Marketing Lessons for Companies Big and Small

AI is transforming the world. And it starts with the right compute. ARM is the AI compute platform trusted by global leaders, proudly NASDAQ listed, Built for the future. Visit arm.com discover. Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Greene. Cartwheel Michael Today I'm talking with Denise Le Yan, a regular contributor to hbr.org on issues of marketing and branding. She's the author of what Great Brands do, and her most recent book is Extraordinary Experiences, which focuses in particular on retail and restaurant brands. Denise, thank you so much for talking with us today.

I'm really excited to be speaking with you, Sarah.

So I've noticed as I've been reading and editing some of your writing for HBR.org over the years that you do often focus on retail and restaurant brands. And I noticed in the new book, really, that's heavily the focus. Why focus on these two industries? And what can they tell all brands, no matter the industry, about reaching customers?

Well, there are a few reasons. The first is that I believe that the retail and restaurant categories are under a lot of fire, under a lot of pressure these days, whether it's the retail industry with all of the especially since I'm talking mostly about brick and mortar companies, with all of the online and mobile commerce that's really growing, I think brick and mortar stores have been under a lot of pressure to not only produce growth, but also almost justify their existence in a way. And the same thing with restaurants. There's a lot of services now that either provide delivery or provide meal services. And so I think they're also under pressure to attract customers and continue to attract customers. So I think for the very fact that these industries are so strained actually makes them great cases for brand building and how having a strong brand can actually help combat some of that.

It's almost like it's a crucible. They're sort of both crucible industries. Like if it works here, it'll work anywhere.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. And also the second thing, another reason is that I think sometimes brands and brand building can be a little confusing or maybe seem conceptual to people. And I wanted to talk about branding in a very kind of tangible and practical and accessible terms. And I really thought that, hey, everyone goes to stores and everyone goes to restaurants. And so I think that people can kind of understand the transaction or the kind of behavior that goes along with these industries. And now let's talk about them from a brand standpoint. And maybe that will make brand building seem or help people understand brand building better.

So what's interesting to me about that idea as well is that you often will hear people say, if you use an example like a Nike or Starbucks, people at smaller organizations seem tempted to say, well, that works for them. That could never work at my company because of XYZ reason. And, you know, conversely, you'll hear people at big companies saying, well, you know, for instance, a company like McDonald's can't learn from Shake Shack because McDonald's is sort of too big and established and not nimble enough. Or, you know, people come up with these excuses, but in a way, you know, you've used all these different examples as a way to say, like, hey, guys, you know, you really can do this. These lessons do translate. I mean, that's how it came across to me.

Absolutely. You know, it's funny because I think that one of the most frustrating things that people like me hear is, well, our situation is different, you know, and this. And kind of like these reasons why these strategies or principles or business practices that work for others can't work for us, you know, and so I think that you hit the nail on the head in terms of, you know, saying that, hey, these are things that everyone can relate to and hopefully everyone can learn, learn from.

So let's take one of those interesting examples. And actually, this is an example that often does not get a lot of play in the business press. But Popeyes, here's a. It's a pretty successful brand in terms of. I think a lot of people will be familiar with it, but at the same time, you know, maybe not on the tip of the tongue in terms of, you know, business case study examples. So what can Popeyes teach us? What are you hoping that lesson is?

Well, you know, Popeyes came onto my radar because they have produced such a phenomenal turnaround in the last. I guess now it's like seven or eight years. And the reason why, then as I started to dig into Popeyes and the reason why I ended up featuring them in my book Extraordinary Experiences is because they have a very strong internal culture. And as I've written, great brands start brand building with a strong internal culture. I think that many people maybe are tempted to think that, well, great brands are built by the images or external messages that they create, but really great brands start inside. And Popeyes, with the way that the leadership team has cultivated this really strong culture shows that you can build a great brand from the inside out.

It's also interesting in that example, as you walk through it in the book, you really hear that, as was so often with Turnarounds, the company really had a lot of things it had to worry about. And it's like, you know, the platform's on fire. What do we fix first? And. But they have to choose. You can't do it all at the same time. So it seems like to me there's also kind of an implication there that branding is also about prioritizing some things over other things.

Right. You know, so when I interviewed Cheryl Batchelder, the CEO of Popeyes, you know, she talks about how at the time when she took over the reins of the company, you know, the list of people or stakeholder groups that were upset with her and her leadership team were so long, and they kind of had to ask themselves, well, what problem are we going to fix first? Who are we going to pay the most attention to? And they, after careful analysis, decided to focus on their franchise operators. These are the folks who have made a significant investment into the brand and into growing the business. And they're also ones who impact the customer experience the most because they are the ones that hire the managers, and oftentimes they are working in the restaurants themselves and affect the way that the customer experiences the brand. So they chose the franchise operators. And not to say that all these other groups weren't important, but I think that having that priority and saying if we can meet the needs of our franchise operators first and best, everything else should fall into place.

Right. Which sounds like it's. Actually, that would be a very risky strategy, I think, to sell to, like Wall street, for instance.

Well, it's a very uncommon one.

Well, I want to switch gears here slightly, a little bit and talk more about retail as well, because, of course, as we're recording this, we are in the height of the holiday shopping retail season, which, you know, in my previous life, many years ago as a bookstore clerk, you could see that the.

So funny.

Yeah, yeah, we had. You could see in our tracking just how important the holiday season was to the health of the store, because you do maybe like a third of your sales, you know, for the whole year in Christmas shopping season.

Right.

So tell me a little bit about some of the things that really stores need to be thinking about today when so much commerce is moving online.

Well, I think that the store experience is still critically important in almost every category and for almost every customer segment. And at the same time, I think that companies have done more in terms of developing their multichannel services, so you might actually order something online and then pick it up in the stores. So you need to really be very specific about what do these customers want and need along their shopping journey and then use their in store experiences to meet that need, whether it is for that entertainment. And maybe there's a lot of sampling that's going on, a lot of demonstration, a lot of service that happens in your store or for other segments. It may be a very quick service order fulfillment transaction, and whether that means delivering things to people's cars in the parking lot or whatever the case may be, but really using all the levers of the customer experience to appeal to those customers wants and needs.

One of the things seems a little bit random, but bear with me here. I wanted to ask you about is print catalogs, because I know you've written on hbr.org about how those have somewhat surprisingly made a comeback. I mean, we all thought people like to say print is dead, but the print catalog, as my mailbox can attest, is still a thing, very much so. But also, it does seem like more and more other companies outside the retail space are getting into publishing, whether in print or, you know, content marketing online. Why do catalogs, why are they still around? What can a print product like that do for you, whether you are a retailer or another kind of company?

Well, I think that, you know, shopping is no longer just shopping. You know, I. I think that, you know, people look to catalogs and other content like that for ideas, for inspiration, for information about the company behind the products that they're buying. A catalog becomes a brand's own personal magazine where they can actually tell great stories, they can explain their products. Again, as I was saying about the customer experience, they can bring their brand values and attributes to life in the content they provide and provide this part of the shopping experience that seems maybe disconnected from the actual transaction of going to a store or going online, but actually really does feed into that part of the shopping experience. I think that companies like Restoration Hardware or even Patagonia, they use their catalogs to really draw people into their brand. And those are the kinds of materials that people leave on their coffee tables. Instead of the coffee table books that people might have once put out there, they put them out there on the coffee tables so they can pick up and browse themselves. And then when their friends come over, they see the brands that their friends are shopping from and it becomes much more of a brand experience that this company is creating.

So it's interesting in a way, I think it sounds like marketers never get to do fewer things. There's always more things to do. New channels arise, but the old channels are not really Fading away, despite what people may have heard, is just keeping up with all that sort of the biggest challenge? Or. Or is that just table stakes and there's some other challenge out there that you would identify as, like, this is the biggest challenge for marketers today?

Yeah, Well, I think that it's two things. One thing that you talked about before, prioritization, and then to your point about keeping up, I think that what brands need to do is to figure out what are the most important channels or what are the most important tools for us to use, and then focus on those. And then having the discipline or the courage or whatever you want to call it, to say, you know, we're not going to focus on these other areas. So, you know, for a company like Humpty Depot, really adopted vine and was producing a bunch of short videos through vine to kind of demonstrate different products and different things that they sold. And that was a great channel for them. And I think that by selecting that, they probably had to deprioritize or they should have deprioritized other social channels or other types of content marketing doing. And then by the same token, then you have a brand like Ikea that continues to sell, see their catalog as a great way to promote their brand and promote their products. And so I think that Ikea probably leans into that and leans away from other things. You're right. You can't do everything. So it's really identifying what are the best channels, what are the best tools that express our brand and that reach our target customers and really focus on only those.

Yeah, so that's an interesting point because I think for many years HBR was not on Pinterest because we thought, well, that's great if you're a food magazine or gardening magazine, but not maybe not right for business magazine, just because our content at the time, we thought it wasn't terribly visual. But then we kind of had this flash of insight where we realized that a lot of Pinterest is actually about self improvement and a lot of our content is about self improvement. And when we looked at it that way, suddenly it all made sense. And now we're on Pinterest. So I guess what I'm wondering is, like when you're making those kinds of decisions as a, as a marketer, how do you sort of get more quickly to that flash of insight? How do you sort of think sideways about some of those things that might lead you to an interesting new audience if you only could sort of think of it?

Well, I think it starts with being very clear about what your brand stands for. And to your point about realizing, hey, a lot of our content is about self improvement, I think that that probably links back to, okay, well, what does HBR stand for? Like, what is the value that we're creating in the world out there? And if it really is about helping leaders and executives improve themselves, well, then that leads you to these different channels. But I think it starts with having that clarity and having that focus. If you don't have that, if you're kind of like, oh, we produce great business content, which I'm not saying that's what HBR say about themselves, but I think that if you're kind of very generic or open about that, then it becomes very difficult to select the right media for you. I think the clearer, the more focused you can be. Then I think that the connections happen. Now, at the same time, you need to have your radars up so that when the next Pinterest becomes available, whatever social network or whatever methodology or tool comes available, you need to have your radar open so that kind of thing comes on your radar and you can say, hey, here's something that we can use. I think you also need to be aware of what your competitors are doing. And while sometimes from a category standpoint, you need to be in certain channels just to be a player in the category you also want to be looking for, hey, where can we differentiate ourselves? By being in a place that people wouldn't expect or by being in a place where none of our competitors are? So I think it's a very strategic exercise, even though it seems very tactical because you're talking about different marketing approaches.

That's a really good point. And I think maybe as we're sort of just running out of time here, which I can't believe since I feel like we just began, but, you know, when you are working with companies, thinking about companies and sort of helping them to do that work, that's very strategic of identifying what they stand for. What are some of the sort of questions you ask or tools that you might offer them to sort of think through and define that proposition? Maybe a little bit more usefully or differently, you know, than maybe they've thought about it before.

Yeah, well, you know, in the past, I've really taken my clients through exercises of kind of unpeeling the onion or, you know, maybe even like the five why technique that I think is very common in a lot of business cases where it's like, why do you exist? Okay. And why is that important? And why is that important? Why is that important. So you kind of, you know, unpeel the layers of onion until you get down to really, what is your reason for being? What is the belief or the cause that embodies what you stand for? What is the value that you create? And so that's definitely something that I've worked a lot with, my clients I'm starting to now explore, if I could use a different metaphor than unpeeling the onion is kind of like climbing up the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and kind of. And thinking not only about kind of, what are those basic needs or desires that you as a company might facilitate for your customers, but how do you, at the end of the day, at the very top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, help people self actualize, help people become better people. You know, help people become their best selves. And I think that when you start thinking about the value that you create at that level, I think that it's a very rich, emotional, kind of more sustainable place for you to mine what your brand stands for.

That's interesting. That reminds me of something I've often heard you say, which is great brands never have to give back.

Absolutely. You know, so it's not about kind of making up for all the toil that you're exercising on the world, but rather you creating a positive social impact on what you do. How can you. How can you make this world better? How can you make people be better? How can you help people do better things to make this world better? I think that the best brands have figured that out.

Well, Denise, thank you. This has been a fascinating conversation. I wish we had more time, but thank you for giving us some of your time today.

Thanks a lot, Sarah.

That was Denise Lee Yon, author of what Great Brands do and Extraordinary Experiences. For more, go to hbr.org.