Episode 266: How to Craft a Visual Identity That Sparks Curiosity + Speaks Truth

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Kate Hallett, CMO at Harper Scott, is one of my all-time favorite guests because she's A) brilliant, B) she doesn't hold back. She's very forthcoming about her experiences and shares them freely. And C) she has experience as a client, a journalist, and a distributor agency. Today's a perfect example of this. Harper Scott, one of the industry's most respected brands, rolled out a new website and visual design. And in typical Kate fashion, she breaks down the process, the priorities, and her lessons learned. We chat about everything from how to use your brand to spark curiosity. We talk about speaking your truth and knowing your worth and really all the brand existential things that one encounters when you're suddenly faced with reexamining your message and your purpose. Even if you're not in the process of rebranding or refreshing your visual identity, Kate has some epic tips on valuing the work you do and bringing forth the best version of all you do on behalf of clients. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at CommsQ. If you haven't heard our guest today, Kate Hallett is the Chief Marketing Officer at the amazing Harper Scott. She has over 10 years of integrated marketing experience. She's a passionate storyteller with disciplines across multiple industries for enterprise and late-stage startups in both B2B and B2C environments. Prior to Harper Scott, she led go-to-market programs for companies like Sutherland Global Services, Yahoo!, and Time Inc. Before we chat with Kate, I want to tell you about our new newsletter called The Backpack. Backpack is an email newsletter that we send to you on the first and third Friday of each month. It features trends in merch, top articles and podcast episodes, and global news impacting merch life. It's a fun and informative newsletter that myself, Ksenia, and the marketing team put together for you. And we're thrilled to know that it must be hitting right. The open rates and click-through rates are nearly twice as high as the best performing newsletters in any industry. We're proud of that, but we're more proud of the fact that it's helpful and that it's a little pack of encouragement in your inbox. You can check out our latest issue and subscribe at commonscue.com/backpack. Today's episode is brought to you by CommonsCue, the work from anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonscue.com.

Now, here again is our friend Kate Hallett.

So, Kate, welcome back. Thank you.

It's great to be back. You rolled out a brand new website, brand new site with a— and this is a quote from you— a priority first and foremost in creating a visual identity that better reflects the quality emphasis and emphasis on creative experiences we create for our clients.

What was it you were trying to correct or improve upon from the earlier version? So many things. Most simply, I wanted to elevate the site to reflect the business we run, which is, as I said, very visually led. It's work that speaks for itself. You don't need a lot of copy. You don't need to overcomplicate the stories and the narratives when the product is as good as what we create. And I also really wanted to tap into customer experience, which I also think is really driven by experiences. And a website's no different, it's just in a different channel. So how do we create a meaningful, unique kind of wow experience for clients who may not get to hold and feel our product, but can, can get the feeling of what that product does in, in a real world environment? And I wanted it to be visual, and I felt the site we had was just not a reflection of where we were as a business and So, you know, less is more was the approach. Yeah. But less of the right stuff, which I felt was, you know, lacking full-screen dynamic imagery, you know, a mobile optimized site. All those things really matter and they're often the subtle things that create that overall really quick and seamless customer experience that I felt our site didn't have. And I thought if we didn't elevate that, then we would lose the opportunity to connect with, you know, customers. And I, I wanted to invite some curiosity into the site, which is how do we want people to want more? So how do we show enough? But not too much. Yeah. Then have people wanna know, want to know more so badly that they ask. And that's so far been working.

That's great.

Did your core, did your core strategy and brand position change from the old site to the new, or did that stay the same? Brand positioning stayed kind of at its core, stayed the same. I think some of the, you know, high-level messaging did, we did modernize it a little bit and elevate it, but it really just meant stripping back a lot of the extra words. So we took a lot of the fluff that I think was on the old site. And by fluff, I just mean, you know, there was a lot of text, so we made it— yeah, reduced text pretty significantly. But at our core, our business and our brand is still the same. It was just sort of a drill down into exactly who we are, what we're about, and what we do. So really, brand positioning stayed the same. We just kind of refined the language and focused on putting less words but the right words in front of the customer at the right time.

Yeah, there is not any superfluous words on the site. I love the simplicity, um, making the brand seem simple but also You get the complexity. It has an understated elegance behind the design, I thought. Also very, very clear. How did you and the team succeed in not trying to throw too much on the site? I mean, that's hard. You get lots of votes from lots of opinions and, and, uh, the comprehensiveness, like everybody wants to put everything. And we go through the same challenge. We actually have been doing some cleanup on our site too. And so, you know, we try to take all the votes, we try to take those into consideration, but then we ultimately have to Google it in the sense of keeping everything off the homepage, right?

Well, it's really interesting because it— well, first of all, I would say it depends on who you ask because I had— so we have an in-house e-com team and this was a really a labor of love and it was quite a long time. The poor team worked with me. They were amazing, really exceptionally patient because I am very smart in a lot of ways, but I don't know necessarily how I'm going to feel about something until I see it and know it when I see it. I know it's the right blend of copy and visuals and video, video, whatever that is. But until I see it, I can't. So we did a lot of revisions was how we got there. So we did a lot of like wireframes, like, and by a lot I mean we did months and months and months of work playing around. And so they would always say, can we get your bad ideas out on the wireframes before we go and build it on the site? And I was like, yes, we can do that. So that was actually really helpful because we got to play around with stuff and actually get our hands into the work. Pull things across, the things we liked from the current site, things we liked from the industry. So one of the first things I do is I have everyone that works on the website as a stakeholder or an actual, you know, someone that actually works on the dev or the design. Everyone brings their favorite 3 sites for consuming media to me that we go through on a call, what our favorite sites are and why. So where do we consume our own content? Great idea. Because ultimately we're vying for client atten— for attention. And attention from friends. Like the way we sit in social media is the same for a person as it is a brand. We're all fighting for people's attention. So I wanted to know from everyone else, what are the sites that keep you coming back to them? Yeah. And why? And for me, you know, it's like the New York Times does some really rich media content and storytelling, and I love those stories because I think the video and the visuals are as much a powerful tool for communicating as the words themselves. But it's all of them together that really matter. So everyone kind of brought their own personal touches and why. And then from there we kind of pulled in those things into those wireframes and played around with them because the site should reflect the business and the business is built by the people that work at it. And so I really wanted that feel and that input. Um, and then we kind of just refined from there, which is like, what makes sense? What do we like that just doesn't work on the site? It doesn't feel like Harper Scott, it's too It's too many clicks. It's too many— like, you know, a lot of this is pretty straightforward. You just have to get into the work, right?

And now I forget the question you actually asked. No, actually, actually, I love that you— the tactic that you have there, everybody bringing their favorite sites. And then you and I have nerded out on this before. We're both big New York Times fans. I almost wore my t-shirt that just has all the news that fits to print on the front of the t-shirt in your honor. But, but I love that. It's a really good tactic getting everybody's input that way because it's an easy way to get everybody's input. You get into the why.

Something I love is either you don't have to use it either, which is that you give everyone an opportunity, voice, and everyone, everyone should have input, but then you can go with what makes the most sense as a cohesive site.

Yeah. I'm also glad you talked about the wireframing, and there's a little dance between copy and design, obviously, and the wireframing and how that took a while for you to figure it out. And I agree with you, most of us are that visual. One of my favorite taglines is we are the brand behind your favorite brands. I loved that. Thank you. Why, why that one?

I'm just curious. Well, because I think when— so when I started, I'm a big messaging person because I am a big storytelling person. And, um, honestly, I can't really remember even what exactly it was, um, when I started, but I felt like when I started Harper Scott, the messaging didn't do us justice as a business. I think that there's so much about what we do that is too tactical in that we don't give ourselves enough credit. So, you know, and so I came in and my job was to actually give as a consumer and as coming from the client side, I was like, you need to speak your truth. You need to know your worth, which was, you know, we are the brand behind your favorite brands and brands are remembered by the stories they tell and the products they create and things like that. So when we are a huge part of a Sephora loyalty program, that means we are the people they trust with their customers, right? We put the product, the products they take home or the products we create for Sephora, you know, same for a lot of our clients, is the fact that we have their trust in there with their customers is huge. So I like being the brand behind your favorite brands because that's exactly what we are. Our job is to make them successful, is to tell their stories, create their products that create those meaningful connection to customer. But thank you.

I really like that line as well. Strong messaging. Yeah. Under the why, a few other faves I had. We build brand demand. That's a fantastic line. And then we are experts in the complicated. Under Quick Links, where you have normally have About Us, you have a heading titled Our Thinking, which is brilliant. Is this—

this is intended to be a blog, like, like your recent post celebrating B Corp? Yeah, so Our Thinking will be— is sort of a bigger— it's not just blogs, it's pretty much anything that reflects our thinking. So it's, it's as straightforward as it sounds. The goal here is to create a hub for thought leadership, so without limiting ourselves to just blogs or a certain form factor, I want to create a space in which people— because that's a lot of what our clients come to us for, is our thinking and what our opinions are, what we're seeing in this space. And a huge part of Harper and Scott is all about value delivery, right? How do we give value to clients in ways that other vendors can't and won't? And for us, a lot of that is the subject matter expertise our team brings, whether it's e-com or operations. So being the experts in complicated, or it's from a design side. All of that thinking really matters, and I think the website provides an opportunity for us to scale that thinking to clients in ways that maybe are easier for them to consume, which is, you know, I know that a lot of times you want it to be a live conversation, but we are built to be the resource for the customer, so we have to be on the channels and in the medias that they're consuming and when they're consuming. So, you know, having a hub on our website where that content and thinking can live will really serve that engagement with them. And I kind of think of websites as that long-term delivery partner, like it's just always on. So it may not in the short term that's dramatic and like significant. It's not going to change your business overnight, but it does create value in a channel that is super important. And over time it shows itself. Yeah, it's like the work that no one sees, but it's— it shows long-term return. Yeah. So that's the point of that page. But the experts in the complicated and the we build brand demand, those two kind of tenets came out of an RFP actually. So that messaging actually, this is an, but I had an all-nighter, my first all-nighter at Harvard's got like full all-nighter, didn't sleep. Oh no. The messaging came from one of our live pitches and I, we were going through this beautiful visuals and I just, I said, there's no, we need higher, more elevated messaging for how we speak to this stuff. And so they came out of like, you know, a 3:00 AM bender basically where I was typing away. But it's true. It's like we do, most companies don't do both. They do one really well, they do the backend logistics, complexity really well, but they don't care and aren't good at the front end, the design. We're good at both. We understand the front-facing side of the business and the customer, but we also are really good at the stuff that no one else wants to do, can do. We're experts in that, like in that complicated and in that speed. So I think those are two kind of core tenets of our business that I think we as a business I'm really focused on growing this year and building on.

We'll talk about this in part two of our conversation here. But I— the Our Thinking to me is brilliant because it's a repository for like you said, all the expertise that you have. So it can be something from your e-commerce team, it can be something around packaging, it can be something around design. I love that. Um, a sort of a two-part question. Tell us, and, and we— you can take a pass on this if you want, but tell us about your own, like, things like design and color psychology and why. And, and, and, and was there some thinking around the typology color choices, or were those kind of already cemented before you did all this?

So from a brand standpoint, they were definitely cemented. So I didn't touch, um, our company, sort of our aesthetic, our color palette, any of that. But what I did do was I brought in the experts. So that we did— all the content that we shot was shot by a photographer in a studio, local studio. And I sent, or I asked, and they are absolute rock stars, to really key members, Emery and Dawn, of our creative team who do different things but are really exceptional. And I asked if they would go on site and help us with the shoot. And initially everything was going to be shot on the same color background and things like that. And this is for the website itself, and they know the brand much better than I do. They both preceded me at the company, but also they're very close to it. But they also are close to the customer work as well, which is what we were shooting. So I trusted them. And on the day of the shoot, there were a few things where actually Don just called and said, we wanna play with color. For example, there's some site, some pages that have a backdrop of pretty aggressive color. And initially I was like, oh my God, I don't think that's a good idea. But I actually just said, I trust you if you think it looks good and it's on brand. I trust your judgment. And I, I know that and trust that they have a good sense of how things are gonna come out in ways that I don't and never will. Yeah. So that's kind of how we landed on it, which is that they know the brand and I trusted that. And I thought, if it doesn't, you know, if it doesn't work or it doesn't look good, we don't need to run it. But, you know, let's have some fun. So it really was a spontaneous move. But the brand itself was really not that much work for me in terms of, you know, brand building, because it's such a strong brand as it is. It always has. Right. Right. Oh, it's not easy, but it's the best position to be in is to have the strong stories, the strong brand, and your job is to really bring it to market.

That's the best. To be. Beyond the website, did you design other resources?

Was there a rollout with this redesign with collateral or campaigns or anything like that? So we're still doing some of that. So we are doing sort of a redesign of our capabilities, assets, all that sort of stuff. And we do do a complimentary, which we haven't rolled out on the site yet, but a monthly feature that will reflect like updated designs. But from a positioning standpoint, most of this stuff is in our like core assets, like capabilities decks and pitch decks and things like that that we're rolling out kind of on on an ongoing basis. But the website was kind of the, the starting point for, and once we had the brand kind of out in the market, my next goal, which we're working on now, is that storytelling, honing in on how to tell better client customer stories.

Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute, 'cause you mentioned that you have a phase 2 for the website and that's where you're at now, that it's about turning the new website into a hub for exceptional storytelling, focusing on client studies as testaments of their success versus writing case studies about ourselves. Which is what we do now. What's the difference? You, I think you, you and I know the difference, but I wanna hear you talk about it.

Yeah, this is the hill I'll die on because, and listen, it's not Harper Scott, it's every company, right? My last company especially. You join and your job is to tell stories, exceptional stories for your clients 'cause you do exceptional work. But you end up, often companies get into a place where they write the story about themselves, about how much work and effort it took to do the thing that they did. So, and I, I get why we are— why most brands fall into that pattern. But I, my— I see our job as being, you know, it's our responsibility and opportunity to tell our clients' growth story or their product story and to focus on outcome or moment. And I think people often think the story is in the delivery, and I often think the story is in the details. It's the story itself can be about, you know, how you landed on one color or a woven tag like that can be the You just have to know those little details and you don't need to tell the full ABCDEFG element of the story. So I really wanna build the site out to be, uh, this like beautiful kind of repository of small but meaningful stories and moments that reflect the ways in which we work, which is those attention to details. Yeah. Storytelling going forward is really about the right details and talking about why they matter, because that's why we matter in this space, which is that we are attentive to details that other vendors or partners are not, and we bring them to light, or we pride ourselves on bringing them to light. So I think stories should reflect that. They really aren't about, you know, oh, it took us, you know, so much time and work and effort to do the thing that we got paid to do.

It's about all the other stuff that kind of comes into play in a project. This is, this is why you and I get along so well, Kate. One of many reasons is because I've been preaching this for years. And the thing that storytelling is editing, for one thing. And second, for years I've asked distributors or agencies, you know, tell, tell me about your best project, recent project, and They're not telling the wrong story. They're telling the wrong story at the wrong time. They will often tell the story from their perspective as the sourcing agent. Yes. Right. And I was asking, tell me your best client story. And I'm asking the question I'm really asking is, what was that project for the client? What was that outcome? What was their experience like? Because you could tell there's 3 or 4 stories in everything. There's 2 things, 3 or 4 stories in every single project or more. You've got the sourcing agent, the person, distributor, their perspective on trying to jump through hoops and make it happen. Then you have the supplier and the manufacturer, then you have the client. You could have all kinds of partners involved in it. The other thing is like projects, especially in this industry now, are so complex. So you have the story beginning here and ending here.

You have to make an editorial decision on what part of this story that you're going to tell. 100%. Some, some readers want to read about how you're an expert in a complicated for X client or how they— because a lot of what is simple that we see is so complicated, right? Right. But there's also Some people also— people, I think one of the things is there's, unfortunately, for the world we live in, you need all of the options. Choice is a powerful thing of the user. People like to read to be entertained when they read. Others like to be educated. So my whole thing on the site is, is it an education information moment or is it an entertainment moment? I need content around that. Are you entertaining through a story or are you informing and educating? Because there are two different things. A Google search portal, like a Google search, is all about education. So having strong content that really speaks to that strategy around SEO and ranking your copy by putting the right words in the right places. That's an education piece. That's someone that's coming to learn an answer to a question they're asking Google. Yeah. Whereas entertaining piece is all about creating an experience that the person like is learning, but is mainly driven by feeling, right? Yeah. They're different, but they're really fun. I also think if you can't tap into this, product itself and the project ends up kind of missing. In a way, and I say that's a big thing for me to say, but who is the product for is the question I always ask. And it's not in our brief, but I just always ask it, which is like, who is ultimately receiving this handbag or the mailer? Because if we don't know that type of person, I'm like, I want you to know that person as if they're your friend or they're you. And then, you know, the stories you create out of those projects are more meaningful because people actually read content. That's the other thing is that the end result, it's consume content. That's why you create it. Yeah. And often I say, did you read this blog that you wrote? And often, it's crazy how often I hear from people, I read most of it. I'm like, well, if you read most— I think I said this in my last one— but if you read most of it but not all of it, how do you expect anyone else to give you their time and attention? Right.

You couldn't even finish it and you wrote it. Well, and there's— I'm so glad you talked about the difference between educational and entertainment, um, content so critical because, for example, we have a fun brand that has a lot of energy, but we also have a lot of decision makers who are CEOs. They're talking about strategy, they're talking about managing their teams, they're talking about execution. There are deep things that they need to get into, but we also have this fun brand that creates these great events that are fun and energetic. And so there's a— has to be a balance, and you can't over-index on either one of those. I think, I think you, I think you have to, as a brand, brand, provide both of those in this space that we're in.

I think in most spaces. I mean, I've, I worked in my last company, worked in a really, really corporate, um, business, very enterprise, very, uh, 40,000 people, very straighty 180. And I went in there and I blew that content up. Like, I, I loved coming in there and being from a magazine and then wondering what kind of salacious story I was going to write about the work that we do. But truly, every brand needs to know how to entertain. Like, you could be the most boring brand on the planet— not that I worked for a boring brand— but my whole thing there was it's not about effort, it's about entertaining the client, because ultimately that's how people make decisions— emotion. So if you have no emotion in your brand, people can't connect with it. It's not right. Yeah, like, you know, the person that gets on social media and only talks about themselves, no one likes that person. It's the same. So I think you have to be in both, and it also makes it a lot more fun for the people that work at the business, but also the clients to engage with you, because, you know, there are, you know, different strokes for different folks. But I think it's okay. I think most brands are afraid to be fun sometimes. I think they feel like they have to cater to both, but I think— I mean, they have to cater to one more than the other, but I think they should be both, right? Totally agree. Content doesn't have to be that complicated.

It can also just be content. Yeah, you can see your journalism background really come through with a lot of this too. It's just the core part of your DNA, especially, you know, you worked for major publications and magazines, and, um, that really comes through. Um, what other elements are you hoping to bring together into the site for part 2?

Are there other things that are big on your— Yeah, so I think one of the things that we didn't get to do this one that I really want to bring in is a lot more of our pre-design, so pre-final product, um, process. So one of the areas of site is really— I always say our product is our process, actually. And I think that part of our story, and it was actually the most challenging part of the site, and that's largely because I just don't think we have the story fully It's not baked out yet quite. And it was interesting to me because I am quite strong in a lot of those things, journalism, writing, narrative, messaging. But it was really difficult for us to articulate that story in that process. Yeah. In a way that felt simple enough for anyone to really understand it, which is like, how do we get from the starting point of a brief to the final product and the process of our creative team, our production team? That's a really complex story for us to tell ourselves. Yes. I know we're not there yet, but I think it's the next step is how do we convey with visuals, with video, with more media than just, you know, your standard rendering with 3D. But a lot of the things that we do for clients, I want to be able to pull those mediums in to tell the story of our process, which is like the sketching, the rendering, the revisions. All of that stuff is really kind of— I still feel like can be built out onto our site and showcase that we're not just putting product on a page. It's so much more than that. And that's really where Harper Scott shines. And that's probably the most important story that we'll tell. And we're not there yet. But the good news is, is we do it already. So that's— most brands have to fight their way through a story. The best part about Harper and Scott is that we do it. And now it's about going, how do we tell this with the right entertainment and education to get the client both informed and excited to want to reach out and work that process for their brand with us?

Especially Harper and Scott. But a lot of companies have a an undermined, under-discovered resource in their process and how they work. And we might take it for granted because we do it all the time. It might be a muscle reflex. We sort of put it under the umbrella of customer service. Well, that doesn't answer anything, right? We're known for our service and creativity. That's what people say all the time. What does that exactly mean? And, and because projects have gotten more complex, I think, than ever before, process is far more important now.

Yep. And trust doesn't come from a product delivery. It comes from the ways in which you get to the product. So all the relationship building, like trust, loyalty, like honesty, all of that doesn't come through, through a product. It comes through the way the relationship between the two brands working to develop that product. So that's why I also think it's super important. And it's also why I think I joined from a client side. It's like the details for brands matter. And so often when you put something in the hands of another, If you're Type A like me, you're like, oh my, all the things that are going to go wrong. My boss is going to yell at me if anything goes wrong. I'm going to get fired. I don't— all those things. But what's amazing is that Harvard's got— actually cares about all the details I don't actually have even in my head as a client. And I want that attention to detail to really come to life, not just in the product, but in all the steps of getting, um, you know, from where you put a tag or how something appeared, like all those things that I would never ever ever pay attention to, they handle it, our team handles it.

And I think that those details really matter and they come out in the process quite powerfully.

I love that the process is really the part where you cement the trust between you and the client. 100%, because you can't— and we've talked about this before, but all the things that go wrong, there are so many variables that are beyond our control. So you can sit there and go, I'm going to control like the supply chain challenges. And I said, no, what we're going to do is be as communicative and transparent about it. And that actually carries you so far. It's just life. Like, I often compare marketing to life, but it's the same thing, which is like, all you can control is what's in front of you and what you know or what you don't know. And I have found in this job especially, I don't know if it's the industry, this is me gonna— I'm just probably a controversial statement, but I don't know if honesty is something that maybe is— people don't get as often, but people just appreciate being told the truth and being kept up to date. And I have found that to be especially true in this industry, is they're not expecting it, but they're deeply grateful for it.

Do you think that's because, um, and we're— this is just conjecture, but I— do you think that's because we also just don't want to tell the client the details?

Maybe something really messy happened with the project and we're afraid to tell them those details. 100%. But also, yeah, I think it's classic. I don't think it's specific to us necessarily, but I do think it's that you don't want anyone to think anything's wrong. The truth is they're going to find— I'm always like, the truth, it just sets you free. Right. And I think there's a time and a place, and it's just communication. It's like core communication. I do think that's another— goes back to storytelling. But, and why, you know, the sales team sits under me is like, it's all about storytelling and communication. Yeah. And people value and appreciate more than anything honesty. And I do think that we have a tendency, everyone does, to want it to be everything went perfectly and we did everything. We don't wanna tell them anything, stress them out. But the truth is it's gonna stress them out anyway. And the other thing is it's too important to be anything but truthful because these are products that are sitting at the core of campaigns that these clients are, are working in their business. They have bosses, they have deliverables, and to not be upfront about it puts them in a terrible position, especially in an industry like, in an economy like this. I'm very mindful of the fact that these are important initiatives for their clients and the people behind the client that work on these things, and to not give them the, the trust is in the process and to not give them the truth and the solutions or what we're working— because you never also know what you're going to learn from a client, right? Here are what our options are. This is what we recommend. We know it's not, you know, it's not ideal to be where we are in these circumstances, but we have these three options. We're leaning towards this. What are your thoughts? Like, people actually—

I think that goes a lot farther than people think. Yeah. You know what I just realized is really essential with you, Kate, is that coming from the buyer experience yourself, coming from a journalism background, But you also have a high regard for the medium itself in the place of the client's life.

Yeah.

And I have noticed this, that the professionals who make this a profession and not just a hobbyist type job— and I mean the folks that really understand it as a part of the core concept within a client campaign—

are the ones who are creating a really new level of professionalism that I've never seen before. Love that. No, I 100%— it's, it's super important, and I think it's so easy to disregard it. It's just got— just product. It's pretty, right? So much more than that. People wouldn't invest in it and wouldn't be one of the strongest channels if it wasn't. Yeah. Also, once you put something out there, you can't take it back. Yeah, it's a great point. Like, product lives on until it doesn't. But for the most— like, especially in this space, is you put your brand or your logo on something, it's there. It's not going anywhere. You can't delete it and erase it.

You can't edit it. Yeah, so it's super important. I remember a vice president of a franchise company telling me one time, everything that we do— she said, she said this to me. Now keep in mind, we're the merch provider, the print provider, we're fulfillment house, e-commerce. And she said, Bobby, everything we do validates the investment these franchisees have made into this brand. And it was such a great thing for me to process because I thought, you know, I could have just said, yeah, we just ship their stuff for them. No, Every investment, everything that we do is—

it reflects that investment. It's huge. And we have a client that's like that. Through RFPs, I've learned this a lot too, which is just you just see how big, much bigger the space or the investment is than just— it's not just product, it's so much more. It's dollars, it's people's times, it's part of their day. Even status meetings with clients. I'm like, it's— you just— I think we underestimate it and we do so much of it that it's so easy.

To that.

But yeah, it's big. Um, last thing, a few things I want to ask you about. So if you were to advise someone else, um, if you were to advise others on how to— and this is too big of a question, but how, especially around how to reimagine their visual identity, how would you advise them to even begin? Hire an agency.

That could be solid advice. Is that it? No, I, I do think so. I think one of the things is, is I think bringing in at my advice would be to bring in outside counsel, which is you don't need to necessarily go, but do enough research with the people that don't look at your brand every day. Yeah. Um, because ultimately I think that's where it's so easy to get both stuck in your brand but also not reimagine your brand. If you work for it, you look at it every day. If you find people that have to see it from the outside in, which is ultimately where that brand, that re— you know, that reimagined brand identity is going to live, or visual identity is going to live, that input is incredibly valuable because your visual identity, if it doesn't matter to the— like, if it doesn't make sense to the wider audience or people that don't have the day-to-day context of someone like you who works there and lives in it, then it kind of fails, right? Which is— I would say that's probably my advice, is to seek the opinion of others who don't live and breathe the brand or the business that you work for. And I would say look at competitors. And I wouldn't say look at competitors necessarily because you should pull from them, but you should see what is out in the world. Yeah. You should also look, you know, going back to that thing I did with the team, which is like, go and look at what visual identities inspire you. Yeah. And then that's where I would start. So I would always start like bringing in outside counsel because that input is super important. They have no bias, right? They're just coming in to tell you what they see and what they understand from what they're looking at. And I think that is very important advice.

It's often not the advice you want, Yeah, but I think it's the best place to start. We also— great advice because we take for granted our expertise often because we don't understand. We're not in, you know, we're so in the weeds that we don't really appreciate what it is we do on a regular basis. Yeah. Or we resort— somebody used this phrase that was a great phrase. You're either creating an archetype or you are a stereotype. And I always thought that was a great, great phrase for a brand, right? In terms of branding, visual identity, because then we succumb to our own stereotypes. What do you think most of us miss when it comes to creating a strong visual identity? Is, is, are there patterns?

Like, I've noticed folks want to jump to visual identity before they get strategic positioning down first. Well, I always think it's— so I'm like a psychopath about some of this stuff, which is that I never look at something without the context of all the other things that are going to appear with that. So like, if you look at a visual, I could love the visual, but if the copy next to it is stupid and doesn't make sense, it's going to fail. So I always go, what's the— the strategic positioning and the visual identity both matter, but they usually matter in the same view. So I don't know if that makes sense, but basically think about it coming to life on a social post. This is usually how I explain it, is that I don't want anyone to read the same copy twice. I don't want anyone to see the same photo twice. And the way I think about it is content that you post on a social channel and then it links to your website, right? So you're clicking, you want someone to click onto your website. So often what brands do is they put the same header in the copy of a social post. So you know how there's the visual icon that has a photo and then there's, you know, a headline that's in the URL. Do you know what I'm talking about on social? Caption. Then they put more copy at the top. Yeah. Often all that stuff says the exact same thing. So I'm reading it like 3 different times and then I click onto the site and I look at the same photo and the same headline. So I'm like, now I've just read 3 different, you've given me 3 opportunities to say something else. You could tell a story, like the caption should complement the headline of the story and the visual should support that. Then when I click onto the site, I should see another complimentary visual and new copy because then you've already started the story., but usually people miss that. So they think the visual's gonna do everything. People don't consume that way. So I think it's looking at strategic positioning. Positioning to me comes first, always. Like the messaging, the words matter the most. The, the, the visuals I think are super important, but I also think that that area is challenging because people get really caught up in like the visual itself. Like, oh, is this, you know, corporate man that's like handing somebody a phone or smiling in a handshake, like really gonna meet the brand? And I think some of that stuff is about It's like bringing them together. So I think it's the combination of positioning and visuals. But I would say that at its core, positioning has to be in place first because if you don't have that and you don't know what you stand for, then you stand for nothing.

Yeah. I love the symbiotic aspect of what you just talked about because it's so important because sometimes I think we take copy as, as a writer, sometimes we take copy as an afterthought. You know, the time.

Yes.

And I know my friend Ann Hanley says— this shocked me when she first said it, then it made perfect sense. She said you should spend as much time on the title as you do on the body copy of anything. And it set me free.

I was like, oh, okay, that explains half my problem. My dad's in publishing. He said every time you read a question mark in a headline, it's not a story. It's not an article. You never read a story. So he has changed, which is that if you have to put a question mark in your header, and this is like us about promo, if it's just editing journalism. You're asking me a question with the headline, you shouldn't be writing the story because you don't know, because you're already putting— which is like a, here's a bold and salacious statement with a question mark at the end to save me in case I'm not right. And I just, I never— right. And the New York Times does it a lot. Most people do. But I'm always like, it should be confident, it should be concise, tell something meaningful.

If it doesn't, if you have to put a question mark, again, go back and rewrite it. Back to the New York Times, there's a great article out there about their A/B testing with headlines too, what they do with segmented audiences. They take the same article and they'll do 4 or 5 different headlines to different audiences to see how it performs.

It's an astounding study. I've been studying this since about like 2015 with the New York Times specifically, because they also do it with different types of content. So they'll do a video clip versus a GIF versus a photo. They'll do no photo and they'll play around with time of day. It's fascinating, but it's exactly the kind of thing that I wanna do with Harper Scott. I, you know, I think every brand should be thinking about themselves as like a media powerhouse, which is like, there's no reason they couldn't be. But I have loved the way the New York Times does that because everyone thought the New York Times was going to die, right? There was all those documentaries and articles. It was like the print is dead. Print was not dead. It was how people consume the content that was changing and evolving. And now look at them. But they do a great job of understanding they're creating content for an audience. Brands, the best brands do that. Yeah. So I want Harper Scott to kind of do that too, which is like we build brands through the stories we tell. Yeah. Um, and we build audiences that way.

Same, every magazine has kind of established themselves like that, but the New York Times does an exceptional job. Yeah, for sure. Um, last question. Yes. What did you learn going through this process that you'd want to correct for next time, or is there something you would have done differently, or would you advise someone else?

Yeah, so I would say— so I know I said earlier that the best thing from a visual identity standpoint is to get outside opinion. By outside opinion, I will say, like, most— a lot of my outside opinion came from my parents. My dad's been publishing, my mom is just generally smart. I like the outside people that have no context, no bias. I think that is super important. But I would also say if you're going through this kind of experience, you should bring in the people that work in your business, make them part of the process and the product. Because there is so much that you should recognize you don't know. So I bring a lot of expertise in the space for which we work and, um, the channel strategy and the marketing strategy and the go-to-market stuff. But there's so much that, especially with a brand that was built by founders, like, that's where I started, was actually sitting down with Michael and John and asking them to tell me the story of the brand and from start to finish, all the details, everything. And I would go back— they were a key part of the process. So especially John, we sat down like every single step. But it's really leaning into the people that know the brand better than you. I would do— and I did that, but I would just say to anyone, that would be where I'd start, which is to make people in your business part of it, because they are— there is no business without people that work for it. And they all have insight that you don't have that is worth— and it will be the best reflection of the brand that you want to take to market. That would be One piece of advice, I'd say that many people overlook what they have and who they have and what they could bring. Yep. Um, and then the second part I would say is, and that's at Herbrand Scott, there are so many assets that have never seen the light of day that I'm— that I was like, we're putting this on the website, right? Why not? There's so— and you know what, it builds culture, it builds like morale. And I can say that there's a lot of people in our company that now feel seen by the site and are excited to share it. And because they're your best marketers, your employees too, is that it makes a website that they're proud of that reflects the, the quality of work that they as creative designers do or production people do. And so now you have a site that reflects that and makes them excited to push it out and share it and, um, contribute to it. So it makes for the longest lasting quality site, right? There's always active participation in making it a success. The correction I would make would be, um, You know, it's funny, I really wish I could ask one of the girls, Chelsea, who worked on it with me, because that poor soul had to do so many. I think what I would have done is, um, I probably— oh my God, I would have done so many things differently. I'm trying to think about, uh, I probably would have spent— if I could have, I would have liked to have launched the process that, you know, I would have liked to have spent a little bit more time on our process page and the story we tell there, probably before we launched. But I don't really regret that. But I think if I were to do it again, that's the part of the site that I'm intrigued and excited by. So I think I wish we could have kind of launched with that.

I don't know if that really answers the question. Totally answered the question. In fact, the last question you gave like 3 PowerPoints that we're going to bring out a little further in this. But the fact that you would bring other people into the process because too often we relegate it to marketing, we'll let them handle that part. But those voices inside the brand are critical.

Um, and bringing out that experience is so important. You can launch a site, but can you keep it alive? Yeah, great point. And if you can't keep— the only way you keep it alive is people contribute to it actively and proactively. And you cannot do that as marketing, can't do that alone, and you shouldn't want to. But it's a participation exercise. Everybody— our thinking is a voice of everyone. So yeah, it's— I want bylines with names next to them. This is about bringing the personality of the brand out.

But yeah, keeping a brand alive on a website is very different than launching one. I love is that it's the difference between having folks invested in the brand versus just marketing doing their marketing thing, right?

That's it. And how do you create an experience where people want to keep clicking? Yeah, that was what I was always saying too, is I said, you know, how does this facilitate a user to take another step? And if it doesn't, we're not there yet. So I would say that people would say I was a little bit pedantic about the site, but that's how I really think about it. Are they like— are the opportunities for further engagement in the right place? Will people even get to the bottom of the page? Like, all of those details I pay attention to do.

Yeah. But yeah, that's what I would say. Kate, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. As always, just amazing insights and thoughts. So you know how I feel about you and all the work you've done.

Thanks for being willing to share all this too. Oh yeah, thanks for having given me the chance to sort of talk about it. It's been fun to go back to and think on.

And, you know, when you're ready for a co-host, I'll join you and we can— You have to.

We've already had demands for it.

All right.

Thanks, Kate. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com.

Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.