What Do We Mean When We Talk About Brand? #BrandBuilderPodcast

There is a whole body of research out there, a whole field of research that shows that people form relationships with brands that are almost identical to the relationships that they form with other people. Welcome to the Brand Builder podcast presented by capitalism dot com. I'm Max Kerwick and I advise physical product brands to find their story.

I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and I invest.

In physical products brands.

A physical products brand is arguably the most predictable path to a seven figure business. And we advise them, build them, buy.

Them and sell them.

The show goes behind them, tracks their success and hands you the keys to what's working.

Let's dive in.

Hey, real quick. I'm doing a test in my business right now that I think you'll be interested in. We have a training called Million Dollar Brands and it helps business owners and entrepreneurs get clear on those first three to five products that they're going to build that will get to 25 sales a day at 25 to $30 and thus be a million dollar business. And we sell that for $297. And I recently had the idea of what if at the end of that training when somebody completed it and they filled out a form saying they know what their three products are going to be, they know how they're going to launch the products, let's refund them the cost of the training. Let's incentivize the action of actually making some decisions in your business and getting clear on your business. And I did this because someone challenged me with the thought of what would I change in my business if I only cared about my customer's results and I didn't care about profitability? And I immediately said, let's incentivize action. And then I said, well, would I really spend however many thousands of dollars a month I spent on Facebook ads or would I take some of that money and put it into a scholarship fund and then fund some of the cool ideas that came from my training. And it was like this whole world of creativity opened up for me. So this is a test right now that we're running. If you are starting a new business or you are still under that million dollar threshold or even that 25 sales a day threshold, then we have this training called Million dollar brands. That's $297 and it's refunded to you when you complete the training. And I figure if you walk out of that training, you're going to leave with such a clear business plan that you're going to want to work with us on ongoing so you can find this@capitalism.com brands and depending on when you sign up, we're also opening up strategic windows where you can qualify for a scholarship and have your business funded. So this is all an experiment. If I lose my rear end on it, we'll probably shut it down. But for now, you can find it at capitalism.com brands.

Hey guys, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Brand Builder podcast. I am your host, Max Kerwick, and I'm going to do something a little bit different today. You know, we do a lot of interviews, we do a lot of, you know, kind of our best of showcasing things from, you know, other speakers and entrepreneurs that we've had at the Capitalism conference and everything like that. But recently in the capitalism community, I fielded a question, just putting it out to the group, you know, hey, what would you like to see? Right? What, what, what would you like to hear more of on the Brand Builder podcast? And I got back a lot of really good information. So over the next couple weeks, months, I'm going to be working my way through some of those topics. But I was struck by one question that came up a couple times and it was, what do we mean when we talk about brand? And this is something that I, you know, frankly, I read that question and I started to just kind of kick myself in the face because I was like, I can't believe I haven't already talked about that. When I work with clients, it is very, very common that the first thing I do is just get on the same page about brand. But as we've been doing this podcast and as we've been talking with different entrepreneurs and people that work in this space in E commerce and building brands and things like that, I realized that I never really went back and did that level setting and said, this is what I mean when I talk about. And maybe it's come out in some interviews and things like that. But I wanted to take some time today and actually go through like, what do I mean when I talk about brands, right? I am a brand strategy guy. I help businesses figure out who their customer is and figure out the story that they can tell that they are credible in telling that is going to resonate with that customer. Right? But how does that relate to brand? A lot of people think of brand as maybe just their logo or their color palette. And maybe I have good packaging and things like that. And so I have a nice, snazzy looking packaging and so I have a great brand. And that really isn't the case. And that's really not what I'm talking about when I go through that. So I want to. I want to just kind of tell you what I mean when I talk about brand. And I hope that you find this helpful. If you have any questions about this as we go through, you know, feel free. The capitalism.com community is a great place to join to have this conversation, right? You can find it on Facebook or, you know, you can email me directly@max brand builderstrategy.com and I will repeat that at the end. But anyways, I want to go ahead and jump in. So what is a brand? Right? When we talk about brand, what are we talking about? Are we talking about a logo? Are we talking about a color palette? Are we talking about our marketing funnel? Are we talking about our copy? The amazing copywriter that we hired to write our emails and things like that? And the answer to that is no. I mean, yes, kind of. All of those things are important aspects of your brand, and they're important touch points with your customers. But. But they are not your brand. If you have a logo and a color palette and nice font and packaging and stuff like that, that is not enough. That is not enough to consider yourself having a great brand, right? When I'm talking about brand, I'm talking about the collective emotional response to your product or service. I'm gonna let that sink in for a little bit. The collective emotional response to your product or service, right? That means any sort of expectations that someone brings to the table when they engage with your brand, right? Any memories they have of using your brand in the past or engaging with it at some point or someone telling them about it, right? It's the stories that they tell about the brand to themselves that they tell about the brand to others that they see in your marketing, right? It's fundamentally a relationship. Now, how can it be a relationship? Right? There is a whole body of research out there, a whole field of research that shows that people form relationships with brands that are almost identical to the relationships that they form with other people, right? You can love a brand in a very similar way physiologically that you love another person, right? You can hate a brand in a very similar way to hating another person, right? You can be attached to a brand in a very similar way that you can be attached to another person, right? And so you have to think of your brand as a relationship partner, right? You are not. It is not just a transaction, right? In a perfect world, if you are doing everything right, you are not just selling something to someone one time, right? You are entering into a relationship with them that will last, that will span over months, hopefully years, a lifetime if the company builds to the point that you want it to, right? And so it's also a promise, right? A brand is a promise. You think of the products that you use, the brands that you love to use, right? I know what I'm getting when I get an Apple product, right? If I'm buying baby products, I know what I'm getting when I buy from Johnson and Johnson, right? Those brands come with a product promise of quality, of accomplishing, you know, achieving the things that you want that product to achieve, right? Of being backed by a guarantee and all that kind of stuff. So a brand is that promise, right? And most importantly, it is differentiation that is meaningful to your customer, right? And this is a big one. A lot of people think that, oh, I can make my brand stand out just by making it a little bit different, right? I see this a lot on Amazon in particular, right? Where people are like, oh, if I just make my thing a different color, then it'll stand out, out on, you know, I get it on page one. I get enough reviews, I get, you know, high enough ranking or whatever, and I'll just make it a different color and the picture will stand out, right? That might work as kind of a gimmicky thing to get people to. To draw the eye, and maybe you'll get, you know, more clicks onto the listing or every or whatever. But at the end of the day, most likely changing the color of something is not going to change it in a way that is meaningful to your customer, right? Changing something meaningfully, right? You have to figure out what your customer cares about, what they want, right? You can't just make a leash a different color, a dog leash a different color. But if you add some sort of, you know, snazzy features to it, if you actually change the design of it itself, right? To be more aesthetically pleasing and to be more ergonomic in your hand or whatever, that might be meaningful, right? That might actually solve a problem for them that might be actually something that they care about, right? But at the brand level, if you're just differentiating, if you're just being different for the purpose of being different, right? That's not going to contribute to the brand meaningfully. So I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about differentiation that is meaningful to customers. If they're stacking up your product, your service up against your competitors, right? They're going to see something different in a way that means something to them and makes them more likely to buy, willing to spend more and less likely to, you know, jump ship to a competitor. So why do we bother with branding, right? We bother because your product can't be your message, right? You can't come out and say, oh, I have the best cleaner in the world, right? Or, oh, I have the best dog leash in the world. And here's why. Feature xyz, your product can't be your message because there are other people out there who sell the exact same thing that you do. When I worked in tech, this argument was a little bit harder to make, even though it was equally true, right? People always have other options. They have the option of not doing anything. They have the option of solving the problem a different way, right? Not with a software tool or something like that, but lots of people in tech think, oh, I built this thing and it's unlike anything else that's ever been built before and it's so special. And, you know, I don't believe that there's something out there, right? With physical products, it's pretty obvious, you know, there are whatever supplement you sell, whatever skincare product you sell, whatever dog leash you sell, there are many, many, many, many, countless other competitors that are selling the same thing that you do, right? So if you sell your product, right, if your message is your product, you are absolutely, absolutely fucked. And you know, I don't say that lightly. That is the biggest risk to your business if you just become a commodity. So we brand because it is the only way to stand out, right? It's the only way that we can build a relationship with people that will last over time, that will cause them not to defect when a newer, other, different colored commodity comes around, right? And so we have to think about it as something that we do 360 degrees. And what I mean by that is that we have to think about brand across every single touch point that our audience might come into contact with, right?

It is a relationship that we have an opportunity to strengthen or weaken with each touch point. Think about it in this way. If you're a brand and you're just starting out, right, and someone's find, you have a really kind of entertaining Facebook ad that someone sees and they get interested and they click and it takes them to a valuable piece of content, right? Then later on they see another piece of valuable content and they read that. And then finally you serve them up an ad selling the product, and again, the ad's clever. They go to your listing page, your product page, and it's really well done. And it's got great pictures and it's got social proof and all that kind of stuff. They buy the product, it ships and arrives on time. It comes with really great packaging and things like that. And the product works exactly like it's supposed to, right? So that's like eight positive touch points. Every single thing that they've come in contact with at that point, you've strengthened the relationship. If you continue to do that, if you continue to build that equity, that's how you end up with a really strong brand down the road. However, let's imagine that they get the product and something is a little bit off, right? You have seven, eight positive touch points at this point. But like, oh, okay, well, the box was like a little dented when it came. And so I'm just gonna reach out to customer service and see if there's anything I can do about that. If they reach out to customer service and your customer service rep is really off the ball is just really rude, whatever. That single negative touch point has just completely erased every positive experience that they've had with the brand up until that point. Right? So that's what I mean when I say that it's a relationship that is strengthened or weakened with every audience touchpoint. And if you're not thinking about something as being brand facing, right?

It's.

You're thinking about it as being like, oh, it's just customer service, it's not marketing. So it doesn't have to do with brand. Wrong. If you have really great customer service and the customer service is an extension of the same experience that they got when they were reading the marketing, when they were consuming content, when they were looking at your product page, then you're going to continue to strengthen that relationship, right? And so from that standpoint, I don't like to think about, you know, a product company as being in the product business. Fundamentally, we're in the relationship business, right? And that's what makes your.

Your company more flexible. If you are in the relationship business and you know who your customer is and you know the relationship that you're forming with them, then you have a really, really, really powerful opportunity to, to do more than sell products, right. Maybe it also makes sense to do events around your products. Right? Easy example to that would be like a fitness brand, right? If you just sell fitness supplements or something like that, then you're in the supplement business and you're the same as everyone else. But if you're a really fun brand and you, you know, you have a really unique take and you know exactly who your customer is and you know they're going to respond to this specific type of competition or weekly fun run or whatever, you can extend that business into new and different areas than you would have been able to see otherwise. Right. And so reinforcing those relationship requires agreement on the brand direction. So you need to know where you're headed and you need to know what that relations looks like. And it also requires really solid, really consistent communication because again, every time someone gets something from you, that's an opportunity to strengthen or weaken that relationship. Right? So that needs to cover every single communication channel that someone might come into contact with. And really, that's really my biggest goal when I work with people is figuring out what that story is and then figuring out, okay, how do we bring that to life across every single touch point? Right. We want people, we want consistency, we want the experience to be excellent and we want it to be unique and we want it to be on brand and we want it to drive value in that person's life to the point where they feel like more of a hero in their own story. Right. I don't want a single shitty customer service interaction, I don't want a single shitty email to go out that is salesy and doesn't bring in our message and things like that. I want everything to be on brand at all times. Right? And that's how you build the equity that makes your brand valuable both in, in your customer's mind and as a result in the minds of a potential acquirer or an investor or someone like that. Right. That, that is going to see more than just your financial numbers. They're going to give you a better multiple there. So I like to say the best brands in the world again are built with a specific customer in mind. They have a singular promise that resonates with and elevates the self concept of that customer. And they communicate that promise consistently across all channels in a way that makes the customer the hero. So again, that does include things like a logo, it does include things like a color palette, it does include things like packaging, but it also includes everything else that a customer might come into contact with. So when you're thinking about brand again, what is a brand? A brand is the relationship that you have with your customer. A brand is differentiation that is meaningful to your customer. And a brand is something that elevates the self concept of that customer and makes them feel like a hero in their own story. So hope this was helpful. If you have any questions about this or if you have any doubts or anything like that about what you're building, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can join the capitalism.com community, which is a great place to do that, or you can reach out to me directly at my email address, maxrandbuilderstrategy.com thanks. Hope you enjoyed and see you next week.

Hey Brand Builders, we hope you enjoyed this podcast by capitalism.com check out our website for upcoming events and additional content about building businesses, building brands, and investing. My name is Max Berwick and my mission in life is to transform businesses into brands. If you have any feedback about the show, any guests you want to see, case studies covered, topics explored, or frankly, just any questions about branding in general, just shoot me an email at Max m a x brandbuilderstrategy.com Again, that's maxrandbuilderstrategy.com and I'd love to hear from you. One quick note, if you could subscribe to the podcast or even leave us a review on itunes. These things really do make a big difference in helping us book amazing guests and then also helping people just like you find the podcast. So thanks and we'll see you next time.

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