Together Digital Power Lounge, Women in Digital with Power to Share
Digital is a demanding and competitive field. And women are still grossly underpaid & underrepresented. But we are not powerless; we have each other. Together Digital Power Lounge is your place to hear authentic conversations from women in digital who have power to share. Listen and learn from our amazing guests along with host Amy Vaughan, Owner and Chief Empowerment Officer of Together Digital. Together Digital is a diverse and collaborative community of women who work in digital who choose to share their knowledge, power, and connections. To learn more, visit www.togetherindigital.com.
Together Digital Power Lounge, Women in Digital with Power to Share
Love, Loyalty & Branding
In today’s episode, titled "Love, Loyalty & Branding," host Amy Vaughn sits down with branding powerhouse Deb Gabor, a 3-time best-selling author and renowned brand consultant. Deb shares her fascinating journey from a brandless upbringing to becoming an influential figure in the world of branding. We'll dive into her early experiences at McDonald's that sparked her interest, her career transitions from journalism to corporate marketing, and the pivotal moments that shaped her innovative branding methodologies.
Amy and Deb also reflect on the provocative concept of "branding as sex" and why it's crucial to focus on emotional satisfaction in branding. By the end of this episode, you'll understand how to elevate your brand to create deeper, more meaningful connections with your audience.
Stay tuned and get ready to be inspired to take your branding strategy to new heights. Let's grow together!
Connect with Deb:
Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgabor/
Guest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deb.gabor
Guest Website:https://www.solmarketing.com/
Episode Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
00:46 - Childhood Without Brands, Later Fascinated by Branding
04:52 - Transition from Corporate Brand Marketing to Agency Mentorship
07:54 - Successful First Pitch Shapes Publicist's Career Path
12:01 - The Force of Irrational Loyalty: Catalyst for Brand Growth
14:53 - Tailoring Brands to Reach Distinctive Individuals
19:09 - Crafting Strategic Messaging Through Brand Swagger Inquiry
23:01 - Guiding Triumph: Embarking on the Hero's Branding Journey
28:05 - Branding: Fostering Desire and Emotional Attachments
30:35 - Transforming Narratives to Empower the Isolated IT Professional
33:43 - Brands Compete by Fulfilling Fundamental Needs
36:33 - Deeply Understanding and Personifying Your Target Audience
42:20 - Exploring Motivations for Unveiling New Financial Prospects
45:03 - Influencer Brands Cultivate Consistent, Meaningful Customer Devotion
51:44 - Buckman's: An Efficient Yet Unpleasant Tasting Cough Remedy
52:45 - Author Harnesses Peculiarities to Become Successful Speaker
55:22 - Transitioning from Unemployable to Consulting
56:20: Outro
Quote of the Episode:
"Compelling stories guide readers through self-discovery, inspiring a fresh outlook through this movement."- Deb Gabor
"Create a vivid image of your target individual. Let this persona guide your team, infusing a relentless focus into your marketing and sales strategies." - Deb Gabor
All right. Hello everyone, and welcome to our weekly power lounge. This is your place to hear authentic conversations from those who have power to share. My name is Amy Vaughn and I am the owner and chief empowerment officer of Together Digital, a diverse and collaborative community of women who work in digital and choose to share their knowledge, power and connections. You can learn more about us and join the movement at togetherindigitalcom, and today we are diving deep into the psychology of brand loyalty with the brilliant Deb Gabor. She has recently led our masterclass on this exact topic about how to turn casual customers into devoted brand evangelists. And Deb is more than a brand consultant she is also a three-time bestselling author whose innovative frameworks, like the brand values pyramid and ideal customer archetypes, have helped to revolutionize how companies connect with their audiences. Her recent insights on hacking Maslow's hierarchy for brand growth have already helped countless organizations build deeper, more meaningful customer relationships, and today we're going to explore that even more on how to create that coveted, irrational loyalty to the kind that transforms customers into passionate advocates who couldn't imagine life without your brand. So, whether you are an entrepreneur, marketer, business leader, you're in for a treat in learning how to build brands that matter. So very excited to have all of you here with us today, our live listening audience. We would love it.
Speaker 1:If you have questions, please share them in the chat. Deb, it is great to have you here with us. Again, thank you for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Fantastic, fantastic. So I know some of our members and folks have met you within the community, but for those who haven't, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about your backstory before we dive into the fun topic of branding. A little bit about how you got into this area and what it before. You became a three-time bestselling author and brand evangelist. How did you get?
Speaker 2:here. I like to tell people that I grew up in basically a brandless existence. So when I was a little kid my whole family is from different parts of Eastern Europe and so very, very practical, down to earth, pragmatic people who didn't feel like we needed brand name anything when we were growing up. So no brand name clothing. All my friends were wearing their Levi's jeans and their Jordache jeans and playing with Barbies and Fisher Price things and whatever, and my parents were buying whatever was the cheapest. So I hadn't really been exposed to brands and actually really didn't understand what brands were or what brands meant, until I was 16 years old and got a driver's license and was able to go to McDonald's for the first time and have a McDonald's hamburger cross my lips for the very, very first time and always was sort of fascinated by what does this mean? How could a brand command more money than something that was unbranded or generic? And was always sort of fascinated by that. And then grew I think I told you this before that I started my career in journalism, like a lot of marketers do, and I worked in television, television news, ran an assignment desk and was a reporter, you know, did things like that, and I was really involved in telling stories that were designed not just to inform people but truly to move people, and there's a strong intersection between storytelling and branding and there's, you know, actual brain science behind it. And so fast forward a little bit to the point in my life at which I couldn't make enough money to support myself as a journalist, which is very often the case I ended up moving to a corporate job, and my first job I worked in a super, super high-tech business. My first real job was at AT&T Bell Labs, which I was the lone marketer in a sea of scientists and technologists tasked with the idea of trying to move people, heart, mind and wallet to care about technological innovations that were coming out of the labs. And really that's when I kind of got bit by this marketing and branding bug. And so, yeah, I grew up in the technology industry.
Speaker 2:For the first half of my career I worked in house, as we say, like people who are agency people we talk about being agency people are being in house people. I was an in house person doing sort of brand leadership, brand marketing jobs, product marketing jobs, a variety of things like that. I had the pleasure and the great experience of working at a tech startup that really is credited with being the first company to help consumers get on the internet with 9,600 baud modems, at US Robotics, and did marketing and branding jobs there and then ended up on the agency side of the business. And when I was on the agency side of the business, I had an incredible.
Speaker 2:I had an incredible experience working for a really, really great mentor who who inspired me to think about brands in a different way, and she was. She was one of the people who helped Steve Jobs launch the Macintosh and go back and look at you know these documentaries and movies and stories about that when that happened. She's a pivotal figure in that whole story and so I worked with her. It was a PR company for technology companies and I was a publicist, and so my job again was telling stories. But she had such a unique approach to it which, instead of telling stories about bits and bytes and how many hops to a tier one network and throughputs and things like that, she was able to turn those stories into unique stories of how people's lives could be transformed through the use of technology. And I learned right alongside her, and that's what it wasn't really. I wouldn't call it branding, but that's sort of what inspired me to pursue the whole practice more.
Speaker 1:Branding so somewhere between the Big Mac and the woman who helped launch Apple yeah, exactly Somewhere.
Speaker 2:The Big Mac, my first Big Mac at 16. And then, sometime in my early 30s, working for this person who launched the Macintosh. And then, you know, frankly, for me like working on the launch of a lot of like really exciting technology products which you know, in the go-go days of the technology industry, when you were, when you were bringing new technology to market, often the stories that you were telling were about like technology, right, you were telling stories about, um, I call it the itties, uh, reliability, availability, scalability, manageability, flexibility, which, which is all comparative. We weren't really telling stories about how technology would impact humans and change their lives, which you know really is more emotionally bonding. And so, you know, I really sort of cultivated this practice of changing the way stories are told and the way that they connect with human beings, which you know later on informs the whole methodology that that I use and I talk about and I write about for branding.
Speaker 1:Excited to get to some of that later for sure. What was the aha moment? That sort of changed though how you approach branding, would you say.
Speaker 2:I think that it was.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'd like to say it was the McDonald's hamburger.
Speaker 2:Like, since the first McDonald's hamburger I had when I was 16 years old, I haven't had another one because it's disgusting.
Speaker 2:The pivotal moment, I think, was probably the first time I actually in that, in in that publicist job where I was pitching something and was able to get the attention of a journalist not being a story about aviation, but being a story of, of transformation, a story of like being able to completely change the way people view and use air travel, featuring the human beings behind it. Like that was the moment that I was like, okay, this is what wins, this is what gets people's attention, that there truly is story behind it and the story takes the reader, the consumer of that story, on this journey of self-discovery. And I was like this is not just a plane, this is not just like an aviation business, this is a movement that truly has the power to help people envision a different way to travel. And I think that that was my huge aha, was like when I really, really, you know, when you land a cover story for Fortune magazine about something in a technology-driven marketplace like that, it turns your head around, it really gets your attention.
Speaker 1:Well, I wonder, did that sort of start to open your eyes to that methodology that you've begun to introduce, unlocking and hacking Maslow's hierarchy of needs for brand building?
Speaker 2:A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So, yeah, when I when I talk about Maslow's hierarchy, I talk about it in a couple of ways, in how it is related to branding, and so, you know, those of us who are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy, we know that. You know, the basic premise here is that we are all on a path to self actualization, self actualization being the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy or the top of that. You know that pyramid construct, the idea that when we get there, we're fulfilling our highest, best value to the world. We are, you know, sort of levitating on a better plane where we are free of judgment for ourselves, free of judgment for others, we are fully accepting who we are. And the idea is that, you know, being a fully self-actualized individual is something that we all strive for, and so what we eat, what we wear, what we drink, the airlines that we use to travel, the cars that we drive, the technology that we buy for ourselves and for our businesses, and things like that are all part of our ascension of Maslow's hierarchy, all part of our ascension of Maslow's hierarchy, right? And so, out of that, like really trying to understand what is the process that people are going through when they're making decisions about what they buy.
Speaker 2:Without Maslow's hierarchy, things like Gucci shoes and handbags wouldn't exist, right, you know when? When you know full well that you can, that you can get a plastic sack from Walmart to carry your personal things, versus paying $2,500 for a Gucci handbag. For me it was really like I had to peel back the layers of the onion and try to understand. Like, why is this even possible? Like, what is it about that? And so the hacking of Maslow's hierarchy? It's been my life's work for probably 25 years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's so much of our identity that gets caught up into that right. It's like we're walking around and that's like our internal. How we identify internally is like how we're projecting externally with the things that we buy and wear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mentioned earlier this notion of irrational loyalty, and I define irrational loyalty as this idea that people are so indelibly bonded to a brand they'd feel like they were cheating on it if they were to choose something else. That's very, very powerful, right? Irrational loyalty is the thing that allows brands to grow rapidly and more profitably, charge more for products and services, attract and retain wildly loyal fans and really sort of stand out in a sea of sameness. There is nothing today that you can buy that there isn't an imitation of it, right? And branding is the thing that creates these that you know, creates these huge companies where the contribution of the value of the brand is worth more than the the products that they sell, right? And so, you know, this has always been really fascinating to me, and, and this notion of irrational loyalty really sort of. You know, you talk about identity, brands becoming part of who you are.
Speaker 2:Irrational loyalty, the research that we do, we learned that the underpinnings, the psychological underpinnings of this are to create that condition of irrational loyalty. The brand has to become part of the person's identity, it has to become part of who they are and it has to be indispensable to them, meaning it's irreplaceable, that you can't trade it out for something else, and so there's so much psychology there. Yeah, people want to get up Maslow's hierarchy, but at the end of the day, brands that get to the top of their own Maslow's hierarchy, the ones that are fully self-actualized. They become part of the people who use them and they become irreplaceable to them.
Speaker 1:Right, oh, I love it. There's so much good stuff to kind of unpack there. I have kind of like a follow-up question to that then like in what ways for people who are trying to, who maybe don't feel like they have they have a brand or a product or service that meets a need and they don't feel like they're elevated, but they want to kind of maybe increase their pricing or to elevate their brand what are some ways in which they could do that by kind of using this hack?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I break it down to like four basic things and I'll share that with everybody here. I just give this methodology away for free. Really, what you're talking about, amy, is helping people who have a business, a product, a service, maybe even themselves, that they're trying to brand and they want to create more sort of financial goodness for themselves, open up new financial territory, open up new conceptual territory. What they need to do is act like the best brands in the world, and the best brands in the world they do four things. Number one they aim their brand at a singular, ideal, archetypal customer, and that is the person who is most highly predictive of their success, right? The one who is going to pay the most for what you are bringing to the table, right? So, aiming your brand at one person, an archetypal human being for whom your brand is made, and being very, very focused on that person, knowing everything about them, their values, their beliefs. You know what keeps them up at night, what are their attitudes, their behaviors, what are their challenges, what makes them feel sexy, all of those kinds of things. So that's number one. Number two they become part of that person's self-expression, part of their identity. They understand how they become part of that person.
Speaker 2:Number three if you have a business and you want to elevate that and you really want to create a brand that creates a rational loyalty, you're not just different, you're unique, you're singular. This is where brands get into trouble. We always want to compare what we're selling to everything else, and that's the itties and the errs. It's smaller, it's faster, it's bigger, it's thinner, it's thicker, it's taller, all of those kinds of things that just opens you up to be compared to everyone else, meaning that your best features are imitable. When you really focus on building a brand that's unique, then you can get to the top of that Maslow's pyramid for brands, right, you can become fully self-actualized as a brand. So, number one aim at an ideal archetypal customer. Number two become part of that person's self-concept.
Speaker 2:Number three don't just be different, but be unique. That's the thing that makes a Porsche a Porsche and not a Mazda, even though both things fulfill the same basic functional benefits, right? And then, finally, the best brands in the world. They do this essential thing they make their brand about their customer and not about them, right? Yep, I do this diagnostic with brands all the time. I say you know what? Go to your mobile phone and open up your company website and if the first word on the website is the company name or the word we, you're doing it totally wrong, right, right. Think of your brand as being heroic to another hero. Like the customer gets to be the hero in this scenario, not you. So so you know, when people are trying to open up more territory for their brand financial, conceptual, attract more customers, it's about that relentless focus, but then also really taking on the characteristics of the best brands in the world. And those are the four things right there.
Speaker 1:I love it and the reason why I threw that question is because I know we have a lot, of, a lot of our listening audience are women who own and run their own small businesses and in companies and they tend to undercharge for what they do and or the products and the services they sell. And it's like how do we encourage them to position themselves in such a way that they can to sell to their highest you know, most ideal client?
Speaker 2:So the ideal clients are the ones who are going to pay what you're charging, right? So if you have a small services based business, if you find yourself over-servicing clients, it is because they are probably not the ideal clients, right? Ideal clients are people who appreciate what you are doing. They need and can use what you are doing. When you do this profile of the ideal customer archetype, you should be able to see as they come towards your business. You should be able to see that they exhibit at least 75% of the characteristics of clients who are most ideal, like I can see it from miles away. Most importantly, I can see who is not my ideal customer and when I know that I like.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we consciously take business from someone who's not our ideal customer. I run a services business. Sometimes you got to keep the lights on, right. You're like this is not ideal. At least I'm conscious about it, I understand it and I can mitigate the risk, right. But it gives me the ability to have choice, and choice is so important when you're running your own business, otherwise, why do it?
Speaker 1:right. Why do this? Exactly, exactly, oh, love it so much. Thank you, deb. Also, in your masterclass, you mentioned three key questions that brands should ask themselves. I would love it if you could walk our podcast audience through those as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely so. Like I just gave you the explanation of the four things that the best brands in the world do, number two, three and four can be summed up in these three questions. I call them the brand swagger questions, and I always tell people if you want to just get started in branding, try to answer these questions right. And the other hint about this is that, through answering these questions, you are formulating the foundation of your strategic brand messaging. The first question, which is the becoming part of someone's self-image, becoming part of their identity, is to answer this question what does it say about my customer or my client that they use my brand? Not what does it say about them that they use these widgets, but what does it say about them that they use me?
Speaker 2:So, for instance, I have a research, strategy and marketing firm for B2B technology and professional services companies. What it says about them is that they are no nonsense, innovative, thoughtful marketing leaders who don't have time for BS, who want to be pushed, not just to do the best they can, but whatever it takes for them to win. It says that they have a short runway and a lot of attention is on them to get things right. That's what it says about them that they work with me and the company that I represent. So it's really important that it's not what does it say about them that they use an outside marketing firm, but what does it say about them that they use me? So that's question number one, right? So what does Right? Right, I'm reliable. I like to help my friends move. I may be a little bit rugged, I got a dog.
Speaker 2:I'm from Texas, right? You have a story about me, right? So that's question number one. Question number two is that question about uniqueness, and that question is so simple to ask but the hardest one to answer this is where I earn all my money, right, what is the one thing that people get from my brand?
Speaker 2:They get from me. They get from my company, they get from my product. What's the one thing they get from me that they don't get from anyone else? And so back to the example where I was explaining about the company that I run. The one thing they get from us yeah, they can get marketing services anywhere. Right, they can get research, brand strategy, marketing services. I always joke around and say you can't swing a cat over your head and not hit 150 other people who do exactly what we do. Right, they can hire anyone for those things. But the one thing they get from us they don't get from anyone else is the proverbial kick in the ass. They get a kick in the pants. They get propelled to do whatever it takes. Right, they come to us specifically for the kick in the pants.
Speaker 2:We are not for everyone. Believe me, I've never gone through a brand strategy engagement that didn't make people really, really uncomfortable and make people feel like they want to quit sometimes. Right, Because the work of branding is hard and my goal with my organization, like our BHAG, is to take a disruptive dark horse brand and turn them into a top five most valuable global brand. So that's Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Tencent. Those are your top most valuable global brands. My goal is to take someone that no one knows and make them one of those, right? I'm not looking to be everybody's favorite marketing agency, right? So the one thing you get from us is the kick in the pants. So really really getting into that singularity is super important.
Speaker 2:And then that third question, the third of those brand swagger questions. It's this simple how do I make my customer the hero in their own story? They're the ones who get to stand on the top of the hill. They plant the flag, they make the declaration, they get the medal, they get the trophy, they get the girl, they get the boy, Whatever it is that they want. At the end they win.
Speaker 2:How do I get them there? And so, when you take those three questions, what does it say about a person that they use my brand? What's the one thing they get from me that they don't get from anyone else? And how do I make them a hero? Can you imagine that the answers to those three questions formulate like the strategic underpinnings of your entire brand story? Right, it's taken me a long time to like really refine this methodology, but if you, if you go through that it, it helps you humanize the brand and it helps you tap into those deep emotional connections that get you up above the fray of bits and bytes and speeds and feeds and it is an ers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I agree. I did this little piece a while back about the so many brands and branding it was always about and it would always kind of honestly piss me off. It was just like, oh, branding is guidelines and fonts and colors and tone of voice and I was like no, it's not TOV, it's POV, it's a point of view. What point of view do you have?
Speaker 2:It's your unique point of view, inclusive of your customer right, and I always tell people that it is the sum total of all of the emotional connections that you make with everyone all around your brand and it's a construct that's made up of two big pieces. One is the brand identity that's a piece that you own and you drive and you control and tone of voice and fonts. And One is the brand identity that's a piece that you own and you drive and you control, and tone of voice and fonts and colors is the articulation of that. But it isn't that right. And then brand image is the part that's reflected back to you by your audience and it's a relationship brand identity and brand image. If those two things are disconnected, then you don't have a brand, you have a, you have a broken brand. So you're a hundred percent right, but you know it is every point of emotional connection between you and anyone that you want to move heart, mind and wallet.
Speaker 1:Agreed, agreed, yeah, yeah, so much, so much good stuff into there, but I'll keep us moving. Oh goodness, cause I did a talk earlier this year, too, on brand reputation and customer perception and all those things too, and how all of that consistency is such a necessity. It's like, yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in there, but you were also talking about that swift kick in the pants, and I love it because, again, like again, what's something I love about your style? And you have a book titled uh, branding is sex.
Speaker 1:So yeah, like you know we just go straight for it. So it definitely obviously turned some heads, catches some attention. I'm kind of curious like what inspired that comparison? And, yeah, divulge a little bit about that book and what people can expect from from that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you, like, what's the meaning of that, and then I'll tell you where it originated, because it's a really funny story. So you know, we were talking about Maslow's hierarchy, right, and one time I was like really trying to break this down for somebody, this idea of what does it feel like to be fully self-actualized, and in order to sort of like permeate this person's like thick skull, I was like do you know what it feels like to have a day so great that all you want to do is take a roll in the hay? Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, like that feeling that you have the world on a string, you've got life by the proverbial cojones, whatever, like you've got this, you have this incredible, have this incredible powerful feeling right. Like that nothing can go wrong. That's the moment in which you really really feel fully self-actualized and you know you kind of want to go for it, right? You know, and I told this story I was like, yeah, it's like you get in your car and you're on your way to work. You make every light, right, you have green lights all the way. You arrive at the office, you get the front parking space, you walk in the door, you get to your desk and your nine o'clock meeting is canceled. So you finally have time to get through all of those backed up emails and clear your desk and maybe read a little bit of the newspaper and whatever. Then you win a big deal. You have a great lunch where somebody else picks up the tab. Then on the way home, you make all the lights. You get home, your spouse has prepared dinner for you, have the kids in the bath already, you get to spend time with the whole family and they're all clean, right, and the kids go to bed. And then you're like, wow, wow, wow, right, so. So everybody like understands what that feeling is like.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the role of branding is to give people that feeling, right, it truly is to give people that feeling. And you know, people ask me I've been interviewed literally hundreds of times about this book, right, and people ask me. They're like oh okay, so are you saying that sex sells? No, no, no. I'm not talking about being sexy or making brands sexy. I'm talking about making people want to feel like they want to have sex. Right, Does that make sense? So all branding boils down to like making people have that great feeling, whether it's through the purchase of a new iPhone or, you know, it's these like really cute eyeglasses that I like. You know what I mean. It's like making people want to have that feeling Right. So that's the meaning of branding is sex, and you know my publisher for that book was the one who encouraged me to name it, that I can't remember what the working title was, but he was like you absolutely need to call it that.
Speaker 1:Now it's been problematic.
Speaker 2:I live in Salt Lake City, utah, and I've been asked to speak at places like can you just call that book branding? I'm like, no, I cannot call that book branding Right, but I'm a little bit, you know, sort of like an in your face kind of person, so. So that's really what the meaning is. It really is about giving people that feeling that they want to take a role in the hay. The second part of that is the story of where this came from. So I told you I grew up in the technology industry and that great job that I had, where I worked for this incredible mentor who, you know, ran the PR company for technology companies. One of our clients one of our clients, very, very, very well-known leader at a very, very well-known, very famous technology company was launching a server operating system which, frankly, is not very sexy, right, and the server operating system was being launched to the financial services industry and government two very unsexy industries and all he wanted to talk about, all the CEO wanted to talk about, was like bits and bytes and speeds and feeds and how many hops to a tier one network and you know how many ones, and zeros and you know, like the itties and the errs, or what they used to call this company RASM, rasm, r-a-a-s-m. Reliability, availability, scalability, manageability you're glazing over. Can you imagine an audience of analysts and media at a launch like salivating over reliability, availability, scalability, manageability? No, so it was my job to change his perception and his storytelling to really put their customer in the center of the story.
Speaker 2:And boy is this guy thick headed. He was really really really thick headed and I was at my wit's end, and this was during a media training. Right, I was really at my wit's end. He was sitting in a rolling chair, like what I'm sitting in right here, and I took another rolling chair and I got up real close to him.
Speaker 2:We were like knee to knee and I was like, listen, we have to tell the story in a different way. We have to put that it guy, that government it guy who sits in a windowless office with like no one to talk to all day, except for all the people who are calling him to let him know that the servers down, that their PCs aren't working, that their workstations aren't functioning, whatever. We have to get that guy laid. How does this service server operating system get that guy laid? And he pushed his chair back and he rolled like halfway across the room and then he told me a story. He was like this happens, and then this happens and this happens.
Speaker 2:And I said this is what we need to say to the media and those analysts, right? And in that moment, like when I asked him, like and it was in a, it was in a moment of frustration. I was like how does the server operating system get this guy laid? When everything opened up to him, I was like I was compelled to share that with the world because I had had my big aha and I thought, for all of these people who don't understand the power of story, the power of connection, the power of emotions in moving people to take action, I can make this so easy for them. So that's where Branding a Sex was born.
Speaker 1:That's so funny. Well, as you were kind of sharing earlier, there's the story of going through the day in those moments and those little moments. To me, what I was hearing, too, was just satisfaction, right, that little sense of satisfaction throughout the day and that sense of peace and things are going my way and trust.
Speaker 2:And in the IT world, like that totally makes sense. Now, you know, one of the brands that I'm working with right now is really about indulgence and decadence, right, and so it's more than a moment of satisfaction. But understanding those like micro levers that you need to pull. What is the difference between satisfaction and indulgence, right? What is the difference between being satisfied or feeling deserving and discerning, right? That is the essence of branding, is like getting to. They are like little micro levers, right, and so you picked up from the story yeah, like that's satisfaction. That's, for a brand, about satisfaction, being satisfied. Some brands are about elation. Some brands are about making people feel confident or feeling powerful, or feeling like they're in control. Understanding those things, and really the magic is understanding, specifically for your brand. What is it that you do, unlike any other brand in the category? That's where the magic is.
Speaker 1:Well, and I love it that you always take it up a notch. You kick it up a notch too, because I think we've become, as a society, a bit desensitized. So I think it's not enough to just say like it's about satisfaction. You have to elevate it, right, because it's like it wasn't enough for you in that moment to go knee-to-knee to him and be like how do we make people feel satisfied? No, it's got to be. How do I get this guy late?
Speaker 2:competitor in that space is trying to make that guy feel satisfied there, yeah, everyone is trying to make them feel, you know, confident, accomplished, satisfied, safe, secure, right. So this is, this is the thing. So Maslow's hierarchy for brands, it's a pyramid. It has three parts. At the bottom are what is the ante to get into the game? What does the brand need to bring to the table in order to be considered a that in that category?
Speaker 2:If we're talking about server operating systems, we're talking about reliability, availability, scalability, manageability, flexibility, uptime, security, safety, all of those kinds of things. Right, you don't differentiate on the basis of that. That's like selling ice cream by saying it's cold and it's sweet. We don't do that right, in the middle of that pyramid are emotional benefits. Emotional benefits are things makes him feel secure, makes him feel accomplished, makes him feel smart, makes him feel savvy, makes him feel secure and all of these different things safe, et cetera. Emotional benefits are not enough, because I would say any server operating system should make people feel that way, right? Yep, if we want to really permeate someone's heart and move them and bond with them emotionally, we need to make them feel exhilar emotionally. We need to make them feel exhilarated.
Speaker 2:We need to make them feel yes, you got to go beyond that Exactly, and so the best friends in the world are the ones that push through that to truly differentiate themselves on characteristics that can't be imitated by anyone else. And it's only those emotional things, a server operating system that makes people feel exhilarated. Is there such a thing, right? I want to find it now.
Speaker 1:It's out there somewhere.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, this company has been bought and sold so many times.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what it's called anymore.
Speaker 2:In the day. It was one of the big things, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness, all right, let's talk a little bit about the ideal customer archetype. I love all your frameworks. I think they are truly helpful and powerful and, again, it's something you can take and start to use right away. What about this framework makes it so powerful?
Speaker 2:So every business strategy methodology talks about something like the core customer, right? They're like, okay, who is your core customer? And you're like, oh, I work with medium-sized businesses with revenues between $10 million and $100 million. I am here to tell you that businesses at $10 million of revenue and $100 million of revenue, they have different kinds of problems, right? Right, the ideal customer archetype is about honing in on the exact human being who your brand is made for.
Speaker 2:It is a branding exercise, not a marketing exercise and this is really, really important because I get a lot of pushback on this but you build your brand for the ideal archetypal customer. That's why it's an archetype right and it really it goes beyond demographic and firmographic characteristics to help you identify, like who is the exact human being that you are made for and who is made for you. I make my clients draw this right. We draw a picture right and we really hone in on, if you're selling to other businesses, who is the decision maker within the business. That is the most important domino that you need to knock down. You build the brand for the people who use it right and figure out who is that human being, what is their job title? What does their day look like? What are their challenges like? What do they wear to work? Are they wearing gym shoes? Are they wearing work boots? Are they wearing wingtips? Are they wearing heels? Where do they go on vacation? What makes them feel sexy? What makes them sit upright in bed and sweat ice cubes? What are their goals, their values and beliefs? It's knowing everything about it, and so when I make clients draw it, if they have a big heart, you draw them with a big red heart in the middle of it. If they have a big fat brain and they're like very intellectual, draw them with a big brain. They have a lot of money under their control. Show them holding a big bag of money. But when you go through this exercise, the most important thing it does is it shows you who you are not for, right. So we talked about, you know, people who are running their own small businesses, the people who are maybe listening to this right now. You can probably look across your business and think about who is the person that I would love to serve, over and over and over again. When you create the archetype of who that person is and you memorialize this for you and your team and you bring that person to your meetings, you use that person when you're thinking about all right, my marketing or my sales efforts and things like that, you get this relentless focus almost to the exclusion of everyone else.
Speaker 2:I'd like to give this little case study. I worked with a mortgage broker, actually here in Salt Lake City before I moved here. They're a very, very large company. I think that they're one of the top mortgage brokers in all of the United States and they only operate in about five states and they're headquartered here in Utah and we were going through an ideal customer archetype issue. They were finding that they were seriously over over servicing people and think you know their team was ready to quit. They also had a very, very unique business model that, instead of commissioned loan officers, their loan officers were on salary, and this was really important because their loan officers were incentivized by different things than, like, pure play sales oriented loan officers. So when you have sales oriented loan officers this was an interesting nuance that I knew nothing about when you have sales oriented loan officers, they're incentivized. They're incentivized by money. They're incentivized to make the cost of those loans more so that they make more money right, which adds time and complexity to the home loan process.
Speaker 2:These guys were like we can shorten the home loan process by 10 days and save the average family buying like a $500,000 house $7,000 on their mortgage, right? So who is the ideal customer for this? We have a conversation about this because they're like we're having a real hard time connecting in the marketing process and their messaging was muddy and they had a real value proposition and they didn't know who their ideal customer was and I said who's your ideal customer? And they said it's a couple. I'm like, all right, tell me about this couple. They're like, well, it's a man and a woman and they're buying a house that's about $500,000 in the Salt Lake Valley. And we really probed into this and, looking at their business model, this idea that they have this unique model that can save thousands of dollars and days on the home loan cycle, which saves real human beings a lot of money and a lot of consternation, I was like, within this couple, who do you need to influence?
Speaker 2:So then I asked questions about, in the home buying process, who's in charge? Right, and you know, they said largely the woman of these traditional relationships is the one who's driving the home buying process. Right, she determines where you live, how you live, what the house looks like, the location, you know, those kinds of things. She has a sacred bond with the real estate agent, right, and you know, I remember the first time I bought a home, I asked my real estate agent for a referral to a mortgage loan broker. My real estate agent gave me a business card and I went directly to that person. I didn't do any shopping around, I didn't do any second opinions, right, and so when we deeply probed into this relationship to understand the process and who needed to be influenced, we identified that the man in these and these were very traditional man-woman relationships right, the man in this scenario who we named Brian. He was the ideal customer archetype because he was the one person who could break the sacred bond between the woman in the relationship and the real estate agent who hands over the business card of here's, the mortgage loan broker. We anointed Brian the family CFO. We made him the ideal archetypal customer who could change the whole trajectory of the home buying process by suggesting they get a second opinion, and this opened up so much financial territory for them.
Speaker 2:I drive around here on I-15 in Salt Lake City. I see their billboards. Their billboards are targeted right at Brian and they say get a second opinion. You get a second opinion for a medical thing, you get a second opinion for, you know, a car repair, get a second opinion on your mortgage. And they're aimed directly at this homegrown family CFO, right.
Speaker 2:And so this is where that ideal customer archetype is so powerful, because it brings you relentless focus. If you're marketing to a couple, who are you talking to? It's too broad, right. So, going all the way back to the first time that maybe you were in the school play in fourth or fifth grade, right, you know, and and you, you have someone that you're you're supposed to be talking to and the, the director of the school play or the school drama teacher says what's your motivation? You know you have to focus school play. Or the school drama teacher says what's your motivation? You have to focus on that person. What's their motivation? What are they trying to get? What are you trying to get? So that's where the ideal customer archetype can open up all kinds of new financial territory.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:That's a great example, and I am telling you drawing a picture of it, being able to visualize it, being able to close your eyes and see it in your third eye is magical. I know it when I see it. More importantly, I know when I don't see it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, yeah, that's always a way to get a marketer to flip a table is tell them that you know we're for everybody.
Speaker 2:It's my favorite, like when I go into a new business scenario and they're like. I ask them, I'm like, who are you selling this to, who is this for? And they're like well, really, anyone can use this. All right, I mean those of us who are marketers like, how much, how, how effective are you going to be at marketing? You know so. So I try to get people to think about it. Their audiences like a series of concentric circles, or even like it's a fried egg on a plate, the yolk like this very, very dense, rich portion of the egg. Here is your ideal archetypal customer, who the brand is made for. You're going to still get the white. They're interested, they're inspired, they're aspiration, they're aspiring to be like that. Don't market to the people who are the plate.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, no, exactly, you can't eat the plate.
Speaker 2:I always tell people this you can't eat the plate.
Speaker 1:You can't eat the plate and you're not going to get, like you said, that irrational loyalty from the plate. You're not going to get the irrational loyalty and love from the people. It's just not the ideal customer. Yeah, I agree, I love this so much. All right, let's talk about an example of a brand that really nails that emotional connections that we're talking about here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, interestingly, a brand that I have recently become obsessed with, which I am not the target audience for, but I've kind of become obsessed with it just because I've been doing some research for another client where this brand was sort of involved. It is a streetwear brand called Lonely Ghost, and so the younger people among us might, might, know what what this brand is, but I, you know, I was like I need to understand what is the fascination?
Speaker 1:for this brand.
Speaker 2:This brand completely nails it and and they create a rational loyalty, like they charge for. I went to one of their stores the other day here in Utah. They can charge $35 for a t-shirt and nobody even gives it a second look because it has, like, the little lonely ghost logo on it and they do such a good job of like becoming part of the person who uses it. So this is a brand that was started by an influencer, right. She was like sort of making her own streetwear kinds of things. She got big. She's, you know, she's a mad sensation on Tik TOK on Instagram. Then that expands into stores and things like that. So what I love about this brand and the reason that I feel like it does such a good job of creating a rational loyalty, is that the brand experience is consistent and meaningful 360 degrees around the brand. So whether you consume this brand by going to their e-commerce site, you consume this brand via shoppable Instagram, for instance, or TikTok you know TikTok posts or whatever or you go physically into a retail store which their retail store. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen and I'm like I'm clearly not the brand for this. I'm not the ideal customer for this. It's like somebody my daughter's age, right, but I'm just fascinated by it. You go into their retail store, which is it's a converted grocery store and they call it Lonely Ghost Grocery and it's and it's set up almost like Meow Wolf style, like it's super, super cool, but it's a destination and it's a 360 degree experience.
Speaker 2:This tiny little brand out of Provo, utah, has turned into an international phenomenon that has been able to do collaborations with Ferrari, with Wendy's, with Jennings ice cream. They have like all of these incredible. They have a cult following. It is like literally a cult following, and whenever a brand has been able to engender that like cult-like following, like that really attracts me. On the other side, another brand that I've become really obsessed with and it's sort of like a joke between me and my partner Like I, I love the Bobcat brand and I'm talking about, like you know, bobcats, like those little tiny bulldozers that you can get to, you know, level your backyard and all that kind of stuff and whatever you know, I have this idea that I want to have a bobcatting business where I teach women to drive bobcats.
Speaker 2:I want bobcats to like do a collaboration with me and give me bobcats that I can paint pink and put little cat ears on and whatever. But I did a deeper dive to like really understand, like, what is it about this? What is it about this brand? And they're very, very clear. They're like they are for people who want to create change, who want to power through things. And it's really interesting because you have John Deere right, which is all about be the envy of your neighbors, which is a competitor to that. They make a similar product. You have Caterpillar, which is like you know, use stuff for your backyard. That's just like what the big guys are using, you know, out on the out on the interstate right now and whatever.
Speaker 2:But Bobcat is like in this category of of construction equipment, they are very firmly focused on that individual guy, who, who, who is like ruggedly changing the way things look, the way things look, the way things feel, making change. They do a great job. They have wonderful case studies on their website, like one of them that I watched the other day. It was the construction company that was serving this, this home building organization and the home building organization. Their mission was to build affordable homes for real people and they sort of they. They followed the path, they let their customers tell the story of how did Bobcat enable us to make housing more affordable for these people? Right, like, truly like that through line. So so this idea of creating these conditions of irrational loyalty, they exist for consumer brands like streetwear, brands like lonely ghost, but also for industrial brands like Bobcat and they, they, you know, and so brands that are able to execute at that level where the brand exists in 360 degrees. Those are the ones that I'm obsessed with right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah Again, and I love that you brought it back to consistency. It's so, so key Again because that expectation is there with consumers, that experience from beginning to end. It is your brand promise.
Speaker 2:I always talk about the brand promise of the Ritz-Carlton right. We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. That is true of every single touch point you have with the brand. They are sort of like the people of the most perfectly constructed and delivered brand promise. We can all take that into every aspect of our businesses.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. This has been so much fun. We are coming up on time, so I just want to go through our power round questions really quickly, because we have some fun ones that I really think our listeners would be interested in hearing from you. Hopefully they're not too challenging, because this one especially, it's going to be hard to pick, deb. So let's hear it. What is your favorite brand of all time? My?
Speaker 2:favorite brand of all time probably, believe it or don't is Salesforce. My daughter, but yeah, I just, I just, you know as a disruptor. They went to market with disruptive tech CEOs and I think that that's legendary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just um. Was it sales blazer? Is that there was the um new project they just launched. For, like all of their education and training, I just met the young woman who helped launch that project at content marketing world. So, she's going to be a guest here soon, on the podcast too. Awesome. Most overrated branding trend.
Speaker 2:Most overrated branding trend. Um, I'm going to'm gonna say uh, publicity stunts yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 2:One book every marketer should have to read, of course, besides your own um, yeah, you can read any of my three books, but, um, a book that I recommend to people. It's called pink goldfish. It's written by my friend, dave rendall and his partner Stan Phelps, and really the idea is that what makes you weird makes you wonderful. I love that. What makes you weird makes you wonderful, so, like leaning very far into the stuff that is unique to you. I talk about uniqueness all the time. Just one quick example from that book that's really inspiring. Are you familiar with this brand, buckman's cough syrup? It's a brand in Canada. I don't think we have it here in the US.
Speaker 2:Sounds kind of familiar, but yeah the one characteristics that Buckman's has is that it tastes like utter crap, right. So you have kids. If you have to buy your kids like Robitussin or Trinic like, one of the standard features is it has to like it's red or it's purple and it tastes like bubblegum, cherry or grape, right, it has to have a flavor. Basically, they've said you know what Like that stuff doesn't matter. What really matters is that it works. And so if you ask anyone in Canada what's the most effective cough syrup, they'll tell you it's Buckman's and it tastes like crap, Right. And so he gives that example. He gives like tons and tons of examples of brands that lean really hard into places where they have sort of gone against what is standard equipment for their category to really really stand out. So I love that book and it's and it's a book that a lot of people don't expect in marketing. But, um, inspiring examples Pink goldfish, it's called.
Speaker 1:Pink goldfish. I love it. And the weird is wonderful. That's a very popular saying in our household, so I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, so the guy who wrote the book, he is, I want to say he's like six foot five and in his I met him on the speaking circuit and in his speaking engagements he wears bright pink pants and pink glasses and everything is pink and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:You know he's, he's he always tells this story. He wrote another really good book which is more it's more for humans than it is for brands and businesses, but it's called the freak factor and it's kind of the same thing, and he always tells the story about how when he was growing up he was a kid you know his report cards coming home from school they said Dave, dave talks too much and he distracts and entertains the people in the classroom, and so you know he leaned really hard into that and he's like well, I'm going to have a career as a professional speaker then. So yeah, these ideas of like what makes you a freak as a brand, as a human, are the things that you should lean really hard into it, because that really points to this idea of like what's the one thing people get from me that they don't get from anyone else?
Speaker 1:So that's the reason why I love his stuff so much. Sounds like my kind of guy. I said that when I announced my podcast here. I was like hey to all those teachers that said Amy talks too much. Guess what.
Speaker 1:Now I got a podcast and I get paid to speak. Exactly, you and me both be to speak. I love it, I love it, I love it. All right, last one, and then we'll wrap it up best, because you have had an amazing career too. I would love to hear and you've had some great mentors, as we mentioned earlier in the episode what was the best career advice you've ever been given.
Speaker 2:The best career advice I'd ever been given was don't sell your time. And I mean that like really really transformed the trajectory of my, my career and really got I love it. Think I told you before I was an accidental entrepreneur. I started out just doing consulting, right, and I was selling my time. Now I made a buttload of money selling my time, but it wasn't until I realized that I could sell a vision. I could sell against the vision of what the world could look like when I solved a problem and that was worth far more money than selling my time for 250 or $300 an hour and it really like it's super, super transformative. So I don't like this is not a knock on employees. There are some people who just don't have the risk tolerance or the profile to be entrepreneurial. For me it was manifest destiny, because you know what I make a really, really shitty employee. I don't like authority, right, I don't listen, I talk too much Unemployable.
Speaker 2:Basically, I am hardcore, unemployable yes, we go around you know that I'm going to go and find a job down at the UPS store. I can't think of a single UPS store that would hire me. But this idea like for me, for anybody who has a who, anybody who has a services business or does consulting, like I you know when when I started to think about what I was doing in terms of its value to the person who was buying it and how it was going to be transformative to them, I like it. It just created a better world, like a better world for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great advice. I love it. All of this has been so great.
Speaker 1:Thank you again, deb, for being with us here this week and for always being so generous with your knowledge and your wisdom and all of your smarts on branding. I hope all of you have really taken a lot away today. I know I took a lot of notes, as I always do, even though I've sat and talked with you so many times, you always take away so many great things. So thanks again for being with us today. We hope to see you all next week. Until then, everyone keep asking, keep giving and keep growing. We'll see you soon. Thanks, la la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la la. Produced by Heartcast Media.
