805: Today’s Marketing Issues and Solutions with The Brand Leader Kyle Duford

Speaker 1 0:01 marketer of the Day episode 805 Today's marketing issues and solutions with the brand leader Kyle do furred?

Robert Plank 0:14 Hey, we're back on the market or the podcast. We're here with Kyle du Ford from the brand leader.com. Kyle is an executive specializing in crafting outstanding experiences for global brands. He is a former magazine editor, he is going to be telling us about some surprises he's discovered in marketing. He's going to be telling us about upcoming trends and marketing and how it relates to you, Carl, glad to be talking to you. Thanks, man. It's

Unknown Speaker 0:39 great to be here.

Robert Plank 0:41 And it's great to have you here and so you have kind of been around the block dealt with powerbar Nike Dr. Martens Lululemon, you've seen everything I think I had a a noon tablet in my water the other day, so it's your everywhere you've seen any everything. So having experienced all this and having kind of moving to new things, what is your focus these days? What are as you passionate, fired up all that good stuff? Well, you

Speaker 2 1:08 know, lately, we're just super focused on on helping brands post pandemic, you know, either reposition or, or get their message out there in a crowded, crowded space. We saw a lot of people jockeying for position the last year, maybe spending some time investing in, in new marketplace strategies, or product extension lines, or whatever it might be. And so yeah, we're just focusing on brands, rebuilding brands, rebranding companies, and leading them into the next level.

Robert Plank 1:35 And, and what does that look like? Because I feel like maybe I can kind of picture like, you know, some brands when, when there was like the lockdown the pandemic, maybe they upped their game as far as social media. But then as far as coming out of it, I have no idea what that even looks like, or what kind of things people are trying or what succeeding. So when you're saying like post pandemic and dealing with the branding, like what's like, how does that look? And like what sort of actions are being taken here?

Speaker 2 2:01 Well, a lot of the major brands, you know, took a step back and said, you know, we're not going to have a lot of traffic and we have to shut down retail stores and we've made some layoffs, they a lot of them took it as an opportunity to kind of you know, refocus their efforts, take that downtime to focus their strategy, hone it in a little bit better, or really just to reposition, we saw a lot of rebrands in the marketplace. I think people have seen Kia and Burger King and some big examples of just really just shifting gears, you know, they had the opportunity to do so in kind of a vacuum almost. And then in kind of reemerging, some of them. We redid it, it relaunched while we were still in lockdown. So that was that was pretty fascinating. But then a lot of smaller businesses. It they kind of had to survive. And we know unfortunately, a lot of them didn't. But the ones that did, if they have the opportunity, they kind of said okay, well, I mean, the obvious example is a lot of the hotels and restaurants that were were being hurt, you know, they change to how they can get takeout or carry out or a lot of government regulations were changes, you take liquor out of the store, they had a market that somehow they had to let people know, you know what they're doing, they had to then let people know that they were still around. And, and it was it's a remarkable way that people use various forms of marketing, social media, local advertising came back in a big way. So it was just kind of kind of cool. But then really also what we saw was a lot of brands say, We're sorry, excuse me, a lot of people say I'm either out of a job or now I'm working for home and my kids aren't back, I have to stay home, I'm going to do something new. And there was just this explosion of new brands, influencer brands, Mom paw brands, people starting businesses out of their garage, Etsy took off again, Shopify, those kind of things. So a lot of folks just took that as an opportunity to really look inside and see what they want to do and say, I'm not going back to the office, I'm going to do my own thing, sometimes that necessity, and a lot of times just out of freedom.

Robert Plank 3:57 Yeah, and it's it seems like every time there's a bit a big upset either like a world upset like if you're like, you know, World War Two, they invaded computers, or even like, your personal upset, or you might like go through a divorce or you might have like, like, lose your job. And then they kind of at first forces you to scramble and panic, but then eventually you end up on a path that you otherwise might not have, you know, barked upon. And as you're talking about these brands, it seems like it's kind of similar situation, right? Where there's kind of a pandemic and everything that happened, I mean, unavoidable but then you figure well, there's there's two choices to make. There's a fork in the road, there's either kind of give up or ignore it or bide your time, which look at that it worked out or adjust and then so am I right in saying that, you know, a lot of these industries that were kind of hit before it's like now now they're they're like supercharged now they're making up for lost time because you hear now about how like, it's hard to book a hotel room. airline flights are super high. So it seems though was like the ones that survived now they're they're reaping the rewards of all this last time.

Speaker 2 5:06 Well, yeah, that's true, I wouldn't know I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a reward, they're still kind of making up, you know, the the losses they had in arrears. But, you know, take the car rental market, for example, it was very clear that nobody were renting cars, and the only way to survive, they had to consolidate and sell their fleets, which is common after a year or two of using the car anyway. But now they literally had to sell everything. And all of a sudden, it felt it felt like overnight, everyone started traveling again recently. And when they did that, there was no cars available anywhere. And I was literally looking at an article the other day, we're in Hawaii, cars were $800 a day, because the demand was so high, it was very basic economics supply and demand, you can charge more people were going to Home Depot and renting their trucks and, and using those around town for $19 a day or whatever, whatever it was. So yeah, I think a lot of businesses are now trying to kind of, you know, make up for lost time, which they had to it's out of necessity, but they're also hiring people back. And now the the job market, you can be a little bit more selective with who you hire back into the marketplace, you know, it's not just adding one or two here and there or even filling in a department. Now, you're actually you're bringing a lot of, in some cases, top level people back. And so just by this new influx of of the workforce, and a lot of it is, you know, blue collar, we know that to be the case, because of potential pandemic particularly hit hard, those smaller businesses or, you know, a lot of that kind of hourly employee sector, but a lot of folks who just didn't come into the office, they shut up office buildings down, you know, they had to make layoffs. And so now, they almost have the pick of the litter. And so it's very competitive in certain aspects to get back into the business. It's, to me, it's very fascinating how everyone is handling this, but at the core of all of it is the message and how they're reaching their consumers how they're even talking internally to their business, you know, what their press releases look like? How do they, you know, open up on Sundays again? Or what are their hours change, you know, to a hotel or a restaurant, all that stuff is really comes down to branding, which is really just an emotional connection between a business and its people. So how you communicate that is at the utmost importance of surviving?

Robert Plank 7:11 And how do you even begin to approach this like, because you're saying that, you know, it's all about the communication between the brain and this consumer. But with all the I mean, even even just a little bit of banter so far, I mean, there's so many factors at play, there's so many things going on, there's so many things to understand, or like you say, like, well, this event happened, because these past three or four cause and effect dominoes sort of fell, I mean, for us is, if a brand comes to you and says, you know, we need help, or we need to change things up, do you look at like, what they've been doing? Do you? Do you go deep and and spend like weeks figuring out what people are talking about? Like, how do you even begin to attack this problem with all the all the things going on?

Speaker 2 7:51 I mean, it's a great question. What I found is that, in years doing this, a lot of businesses don't have a good internal communication mechanism to explain who they are internally. So give you a perfect example. Recently, we did a workshop for a company who they said, Listen, we want to go with you guys. We want to rebrand, but we we don't know what we don't know, we're going to take a backseat and just kind of hold off of it. So I just said, Listen, why don't you come in for a couple hours, just pay us for our time. And we'll just talk you through what you don't know, we can maybe help us help come up with a plan together. So that being said, you know, we we all started talking and there's a sea level group of people. And I asked them privately without the other ones hearing what their business was about describe your business for me, and you know, three words or less, and off all four or five of them completely different answers. I mean, completely different. And so the question from us was very logical. Like, if you guys can't come to a conclusion of who you are internally, how are you ever going to explain to either your current customers or potential customers? And so we're finding a lot of it is just asking the right questions to the stakeholders, going back to original mission and vision statements of businesses asking them, you know, are you really upholding your business values? are you achieving your goals? Has your vision changed right now, because of where you are, has your mission changed? A lot of people have changed completely because and some of it is just for Goodwill. Some of it is they want to go back into nonprofit or whatever it might be. And it's, but you have to understand who you are before you can ever tell somebody who you are. And if you don't do that the market is going to tell you who you are. And then if you're not ready to pivot or respond to that accordingly, you know, you're going to fall flat. So a lot of is listening to them and then listening to customers understanding who they are do a lot of market research, putting social media listeners out there and understanding how people are talking about their company or brand and then coming up with a strategic plan to execute on either putting efforts behind who they are and getting the message out kind of accelerating that message or rebranding, repositioning and coming up with a new way that their new business model can appropriately explain who they are to other people and in hopes that you get or retain customers.

Robert Plank 9:59 And what I'm hearing from a lot of this is how important it is to go back to the fundamentals. And also just an in like in business in life in general, it's like, it's really easy. And it's kind of scary to be like, as you were explaining that what went through my head was like, there's like a dot way down here, like the starting point, right? And maybe like years ago, you figured, well, here's, here's what we're about, here's what we believe, vision mission statement, all that. And then you'd like went on this like trajectory, and it was okay for a while. But then something happened like pandemic or something else, they took like a big left turn, and now they're way over here somewhere else, but they're still acting on the original, the original starting point, and then it's this weird identity crisis, things don't line up. And then like you said, then the the end result of that is in the marketplace is kind of like making decisions for you and saying what you are for you. And that doesn't seem very, like strong, it doesn't seem like that, that exhibits like leadership. So then the it seems like what you and your team are doing this case is go back to that was bare basic fundamentals and say, okay, like what you were doing before that worked back then. But now you're way over here. And now it's time to maybe re examined and say, if we were starting from scratch here, which in a way they are now here's here's what we would do, like deliberately, instead of things happening to us.

Speaker 2 11:16 Absolutely. I mean, you couldn't be more on the head with that. That's absolutely right. In many cases, too. It's almost they they drifted off and maybe started a new lane, which could be successful. But when they look back and go, No, we actually don't want to change our mission, we fundamentally want to believe in this, and they actually have to bring it back. And so we see that a lot instead of changing, which is totally fine. By the way to change your vision and mission statements, we encourage brands to change their mission statement, depending on the marketplace. I mean, that's okay, your vision is long term, your mission is to hit your goals. And so we we, we look at that and say, Okay, well, one of two things could be wrong. And like you said, you could drift off, and they may have to repurpose or reposition who you are. Or you could say that new thing we did isn't really the right thing. Let's bring that back to the center. It depends who you're you're answering to if you're answering to a CEO, at a smaller business, we're answering to a board of a fortune 500 company, it all depends on what situation you're in, you know, I imagine I'm making this up, I have no idea. But I imagine coke sales probably dropped a little bit, without fountain cokes being sold and gas stations, you know, having less traffic and so forth. I can imagine, you know, Coke probably had to do and Pepsi and all those other folks had to probably do something, did they just batten down the hatches? Did they just kind of reduce the workforce, they just slow the pipeline down, I actually don't know. But they're not going to change who they are fundamentally been in business for 120 years or whatever. So you know, whatever change may have been just a blip on the radar, and they're going back to where they are other businesses to use that same example came up with different flavors and different opportunities for a while we had some downtime, let's spin up a different machine and try something new. So it all depends where you are it there really is no right answer. It's what do you want to do as a, as a business? Who do you want to be known as or known for? And do you have the right customer base for that? And if you can say yes to those things, then just go for it. And we'll help people do that.

Robert Plank 13:02 That's huge. I mean, you're blowing my mind here that there might no mean pandemic or no pandemic, this kind of side project or side, you know, just new venture might express itself. And then so when the if the side kind of experiment grows, then there's like that decision you made of, okay, which is just temporary, do we go back to the tried and true or is this is something that's like new, and this was a surprise, we didn't expect this to take off. And what you're making me think of is, like, yesterday, I was talking to someone that was saying something along the lines of like, you don't have a knowledge problem, you have a thinking problem. And that, like, you know, like, you can have all all these techniques and all this data and all these like tricks in your back pocket. But sometimes you just have to, like slow down and stop and think about, like, where you are and the strategy and what you really want. And I mean, that's it's like the, the most like bare bones basic thing to say, but but it's huge. And like you said, it's never a one size fits all. It's about, like, what, where you're at and what you want and what the customers are responding to. And so, um, yeah, so you said, you're saying kind of go back to basics and think about that kind of internal communication and things like that. And so, the, and that the businesses that failed, were the ones that maybe like did not quite adapt. So is there something that like, we all need to be like on the lookout for moving forward? Like we talked about, you know, surviving the pandemic, but as far as like, things moving forward? I mean, it's it's such a weird, it's such a weird like, situation we're in right with, like the economy and businesses reopening and like, Will COVID comeback or what will things even look like moving forward? So like, what are your thoughts as far as like the future and the way things are headed?

Speaker 2 14:41 Well, I see a lot of businesses and probably rightfully so just kind of hold back some cash and reserves for a lot of things. So it's almost now that things are back to normal people are more gun shy than they were during the pandemic when they when they kind of wanted to take a risk and see like, hey, let's just throw caution to the wind and see what's going to stick. Now it feels like Now that things are getting back to almost normal, people are in businesses are kind of going well. Okay, what if this happens again, if What if something happens in, you know, in the wintertime, and this comes back a little bit, or if I have to lay people off again or whatever, or something else completely happens, a natural disaster, or God forbid, you know, the, you know, the pipeline that was held hostage recently affected us in the south pretty badly. And so I think they're holding back some cash reserves a little bit. And I think that's to a detriment, because now's the time to really put your differentiators out there and your value propositions let people know that you're still around, you're still strong, you're doing really, really well. So that's, that's kind of interesting. But now, where I'm also seeing a lot of a lot of people, it takes to, you know, take the things like tick tock and, and new ways of communicating which, you know, up until the pandemic started was most reserved for 15 year olds and younger. And nowadays, people are selling on tick tock and brands are on there. And it's kind of like, you know, the new, the new Instagram, the new Pinterest is everyone's trying to jump on this bandwagon. And it's working for a lot of folks. And so you're seeing a lot of people just kind of start to slice and dice their marketing budgets in a much different way than just traditional. A lot of people are going to the streaming services, which is great. And we just declare we don't do it marketing, visor, media bias. But I'm seeing that a lot. And the trend is people are just trying to get their message out in different unique ways. And the ones who are taking risks, I think, are really doing really a great job. So what I'm seeing coming is, is that twofold theory is people are holding back and nervous too gun shy to spend anything and hoping they can just ride out the storm. And, and then the other side is people just taking risks and saying listen, we might be we might be in a crowded space, we might be one of one or whatever it might be, but we're going to, you know, we're going to slim that pedal down and see how far we can take this thing. And you know, you can win on both sides. So it's just we want to help business businesses achieve their goals and whatever they might be, we might have some opinions here and there. But for the most part, that's what our goal is.

Robert Plank 16:55 And opinions are good, right? Because you can you can take an opinion and say, oh my gosh, I'm seeing it a new different way, or I hate that opinion. I'll throw it out. I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do anyway, it's at least helpful to have that opinion. And I mean, risks sound fun, right? Especially calculated risks. When you say interest. Well, instead of being afraid and letting that control me, let me like think this through and then try this and look at the result. And not just throwing caution to the wind, but like doing something more outside the box. I mean, my mind was blown years ago when like Taco Bell came out with an app, and you can just do what you want. And then it's ready for you when you get to the drive thru little little things like that when when a restaurant has QR codes and fun things like that on the on the table. So I'm like, Oh, cool. They're like getting with the times instead of just doing the same old thing since since 1950. And so you mentioned about the things that you you and your team and your agency do and in what you don't do. And so now that we've wet, wet people's appetites at about the brand leader.com Can you tell us about what you and your company your team does and what you don't do? And if someone's listening and watching right now today? How do they know if they're a good fit to go to your site and reach out and contact you all that good stuff? Yeah, well, thank

Speaker 2 18:11 you for that. Basically, what we say is we're a branding agency that focuses on strategy and design. So that's we do develop the things we design, if we're talking about digital and websites and things like that. But we're not a development house, we typically don't develop things that other people have designed. We're not a marketing shop, we're not, we're not a design company only. We are, we are a branding firm, which means that really, really want to work with brands and getting their message across. Now a lot of times that is visual, that's their aesthetics, they're looking feel. But a lot of it is focused on voice and tone and proper guidelines, like we talked about positioning and what archetype they are, and how they talk to their consumers, what their consumers are, what their competitors are, how to price products, where to where to put them. And the other half of the business is that kind of design element, we've got an amazing development, sorry, assuming that we have an amazing development team too. I shouldn't say that, because it's my brother in law, right, run that side. But we have amazing design department. We've won some awards for our designs, really proud of those guys. And you know, we design everything from obviously logos to support the brand, but also, you know, color palettes and PowerPoint presentations and you know, full identity systems, including people still use them ironically, you know, letterhead stationery, that sort of thing. And then websites, We're known for our website design, we produce a lot of videos. And so yeah, we do we all do all those things, but we look at that in a way that says that's going to support who you are. We typically turn down business, if they come to us and say we just need a new logo. You know, we'll we'll poke holes in that say, well, well, why or, you know, they say we went on a rebrand. Tell us what our new name is we're like, well, that's just not a rebrand, you know, we have to talk about all those elements. You know, we like I said earlier, a brand has an emotional connection with with your customer or potential customer. So, it's not just one thing, it's this kind of all the sum of the parts, you know, so it's yes, it is. Your logo, but it's also how you answer the phone. And you know how you position your product, how you price your product, what clothes you're wearing, when you greet them at the store, and then things like that. So we help businesses understand those elements. Sometimes we help create those elements, they don't exist. And and we put that strategy thinking behind it to, to accelerate the awareness of that business in its own marketplace. So if you're a right fit for us, really, it's really anyone who has questions about that. We're always open to talk to people, if we're not a right fit, were open to telling people that we've got a great downloadable guide online at the brand leader.com. It's called The Ultimate Guide to rebranding it, even if you're not rebranding, if you want to learn more about brands, it's a great resource for people just it's a free guide, take it, we love to tell people about knowledge, we know. And if you work with us, great. If not, there's some good information there anyway, so anyone can call

Robert Plank 20:51 us. Fantastic, but the brand leader.com to get that rebranding guide. And I mean, you made a lot of really good points there that that it's like, there's the big picture, right. And it's really, like you said, it's fascinating sometimes to see businesses like rebrand, or pivot and things like that. And what I'm getting from our conversation today is how important it is to stay curious and to stay on top of who's doing what because if, if you see if you see someone like Burger King, or whoever, you know, come out of the pandemic bigger than when they came in. And you say, Oh, that's cool. He did that, how they do that, it's kind of almost too late, because you haven't been staying on top of all these, just all the all these things that they've been doing and all these kinds of marketing techniques. And so I like how you set that up where there's like the bigger picture, and there's more of like the emotional connection of lookout. So just a logo, just to name that's too small in scope, we need to be looking at the bigger picture. And the place to do that the way to do that is by going to the brand leader.com. And we will see you there, claim that report. See what Kyle has on that website, contact him and his team if you're interested in having that conversation, or moving things forward to the next step. Anything to say Kyle, as we wrap up, wind down any final, like parting words of advice or something you want to say to just like wrap up this whole conversation?

Speaker 2 22:08 Yeah, I mean, it thanks for that opportunity. I think most of it is just if you if you feel the need to change ask yourself, why is it because you've heard things in the marketplace that are against you is your new competitor. That's you know, that's coming in and taking your market share. Have you been bought out? Or have you bought another company and acquired one you know, what is the reason that you feel that you need to change your look or change your position? Ask yourself that it's we don't want to do these things willy nilly. We saw GAAP tried to do that years ago and change their logo and people have had just a crazy fit. You don't want to just do something arbitrarily. So think about why you're even calling somebody like us. And if you don't know why we can help you, you know, come up with a reason and there is no reasonable will tell you that there has to be a they're there to kind of do an expensive proposition that could change your business. You know, like a full rebrand would do.

Robert Plank 23:04 This is Robert plank from the marketer of the day podcast which you can find at marketer of the day.com for more episodes, and d f y podcast.com. forward slash free if you want to know more about running your own podcast or running a better or more fun or easier or less time intensive podcast, go to D F ly podcast.com/free To find out more right this instant