Building a Memorable Brand: Insights from Steven Wolfe Pereira & Marisa Thalberg

LinkedIn News.

Hey, folks. A few weeks ago, we talked about consulting with Eloisa Domingo. Now, it seems that consulting has become just about the best move for people in senior positions who want more flexibility and more agency in their work life. But it's impossible to strike out on your own like this without one key thing, and that's really good branding. So this week we're going to refresh our marketing skills. And to do this, we're bringing back our conversation from late last year with Steven Wolfe Pereira and Marissa Thalberg. Without further ado, here's the episode. From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is Hello Monday, our show about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing us. Quick question, don't overthink the answer. What's the difference between VRBO and Airbnb? Okay, how about Uber and Lyft? And one more, LensCrafters and Warby Parker? Ostensibly, each set of companies offers a similar product or service. There's rentals, rides, glasses. But in each case, you probably have a very strong opinion about which one you'd rather use. That opinion is shaped by its brand. At its core, At its core, branding is the story that's being told about a product or a service or a company or even a person. And let me tell you, if you get it right, it can make your business. Just think about that conversation we had about Warby Parker earlier this fall. So today I'm gonna bring you a crash course in branding and marketing with 2 old friends, Steven Wolfe Pereira and Marissa Thalberg. I've always considered these folks kind of like mentors, and I was excited to learn that they have launched their own podcast. Brand New. Get it? Brand? It's for anyone coming up in the field who wants to understand what the experts think, or more importantly, how they think. After the break, get ready for a crash course. Stay with us. And we're back with Steven Wolfe Pereira and Marisa Thalberg. You know, these folks come from very different backgrounds. Steven started off in finance, he got into marketing, and now he's in media. And Marissa has been a chief marketing officer for a wide range of companies, from Taco Bell to Lowe's. The thing that I really love about these two is that they care so much about making something as important and foundational as branding accessible to everyone. Because whether you're in law or medicine or communications, It's something that you would do well to understand for your own career. Here we go. So, and I'm going to call on you guys. Steven, let's start with you. How do you describe what branding and marketing are?

So it's a loaded question because it's so subjective. I look at it a little bit more from this consumer lens, but also from technology/entrepreneur lens. And for me, the brand truly is the company and the company is the brand. The tactics for me are marketing, but for me, the brand is the business.

You know, you say that so definitively, Steven, that it makes me think that people take issue with that statement, that not everybody thinks that. And so when people misinterpret the relationship between a brand and a business, what are they getting wrong? Either of you can take that.

Well, how about I tee it up for Marissa? I think we need to define terms. And so there is capital B brand, which for me is synonymous with the business, right? When you think of Apple, you know, that is the brand. When you think of JPMorgan Chase, they're just synonymous. But then you have lowercase b brand, and that is part of the brand marketing tactics of something that is gonna be more upper funnel in terms of trying to drive awareness. And that's where there's a lot of controversy. And I know, Marissa, this is such a, Hot-button topic in the industry, but something that you care very passionately about.

Yes, I do. And I'm just trying to figure out even where to start because it is this prevailing topic, if you will, where I think we've gotten into some trouble and some confusion is just like many things in the world where we live in a kind of an instant gratification, highly impatient society. That has really infected the world of marketing and brand and made it seem like there's 2 different things because there are so many tactics in marketing now. And whether you're a marketer or not, you can definitely understand what they are. If you've ever clicked on, you know, a link in Google and then bought something off of a website, well, that's exactly what Google wants you to do. And there are tools that make those things really easy to measure and make those tactics look incredibly effective, which they are. But other things that impact our hearts in our minds aren't necessarily at the point of having that level of measurability. And therefore, they're more prone right now to being dismissed, even for leaders who might intellectually believe on the brand thing, but feel tremendously under pressure to make a quarterly target for an earnings call. And then there are some people that really have made this idea of building a brand seem quaint or seem indulgent, and it's just not. And all you need to do is pull yourself out of the business world for a second and just think about your own behavior as a person. I like saying person versus a consumer. Can you really identify exactly and how different signals that are out there may have led you to want the last brand you bought or the last product you brought? It's often conscious and unconscious and a complex web of things. That's what makes marketing amazingly interesting, but also frankly, a lot more complex and hard. And gosh, I mean, when I started in this business, there were only a few TV networks. It was a lot easier. You ever read magazines? Like, it was easier. Media is so much more fragmented today. So, um, like a lot of things, technology and choice are blessings and curses.

I love that we're starting here. I'm gonna jump right in. And first of all, I'm gonna bring up a, a word, Steven, that you just threw off like we all wouldn't know what it is. And I, I, I know what it is now because I work adjacent to so many people in your field. Funnel, upper funnel, you said.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that what you guys are talking about is that there are some aspects to a brand that are sort of seated in the heart, in the imagination. They're a little squishy. It's hard to trace exactly where they begin. It's almost like they come up inside of you rather than external to you. And then there are some aspects to building a brand that are Small, measurable action steps that you can look at and you can note success, right? And so that first category, that would be upper funnel, right? It exists way up there at the beginning of how we form our stories about a brand. And then because we have that upper funnel foundation, then the other stuff works, right? Am I understanding that right?

Well, yes and no in a sense. You know, I think the classic marketing funnel, just in layman's terms, hey, you know, I am just, you know, Apple devotee. I'll buy every, you know, new product they come out with. I'm an early adopter. So if you think about the marketing funnel, which is basically a purchase cycle, you know, you need to be made aware of the product, then you have to consider it, then there's gonna be a conversion, you know, layer. And then once you actually buy it, you know, do you really love it? You know, 'cause maybe you hate it and then you're out of the funnel, right? Or, you know, you loved it and now you're gonna be loyal to the point where I'm gonna tell Marissa and you about this new product, right?

Mm-hmm.

So that would be like a classic funnel and there are ways to measure that, you know, but I come back to, you know, as a recovering, you know, finance person, for me, I, I always remember one of the first kind of case studies that you were giving in investment banking as an analyst. You had to kind of analyze the Coca-Cola annual report. They would actually ask you, can you find where does brand sit on the balance sheet? And it's just such a fascinating business question because you're not gonna find, you know, the value of Apple's brand on their balance sheet, but everyone knows it's incredibly valuable, right? And I, I truly believe that most folks think it just happens. And it doesn't. And I think that is the craft of marketing. It truly is a craft. There's art and there's science, and you really need operators and practitioners that understand the best of both upper funnel as well as lower funnel.

Yeah.

I'll just say I'm a visual thinker, so I love good metaphors in work and life. Me too.

And the funny—

yeah, right? The funny thing about the funnel is even though it's highly imperfect, when you're talking with non-marketers and you're thinking about how to split up your investments, It's still the clearest way to unpack it in a way that everyone understands. Because what I've had to say oftentimes in a business context, so you, you put all your money, like Steven was saying, in that bottom of the funnel. And what that means is someone's already familiar considering now maybe they're just making that last decision to purchase.

Right.

Um, well, that's great. Like those dollars look really efficient. Here's the problem. Picture a funnel right now. Cut off most of the funnel. You don't have a funnel anymore. That's not a shape. So this is why— It's kind of like a little straw. It's just like, it's a nothing. So if you don't have a top of the funnel, this is where metaphors do work. If you can picture, if you are not having that wider berth where you can pull people in, knowing some of those people won't sieve through, right? All the way down. And that means there's some inefficiency in the top, but you'll never feed them in. You'll never replenish. And it's like as simple and as hard As that, that is really still the, the art and science of what we need to do is how do you wake people up? You get them to think about it, care about it, feel something. So many different ways that happen from word of mouth to traditional advertising. And then maybe it gets more rational, like, well, do I need this right now? Or is it, is it priced right? Or what seller has it at the best price or nearer to me? And then you get all the way down to that final point.

Yeah.

But a lot of things probably happen before you get there.

Right. Well, and a lot more things need to happen than did when I got my first job way back in the '90s. I'll tell you that. Yeah. Because media is so different and audiences are so fragmented. At one point, I don't need to tell my listeners this because they all know this. At one point, you could reach most people with a let me tell you about this new thing ad on NBC around 5:30 in the evening. Not so anymore.

No.

So how does one launch successfully a new brand in 2024, a new mass market brand?

Well, the mass market clarification's important because the real answer is gonna sound like a hedge, but it's not. The real answer is there is no one answer. It depends, right? Steven knew exactly what I was gonna say. It totally depends. I mean, who's the audience? How big is it? What are the goals? What's the budget? Like all those things actually matter incredibly. Um, but you're right, it's just, it was a lot, it was a lot simpler. So I can't give you a simple answer to that because, and, and actually I'll go one step further. I think one of the problems in business right now is you have leaders just saying, what tactics should I be using?

Yeah.

And we're kind of trying to jump to the end of the sentence before we've even framed the problem. And that's where everything old is new again, where it's things that haven't changed that are important in our mind is like, Strategy. Strategy really matters. Like getting everyone aligned to what is the problem or opportunity we're trying to solve for? What's the strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats? The SWOT, the SWOT analysis. Like those are just tools that actually still are helpful to frame it.

Right.

Once you have the strategy, then you can start talking about, well, okay, then what tactics are we gonna solve? And I am amazed how much everyone wants to jump to the, what tactics? Like, what do you think of my media mix? Is it right? I don't know how to answer that yet until I understand what is the problem and/or opportunity of this brand/business, as Steven well said, that has to be on the table. And if you can't get agreement on that, it's very, very hard to get the tactics right.

Okay. You say problem or opportunity, and I'm kind of, I'm thinking about it in my head as like, what is the promise of the brand? What are the values? Why does it exist? Those are the sets of questions that we have to be involved in before we get to the, to the why, right?

Yeah. I mean, I mean, look, it comes back to the 4 classic Ps, and these are the things that will never change, right? It is the product, the pricing of that product, the place that people can find that product, and then the promotion of that product. But you need to have the right product. And, you know, you could put as much lipstick on that pig as the saying goes, but, you know, if the product isn't good, that first moment of truth, the way Procter Gamble coined that phrase so many, many, you know, years ago, it's gonna disappoint the customer or the client or the consumer or whoever the buyer is. And so having a great product is paramount. And again, as an entrepreneur, you don't have the luxury of a marketing department over here and, you know, this other department over here. Like, It's a small team and you're doing everything.

Right.

And so understanding how to rapidly prototype and iterate so that you don't spend a lot, 'cause we didn't have big budgets, is critical. And that is really the advent of digital enabling all that. And what is so exciting is you have all the tools available to you today. And now at the dawn of the AI era, it's only going to get more exciting, more scary because you could actually do a lot more for a lot less people. But that's a different pod. But, you know, the truth of the matter is we are now at a point where you can launch a brand and you see it. Where it's celebrities or it's people with a side hustle or, you know, it's new companies trying things. I mean, you know, P&G has Gillette Labs and they're trying out, you know, new things, right? So it doesn't have to be just the solopreneur or the entrepreneur. It could be big corporate as well.

I love the way that you keep using that word exciting, which I find when people use that and they're talking about AI, at least in my studio, it's actually a euphemism for this is terrifying. And look, we do a lot of terrifying things because they're exciting. My kid just discovered water slides, right?

But It is both exciting and terrifying, to be clear. It is both.

Yes, yes.

I mean, honestly, Jesse, question for you. Let's turn the tables. Can you get through a pod and not discuss AI?

I will flip that a little bit and say we should not get through a pod without discussing AI for 2 reasons. AI needs to not be its own bucket conversation. We need to find a way to thread it into everything. And also, it's not like anybody that we have in our studio, with the exception of just a couple of folks, are experts. But that's the point. And unless we find ways to talk about it, to bumble through that conversation and make a mess of it, we won't get to the point where we get to actually help steward what happens.

Love that.

You know, and you all, you both really understand this because you were here at the advent of the internet. It's not really that anybody knows what's going on. It's that we all kind of make it together by leaning in, right? So, what does it mean to lean in with AI right now in your field?

Well, I'll tell you, when you tie it back to that really first digital and social media revolution, and I'll tell you something, and, and this ties in a bit to also being a woman in business, and this is not gender stereotyping. This is honestly a, a, a truism, fortunately, unfortunately, of women. As you know, it's, it's, it's a truism for a reason. Like, women can do You know, 8 out of the 10 things needed for a job and feel grossly underqualified. And men can do 6 of the 10 and feel like, I've got this in the bag. I was being very—

You're being very generous.

6?

I'd say maybe 1, maybe 2. And they're, you know, thinking that they're qualified at 100.

Well, I'll tell you. So let me relate it back to my own experience. So this goes back to 2007. And in case people need to timestamp that, we were not even yet calling social media social media. Hard to believe because it was a long time ago and not really that long ago. We were calling it Web 2.0.

Yeah.

And I got hired into a completely new role at a portfolio company. The Estée Lauder Companies, 30-something global brands as really the first leader of, you know, kind of enterprise, what we realized was digital and social marketing or new marketing. And I was so scared to say yes to this. I'm like, how me? Like, what am I really? Like, are they sure? Like, I wanna do it. Someone used a very funny cliché at the time and said, you know, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Have you ever heard that one? It's a terrible expression.

Yeah, yeah.

But, and I was like, okay. And in a way it sounds like I was trying to cheat it, but don't take it that way. The way I took it was my job was no one, everyone was a little blind at that point. The world, and this is your point, no one's really an expert. And if I just made myself curious and then thought about how to learn it, and then really what I realized my role was to distill it. for the company. That was the one I— where everyone else was working on everything else. And I became good at that. But I had to get over the fear of, I'm not qualified for this. But no one was really all that qualified for it. That's where I feel like we are right now with AI and this next generation, is there are people, and I would count Steven and I among them, who are trying to lean in. I don't see myself as an expert, but I see myself as someone who is jumping in because that's the only way to do it. So that's the answer. The answer is just try to be the one-eyed man, if you will, or woman. And it kind of reframes, I think, the fear a little bit that to be good at it, you have to know everything, because no one can at this point. It's too vast and it's too mutable. It's changing every minute.

Totally. Lesson right there. Just total life lesson. We're gonna take a quick break here. When we come back, Steven and Marissa get into personal branding. And we're back with Steven Wolfe Pereira and Marissa Thalberg. Hosts of the podcast Brand New. I want to spend a few minutes on this idea of a personal brand, which also is something that did not exist when I began my career in the '90s and now seems like a de facto must-have no matter what your career. What's the relationship between this nebulous personal brand idea and the actual field that you're in?

I mean, I would argue that everyone is in fact a brand, and maybe we didn't call it that back in the day. Obviously, with the advent of digital, it makes it certainly a lot easier. And again, it's both exciting and terrifying, but you now absolutely have a digital brand, and it is only going to accelerate in this AI era. And so really taking hold Of what you stand for, what you believe in, what your voice is, and how do you really carve out your areas of expertise, your areas of interest, your areas of authenticity, right? And I don't believe in, you know, trying to silo yourself. We don't want that in a corporate sense. Why would you do it personally? I truly believe in really fusing your personal and professional so you could have the holistic self.

Yeah.

And I think that is what is going to differentiate you. But your digital brand is a must. It's surprising how poorly people portray themselves. And that is your first impression. I mean, whether, when they're, you're an employer, I always say, you know, you are a product on the shelf. And I wanna see, is this a good product I should buy? And, you know, what do people say about it? What are the reviews of this product? So everything that happens with a product.

Yeah.

It's going to happen with you as talent because you are in fact a product as well. And the brand does matter.

Steven, I have to say that makes my heart feel like a little bit sad inside. I want to think of myself as something outside of the structure of capitalism. And I sometimes worry that thinking of myself as a brand, which is a media personality I've spent now a long time doing, is too limiting to who I, Jesse Hempel, actually get to be in the world, that I don't know how to help the brand evolve. When Jesse evolves.

So I would say capitalism is just one lens, right? It's very simple in terms of what are your values? What does that brand stand for? What is your identity? It's just another way of saying identity, perhaps. So maybe there's a way to—

I love that. Yeah. Yeah.

Identity. I was going to give you a little bit of a softer way to internalize that because I understand how there's a potential feeling that Calling yourself a brand feels crass, feels commercial. It's not for everyone. But I think identity is one way of thinking about it. I think reputation professionally is really the other. They're not perfectly synonymous, but they're close. I don't think that— I'll disagree enough with my partner to say I don't think everyone has to think of themselves as a brand, but I think everyone cares about their reputation. And a reputation is a lot like the art of branding in that, and this is where people and brands are similar, is have you ever known someone who seems one way and then turns out to be completely different? You tend to have an aversion to that person because you've lost trust. Well, guess what? That's what happens with brands and people.

Yeah.

Um, if, if that brand suddenly proves to have a faulty product or says something really stupid on social media or behaves in a way that doesn't and align with your values or how they've behaved before, you're gonna reject that. So that's really true of people. So that's where these analogies aren't silly. They actually really make sense. And just like brands, you wanna have the best possible reputation that feels right for you, that feels truthful to you. And then, you know, how you perpetuate that professionally on platforms like, of course, LinkedIn, Is then like, it's a lot like what we've been talking about brand and marketing. That becomes the brand is you, the what you do with it on platforms and elsewhere are the tactics. And everyone's going to have a different interpretation of that.

Right. I will just add as a coda with my partner in podcasting, you know, as much as we would want to use maybe different terms and maybe we don't want to view it that way, the world will view us that way, right? Whether we like it or not. And I'm a big proponent in just having radical candor about these things, 'cause the business world is going to look at every talent as a product, whether we like it or not. You could call it whatever you want. That is the world that we're living in, and it's only gonna accelerate again in the AI era.

Look, I, I think that for anybody who is sort of as thoughtfully obsessed with the questions that we have raised collectively over the last half hour as I feel right now, there's this obvious question, which is, if I didn't grow up in this field, if I didn't come up in this field, and I'm thinking about new opportunities, where are the side doors into your industry?

Well, I love this question because I did not start in this industry, Jesse. Honestly, my best advice would be to start at an agency. Believe it or not, in this day and age, I think it's one of the best places to start because you get to learn every aspect of a business. You get to work directly with a client. You know, you could be on the digital side, you could be on the traditional side, like whatever side you're gonna be involved with.

Right.

You're really cutting your teeth working with clients and understanding, you know, the needs of the clients, you know, understanding the pressure that they're under. And then if you're fortunate, then you could eventually make the jump to either go client side or you go to someone on the sell side. But that's, I think, part of the magic of this industry. There's so many different ways for you to side door in.

Yeah, I love that. Anything to add, Marissa?

Well, when I started in my career, the paths were much more narrow and there were much more linear, tighter expectations of You know, the path you had to follow to get somewhere. So, for example, if you were going to go client side, you had to have an MBA. If you wanted a job in the beauty industry, you already had to be in the beauty industry. And I defied that because I, first of all, I started in advertising. Like Steven said, I left in my mid-20s. This is not even really anymore a footnote on my LinkedIn profile, but it's true. I left and became a TV producer. I had no TV producer experience. But I had an idea that got me in the door. I had no— there was no nepotism or special connections involved. It was an unbelievable life lesson that I took initiative because I believed in something, and that was my calling card. And the next thing I knew, I got myself hired as a TV producer. And what I learned from that, that I realized has probably informed me more than I sometimes remember, is every business will have its technical expertise. And you might approach it without knowing that, but if you know how to think and connect dots and can draw the parallels, then you make yourself a lot more marketable for it. And funnily enough, I think that innate lesson that I, I must have learned then in my early 20s, it's probably what allowed me to become that digital marketing person that we talked about earlier, to go from luxury beauty to fast food at Taco Bell and. And I now pride myself on an ability to go into something being actually very humble about what I don't know. And we don't talk nearly enough about the importance of humility in leadership, but also confident in the skills that I have that transcend a particular industry or role because leadership is leadership. So I hope that sounds mildly encouraging to people that are interested. But you have— you own the, the packaging of your story to help people see how your own dots connect to theirs.

Well, nobody's going to do it exactly how either of you did it, right? But there is a through line to both of your stories, and that is that you both operated out of a sense of curiosity and that the curiosity became its own engine. And I think that is a lesson that we can all take away.

And I would say, even if you're starting out or if you're mid-level and you're stuck and you really want to try to go somewhere else, Like, just go out there and talk with someone, make that, you know, kind of effort to either not just be curious, but go and really put yourself out there in some way. And what I always say is like, just everything's on the internet. Like, literally everything is there to spend time learning, reading about the industry. You'll find more relevant information reading the trades, seeing who the thought leaders are, and then start writing about that topic. And tweet about those things, post on social, post on LinkedIn, and you're gonna start to find other people that will comment on that. Like, but you wanna develop a point of view.

Yeah.

And I always tell, you know, like my mom would always say, don't be furniture. She would say it in Spanish with an accent, of course. But like, don't be furniture. Don't just like sit there, like be active. Let your voice be heard. And if you are curious, if you're new in an industry, ask the questions. And the best thing is, you know, the 5 layers of why. Ask why 5 times. Just peel that onion and really get to the core of that Tootsie Roll. Because I feel like that is one of the best things someone coming in new with a fresh set of eyes, that's one of the best things that people would appreciate.

That was Steven Wolfe Pereira and Marissa Thalberg, hosts of the podcast Brand New. If you want to learn how the field thinks, definitely check out their show. It's a great place to get started. There's a lot about this conversation that leaves me thinking. First of all, branding is not just for business. Anything can be a brand, or have an identity if you prefer that framework. You have a personal brand, a reputation, and whether it's for your small business or your own career, branding is something that you need to approach intentionally. Second, don't skip out on asking the hard questions. What's the promise of the brand? What are its values? Why does it exist? And then go and figure out the rest of the 4 Ps. That's product, pricing, place, and promotion. And finally, as Steven's mom says, don't be furniture. I loved that. Do something. Jump in and use whatever resources you have to become an expert in your career. No one fully knows what they're doing, so let that empower you. And as you get more knowledge, develop a point of view and build your brand. Now we're going to talk about all of this on Office Hours. Please join us. We will go live from the LinkedIn news page on Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern. You can find a link to join in our weekly newsletter, in our group, or you can drop us a line at hellomunday@linkedin.com. We'll send you the link. We really love to hear from you. Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn News. Ava Ahmedbeghi produced this episode with help from Rachel Karp. Sarah Storm is our senior producer. Sound design by Asaf Gadron. Tim Boland mixed this episode. Our theme music was composed just for us by the mysterious Brickmaster Cylinder. Michaela Greer is the strongest brand around. Enrica Montalvo is our executive producer. Dave Pond is head of news production. Courtney Koop is head of original programming. Dan Roth is the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn. And I'm Jesse Hempel. We're back next Monday. Thanks for listening.