The Twin Room Episode 6: Brands That Evolve

I remember we were in college and I remember you were studying communications. Yeah. And, um, actually in the beginning thought I wanted to be an interior designer. Ooh. Ooh. I know. Anyway, uh, decided that I wanted to have a degree in fine arts. Most people think I have a business degree, but I actually have a degree in fine arts. And I ended up leaving our college, university, for another university. And I left because there was a professor who I wanted to learn under. Oh yeah. And the thing that really, I guess the big lesson that I learned in life is I'm a person. I realized that I was a single person because, you know, I'd walk to campus and, you know, I lived in a dorm and I didn't really know anybody there, but like no one knew that I had a twin. So I was like one single individual and it was the strangest feeling. And I thought, this must be what it's like to be a person. And it was a really good experience for me because I really thought about like, You know, everyone's like, has this thing about twins, but I never really thought about what do they mean? Like, I remember even when we were young, I would like, someone would come up to us and say something and I'd be like, well, what are you talking about? You know, because I always thought of myself as a single person. Anyway, that's what I learned when we changed colleges. Yeah, my experience was similar at that same time because I joined a sorority. Yeah, and no one knew I had a twin. I was, you know, uh, by myself, and it was, it was an interesting feeling because it was kind of the first time. I, I didn't, I didn't do this for anything. Yeah, I don't know that anyone would have recognized me at that time or even thought we were twins. It's not too late, Winnie. I looked a little different, um, I guess. Was I the evil twin? I guess maybe so. No, good evil. Anyway, But I think in terms of what that means to us for brands, it's that brands change and evolve over time. Mm-hmm. And I think that, you know, the many brands that we've launched over the years and the thought leaders that we've launched over the years, I think about how some of them are actually still in the same place when we launched them and how they need to change and evolve. It's one of those things where when we first started launching brands in 1990, it was different because they were fixed in stone. They say, you know, they were fixed. They were, they were institutions. They were institutions. You know, the, I remember we never even changed brand standards of these companies. PMS 348. PMS 348. That was one of our biggest clients at the time. Isn't that crazy? That's a Pantone color for people who don't know what that is. But today we can launch, we launch a brand in days. And at that time it used to take months. Of course the technology is different and the process is different. But today, you know, brands are evolving and changing and launching in record speeds. So it's almost like you don't have the time to do the depth of work that we typically do when we launch brands. But we still have to think about them as changing and evolving like entities. And some of these brands we've launched have sold within months of launching. So they actually don't even exist anymore because they were absorbed by another company. So their, their, their, you know, their, their life was very short. So you have to think about like maybe the brands that we launch maybe don't live for 30 years. Mm-hmm. You know, and I think about even the rebrands that we've done over time and how much they've evolved and changed. You know, some of the brands that we launched probably 20 years ago have probably changed 3 or 4 times through mergers and acquisitions and brand updates. But that really brings me to today because I believe that this is something that every brand needs to be thinking because of what's happening with AI, what's happening with products and services. Relationships with their clients, their communities, their customers, maybe even that they change what they stand for and what their purpose is. And I think that brands need to be ready and comfortable with change. Brands are something that people used to feel like they could trust and that they could rely on, that they would be consistent and they would be the same, or that they knew what to expect from them. But today they, you know, we launch a brand and it changes and evolves sometimes in weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years. Yeah, and I think it's happening faster now. Yeah. And the way I see this is really growth. Because, you know, as, you know, just like we talked about this with the schools, we were growing, you know, and we continue to evolve. And brands have to do that too. And I can think of a specific brand we launched 6 months ago. Completely new brand, but still the same foundation, the same leader. But it really came from the leader was growing. Yeah. And really wanted to, was looking at what happened in the, was happening in the market and thinking about, you know, am I still relevant? Yes. Is our brand still relevant? Do we stand out? Are we connected to our target audience? In fact, they even changed who their target audience was. And it's been a real successful launch so far. And I think it's really resonating more with their target audience than it was before. I think people get excited. Yeah. They get excited with change. Change is good. And it's complicated sometimes because brands can be quite complicated. And especially when you're talking about, you know, we were in a meeting a few minutes ago about talking about website domains and when you change names, what that means to even the technical side of things. Yeah, exactly. And the CRMs and sales teams. But I do believe that we need to get comfortable with change. And I think changing schools put us in new environments where we were able to kind of see things differently. And we became different. And it goes back to those epigenetic sticky notes that we were talking about. And those are epigenetic sticky notes that impact genetic code of a brand or a leader. I think it's good, but you have to be ready to change and evolve. And I think that's why even the brands that we're launching right now, we need to think about like not only who they're going to be maybe in 3 months, but where will and when will we evolve them to become what's next. Yeah, and I think that every brand out there right now, no matter what you do, who you are, you know, your target audience, take a look at your brand. And really look at it and say, is it still relevant? Yeah. With so many things that have changed in the world, just within the last couple years, it's a good time to be reflective about that. Yeah, and I think that even companies think sometimes the grass is greener on the other side. And sometimes they're looking at what their competitors are doing and evolving and changing based on whatever those activities are. And sometimes that's not the best thing to do either. So I struggle with change or not change sometimes with some of these brands because, you know, you have to really think about the consequences of change when you change a brand. Well, and thinking about change, I think going back to what you said about competitors is you really need to understand what your competitor— well, first of all, you need to understand who your competitors are. Your real competitors. Because those change over time. Yeah. And really understand, you know, what's their value proposition? What do they deliver? So going back to when we talked about BORR distinctive advantage, like maybe redoing that exercise and being like, okay, well, is my distinctive advantage the same as I thought it was last year? Because things are changing so fast. I know. And there's a lot of new companies coming to the market that are— By the minute. By the minute. And I think the buyer is confused. Yeah. The buyer's confused because they're like, ooh, squirrel. But maybe that squirrel isn't what the squirrel says it is. And also think that people also compete for attention. The sheer volume of information, the sheer volume of noise there is, it's hard. You know, we have a client right now that doesn't want to do email marketing anymore because, you know, it's so hard to opt in and to, you know, gain people's attention for those few rare seconds. And This is, this is something that's new because people are inundated with all of this. Now it's AI written and AI automated, and it's literally just too much. I also think about, whereas in the past you could recognize a big brand. Yeah, it's harder now. Yeah, because you can compete with a big brand now. It's harder. I don't know, I think that this concept of flexibility and change and constantly rethinking and really like, what's your touchstone? Are we who we should be right now? Is this what our customers need from us? How have our customers evolved and what do we need to do to evolve with them? And on the thought leader side, what does my audience look like? Am I speaking on stages? Building LinkedIn campaigns? Am I launching a podcast? And what's next? I think one thing I've seen, and I was actually thinking about this earlier today, is for thought leaders that we're moving from a space of tell me, right? Where people are interviewing people and they're talking about whatever the other person, maybe the person's written a book or, whatever they might be interviewing someone for. But now it's like, show me. You know, maybe from this space of like, tell me to show me. People want to know how to do things. They want to understand. They want to like see it actually happening. And I think it's because we're so inundated with so much content. You know, for thought leaders, there's so many thought leaders out there that have access to amazing podcast studios and resources and media. And it's pretty easy to gain attention from that too. I mean, you look at all of the thought leaders that are launching digital twins that we've talked about many times, and I think about the way that they extend their reach. Now, not only are we competing against one competitor, we're competing against one competitor's twin. So it's exponential, which, which moves me to really about people, you know. It's, it's people to people, and how can we bring more of that into how we talk about what we do and tell people what we offer? Yeah, how do we do that? Well, I think getting personal. I still believe that analog is going to be very important. How do you have peer-to-peer events? How do you bring your brand into having experiences versus just a sales CRM or even a sales conversation? How do you create these once-in-a-lifetime moments where people remember you? And to really go back to what you said earlier about how do you really understand who your audience is, what they're looking for, and how do you connect with them in a way that makes makes sense to them and that you can influence them. I think it's going to get harder and harder because everyone's solving the same problems, you know. I think it's experiences. Experiences. Yeah. What kind of experiences? Well, it's almost— you were just talking about it. Could be like a special event. It could be, you know, it could be lunch. You know, people are— everyone's on Zoom now. Yes. You know, and our teams, or our teams. But picking up the phone, having a conversation with someone, meeting them for lunch, having a lunch and learn, you know, I think, and I've seen it since COVID you know, whereas before, you know, it's all in person. And then since COVID it's been everyone's been on these Zooms. I think people miss that. To your point, P2P, P2P connections and experiences. Yeah, it's hard to get to know people when you have never met them because you've been on Zoom the whole time. Unless you see their cat walking across the background, which makes more human. Well, it does make people more human, and you can always tell you're a cat person, you're a dog person. Yeah, yeah. I think that, um, you know, when I think about, you know, iconic brands like Apple, and I love their new animation of their logo, which by the way they did by hand. I don't know if you've I don't know if you've seen it, but definitely a video, I'll include it in the link to see how they actually made that. Wasn't done in, you know, with AI. Yeah. It was done by hand and by, you know, translucent panels, really beautifully done. But how they are still so connected to the user experience. Mm-hmm. And even though they've changed and evolved over time, that they're still relevant with their audience and their product. And maybe it's as simple as sometimes just getting back to basics. Back to basics. I love that. Back to basics. Sort of like eliminate all of the thousands of ways we touch people. The noise. And the noise. And just like, what's really important? What do people really care about? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that. Mm-hmm. So what should people be thinking now about the basics? Well, I think it's about, um, Really defining, you know, what is your purpose? You know, I think sometimes when we get bogged down in business, you can lose sight of that sometimes. Because I feel like as long as you are living your purpose, you're gonna be great at whatever you're doing. And people are gonna recognize that. So understand what your purpose is and then deciding, well, okay, here's my purpose. How can I, How can I connect that with my target audience? How do I build my reputation based on that? How do I build my message? Just some really basic things. Well, that's why I think with the two engines, the leader engine and the organization engine, the organization needs to know what the leader engine's all about. And to really double down on the, and maybe this is the basic of the basic, is that the leader gets really clear about the message consistently, like helps everyone have a very clear understanding about who the company is, where the company's going, and helps them see themselves in that success. You know, basics, just like maybe basics starts inside right now in terms of all the noise and your customer really should really be your employee and how to really bring those people along. I know we've had the opportunity to hire some amazing offshore teams that work with TwinEngine, but it's still hard because you're not connected. I know we have daily huddles and we have all the systems in place and weekly meetings so everyone feels connected, but maybe the basic of the basic is really marketing to your own team, you know, and getting the leader, getting really clear about what they stand for, where are the companies going, so that other people know how they fit. Well, I think that that is really important because you're not, in terms of building your brand, it's not just about your external brand, but your internal brand too. And like we have, like we help, we, you know, we help facilitate quarterly town halls. Yeah. It really brings everybody together and really creates that sense of, you connection and gives everyone kind of a vision of, 'cause when you work every day, you don't really know what's going on. You don't really know the 30,000-foot and the big picture and how you fit into that. So that's been— I love town halls. Me too, I really do. I love town halls. I know that might sound kind of antiquated, but just really back to basics. Back to basics, back to basics. Like, here's the state of the company, this is where we are. And then we brought in speakers to those before to make them more interesting. And I think they're really effective. And they help people just, again, understand when they get an email about a specific, maybe new product or service, that they understand why, you know, from the leader. And it also forces the company to have that touchstone, to have a time, you know, several times a year to think about, okay, what is our message to our employees? What do we need to be talking about right now? It's been really awesome, love 'em. Well, and the reality is marketing's no longer a department. Yeah. But you've gotta create that community, that sense of engagement to where, you know, obviously your customer's the center of everything you do, but then how do you create that flywheel to where you're building those relationships, so it's not just about the sales process. That continues to go on in the relationship of that customer and as well as that employee. You're constantly building on that relationship because ultimately you want 'em all to be like, speak highly of you. They call it delight, you know. Yeah. And to be your biggest fans. Okay. Referrals. Huge. Mm-hmm. Referrals. Another great idea for a long-term campaign and back to basics. Yeah. You know, the people that love you the most are gonna promote you the most. Yeah. And there's no sell to that. I think, you know, I'm kind of feeling like selling is over, you know. It just, People see it coming. They don't want to be sold to. And I think there's some ways we can kind of get back to basics, be human, and to solve people's problems. Mm-hmm. I can definitely see that. Yeah. So I think that, you know, that moment of, you know, changing schools, getting out of your comfort zone, changing your environment, You know, I know of some brands that have actually moved their entire offices to other cities to really change, to force people to think differently, because this is a time when we need to be thinking differently. And sometimes we have to change our environment to do so, to really even become different, to have a different environment, to see things differently, to think about what they can become, whether they're thought leaders that are really looking, maybe they've sold their business and trying to build something new, or organizations that know that they need to change with the changes that are happening in the world. So, a little bit of information, a little bit of inspiration. It's exciting times. And it's exciting times. It's exciting times. And I'm thinking just of a couple of different examples where we recently work with our clients to do, to get back to basics. Yeah. Because they were just doing too much, saying too much, you know, it was unclear. Yeah. Really get back to clarity, back to basics, and stand out. God, there's so much information in the simplicity, simplicity, clarity and simplicity. Isn't that your why, Winnie? It is my why. Simplicity. I love it. Anyway, that was fun, and I look forward to continuing the conversation next week in the Twin Room. See you next week. See you next week.