#H2HChat "What Great Brands Do" with Denise Lee Yohn

Hey everybody, we are here again for another HAA Chat, but more importantly, Happy New Year. We're back after a long 2-week hiatus, winter break, all kinds of good stuff. I'm sure you all had fun over the winter break. I know I did. First, before I introduce our guest, Suzy, I'd love to check in with you. How are you doing and how was your break?

My break was fabulous. I have to say I missed my dear H2H Chat community very much. It was very weird not to be doing this for 2 weeks. I am refreshed and super, super excited for what 2016 has in store.

Isn't it amazing what sleep can do?

It was amazing. It's like, what is this strange thing? Why do I feel energetic?

On a consistent basis?

Who

does that?

Maybe we should look into this concept a little bit more. Maybe we should study it. I'd like to do a case study, Bryan. I think we need to spend some time really contemplating this concept.

We will do one full H2H show We're going to do a chat in the future just on sleep, and this is what it will look like. One hour.

I love it.

So I want to introduce our guest and let everybody know why we brought Denise on. Denise and I met— Denise, we met in Colombia. But we also met on the phone in advance of that. So nice of you, us, somehow we got together, we talked, and then we—

I think I stalked and hunted you down and made you talk with me on the phone. I think that's how that happened.

I love that. How H2H is that? And it was great because we were going to Colombia, and how many people do you know in Colombia? I don't know that many.

Well, now you know a few, right?

What?

Now you know a few, right?

Yeah, now I do. Now I love Colombians. I would love to go back. But we got a chance to meet, we both keynoted at this wonderful conference, and I got a chance to really hear about what you're doing and what kinds of things you've done in your career and how you've made a difference. Also the book and now books that you've written, and so I think it's time that we talked publicly about your fun book. Yeah. Well, now your newest book, which is called Extraordinary Experiences. But more importantly, let me do a quick introduction of you. I'm going to pull my intro up. Denise initially cultivated her brand-building approaches through several high-level positions in advertising and client-side marketing. She served as a lead strategist at advertising agencies for things like Burger King and Land Rover, and as a marketing leader and analyst for Jack in the Box restaurants and Spiegel catalogs. So Denise went on to head Sony Electronics' first-ever brand office— that's interesting, I didn't know that they even had a brand office— where she was the Vice President and General Manager of Brand and Strategy and garnered major corporate awards. She's run her own firm as an independent consulting partner since 2004. She wrote a book called What Great Brands Do: The 7 Brand Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest, and now her new book, Extraordinary Experiences: What Great Retail and Restaurant Brands Do. So that said, welcome Denise, how are you doing?

I'm doing great.

How's your day going?

Yeah, it's great. So I'm based in San Diego, and normally I say sunny San Diego, but it's actually kind of gloomy It's kind of rainy today, but you know, you can't have perfection 365 days of the

year. Yeah, that's true, huh? 364 is fine.

Right, right. So thanks for telling everyone about my book. I thought I'd bring a copy so everyone could see it, What Great Brands Do. This is kind of my first and main attempt at sharing what I know about brand building. And then as you said, I just recently published a short ebook, Extraordinary Experiences. What Great Retail and Restaurant Brands Do, and that just came out last year as well. So I'm so excited to talk with you all and to share insights. I've been looking forward to this actually over the break, so this is a great way to start the new year.

Awesome, awesome, I think so too. So tell us a little bit, let's talk about your first book a little bit and talk about building brand experiences. I'm actually curious, before we jump into just overall branded experiences, how brand experiences maybe has changed over the years, kind of a before, during, and after, or past, present, and future. How has it changed since Mad Men days? I mean, what is your— you know, now Before you would have people who couldn't tweet, and now anybody can tweet, so branding experiences are so much different. What else am I missing? How do you see branding experiences?

I would say there are probably, if I could think about it, maybe at least 3 main changes that have happened. One is the one that you just talked about, which is I think that communication is now 2-way and multi-way, whereas previously it was just kind of one-way from the company out. So I think that's one change. I think another change is that there are a lot more ways to experience a brand today. So before it might have just been a single product that would be the embodiment of the brand and that was it, whereas now you have lots of different products, services around those products. You might have a retail or in-person or human experience. And then I think the third— Yay! Only the first day back, I'm a

little slow at this right now. It's okay, it's getting back into

the swing of things. Of things. I think the third way is probably the most important, and that is that I think brands and brand building have shifted from being only an external-facing message or image or even like a reputation that you manage externally to actually being an internal management tool in the sense that companies are really saying, hey, if this is what we want our brand to stand for, we can't just run ads that say that, we actually have to operate our companies using that identity as a filter for everything we do. So we are actually going to use our brand to drive, align, and guide everything we do. And so I think that's the most important and most fundamental shift in that brands have become less of a message and more of a management tool.

So you talk in both books, the thing I love about what you do is you case study. You are probably the most focused— I mean, I read your bio and obviously you haven't just worked on the outside, you've worked on the inside of brands, and now you've kind of come full circle and, you know, really kind of looked at it from both angles, which is awesome. I love that. And then you went and you case studied them. What are some of the— what's one case study that you just die over, like you can't believe you got not only access to it, but the research came out so awesome and you learned so much. What kind of learnings did you take away from it?

Oh gosh, there are so many, but I will probably say—

I know that's like asking you to talk about your favorite children.

I know, I know, it's so hard. But one thing that I think, you know, a brand that has continued to excite me and be something that I want to talk a lot about is Shake Shack. Okay, the burger and Shake Shack, right? Yes, I love the food, right? You've been there before, yeah? Yeah, yummy. We're getting close to lunchtime my time, and so I'm going to start drooling in a moment, I think. But you know, what was great is that I met Randy Garutti, who is the CEO of Shake Shack, a few years ago when he and I were speaking at the same conference. This was back when Shake Shack was really small. I want to say that maybe they just had a few restaurants in New York. And I was really— I had heard of them before. I heard about their kind of cultish following and all the huge lines. And after hearing him talk, I was like, this is a brand that I'm going to pay attention to because I think there's something very special here. And through the years, it's just continued to grow. It's continued in its popularity. It had its IPO. It was very successful last year. And it's continuing to expand, and I think it's just a great story of how the company that just wanted to do something very basic, burger, fries, shakes. I think now sometimes they are testing a chicken sandwich, but a very basic menu, but this extraordinary experience that people just love. And I just think it's a great success story.

Yeah, oh my God, and you've obviously had a Shake Shack burger.

Oh yes, so my story is the first time that I went to Shake Shack, so I'm like, okay, I've heard about these really long lines, but if I'm going to buy into this brand, I need to experience it fully. So I'm going to go to Shake Shack at like 10:30 in the morning. It doesn't open until 11, but if I get there at 10:30, you know, it should be okay. And this is like in New York, so it's like 7:30 Pacific time. I'm trying— I'm going to go eat a burger, but I'm like, okay, fine, I'm going to do this. I go and there's this huge line already formed, and I was just like, you've got to be kidding. Okay, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to stand there. And I went through the whole line and it was just— it was— Awesome. Just a great product, but more so just like the vibe and the atmosphere, the people, the service is just great.

Yeah, one of our previous guests, Shanda Maloney, she heads up social for UFC, and I met her at one of her UFC fights which Cox Communications hosted, and we went afterwards, all of us, a group of us, to Shake Shack on Las Vegas Boulevard. She asked us all to go there. She said, if you're going to go anywhere, this is where we're going to go. We went and we had way more than one burger. We were just like, oh my God, this is crack. So now I'm curious, what— I mean, so obviously there's a lot of things that make up a brand, but what do you feel like is the winning— is there a winning formula?

I don't know if I would call it a formula so much as an approach. You know, I think that the very first thing that I think all great brands have in common is that they are crystal clear about what they stand for. You know, what is the thing that is unique and compelling and valuable that they stand for, and then they bring that to life and express that and demonstrate that in everything that they do. You know, we talk about kind of the standard examples of like Nike and Starbucks, Apple, all those brands, but I think the reason why we talk about them is because everything they do is so on brand. central to their approach. And I think what happens on the flip side is that a lot of other companies aspire to be great, but they don't take that same sense of focus and commitment and discipline that we see great brands do.

And one of the things, one of your, I think, 7 brand building principles.

Yes.

I don't know if we have time to walk through all of them, but one of them that I— we can certainly try, but one of them I One of the things that I really thought was interesting was that great brands ignore trends. That one kind of stood out to me because if anything, brands are trying to be analytical about what's working.

Yeah, I think there's a difference between being informed by a trend and following a trend. And I think that great brands are very attuned to what's going on out there and they have sometimes very elaborate and sophisticated systems to monitor everything that's going on out there. But they don't necessarily jump on the same bandwagon and say, oh, well, we're going to do this because everyone else is doing it. Like, for example, going back to the Shake Shack example, let's say because everyone's health consciousness has been raised, there's a lot of fast food restaurants that are trying to do all these low-calorie, natural, very healthy kinds of products. And Shake Shack could say, oh, we're going to promote ourselves as a healthy brand because that's what everyone else is doing. But that's not consistent with what Shake Shack stands for. Now, their products are, I think, very natural, and so I think that there is some healthfulness to them, but their positioning is very different. And I think that what happens a lot of times is people see a trend and they say, oh, we're going to jump on that. But what I found is that great brands actually ignore ignore the trend and sometimes challenge it. You know, in the case of Chipotle Mexican Grill, they were started because Steve Ells challenged Taco Bell and all the other cheap fast food players that were out there and said, hey, we're going to do something totally different, a little more upscale, a little more valuable, a little bit better experience. So they either challenge trends or they just look in a totally different direction. I mean, think about in the transportation category, for example. So there are all these rental car companies that were out there and then And then the smart cars and the car sharing services came in with Car2Go, and so that was great. But then Uber comes along and says, you know, we're not going to look at this from a transportation perspective. We're going to say, what do people really want? They want to be able to summon this car at the snap of their fingers, and we're going to make it a very personalized seamless experience. And in that way, they created a whole trend that now everyone else is trying to follow. So that's the difference. I think it's being very informed about what's going on, but then deciding really how do we use that information to advance our own cultural movement, our own trend.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, just even with that example of what you're saying, they're taking a hamburger And they're creating a new business out of this commodity, if you will. I mean, it's a hamburger and French fries. Right. And so, you know, what makes it so that another competitor couldn't come around and take a hamburger and French fries and do something again different? And if you look at the last God, 10 years, just like you're talking about, God, Five Guys Burgers, In-N-Out, and now Shake Shack. Mastering it. I mean, they just took a hamburger and french fries and they've reinvented it however many times, which is so exciting. Now I'm curious too, how do you see a personal brand versus a business brand today versus 5, 10, 15 years ago. Where does it fit or where do you stand on that?

I think there are a lot of parallels. One of the things that I talk about is that great brands start inside, meaning as a business you start brand building by cultivating a strong internal culture and then you go express it to the world. You don't advertise before you actually have done the thing, right. And I think in the same way from a personal brand standpoint, I think there are a lot of people out there who think, oh well, my personal brand, I need to wear the right glasses, I need to use the right equipment, I need to have the right avatar. And it's like, well no, you need to first start inside and figure out what do you value the most, what is your reason for being, what is the unique value that you create for other people. You need to be very crystal clear about that. And then once you have all that, then you can look for ways that you express that through the way that you look or the things that you use, whatever. But I think oftentimes people want to kind of jump to all of the symbols of what you stand for as a brand, as a person, rather than what do you actually stand for as a person. What really is your reason for being? Why should I listen to you? Yeah. So I think there's that parallel of start inside, really make sure that you're First before you go trying to live a certain way or look a certain way.

Yeah, that's great advice. It's not always easy. I mean, with our company, we're small enough that I think, you know, I would— anybody who wanted to build their brand, I'd say go for it. I mean, why not? It's going to help everybody. But you start getting into Midsize or even enterprise companies, it starts to get a little harder because then rules and regulations and here's what you can do and here's what you can't starts to get a little more challenging. Do you have any advice for how to make it not so challenging besides don't go work there?

Well, no, I think that one of the reasons why it's easier— Don't work

for Matter?

I'm trying to make a point here, I'm trying to answer your question right.

I was on a roll and I had to go for it. Sorry, go ahead.

I think the reason why it's easier in some ways when you're smaller is because you are the brand and the people you work with, you're so close, you're so closely aligned, you all have a common mission, common vision. You can give feedback and share ideas in real time, very honestly, very direct. And so your brand, that clarity of your brand, I think is fairly easy to achieve. What happens is when you start adding 20, 30, 40, 100, 1,000, 10,000 people is that this understanding of your brand and the ability to connect and align on your brand becomes so much more difficult, right. Yeah. Because the CEO, in fact I was just dealing with this with a client of mine, they are a grocery store chain that has around 200 units and they are going to be expanding to 2,000. And it's like the CEO can't go around and be in every store the way that he used to. And so I think what you need to do is first of all, you develop tools for your staff, your employees. Tools that help them understand what your brand stands for, why, how are you different and why that's important, who your primary customers are and what they want and need, and so you make sure that everyone in the organization has one common understanding of your brand, what it stands for, how you want it, your brand strategy. And then you give them other tools to help them make decisions that are on brand. So your research and development group needs to have a set of boundaries in which they are developing new ideas and innovating, but that needs to be informed by the brand. So you kind of build this brand sandbox and you say, okay, here is a creative space that you can play in, it's defined by the brand and you help them figure out what is that new product pipeline within that sandbox. Same thing like with your salespeople, okay, so these are the customers that we're going after and here's how you qualify a customer so that you determine whether they really are the kind of customer that we want, that we're seeking after. So you give your employees tools and training and engagement So that they truly can take your brand and actually use it in their daily decision-making and actions.

Yeah, communication is absolutely key. Now one of your other ones that stood out was great brands never have to give back. And all I kept thinking when I read that is screw you, our product is good.

We

don't need you to tell us what you think. But I don't think that's what you meant.

I think Apple is the only company that could do that.

Right, you will like it. Yes.

So you know, I think that this term give back has— it's kind of problematic. I mean, we use it all the time, but if you really think about it, it kind of implies that you've taken something that then you need to give back. And I think that companies shouldn't be in the business of taking things from people anymore. I think businesses should be in the business of creating value in everything that they do. So it's not about, okay, well, we're going to operate our restaurants in one way and then we're going to make a charitable contribution to make up for the bad way we've been operating our company, or we're going to do a cause marketing initiative so people think that we really are socially responsible. It's designing your business at the very core to actually make a positive social impact. And so that can be as big as GE making all of these investments in sustainable technology that creates sustainability for the environment. It can be as big as kind of, you know, like business units that are dedicated towards reducing your environmental footprint, or it can be as small as running your restaurant so that people get a good meal that they can have with their families and really enjoy it and not feel like they're being ripped off, they're not being served by employees who are disgruntled because they're not treated well. There are all sorts of ways, big and small, to impact your community, however big or small that is. And I think that When you do that, if you're making a positive impact on your community, giving back becomes kind of a non-issue. You're always doing good things for your community.

What's the most radical thing that you've done in your career that in one of your past companies or as a consultant that you've done that helped kind of to encompass what you're talking about, you know, in a time that that, you know, man, or maybe it was feedback that you received from a customer or out of a campaign that just proved that brand experiences really does work.

Yeah, hmm.

I kind of put you on the spot with that one.

You did, I have to think about that a little bit. You know, I mean, I will say like my experience at Sony I think was very formative, because when I was hired, so to your point when you were reading the introduction They basically hired me to be their first ever brand person, and this was back in 1999. So I was kind of surprised when they recruited me that they didn't have a whole slew of brand managers that were kind of responsible for the Sony brand. They never had to have people like that because the Sony brand had just been built off of their products and was very successful. But I came in and the president and the chief marketing officer at the time had started to say, you know what, maybe we shouldn't be taking our brand for granted. This is right before Apple came out with the iPod and iTunes, but there was already some indications that the market was really changing. So they said, okay, we want to revitalize our brand, make sure that it's strong and that we are justifying the price premium that people associate with our brand. That's probably the primary way that you could tell that Sony had such a great brand is that people were willing to pay more for it. But you know what was really interesting is when I got there, instead of launching this great brand campaign and oh, we're going to do like, we're going to get some big celebrity and we're going to do some big shoot and you know, just kind of blow the doors off of a brand campaign, we decided no, we're going to actually do things differently. We're going to take an internal, an inside-out approach. approach. We're actually going to work internally to make sure everyone in the organization understands what the Sony brand stands for. I worked a lot with human resources on not only their recruiting and onboarding, but then also training and developing leaders so that they could support the brand. And so it was a very different approach to ensuring brand vitality or brand revitalization. And I think that ultimately that Our efforts were successful for a while, but ultimately then you know what happened. Apple came on and Sony just kind of, I think, lost their way when they were threatened by Apple. But I think at least for the first few years, I feel like we really sustained the momentum that Sony had created by ensuring that we really had the strong brand alignment and integration internally.

So just going to take a quick second here. Yes. We're having an awesome start to #H2HChat. 2016 is now ranked number 46 and trending in the US on Twitter. So congrats to everyone, and thank you, Denise. Yay! This is epic that we are killing it. And thank you everybody out there who's tweeting, because that's your tweets that are doing that. That's awesome. I really appreciate it, you know, for helping to extend Denise's voice and your own ideas and opinions, and keep it coming. And that said, I really would like to encourage you all to ask questions using the hashtag #H2Hchat. Ask lots and lots of questions in the next 5 minutes because Suzy is going to repose those questions back at Denise here starting in 5 minutes, so definitely make sure that you get your questions in. And in the meantime, Denise, I didn't mean to interrupt you because it was really good stuff. I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned all the great things that were going on on Twitter. Now I am curious if we can kind of wrap up this segment in the area of metrics. Or how you measure, maybe not metrics, maybe you should say how you measure a brand and what your opinion or your ideas are there on how you have and will continue to maybe in new ways to measure brand experiences.

Yeah, well I think that there are both quantitative as well as qualitative measurements. So the quantitative ones, I kind of alluded to this before when I was talking about Sony, but I think your ability to command a price premium is probably the biggest indicator or best indicator of your brand power. So I think from a pure quantitative standpoint, if you have equivalent product, you know, you have like a Monster energy drink and you have a Red Bull energy drink and Red Bull can actually charge 3 times as much as Monster. To me that means that you've got a strong— Red Bull has a stronger brand. So there's that quantitative measurement there, and then even at a kind of higher, more sophisticated level, there are all these sophisticated financial valuation methods that companies like Interbrand and Millward Brown do to quantify the additional market cap that you as a company have because you have a strong brand. So there are certainly measurements in that regard that help you understand quantitatively what the value of your brand is. I think there are all sorts of qualitative measures in the sense of what do your consumers, what do your customers say. You should be doing some sort of brand tracking that helps you understand, do your customers feel an emotional attachment to your brand. Do your customers recommend you to their friends? Do they actually advocate for you to their friends? Are they satisfied and wanting to not only stay with you, but wanting to engage with you more? Those are all kinds of measurements that you can get from consumer surveys that I think give you more of a qualitative sense of, are you really developing that kind of strong emotional sustainable, valuable connection with customers.

Yeah, so I hear you on the qualitative versus quantitative. That's always a hard balance, especially when you have management that may swing one way or the other or both, and trying to do both is always hard. I think that brand ambassadors or brand managers Managers probably have one of the hardest, if not the hardest job in any company because it is so mixed and so hard to balance the two between what the expectations are versus what you think needs to happen. Yeah. But at the end of the day, man, Shake Shack makes a great fucking burger. If you don't say so

yourself, right?

Measure that. Yeah,

really.

You know what I mean? Like, there's a line out the door says something, you know. Right. So just kind of a closing question before we take the questions from everybody out in the audience is, What do you see coming? What's new? What's exciting in the next 5 years or couple years that you think will be new for brands? I know part of what I've been loving over the last even just few weeks, I am so freaking addicted to Snapchat. I'd love to see Snapchat— I mean addicted to Snapchat. It's almost like a Shake Shack burger to me. And I'm like, I'm spending too much time. I think my wife's on here, she'll tell you that I am like, I'm always on. Here, let me Snapchat this. Here we go. Alright. So what kinds of tools or experiences or things can we kind of look forward to, do you think, that will make a new branded experience, a new fit within your 7 rules

here.

By the way, my Snapchat handle is Bryan Kramer, Bryan, B-R-Y-A-N, K-R-A-M-E-R. Connect with me, I love Snapchat. Okay, sorry, go.

I think that's awesome, Bryan, that you just did that, because look how fanatical you are about Snapchat. That to me is like, wow, that's a brand relationship that's so valuable, and you just told thousands of people about it. I mean, Snapchat, you know, kudos to them for having a customer or user like you, that's pretty awesome. You know, I think that it's so hard to predict specific technology or specific tools. You know, I will say that I think that this whole area of experience will, has been and will continue to grow in importance and evolve kind of in the way that we've experience brands. I think that this kind of line between, well, is that a brick-and-mortar store or is that an online brand, I think that those lines will blur and it will just be like you'll just have a brand and the brand will be everywhere. And you'll have lots of different experiences for that brand. They'll all be personalized to you as a customer, so brands will be able to use data to customize an experience. that is right for you, and you'll be able to engage personally with that brand. And so I think that, you know, like I said, it's hard to predict the specifics, but I do think this whole area of people having very immersive, personal, emotionally engaging, again human kinds of experiences with brands, that that's what's going to continue to be at the forefront for the next few years.

That's fantastic. Well, we will wrap up with— not wrap up, we still have a half an hour, but at the end we will have a way for everybody to connect with you and to get more information, to get your books. But I can't thank you enough for getting on HJH Chat and doing this. And now for the nice fun round of questions. I'm gonna pass the baton over to— Can't wait. To Susie. She is a lot of fun, so I'm very excited to listen in, and I'll jump in from here to there.

Alrighty. I will just say there's a reason that we are trending this week. We have some awesome conversation going on. So please keep those questions going. I will continue to curate them as we go. Denise, we have I can't wait. People are geared up and ready to go.

This is awesome.

Let's go ahead and I want to continue with moving back to the question about personal brands. We have Nancy Rubin who is one of our original H2H chatters. Thank you, Nancy. Happy New Year to you. She wants a little bit more information on this. She says, how do you balance strong personal brands with a corporate brand? Do you blend them? Can you blend them successfully? We talked a little bit about, say, Peer Matter, small business. Bryan has his brand. We do all this stuff. But let's talk about those companies that have several thousand employees.

Unfortunately, I don't have a really good answer. I just want to be completely honest and say this is something that I haven't quite figured out yet. I do know particularly for people that are in sales positions with companies, they have their own personal brand that they're trying to build up and promote, but then at the same time they're trying to sell certain products or services for their their company, and it's kind of like how closely do you integrate them, how closely do you align them. I find just by personal kind of observation anecdote that it's the people who develop their own personal brand, kind of really cultivate it more kind of from a thought leadership standpoint, that they are the ones who I think really establish themselves so that regardless of whether they are with this company that they are with now or whether they move to another company, that they are able to kind of still have this sense of value creation that they are doing for people. Like a great example is Jeff Hazlett, who used to be the CMO at Kodak, you know, and so I think he had been developing his own I know Jeff was the CMO

of Kodak.

Yeah, I'm hoping I'm saying that right. Yeah, you're probably right. I'm like, oh my gosh. So he was CMO of a big technology company before, right, but he was developing his own personal brand and at some point he left, but his identity wasn't so connected with the company. Certainly I think he has valuable experience and insights from that experience. brands, but he's been able to kind of transfer that into his own personal brand, his own thought leadership. And so I think that, you know, like I said, I haven't really quite figured it out, but from my own personal observation, it seems like you really look out for yourself and really develop your personal brand independent from your corporate brand so that over time, you know, you have something that you're creating on your own. I don't know.

Yeah.

If other people have opinions or perspectives, I'd love to hear them because This is something that I still struggle with.

It's definitely, you know, it seems like an evolving thing, right? Everyone can more and more have their own individual voice out there. In some ways it's the great flattening effect of social media. It can be a brand out there and then an employee out there. And in some ways, you know, we've seen employees have— there's a reason for employee advocacy, right? People trust employees more. So I think that's a great answer and appreciate your honesty, right? No one has the answer here. That's why we have a conversation. So kind of keeping on with the employee thing, a great question from Christy. Happy New Year, Christy. She says, what's the best way to define your brand and translate that to your employees? Internal definition. What do great brands do here?

Right. I think to define your brand, you really need to boil it down to what is the ultimate purpose or reason for being. Some people call that a brand essence, some people call it brand purpose. I'm kind of agnostic about what you call it, but you need to be very clear about why do you exist. I think it needs to be said in very human terms. It needs to be very relatable, understandable, accessible terms. It can't be, we exist to make money. I think making money is is a great aspiration for a business, but that's the end. And I think that you really want to think about, you know, everyone can make money or everyone should be able to make money. What is your unique value that you're creating that will enable you to make money? So I think that you need to have a very— that kind of clarity and that really relatable, understandable purpose. And then I think you need to make sure that people internalize it. So I run a lot of brand engagement sessions where we are basically bringing either by department or sometimes cross-functional groups into experiences where they really engage with what does this brand mean. So this healthy living— this grocery store I was talking about, they are all about healthy living. And so really having different groups in their organization think about what does that mean, like healthy living From a product standpoint, from the services that we provide, from the store experience that we create, the content that we provide on our website, the partners, the vendors that we work with, the way that we interact with our community. And getting them, getting actual employees to process through this. So it's not just one way where you as the CEO or you as the brand person are telling everyone in the company, this is how we do our brand. Right. But it's rather, this is what our brand stands for. Now you expert in this area, let's figure out how do you actually bring that brand alive. How do you actually make this brand real. And having them come up with the ideas and having them come up with the decision criteria about, well, we really should be doing this, we really shouldn't be doing that. Having people engage with your brand in that way is the most powerful thing, and it's very empowering in the sense They're not trying to follow a bunch of rules that you gave them. They're trying to figure it out on their own. I think that it's been very successful with the clients I've worked with.

I love that. I seriously love that concept. It's so important you get that buy-in and that's worth everything.

Yeah.

We have manuals, sex manuals.

Right. Especially because the folks who are in their positions know their context. Better than you do, right. So you want to take advantage of that. At the same time, you know, there's been a lot that's been written and talked about, about the new generation of millennial workers that are coming into corporations. And these employees want to give their ideas, they want to be engaged, and they're not going to accept you telling them this is what our brand stands for and this is what you need to do. They're going to have great ideas and they're And so why not tap into that?

Yeah, absolutely. Jason has a great question. Happy New Year, Jason. He wants to go— let's now talk about the client/customer side. He says, how can a brand inspire clients and potential customers without being too salesy? Where's that line?

You know, in some ways I think it really is your approach in the sense that if you think about, I'm here to sell something to you, that will come through in your communication, the way you engage them. But if your approach is, I really want to understand what you need, especially like in a B2B sense. In fact, I'm going to be speaking to a client's kickoff meeting in a couple of weeks, so I was just on the phone with them this morning. They're making a whole shift from a product-driven approach to a customer-centricity approach. And you know, their whole thing is we need to really understand what our customers want and need and how our customers help their customers be successful. How do they actually want to do that and then work backwards from there and say, okay, well this is what you are trying to do. If you are making your customers successful, then how do we make you successful. successful, and then how do we apply the products or the services or the offerings that we have to do that. So I think it's starting from a different point as opposed to starting from, this is what we have to offer, you know, do you want to buy this or not, to saying, what are you trying to do, what's really important to you, and then how can we help you do that. There's definitely an emotional component to everything also. And I would say this not just for consumer goods, not just for luxury brands, but even like B2B technology purchases, there is definitely still an emotional component that a B2B technology buyer wants some sort of sense of confidence and affirmation. They are trying to position themselves within an organization to be successful, so if you really relate to someone on an emotional level I think that is so much more powerful than trying to push products on people. That's why one of the brand principles I talk about in my book is that great brands avoid selling products. They're not pushing products, they're actually engaging people emotionally, and then the products just become a part of that relationship.

Yeah, yeah, I love— yeah. How many more ways can I say I love that? So this is actually a perfect transition, couldn't have scripted it better, into a great question from our friends at PayCompliment. Happy New Year, guys. So glad you can join us in 2016. They want to know, how do you differentiate between a great brand versus a great product? Is it essential to have both to succeed?

I feel like you could interpret that question a couple of ways, so let me interpret it one way, and then if I'm not getting it right, you guys need to tell me if we need to answer it a different way.

I'll monitor the Twitter stream.

Okay, good. So I think that your product needs to meet expectations at kind of a base level. I was just having a conversation with someone earlier today that said, if you create this great experience but then your product sucks, you really haven't created a great brand or created a great experience for that matter, because your product needs to perform at a certain level. But I think that what we are discovering is that it's hard, it's becoming increasingly difficult to compete only on product performance or product efficacy or product quality. You need to have other elements that really bond people to you, and that's where I think your brand comes in the sense that if you can relate more of these emotional values, if you can create a sensory experience that really engages people, if you can provide additional value around that product through an added value service or maybe an additional offering. All of these things I think then make this great brand that kind of surround what may be an okay product. I think, you know, we joked about Apple before, but you know, very few companies can have that kind of product leadership of just fantastic products. I think most companies can do a great job of having good products, but then creating this brand experience around that good product, that's really what's valuable. So like I said, hopefully that's what you were asking, but if you're not, let us know.

Yes, let me know guys, but I have a feeling that That's definitely— I have to agree. I keep feeling, I always have the Apple thing and I keep wanting to write a case study that is just on this anomaly because we always have to kind of put them over here with everything. So put it aside, mental note.

Well, Susie, I would read that if you wrote it.

There

you go.

I'll do some research. It's one of those things. Let's see. JS Gilbert, happy new year JS, wants to go back to what we were talking about in terms of ignoring trends. I have to say I'm very much in favor of this. H2H chat community people know I always say it's the shiny thing syndrome. You're going this way and then that way and other things. Yeah. He says, this seems to be the opposite of the advice many others give. Would you explain it a bit? I would phrase that, maybe what we can say, because you gave a good explanation, maybe what we can say is when should trends, how should we incorporate trends? How does that, when does, because the pivot is necessary sometimes, right? So live streaming occurs, how do you figure out when you should incorporate it? How do great brands do that?

Yeah, well I think that you need to be looking pretty far out. On the horizon. I think if something is like right in front of you, it's too late, you know, so you need to kind of have those methodologies whether it's using forecasting tools or, you know, like PSFK or Trend Hunter or, you know, all these great sources now that are out there that kind of really monitor far out things. Even like TED Talks and the TED conferences, the concepts that are introduced there are things that are pretty way off that I think Then you need to identify, okay, well, why is that happening? What is so intriguing that this is actually becoming something that's interesting? So maybe, you know, going back to the Uber example, I think that maybe it would have been saying, okay, so people are using— people are sleeping with their mobile phones, they have their mobile phones with them all the time. Why is that? Is there something in that that we can really tap into and leverage? And then I think it's also looking in spaces that are not your own categories. So I think what I kind of alluded to before is that Uber didn't come in and say, we want to be like rental car companies, and so what's going on in the rental car business, and so let's figure out how to do that. That better. Or we want to be in— I don't even think they thought that we wanted to provide transportation. I think that they thought, well, how are other brands providing great service experiences? How are other brands getting people what they want, when they want it, where they want it, how they want it, and then how would we do that? Oh, well, we could do that by having car services coming to pick you up. But it was kind of like not thinking so narrowly about the space that you compete in. So I always say like for this grocery store chain that I'm working with, I keep on going back to them, yeah, you want to know what's going on in grocery store trends and that there's going to be more sampling and more local sourcing and more store experiences and things like that. Yes, all that's great, but like I said, that's kind of like riding right in front of you and you need to be doing that. Maybe look at, well, okay, the whole trend towards urbanization is happening where people are moving from the suburbs back into cities. People are not making those big once-a-week grocery store trips anymore. People are sharing cars, they may not have their own transportation. Maybe we should be thinking about grocery shopping differently. And rather than thinking about building more stores and creating great experiences in our stores, maybe we need to be thinking about building more distribution centers that actually get groceries to people's houses.

Right.

So it's kind of looking far out on the horizon, so I always say look forwards, don't look backwards, and then kind of look upwards in the sense of kind of blue sky. What is this telling us, what are new ideas that we're getting from what we're seeing out there. And it's kind of being able to connect the dots in those ways that I think helps you challenge a trend or ignore a trend and actually advance something very different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. I think it's all about that balance, right. It's so important.

Yeah, you know, another example is Cirque du Soleil. So many years ago when they started, had they only looked If they looked at the circus business, I doubt that they would have created something very successful, but they looked at Broadway shows. They looked at other ways that people were being entertained and they said, hey, maybe there's something very different that we could do. So it's kind of looking at different things in different ways.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's innovation. What's the next thing, as opposed to once again chasing the shiny thing. Yeah. I like that very much. I want to go ahead and finish out and give plenty of time. There's so much content here. I know our audience would love to hear some of your pro tips. If someone— we're talking about great brands. We have lots of entrepreneurs, lots of people who are definitely looking to take their brands To that great brand. What are a few tips that you would give if someone wants to make that jump? What should they be looking to do, be considering?

Yeah, well first of all I alluded to this before, I think you need to start inside. You need to start by developing a strong brand-led culture. That means being very clear about what you stand for, what you will do, and then what you won't do. What customers you're for and what customers you're not for. Understanding that you're going to grow in a way that is healthy and sustainable and not growth for growth's sake. I think that really being very centered and focused about what your brand stands for as a starting point is the most important thing. And then from there I think you build out and you say, Okay, what are the different possible touchpoints that we could bring that brand identity to our customers through? And when you're starting out, it may be just a few touchpoints. Okay, so maybe we'll have a website or maybe we'll have some sort of social media presence. Or if you're a brick-and-mortar store, maybe we're going to have our store and then we're going to have flyers and we're going to have our signage and that's it. So you start out with very few touchpoints, but you try to innovate and think about what are different ways that we could use these touchpoints, ways that other people aren't using them that really attract attention to us. And then from there I think you kind of build out more and more touchpoints, but you're always using your brand as the center, as the core, as the decision-making filter for everything you do. And then ultimately, eventually, you'll get to running advertising and marketing and promoting your brand, but I think that you don't get to any of that until you've created these experiences and fleshed out these touchpoints in a way that really do bring your brand, make your brand real first.

I love that, and so once again we can come back to it's all about the human and the H2H.

Yes.

That genuine transparency. I always try to get some applause myself as well.

Yes, I think that's a really good point. All the little things that you will do for someone in person far outweigh the big things that you say or that you promise or that you broadcast in your advertising. So it's really about how do you make that human connection

I love it. I love it so much, Denise. I just want to say before I switch it over to Bryan, I personally am now feeling super pumped for 2016 and our community is as well. They're so excited. I definitely encourage you to jump on the Twitter feed after this because I think I'm very excited to meet you.

Cool.

Yeah, absolutely, there are some great questions on the feed here. Over to you, Bryan.

How can everybody find you? What's the best way to find you? What's the best way for them to purchase one or both of your books?

Right, okay, so if you go to my website, DeniseLeeYahn.com, that's where you can find out everything about me. And if you want to know specifically about this book, What Great Brands Do, just go to whatgreatbrandsdo.com. That's like a part of my website, but it will direct you straight to there. Or if you want to know about the Extraordinary Experiences book, that is DeniseLeon.com/extraordinary-experiences. But really, my website is the best way to start. And then I think Twitter is my main kind of social network, the place that I hang out and place that I really enjoy meeting people and connecting with people. My handle is DeniseLeeYon and I can't wait to get on the Twitter stream. I can't multitask and Suzy, I know you told me not to so I haven't been watching at all. Yes. But I'm drooling not only from the Shake Shack burger but now I'm drooling to find out what's being said on Twitter so that I can engage with everyone. So definitely look me up on Twitter and then look me up on my website, DeniseLeeYon.com.

Yes, I would definitely say the theme for today was great branded experiences and burgers are definitely going to happen today.

We've made everyone completely break their New Year's resolution. I mean, it's

over. This week or next week.

Yep, completely over. Alright, the diet starts tomorrow, guys.

That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Denise. This has been awesome and it went so fast. So we will definitely circle back with you and find out what you're up to here later in the year. Good luck with everything that you have going on. I'll see you on the road. We're, I think, keynoting at another conference together, so everybody stay tuned for that. It's in Mexico, so that should be pretty fun. Yeah. And I just tweeted out the URL to your website, so everybody check that out. And yes, we did have somebody find us today on H2Hchat.

Through Snapchat.

Through Snapchat.

Yay!

Snapchat does work, and I'd encourage everybody to get on Snapchat. If you don't do it, then there's something wrong with you. And so that's it. I hope everybody has a great week. I just invited actually this morning somebody that I think most everybody knows here, which is Courtney Smith, and she is also my wife, and she is writing a book right now, and her book is 21 Things Are— I should know this off the top of my head. Busted! How Creativity Is Like Sex. 21 Ways Creativity Is Like Sex.

Creativity Is Like

Sex. I just had I had a total brain fart. It's going to be awesome, you're going to love it. And so I'm trying to get her to up it to 22, but she won't do it. So anyway, come on next week, we're going to talk about how creativity is like sex. You can't get more intimate than that. More human. How's that? More human. Human on human this week. Human on human. So anyway, that was bad. This has been a fun Fun episode. Thank you once again, Denise. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Bryan, and thank you, Suzie. Cheers,

everybody. We'll see you guys next week.

Thank you.

Have a great week. Make it a good one.