Transcription:

We know what you want. You want to reach more customers and grow your business.

But the marketing and PR landscape is murky and confusing.

Now, you can gain clarity with straight talk on the latest marketing and fundraising trends in technology from two agency pros.

Bryan Earnest and Mark Mathis from Amperage Marketing and Fundraising.

Now, amp up your marketing with the Amp Up Podcast.

Mark Mathis: Hello, I'm Mark Mathis.

Bryan Earnest: And I'm Bryan Earnest.

Mark Mathis: We are excited for today's episode and the reason is we're going to talk about branding. And I know that doesn't sound like the most exciting topic, but it's a topic that everyone talks about and everyone refers to from time to time. And it excites us because it's really that deep part of an organization where they communicate who they are and it's how people think about it.

But there's lots of definitions for branding. Bryan, I know I've heard and read thousands of them. But when you think about branding, what do you think it is? How does it fit?

Bryan Earnest: Great question, Mark, and thanks. How long do we have for this?

Mark Mathis: We've got two minutes.

Bryan Earnest: Couple hours could probably talk about brand. I'll take it from the most simple. You know, a lot of times people think about brand as just an organization's name, maybe their identity, their logo, the colors that they use. But it's really how an organization is positioned in the marketplace. But a brand really goes much further than that.

You know, I like to think about brand, certainly all those pieces that are the identity piece that we think about, that's what most people think about brand, the visible elements of a brand. Even further than that, I think, your brand really ties back to your strategy. It's about the vision for the organization, the actions you take, the priorities.

It's certainly about the experience. It's about how consumers engage with you in all of the ways, every encounter. It's about your online experience with that organization, how you answer the phone, treat your customers, the facilities you have, every employee, every time, that's part of the brand. And it all ties back to kind of the operations of an organization.

You certainly can't say, "Fly the friendly skies," if you don't train people on friendliness. You can't say you're the Magic Kingdom if there's really no magic. You can't say you're the safest if you don't rank highest in safety. So it really ties back to the identity, the experience, the strategy, and the operations. All of those pieces coming together really make for a brand.

Mark Mathis: Yeah, I think that's so much deeper and that's why I really like this topic. We're in such a brand saturated world. I mean, there are brands everywhere from Instagram to television news. And I like to think of it's not necessarily what the company thinks what their brand is, it's more what the customer or, in our case, donor, patient, stakeholder or prospect, whatever the area we're working in, what they think about you.

So it's almost like a little piece of real estate in that person's mind that you kind of own. So it's that mental shorthand that allows you to think, "Oh, I recognize that green circle up there. That's Starbucks. I like Starbucks coffee, but I really like Starbucks for some other reason I don't know." And that's that little place in the mind that the brand consumes and holds.

And to me, the way I like to describe it to people is getting healthy. It's like getting healthy because a lot of times people will say, "Hey, Bryan. What's the best way to brand my organization?" And they're looking for one or two quick answers. But it'd be like saying, "Hey, I want to get healthy tomorrow. What apples should I eat?" It's just more holistic than that. It's got to be beyond just the logo. We think about logos. We do logos. We think they're an important part of a brand. But to your point, it is so much deeper because if it doesn't follow through, you're lost, your brand will not be what you expect it to be.

Bryan Earnest: Just think about that, the example you used of Starbucks. Whether you go to Starbucks or Caribou, let's use that as an example, they almost have identical products, right? It's coffee. It's lattes. It's espresso. It's a few snack items along with it. Now, they may argue with me that it's, "Oh, but we're so much different." It's not. They both have nice soothing music when you walk in. They have a little wrapper that goes around your coffee cup.

But what is it about the two brands that make you feel something different about them? There's people that are loyal to, "Oh, I'm only a Starbucks guy" or "Oh man, I go to caribou." They're essentially selling the same product. It's target and Walmart, right? You can buy the same crap at two different places, but there's a certain feel you have. That, in its essence, is a lot of what goes into to an organization's brand. It’s just that differentiation. And it's more feel than it is look.

Mark Mathis: Yeah, I, so agree with that. If you walk into that Starbucks and it's dirty and you get treated poorly,. It doesn't matter about the logo and everything. Or the food's not good or consistent. I like to think too about the way we use branding. Like somebody says, "Well, I want to make sure I put my logo on that cup because I want to brand it." And I think what do the cows think about branding? Like do cows sit around in a field and go, "Yeah, I really want to be branded." I'm pretty sure they go, "Oh no, they're heating up the branding iron, get the heck out of here."

I think people have the same problem too. They're like, " I want to enjoy my brands. I want to like my brands, but I don't want you to beat me over the head with a branding iron. I want it to be more subtle. I want it to solve my problems.

Bryan Earnest: You know, the word that comes to mind for me, Mark, you're right on, is relevancy, right? I want to feel relevant in my life. If it's a brand that I wear, my Nike shoes or I've got a certain brand of shirt or, jacket or hat that I'm wearing, or a car that I'm driving or the Starbucks in my hand, or the iPhone in my hand. Whatever it might be, does that brand fit into my life? Is it relevant in my life? The brand that's trying to hit me over the head and just doesn't fit and really speak to me personally is more like a noisy gong than it is really relevant in my day-to-day life.

Mark Mathis: A lot of people will say that in branding you have to be consistent and you do. But I almost think a better C word would be like continuity. So if you think about it, on a video set, a continuity person is the person that says, "Oh, nope. The book was over there." "Nope. You were turned left, not right." "you were wearing a green shirt, not a red shirt." And so as you edit the piece together, suddenly the story fits. There aren't these little moments where you go, "Oh, that person isn't looking the right way" or "Something's out of place."

And I think that's the same thing that happens with a brand, it's how does it all fit together? You know, what's the steadiness of your brand? How does the continuity of it fit with your life? And so if I were to think, what are the first things you have to do brand? I'd say one is you've got to start thinking about how you solve problems. You've got to do research. You've got to really think about what kind of business you are or organization you are. because if you want to brand fun and hip, but the interior of your building is dark mahogany wood. And the music is it just classical or something, it isn't going to work. It isn't going to fit together. The continuity has been broken, it's been interrupted.

And that I think happens with people and brands. They come with an expectation and then they're either happy and think it fits or they're sad and they're not.

Bryan Earnest: Think about some of the brands. I know you've talked about them, Mark. They've been around so long or they're so embraced by their customers or consumers that they've become part of the public trust there. I think about many of the hospitals we work with, colleges, universities, their brand, it feels like it's almost owned by their consumers, by their stakeholders.

We've seen it with big national brands. I think it was The Gap that tried to change their logo and their people were like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. You can't. Don't change our logo." We see it with some of our sports teams, our universities. Those of us that are either alumni or supporters or it's in our state or whatever and go, "No, no." My school, their colors are red and yellow, red and gold, and they start wearing black and you go, "What are you doing?" That's not the brand identity. We own that.

Go Hawks.

Yeah. Go Hawks. We own that brand identity. What are you doing? And so it feels, your word of it, it's lost that continuity.

Mark Mathis: Yeah. So that kind of comes to the next question. I think if you were listening to this podcast, you'd go, "Well, how do I know if I need to rebrand right now?" And I think that's one that, as we're coming out of a pandemic and there've been a lot of changes and there's an acceleration of digital and how people merge with that digital world, kind of think of some of the things that really stand out.

I'm just going to list maybe two, Bryan. You can be thinking a couple as well. I think when your brand looks painfully outdated. You've just outgrown your brand, right? It's like clothes that don't fit and the hem isn't right. You can't quite get it buttoned. That pant doesn't fit anymore. And there's some brands that are like that. It just doesn't look right, right? It doesn't fit who you are now.

I look at like newspaper headlines where there are icons across the top and how they've struggled to look more digital. But when they go, "This is a newspaper." Then they fight it, changing even the fonts that they use internally. But that's an area that really needs to go.

So I'd say when the brands outdated, maybe also when you don't look digital. What are you thinking? What are some other things? When is it time to rebrand?

Bryan Earnest: Several things come to mind. I think, first and foremost, it's listening to your customers. So getting those insights from your customers, are they not buying from you as much? Are you not being referred? Are you finding that you aren't as relevant to your target audience as you once were? Have their perceptions and feelings about your organization changed? So getting outside of yourself is probably first and foremost.

Also I think a big strategy change. I think about an organization, Kentucky Fried Chicken saying, "Look, we really can't promote fried. People are more health conscious. We probably need to downplay fried. Let's go with KFC though. It's a strong historical legacy brand. Let's reposition that way." I think that's one of them.

You know, and a thought that came to mind when you were talking about it, Mark, is some of the best brands have looked at it as evolution, not necessarily revolution. I think about John Deere and how over time their brand and brand identity was a slow and steady, maybe every decade, just slowly updating making it more contemporary, changing their icon. It wasn't John Deere tractor and engine company, but instead refining that down to John Deere.

NBC, who you and I both worked for at one point. There's great history there at one point of the evolution of the peacock and the colors and how that's evolved over time. ESPN, how their brand has just changed. You mentioned it, is it digital? Yes. Mobile? Yes. It's been more of an evolution than revolution.

There certainly is a time for revolution where it's time for, "We need a whole new name. We need a complete new identity. Our strategy tells us we want to reposition ourselves in our marketplace and really emerge a different brand."

Mark Mathis: We had to do that when we changed company names, had a merger and acquisition. It made more sense to rebrand than to try to keep cobbling everybody together into one name.

Bryan Earnest: Yeah. Well, back in the in the 19-what? Fifties and sixties and seventies, in our industry, the reputable organizations like ours, where the names of the partners, it sounded a lot like a law firm. There was a high degree of trust in that type of naming convention. And we followed suit with that in the mid-'90s. But as we got well into this century, you look at that differently and you look at our competitors and you look at how we needed to reposition in the marketplace to be more digitally focused, while still being true to some of our core brand elements, yeah, we needed to think about our rebranding strategy.

Mark Mathis: I'm thinking too there's some companies out there that had to do it because of exceptional bad press,

Bryan Earnest: Mm. Yes.

Mark Mathis: Where they needed to change their name. There's been some financial institutions that had to just completely changed the name, tear down all the branding that they had built over time. But some other ones that I was kind of thinking of too, along with some of the observations you had, was just if the target audience changes, just like if all of a sudden your service line changes, but maybe your target audience changes or maybe your values change as you're going along. Suddenly, you think differently. Maybe you want to be more ecology focused and you want a more green look to your whole organization, that might be a time to rebrand to shift.

But I think about, this sounds like a joke, but I think it's true, if you're embarrassed to hand out your business card because either the logo looks dumpy or the font just doesn't look right or it looks like it's from the '50 or from the '80s, I think that's a good sign you need to rebrand. That's a moment in time,

Bryan Earnest: Yes. you don't want to send people to your website. because of the way it looks.

Mark Mathis: Right.

Bryan Earnest: Yeah. Part of that brand too. We're talking a lot about names and logos, but it's also really that brand positioning, that brand messaging too, Mark. You may not need to change your name. You may not need to dramatically change your logo, so to speak, any of that iconography, but it might just be your brand positioning. How does that align with where your strategy is going?

I think about a hospital system we work with, they didn't want to change their name. They didn't really want to change their logo, but they really wanted to own the cardiac market. So developing theme line, tagline, that really involved heart into their messaging, being the heart of your healthcare, really positioned them in a market differently because of that leg of the stool, not just their name or their logo.

Mark Mathis: Yeah. It is deeper. And it does go beyond that. I know we worked with a credit union once that wanted to rebrand, modernize their logo and font. I think we ended up through research, finding that we needed to really think about how employees were impacted and motivated by the brand, understanding what it is and how to work with people. And one of the outcomes of the research was that people wanted a guide. They wanted someone who was going to help them with more than just setting up a checking account or setting up a savings account or a car loan. They really wanted a guide on their financial journey.

And so creating the brand, but instead of just like a typical brand guide, we had to create an entire guide for how people might even answer the phone, how they would work with somebody in a branch office. Or when they come to them with a simple problem, how you can maybe figure out how that works in a grander scale, so that you can have a deeper connection with the person rather than just, "Yeah. Thanks for opening your checking account. Now, make sure don't overdraft or we'll charge you a fee." This really, I think, brought a richness to their brand that allowed them to get to know people better and to make that customer experience so much more.

It is deeper. It is beyond the logo and the tagline or the colors or the font, although those are extremely important. Just imagine if your favorite football team just suddenly changed its colors, like you said, it just strikes you as something wrong. But when you can really make it so that it strikes you as something right, it really makes a difference in your life and how you view that brand going forward.

Bryan, what would be the last thing you want someone to remember? If they're listening to this podcast about branding, what do you really want them to remember about brand?

Bryan Earnest: Two things come to mind, Mark. One is that a brand is more than just your name or your logo, your identity, the colors that you use. It's so much deeper as you and I have both talked about. It's about your strategy. It's about your day-to-day operations. It's about the experience. It's about your culture. It's about your people. It's about how you do business. Quite often a brand is a mirror held up to the organization to really reflect truly at the core how that business operates.

The other thing too is don't take it lightly. I see organizations that just say, "We'll do a contest to do a new logo or to come up with our new name." It is one of your most valuable assets of your organization and not something to take lightly. it should be deeply supported and embedded with research, whether that's internal research, external research, competitive research. But really to gain those insights, look around your organization from a 360-degree perspective and really understand how your brand fits into the marketplace, is owned and held by your customers, how you're perceived outside. It's not something to mess with and something to take lightly. It's really something to probably get some type of guidance through that process to really lead you to a successful outcome of rebranding, repositioning, re-introducing then that brand.

Near us is the Field of Dreams, just by building it and putting a new brand out there, people won't immediately take to it. You've got to introduce it to your market. So that's critical. It's nothing to take lightly.

Mark Mathis: Yeah, I think that's such a strong point, Bryan, and worth repeating. But I just think if you see an article that says here's how to brand your organization in four easy steps, run. Run. There's no easy way to do this.

Well, thank you for listening. I think, you're understanding that there are 5,000 branded messages a day that we all receive and how important branding is and that you differentiate yourself and stand out.

If you have liked the insights that you've heard or you're interested in Amperage, please visit us at AmperageMarketing.com. And if you get a chance, would you please rate and review us? We would certainly appreciate any feedback we could get on this, how we can improve it, what we could do better. But also you and I both know that the robots really like when you click on ratings and reviews, so let's make the robots happy. And for Bryan Earnest and myself, Mark Mathis, thank you for listening. Have a great branded day.