have been teenagers and had the awkward teenage experience going out on a first date.

And we were like, tongue tied, boom, it's a safe, it's like showing up without maybe having like an idea of maybe what you might want to talk about, maybe what might be relevant, or even, omitting this one, being interested in the other person first.

I think all of us made that mistake.

You know, it's, it's a, so the thing is, is, is, it's not all about you.

No, it's really about them.

It's like, tell me what you're interested in.

What are your, what are the things that get you up in the morning?

What are the things that you're excited about?

What do you like to do?

What are your aspirations?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So the thing is, is rushing to social media as the cure all, social media is not the cure all.

No more, no more than this.

I tell people who look to social media as though it's going to do something for them, or look to technology as though it's going to do something for them.

Oh, there's this thing that's gonna, going to automatically get us in front of 50 million prospects and blah, blah, blah.

Nothing's going to do nothing for, trust me, trust me, just like, just like this, right?

I tell people, look, the microphone didn't make the Beatles sound good.

The Beatles made the microphone sound good.

So that's what I'll say with regards to social media.

- What's brand architecture?

What does that mean when I hear that term?

- Brand architecture basically means what, you know, it's like this, for example, like there are companies that have a number of, oh, actually I'll give you a very simple example.

So brand architecture, Apple.

So we have Apple.

Apple is the, is the parent brand.

Then we have the iPad, the iPod, the iMac.

And then we have all the bits of, little bits of software.

So in other words, the brand architecture is like, okay, so we know what senior, we know what falls, what falls underneath that, but it all should be connected as part of the DNA, you know?

And if you looked at Starbucks, you go, okay, Starbucks has the mermaid.

And then underneath that, you have the products and stuff like that.

It doesn't have a lot of strong products.

It's not there's, you know, I mean, except, probably frappuccino is about the only thing that's kind of like underneath that.

- But at the same time I get what you're saying.

It, for them, for their brand, it is strong.

I mean, that really is because they really care about their employees first.

They talk about that.

They talk and they take care of their employees.

And if the employees are happy, they take care of the customers.

And if the customers are happy, they'll drink whatever, because it's hip to go there and they, and they like it.

So it's pretty cool.

I like the, the thought that you just put of Apple because they do just, it's almost like a menu, so to speak.

That's what the architecture is.

I get it.

Well, I, I appreciate you, having, you know, having you on it.

It's always fun because I sit here almost every show and I say, well, I could do another one with you.

I could do another one with you.

But with, with this topic, I really honestly have about 10 hours worth of shows that I want to talk to you about.

And some of it's self-serving because when I take this back to, to my business, it really does help.

And, and I appreciate you spending all this time, helping us through this, David.

- Absolutely.

- Chief Gravity Defyer I love it.

I love it.

Well, I appreciate it.

I love the hat.

We'll talk soon and thank you for everything.

David Brier.

He is the master.

He is the bomb of branding.

We appreciate it.

I'm Matt George.

And this is another episode of Business Forward.