Resoundcast - the branding podcast from Resound, a

Did you know your content ideas can give you monopoly power in your market? That’s because when you really know your audience, your content tells them what they’re thinking and then answers it directly, helping them to know how to think about a topic. And when they think about your topic in exactly the way you do, you win. But before you can connect, you have to listen. Today, I want to talk about how authentic branding, paired with an understanding of your audience, will activate relationships at the top of the marketing funnel, and all the way down. Remember, this all doesn’t have to happen today. But if you’re intent on brand and service strategy by including your audience in the conversation, this process is for you. Don’t stress about doing this overnight. Keep it simple and then focus on the next thing. https://youtu.be/eggheR2Mgls Identify the Audience You Want to Understand “Understand who you should be talking to for maximum brand resonance.” What does this mean? Brand resonance is a fancy way to say your brand makes sense to your audience. Have they been beaten over the head by the industry, and you’re making them feel like you’re on their side? Do they have a frustration with the industry that you’re solving? You know, because you listened? Are they sick of seeing every firm acting like every other firm? In a world where everyone’s trying to be relevant and current, you stand out by focusing on what’s important. You rely on your values and brand personality, showing that you care less about impressing people with external things and more about timeless values—focusing on things that really matter. Define your ideal client by creating a persona. This process involves going to different resources and finding out where your potential clients hang out. The key is to place your brand where your ideal clients already are, as they usually won’t come to your brand on their own.  Give the persona demographic data, problems they’re encountering, key values they hold, and psychographic information about how they think. Demographics can encompass details such as income, job title, type of firm they work for, and the size of the company. Understand Your Audience Using Inside Knowledge “Tap into internal insights to authentically reach your target market.” All this means is that you should talk with other people in your firm about your clients. Build an understanding of who they are based on shared internal knowledge. What’s going on when they’re trying to take their kids to school? What’s going through their mind when they wake up in the morning? Is there anything you don’t know about the cycles of their business? So it’s not a scientific study or focus group. Oh well. It’s easy to do, and It’s more information than you had before, and now you can test the insights you gain from each other in other ways, such as by talking to clients. Plus, it builds a client-focused culture and lets everyone know that you’re interested in providing leads for them. Understand Your Audience’s Preferred Channels “Explore unconventional marketing channels” Simply put: Find where your audience hangs out and engage them there. This is the core question of all media buying.  Do they all have offices in the same part of town? Do they all go to the same hot dog stand or deli for lunch? Are they all in one LinkedIn group? Related: how does your competition try to reach them? If everyone’s using the same medium or marketing channel, you just need to think things through. Maybe you go back to sending postcards or invite them to a webinar. It helps to go back to your brand and product, and just think “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could advertise on a blimp downtown.” You may not pull that off, but that’s the kind of thinking that leads to some pretty cool ideas. Understand Your Current Audience “Use existing client patterns to identify your ideal customer profile.” In plain English, this is just looking at what’s going on around you. Who do we tend to talk to? Who are our most valuable clients? Extra points if you haven’t even tried with these people. It’s just been effortless. Why is this good? Because it’s usually easy to serve people when you’re a great fit. When you find these people, you want to understand them. Understand Your Audience on Their Terms “Build relationships through value-driven communications.” Or: what’s in it for them? How can we guide them, even if they’re not in front of us? Even if they’ve never talked to one of us or even purchased from us before? It’s like a friendship. You usually don’t plan a vacation together with another family the first time you meet them. More often, you’re at the golf course together or serving together at church. Then one thing leads to another, and you invite them over for dinner. In business, it’s the same. They hear your name here and there. They see you on LinkedIn taking a stab at a topic. You seem a little more genuine than the other firms. So they poke around your website. They like what they see. So you give them something as an act of generosity. You’re not planning the vacation quite yet. Neither are you getting the families together for dinner yet. You’re just giving them something of value…to show that you like to help. Something that symbolizes the kinds of tools that you offer in a fuller relationship. For example: Write a whitepaper about changes in the tax code that could benefit them. Share some research showing often-under-utilized tools to save money, make money, or reduce headaches. Build an infographic showing a simple workflow for how to interact with you (talk about making it seem easy). Understand the Audience that Matches Your Brand “Personalize your marketing materials to reflect your unique brand identity.” In other words, make your marketing material your own…so that it oozes your values and personality. Do it so that nobody will be able to mistake it for your competition’s materials. And then go for the audience that appreciates it. How do you do it? Simple, just learn a branding process, schedule it out, get all of your senior leaders into a room for a day, and get them on the same page about values, personality traits, and brand story. Then the work begins. Or you could: Get our brand course and our book “You are Remarkable” and get guided through the process. Join my Remarkabrand Masterclass (get your name on the list). Hire us to do it for you. The point is that you end up with a clear, well-organized brand guide that will orient everything you create toward your brand. And a brand anthem that will orient how you talk about yourself and the core problem you solve for clients. Evaluate and Adapt Your Audience Communication “Stay agile and responsive to changes in client needs and industry trends.” Mike Tyson said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Well, marketing plans are no different. The best approach is to plan, measure, and then readjust. You measure in a few ways: Measure the numbers. What do you expect your marketing to do? Did it move the numbers? If not, then ask why. Talk to business development. Are they getting qualified leads? How can you improve? Talk to clients. Make it casual so they feel they can talk about small things that aren’t that big of a deal (but probably are). This info is priceless. Plans are useless. But planning is essential. Get your strategy figured out and then be ready to be wrong. This is how the best strategists do it. How do you know you’re wrong? You measure. Early and often. Know Your Audience Sun Tzu said that if you know yourself and know your client, you’ll win. Or something like that. At the top, marketing is simple. You know yourself, you know what you do, and why it matters to someone else. All other branding experiences you create get their inspiration from that. This is a process, so don’t get impatient. But don’t take it too casually either. Like anything, if you don’t start, you’ll never take the next step. Make a commitment, carve out the necessary time, and find a way to make it work. Your firm, your clients, and your career will thank you.

Accounting firms are all the same, right? Nerdy, dad-joke-telling professionals who drive sensible cars and wear beige suits to work every day. Unless they’re feeling saucy, in which case they throw caution to the wind and go with the branded polo. Of course, these accounting stereotypes come straight from the ’90s and, more recently, Parks and Rec. But the industry isn’t exactly doing its job in busting that myth. Most accounting firms: Claim to be “more than just accountants.”  Use blue and sometimes green in their branding.  All on a mission to come across as a little more human than a calculator. Of course, we know these stereotypes don’t reflect the people working in the industry. And we’d like to help. https://youtu.be/GRal1TSGuGU The Index Here at Resound, we thought it would be interesting to see exactly how differentiated—or how homogenous—the industry actually is. So we grabbed 40 data points across 1,485 accounting firms, crunched a little data, and named it the “Remarkabrand Index for Accounting Firms.” The index reflected our desire to give firms a measurable standard against which to judge their branding efforts. Basically, “Are we different, or are we undistinguishable from our competition?” Why? Because differentiation is a real challenge. Accounting firms struggle to distinguish themselves in a competitive market. And until now, there was no quantitative, benchmarking tool to objectively measure brand differentiation.  …until now. So How Did We Collect the Data? Tons and tons and tons of manual, sometimes painful, data entry (we’re working on automation for this now). But other than that, it was easy. We looked at 40 data points, including SEO scores, naming conventions, word-choice differentiation (e.g. in tagline), and color and logo style ratings, to name just a few. The index revealed insights into effective differentiation strategies used by top firms. Here’s an overview of the data collection: SEO via Domain Authority Score We used a standard measuring tool called Domain Authority from Moz, which acts as a good summary indicator of SEO strength. For additional context, we looked at inbound links as well. Can Small Firms Compete? Toward the end of data collection, we started asking what company size and revenue had to do with the index score. Surely, bigger firms by revenue and employee count would do better, right? We’re glad we asked, because the results were a bit surprising, with many of the top-performing firms having fewer than 200 people. Visual Was Huge Through the Eyes of a Designer Some of the data wasn’t so straightforward from an evaluation standpoint. After all, there’s no math formula we know of to evaluate the quality of a logo or even the decade that inspired it. So we brought in the professionals. And lest you think designers are kookie, impractical, blocky-framed-non-prescription-glasses-wearing artsy types with no grounding in reality, we’ll have you know…our designers are pros. And it’s a good thing they are because we have deadlines. We asked them to evaluate based on design and branding principles. They tagged the logos and websites, collected colors, and, yes, even estimated the decade of the logo based on style. Does Accounting Look Old? In addition to how firms differentiate, we wanted to know: is it time for a rebrand? Has there been deferred maintenance on the brand? Who needs a new brand makeover? To get to the bottom of this, we ask a few questions: Design Era Classification:  Was the logo designed in the 2000s by a guy who’s been unemployed ever since he designed the Windows 95 logo?  Was it designed only this year by a design school student who’s so progressive that she lives in the future where styles from 20 years ago are cool again?  To find this out—or at least assign a decade—designers went all antiques-roadshow and used style indicators to put the logos on a timeline. Differentiating—or not—with Color The industry loves blue. If it could, it would marry blue. It has eyes for no other. Except green. If it was going to have a mistress, it would be green. The point is that the industry lacks variation in color. But Names and Taglines Matter Too Firms love to use their founders’ names. It’s a near obsession. Over 90% of the firms used the founders’ names or an acronym based on the founders’ names in their branding. This suggests a huge lack of imagination. It also suggests a great opportunity to differentiate. Taglines were a lot of fun too. In fact, once we found the most popular words and themes in taglines, Sam Pagel created a script that amalgamated the perfect cliched tagline:  “Beyond numbers, we deliver clear solutions for business success, helping clients secure a trusted financial future since 1982 with personal service and value that goes beyond tax accounting.” Because which one of us doesn’t wake up at night all “I want to secure a trusted financial future, especially if it’s beyond numbers?” Standout Opportunities Rebrand: The industry is competitive, but the branding is not. Maybe the biggest opportunity is for brands who decide it’s time to re-evaluate. Because if you’re ready to do it, you have at least 6 months—at least—before the rest of the industry realizes what’s going on and decides to own its space. Need proof? Get your copy of the index and see the actual numbers. You’ll have all the data you need in just our first annual report to justify your rebrand. Now it’s up to you to sell it. Cross-platform video: We didn’t see firms using a lot of video, which gives you a way to stand out with knowledge, education, and thought leadership. LinkedIn, YouTube, and other platforms present an opportunity to address people personally, whether that’s new business or recruiting. Don’t Encourage Us We’re like the guy at the party who’s ready to show off some sick dance moves. All we need is an excuse. Cue the disco and the mirror ball, because we’re about to get down. This first year created a monster. And for better or for worse, the positive response from the industry got us all worked up.  It’s almost like the industry needs this kind of data.  So we’ve been working on a list of ideas we think will make it a richer, more useful report in future years.  We may not get to everything in the next edition, but we’ll try: Including more small firms. Although this is a little more challenging, with less public information available, we’d like to see what it looks like when we get data from a wider swathe, size-wise. User feedback. We’re looking for ways to formalize the feedback process for future years, so we can get useful ideas from accounting marketers. This includes new data points. Automation and AI in data gathering and analysis. Although online data repos like LinkedIn frown on scraping, and we don’t want to run afoul of their policies, we’re working on ways to automate data gathering in an ethical way, and in a way that will deliver more reliable results and avoid mistakes introduced by human error. Accounting Firms Aren’t All the Same We know all accounting firms aren’t the same. But in order to fix a problem, sometimes you need to make sure those in charge of marketing see the opportunity. You see, when an entire industry fails to differentiate, the ones who decide to move—to initiate the conversation in the firm—to get started. They’re the ones who can give their firm an advantage. All firms aren’t the same. But differentiation can be a real challenge. Especially if you don’t know what an advantage it gives you. This is our attempt to show the accounting firm the state of affairs and let them know it’s possible to distinguish themselves in a competitive market.

Every brand gets its power from connecting with people and delivering on its promises. And that starts with internal branding. I’m taking inspiration from a conversation I had with David and Sam, where we emphasize internal branding: taking an internal focus before taking your brand identity to the world. We’ll explore why internal branding should be your first focus, the pitfalls of neglecting it, and how to implement it successfully within your team. By aligning your internal stakeholders first, you set the stage for a more cohesive and powerful brand presence in the market. https://youtu.be/hlG0ojbxGo0 Focus on Your Team First Nobody advocates for your brand like employees. Their words and actions tell everyone what your brand stands for. If they know your brand—and you hire well, based on your brand—your employees will see the connection. And that consistent brand experience—through the words and actions of your employees—connects with customers more than your claims ever will. Create clear guidance and your employees will give you a cohesive internal brand that enhances customer service, employee satisfaction, and overall business performance. Not Convinced Internal Branding Matters? Here’s what happens when external branding fails to connect with your employees. Lack of Cohesion. Without internal branding, your team acts and speaks inconsistently, confusing clients. Employee Disengagement. When employees don’t feel connected to the brand, their engagement and productivity suffer. Reputation Risks. Inconsistent branding can damage your reputation, making it harder to attract both clients and talent. Missed Opportunities. A team that’s not aligned with the brand won’t know how to represent the firm in social settings or online platforms. Neglecting internal branding can have real financial consequences, from lost sales to increased employee turnover. The Overview: Implement Internal Branding Branding starts at the top but doesn’t stay there. We’ve all seen companies that embrace amazing-sounding values but don’t live up to them. You might be at the counter at the car rental desk, and you can’t get the agent to live up to their own values. The values are literally on the wall behind the person helping you. They’re just not lived out. So how do you build out those brand values properly and honestly? Start with Leadership. The first step in internal branding is getting buy-in from the top. Leadership needs to exemplify the brand values. Synthesize. People grow in understanding when they’re asked to think through the brand regularly. Ask everyone to apply them to a situation that happened recently. Did they live up to them? Is there room for improvement? Make sure everyone understands the brand’s values, mission, and vision. Give them Guides. Don’t give them long paragraphs to read. Give them workshops, handbooks, or even regular internal communications. Know the Tools for Internal Branding Internal branding uses different tools than external. But they all do the same thing in the end: instill an understanding of the brand to humans who can either be encouraged and excited about values or eventually forget. Here are some ways you can keep everyone engaged internally. Brand Handbook & Workshops: Combine a comprehensive guide with internal training sessions to educate team members on brand elements, values, and practical applications. Digital Communication: Use platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams for consistent, brand-aligned messaging and updates. Employee Engagement: Implement regular surveys and distribute high-quality branded merchandise to assess and reinforce brand understanding within the team. Prioritize the Launch Employees get engaged when they see the commitment from the firm’s leadership. The most obvious way to do this is through a brand launch event. However you do it, make sure you launch in a very visible way that involves everyone in the firm. Here are a few ideas for how to launch your brand. Virtual Brand Reveal If you have a remote team, a virtual event may be your best bet. Use a mix of pre-recorded videos and live sessions to unveil the new brand. Include interactive elements like polls, Q&A sessions, and virtual breakout rooms for team discussions. In-Person Brand Expo Maybe you can get everyone together. This is the best option. Whether it’s at your firm’s headquarters or a rented venue, set up different booths or stations where employees can engage with various aspects of the brand—like a “Brand History” station, a “Meet the Designers” booth, or a “Brand Quiz” area. Hybrid Event Combine elements of both virtual and in-person events. Stream the in-person event activities online for remote employees and include them through interactive digital platforms. This ensures that everyone, regardless of location, can participate in the brand launch. Engaging Different Experience Levels Tailored Communication Understand that brand engagement isn’t one-size-fits-all. Customize your approach based on the experience level of the team member. For New Hires. Focus on educational workshops and onboarding programs that immerse them in the brand culture from day one. For Long-Time Members. Leverage their experience to serve as brand ambassadors within the team. Their endorsement can have a significant impact. For Partners and Stakeholders. Keep them in the loop with regular updates and involve them in major brand-related decisions. Their buy-in is crucial for long-term success.  Keep Brand Momentum Everyone wants to rebrand. That’s the fun part. But keeping momentum is the big payoff for the business. Want to build your value and the value of the firm? Then you’ll want to maintain the brand. Here are some ways to do that. Regular Audits. Regularly review your brand’s performance metrics to ensure alignment with your initial goals. Refresh Campaigns. Introduce new marketing campaigns that align with your brand but offer a fresh perspective to avoid staleness. This means you add a creative brief to your brand guidelines. Employee Recognition. Acknowledge and reward employees who exemplify the brand values in their work. You gotta keep them thinking about it. Customer Feedback. ABL: always be listening. Customer perceptions offer insights into how your brand is really doing. How Do You Handle Team Members Who Push Back on Brand Identity Not everyone will understand, and not everyone’s a perfect fit for the brand. Here are some ways to bring people on board. The most resistant can sometimes turn into the brand’s strongest ally. So don’t give up too easily. Open Dialogue. Create a safe space for team members to voice their concerns without fear of retribution. We’re not telling you to create a cry room with puppies and essential oils. Just listen in a way that lets people know you’re not interested in judging; you just want to know their honest concerns. Data-Driven Discussions. Use performance metrics and customer feedback to back up the importance of brand consistency. This may be the key to establishing your value. Inclusive Decision-Making. Involve resistant team members in brand-related decisions when possible. You’re not letting them sabotage things. You’re just giving them a sense of ownership. Training and Onboarding. Sometimes you just need to get them to talk about their objections and express your values in their own words. Strong Internal Brands Fuel Strong External Brands In today’s landscape where name-brands dominate, your strong brand gives you more value than ever, providing guidance for how to make policy, how to communicate, and how your brand works, from the inside out.  Inspired by a conversation with David and Sam, we discussed why your team should be the first focus in your branding efforts. We also explored the risks of overlooking internal branding and offered strategies for successful implementation.  Remember, by aligning your internal team first, you pave the way for a unified and impactful brand presence in the market.

Tech innovations, like AI, come along every few years. The real question is, how will you leverage it—understanding the advantages and disadvantages of AI—to elevate your performance? AI improves automation and efficiency. It can analyze data, generate content, and even interact with customers. And it’s tough for humans to match the speed and cost. But ultimately, AI only replaces you for routine and repetitive marketing tasks. Maybe it’s time we talk about all its shortcomings, and what you can do to rise above yet another “disruptive” technology innovation. I talked with Anait Zubia, former marketing manager at Quora, about how she sees AI, and these insights came from that discussion. Let’s cover a few things AI’s not very good at and a third piece of advice for how to put it to work, pushing your career forward. https://youtu.be/N6teW246RdA You Dictate the Why: Measuring AI against real marketing objectives. For all of the benefits of AI, it doesn’t know how to create objectives, strategies, or even executions for your brand without your help. AI isn’t a project manager. You decide where AI fits in the process and what you expect it to do. Like any tool in your stack, keep it simple and build from there. AI isn’t a brand manager. It may understand your color scheme, but it doesn’t know how to connect with people. Your brand needs to do that. It can do a lot of work, but it needs accountability. This is where you put your brand manager hat on. AI isn’t a leader. Leaders make moral decisions. Sure, we think of leadership as everything from strategists to theorists who help us understand practical ways to get from here to there. But at their base, we expect leaders to be moral actors. It’s a prerequisite (except, apparently, in politics). The bottom line is that marketing leaders are still needed to make sure that what we do—and how we communicate—is moral, not just expedient. AI is not a replacement. It’s a support. It’s a tool, not a worker. But if you think about it the right way, it can free you up for other things. For example, the time you’re saving from writing a blog outline could be spent reading about leadership, or even walking around the office, exercising leadership by encouraging, problem-solving and helping others make good decisions and get work done. Leaders bring a sense of order and brand to the work. AI is just a tool that can help you execute. Leaders should view AI as a tool to enhance, not replace, human capabilities, allowing them to tackle more significant challenges in an AI-augmented world. The Dangers of Blind AI Trust For brands, we’re bringing a point of view to the areas we speak to. Your ability to evaluate and respond to new trends based on your brand makes your content interesting and gives it depth. But if you rely on AI to speak into your topics before you get a chance to analyze them, you may lose your edge, creating content that’s predictable and not valuable to your audience. Refresher: How Point of View Works in Creativity. Students of the creative process know there’s a thing called “top-down” thinking, which refers to your ability to form an opinion and dig into a topic before you start receiving information about it from outside sources. This gives your content originality. By forming an opinion based on your values first, you’re creating thought leadership in a way that makes sense, unpolluted by the complicated and often-convoluted thoughts of others…or the oft-misapprehended outputs of AI. This is especially true with political topics. AI is likely to take an inoffensive approach, which sometimes puts politeness over truth. So if your brand takes a truth-first approach—as part of its values—to making sense of topics, you’ll find AI lacking. The goal is not “diversity” or “homogeneity.” Rather, it’s helping people make sense of the world, and business, from your brand’s point of view. So as we’re taking our mom’s advice and “considering the source,” we also need to determine what points of view are valid and which aren’t. It sounds exclusive. It sounds closed-minded. It’s called “standing for something.” Use AI only AFTER you’ve thought it through. AI may default to answering questions it thinks are mainstream (I’ve even had it give me values judgments I didn’t ask for when asking a technical question), but it also is trained on less-popular viewpoints as well. This gives you the opportunity to ask about the topic as if you’re arguing with someone from a different point of view. This creates some very original content—pulling you deeper into the topic—that your audience is likely to find interesting and useful. Examples of AI bias: Social Media Feeds: AI algorithms curate content based on broad user preferences and the goals of the media channel. Do your brand’s goals always match with the average person or the views or business goals of the channel? News Aggregation: AI-driven news apps may prioritize or deprioritize what they see as sensational or biased content. This represents bias since not everyone agrees on what “bias”  or “sensational” means. Search Engines: Search algorithms can create filter bubbles, limiting exposure to alternative perspectives or even privileging a minority perspective in the name of inclusivity. Both represent bias. In the end, AI has no idea what’s right and wrong, and so it’s ridiculous to expect it to be objective. The point of view has to come from you and your brand. Don’t let it censor your thinking. Use a top-down approach and record your thoughts so you can push interesting, fresh ideas from your brand that will create legitimate thought leadership for your industry. Get in Front of Tech Disruptions We just talked about the ways you’ll be needed—and two aspects of leadership you should focus on—in the age of AI. Now, let’s look at how it comes together. A Lesson from “Hidden Figures” Anati mentioned the movie “Hidden Figures” as an example of individuals who harnessed technology for empowerment. In the movie, these mathematicians were about to be replaced by a computer. Instead of protesting their replacement by technology, one leader, Katherine Johnson, learned how to use the new technology and made the case that NASA would need people to run the machines who knew how to do the math. She even trained her coworkers. She was then promoted to management and, in an era of racial segregation, was even put in charge of white workers. In Hidden Figures, Johnson looked ahead to see where there would be more opportunity, aligned herself with the future (instead of fighting it), and took action that aligned her with opportunities. Rolling with innovation: the next career skill We saw Johnson demonstrate what the military calls “Sempre Gumbi:” always flexible. She thought about the implications of the technology and harnessed it. There will always be new technologies and even occasional disruptions. But those who learn how to ride those waves will always be in demand. Make yourself irreplaceable by learning to harness the disruptions, understanding their implications and how they’ll affect your work, and you’ll never be bored. Avoid AI Pitfalls and Turn Them to Your Advantage While many people fear for their jobs in this time of AI disruption, this is an opportunity to focus more on meaning, leadership, and how AI fits into your workflow. Find your moral/ethical/values anchor tells you how to think—it gives you a point of view. Use that point of view to bring important perspectives to current topics that AI could never bring. Get in front of technology disruptions, like AI, to turn them into maximum value for your firm. If you learn to do that, you’ll never fear new technology. In fact, you could be the one driving the train.

In marketing, authenticity builds lasting connections. This means creating content that matters to your audience. But what happens when we introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) into this equation? Can we really maintain authenticity while leveraging AI for content creation? To understand the topic better, Sam and I interviewed Anati Zubia a seasoned marketing professional with stints in tech startups and, most recently, Quora. What are the rules for using AI to bolster your marketing efforts? Here’s what came out of that conversation. https://youtu.be/lX7edQm6Qxw Remember Your Goal: Create Content that Matters Technologies and fads change, but meaningful content will always build relationships. Don’t lose sight of this, because it’s your job. Anati stressed the importance of crafting content that truly resonates with your audience and addresses their core problems. Know your audience’s pain points. Content starts with understanding the customer’s problems. If you know their problems—and how they speak about them—you can cut through the clutter. What are their needs? What are their goals? What’s between them and those things (that you can help with)? AI doesn’t understand these things. It doesn’t grasp the complexity of human problems and changing preferences. The dynamic nature of customer needs and market trends adds a layer of intricacy that AI is still evolving to navigate accurately. This affects the ability to write strategy (understanding problems) and to write copy (to connect with people). AI can certainly aid in content creation, but authentic human insights into customer pain points and desires remain at the core of content that resonates. As businesses integrate AI into their content creation strategies, the alignment between AI assistance and human understanding becomes the key to producing content that genuinely matters. So how do you align those things? Keep reading. 1. AI Can’t Generate Original Content, but It Can Help AI tools like ChatGPT aren’t innately original, but they boost your creative process by leaving you lots of energy to put toward other things, like editing and asking questions.  You can use AI-generated content as a springboard for your marketing materials. By merging AI-generated ideas with your human insights, you can craft standout content while retaining authenticity. Why can’t AI create new ideas and connections? Because at the center of creativity is the ability to connect with people by connecting ideas that aren’t explicitly related to ideas. And how do you train AI to see the funny side of something if the idea of “funny” is different in every situation? The human brain possesses a unique skill in linking seemingly unrelated concepts. Effective content sometimes pairs ideas that initially appear unrelated, resulting in a perspective that conveys a sense of discovery. Only the human mind can do that. And AI can free up more of your time for things like that if it can act as your secretary, doing the simpler tasks for you. Where AI is strong: Using tools like ChatGPT can serve as a compass to gauge language trends and content styles. These outputs give us insights into current usage and style. In a way, it shows us what everyone else is doing. 2. Use AI to Create Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) We mentioned using AI to do the more menial tasks of marketing and content creation. Creating an FAQ is a great use and one that Anati recommends. Since AI-powered tools can aggregate and organize industry info, it’s great at generating, organizing, and refining FAQ content to provide web content.  Here’s how AI can help with building FAQs: Make it generate initial content. AI can analyze large volumes of data, including customer inquiries, industry-specific information, and existing FAQs, to generate an initial set of questions and answers. Find relevant topics. AI algorithms can analyze website content, customer interactions, and industry trends to identify the most relevant and common topics. Make it write your answers. AI can be clearer than many human writers and can help craft clear and concise answers. Ask it to write in other languages. AI can translate FAQs into multiple languages. Ask it to improve your SEO. AI can optimize content with relevant keywords, improving search engine visibility and helping users find answers more easily. Be careful though. Don’t lean on AI like a crutch. Remember, FAQs grow with your input. Is your sales team getting the same questions over and over again? Update the FAQ. And with the mistakes AI has made with data, don’t publish without reading and verifying the answers yourself. 3. Learn the Art of Effective for AI Content Generation If AI doesn’t know what you’re really asking, it can’t answer your questions in a helpful way. This means asking well-worded questions. Anati points out the difference between a search and an AI prompt. Search is typing in what you need and then reading through the results and, if you don’t see what you need, writing a better search term. AI prompts get right to the point, “Using this, do this with it and give me this type of action or this evoke emotion this way, or do that.” Other ways Anati uses ChatGPT: What is the tone of this that I just wrote? How do I improve the tone, or how do I make the tone sound this way? Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old. 4. Make AI Teach You about Content Topics AI can analyze your conversations to find customer preferences, pain points, and interests that you might not see. These insights could point to a deeper understanding of the customer’s pain points and the kinds of messages that resonate with them and get them to see you as a great solution. Things Anati does: Simplify processes – consider the effectiveness of listicles. Using AI, she often curates top 10 lists, generating potential campaign ideas or discussion topics.  An intriguing aspect of ChatGPT is its knack for crafting templates. You can request an ABM (account-based marketing) campaign template in well-established formats.  But you still need to know what you’re doing. Not only does AI lack creativity, it’s sometimes wrong or irrelevant. Remember that no company is really the same, and best practices need to be adapted. So you still have work to do. The good news: AI isn’t replacing you anytime soon. 5. Build Personas and Characters with AI AI can build customer personas and even fictional characters. These personas guide content creation and help you tailor your messaging. Anati mentioned her favorite method of persona development—the Character Diamond. A four-quadrant system often used by storytellers, the character diamond helps establish a character’s relatable identity by identifying strengths, weaknesses, core values, and potential challenges in their personality. Using this, you can create a brand voice guide. Understanding your brand’s identity is key. By defining brand personalities, archetypes become effective in content creation. For example, matching one of the twelve archetypes to a client’s personality traits provides keywords and real-world examples that inspire content generation. For example, Jeff Goldblum’s “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” focuses on curiosity and learning, rather than the individual. It’s more about how he thinks than who he is. This approach exudes warmth and authenticity, reflecting a genuine excitement for knowledge without ego. Integrating AI-generated content and character-building processes can help brands develop resonant personas and stories that connect. Embracing AI for Authentic Content Creation In the final analysis, AI is good for some things and not for others. But it can be a part of your content creation process if you keep it in its place. By using AI to generate content, answer FAQs, and develop personas, you can save time and get more done. And when you oversee this content creation, by adding your experience, you can craft marketing campaigns that feel genuine and build meaningful connections with your customers.  AI is a powerful tool, but your unique insights and creativity remain the cornerstone of creating authentic marketing content that truly matters. And it’s not gonna replace you anytime soon.

Mergers and acquisitions can ruin a B2B brand. Even the best-intentioned M&A can take a toll on a brand when rushed decisions lead to a lack of coordination in the culture and a timid approach to the market. I had a conversation with Jaimi Koechel who’s a veteran of both a firm rebrand and a B2B brand merger about how to execute a merger well, from a branding perspective. B2B Brand Mergers: 2 Views Firms take different views on M&As. Some see it as just an opportunity to expand, adding a book of business and making the firm’s strengths available to a wider audience and geographical area. But while the firm’s management may be thinking about expansion, and making higher-level decisions about naming, the accounting firm marketer’s job is to think about how the brand gets lived out over the course of the merger. Anyone who’s been through a merger knows that, although the technical aspects of a merger take only months and end when the announcement is made, everyone gets new office signage, new email signature lines, and t-shirts with the new logo, the effects of the B2B brand merger last until everyone understands the new brand. It can take months and years to get everyone to embrace the new brand, especially when two companies form a merged brand, and two cultures come together. The Marketing Goal of a B2B Brand Merger As a marketer, your job is twofold: End up with a strong brand whose values are understood and mean something, along with the requisite visual and verbal assets and guidance. Shorten the time between the merger and a strong culture that will consistently and convincingly live out the firm’s values. We can’t control how quickly people grasp the culture at the individual level, but we can think ahead and make the path clear. The Remarkabrand podcast was joined again by award-winning accounting marketer and former client Jaimi Koechel to help us understand what’s coming down the pike when two firms form a single, merged brand. https://youtu.be/YjBNFIHU0BU 3 Decisive Moves Toward Brand B2B Brand Merger Success I asked Jaimi about some of the challenges accounting marketers face during a merger. How do you maintain the strength of a brand when a merger presents every opportunity to dilute the brand? How do you help everyone make sense of the rebrand and keep them focused on what’s important? Brand managers face a unique challenge when their firm merges with another firm since planning isn’t always straightforward. How do you make a merged brand that makes sense? Let’s continue on and talk about things you can do to solidify the brand during a merger or acquisition. Predict Brand Disagreements Nobody’s more likely to see potential brand disagreements than you are. As the caretaker of a brand you may have had a hand in developing, you’re likely more aware of the conflicts you see coming. And if you can express your concerns well—and think of ways everyone involved can work together to solve them—you could turn a problem into a big win for everyone—especially you and the firm. After all, it’s not the order-takers who help the leadership make sense of things. Rather, it’s those people who can solve problems, make decisions and get people working together. A Few Examples Whose logo and brand name will we use? Although this decision is usually implied by the structure of the merger/acquisition, it opens up a broader question about the rollout: how will we make this make sense to our clients? How aligned are the two brands to begin with? Do the voice, tone, mood, and values complement each other, or do they conflict? Are the two cultures able to work together? Is one more focused on individual relationships while the other sees clear processes as better for everyone? Clients are accustomed to a particular treatment, and your staff is used to having the flexibility or formality to carry out the same level of service. How will that change? Defining Steps for a B2B Brand Merger If you can make sense of these questions by defining the goal and then fostering the process, a stronger merged brand will result. Clearly articulate your goals for the brand. Everything else is negotiable, but if you can confidently and concisely set the agenda for everyone else, you’ll gain consensus very quickly with your partners/leadership and everyone else. In other words, convince yourself so you can convince others. Remind everyone why brand matters. This comes from your values and extends from why you exist. For example, suppose one firm in the merger serves people through consistent, unchanging processes, and the other serves people by making case-by-case decisions. In that case, you have two points of view with accusations of “bureaucratic” on one side and “unprofessional” on the other. You have to present a brand vision that’s above those distinctions, focusing on how your newly merged brand can serve people best. Reward participation. Involve others in solving the problems with you, keeping your brand goals in mind during the process. This usually involves opening a meeting by reminding people what’s important to the brand and then, with that in mind, addressing issues. In other words, the brand defines the ground rules, and the solutions play within that “solution space.” Then, as ideas come up, you’re able to guide them in the right direction, giving credit to those who are buying in. Reinforce Brand Locality Once the day the merger officially arrives, you’ll want a plan to let people know you’re “from around here.” You don’t want people thinking a big, outside accounting firm, with no connection to the community is descending on your town from above, seeing it as its next conquest. Whatever the new name is, let the town know you’re there and you’re invested. Consider: Sponsorships. Local ads that connect with the community. Partnerships. Have partners speak and involve themselves in local clubs and organizations. Get Support. Join AAM. Get support from marketers who’ve been there—join AAM (the Association of Accounting Marketers). Although less directly related to branding, this step supports your career and your role in the firm, as it puts you in direct relationship with other marketers who’ve been through M&As and can help you see around corners. Membership in the Association of Accounting Marketers gives you everything you’d expect from an association. But according to Jaimi, and from my experience, you develop a camaraderie that transcends professional relationships. AAM members are more than people you see once a year at the annual conference; they become friends who you consult with in the day-to-day. Do you need to complain? They get it. Having trouble getting your firm to understand your idea? They can help improve your communication skills. Having trouble seeing around corners in an impending merger? Someone’s been there already, and they can share their experience with you. Eyes on the Prize Maintaining a strong brand during a B2B brand merger takes vision, clarity, and skill. But if you can think ahead, form your thoughts, and communicate clearly, you’re steps ahead of many problems that could cause you to compromise your brand during a merger. And AAM membership—and the relationships that come from that—only help you as you think through your actions, develop your leadership and orchestrate a successful merger. And If You Find This Helpful… There’s plenty more where it came from—both in my book, ‘You Are Remarkable’ and on Remarkabrand, the podcast I host with Sam Pagel.  The Resound team specializes in helping professional firms unlock their authentic identity and express it with a winsome, engaging brand identity.  If rebranding, or simply making the case for branding to your firm’s leadership calls for backup, we’re always eager to consult. Whether that’s leading your team through a workshop or working closely to help set you up for a successful branding journey, we thrive on helping organizations like yours tell their story.  Check out our resources, or give us a shout.  And don’t forget that you are remarkable.

Rebranding hardly ever happens in perfect conditions. But it’s those challenges that grow us into leaders who can push through and win. For example, in my Remarkabrand podcast conversation with former client Jaimi Koechel—an award-winning marketing director with deep experience in accounting firms—we covered branding for accounting firms, rebranding during transitions, and what a successful, inside-out brand build looks like.  Jaimi’s approach to demonstrating the value of branding to her firm’s partners reminded me of a few things. https://youtu.be/nfJdZkyioY4 Podcast Thoughts As I am wont to do, I’ll bring in my first point with an illustration from a TV show—the historical drama series “Chernobyl” that came out a few years ago. After the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melts down, the secretive Soviet government meets in Moscow to discuss what happened.  One scene in particular puts us right in the shoes of Valery Legasov, a nuclear physicist who figures out that the reactor’s core exploded. But at the table with Premier Gorbachev and his top advisors, Legasov realizes that his country’s leaders have no idea what happened. They don’t understand that millions might die from lethal radiation if they don’t act fast. This gives him no choice but to speak up—and risk his life and career in the process. Fortunately, Gorbachev hears him out, and after telling the horrifying truth no one wants to hear, Legasov finds himself advising the entire containment effort.   It’s a far stretch from nuclear meltdowns, but the problem of preoccupied decision-makers not understanding something’s critical importance is one we can all relate to.   Herein lies a branding point that’s really worth looking at:  – A firm’s leadership may not see or fully understand the value of authentic brand building.  Someone, perhaps even you, might need to demonstrate that value before the branding effort can begin. As Jaimi, a longtime branding advocate put it on my podcast, “They won’t know they need you at the table until you show them that they need you.”  My second takeaway goes something like this:  – Accounting firms should be no strangers to the branding process. Instead of assuming a killer logo will just do the trick, accounting firms that want to build relationships with their clients need to put the work in on the branding front, to the point of owning their authentic brand identity.  Neglecting, misunderstanding or undervaluing brand identity makes for thorny problems: diluting brand and reputation or confusing the audience, to name a few.  Outside of building out a true, authentic, consistent brand identity, how will everyone else know how remarkable they are?  With these takeaways and Jaimi’s story as a starting point, here are my quick thoughts on what every accounting firm should know about branding, branding advocacy, and how brand identity helps firms build remarkable, lifelong relationships.  Let’s dive in.  Every Firm Needs a Brand Advocate  First, I’ll pass a little more of Jaimi’s advice to anyone who might be in this position. If you have a seat at your firm’s leadership table, or if you’re simply making the case for some kind of branding effort to your firm’s team members, you probably need some wind in your sails.  Hopefully, this will lend you some.  As you think about how to show your firm’s partners the value of brand building, don’t forget… To play the long game. Building trust takes time.  Even with Jaimi’s marketing background, adjusting her rebrand proposal to suit her firm’s needs took time and persistence. Eventually, as she won trust and got to know the firm’s specific needs, her firm’s partners saw the value in what she was proposing. After partners warmed up to the idea of a complete rebrand, Jaimi led the way.   To always put the firm first  Even if you majored in graphic design and have the perfect new logo ready to go…remember that a firm’s branding efforts are not about your ideas per se. To get people on board, you’ll have to make the case that this branding effort is what they need to reach their audience in an authentic way and move closer to the firm’s business goals. Like it or not, branding isn’t a blank check for spending money on new (i.e. “your”) ideas.  If it doesn’t make “dollars and cents” it’s hard for someone to sign off on it.  Authentic brands that build lasting relationships do drive long-term success—and here’s my article on that very topic. Communicate that in a way that demonstrates branding’s present and future value, and makes a good case for someone getting behind it.  If you’re a branding advocate, you should also be the frontrunner  Along with seeing your passion and drive for brand building, your firm should know that you have your fingers on the pulse of what’s going on.  Where is the accounting industry going? Where should it be going?  Little known fact: Jaimi’s former accounting firm Henry and Horne (it merged with Baker Tilly in 2002) began blogging in 2008. At the time, Jaimi showed her firm the forward motion of brand-centered blogging with one fact—only sixty-four accounting firms in the whole country had a blog.  Start small to build credibility, then “show the wins”  Whether you’re on a pickleball team or your firm’s leadership table, there’s only one way to build your credibility—start small, and when the time comes, show people the wins. Show the impact one branding-based approach can have on marketing content or social media (to give a few examples), and when the time comes, make the case for duplicating those efforts.   Take “No” as an opportunity.  Time and time again, Jaimi’s partners told her “no.”  But instead of giving up, Jaimi learned that “no” was not a negative thing—in fact, it usually meant an opportunity to regroup, understand the firm’s needs and situation better, and eventually come back to advocating for an internal brand build.  If you’re told “no” don’t lose heart.  While you’re hanging in there, here are a few more brand-building tidbits that accounting firms should consider.  A Consistent Brand Identity Matters  I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. Accounting firms should care about brand identity because brand identity is ultimately about building an authentic relationship with a target audience. In the digital age, very few potential clients make their first impression over a handshake or even a phone call. It’s more likely to be through a digital touchpoint: email, social media, a website, or a monthly article like this one.  Creating and maintaining a consistent brand identity puts the truth of who you are front and center across all of those digital touchpoints.  By showing everyone how you’re remarkable, your brand identity also sets you apart from the competition. As they get to know your firm’s look, personality, service, and unique values, a brand identity goes a long way in acclimating a potential client to who they’re dealing with—and that process should start from the first interaction.  Brand Identity Goes Beyond Name and Logo  If you’re an accounting firm, then there’s a decent chance your name and logo reflect the partners who started it.  That’s great actually; it doesn’t mean you’re behind the times. On the other hand (and this bears repeating), accounting firms should know that a spanking new, non-accounting firm-sounding name or logo is not a brand in and of itself. Rather, a brand embodies a firm’s whole identity, right down to the foundation. Authentic branding is an effort to get at the heart of that foundation—its purpose, location, history, story, values, and unique personality. An honest brand-building effort digs into all those foundational areas and brings them to a clear, winsome, compelling expression (I actually prefer the term “brand anthem”) that engages people. What does it engage them with?  The truth of your organization, the fact that who you are and what you offer is truly remarkable.   As with most things, there are no shortcuts, and accounting firms should not assume that everyone can grasp what they offer or what they’re really about from the name, logo, or services alone. Consistency, of course, will always win.  Brand Identity Should Come from the Heart  A brand identity that builds relationships, captures that firm’s story and anthem with confidence, and ties a firm’s team together usually starts with a holistic effort on the inside. That effort could look like an inside-out brand build involving input from the entire team, or it could look more like a transitional, internal rebrand that positions a firm toward its new corner of the marketplace.  Either way, an authentic brand identity comes from the heart. And given enough time, the audience you’re trying to build relationships with can usually tell if that’s the case.   Rebranding Means Getting Everyone On Board  Firms that merge with other companies or branch off to form new ones often position themselves through a rebrand.  On this last topic, let me bounce back to my conversation with Jaimi one more time—after all, she led an accounting firm with over a hundred team members through a successful, inside-out rebrand.  What should accounting firms (or any professional service firm) be thinking about as they consider a rebrand?  What priorities should they pursue and how should they go about it?  From Jaimi’s advice and my own experience helping B2B companies in their branding efforts, one huge advantage of a rebrand is that it presents an opportunity—the chance to get your firm’s whole team on the same branding page. Down to the foundation.   Once everyone understands what a firm’s brand is, what story it’s telling, and how values, history, and core purpose are navigating, or perhaps even shifting slightly, in a very visual change, then the whole process gets a little more straightforward.   However a firm does that, (group sessions set aside from regular hours, an extended brand building workshop – conference, input from surveys, or equipping each team member with my step-by-step branding book ‘You Are Remarkable’ like Jaimi did…) everyone should be involved.  Getting everyone involved is the first and key step to another huge goal of your rebrand, getting everything about your new brand identity consistent. From your graphics, logo, and social media, down to a client’s experiences when they walk in your lobby, consistency means that everyone your firm meets will be treated a certain way.  Each and every impression should work in tandem to communicate your brand’s truthful, authentic identity to your corner of the world.  Want to Stand Out?  If you’re an accounting firm, you’ll find this helpful.  We recently released the 2023 Remarkabrand Index for Accounting Firms, a comprehensive guide to the names, logos, colors, taglines, awards, and digital presence of 1,500 U.S. Accounting Firms.  With over forty data points, the Index is both a guide and a brand-building driver. Reinforce your branding decisions and stand out in a sea of sameness.  It’s a free download – our gift to you and your remarkable organization.   On the Digital Front  Finally, rebranding strategies are increasingly changing on the digital landscape.  Advances in AI and automation, in particular, are opening up chances for accounting firms to look at their brand identity via digital footprint and express that brand consistently while positioning themselves in the marketplace.  But more on that later.  And If You Find This Helpful… There’s plenty more where it came from—both in my book, “You Are Remarkable” and on Remarkabrand, the podcast I host with Sam Pagel. The Resound team specializes in helping professional firms unlock their authentic identity and express it with a winsome, engaging brand identity.  If rebranding, or simply making the case for branding to your firm’s leadership calls for backup, we’re always eager to consult. Whether that’s leading your team through a workshop or working closely to help set you up for a successful branding journey, we thrive on helping organizations like yours tell their story.  Check out our resources, or give us a shout.  And don’t forget that you are remarkable.  

If you know so much about it, why don’t you write a book?  Imagine being able to say: “Yeah, I did that… and here it is.”  Mic drop.  Here, in part II of taking your brand anthem to a thoughtful, well-developed book that demonstrates your expertise, I’m making the argument that every firm (including yours) should chase that feeling. Building on last month, when I made the case for writing a book with co-authors with the partners of your firm, and over a calendar year of recorded conversations, I’ve got more thoughts on the writing process itself.  But before I dive in, I’ll go ahead and tell you why.  https://youtu.be/tNio5GpRXxU Why write a book? Why take the effort to plan, write, edit, and publish a piece of content that based on your brand anthem, if we’re being honest, probably won’t be a bestseller, or even a moderately successful seller? Because publishing a book is a powerful long-term strategy to build your firm’s reputation for thought leadership, and at the same time, define its position in a marketplace filled with noise. In another article we’ve published, Chief Operating Officer Chris Stadler puts it this way:  “If your firm writes a book, it’s a sign that your thoughts and processes are time-tested and organized. Anyone who can talk deeply enough about a topic to write a book demonstrates depth and experience.” This is especially true in professional services, where brands develop their reputation and define their place in the market through knowledge, competence, word-of-mouth, and in-depth experience with a particular topic. If you’re in accounting, law, or engineering, then your respective knowledge of case law, financial trends, or the geographical layout of the Colorado River basin is your bread and butter. With that in mind, a brand anthem book gathers all that knowledge into an eye-catching, tremendously helpful brand asset.  Of course, knowing what you do is different from communicating that to everyone else.  Before you get cracking on a book, your best bet is having your firm’s brand story right.  Brand Anthem Squared  This is where your brand anthem comes in.  Whatever your content strategy looks like—and trust me, articles, brand videos, a podcast, a killer website, and social media accounts filled with clever posts are all a pretty great start—it should be centered on a clear, memorable brand anthem. That is, on a memorable story of how you help guide your clients to the solution they need in your unique, unduplicated way.  The same goes for a book; it should wave your brand’s banner in an unmistakable way, even as it dives into your point of view, experience, and comprehensive knowledge of a particular topic. Even where it dovetails with your regular ongoing strategy, a book built from a truthful, memorable brand anthem should take things further. More than standalone blog posts, and even more than a viral brand video that’s trending with your target audience, a book fleshes out your brand anthem in a definitive way.  One that commands your audience’s attention.  Put Another Way A book takes all the content strategy that you’re already putting out, and condenses it into a sophisticated, reputable piece of brand content.  All together in one package, with a clean title and an author from your firm on the cover, and listed on Amazon or stacked on a table at an annual convention, a book speaks volumes. It produces a level of reputational trust that I haven’t seen with other pieces of content that firms put out in the marketplace.  As you can imagine, a book is even more than a summary of your brand anthem, or one source volume of content strategy. Rather, it’s a valuable, sophisticated asset for your firm and your firm’s brand. Not to mention a reputational investment in your firm’s role as a thought leader.  Your Brand Anthem: Going Beyond ‘Write What You Know’   You’ve probably heard that you should ‘write you know.’ But in the professional service and B2B corner of the world, a better saying would be ‘write what you want to be known for.’  That obviously means tapping into you and your firm’s expertise—the refined experience and thought processes you’ve acquired over years, or even decades of day in, day out business and interactions—and aiming it squarely at your target audience.  It might mean elaborating on simply ‘what you know,’ even though the topic is one that you probably eat, breathe and sleep. Research, reading other books in the market and for the same audience, and of course gleaning as much as you can from co-authors all goes a long way in building out your book. Write as a Teacher   If nothing else, translating your proven experience into expository or, at times, instructional writing conveys another quality. It suggests that you’re capable of teaching others about your thinking—not just what you think, but how and why you think a certain way.   If you do it well, writing as a teacher can even push you, your firm, and your co-authors into the realm of being a thought leader on that topic—something that’s much more valuable than simply sticking the book on your website and telling people to buy it.   If they buy it, that’s a bonus.  But the real tactical advantage of writing a book comes when your firm can use that book and the expertise it conveys as a reputational, brand-building platform. With a book to your name, you’re more likely to land speaking events, or to make an impression at conventions with people you want to work with.   Handing someone a book is like handing them a turbo-charged resume.  It’s proof of your knowledge, your proven experience, and your conceptual thinking, all rolled into one.  Do I Have to Write it?  No shame in asking.  Nearly everyone wants to have written a book… and that writing, editing, and publishing part of the journey looks pretty daunting.  No doubt, there is a ton of work and planning involved—but as I explained in last month’s article, the writing process itself also pays dividends when it comes to monthly content marketing.  One strategy I talked about was writing a book by talking to people. That is, get together with the partners of your firm, or any co-authors, and schedule twelve in-depth conversations (one every month) that you’ll record, draw from, and eventually turn into chapters in your book. With that strategy in mind, I’ll be talking more about the writing and editing process, and about how your book should differentiate your firm from others in a unique, remarkable way… obviously.  Writing With Backbone  Here are a few tips on the writing process.  Or, and to the extent that writing is nothing but refined thinking, I should probably say the thinking process that will go into your book. A good process, along with a one year, one-topic-a-month strategy, goes a long way in making the whole writing journey a worthwhile investment.  Writing a book is a huge commitment. For every finished book, there’s a handful of would-be authors who got started but then changed their minds.  You’re probably not writing a book about something unless it’s something you really believe, and everybody knows that. When people see a finished book, the commitment that went into taking it over the finish line speaks for itself. Even more than case studies, a website, or marketing materials that share your philosophy while laying out what your firm does, a book gives your reputation and your way of thinking a backbone.  So what goes into this backbone? Chapter by chapter, page by page, and even paragraph by paragraph, how do you stack it all together? Aside from a keyboard, voice to text—or by the time I publish this, some flashy new copywriting bot—is there a silver bullet for translating that thinking into words and sentences?  Beyond carving up your book into a minimum of twelve chapter topics and then filling out those topics with recorded conversations, there’s no prescription for how you stack and organize your content knowledge. At the end of the day, someone will have to transcribe those conversations, edit the writing, and publish it. You’re in Luck Probably more than once. But I can say that the backbone of your book should be particular details, focused on your target audience. The common thread through each detail, as well as each chapter, is that they demonstrate your proven experience. Here’s where you’re in luck. Your proven experience is made up of details you already know.  Oh Yeah? Prove It.  Say you’re telling someone all about your brand anthem book topic: someone like a hard-hitting journalist. While you talk, they’re hitting you with a ton of questions that force you to get more particular, more example-driven, and even more focused.  “Okay,” they say, thinking about accounting software, jury selection, or start-up strategies, or whatever you’ve just told them. “Tell me more about your take on that.”  “How is your take different?” they ask. “How is it Special? How is it unlike what I’ve already heard from other firms who know this topic?”  “What have you thought about or realized that nobody else is saying?”  “Can you demonstrate?”  “Can you give me an example? Something from your experience that stands out and illustrates your point?”   Now take a look at what you’ve got The more you answer these questions, the more you’re responding to an unspoken challenge: prove it, prove it, prove it. By the time you’re done, you’ve probably got a whole chapter’s worth of content, just in answering their questions. Maybe you’ve got several chapters, or even a whole book’s worth.  This exercise forces you to get particular. Answering questions means fleshing out your proven experience in a way people can understand. If you’ve spoken to someone who’s curious about your work, but not an insider, you know that dry, flavorless exposition will leave them bored or scratching their heads. Instead, give them stories. Memorable examples. Details about the process. Give them jaw-dropping facts, anecdotes and general stats (or estimates) so they have a baseline and proper perspective.  And when they ask how you approach your process, you’ll answer directly: ‘here’s what this means to me, and maybe even to you.’  In other words, in an authentic, reputable way, you have to prove it. Regardless of chapter topic, chapter order, or paragraph by paragraph flow, proving it is a pretty good plumb line. At every step, you’re showing that your way of thinking is a trustworthy map: a graspable system that helps people understand your profession, your industry, your valuable insights, and how you approach common challenges with a unique solution. But Keep it Grounded When you stack all this in a book, people can do more than grasp your way of thinking—they can test it out for themselves. They can compare something you said in chapter one to what you say in chapter nine… and see if the numbers add up. In other words, part of your thought leadership’s backbone means being falsifiable. Not stepping out on a limb for no reason, but rather, taking stand after stand that can potentially be proven false.  It’s a scary thought, but remember that your reader is asking you, your co-authors, and book one thing: prove it.  Nonfiction writers like to say that every book makes a promise to the reader at the very start. Any book worth its salt, from a how-to book to a sophisticated work of investigative journalism, answers that promise.  By filling out your book’s content with falsifiable, but thoroughly supported, claims and proven experience, you show the reader your thought system works to the nth degree. You show them that you’ve used it so much (as the case should be if you’re writing about what you know) and so often over the years that it’s trustworthy and convincing.  Thought Leadership as Content Strategy Writing your book means more than refining your thinking—and when all is said and done, proving your role as a thought leader in the marketplace.  Another advantage (and another reason to do it) is that putting your knowledge or your firm’s philosophy into a falsifiable, focused book filled with proven experience means getting all your co-authors on the same page. The monthly, recorded conversations are an excellent way to do just that… and when the writing and editing process comes full circle, having co-authors weigh in, make corrections, and keep an eye on the overall project is a kind of brand refining process in and of itself.  With the goal of carving out your firm’s position in the marketplace, you want everyone involved on the same page… singing from the same tune from the same hymn book, you might say.  To that end, your book doesn’t need to read like a textbook. Believe me, it doesn’t have to be this super academic, footnote-packed product you might find in a college bookstore.  You can build your backbone and flesh out your claims with facts, details, and proven experience in a substantial way…while being approachable. Many businesses who want to write a book envision something thick and substantial, but the reality is that putting out a massive volume overestimates the number of people who might actually read it.  Guard Your Expectations Carefully  Even if your book is brilliant, it faces a harsh reality.  Most people that you encounter as potential clients will never actually read every word of it. They’ll read the parts that matter to them, or they might not even read it at all. Seeing the book and browsing its contents might be enough to make them go “Wow, you wrote the book on that? I want you as my firm.” So if you’re thinking of putting out a brand dictionary, something that will take vast amounts of time, resources, and even budget… keep this in mind.  As I mentioned last month, manage your expectations accordingly.  Take a Breath Of course your piece of thought leadership needs to be good—I’m not saying a stylish book jacket is an easy swindle for getting people’s business.  But while you’re writing, podcasting and recording, or editing the book into the best, most substantial and thought-through version of itself, take a deep breath… and remember why you’re doing it.  Don’t expect a New York Times bestseller… or even to see your book on any physical bookshelf in a store. Rather, remember you’re doing this as a sophisticated way to validate everything you think internally about your firm, your industry, and your brand’s unique place in the market.  With a book, and for those who read your approachable, systematic outline to your thinking and proven experience, you gain a little bit of monopoly power against your competition. And that stakes out your firm’s position.  Don’t Be Shy with your Brand Anthem  If you love the idea of a book that can build your remarkable firm’s reputation with your audience, then ask for the help you need to make it happen. Having written a book on B2B branding with some incredible people, I know the process back to front. I’m glad to help remarkable brands plan, outline, and even get the words right. If the end result is a proven, authentically-reading piece of thought leadership that builds your firm’s reputation, then I’m all in.  I’d love to help make that happen.  So if you need help, you can give the Resound team a shout. You can even check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon to see what the finish line looks like.  If you’re itching to get recording or writing, that’s splendid.  But don’t forget that you are remarkable.

As we all know, there’s more than one way to get your firm’s brand out into the world. Traditional content strategy with a website, ad campaigns, articles, social media, and a skillfully edited brand video is increasingly common—and not necessarily ineffective. If it’s done well and authentically, not by a long shot.  Trust me, you don’t have to go super-outlandish with free air guitars or pregnancy test coupons in magazines to get your brand seen.  As I wrote about last month, short videos are probably the most potent, shareable way to capture your brand anthem and communicate it with a wider audience. Video taps two of the five senses, taps memory and emotion, and speaks the common parlance of phones, tablets, and computer screens that take up people’s time.  But even if you’re dropping money on filming or professional editing, there’s one final strategy you should not overlook.  Writing (and, of course, publishing) your brand anthem in a book.  A brand book, or perhaps a book containing your collected thoughts on a relevant business or marketing topic, gets people excited—especially in professional services.  Think of a brand book as a printed, sophisticated piece of thought leadership: a respectable piece of developed, long-form content that contains your brand anthem and even raises it to a higher level of conversation.  But writing a book raises pointed questions, with the first one being:  How do I get there?  How do I get my brand anthem into an actual book someone can hold in their hands?  Do I have to write?  What about editing and publishing—aren’t those lengthy journeys in and of themselves? Great questions.  But before I dive in, let me recap what any brand or topical book should be doubling down on: brand anthem.  If you want to do something right, there’s no getting enough of the basics.  https://youtu.be/7eJqjJevgEc Brand Anthem If your brand anthem is the starting point—your north star for a killer video, slick visuals and marketing, or even a product rollout—you should know exactly what it is and why it resonates with people.  Lest we forget, a good brand anthem builds on elements of a good story (one about your clients, and how you help them) and waves them into a clear, vibrant banner. I walked through the elements of a brand anthem in detail, but they’re worth repeating—there’s the hero (your client), the problem they’re facing, the guide (that’s YOU), and then the solution. As you can probably imagine, the story goes like this: the hero had a problem, and with the help of a trusting, knowledgeable guide, the hero solved that problem.  That story, of course, contains your brand’s unique traits and values. If it’s uniquely you—and don’t forget, whether you’re an accounting firm or a law firm or an engineering firm, you’re still the guide—then your brand anthem should set you apart from the stories that other brands are telling… in a pretty big way.  How do you uniquely help the hero? Which kind of hero (or better yet, which problem) are you focused on solving?  How do you uniquely solve it?  With what philosophy or fresh vision of a better world? How is your solution different from other brands?  If your brand story sounds a little too familiar… then it might be time to tease it out a little more. Getting your brand anthem clear, and polished, and getting your message about who you are on point means carving out your position in the marketplace. What’s your approach to the hero’s problem?  What’s your unique solution? Your answer for a segment of the market that’s not being fully served?  Potent brand anthems are usually the focused ones… and if we’re talking about writing a book on it, the more potent, the better.  Starting the Book Process Say you’ve got all that—a brand anthem with a tight, well-messaged story, and maybe even a tagline to go with it. Say you’re developing that brand anthem with your website. Maybe you’ve started to write some blog posts that break it down for everyone.  Great.  If you’re there, or getting close to that state, you’re well on your way to building out the thoughtful brand book I mentioned earlier.  If polishing up your brand anthem is step one of the process, then writing, publishing, and promoting the book is step two.  I mention blog posts as part of step one because, for many brands, they’re an incredibly helpful content strategy… and at the same time, a helpful, preemptive, book writing hack.  But here’s a better one.  Trick Your Leadership Into Writing a Book  I mean it… but not literally.  If you walk away thinking you can convince some ghostwriter that they’re really cranking out Mark Cuban or Elon Musk’s next business book (and for a hefty fee when the draft is done), please think again.   I’m talking about writing your book with other people’s input, and with a content strategy that lends itself toward developing a thoughtful, in-depth book over the course of a year, even while you’re pressing out monthly, brand anthem-grade content.  It’s no one size fits all… but it is a strategy worth considering.  Typically, it won’t be just you writing the book; it’s a process that will involve the partners and leadership of your firm. So give yourself plenty of time.  Start out by carving out twelve months (not five, not three) and making a calendar of topic questions. By topics, I mean every content angle, area, or conclusion you’d like your book to cover.   A twelve month content strategy calendar is necessary because the next step is involving the key brain power behind your brand… although if that brain power involves thirty or more people, you may not get to all of them.   Once you’ve got the brain power lined up, ask the tough question—who’s going to spearhead this? Will your book have one, or two, or even three authors? Assuming those potential authors have other full-time responsibilities, families, and a generally busy life (and assuming you’ve got one partner willing to step out with you and take the lead), how are you going to get them to dump out all that knowledge and experience they have? How about one drip at a time, through conversation?  Generating enough content over twelve months that can be turned into a book is not easy. But one way you can get your partners to commit to is by planning time for you and them to sit, hit the record button, and talk about the things that need to go into the book.  That calendar, and those conversations give you plenty of material to work with, both for your book and for the monthly social media, audio, or even visual content that you want to be dripping out.    And that’s what I mean when I say trick your leadership into writing a book.  Speaking from Experience I’ve found that this works for one key reason—those people who are knowledgeable, experienced, and interested in being authors of a book are usually verbal.  Think about it.  They’re used to talking to clients all day. They’re used to having to sell and pitch the business with their mouths, with speech, communication, and facial expression. Getting them in front of a microphone is one of the best ways to get the content out of their heads and eventually into a manuscript page, paper or digital.  I’ve also found that getting those key people involved in planning that outline pays dividends. For one thing, if your co-authors understand the strategy, you’ll get buy-in right from the beginning.  Who knows? By tapping your firm’s brain power as co-authors, you might also be tapping them as podcast hosts for twelve podcasts at the exact same time. One podcast episode a month can follow, and fill out a chapter in the book.  Or not. Keep in mind that your conversational writing sessions don’t need to be a podcast. If you’ve got a twelve month, one year content strategy set, then you and your co-author don’t need to pull out some fancy, expensive microphone when topic one rolls around.  If it takes some pressure off, use your iPhone. Or, and with the high probability that you’re both working remotely, hop on Zoom for an hour. Just say ‘we’ll record it and we’ll see what happens.’ As long as you’re able to get their voices recorded, you’ve got content you can start to utilize—and pull from if you need quotes or soundbites for brand marketing.   With a twelve month content calendar, and a commitment from co-authors to sit down and record twelve conversations, you can’t go wrong.  Book Strategy is Content Strategy Having built that twelve-month calendar, you might be outlining your book and deciding on its structure at the same time. Simply enough, each month’s topic is a different chapter of your book.  Chances are, you’ll be building off your brand anthem—unless, of course, everyone at your firm just happens to have a Ph.D. in the same, unrelated subject and wants to write about it. But more likely, you’ll be drawing closely from your brand anthem with whatever topic you tackle.  With that in mind, you can generate an outline from your brand anthem and pencil them in quite easily. If you just did a chapter on your hero, well, next up is your hero’s problem. If you just did a chapter on the guide, then move on to your unique solution and how that unlocks a new level for the hero. Next up? The outcome… And so on.    Or mix things up a bit.  However you slice it, twelve months should give you twelve themes for you and your partners to talk about… and twelve fresh podcasts, (or if you’d rather not publish them as podcasts, interviews…) Or twelve wells of thoughtful, quotable content, perfect for blog articles, email newsletters, social media, or mini-marketing concepts. All for each month of the calendar year.  How’s that for a book writing hack?  But Why a Book?   I want to peek behind the curtain of your future here.  Assume you’ve sharpened up your brand anthem.  Imagine that you’ve interviewed twelve knowledgeable people, (or even, three co-authors four times each).  Take one more leap and imagine you’ve published it.  Why have you published it? Believe it or not, and unless you’re extremely lucky or super well-connected in the New York City publishing world, you didn’t necessarily publish the book to sell millions of copies… enough for an advance on the next book and a ranch in Montana. In fact, you probably didn’t even publish it to sell thousands.    Bear with me: you published your book to establish your firm, build your credibility, and show people why you’re unique beyond any shadow of a doubt. If you think about it, those co-authors you brought on board are probably among the foremost leaders of the unique way you approach and do business. By mining their experience and expertise, and by writing it up and publishing it in a book, you’ve distilled their unique view, their philosophy, and their way of serving clients into a satisfying, readable product.  That speaks volumes about your firm, and even reminds people that your firm truly is remarkable.  I’m not saying that the book isn’t a product in and of itself (of course it is, even if you’ve given away much of the content for free in monthly blog posts or podcasts)… but it’s not the overarching fruit of your intention.  Of course there are strategies to recoup the cost of writing, editing, publishing, and promoting it… but think of those benefits as incidental to the real value: establishing deep credibility for your brand. Writing a Book Makes It Official  In a way, it really does.  The effort, time, planning, knowledge, and elbow grease that goes into a published, thought-leading product often speaks for itself. Hand someone a book and you’re a lot more likely to get invited on their podcast, or to give a lecture at a conference coming up…or win the contract with a new, big client. That’s because a brand book shows people your unique, remarkable process, and what it looks like crossing the finish line.  Now THAT’s a business card.  What a way to tell, and show, and, insofar as you get some readers, continue telling them about your unique process, your unique solution to the hero’s problem, and your one-of-a-kind position in the marketplace.  Going around and saying you have a unique position unfortunately, means nothing.  But having written and published a book about it usually means you’ve lived it. It means you know that position from every angle, and furthermore than you’ve owned it through experience.  All this to say, a book isn’t the only way of telling people that you’re remarkable.  I’ll probably talk more about publishing in another article, but a book lends itself to a number of mediums. As part of the publishing process, there’s plenty of room to branch into an audio version, an e-reader or digital copy people can share or download… or like I mentioned earlier, a sign leading back to those twelve months of blogs or podcasts.  Adding a book to twelve months of existing content is in many ways, a force multiplier.  Need Help Planning a Brand Book?  You’ve come to the right place.  Having planned and written a book on B2B branding with some pretty amazing people, I can tell you all about the ins and outs of gathering audio content, getting it into words, and organizing those words into a publishable, potent, brand anthem product.  It’s no cakewalk, but I believe it’s worth it. If you think planning a book would be a worthwhile part of your brand’s content strategy, and if you’d like some help or consultation with that, the Resound team stands ready. Give us a shout. You can even check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon to get a sense of what I’m all about, and why I love helping brands and companies share their story with the world.  So dream big.  And don’t forget that you are remarkable. 

“Do you have videos? Videos are the best! Oh you’ve got to have videos,” … said every SEO and marketing guy ever.  For the most part, and in a world that’s increasingly defined by phone screens, video uploads, and short, watchable content, I’m on board with that. Of course, I’m not talking about tapping your inner Hollywood director and going wildly off color—if you’re a highly-ranked law firm with a long standing reputation, would you really run a cheesy, late night T.V. commercial? Or if you’re a no-nonsense wholesale store, do you really want to post Tik Tok videos with customers getting their twerk on?  Maybe you do… but I digress.  Having made the case that every brand should be telling its remarkable story in the form of a potent brand anthem, I will say that video, more than any other mass media or medium, captures that anthem in a shareable, authentic way. More to the point, and remembering that your remarkable brand identity boils down to you, video far surpasses written copy, visuals, or even audio as a way to show your authentic self. Provided it’s done well, and built on the truth of your brand story.  Keep reading and I’ll gladly tell you why.  https://youtu.be/qtfnej5C4pQ Brand Video Taps the Senses Why are videos so effective? A short answer is that they tap into two of the most important senses people have—hearing and sight—at the exact same time. When it’s done correctly, (and you don’t need $30,000 cameras to do that), video weaves sight and sound together in a seamless, memorable way.   That being said, I will say that at least half of a video’s effectiveness is actually the sound. Being able to hear someone speak without interference, or choosing the right music track to go behind the visuals might be just as important as what people see when they watch your video. Recording garbage audio usually makes for a terrible video, even if you’ve got A-list actors, perfect lighting, and so on.  Of course the visuals are important—I’m not talking about radio shows or podcasts. Video is, of course, visually moving, unlike still graphics and illustration. As such, the visual, even in the old time, black and white motion picture sense, is stirring. If we think of brand video as a trifecta that brings our senses together, its elements would be visual, audio, …and the story expressed through both of those things.  More on Brand Story You might have a great video. Killer sound, a visually compelling subject that captures the eyes with style and color… but if you’re completely missing the final element of storytelling, you probably won’t be holding anyone’s attention spans. On that note, they’re increasingly short and getting shorter by the day.  More than written content, visuals, or even audio in isolation, a video with a story packages all those elements together in a way that quickly gets someone’s attention and then keeps it long enough for you to show your brand anthem.  What’s in a brand story? I talked more about this in previous articles, but here’s a recap. In your own brand story, you’re not the hero. Rather, your customer or client is the hero, and you’re the guide, the one making the difference that enables the hero to achieve their goal and make the world a better place. When you set to making that Oscar-worthy brand video, remember this template: hero, (your client), guide (your brand), the hero’s problem, and solution. The solution, the thing that solves the hero’s problem and enables them to cross the finish line, is what you offer: your benefits, what you deliver, and what makes it unique and suited to the hero. On a deeper level, it’s also the benefits you (through the hero) deliver to others at the end of the story. What’s the difference that you, as a guide, make in your hero’s world? In the broader world for your customers and your clients? Framing your video’s message and any marketing content within a story makes things crystal clear for anyone watching.  Authentic Identity Authentic identity should shine through every brand video. Authenticity engages people and resonates in a way that much of the video content being uploaded every day does not. Rather than straight information, how-to videos (‘three easy steps to fix your clogged sink,’ anyone?) or the coming tons of AI generated video b-roll that will no doubt be dumped on the internet on every conceivable topic in the coming years, brand videos that bank on story, and show real, authentic people will be the ones that stand out.  Think of the last time you broke through the automated customer service hotline to a human voice. Brand videos that tell a relatable story with authentic people in a memorable way, can activate trust. And in getting your brand or message to stick in people’s minds after they’re done viewing, trust is no small thing.  Trust and Memory Usually, our strongest memories are the ones that stirred our emotions in an unforgettable way. In fact, I’d put it this way: our memories are embedded by emotions. I talked about how video captures the two most important senses: sight and hearing. I mentioned brand story as a way to communicate effectively and bring an authentic level of trust. But most importantly, and even on top of all these important qualities, video captures the memory of the viewer by evoking emotion.  When you call someone, you hear their thoughts and single reactions in real time through tone and inflection—and you don’t get those things in a text message. In a video call, you get both of those things, and you also get the added subtleties of facial movement. It’s in our communication wiring to trust the responses of people we can see and hear; we’re less in the dark about who they are, how they communicate and what they are, or are not saying.    Brand Video Captures Memory Remember, our memories are embedded in emotions. This means videos are memorable because they evoke emotion. Where written content or even audio just tells you, they show. Why do short, random videos, like videos of cats doing ridiculous things, dominate our break time? Distract us from work? Because they stir our emotions. If a video is funny, sad, thrilling, or awe-inspiring, that comes with a powerful emotional draw that makes the story, visuals, audio, and whatever content all the more memorable in our eyes, ears and mind. Our emotions are deep-seated, and even if someone’s only got a few seconds of video playing time to capture them, they can do it through repetition, through showing us the same kind of funny, touching, or thrilling content more than once, in a way that links to our senses, emotions, and memory. For the record, I don’t recommend that brand videos go for negative emotions… even if a negative emotion (like the dread, disgust, or surprise evoked by a good horror flick) tends to stick.  Stir Emotions by Evoking Memory But touching on memory through emotionally engaging videos, and doing that in a way that makes your video seen again and again is a way to make your brand anthem stick. In most cases, someone’s not going to pick up the phone or fill in a lead gen form the first time they see your video. But if your brand video tells a story, shows the authentic you, and stirs emotions in a small but decisive way… the more someone sees it, the more familiar they’ll become with your remarkable brand.   In short, through compelling brand videos, someone will get to know you and your brand in an intimate, relatable way long before they interact with you… assuming of course, that your videos and brand story are all showing your authentic self. Lest we forget, and like I usually say in every discussion, you’ve got to know your authentic self before you can communicate to the world.  If You’re Making Your Own Video… Watch out for distractions. By ‘distractions’ I don’t mean rounds of minesweeper. I mean anything that can get in the way of your brand anthem, the emotions you want to evoke, and your viewer. A word of warning—if you’re putting together your own brand video, you (and in the end, the viewers you want to reach) are up against a world of distractions. What I mean is that writing, location scouting, shooting, editing, and publishing each come with their own set of hurdles…and in the final analysis, every little detail matters.  If you’re doing everything yourself, and assuming you’re clearing each hurdle on your way to the finish line… you’re probably going to get caught up in all the details of what you did. If you’ve seen an amateur video, you can tell immediately that something’s lacking. Whether it’s bad video, wrong music choice, terrible acting, bad editing, or extra black space at the end… those distractions stick out like a sore thumb, and the emotional connection that will embed that video in your memory is distorted at best, or outright broken.  Consider Hiring a Pro It’s a lot of work to craft videos, and edit out any missteps or distractions. That’s probably a good pitch for all the professional brand filmers and videographers out there. Of course, anyone making videos for their brand can learn and practice those elements piecemeal, but with the time and attention that takes, many brands hire outside pros for shooting, editing, or even brainstorming and fleshing out their brand story in a visual way.  If your goal is to be authentic, and to produce a video without all the potential distractions and small stumbling blocks… then you’re probably going to want to invest in somebody who knows what they’re doing with a camera, with a microphone, and with editing software. Unless you’re going for some dancing interns in grainy footage that won’t really matter on Tik Tok. Whatever you choose to do, it’s worth asking what is the point of this video that we’re about to produce? Is this just a quick hit for social media fodder? Is it a piece of your brand story really quick with a human element? Or is it an event or a human interest project highlighting the staff, an update, or the release of something new? Or are we talking about a longer, informational recruitment or training video, something that’s essential for people on your team but also meaningful, authentic, and memorable? Take your time to brainstorm. Outline. Write the ideas out in a treatment, a creative brief, or even a short script. Then give yourself the advantage of finding the talent you need to produce and finish it.  However you Edit, Authenticity Wins Brand story, brand identity, brand expression—brand video ties so many elements together it’s incredible. Done well, and cleared of distractions for a memorable final cut, brand videos amplify your brand in an unforgettable way. They’re much more than putting a set of values together on your homepage, or slapping an amazing new logo or tagline on everything. Videos are powerful because when they come together, they’re authentically you.  Authenticity, and showing who you really are, (don’t get me started on cheesy stock video clips instead of actual footage of your team) is critical to building relationships with everyone around you. If you’re able to show people who you are, it’s almost like they’re meeting you before they ever talk to you. If people can see and hear it, and if it taps their memory by stirring emotion, then they know inherently. They feel it. And if they don’t feel it, or if a rushed brand video throws the whole experience off with terrible audio…then it’s just another distraction. One of the billion and half videos out there right now. When you make your brand video—do it right from start to finish. Be aware of what you’re saying, the emotions you’re evoking, and the story you’re telling. That’s the way to cut through to people.  Need help along the way? For brand builders with video ideas, and an honest sense of what they need with scripting, shooting, editing, and publishing, I’m all ears. From dairy co-ops to tech companies and on to nonprofits, the Resound team has shot, edited, and shaped award-winning brand videos that help remarkable brands tell their authentic story. Here’s a few we’ve produced recently:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44RVYTAzn0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw9xpRgcELE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wu4J2M2U5c If you’d like to see your brand anthem in a killer brand video, give us a call—or check out the articles, videos and podcast on our website. You can also check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon. Until next time, don’t forget that you are remarkable. 

When you think of the American National Anthem, what comes to mind? Is it the melody? Or the first lines that many of us sang in grade school, or before a baseball game with thousands of people?  ‘Oh say, can you seeee…by the dawn’s early light.’  If you’re more pedantic, you might think of more lyrics and the imagery of the ‘bombs bursting in air.’ Or if you’re into history (like I am), you might think of the context—author Francis Scott Key, who watched the all-night bombardment of Fort McHenry from a British vessel in the Chesapeake Bay, and then scribbling down the words when the Fort’s flag was still flying in the morning.   All those things touch on the anthem in meaningful ways.  But if you think about it, a country’s anthem is really more than the words, the melody, the history, or even our own memories of it. All of those things spring from it, but stripped to its core identity, a country’s anthem is a collective story—a lyrical one to be sure. It’s a story that embodies national history, values and aspirations, but also, and more powerfully, the feelings, ideas, and associations people have, and share about their country. Pride, camaraderie, historical events collectively remembered, honor for those who sacrificed for their country—everything’s wrapped up in that story and what it means to people.  You’ve probably heard another country’s national anthem…but unless you’ve lived or spent some time in that country, hearing it probably didn’t prompt all of the thoughts and feelings that come with hearing your own national anthem.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  The point is that people are wired with deep, personal loyalties, and those loyalties are tied to stories. Just like someone who appreciates a national anthem, a good brand builder does well to understand that.  https://youtu.be/7xW8aeSrQCw Brand Anthem Defined  I know what you’re thinking…great topic for the Fourth of July.  Fair enough.  But when it comes to thinking about your brand’s story, how you tell it, and how that telling of it makes people think and feel, thinking in terms of a national anthem makes sense.  With that in mind, your brand’s ‘anthem’ is more than good content, great marketing, or obviously, an incredible product or service that keeps people coming back. Rather, it’s your unique, remarkable story, and telling it in a way that unifies all those things with personality, emotion, and authenticity that people relate to.  I’ll talk more about this later, but I will say that one of the best ways to express and share your brand anthem is through video. As far as putting your brand anthem out in the world both visually and audibly, it seems to be a natural way to do that. Obviously, you can do that in other parts of your brand, your website, your collateral, and the way that you talk to clients, but the video side is an optimal way to capture and communicate it.  Of course, there’s a temptation to cram everything—every service or product you offer—into your brand’s communication. But more than likely, that will come across as confusing or overwhelming to your audience. If you find yourself cramming everything in, take a step back, because you shouldn’t be.  A solid brand anthem video dodges that problem while communicating something evocative—starting with your brand’s story.  A Good Anthem Starts with Story  As I’ve said and written about before, your brand story is the foundation, the starting point for everything you’ll communicate through marketing, visuals, and a cohesive brand expression. Along with your brand’s purpose, history, and mission—your brand’s story is no small ingredient in your brand’s anthem.  There’s any number of storytelling formulas. For more digging, I’d recommend reading up on Joseph Campbell’s (no relation to Campbell’s soup) template called the Hero’s Journey. Campbell based his template on what he found after looking through thousands of stories spanning ancient history to the present.  The Hero’s Journey breaks down into twelve steps that many novelists and screenwriters swear by. But for those looking to build a brand anthem, we can translate a few aspects of traditional story to the business environment.  Two characters: the hero and the guide.  The first element in every brand anthem should be two characters—the hero of the story, and that hero’s trusty guide. If we think of the very first Star Wars movie as a classic template, it kicks off the journey with these two characters: Luke Skywalker, the hero, and his guide, Obi-Wan Kenobe. While Luke eventually meets his second guide in Yoda, we can safely say he wouldn’t have made it off his home planet and successfully rescued Princess Leia without that first guide.  Every hero needs a guide, and that’s where your brand comes in.  You’re the guide to your customer, who is always the hero. The hero has a problem.  What’s really interesting about heroes in stories is that they have a problem.  When we think of Luke in the first Star Wars movie, one of his main problems is that he has this power called the force. When Obi-Wan introduces him to it, Luke is bewildered. With a little training, he sets off on his journey, but he still hasn’t mastered it… that doesn’t happen until he’s done more training with Yoda, and then tested himself by facing Darth Vader two movies later.  The guide offers a solution  So both Obi-Wan and Yoda play huge roles in shaping Luke, mentoring him, and passing on their knowledge of the force. With their guidance, Luke masters the force, a power he had from the beginning, and even before he was aware of it, but could not have possibly mastered on his own.   Along the way, and with both guides helping him, Luke becomes the Jedi Knight he was meant to be.  However you look at it, it’s an engaging story. And there’s a lot more brands can learn from Star Wars, or a few elements of the Hero’s Journey when they start telling their stories, and then using those stories to craft their brand anthem.  Craft a Compelling Brand Anthem One last thing about Star Wars and why it resonates—Luke doesn’t just become a master of the force. He becomes the savior of the galaxy. He overcomes Darth Vader, the evil emperor, and leads the rebellion in a war of liberation.  It’s ultimately satisfying because by overcoming his problem, Luke empowers those around him. He makes the galaxy (or at least, his corner of it), a much better place.  So, all the way back to brands. Brands need to tell stories with a hero and a guide. But the big challenge I see is that a lot of organizations confuse who the hero is in their story. They often think, well, the hero is the focus of the story, so, therefore, that should be us. Our brand should be the hero. But remember, the hero is the one with the problem; the hero is stuck in some way, shape, or form, and the guide is the one with the solution.  If your story is about how your organization is stuck and how you can’t overcome the problem that you’re trying to solve… that’s not a compelling story to anyone else. That might be a story that’s important to you, but that’s not your marketing story—and while solving your problems and fulfilling your brand’s purpose might be a great story that’s worth remembering, it’s not the basis of your outward facing brand anthem.  Rather, your brand anthem should be the story of how you, as a guide, help your clients overcome their problems and realize some new state of being. That could be growth in their business, a promotion, a hassle-free cooking experience—whatever they’re defining as success. It’s hard, but worth it to figure these elements out. Thinking, and building your communication in terms of hero (your client), guide (you), the hero’s problem, and solution means understanding what your audience will see about themselves, their concerns and problems, and how you can help them achieve a new state of being when they encounter your brand story.  What Comes Out of a Brand Anthem? Having worked through your brand story, and from the point of view of your client or customer as the hero… you’re in much better shape to start telling it to people.  Does the story you’re telling paint the picture of how you help heroes overcome their problem and realize a new state of being, and make their corner of the world a better place? If so, you’re on the right track—and that’s the story you’re going to tell through your brand anthem. How does telling your brand story play out in terms of content, marketing, and internal communication?  Here’s a few ways:  A specific hero  You can’t be all things to all people. Even if your brand offers multiple services or sells products in different industries, your brand story can’t be about how you grew to offer all those services…remember, you’re the guide, not the hero. Over time, most companies specialize, offering sophisticated products or services to a specific demographic… and even if that’s not where your business is headed at the moment, you can apply that principle to your brand story.  Through customer personas, or your own research and client feedback, narrow that story down.  As the trusted guide, who are you helping, and how, specifically? What’s unique and remarkable about how you help this hero on their journey or mission? What will be better and different about their world as a result? Brand taglines Take your story and shorten it to an elevator pitch.  What do you offer, what’s unique, or different about it, and most importantly—who is it for? Who do you help and why?  Don’t forget the elements—hero, guide, problem, solution. If you’re a financial lender, maybe those elements go something like, we empower entrepreneurs for long-term success by loaning them the working capital they need to break ground.  If you can get your tagline as short and memorable as Nike’s mantra… ‘Just Do It,’ even better.  For the record, ‘Just Do It’ applies broadly to Nike’s whole team and organization, but it’s foremost an exhortation to every customer. If you can frame your tagline with the point of view of the hero and their journey, that’s even better.  A memorable mission statement  Similar to the tagline, a mission statement is a short, sweet sentence with active (not passive) verbs. A memorable one captures the mission and even touches on how an organization empowers the hero or seeks to usher in a better world… but it’s mostly for the troops.  Crafting a mission statement that tells your story, and one that everyone in your organization can know, relate to, and apply to what they do and how they interact with others, is one way of crafting a cogent, compelling internal-facing brand anthem.  Think of it as one of the most memorable lines of the anthem.  I could spend more time on the do’s and don’ts of company mission statements, but they’re worth mentioning as a way to buttress your brand anthem with a brief, rallying statement that embodies your purpose and story for everyone onboard.  Here’s a few that leave an impression:  Linkedin: ‘To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.’ Tesla: ‘To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.’  Ever seen a TED talk?  The TED organization has their mission statement down to two words: ‘Spread ideas.’  Marketing content for a website and collateral  A brand anthem that’s narrowed down to the constraints of your business, and built on a truthful brand story should capture everything in a concrete, creative way.  Working from the story in mind, and the elements of hero, guide, problem, and solution, a brand anthem can be built outward into compelling, catching copy for your website, printed marketing materials, and social media accounts.  When it comes to offering more specific expertise, promotion, or products and services on your website, unifying everything under a brand anthem makes your story clear to anyone who sees it. More than that, it reflects collaboration and thoughtfulness while speaking to the client (hero) on their terms, about their journey and the solution they’re looking for.    Content for a great brand anthem video  As I mentioned earlier, a brand anthem takes your purpose, your story, and the flair and associations people will make with your brand, and packs that into a killer visual format that people can share. Along with short videos or clever commercials, you can elaborate on your brand anthem through a regular podcast, or through multiple episodes that break your brand story down—one about the hero, one about the guide, another about the problem, and so forth.  The Anthem for Your Remarkable Brand  There’s plenty of ones to generate content from a brand anthem, and then drip that content out through videos, articles, podcast episodes, or even a book.  However you do it, remember that your brand anthem will be more compelling if you talk to your audience about them—not just about yourself and what you offer. By considering their problems, their challenges, and what they need to grow, flourish, and become who they want to be, you’re setting up your brand as the trusted guide the hero needs. One really interesting part of the brand anthem process is that it forces you to figure out who the hero of your story is. It can’t just be the whole world, everyone,  or humanity in general.  With any luck, and while you won’t be for everyone, your brand anthem will show people the exact guide you are—and that you’re intrinsically remarkable.  Need a Guide?  Every firm has an intrinsic remarkability to it.  I know I use that word a lot, but it’s the truth. There’s remarkable, and one-of-a-kind traits that come together in every brand or organization, and it might take a lot of digging to discover them.  But once you’ve unlocked the process and found your authentic brand identity, building a brand anthem that condenses these elements in a creative, compelling way is quite the journey. If that’s a journey you’re on, and if you’d like a guide whose purpose is helping B2B’s unlock their authentic identity, then you’ve come to the right place.  Browse some of the articles, videos, or podcast episodes on the website, check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon…or give the Resound team a call.  And remember, you are remarkable. 

More than ever, everyone works, meets, and shops online.  It’s no surprise that companies which previously insisted on a brick and mortar location for their workers are now almost completely remote.  But regardless of that steadily encroaching fact, your brand’s geographic, physical location still matters. In fact, and for a few primary reasons, I’m going to spend this month’s article arguing that it matters even more than you think. The main reason why location matters—and a kind of catch-all summary for more reasons—is that we’re physical beings…obviously. We exist in physical locations. Even with the likes of e-commerce, virtual reality, and opportunities to work online embedding themselves into the fabric of daily life, geographic locations and all their sensory, historical-cultural, and experiential particulars still pique and intrigue us—or in some cases, repel us. You don’t need to look very far to find examples of this, (unless you’ve been dutifully under a rock this last month.) If you think physical locations and all their colorful baggage don’t matter, look no further than people and companies moving from coastal states to other states in record numbers. Or just look at all the hype and controversies that surrounded Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.  As the old realtor’s adage goes, there’s no beating—or at least, no factoring out—location, location, location.  Fair enough.  But what does all this have to do with brand building?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ1H7SugaeY Brand Location Quiz Here’s a brain-teaser.  Each of these brands and companies drew closely from a physical location for their name and brand identity. Can you guess that founding location for… Patagonia (outdoorsy clothing based in California…but where does its name come from?) Haribo (gummy bears)  Big Sky Brewing (glug, glug) Cisco (digital technology and communication)  Valero (gas stations)  Carrefour (a French grocery chain…no hint with that one) And, last but not least:  Bank of America (a little trickier…but worth looking up if you don’t know the answer)  There you go. I’ll include the answers at the bottom of this article…scroll ahead if you can’t wait to see them.  As you can probably tell, I really enjoy this topic.  In fact, I wrote and published a previous article on location branding, how important it is, and how B2B’s can incorporate their location into the winsome mix of an authentic brand identity. Here, I’m keeping this topic up-to-date with a more horizontal focus on location, and its role in your organization’s day-to-day, operational landscape.  Even if your workforce is all remote–or if you’re like most companies in that you’re still trying to figure out this work-from-home, shop-from-home, some people back in the office hybrid thing out–your location matters. Even if you’re an e-commerce business that sells to customers who don’t interact with you, and who simply buy your product without ever coming into any kind of physical, real-world environment. Nevertheless, depending on your brand strategy and perhaps to a lesser degree than other circumstances, location is still important.  With that in mind, the question I’ll be focusing on is how.  How does location matter to a brand or company?  In what ways and to what extent?  Geography and Location Basics  As it usually turns out, the branding’s in the details.  Historically, and before it became hard to find a company’s physical address on their website, physical location embodied a large part of a brand’s identity. More than that, claim to a particular location often, and still, shapes a brand’s strategy and expression, playing on how people around the world perceive that location. While that claim takes many different forms and shapes a brand in countless ways, a lot depends on branding efforts that might or might not be taking location into account.  Because locations are intriguing and evocative, many brands go with loud, on-the-nose ties to a certain location as an optical effort to market themselves.  Nothing wrong with that. Some Modern, Well-Known Examples of Location-inspired Brands From Arizona Iced Tea (made by a company in upstate New York) to Texas Roadhouse restaurants (owned by a company in Kentucky), there’s a huge number of brands and products that claim a location as their name without having existed there. Texas, Hawaii, Florida, Japan, London—any iconic location that captures people’s imaginations in certain ways finds itself in a product name…and for good reason.  In terms of pure brand naming—and by the way, even the word ‘branding’ comes from location, from the act of branding cows with a symbol to tell them apart from one ranch or another— certain locations punch above their weight.  If a hot sauce company puts ‘Texas’ or ‘Louisiana’ in their name, that conjures up a world of sensory, and in this case, culinary associations in people’s minds. In effect, that hot sauce company might be saying: ‘we’re a flavory, cajun kind of sauce,’ (Louisiana) or rather, ‘think of us like you’d think of a mouth-watering Texas brisket, served up in a roadhouse with sawdust on the floor’ … and so on. We might roll our eyes, but chances are we’ll get the idea. To some extent, that’s also why we might drive a ‘Tucson,’ a ‘Sienna,’ or a ‘Sedona’ …but probably not an ‘East St. Louis.’ Invoking a desirable location gives a flair and a cadence to products that we otherwise wouldn’t think about. To that end, and whether or not it’s always based in fact, location is a guiding force for marketing strategy, conversations, and brand expressions that resonate with people. It’s not for nothing that companies who may or may not be from Florida ask questions like: “Is our company a Florida brand? Do we have a laid-back, sunny-tropical day kind of vibe? Or are we more of a rugged, Rocky Mountain kind of brand?”  Drawing from a Location Can Convey Essential Ideas About Your Brand Identity In terms of value, aesthetics, norms, and associations that people quickly recognize, location means a lot. If a location syncs with a brand’s values, identity, and authentic expression, that meaning will carry over and we’ll see it—regardless of where we’re working, shopping, or browsing.  This also raises the question of whether or not location is a simple way to tack-on an association that bears no relationship to the actual product.  It certainly could be.  If your brand is adopting the style and swagger of a place it has nothing in common with, then you should probably rethink that approach. In the end, people don’t respect copycat brands, or anchorless, superficial brands that try to be everything to everyone. With few exceptions, tacking on a location just to move more product is a losing, short-term strategy that doesn’t build a loyal audience over time.  One way to avoid this pothole is owning the place that birthed, or influenced your brand’s history and values in indelible ways.  Owning Your Brand’s Location Of course, many companies wear their original locations like a badge. More than that, they take that location’s associations and let them define the company’s brand identity, brand expression, and growth and marketing strategy. Where everyone else is pressing for a digital, or international flair, sticking with one’s hometown is a bold choice, but not a surprising one.  There’s pros and cons to doubling-down on where you came from. Companies like Chrysler have even tried it with Detroit—a bold, calculated move because most people don’t find Detroit exotic, evocative, or even positive as a location.   But in a world where it’s harder to pin a brand down to a particular location, drawing from geographic roots to develop one’s brand identity has clear upsides. Of course, people want the option of working from home, or from anywhere in the world, but that leaves us craving a sense of sensory physicality that zoom meetings and even virtual reality increasingly lack.  Rather than simply being a way to imbue meaning into a product, location, and even local culture, both matter to brands and their customers.  After all, brands are made of people…and people have to live somewhere.   Location for the Remote Workplace  If you’ve gone fully remote, or if your workers and customers interact online from different corners of the planet, places still vibrate with meaning, flavor, and identity. That’s because, while workers and management, or customers and vendors, may not be ‘located’ together, in a sense, everyone’s in ‘locations’ together. Think of your last few work-related zoom calls. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet that you, or someone you spoke to on zoom asked something like “Hey, how’s the weather where you are?”  Or at the very least, (and if they didn’t already know), someone said, “So where are you calling from?”  Even if we’re gathering online from different places, geographic location still piques our curiosity. Places are a common point of connection in the online workplace. For online companies who want their workforces, team members, and ultimately their brand to thrive, recognizing, sharing, and celebrating locations is a smart move.  And even though the remote workforce presents considerable challenges, there’s ways that brands and companies can turn everyone’s location to their advantage.  Try Local Culture  One of our values at Resound is local culture.  Even though our workforce meets online every day, and even though our roots are in Tempe, Arizona, aren’t always visible publicly, tying local culture to our mast means wanting all of our team members to flourish in their own local communities.  In the work-from-home era, and with an office in Tempe and remote workers around the world, we’re still learning how to do that.  In conversation, and in monthly meetings, we talk with team members about what’s going on in their neck of the woods. We celebrate when they celebrate, and in the other direction, we tell them all about what’s happening where we are. As an added boost, and as something we proudly incorporate without a front-facing name like ‘Arizona Iced Tea,’ we’re deeply connected to our location.  Many of our clients and colleagues are also in Phoenix. In more than one case, they’re right down the street, or in the same building as our office.  Caring about communities and taking an interest in them comes from our willingness to celebrate our own location, to fly our hometown flag wherever we can. Just like we want Tempe, Phoenix, and the state of Arizona to flourish, we want our team member’s communities in Idaho, Ohio, Kentucky, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere to flourish.  Tapping in to Physical Location Finally, and in a time when people working and shopping remotely are craving physical, in-person experiences like never before, location can be a tactical advantage. Whether it’s front and center in a brand name, or present in undertones and accents (like a ‘Texas drawl’) physical locations come through in a number of ways, letting people connect the dots as they form their impression of a brand’s history and personality.  Done well, and with a clear approach that reflects a company’s identity, location helps people experience brands in a particular, potent way.  People who experienced formative challenges in a particular place and time, (say, raising a family, playing on a football team, or studying together to survive a particular medical school), bonded from those in-person experiences. They bonded because physical interaction with touch, smell and other physical people builds memories in a way the digital world can’t…and probably never will.   Sorry, Metaverse.  Nothing personal.  To a lesser degree, walking into a store or an office is still inherently different and much more memorable than buying something online. In a zoom chat, nobody shakes hands. Physical location brings in elements (like more of the five senses) that are hard to incorporate in an all digital experience.  In fact—and even if you’re not launching your own flashy copy of the Apple store or the Rainforest Cafe—there’s a huge opportunity to flip the ‘all digital experience’ on its head by offering some kind of real-world experience for your customers.  A remarkable one that only you can offer.  Even if you don’t have an office or a physical headquarters, can your brand create some kind of pop-up or temporarily real experience that has a sense of location to it? If so, that might be a way to offer something people are increasingly craving: physical locations and experiences that offer variety, entertainment, and in-person interaction.  All in a specific place and time.  Online or In-Person, You are Remarkable  I’m all for working and doing business online. But I could talk about location (yours, mine, or the site of future World Cups to name a few) all day.  People, more than ever, crave physical experiences, even as everything goes digital. This means location still matters, and that brands need to think carefully about their ties to geography, their physical presence, and what those things communicate about them to their customers. Owning, recognizing, and embracing location (whether it’s a real-historic one or one you’ve adopted) in authentic, purposeful ways helps your brand resonate with physical, location-based people.  And that’s a good thing because your brand is remarkable.  If you need some help working through your remarkable identity, building it into a strategy, or shaping it into a thoughtful, confident brand expression that will grow your customer base, check out the resources on our website or give the Resound team a call.  And we’ve got plenty of wind for your sails in our B2B branding book: “You are Remarkable”, available on Amazon. Wherever you are… and wherever you’d like to be, we’d love to hear from you.  Happy branding.  P.S. Here’s a few quiz answers Get your red pens ready.  Patagonia operates out of Ventura, California. But its name comes from the far-off, southern portion of Argentina and Chile.  Haribo, believe it or not, is a German candy company based in Bonn, Germany. The name ‘Haribo’ comes from the first two letters of the founder’s name—Hans Riegel—along with the first two letters of the location.  Big Sky Brewing – Missoula, Montana. Home of big skies.   Cisco – As the name (or should we say, ‘nickname’ implies), San Francisco, California.  Valero – Founded in San Antonio, Texas, and named after the full name for the Spanish mission there: Mission San Antonio de Valero. Carrefour – If you know this one, you’re really up on your international brand history. While you’ll find a Carrefour in far off places like Indonesia, Africa, and all over South America, the grocery chain was founded in Annency, France, near a crossroads.  And finally, Bank of America was originally the ‘Bank of Italy,’ founded in San Francisco by an Italian immigrant in 1904. The actual ‘Bank of America’ was founded in Los Angeles around the same time, but Bank of Italy acquired the name. Very American, in the melting-pot sense.   

Here’s a riddle…although if you’ve been reading or listening recently, it’s more of a review question.  What do slick, wildly successful brands like Salesforce, Nike, and Apple have in common with England’s historic royal families? Aside from hype, hefty name recognition, sky-high valuations that might compare to the Windsor family’s personal fortune, what’s the common thread?  Give up?  From a brand-builder’s perspective, there’s a right answer—they’re all distinguished, organizational, or ‘household’ brands that stamp their values, history, and reputation on every product.  Or in the case of the Windsors, every family member.  When we think about branding for individual products versus branding for organizations, household brands present one kind of overlap.  Usually, it’s the good kind.  Whether they’re putting out a new pair of basketball shoes, a line of kids’ athletic shorts, or an app that can track your biometrics while you work out, all of Nike’s products are clearly Nike. Though varied, built for different purposes, and even aimed at different audiences, each product reflects Nike’s core values. Those shoes, sorts, and app all exude its mantra of just do it, and carry that same reputation for stylish, athletic excellence. Each has the swoosh logo in a place where you can see it.  In other words, that strong, overarching brand carries a lot of weight and communicates a distinct identity. But while they all get a lift from that household brand, all of those individual products need to maintain trust and consistency.   Of course, Nike, Apple, and even Disney are not indestructible.  If a company with a high-flying reputation puts out one bad product, and then another…soon enough the entire brand will suffer. https://youtu.be/k2T7EFVG5g0 Moving on From Product Branding   Last month, I talked all about product branding, and how making really amazing products (or, if you’re a business to business company, offering really amazing services) is a prerequisite, but not enough. Without a cohesive brand expression, marketing, and a strategy for gaining the trust and attention of those who might need that product, or service, chances are few people will know about it.  To that end, thoughtful product branding strategy hinges on the audience.  Knowing who your audience is and what relationship you’re building with them by way of your service is the starting point—and for many successful companies (Jeep, for one, comes to mind), it’s one way to build a widely recognized organizational brand. People get to know that overall brand, and in the future, they return to them, because of their relationship with a product or service they really love. The association of the product transfers over to the household brand, and hopefully to more products or services that household brand might offer. While this makes sense if you’re building outward for a product, or a service, there’s another, and I’d argue, a more advantageous way to approach branding for an organization.  Branding Your Organization Starts With…Your Organization. No, I actually mean that.  While it might sound somewhat corny or on the nose, please bear with me:  Rather than starting with the audience (as you might with product branding…or as you’d probably have to if your whole brand is wrapped up in one product), start with yourself.  I’m not saying your audience, your customers, or the corner of the world that you’ll be interacting with day in, day out is irrelevant.  Don’t throw everyone else overboard while you go on some pilgrimage to another dimension.  Instead, do yourself the courtesy of realizing you, your team, and your entire organization is remarkable. From there, start digging…and just like you’d examine your audience, their needs, their history, their location, their purpose, their unique traits, values, likes, and dislikes as if you were marketing a product, examine those things in your own organization.  Take the time, and possibly take the whole operation through a discovery workshop, and come to a clear understanding of your history, location, purpose, unique traits, values, likes and dislikes…and so forth.  While audience may be the biggest consideration in product branding, organizational branding starts closer to the famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘To thine own self be true.’  True that, Polonius.  Building a strong, organizational brand that will lend coherence and name recognition to your products while relaying your values and purpose starts with building on your own true identity. While I could (and while I have in previous articles) run through all the pitfalls of building a brand on anything other than one’s truthful, authentic, purpose-driven identity, the short and quick summary is that brands built on truthful identities resonate with people.  And at the organizational level, overarching brand identities that resonate lend that authenticity and clarity to every product or service that reaches someone.  Getting Down to B2B Branding Yes, let’s do that.  After all, product and organization branding for business to business (rather than business to consumer) companies comes with its own particular flavor. Even if principles—like building on a truthful identity, or strong organizational brands giving a lift to that brand’s individual products—carry over, the specifics are worth looking at.  Assuming you’ve done the hard work of building an authentic brand identity for your organization (with all the soul searching and elbow grease that goes with that), there’s a number of things to know about branding an organization based on services.  Again, and to circle back to some aspects of product branding, this is where your company’s identity, values, and truthfully crafted brand expression meet and build relationships with an audience.  In the B2B sector, customers need services for a variety of reasons.  If you think of an accounting firm, for example, it’s clear that people hire them in different capacities, to different degrees, and for a number of reasons.  A small business, or even an individual—say, a freelancing graphic designer—might need tax filings come February. So they’ll hire an accounting firm to complete those filings.  But a larger business, or a family with considerable wealth to manage might hire the same accounting firm that does their taxes to track their day-to-day finances and consult accordingly.  The conversation might even sound like: ‘Hey, our bookkeeper is just not cutting it. Can you do some bookkeeping for us and fine tune the process?” And if that same business is growing, merging, or moving across state lines, the question becomes: ‘can you help us with state tax and local tax issues?’  And so on. Your Brand Name Matters We begin to see why strong organizational B2B brands (again, Salesforce comes to mind), offer different services, or even bundle services into different packages. When a new situation opens up an opportunity to help someone with other problems…each solution stands ready. And the stamp of the household brand offering that convenient service becomes more trustworthy.   While each service has its own identity, audience, and purpose, it stands within the larger brand identity—and customers can find them, identify them, and understand what they’re getting because they have some familiarity with the organization brand.  One that’s built out those services from a clear, truthful identity, but tailored them to reach and help people in different ways.  Putting It All Together  Like the old chicken and the egg analogy, it’s hard to think of product branding and organization branding as existing in the abstract.  Organizations exist to offer services and products to a distinct audience…but those services and products would not exist without the underlying organization and its purpose, values, and identity.  When the rubber meets the road, organizational brands who know themselves (that is, they present themselves truthfully and their products and services are in sync with that true identity) will present themselves and their services to the right customer in a targeted way.  If they’re an accounting firm specializing in corporate finance, chances are, they’ll know how the CEO wants to be approached about a solution to tax issues. Or if they’re in the business of helping car dealerships, they’ll know what’s on the mind of the guy managing the lot…and knowing his needs, they’ll approach him with the right solution.  Brands that offer different solutions will know that those solutions need to feel like they’re part of the same family, like they belong together.  That brand’s tone, voice, brand expression, and marketing strategy will all cohere under the household’s purpose and values.  And if they’re successful, people will see it and hear it a mile away.  What About that Newest Product?  Done well and with an eye on both a product’s audience and how that product carries the household brand, a strong organizational brand helps people fit what they see into a larger story. Values, history, and a purpose built on authentic identity all pay dividends when a customer goes: “Yeah, that makes sense. I understand why you guys offer that.”  One last warning would be keeping an eye on new, flashy services or products that companies hope will take off. The temptation is to spin a new product or service as the latest, greatest thing…but how will that newest thing feed your larger brand and drive it forward?  If it’s wildly different and confusing for your audience, or if it has all the success of a tissue fire, how will that affect people’s perception of your other products?  Of your brand as a whole?  Building and maintaining a solid organizational brand is no small task. And while most companies offer new products or services at some point in their history, that shouldn’t be done in a way that detracts from other services or products the household brand might offer.  There’s even times when launching a wildly new product means considering a new brand to fit that product…or even rebranding.  But outside of those cases, new products and services should cohere with everything else, and they should strengthen your brand’s image in your corner of the world.  Remember What’s Remarkable Here’s a few concluding thoughts to wrap up product versus organizational branding.  -It’s important to understand how branding a product differs from branding an entire organization.  -When a product fits within the organizational brand well and resonates with customers, you can build a strong relationship with them.  -Trust and a relationship can help you house similar products and services within your organizational brand…but only insofar as they represent your brand well and make good on its promises.  -While organization branding starts with yourself…always consider your audience—what they need, how they want to be approached, and the relationship they have with you through your services, products, and brand expression.  That’s all for this month.  For more resources on discovering your remarkable identity and building a brand that resonates, give the Resound team a shout. Or check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’, available on Amazon.com.  Until next time, happy branding. 

Is your brand imprisoned by a single product?  Don’t worry…we know someone on the inside who can help you escape. Some guy with an insane plan and a blueprint of the prison facility tattooed all over his body.  Once you’re out you’ll be on the run, wanted by the Feds—and of course, you’ll be caught up in a steamy love triangle.  But don’t worry…we’re gonna get you out of here.  Let’s Try This Again.  All right. Now that Prison Break’s out of my system…let me properly introduce this month’s branding topic, along with the overarching question.  If your company finds itself branded all around ONE product, how does it pivot away from that?  Should it?  If so, then how does a company with a Johnny-One-Note product line rebrand itself so that people see a unified, authentic, corporate identity that stands behind all of its products?  To anchor this in a real-world case study, how does a company like Axon, (formerly Taser International, the company known for building Tasers comes to mind…) steer away from being overly defined by one product in the first place?  Tough questions…but if you feel like one product or service has put your brand in prison, here’s our thoughts on making a break for it.  https://youtu.be/lgof12A0QPw Before You Rebrand Count the cost.  Rebranding your entire organization is a huge endeavor, so before you go down that road, think broadly and strategically. Consider the big picture of your brand, your products, and where you might be heading.   A little more about Taser International, which dominated the market for Tasers and then, (surprise, surprise), became singularly identified with selling Tasers. While Taser had other products, breaking out of the one-product prison came at a price — rebranding their entire organization as Axon Enterprises, a supplier of body cams, drones, and all kinds of law enforcement accessories.  While we can chalk up Axon as a success story — one of a challenging, but necessary rebrand from a single product brand to a broader corporate identity — consider them an exception.   They’re also a good case study of why establishing your organizational brand clearly, purposefully, and early on can give you a sense of where you want to go beyond one product.   Brand Like an Extended Family If your company houses multiple products, define your brand in a way that allows it to house all of those products in a cohesive, authentic, and yet recognizable way.  Piece of cake, right?  We grant that it’s not a trivial undertaking. But if your company houses multiple products, developing your brand into one that can lend full support and identification with all those products is well-worth the thought and planning.  When it works, it’s pretty phenomenal.  If you think of companies like Apple or Nike, you see that this strategy of an overarching, organizational brand is one that drives demand for all the products they sell. Sure, the products themselves have their own brands, many with their own unique identities. But they all carry traits of the overarching corporate identity.  They’re all part of the family.  For a fun analogy, you can think of a household brand as similar to the royal families that ruled England in an unbroken dynasty. Every member of the family shared a recognizable surname, not to mention a set of colors, a legacy, and a distinct family crest. While some of those royal families had to rebrand themselves (I’ll tell you about how the Windors of Windsor Castle weren’t really the Windsors some other time), the concept of a royal family name leads me to another situation — one where companies and brands need to be careful because the single product is a person.  When Everything’s in A Name  You’ve probably heard of Dave Ramsey. If you haven’t, he’s a financial guy who became a household name for his advice about getting out of debt. He’s also known for Financial Peace University. But while his main thing, the one that he’s been doing for a long time, is finance, budgeting, and getting out of debt, Dave Ramsey has also built a larger platform, with guest speakers appearing on his show and weighing in on a number of topics.   You might think, well of course, Dave Ramsey…makes sense that his brand and company are going to be wrapped up around his identity as a person. But the truth is, in the branding and B2B industries, many firms face unique challenges because their brand is based on one person. The individual-as-product legacy persists in accounting, tech, and even in law. While it’s often common practice (particularly in law, where a firm that was established by two or three people will take their last names as the brand), having a brand based on one or a few people comes with its own liabilities. Legacy Isn’t Everything For example, having a brand name like ‘Schmidt, Miller, and Johnson’ makes sense if the imprint and legacy of those individuals still animate your company’s community, network, reputation, and current operations. But if those original founders are long gone and forgotten…a team of new leaders might be stuck carrying on a name few people recognize.  Of course, a founder’s legacy can be memorable, and for a successful company, it’s usually a net positive. Companies carry a founder’s name, or a historical brand name for this very reason.  But if an individual’s legacy has completely dried up, and taken any inkling of purpose, or recognition with it, that can do a huge disservice to the brand. Over time, the name gets institutionalized. It becomes a single product that really doesn’t mean anything about the original people…even if those two or three generations out in the company still reference them.  Having a person’s name as a brand brings both risks and benefits. In a similar way, having your brand or company associated with a single product raises the stakes. While a name runs the risk of drifting into irrelevance, a single product that defines a whole brand or company might tarnish the company if its reputation suffers.   If, for example, Dave Ramsey appeared in all the tabloids as debt-ridden, disheveled, and camped on the street begging for change, what would that do to Financial Peace University?  Nothing personal, Dave.  Just using you as an example.  Think About Where You’re Headed  Companies might fall into the single product band pipeline because they’re concerned about the bottom line. They’re focused on finding a product-market fit that will make them profitable, or maybe one that will keep the lights running for another quarter. They want to get that first product to work, so they’re excited.  After all, nothing beats a wildly successful, life-changing product…like the fidget spinner.  Like Taser International, it might be tempting and easy early on to let a single product become the entire organization’s brand. But in time, most companies are likely to start building products and services that may not fit into that original product’s identity.  This is where wrapping your whole brand around one successful product becomes a prison. When you start offering other products, your corporate identity is stuck…and it’s going to be time-consuming and emotionally draining to pivot the brand from being so tightly bound to the product and not to a larger, purpose-driven identity.  For most companies making this pivot, the antidote is a complete rebrand.  Before they get to that point, emerging companies need to think about where a particular product might take them one day.  Is the brand they’re building one that’s only embodied by one product?  Or are they tapping into some deeper purpose, and a vision of how any products and services they offer will make the world better in a particular way?  You’re More Than a Single Product Brand Better yet, what if brands or companies start to realize that they’re not their products, but rather, they’re a set of ideas? A way of thinking, visualizing, and problem-solving that approaches problems in a unique way? What if a company’s purpose, values and way of thinking and approaching problems are baked into every product it makes?  What if that purpose should be?  In my experience, and having studied, helped, and worked with hundreds of B2B brands, a successful brand is one whose unique philosophy infuses and characterizes each of its products.  A successful brand thinks carefully about what it does, how it sounds, and the message it’s sending…and people notice that. Over time, and as they get to know what that brand really values, loyal customers learn to trust it…and this trust carries over when that brand or company rolls out new products or services.  If you think about a brand like Husqvarna (one that makes top-notch chainsaws), there’s a reason why customers respond well to all of their products, and usually welcome new ones. It’s because Husqvarna’s values carry through in every one of their saws. When they make a new one, people know it’s going to be powerful and reliable, just like its brothers and sisters.  The same goes for corporate identities like Nike. Their ‘Just Do It’ philosophy is evident in everything they do. Their vision of helping people achieve athletic victory transcends demographics, geography, and even specific products.  People trust a brand (and its products) when the brand’s philosophy informs everything it makes and does.  Start With Intentionality So…you’ve got a purpose and a vision. How do you carry that purpose, vision, and brand philosophy through every product and service you offer?  Great question.  As with most parts of authentic branding, forethought, and intentionality lay the groundwork for any brand strategy session or discovery process. Thinking carefully about what your purpose is, and how your products and services express that core purpose also helps you when it comes time for brand expression and even things like fitting your product to the market.  But remember, the flip side of authentic forethought is a kind of passivity: building your brand on whatever works, whatever the founder’s name was, or whatever’s successful.  Not choosing and defining the track you’re on might mean having it defined for you.  Rebranding Remedies  There’s something to say for branding agencies.  For rebrands and thorny branding problems, bringing in some help means valuable, outside perspective. That could be a branding agency like Resound, or it could even be setting time and resources aside for a thorough self-audit. It meant mean talking to your customers, colleagues, and team members, and then using all that input to make some thoughtful branding decisions that build on a true identity.  And even if your brand is heavily associated with a product, that might not mean you need to break out of jail…or that all your branding efforts are sunk.  Rather, let a successful product take you back to your roots. Ask yourself: in what ways does this product, its success, and how people respond to it reflect the truth of my organization? What we’re all about? Our vision of how one corner of the world can be a better place through the work we’re doing?  Now we’re talking.  While the journey may not end there, looking at your products through the lens of values, identity, and underlying purpose puts you in the driver’s seat. Rather than being passive and sailing wherever the wind takes you, you’re thinking good and hard about the track you’re on and where that track might take you.  Remarkable Comes in All Shapes and Sizes While there’s no silver bullet to the dangers of becoming associated with one name or one product, the branding process pins a lot of hope on one, easily forgotten fact.  You’re already remarkable. Even if you create one product and sell it exclusively to an island population in the North Atlantic. Even if you’ve let one product and its success take you down a track you’d rather not be on.  If you’d like some help working through your values, your purpose, and how the products you offer might set you on a certain brand path, you’ll find wind for your sails in “You are Remarkable,” my book on B2B branding from the ground up.  And if you’re just joining me, check out more of my hot takes on building authentic brand identity in the articles and podcasts posted on Resound’s website.  Or reach out to the team and we’ll get started.  Until next month, happy branding. 

Last month, I wrote about how authentic brands that last and endure build a loyal community. This month, I’m tackling a logical, highly relevant follow-up question. Given the polarization that’s put everyone in our country under increasing pressure to take sides, can authentic brands be canceled? It’s possible… and with an ever-increasing list of notable examples, brands facing backlash and cancellation are becoming less and less of an anomaly. While there are many ways to embroil your brand in some kind of viral, meme-worthy controversy, (if that were my topic, that might be a fun article…) the question I’m asking is: how do authentic brands serve their customers and continue to resonate, even amid a highly politicized culture war?  Furthermore, aside from walking the tightrope of not offending—or to be realistic, of offending some people in a way that doesn’t do lasting damage—how do brand and company owners know when it’s time to speak up or stay quiet?   When it comes to politics, conventional business wisdom says always stay out of it. While I see the level-headedness and caution inherent in that approach, it’s actually not a one-size-fits-all for every brand. So, is there a right time to take a stand? If there is, and if they must wear one jersey or another, how do authentic brands do it without getting canceled, forgotten, and booed out of existence by everyone in the stands? It’s a thorny question but, by all accounts, a good one. Like many thorny branding questions, the answer takes us down to motives, intentions, and the extent to which a brand or company, its team, and even its customers understand identity.  https://youtu.be/S5i79bVKKLI To Thine Own Self, Be True Believe it or not, the first and foremost defense against getting canceled is a good offense.  Brand companies that, for any number of reasons, step away from the consistent, authentic identity that they’ve built to score political or social points pay the biggest price…and usually see the biggest backlash.  The rule of thumb here can be expressed in a simple question—does taking a political stance (or refusing to take one when it’s all the rage and the pressure’s on) make sense given who you really are? Given your brand’s authentic identity? Is it a clear and logical extension of your values, who you are and who your customers know you are, and the overarching purpose behind everything you do? If not, and if stepping out into a dicey conversation has no connection to what you do and who you are, should you expect that new, controversial website banner or political hashtag to come across as genuine? Probably not…and chances are, it won’t. What if commenting on something does align with your brand? On the other hand, if your band has had a clear ideological strain from the beginning (brands like Ben and Jerry’s, Chick Fil-A, and Rolling Stone magazine come to mind) and if your values, message, and actions have reflected those political leanings for a long time, taking a stand might be consistent with your values. Chances are, the customers you resonate with will recognize that and the outrage that leads to calls for cancellation will be minimal. In short, and to the extent that any first line of defense is probably a good thing, a brand that knows itself, and navigates political winds in a way that’s consistent with its purpose and core values, is more likely to keep an even keel. Even, as you sometimes hear when war breaks out, the game goes to overtime, or a jury goes to deliberate, when all bets are off.  In the Crossfire As we increasingly see political stands and calls for cancellation on both ends of politics in America and even the world, more and more brands are getting caught in the crossfire.   Running with my first premise—that a brand which is authentic, which has done the hard work of finding its frequency, knowing its purpose, its values and who it is has a built-in defense against stepping out of its lane and getting canceled—I’ll go even further.  A brand that knows itself is defensible in a hostile, even in a back and forth, increasingly fraught political environment.  I can think of two reasons why that’s the case.  Number One: brands that know themselves inside and out are less likely to get caught in a dicey conversation. Even if there’s a political firestorm going on and a lot of temptation for a brand to take sides or have a strong opinion, a brand that knows its own identity through and through will be better able to decide. That brand’s a better position to know if the issue or conversation is one it should be talking about, regardless of what everyone is saying.  Number Two: brands that know themselves already know what they think. At least, in many situations.  If core values and purpose are aligned to actions, expression, and every part of a brand’s interaction, that brand has a pretty good sense of what they’re all about…and which conversations and stances would align with them. In any case, you’re more likely to have flushed out your thinking before some of these conversations arise. Any stance you take, or don’t take, is pretty well aligned with everything else you’re already doing.  A Few Case Studies If, for example, you’re Ben and Jerry’s, your fair-trade ice cream will probably sync well with other political stances you’ve taken. The initiative makes sense and goes with the grain of the ethics and values you’ve said you care about since day one—the environment, global poverty, Birkenstock wearing and the like. You have a reputation for being vocal on one side of certain political conversations, so when you get loud…your customers will continue paying eight bucks a pint for ice cream because they’re familiar with that.  And while not all of them might appreciate or agree with your political stances, weighing in from a side you’ve traditionally weighed in on will be no shocker. Not if it’s baked into your values, your stated purpose, and the authentic brand identity you’ve built from the inside out.  To hop to the other side and take another example, think of comedian Dave Chappelle.  It’s no big secret that Dave Chapelle (and with him, Netflix) have taken heat for some comments from his stand-up comedy about transgenderism. But despite the controversy, and some very angry Netflix employees, Dave Chapelle continues to sell out his stand-up shows.  The reason why comes back to the fact that he’s authentic and on-brand. Going all the way back to his controversial sketch comedy show, he’s always been the guy that says whatever he thinks, and doesn’t discriminate when it comes to skewering people, habits, and even sensitive cultural topics.  It makes sense that even if people disagree with them, they’re still likely to think: “Yeah, that fits him. That makes sense. How much for tickets?”  Operate From an Authentic Place Whatever side you’re on, if you’re grounded in your values, your purpose, and your core beliefs, you’re operating from an authentic place.  When some parts of the national or political conversation start creeping into that territory, well…you might be inclined, or even expected to respond, and you might not be. But whatever the case, you probably won’t fall into the pressure many brands and companies do by thinking: everyone’s talking about this… we need to react! We need to say something, fast.  Rather, and in a way that’s much more winsome and consistent in the long run, you’ll be able to navigate clearly, cautiously, and in a way that fits the beliefs and values your brand identity has already been expressing for a long time.  Caution and Inventory Where hot-button topics often spark the fire, social media brings the gasoline.  A word of caution that’s no big surprise—be careful what you post, when you post, and who posts it.  If you’ve decided you’re not going to weigh in on the latest headline, the last thing you want is someone from the marketing department going ballistic on your LinkedIn page.  While conversations and impressions and social media are a bit like vapor—here one moment, and then poof, many brands and companies have done themselves considerable damage by trying to bandwagon, (or by being asleep at the wheel while someone in their office is trying to bandwagon) on the latest hot button issue.  It makes sense that people are passionate about it, and sometimes overly so. So, if you choose to make a bold statement or say something in the heat of the moment, you’re likely to end up backpedaling, backtracking, or even wishing you hadn’t said anything. While whatever you said might (and likely will) blow over faster than you think…it’s no alternative to staying level-headed and banking on an authentic brand identity as you make your choice.  Remember, if getting active on social media in a sensitive conversation doesn’t vibe with who you really are, there’s a lot of wisdom in staying out of it.  Or at the very least, in taking some thoughtful, comprehensive inventory: Who am I at the core?  What do I stand for on a day-to-day basis?  What’s vital, important, and indispensable to my brand’s identity?  Is this issue one that really matters given our focus and our purpose?  Is this conversation one that speaks to the values, ethics, and expression we’ve been building with customers from day one?  And looking at it from the angle of your customers, your team, and how your brand’s identity radiates outward and expresses itself in a hundred different ways, you can also ask:  What culture have I built?  What am I known for? Appreciated for?  What do customers, colleagues, or clients say about me when people ask them?  What values and conversations have I entered before?  Over the interactions with customers, and over conversations, communication, and the impression my brand makes, what’s been built in terms of a shared, recognizable identity?  Are parts of my brand superficial, or am I completely truthful?  Do my customers trust me at a deeper level?  How might they respond to speaking on this issue or conversation I care about? Will they understand and see it as consistent? Or will it be out in left field?  To that end, given my brand identity, is it worth it to go out in left field in a surprising, but nonetheless authentic way and face the consequences?  These ones aren’t easy, and we can’t prescribe answers to them one way or another.  But if your own answers are shocking or surprising… perhaps it’s time to bow out of that Twitter war and work on the basics of your brand’s identity.  Authentic is Close to Bulletproof My final hypothesis on this edgy, slippery issue is that authentic brands look and sound confident.  Where true confidence that wins respect, builds loyalty, and comes across as authentic only comes from the intrinsic identity and functioning of an organization itself, flamboyant stances meant to grab attention come over as weak, hollow, and inauthentic.  Knowing who you are and what you stand for, and in many cases, being brave enough to stand by it, conveys strength. Honesty. Humble, genuine, confidence.  Brands who build their identities with this self-knowledge, and with the discipline to walk it out consistently are in far less danger of responding to political conversations with some kind of PR panic button… uh-oh, oh man… should we say something? We better say something.  If that’s how you’re going about it, then maybe you shouldn’t.  What if speaking out or putting out a manifesto in haste will probably cause more problems, come across inauthentic, and put you that much closer to those shrill, critical calls for cancellation?  Rather, slow it down.  Build your brand one day at a time.  Live out your values; if you’re not sure if you’re doing that list them, write them out, and think about how they apply to everything you do.  For Example… One of our core values here at Resound is local culture. Having thought and wrestled with how to make that value into a reality, we made a habit of shopping locally, and even giving gifts from local businesses in the Phoenix area to our clients all over the country.  Telling someone in Texas or Toronto about our favorite Tempe delicatessen, or mailing a gift that’s sourced or manufactured a few miles away is one small way we honor the community that shaped us.  While it surprises our clients, that surprise usually turns to interest, and even appreciation.  You’d be surprised how small, but consistent habits can communicate what you value and the fact that you try (of course, not perfectly) to live those values out.  Implement them wherever you can. If there’s a way you’re missing the mark, or not living up to a value you’ve gone on record about, think about ways to build it out that are small, practicable, repeatable and winsome.  Who Doesn’t Get Canceled? Brands with authentic identities and remarkable track records.  Ones that know themselves, what they stand for, and how others perceive and appreciate them. They build authenticity by being themselves; by showing up consistently and confidently from the central transparency of a purpose worth living out.  Of course, only time will tell. But in my estimation, and even while authentic brands that combine self-knowledge with character, humility, consistency, and self-restraint aren’t bulletproof… they’re pretty hard to cancel.  Trend chasers? Copycats? Knock-off brands that look like all the others? Any brand that goes on a downtown protest just to win a thousand customers?   Not so much.  But Whatever Happens… Remember that You Are Remarkable With that wrapping up my thoughts on how (or how not) to get canceled, I want to come full circle, and remind you that your brand, company, organization, or solo practice already has a remarkable identity.  Even if you don’t know it, or even if you can’t articulate it just yet.  If you’d like some help working through your values, your purpose, or how to translate those into an authentic brand expression that’s not likely to be canceled, you should check out my recently released book on B2B branding: ‘You are Remarkable.’ And if you’re just joining me, you can learn about the steps of building, and building from an authentic brand identity in the articles and podcast that cover a whole host of B2B branding topics.  Or give us a shout and talk to our team.  Glad to have you and happy brand building! 

How do you truly connect with your brand’s audience? Through story. Great stories stick with us…and the reason why is no great mystery. They resonate. From Star Wars and The Godfather to the plays of William Shakespeare, a great story survives time and change because for audience after audience, something true and potent sunk in. Star Wars and Brand Story That is, if we break apart the plot of the first Star Wars film, we see a template of events that are millennia old — a young hero who yearns for adventure is pried from home after a trusting guide, and a chaotic chain of events thrusts him into the innards of the Death Star itself. The events are both deeply familiar and yet invigorating…because, on some level, we see our own life parallel the hero’s quest. So we watch. Story Involves and Motivates Your Brand’s Audience In other words, stories like Star Wars don’t exist in a vacuum. They land, and land well, with their brand’s audience…and with subsequent generations of audiences who love the story so much they consume fan fiction, dress up for conventions, and in some countries, lobby to make Star Wars an official religion. If you’re just joining us, don’t worry. This article isn’t part of a Star Wars series and we won’t be talking about the new Obi-Wan show. Rather, it’s a series on authentic B2B branding…and my point is that potent brands reach people with the posture and messaging of a timeless classic story. If you’re just joining by the way, you can read more about how the elements of a brand that guides its customer (the hero), mesh with the elements of story by reading this article on how to tell a remarkable brand story. https://youtu.be/jgXdwIebNHA The Final Piece of Your Branding Effort Riffin’ on story brings me right to the heart of it. On the top of the branding pyramid, way above the foundation of a true, authentic purpose —  and above the narrowing, rising layers of personality, metaphor, archetype, history, location, and brand story — we find a sharpened, or…if we’re still talking pyramids, a crudely sharpened capstone. As magnificent as it may look, the whole structure is pointing at something: Your brand’s audience. Every author knows that when you’re telling a story, you need to pay attention to your brand’s audience. The same applies for a large corporation, a regional B2B branding agency like Resound, and your own company. Who’s your brand’s audience? Which hero are you aiming to guide to the finish line? While most companies have a good, or even a statistically sharpened understanding of who they’re trying to reach, the question is worth asking again, and as simply as possible, from a brand and brand story perspective. Your Brand’s Audience Squared You might respond that I’m forgetting one thing — your brand or company has more than one audience. Take it easy. If you’ve got more than one audience, (or more than one product), you’re in good company. In fact, even if you create one product or offer one service, you’ve probably got a few audiences already in the bag. When we think of any given brand story, four distinct audiences come to mind: Your customers (or clients, or whomever you serve) Your employees (or volunteers, or members, or whoever is on your ‘team’) Your investors (or partners, or shareholders, or whoever your biggest stakeholders are) Your community (the people who share your location, geographically or otherwise) Depending on your type of organization, the specifics of each of your brand’s audience will vary, but the categories will remain roughly the same. For instance, a non-profit doesn’t have shareholders, but it does have donors who make a financial investment. An ethnic grocery chain’s “community” may not only be its neighborhood, but also the ethnic community in the city in which it plays a role…and that “community” probably includes other competing businesses in the grocery industry. Who You’re Pitching To For each audience, there will be a specific adaptation of your brand story which makes the most sense to that audience. The story should stay the same, but the way you tell it will differ, depending on whether you’re advertising on the front page of your website or talking with your employees. New Audience. New Version. Your employees, for instance, need to have a deeper understanding of the story, so that they can in turn relay that story to customers. Even if they don’t regularly interact with customers, knowing the larger story gives employees a sense of purpose at work. By contrast, an investor needs context, which helps him see whether your goals are plausible given the backdrop and setting of your business. Customers often don’t have time for much context. They may only give you a few minutes to tell your story, if that much. In other words, your plot and purpose need to move! Your local community, on the other hand, doesn’t want a sales pitch. They’re not interested in giving you money or buying your service. Instead, they want to hear things like how you’ve helped the community, provided jobs for people, given opportunities, or sponsored community groups. Tell Your Story So, you’ve identified the purpose of your organization and the values which result from that purpose, which together form the core of your identity. You’ve used some tools to further define your identity, and all of this culminated with the idea of a brand story. But it isn’t enough to just have a good story. You have to tell the story. Put Your Story to Work This entire exercise is pointless if your brand story sits on a document filed away on a server. You have to make these ideas about your brand concrete: turning them into images, colors, content, a brand voice, and ultimately into relationships with your customers. There are many different ways to tell your brand’s story. You can create a video, or write a book. You can write an article, or design your collateral with your brand’s story in mind. You can create a greater sense of identity through your logo, images, and other artifacts within your organization. But the brand story is the genesis of everything else: all of the other expressions of your brand expand outward from that single point. Give it Enough Time The process of expressing your brand outwardly might be gradual. You might begin with a logo or an email signature. Then it might expand to some signage inside of your own office or an update to your website. Or you might just begin with your elevator pitch, and how you talk to people about what you do and your ideas. The important thing is that, having documented your ‘why’, your values, and your brand personality, you want to take action as a team and ensure that it fuels what you do day to day. You want to make sure that it guides you as you interact with customers, as you communicate in your marketing, and as you make decisions. These are things you agreed were important; the truths about your brand. Remarkable brands, (and even if you don’t know it yet, yours is one of them)…resolve to live those truths, not hide them beneath the latest marketing trends or corporate logo. Everywhere the light touches your brand, your authentic personality should come shining through…and resonate like a classic dose of the hero’s journey. There and Back Again Well, remarka-fans, this was quite the journey. Now that we’ve come full circle to your brand’s audience and purpose, we’re excited to tell you that this whole series of articles has been drawn from chapters of our recently released book on branding: ‘You are Remarkable.’  It’s out now on Amazon, and if you like what you’ve been reading here, the book will put even more wind in your sails. If you’re new to the series, we’d also recommend going back to the start and reading through our series on B2B branding. If your company’s going through a rebrand, if you’re wondering how to take your company’s purpose and show it to the world in a way that’s winsome, scalable, and authentic…we’ve designed our resources to take you there, one step at a time. You can also give us a call and chat with our team. If there’s one thing we love more than getting to know remarkable brands, it’s helping them step up to the plate of showing their brand’s audience how remarkable they are. Thanks for reading and happy branding!

This is it, remarka-fans. How to tell a remarkable brand story This month, I’m cutting right to brand story—the heart of a brand’s posture toward the world and its customers, and the final piece that ties a brand’s expression, identity, and strategy together.  If you love a good story, (seriously…who doesn’t?), and if you know that telling one can mean the difference between scaling your brand dramatically or getting little traction with the same old strategies… then you’re in the right place.  Welcome to the writer’s room.  If you’ve been following my series on discovering your brand’s purpose and remarkable identity, and then using it to build a winsome, potent brand expression, then you might sense that we’re nearing the summit.  And if you’re just joining in, that’s also swell… and if you enjoy the view then you’ll probably find the previous stages of our branding journey worth your time. All of the tools we’ve discussed so far, from your brand’s archetype, metaphor, and location to its own slice of history, culminate in your overarching remarkable brand story.  A well-developed brand isn’t an image. Or a tagline. Or even a killer color scheme.  Those are ways of expressing the brand…but they’re no substitute for its story. In many ways, and when it comes to what the busy world sees and hears, a brand is its story.  https://youtu.be/CZ7FflRDxJ8 Whittling Story Down to a Remarkable Brand Story Hollywood screenwriters and those who study ancient civilizations love to tell us that there’s only one story.  Maybe two… and on the note, the variations I’ve heard are:  1) a stranger comes to town.  2) a stranger goes on a journey.   But if you’re a fan of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, then you’ve probably had a taste of how much debate, speculation, and back-and-forth exists amongst story and movie buffs.  Seriously.  There’s enough of it to fill a thousand masterclasses. But the good news for B2B’s is that the elements of story sharpen down nicely for those building a brand.  A classic story has five key elements: the balance, the unbalance, the quest, the crisis, and the new balance. In plain English, here’s what those five elements look like: The balance is the “normal” state of the world at the beginning of the story, its status quo. The unbalance is the new event, intrusion or “problem” which disrupts the “normal” state of the world and sets the events of the story in motion. The quest is the pursuit by the protagonists (the “heroes”) of the story to find some solution to the problem or other ways of settling the unbalance. The crisis is when the drama of the quest and the drama of the underlying problem comes to a head, the key event which will determine the outcome of the story. The new balance is the resolution to the story in the aftermath of the crisis, which becomes the new “normal” for the end of the story, or the new “balance” to be upset again at the next stage of the story.  Shall we try it?  The 5 Sentences You Need to Tell a Remarkable Brand Story The key elements of any story can be stated in five sentences following this format.  Balance: Once upon a time there was a quiet village where a humble dentist minded his own business.  Unbalance: Suddenly, a dragon started attacking and burning down the buildings.  Quest: The dentist went on a quest to find the dragon’s lair and slay the dragon.  Crisis: He found it, and the dragon was about to kill him in a blaze of fire, when he noticed the dragon just needed a few root canals to relieve the pain in his mouth.  New Balance: He helped the dragon and brought it back to the village as his loyal pet. To give another example… one in which you can pick out the elements for yourself: Sometime in the distant future, the crew of a starship is exploring the galaxy for signs of intelligent life.  Suddenly, they are attacked and boarded by a horde of three-headed alien dogs, or cerberi. The captain and her two first officers flee in an escape pod to go looking for help, searching the galaxy, only to discover that every planet in the area has been conquered by the cerberi.  Realizing they must either fight or die, they come up with a clever plan to displace the alpha dog with themselves. The trio succeeds, the cerberi now follow their lead, and they return to their ship as heroes. This basic structure works for any story. You probably use something like it already when you’re telling someone about a significant event that happened in your life… or just trying to catch them up on your day. The structure also works for presenting the story in which your brand plays a role. How to Cast Your Remarkable Brand Story Not every story you tell about your organization will have value for your audience, of course. A story that is all about you and never about them might be interesting but it won’t really matter to them.  For example, the literal history of your company can be presented decade by decade as a “story”, but that story might not do a good job communicating who you are and why anybody should care.  Instead, think about the larger story in which both you and your audience are characters. It is your audience, not you, who should fill the role of the “main character” in the story. Their perspective, as well as your perspective, should guide the way the story is told. Your brand is not the center of the story.  Rather, your customer is the hero, the one at the center of the story.  Your brand is the guide, the trusted authority who helps your customer reach a positive, transformative ending. Putting Meat on the Bones Having oriented your brand as the guide and your customer as the hero, here’s how the other elements play out in real time.  Balance The balance of your story is the context, the “world” in which the people your organization serves operate. It’s what your audience currently takes for granted as “normal.”  Again, it isn’t what your organization or industry necessarily thinks is “normal,” because there may be a gap between the way your industry views the world and the way your customers view the world. Try to describe the balance from the point of view of your audience, before any problems come on stage. For instance, for a non-profit that helps spay and neuter cats, a few stray cats roaming around.  For a company which sells a new system meant to replace the decades-old software tool everybody uses that its competitor never updates, the balance might be how things worked just fine in 1995. The balance might be more general for other brands: like a world in which people commute everyday to work, or a world in which people are busy and easily forget things. Unbalance The unbalance of your brand’s story is the problem you’re trying to solve… or just a change in circumstances that disrupts things. Think bigger than just the specific problem solved by a product or service to the overarching cause of those problems.  The unbalance is about the problem in the world which it is your brand’s purpose to address, the problem you exist for the sole purpose of solving.  The unbalance might be the neighborhoods flooded with stray cats that keep having kittens, or the consequences of people using frustrating outdated software. The unbalance might be the stress drivers all feel on the road while commuting, or the damaged relationships when people forget and miss an important event.  Quest The quest, then, is your audience’s journey to find a solution to this problem, looking in every direction and searching through all of the options.  For instance, the quest might be finding some way to cut down on the stray cat population or searching for ways to fix the software, or looking for a more comfortable way to drive.  At some point along the quest, your customer runs into you. You become their guide along the quest leading them to the solution.  Crisis The crisis is the point when you come to the rescue! You help them start to neuter the cats, or start to replace outdated software, or start to improve the comfort of driving, or start to better remember what is important to them. The crisis is where your purpose as an organization intersects with the problems people experience. New Balance The new balance in the story is your vision for the impact your organization will have on its customers and on the world.  Perhaps you envision neighborhoods with stable but gradually shrinking stray cat populations. Maybe you envision people who are more productive because they have more user-friendly software. Maybe you envision people who are more relaxed on the road, or a world where people spend more time together because they don’t forget.  Brand Stories Come in Many Sizes Your brand might have multiple stories at multiple layers, of course.  To start with, there should be a story for each specific product or service your brand offers. But even bigger than those stories is the story for your brand as a whole, the one that makes you who you are, and will most likely endure past particular products or services.   For instance, each model that a car manufacturer sells may have its own story—the kind of problems it’s trying to solve in the lives of intended customers. These stories are parts of a bigger and more important story, though, which is the story of that automotive brand… not to mention its values, history, and the crisis in the world that demands its attention. If you’re looking for an overarching brand story that incorporates the five elements, you should probably be asking:  Why do you exist?  What’s the problem in the world that your brand uniquely solves? What do you care about?  How is the world a better place because of your work?  These pieces all come together in your brand story.  Authentic Means Remarkable Ultimately, tools like a metaphor or a remarkable brand story are about the feeling or experience of the brand, not the definition.  What defines your brand are its vision, purpose, and values. A metaphor or a brand story are a way of giving color and drama to a vision, purpose, and values that might on their own seem dry and lifeless. One more thing: your brand story needs to be authentic above all else.  Don’t worry about making your characters more “interesting” or the plot more exciting.  Be truthful, and stay true to your values. Telling an honest story is what will engage your audience… and with any luck, show them your true, remarkable colors.  If you’d like some expert consultation on your brand and its story, then check out the resources on our website… or better yet, skip to the quest and give us a call.  We’re all about brand story… so much so that we wrote a book about how to discover it, express it, and use it to find customers who resonate with what you have to offer.  It’s called ‘You Are Remarkable’ and it’s out now on amazon.com. Until next time, happy brand building! 

There’s any number of highbrow ways to kick this article off.  Where to start?  In going with a splendid example of a no-frills metaphor, I’m torn between:  William Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage.”  Vincent Van Gogh: “Conscience is a man’s compass” Dr. King: “We will transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony.” Eminem: “You don’t get another chance / life is no Nintendo game.”  Simon and Garfunkel: “I am a rock. I am an island.” And finally, assistant to the Regional Manager Dwight Shrute: “Always the Padawan, never the Jedi.” Decisions, decisions… Intentional and Artful Whatever you pick, an artful metaphor can prime our minds with a clever, inventive shortcut. If the comparison is clear, obvious, or something we use every day, we don’t even think about it.  Although there’s no harm in slowing down to ponder the fact that an elephant in the room—an ultra-obvious, overriding fact or secret no one wants to talk about—weighs down the atmosphere, and creates the same claustrophobic tension as a seven-ton mammal wedged against the walls. Of course, metaphors aren’t literal.  Ones that try too hard, make no sense, or get their wires crossed end up on internet lists of ‘worst metaphors written by high school students.’   Take THAT to the bank and smoke it!  It was one peach cobbler of a tax audit.  The backyard oak tree was a proud, brown, twelve-foot column… with branches and leaves. I could do this all day…but I’d rather pivot to how B2B companies, national brands, and pretty much everyone presenting themselves or their services to the world can, (and should), use metaphor to help people grasp their remarkable identity.    Built thoughtfully, and with the truth in mind, a good brand metaphor fleshes out an organization’s qualities, strengths, values, expression—everything that helps someone resonate with that brand’s story.  https://youtu.be/ReIOEXKW1iI Metaphor Brings Clarity to Your Brand’s Story In previous articles, I discussed all the components of building an authentic brand identity. I followed that up with a series on understanding your brand’s story through the lenses of a brand’s history, location, and archetype.  Assuming you’ve done the work of pinning down those aspects of your brand, how do you go about actually composing and narrating your brand’s story?  Lots of ways, actually.  But the one way I’ve found especially helpful is the brand metaphor. The literal story of your brand, after all, is often not something that most people can grasp on an intuitive level…even if you’re able to see how your pest control company is the hero of a grand epic tale about termites and roaches. When you try to tell that story literally, the focus is going to get stuck at just killing bugs.  Nothing wrong with killing bugs.  But your brand story should be told in a way that resounds outward in distinctive visual and verbal expressions—something that can be uniquely expressed by a logo, a choice of typeface, or a company name. “We kill bugs” is not unique or distinctive. So, instead of a brand story that ends at what the brand literally does, in most cases, I try to work with a brand metaphor. Like a College Basketball Coach Metaphors work because they help us understand something unfamiliar through comparison to something familiar. Ditto for something abstract; we understand it better because a metaphor makes it concrete.  Most of our language is metaphorical at its roots… and even the word ‘roots’ is a metaphor from plants. So a brand metaphor is a tool for understanding a brand’s story through a comparison— one that makes me feel the same way that people should feel when I interact with your brand. A Metaphor is Not a Perfect Analogy. Not everything in a brand’s metaphor has to correspond to something in the real company. Rather, the similarity is in how the metaphor makes me feel. My experience with your company should remind me of how your company’s metaphor makes me feel. For instance, my own company, Resound, uses a college basketball coach as its metaphor.  This doesn’t mean everyone in the company shares an interest in basketball—some of us like hockey better, or even improv comedy—and it doesn’t mean that the ‘net’ or the ‘scoreboard’ or the ‘court’ in basketball somehow correspond one-to-one to something in the operations of our business.  What it means is that we want the feeling that we have towards a college basketball coach to be the same kind of feeling that our clients or audience have when they interact with Resound. We want to guide and educate, and we coach out of a love of the pureness of the game rather than the glory of an NBA franchise.  We’re not teaching the fundamentals like a high school coach, but we’re also not interested in coaching professionals with ulterior motives that pull them away from the team. We want the team to be successful—to provide strategy, and call out points of weakness and strength.  At the same time, it’s on the team, not the coach, to execute.  We’re not there to take over our client’s business, because it’s their business. We’re there to coach them, and provide guidance and encouragement from the sidelines. Finding Your Brand Metaphor Your company’s brand metaphor should be something several steps removed from what you actually do. The metaphor won’t be effective if it is too similar to reality.  For instance, a Veterinarian’s office wouldn’t want the metaphor to be “a doctor’s office” or “a zoo” or “a farm”, because those things are too similar to the reality. Any of those metaphors would distract us from the reality rather than illuminate it. On the other hand, it might work to say that the brand of your Veterinarian’s office should feel like a cruise, or a carnival, or a superhero, or a military base, because each of those gives us a clear and distinct picture of what interactions with your brand should feel like.  Finding the right brand metaphor takes some creativity, but once you’ve found it, you’ll recognize that it “feels right.” Having found it, you’ll probably find that your brand’s metaphor can then go on to inform everything else your business does to express itself, from advertising and copywriting to interior design. Easy Does It I always emphasize that your brand metaphor should be under the surface, not overt.  Your customers should not know what your brand metaphor is, but your employees should.  If your Veterinarian’s office is supposed to feel like a military base, that doesn’t mean that you all wear uniforms; if it’s supposed to feel like a cruise, that doesn’t mean you have to put seashells on the walls and label the walls ‘port’ and ‘stern’.  Rather it means that the way a customer feels when they interact with your website or read what you write or look around your waiting area should produce a similar feeling in them as they might get relaxing on an ocean liner… or in boot camp, if that’s your ticket.  A Brand Metaphor =/= Theme The metaphor may guide your choice of imagery, but it should be subtle.  A metaphor is not the same thing as a theme, which looks more like the literal decorations and suggestions found in parties or gatherings… or in every Christmas episode of ‘The Office.’  A theme occurs when your Veterinarian’s office literally does call itself “Camp Paws”, lines the walls with sandbags, passes out ‘dog tag’ dog tags, and calls the doggie treats “MRE”. Themes can work for a certain kind of business… that is, if they’re in line with the definition of that business. But much of the time themes look like amateur branding.  If you can’t answer the question “why?” in response to a theme, then please, don’t.  Even a themed business would need a distinct metaphor, removed from its theme, to help guide decisions about how the brand expresses itself. An Italian-food-themed theme park, for instance, might have “family gathering” or “first day of summer” as a metaphor, rather than “pasta sauce.” Good metaphors fuse connections without drawing too much attention to themselves, it’s a good bet you’re trying too hard if your brand’s metaphor comes with party decorations and designer napkins.  Appreciating What’s Remarkable I dig metaphors because they’re often underappreciated.  Along with brand story, brand archetype and a few other tools, they help frame things for those responsible for articulating and illustrating on behalf of the brand. Designers, copywriters, and even employees going about their day-to-day business all know how the place should feel and what feeling they want to leave with customers who interact with them.  It gives any team a powerful picture of the emotions and experiences that somebody should leave with… and reminds them of just why their B2B company, or organization, is remarkable.  If you’d like some help crafting a few metaphors of your own—or better yet, a subtle, compelling brand metaphor that will help a wider audience resonate with your brand story—then drop me a line.  Resound is all about building brand expressions with the help of a stellar metaphor that embodies an organization’s unique identity, purpose, and story.  Give us a call, or check out my detailed, step-by-step branding book  ‘You Are Remarkable’ out now on amazon.com. Until next month, happy brand-building! 

Unless you work in the candy industry, you probably didn’t know that M & M’s only became a household name after selling their candy-coated chocolate exclusively to U.S. Servicemen in World War II. When the servicemen came back home, demand for those orange, yellow, and red candies we all recognize skyrocketed.  You probably don’t know that M & M’s were the first candy eaten in space, or that there were no red ones between 1976 and 1987, when a bogus study linking red food dye to cancer scared the American public.   Would the M & M’s you see at every counter be as famous, or as big a part of everyone’s life if World War II never happened? Perhaps the vast majority of people would have never heard of them, or perhaps they’d know them by a different brand name. While we’ll never know, it makes you wonder. If you think about it, the story of each brand we use and recognize is deeply tied to the historical events that shaped it over its lifetime. Along with a brand’s location or setting, a brand’s history leaves an indelible stamp on how that brand expresses itself, how it grows or shrinks, and how the world around it experiences and recognizes it.  Even if no one aside from a brand’s founders knows that history, the events, trends, economic demands, and cultural appetites make a mark nonetheless.  And in deeply important ways that contribute to a brand’s story, and even its eventual success or failure. https://youtu.be/MSdjavA0NLs Brand History Means Context  The context of a brand’s story is not only its place, but also its time.  If you’ve done the hard work of figuring out your brand’s identity, values, and core purpose, and if you’ve factored in the ways your brand’s location shapes everything about it, then a final step would be taking note of what’s happening all around you.  Consider the recent years that have seen your brand grow, begin, or change course, and ask yourself:  What’s been going on in the world? Have there been any major shifts in the status quo? Or is the world ready for one? What’s going on in your world right now?  And what’s going on in the industry?  What historical context helps define the changes in society, culture, or your industry? How did all these changes get to where they are?  Answering these questions should give you a sense of your brand’s historical context… and your impression of recent history prepares you to ponder the follow-up: What does all this mean for your brand?   How does recent history, or everything that’s happening today, contribute to your brand’s story and expression? How does it shape the way people think about it or respond to it?  It may not be so easy to distill the answers… or to separate how time and history have influenced your brand from how your brand’s geographic location has.  But a good way to practice, and no doubt a good exercise in and of itself, would be asking how our own individual histories shape the people we are today.  Starter Questions for Understanding the Past   We’re all shaped by the memories of our own history. No exceptions. How we think about ourselves has a lot to do with the story we tell of what has happened to us, and how we got to the present moment. Our fears, aspirations, and present behavior patterns are often echoes of what worked for us in the past. For organizations, looking back and reflecting on their history is an important component of their brand story… and with a handful of direct, but not necessarily easy questions, that history can be unlocked.  When was your brand founded?  Why was it founded?  If the company has been in business for 30, 50, or 70 years, how has the industry changed?  How has the company changed? How did the world change?  What were the big, emotional moments in that history, either the successes or the failures, that shaped the way your company operates today?   How did you react to big events that happened within your business, or on your team?  Following Memories and Feelings  We’re often influenced heavily in how we think about ourselves by moments of great emotion, the high points and the low points of our lives. Organizations are very much the same.  Both individually and collectively, we remember feelings rather than facts. So, looking at a brand’s history, what were the moments of intense feeling?  When did you feel like you were at your lowest?  And when did you feel like you were at your highest?  How did you behave in a moment of thrilling success?  And how did you handle a crisis?   Often, strong feelings and impressions are tied to major events that impacted the organization, or everyone involved in it.  Think of the big milestones in your company history.  What was a time that you decided to change?  And what was a mistake that you resolved never to make again?  What was an opportunity that you’re glad, in retrospect, that you did, or didn’t pass up?  But Your Brand’s History Doesn’t Have the Final Say Feelings and memories of someone’s history can be incredibly strong. And of course, an individual should not be a prisoner of their own history.  But only by becoming aware of the past narrative of our lives can we recognize ways in which the old narrative no longer fits, and generate the awareness needed to start moving past it.   Similarly, an organization should not be defined by or held captive by its own history.  The history of a brand is not the same thing as the story of the brand. One reason to be aware of your organization’s history is to understand, in greater detail, how that narrative has constrained or restricted its ability to flourish in new circumstances.  An organization that survived a crisis by becoming highly secretive, for instance, may be better off becoming more open now that the crisis is over. A company that was once the top in its industry and has since fallen, may thrive best by moving past the narrative of trying to return to a lost golden age. Your history doesn’t determine your future. Nintendo, after all, started as a playing card company. That doesn’t mean it should now dump consumer electronics and go back to their roots. History shouldn’t stop you from making the choice to pivot and do something new. You can dislike parts of your own history, or be embarrassed or ashamed by them, but you need to own your history, and incorporate the truth of the good, the bad and the ugly into a story that leads to the future you envision.  If the vision of your history isn’t true, the vision of your future will be a lie. History is Remarkable Without history, all you have is the chaos of the present moment and the demands of right now. An awareness of your own history keeps your story anchored for long enough to see how your underlying purposes and goals are playing themselves out. And it’s also a potent reminder of a highly historical fact—your brand itself, what it does, and the impact it has, is remarkable.  Like values, purpose, location, and even archetype, history is a vital tool in understanding and unlocking your brand’s potential. And if using history to unlock a remarkable brand identity, a winsome and true brand expression, and a growing impact among customers and the wider world sounds good to you… then you should probably drop us a line.  We’re all about a brand’s history, and as B2B experts who have worked with regional and national brands for over a decade, we’re always game to get to know the remarkable story of a brand that wants to share itself.  Give us a call, or check out our detailed, step-by-step brand-building book ‘You Are Remarkable’ out now on amazon.com. Happy branding, history buffs!  

Here’s our elevator pitch—Star Trek on a pirate ship.  Same cast. Same plotlines… but instead of the outer reaches of Deep Space Nine, everyone’s cruisin’ around the Caribbean.  Or suppose Star Wars took place on an elementary school playground. Or Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?  Apparently, some have tried it. But setting informs a story as much as the characters do, and changing a setting obviously changes the entire story.  The where of a story gives off a certain personality, just as much as the who and the what. The elements of a location, an environment, or a unique time and place shape how characters relate to each other, navigate the world, and compose the stories we watch, read, and listen to.  The same is true of your brand’s story, culture, and overall identity. Trust us… locations shape a brand’s story in ways you wouldn’t expect. That includes our own story as a Tempe, Arizona-based branding agency—and that’s something you can read more about in our new book ‘You are Remarkable’ authored by our founders. Back to you and the simple, overarching question: ‘where are you from?’ https://youtu.be/xr0KW1Fe30c Not Forgetting Setting While everyone’s got a distinct nature, nurture (i.e. setting) still makes its mark.  Of course, it helps to know your core purpose, what you value, and your organization’s vision for making a small corner of the world a little better. And while you’re at it, you need to know your character archetype.  But knowing, and owning your setting is non-negotiable. The environment all around you, not to mention the values, history, and customs of the place where you set up shop matters more to your brand’s identity than you might think.  Forget setting, and you ignore a huge chunk of what makes your organization remarkable.  Having Roots in Two Locations  So what’s the setting for your brand’s story?  Is your location local? Regional? Global?  Where, and just as importantly, when does it begin? One thing you often find out when you’re getting to know someone is where they’re from. Sometimes, it’s straightforward, but other times, not so much. In fact, if you think about it, many people are from at least two places.  First, the place where they grew up—the locale or community where their formative years were spent. The place that, to a large degree, probably influenced what they see as “normal” in the world. Somebody who grew up in the Midwest has a different “normal” than someone who grew up in Los Angeles.   Second, the place where they currently live, which influences and constrains their current choices. Somebody living in rural Kansas has to adapt to a different physical, cultural, and economic environment than somebody living under the clear, hot skies of suburban Phoenix.  The same is true for a brand or an organization.  When your customers are getting to know your brand story, part of learning that story is knowing where you and your brand come from.  Location Influences All the Details  Directly or indirectly, people will get a feel for the values, culture and customs of the place where your business started. They’ll also get a feel for where it is currently located or headquartered.  This may be overt, in the way that Portillo’s Hot Dogs are explicitly from Chicago (even when they’re in Arizona), and Alaska Airlines explicitly serves Alaska (even if their hub is in Seattle). It can also be unconscious or implicit, such as when people get an intuitive feeling that a brand is southern, western, urban, rural, European, or even Canadian.  Speaking with a customer service agent on the phone, it’s not too difficult to detect the politeness of Missouri, the gruffness of Philadelphia, or even the clipped, British pronunciation of someone in Mumbai or Bangalore.   You probably know a ton about where you come from. But if it’s not that clear how setting influences the day-to-day life of your organization, culture, and overall brand story, ask yourself:   How do your employees spend their Saturdays?  That makes a difference in how employees think.  What does your local business culture celebrate?  That makes a difference in how leadership thinks. What festivals, holidays, or times of the year does your team look forward to? These aren’t small details; rather, they’re probably clues to help you understand the tastes, habits, and motivations of clients, team members, and all those you interact with on a day-to-day basis.  If you think about it, they’re also the raw ingredients of a brand’s story, culture, and core identity.  Standing Out Your setting can become a limiting factor if it causes you to conform so closely to those around you that you don’t have your own story.  If they’re not careful, every tech startup from Silicon Valley can start to look and feel like every other tech startup from Silicon Valley, because a sense of that place is so strongly baked into their identity and their staff. It can become a challenge to make sure one’s values are authentic and not merely a reflection of the prevailing ethics in one’s local business culture.  Branding should be intentional, and not merely borrowed unconsciously from the surrounding environment. This can get to the point that you blend in and become easier to dismiss. Your values, culture, and brand story should win out over your setting, or the business norms of those in your immediate proximity. But while your setting shouldn’t change your character, it’s worth acknowledging that, right beside your brand’s story, setting will impact your customer’s experiences.  Turning Location to Your Advantage  Applying setting to your brand story, brand culture, and brand expression in a winsome way means owning it.  Especially when all those little details give you away anyway.  Setting will show up in behavioral traits you don’t even realize you have. Examples of this might be how polite or direct you are, whether you’re always a little early or a little late, whether you use first names or last names, or whether you think winter or summer is the best time to be outdoors… just to name a few.  Becoming more conscious of your setting doesn’t require making a big deal of it, unless it really is a big deal. We’re not suggesting that every company in Texas should have cowboy boots in its logo.  But it does mean recognizing the way that a setting like Arizona shapes the culture, history, and underlying story of a boutique Phoenix branding agency, such as ours.  Finally, when a company has multiple settings, it can incorporate elements of both its origin or headquarters and also its current location.  For instance, consider the ways that Whole Foods or Bass Pro Shops go through the effort to make their individual stores reflect some of the vibe, local flavor, and personality of the area they’re located. At the same time, the identity and expression of their underlying brands stay consistent—whether you’re in Phoenix, Dallas, or Boston, a Whole Foods looks like a Whole Foods.  So, it’s important to be aware of your setting and let that shape your brand’s culture, story, and remarkable expression.  Your Roots are Remarkable In our series on brand identity, brand story, and brand expression, setting’s no small piece of the pie.  But keep in mind—and if this part piques your interest, be sure to join us next month as we explore it in more detail—that your ‘setting’ isn’t just a geographical location. Setting also means your place and time in history, characteristics that can be just as important in shaping your brand’s story and identity.  And if you fancy the thought of talking with some thoughtful, curious, B2B experts who know your setting is remarkable… give us a call, or check our play-by-play take on brand building in our new book ‘You Are Remarkable’ out now on Amazon.com. Wherever you hail from, we’re eager to hear all about it.  And we’re always excited to build setting and place into remarkable brand identities.