Episode 276: How “Brand EQ” Drives Smarter Sales (A Chat with Touchstone's Andrea Stoll)

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skewcast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Andrea Stoll is a brand fanatic. She's a graduate from one of the most prestigious business schools in the world, Babson, with an MBA in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial studies. She's a veteran of brand experience through her work with some of the greatest brands in the world, including Nike, Vans, Reebok, and Converse. And today she advises clients and serves as director of brand engagement for Touchstone, Touchstone is one of the top distributors in this multibillion-dollar industry. They are a CommonSKU customer and are led by founder and CEO Derek Block, who, by the way, will be speaking at our SKU Camp event in Austin in September. If you're not following what Touchstone is up to, you are missing out on some of the most innovative thinking happening in the industry. Today, Andrea and I talk about her role as brand engagement director and her work with clients, and we talk about Touchstone's Brand EQ system. Their signature methodology they use with clients to create aspirational branded merch experiences. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. Hey, if you're heading to ASI Chicago, you won't want to miss all the Commonsku energy happening there on Tuesday, July 25th from 12 to 3. We're hosting Commonsku University where you can spend a few concentrated hours learning about the power features on Commonsku, plus how to drive sales through shops and more. We also have a SCOMmunity happy hour happening on Tuesday, July 25th. And finally, one of the most powerful features on the platform is the ability to seamlessly transmit orders from ideation through to completion, thanks to a unique process and a powerfully connected supplier network. In fact, we even have all the connected suppliers' booths at the ASI Show in a handy list for you. You can register for Komminski University RSVP for the happy hour and grab that list at commonskew.com/asishow. Now, here's my chat with Touchstone's Brand Engagement Director, Andrea Stoll. Well, thank you for joining us.

It's a pleasure to be here.

I'm so glad. Yes, so glad. The Brand Engagement Director. Can you share more about your role? I love the title, for one thing. I just love the title. Do you work both on Touchstone's brand as well as with clients. Tell us what that encompasses.

Yes, yes, thank you. Yeah, we were, it was kind of a creative collaboration on the title, but the spirit of it is that, you know, Touchstone really is all brand first, and so we really wanted to lead with that and make people know that like their brand is everything to us. So it is somewhat in the spirit of championing the Touchstone brand as well. We haven't done a lot of marketing per se. In our history, we've been fortunate enough to grow organically and do some things to that end. But yeah, so working with our clients, I'm really responsible for making sure that we're doing everything possible within our capabilities and our partnership network to really, you know, fully create brand engagement for them to inspire their customers and fanatics to really follow the brand and engage with it at every level. So Yeah. Okay.

So you find yourself not only working on the brand, but working with clients directly for this.

Yes, I work with a lot of clients directly. That's sort of something that I love to do. It's been my passion throughout my career, and I love to just vibe with the company and understand their sort of genuine authenticity, what they come from, what they stand for, and then being able to figure out all the ways that we can help monetize and engage people through merchandise.

So we're gonna unpack this a little bit because Derek Block, founder and CEO, uh, who is also going to be speaking at SKU Camp, and when we have an interview with with Derek there. He created a pretty unique concept. I loved it when I first saw it. It came across my screen, I think on LinkedIn, called Brand EQ. What is Brand EQ?

We love Brand EQ. I think it is a really interesting concept. Again, I tell people I pretty much look good for my age, but I'm old and I've been around the block. And, um, so I've worked for— I've been fortunate to work for so many great brands, you know, from Nike to American Express. And, you know, the idea of really understanding your brand and having that inform all everything that you do in a, in a way that feels really genuine to people. And I think it's more important than ever. So what Derek and the team had created and evolved over the last 10 years is in order to even think about a merchandise solution or, you know, what would be the right product or process for an organization, we really need to understand their brand first. Emotional intelligence, what Daniel Goleman came up with 25 years ago, the idea that if you really understand your brand and how it interacts with people and kind of take that personality of the brand and extend it in different ways, you're going to have the most success. People are going to really respond to you. And so if you're really considering and putting that intent into your merchandise solutions, can really have a very powerful, intentional connection with people.

I love it because it also helps your team start out on the right foot with the client to understand them. It's a very comprehensive aspect. And then it also helps the client put everything in context, it sounds like.

100%. And we're building it into, you know, we used to really talk about as it related to the merch process, but we're building it into every capability that we have. So now we have a fully robust program around Brand EQ merch and like how to really help understand the brand, the consumer profiles, the archetypes. Segmentation, who is the merchandise for, to create those solutions. Then we're doing the same thing from a digital e-commerce perspective with our shop experiences and making sure that the user experience and the interface and how we, the cart conversions and everything that we do related to the e-commerce experience makes sense for the brand. And then down to, and then we have ops, which is our Brand EQ fulfillment experience. So what does the unboxing experience look like and how does that fit with the brand? If you're, You know, a sustainable brand, what is your packing tape? And, you know, how does that extend through every aspect of the company? And we, we do use that, like you said, from an internal point of view so that all our employees are on the same page. Like, this is what this brand is about. So if you go into our warehouse, you see everything related to, you know, one of our customers because it's really important that the people who are packing up the products are understanding who it's going to.

It's also somewhat of a sales roadmap. For, for, uh, your team, I would imagine, because then you're looking at all the touch points that the brand can exhibit. You're almost unpacking sales opportunities while helping the client at the same time.

Yes, I mean, we think so. I mean, we like to say, you know, add value along the way. Of course, some of it is like selfishly we're growing our business, but we do feel like people just expect that Amazon experience today, right? They want, they want the right product, they want at the right time, they want at the right price. And so, you know, we don't wanna think of promotional merchandise the old way when it's just kind of like, you know, put together, not as thoughtful, and in each piece of this, including the delivery experience. And we just know that everybody has that expectation and every brand should be delivering on that. The capabilities exist, so why wouldn't we kind of connect the dots for them and help add value as much as we can?

Right. Does every new client go through, you know how clients come to us, especially new clients, they come to us with a project typically.

Yeah.

Not typically, they don't come prepared to go, I'm ready to review my entire brand. So do they, do they, does every client go through this?

Not every client. Um, you know, we have kind of different phases of it based on if it's like, you know, just a project-based opportunity and more of like an enterprise client. Um, so we can kind of, we can, um, condense it, you know, based on what the, what the opportunity is for the client. We can do a lot of the work internally. Ideally, we like to engage them and not just the person that's talking to us from the client, but someone from their sales team and someone from their HR team, because everybody within the company has a little bit of a different perspective. So yeah, we can go all the way from, you know, a quick internal session for a project-based opportunity where we go through our own rigor that way, or, you know, we have people come in for 2-day, you know, full-on workshops where we get full teams together and we have it very structured out, um, so that we can kind of get on the same page. And just so you understand too, it's not to dictate the brand at all. Like, some brands, um, you know, going through this exercise, there's a lot of learnings for them. Some, they're like, we're dialed, like, our brand is everything. And so then we just want to be educated on what brand is so that we're making sure that everything that we're doing, you know, reinforces that. It's bigger than just a brand guideline deck. It's like the essence and the personality and the people and the culture. You know, all that stuff really matters.

What kinds of things does it encompass? I would say, I think I saw like market position, competitive landscape, brand personality, target demographic, and more. Can you, can you talk a little bit about how that, not only the criteria that you have, but how then that informs a better merch experience?

Yeah, I mean, we start all the way from like Simon Sinek says, you know, what's your why, right? We start all the way from the process of understanding a customer's why, you know, to just try to tease out from them not what do you do, but why do you do it? And that also, that often brings up a lot of like interesting conversations that, you know, again, give them a unique positioning like in the market so that everything that we do for them isn't— if you have 3 insurance companies, they should be doing 3 different things. You know, even if they're going to the same, you know, event, right? So it's important that it sticks back to that DNA of why are they in this business and why are they differentiated and what's their point of view. And then we take that straight to, yes, their market landscape positioning. Okay, how do they sit? You know, are they, you know, a higher cost provider? Are they more value added and for everybody? So really kind of understanding how they sit within the marketplace and then looking at their archetype. So every brand, you know, falls within 12 archetypes, you know, Are they a joker? Are they a ruler? And defining that again, each step of the way we're getting new insights. Again, some they might totally be dialed in on and they're educating us, which is awesome because it's great to work with brands who really understand and are excited about what they have. But you're usually getting some interesting conversations that maybe they haven't had before. Once we get through all the brand work, which is like kind of the first part of the process, Then we dive into consumers, like who is the product for? You know, is it for their internal employees? Is it— are they selling it? Are they selling it? Are they giving it away? Is it for events? Is it for, you know, there's a million, you know, a million different things in our industry that people use the merchandise for. So what is that? And then based on that, how do you want them to interact with it? What's the day in the life? Do you want them interacting with it at the office? Do you want them interacting with it on the weekends? Do you want them, you know, in their car? You know, what are the different things? Where do you want your brand to come top of mind? So then we go through all the consumer stuff and then we start segmenting it out and getting to what we call the visual line planning process, where based on all the information that we've gathered, we'll build out one of those brand books, brand guidelines, and then start to try to inform some ideas around how to bring that to life.

I saw a visual line process or visual line plan on your website. And what is that? What does that look like?

So it really is just like a SKU map basically of different ideas, some that could happen tomorrow and then some could be more that we build towards. But the idea of it is to kind of see, okay, on one snapshot, this is what our brand looks like to make sure that there's no things, there's no outliers. Like usually a company will come to us and they'll have 200 different things that they've done. 50 of them are still sitting in a closet. Some people have this, it's kind of like a hodgepodge of stuff. So we want to get it to a point where we can look at everything in one holistic view and say, okay, this is what it looks like. Does this all make sense? And how are we talking about it? And if our biggest market is our internal customers, why do they only have 4 options? But the external place has 27 options for a polo. So it's It's a way of organizing the information and then making sure that it reflects the business that it deserves and the customers that are using it and, you know, kind of thinking about how it could grow and evolve in a future state.

I see. So it's like a visual infographic of the brand's merch experiences and how they impact each audience and you can see it in one snapshot.

Correct. That's probably a better way of saying it.

No, I love it. I love it. No, I'm, you can tell I'm used to radio, right? Or podcasts. So I'm like unpacking it in my head, but I love it. Do you have a client? Experience that sort of, that you can share a story around this that exemplifies either one or both of these processes, the EQ or the visual line plan, and how that may have impacted how you worked with them?

Uh, yeah, I mean, I think about an account like Progressive as an example. Like Progressive Insurance is one of our, you know, big clients, and, um, we do a lot of cool stuff with them because they are very brand first, right? I mean, that's one of the reasons that we work with them from the jump is because they, they understood how much we loved and appreciated all the cool stuff and, and their brand. Um, and but it goes in many different directions, you know. They do have like, you know, internal teams that are there, you know, I know, on the desk every day selling insurance. Um, and then they do have all these cool events that they do, and they have different, uh, targets based on the type of insurance. So I think about like motorcycle insurance, you know, they're going to— what's that motorcycle event, um, in Sturgis? Yes, Sturgis, right? And events like that. And we can't show up with like floatata heads like what we know, like, for certain other people, right? So, um, you know, we have to kind of kit it out in a way that makes sense for that audience. We did, um, uh, temporary tattoos and we did haircuts and, you know, like sort of a barber chop shop we called it, um, in these different kind of event activations that felt very progressive but were, you know, visually they look very different and culturally they, you know, made sense for that audience. So those are the kind of things that we do. We can kind of tune it in different ways depending on the customer experience, but it all comes from the essence of who that brand is.

I love how you're, um, you're also really giving your team a pretty sophisticated tools toolbox as opposed to, yeah, I can source that for you. It just said elevates the whole, the whole selling process to it to another level.

I mean, that was one thing that Derek has— I mean, that's why he founded Touchstone, you know, because he felt like there could be a better way, you know, this kind of, uh, more agency-like brand approach to our industry. And that's our point of difference. You know, I think we're not right for everybody. And, you know, customers that really do understand and believe that brand engagement is real and the Merch is Marketing, which is something like that I stole from Gary Vee that I just absolutely love. I mean, if you, if you believe that that's true and you really care about it and put intention into it, it can be very powerful.

So I know, I love it, I love it. Merch as marketing. I saw that too. I saw Gary talk about this. He just had a little snippet about it, but it was like the phrase was perfect.

Yes, and I love it, and we use it on everything now because that's it. I mean, that to us, that's brand EQ. It's not merch as a tchotchke or giveaway or, you know, at an event. It's the most personal connection that you can have to a brand. Like you give somebody something and it could sit on their desk for like 10 years.

Yes.

I mean, can you think of a more intimate one-to-one relationship?

Yes.

So if you don't think of it in that way, it's just, it's just a missed opportunity, you know. So we, we really believe that it's, it's a, it's one of them. I mean, I think other than digital marketing, it's the one medium that continues to grow because people love to get merch. I remember at my first PPAI, um, I think it was Seth Godin did the keynote. Speak. I don't know if you remember that. Do you remember that?

I do remember that.

Talked about Paul McCartney, you know, being at it, being in the— being at a Knicks game and, you know, jumping over people for the free t-shirt.

And it's like, trying to get the free t-shirt, trying to get the free—

but that happens all the time. Like, you bring something cool to an event and people will like line up for like, you know, this Rubik's Cube, and you're like, okay, like, yeah, so we know that it works. So yeah, right.

I love it. Merchants marketing also, you know, we're at a time, I think, in our industry where it's really exciting to be a part of this industry. It's really fun. Its popularity has never soared as high as it has now, and it just continues to grow. But talking about Touchstone a little bit, Touchstone as a company is really amazing. One of the industry's leading distributors, ASI reported $92 million in revenue in 2022 in their top distributors list. How has your year progressed? Compared to last year?

I mean, it's good. As we were going into, you know, the pandemic, everybody was kind of like nervous, like, how is this going to affect things? Events are down. I know a lot of people picked up in PPE and stuff to kind of weather that. We really leaned into e-commerce because e-commerce was, you know, everybody was shopping and buying from home, and that allows us to grow pretty significantly during that time. And since then, we've really gone out, you know, tried to partner with more content creators and drive that e-commerce part of our business because we really optimized and tuned our, you know, e-commerce program based on that success. We always are willing to build in and invest in customers that are like, you know, growing in those areas and really, you know, increased our SLAs and our turn times on different types of products that, you know, again, to deliver on that experience that customers are expecting, especially from, you know, just an e-commerce company. And then also the the fulfillment piece of that. So, you know, in addition to all the success and business that we had on the merch side, I would say this— what we call now BrandyQ Shop and BrandyQ Ops are the two areas where we're bringing in a lot more new customers, some people who just want us for that, you know, in terms of the e-commerce experience and our fulfillment operations. We just brought, you know, new facilities, broader facilities, uh, in Ohio to service those clients, and that's been a really big win for us.

Touchstone has received all kinds of accolades, but what can you tell us about Touchstone that you wish more people knew?

I think the entrepreneurial nature of the people at Touchstone. You know, I think that we don't follow the industry formula. Derek really challenges each and one of us all the time to think differently, to, you know, do everything that we can to support a customer's brand in the way that we know that we're capable of and to even challenge the customers in that way. And then if a customer wants to take something somewhere, figure out a way to do it. I mean, again, I said like there's so much technology and things happening in the apparel industry, sustainability, you know, whatever those things are that are out there. And so maybe if we haven't done it before, we're still very capable of doing it. So really just challenging us to make sure that we are doing absolutely everything we can for our customers. And the company shows consistently that they're willing to build out the capabilities to support those customer experiences. Experiences. So, I think that's something that makes us really unique and special, and it comes right from the top, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. Touchstone is a CommonsQ client. Are you in the platform?

I don't personally work too much in the platform, but I did survey the troops, and because we were on CommonsQ, then we weren't, and then we came back, right? And they are thrilled to be back on CommonsQ.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, just the user experience, the feedback from the clients, and they're able to engage with them. And then one thing that they noted that we've been using a lot recently, which has been very successful, is kind of the pop-up shop opportunities.

Yes.

And really being able to give customers the ability to have choice in their variation, to aggregate their orders, to get them excited about just new ways of looking at opportunities and events. And I know that that's been driving a lot of new business actually by being able to kind of show different ways of being able to use the platform. So the team is super stoked.

Awesome, thank you for that. Uh, let's talk a little bit about Andrea. You've had a notable experience with some major brands, including Nike. You mentioned, by the way, I'm almost done with Shoe Dog. I know everybody's read it but me, but I'm finally getting around to it because of the movie. Yes, I'll admit. Um, but you've worked with some really cool brands— Vans, Reebok, Converse. How does this inform your— you— I can tell you have this You come with sort of a brand level of understanding and it fires you up about this business. How does it— how else does it inform your work at Touchstone?

Yeah, I mean, I have been fortunate to like work with some amazing brands and amazing leaders. I think to, you know, my boss at Converse is now the chief creative officer of Nike. My boss at American Express went on to be the CMO of Visa. I mean, these are people who in my formative years were like so inspiring in terms and really in terms of brand and vision and like what's possible and engaging customers. And so it's definitely stayed with me. The other part I think of my experience has been so powerful was my experience at Babson College. I don't know how many people know about that, but it's actually the number one school for entrepreneurship. So that's where I went., to get my graduate degree. And what's so unique about Babson is every professor there is an entrepreneur. So like the head of Babson and my entrepreneurship professor was Steve Spinelli, who was the founder of Jiffy Lube. So like back in the day, you know, Jiffy Lube was a very successful franchise, very successful franchise. The founder of the entrepreneurship school was Arthur Blank, who founded Home Depot. So every conversation, every project, every experience is being discussed amongst real entrepreneurs. And not to take anything away from academics because they bring a whole nother level, but I think that's what makes Babson so exceptional in their work and the network and the relationships and the people that I gained from there. They're just, they're with me all the time. So I think it's just been, I've been fortunate to like just have amazing brand experiences. So that's what I love and that's what I know and that's why I vibed with Derek so much because it's so much his passion. So it's been really fun to be a bigger part of the company and be able to help the people that are there kind of understand the power. We have so much power with their brands to really be able to be grateful that we have that opportunity and how to really covet it and leverage it.

By chance, was the creative director you referred to at Nike Hoka? John Hoke. John Hoke. I got the name wrong. So I'm not familiar with him. I just read an article this morning in Fortune. Because he has dyslexia.

And I saw that article, and it was a brilliant article.

I actually forwarded it on to my daughter, uh, because, uh, because we were just talking about this last night as she was saying she's an artist and drawing and the things that, that dyslexia gave him as a gift. Anyways, I didn't mean to get off on that tangent.

No, he, he is, he is the best. Like, I, I— he was— I would go into his office and leave like on cloud nine because it was just, he's such a visionary and so creative and talented and such a good person. I mean, he's the one who introduced me to yoga because he was like, you're way too stressed. Let's go to Bikram. And we went to the Bikram yoga studio and we get there. This is so funny because he is like dyslexic, whatever. Like he's a little bit ADD. We get to the yoga studio and she's like, oh, hi, John. And she goes back and she gets a towel and clothes for him because he never would show up with anything. He just like would have all of his stuff. And it was like, that's the other thing that, you know, lesson I learned from all of these leaders, like, throughout my career was the, the balance of, like, life and work. You know, it wasn't all work to them. As successful and talented as these people are, like, leaders of Fortune 100 companies, they all, like, had this really, like, um, peaceful approach and perspective. There was not anxiety. There was not— I mean, I'm sure they had it at some level. They're not sure. Well, but it wasn't brought out in the workforce. There was no like, you know, pitting people against each other or, you know, kind of any like bad vibes. It was always like really calm and like, what's happening in your life? And it was just the whole person, which I think when you feel that way, you bring that to the work and then everything is just better.

Yeah. What an influence on others too. And speaking of a question the community loves for me to ask, and you've sort of touched on it a little bit. What's a recent book or podcast or article that's inspired you or challenged you recently?

Yeah, I mean, I'm into that whole like health and wellness stuff. So I mean, I do read the business book every, every once in a while, but like my new is Jay Shetty. I don't know if you've read anything, but like Think Like a Monk and Love Rules. And Eckhart Tolle is still somebody that I always—

Yeah, that's brilliant.

I love that. Pema Chödrön just wrote a new book, which is incredible.

That was, by the way, that was a phenomenal book. She talked about something I learned from that is just the two sides of the same coin. I forget the phrase for it in Buddhist thought, but the positive and the negative and how they can actually be influences in your life in a good way if you look at them from the right perspective.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's like the obstacles are not in your path, they are your path. So being able to move through them in a way that you're learning and growing, you can almost make it feel like an incredible, you know, gift, right?

Yeah. Yeah. What brands— I know you came from some amazing brands, but what brands do you follow now for inspiration?

I mean, I love all the, you know, the— I'm a sneakerhead, I guess. I love all the kind of things in the footwear space and hypebeasts and kind of following on that stuff. But I, I really appreciate and I love companies that come out and are very bold about their brand. Like, one new cool brand I'm following is like SuperSide.

Have you seen those guys?

Yeah, I have. I just, I love everything they do. I love their business model. I love just the way they're trying to flip the agency model on its head. I think everything is so consistent and like well done and I met with their team and just very thoughtful. So that's cool. I love how brands can just come up and kind of disrupt an industry like that and I love to watch that whether it's in agency world, tech world, footwear world, whatever it is.

Andrea, I got one last question. Thank you by the way for joining us and spending time. This has been amazing. What do you enjoy doing when you're not working? I think we got a clue in some of the things that you mentioned, but what do you enjoy doing?

Yeah, I mean, I love just new experiences. I was also kind of fortunate through my jobs to travel the world. We went to Asia for development trips and Europe. And so I think traveling and sort of, you know, yoga and wellness and meditation, I found like through my life and now doing it more, like how important it is. And I try to like instill that with my kids because you never really get taught those tools when you're younger or like think about that and how powerful it is. And until you get it, like, I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, it wasn't until 40 till I even started to think or talk about kind of these things. Then you realize what a game changer it is. So I just, I tried to, you know, have some of those routines in my life that build that into each of my daily practice so that each day is great. You know, I just try to have like the presence of mind and you know, have this more holistic view.

Yeah, you can, you can sense that Eckhart and Pema Chödrön influence for sure. Andrea, thanks so much. I really enjoyed chatting with you. I learned a lot. And what a great experience. What a great company you've built, you and Derek and the team at Touchstone. And, you know, our entire team loves you guys and respects you so much.

So thanks for coming today. Awesome. It was so much fun. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you again sometime.

You bet. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKU Cast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.