Rachel Fairley and Sarah Rob, co-founders of WeBrandRight and authors of “Rebrand Right,” shared their insights on how marketers can create strong, valuable brands by busting common branding myths.
Key takeaways include:
- Myth 1: Start with Strategy (6:51)
- Reality: Begin with a thorough brand diagnosis to clearly understand the actual problems your brand faces before crafting a strategy.
- Myth 2: Trust the Experts (11:32)
- Reality: Brand strategy often appears overly complex due to jargon and agency frameworks. Marketers should take ownership, simplify the approach, and engage the entire organisation effectively.
- Myth 3: Customers Come First (17:55)
- Reality: Think of customers as buyers with many options. Equally important is engaging employees internally to ensure consistent brand experiences that resonate externally.
- Myth 4: A Brand is Not a Logo (24:19)
- Reality: While a brand is more than a logo, visual assets remain crucial. Assets like logos trigger brand associations and recognition, significantly influencing brand strength.
- Myth 5: Consistency is King (32:00)
- Reality: Prioritise cohesion over rigid consistency. Brand guidelines should inspire creativity rather than restrict it. Think of visual assets as ingredients and their execution as adaptable recipes for various contexts.
Actionable Resources:
- Take their brand diagnostic quiz available at rebrandright.com
- Download the first chapter of their book “Rebrand Right,” offering insights into brand growth drivers.
Rachel and Sarah’s session emphasised clarity, confidence, and practical tools, helping marketers build valuable brands that genuinely drive business growth.
Transcript
this so fabulous hello lovely humans thank you all so much for being here today it’s such a pleasure um I’ve seen
0:10folks in in Bal in Switzerland I can see Melissa in Houston I can see folks in
0:16leworth Cambridge Texas wow indeed Sarah uh and and so many more so it’s such a
0:23thrill uh to have you here today I can see Liz in the chat already saying yay I
0:28can feel my mood lifting in and honestly even just a hello uh from Sarah and
0:34Rachel at the beginning of this session 15 minutes ago when we were getting going on today’s session uh lifted me uh
0:41so we are in for a lovely session today and thank you all so much for being here
0:46uh if you haven’t already uh do follow the lead of like Karen uh shazmin Judy
0:54uh Matt Tia uh Amy Amar and so many more in saying hello and where you’re
0:59watching from um and if you want to do pop an emoji to to represent your day
1:05today and and hopefully we’ll get lots of good vibes and and and smiling faces uh come through if you haven’t already I
1:12can see some of the messages are being sent to hosts and panelists only uh so make sure to switch those to everyone so
1:18everyone can see your messages there’s the option to switch that in your chat feature um today we have uh two
1:26wonderful human beings uh joining us to to to present to us and then take any
1:31questions from our lovely Community uh so we have Rachel fairy we have Sarah Rob and then on the right hand side of
1:38that uh those QR code lineup we have their upcoming book uh Rebrand WR uh
1:44which is coming out on the 22nd of April uh this year and
1:49um I’m gonna I’m gonna TOS you in that I hope this is okay but they’ve just received their first copy so I just want
1:55to say huge congratulations to both of you for that because uh that’s that’s just amazing so congratulations on uh
2:02putting so much work into this and I hope it’s a huge success uh you can see in the chat that’s beened from the
2:07community too today we’re going to be busting some myths myths on how to Rebrand right um and I think it’s going
2:15to be a lot of fun if you have questions do drop them in the Q&A feature uh which is found down below uh we’ll get to
2:20those after Sarah and Rachel have presented uh today before we get started
2:26I just want to say a thank you to our sponsors um because with these folks then we won’t be able to bring you these
2:32sessions and this week’s featured sponsor is plannable now plannable are a social media and content planning
2:38platform they help you collaborate with your team when it comes to getting social media posts they’re the platform
2:43that we use at TMM um and they’re all around good eggs um they’re doing Partnerships right um because they’re
2:50not asking you to do anything anything except for check out a piece of generous
2:56uh content uh that they’ve delivered here on their QR code on Reaper purposing content and how to build it
3:01into your workflow uh so do check that out also a big thank you to Sticky be
3:07cambrid marketing College Redgate and frontify wonderful Brands run by wonderful people uh supporting our
3:14marketing Community we’ll speak about them more in future weeks uh I’m
3:19laughing at Lydia’s comment here uh in in the chat saying my husband just walked past during your intro Joe he
3:25said sounds like talking it sounds like therapy and uh so I’ve been told I’ve got that voice anyway uh now’s the time
3:32for me to pass over to Sarah and Rachel and thank you all for being absolute Legends as ever in that chat feature is
3:38endlessly appreciated uh Sarah Rachel over to
3:44you great to meet you all we’re so excited honestly we’re just gonna have to calm ourselves down um I’m Rachel
3:51Fairley Sarah Rob lovely to meet you so we’re the co-founders of webrand right
3:57um we’ve basically dedicated our careers to fixing Brands we’ve worked with B2B
4:03b2c Brands there’s about 90 of them um so far and there have been across
4:08multiple Industries and stages of growth and we have an amazing very practical
4:16tried and tested approach um to how to get your brand to be strong that will
4:21give you we hope the clarity and the confidence um to get your brand right
4:28get your Rebrand right so um we’re going to bust five myths today and we’ll walk you through it take about half an hour
4:34and then we would love your questions so do pop them in the chat as you think of them as we go um so that you you don’t
4:40forget them so brand I mean it’s a curious thing it is the biggest lever
4:47that any business has right brand Z brand Finance interbrand all those
4:53reports that they produce they tell us that much of a business’s value actually
4:59sits with in the brand kar’s data tells us that it can be between 32% and well over 50% and as
5:07Standalone assets Brands can be worth billions on their own I mean it’s amazing right and this is our Holy Grail
5:15as marketers right I’ve been a chief marketing officer and a chief brand officer and the the the holy grail for
5:23me as a marketer for all of us as marketers is to make the brand so valuable that the business keeps growing
5:31growing but how many of you think the brand that you work with is as valuable as it could be they have so much
5:37potential right and you shape it and the weird thing is that makes you really valuable because you’re the ones are
5:45incredibly valuable because you’re you’re creating this asset that can grow and grow the business the trouble with
5:53brand If we’re honest is it’s shrouded in jargon and myths really outdated
5:58myths and so many conversations that Sarah and I have had you know the Jaron
6:04just comes thick and fast and the models and can you tell fact from fiction because we really we really struggle I
6:12mean does it ever make you worry that you’re sort of winging it feel that like an impostor yeah you’re so not alone
6:19you’re not alone and today we’re going to we’re going to bust some of those myths so we picked our top five I mean
6:24we could do a drum roll sorry I feel like I’m at my children’s school but number one start
6:30with strategy the second is trust the experts three is customers come first
6:39four is a brand is not a logo and the fifth is consistency is
6:45King right maybe some raised eyebrows at that but those are myths and we’re going to bust them so let’s start with the
6:51first one which is strategy you start with strategy don’t you when you’re working on a
6:58brand no please stop please please please please start with brand
7:04diagnosis what we usually hear is the brand isn’t working in hard enough for
7:09us you dig a little deeper and what do you find sometimes it’s pain there’s a
7:15toxic culture or the company’s played too much Pac-Man and bought too many companies and not integrated them
7:21properly or they’ve got a massive competitor threat or they have been
7:27really complacent so sometimes it’s pain sometimes it’s ambition wanting to be the best to lead to break into new
7:34markets to grow or even a new business strategy right and if we’re honest
7:40sometimes it can just be a new CMO or a new CEO that wants to visibly leave their
7:46Mark the thing is to get it right you have to understand what you’re actually
7:51trying to do before you do anything I know that sounds so simple but genuinely you you have to understand the strength
7:57of your brand you need to know know how healthy it is before you touch anything
8:03and this is really all about answering some questions we call them the sort of exam questions um if you’ve got a piece
8:10of paper and a pencil will you grab it now we’re going to ask you some questions and just just mark down a
8:16cross or a tick and count the number of crosses at the end let’s have a look so
8:21do you know why buyers come shopping for what it is that you
8:27sell do you do they know your name the brand name does it come to mind do they
8:33recognize it when they see it do they know what it offers and would they consider buying from
8:39it what is your brand enemy and if it’s not a
8:47competitor and what about if it’s not
8:52inertia do you have any distinctive brand assets do they recognize you can
8:58you can they can they see you from a distance do your colleagues know how to
9:06behave in a way that’s on brand do they know how to take decisions that are on brand because otherwise it won’t become
9:13reality and do you know why your brand is
9:18recommended so this is just a few of the questions that you need to ask
9:25yourself do a quick count up see how you did how many ticks how many crosses so
9:30these are these are there is about 33 questions you need to ask yourself and especially for you today um Sarah and I
9:40have worked on a quiz which is uh which allows you to diagnose your Brand’s health and that went live about five
9:47minutes before this call we haven’t told anyone apart from you yet but we’ll give you the direction at the end of and you can be the first people to take the quiz
9:54we’ll talk about that more at the end the thing is thinking back on what you’ve done so far in your career when
10:00was the last time that you did a a holistic a comprehensive datadriven brand
10:06diagnosis have you ever sorry to ask but because when we talk to
10:12CEOs it’s fascinating so many of them have never seen one before and when you
10:18present one to them they get this look in their eyes I’m going to try and recreate it but it’s sort of
10:23like and it it’s this sort of moment of what is this I’ve never seen anything like this before before why haven’t I
10:30seen anything like this before Oh my God I should have seen this before and it you can see their head worring as they
10:36realize because when you see the the facts written out in data that your
10:41instincts tell you are true but you’ve now got it for real it’s quite extraordinary you can so look forward to
10:48that moment honestly and that’s the reality is we stand on the shoulders of giants right we inherit the brands that
10:55we um that that we work on or we create create the brands and we hand them on to
11:01successes to manage we have to evolve them so carefully we need to know what’s
11:07strong that we shouldn’t change leave it alone what’s working that should change
11:14because it’s not quite working well enough and what is missing what you need to add in order to achieve that business
11:23goal so much more we can say on diagnosis but let’s move on myth two leave it to the ex experts so I’m a
11:32brand strategist and I’ve been one for 20 something years um and I’m here to tell you don’t trust people like me or
11:40be wary of people like me and be wary of
11:45what you receive from agencies and what you receive from Brand strategists um because brand strategy is
11:53one of these things that perhaps you don’t do very often and you and it shouldn’t be done very often marketing strategy yeah reg thing right but brand
12:00strategy changes maybe every decade if you do it really well and then when you
12:05get to that point of needing to do a brand strategy as a marketer it’s often the time when you turn to an agency and
12:11you’re like oh right I need some help I need some expert help to do this and I think one of the reasons that’s the
12:16natural thing to do is because brand strategy can come across as incredibly complicated right it’s just shrouded in
12:24jargon and Frameworks and it can feel so complic at that you feel that you you
12:30have to get the help in to do it and there’s two areas that causes the
12:36complexity right there’s the first one other the Frameworks themselves so I’m sure you’ve seen and you’ve been told
12:42well you need a brand pyramid or you need a brand onion you need the Golden Circle you need um a brand prism you
12:49need a conviction springboard you need a brand truth framework right you hear all this stuff and so there’s the Frameworks
12:55and then there’s the jargon for the labels that go on the Frameworks so oh well you must have a positioning and a
13:01philosophy and a and beliefs and a mantra and a brand Essence and a brand idea and a brand positioning and you know and a purpose don’t forget that and
13:07a mission and a vision but how does a vision you know you hear it all right it we’ve all seen the language I can see
13:13Joe nodding along and it and it’s overwhelming and the problem with all of this is it can make you feel that you
13:20cannot do it yourself right that this must be so complicated and need to get help in but we want to tell you the
13:25secret behind all of this after doing this for 20 odd years together separately independently in the biggest
13:32agencies in the world there’s a reason for all this jargon and it isn’t actually that complicated when you get
13:38underneath it all and the reason you see all of this out there there’s two reasons first is differentiation right
13:45we all know that principle of differentiation we know it’s important to Brands and agencies know it too and
13:51just like you’re trying to get the attention of a buyer you know when agencies come in to pitch to you as marketers you know they’re sitting there
13:58because we’ve been there in in their offices going right how are we going to differentiate ourselves versus X brand
14:04blah blah blah you know how oh well we need a mod we need our own strategy model and and we must have some language
14:10around it right we’re going to call our the ver verbal brand driver that’s a real example visual brand right R so
14:17they come up with this jargon to be remembered by you but that really really really doesn’t help you on the back end
14:23of it right because you’re like well what is all of this stuff and which one do I need and how do I sell that in now
14:30the other secret to all of this and the thing you need to know is not all brand strategists are created equal and I
14:36don’t mean that in terms of better than others I just mean that if you meet brand strategists who come from ad
14:41agencies often not always but often they use the pr brand strategy to talk about
14:48a campaign idea so their idea of what a brand strategy is is all about how the business ultimately makes a profit now
14:55if you talk to Brand strategists who’ve come from a design background often their version of brand strategy is all
15:01about um getting to a brief foot or a design team that they can then you know get through to that next level of making
15:07their revenue and what happens is all of this is sort of skewed and it’s skewed
15:13to their bias and it’s not their fault I’m not talking it I don’t mean to say it’s a bad thing it’s just the reality
15:18of their business model but for you I think you know as a marketer you’ve
15:24really got to step into control that strategy because for you it’s not about that one end deliverable a brand
15:31strategy has to engage the whole organization right now we we all know that brands are these associations in in
15:37our minds but we also know that actually everything a business does contributes to that you know all employees need to
15:44be engaged with knowing what that brand is about and if they’re presented you know you’re never going to get a CEO
15:51standing up there talking about his brand onion or her brand onion you know just just that language and the jargon
15:57and the Frameworks can prevent create this barrier for you to get the brand strategy sold in and implemented through
16:03the business so there is a simpler way of doing all of this and it is taking us a
16:09long time to get here so we hope we can shortcut it for you and I think one way of thinking about it is you know the
16:16this leadership team that you’re working with and the business are very comfortable with thinking about strategy
16:22in as answers to questions right so business strategies are usually framed
16:27as you know well what are we aiming for where do we play you know which markets you know which geographies what are we
16:33focusing on you know what are our big bets our pillars for the year so that they’re very used to understanding
16:38business strategy as answers to questions and to us brand can be framed exactly the same way it becomes this
16:45bridge between the business and the people that you’re trying to attract and the people you care about and you can
16:50frame that as questions too just take all this J and Frameworks park it over
16:55there and just answer some core questions you know why do we exist what do we do who are we and how do we do
17:02things how do we look feel and sound and we’ve used this model across you know all sorts of businesses B Tob B Toc
17:10nonprofit and it came from a study of the 181 brands in the that were across
17:15the three Global valuation studies so I took six months out studied all of them to try and figure out what is it that
17:22they all have in common regardless of this terminology and I think once you start to think about normal language you
17:29can really start to engage the business and and that’s when the brand becomes even more valuable than anything you can
17:34do in marketing you know it’s the coupling it together your brilliant marketing with engaging employees to
17:41actually drive it forward and that you know there’s the value there’s the value for the business and the value in your
17:48role so control the strategy Don’t Leave It to The Experts so keep going myth myth number
17:55three customers come first now it’s it’s funny when we were writing this book we
18:01were talking about like should we call it C come call them customers and we actually don’t use this phrase anymore
18:07and the reason we don’t is that we believe that there can be a little bit of complacency sometimes when you think
18:13oh they’re our customers they you know you know they bring us custom and we own them and we prefer to think of them as
18:19buyers actually that you know if you start thinking well there are buyers out there and they buy from everybody and we
18:25know that from buyer and sharp and everything right they they’re going to buy from your competitor as much as they buy from you so when you start thinking
18:31of buyers it can just give you that little bit of distance from thinking that you own that customer and a little
18:37bit more of that competitor mind so anyway I digress when I’ve worked with a lot of
18:44organizations sometimes I’ve had to come in and sort out a piece of brand strategy work where the agency has
18:51forgotten to answer a big question and the question they’ve forgotten about is this one third one down is answering you
18:58know who are we as an organization and how do we do things around here and this Taps back into that point about the
19:05brand becomes Uber valuable when you really engage the employees in this and
19:10if you can’t answer you know who are we supposed to be and how are we supposed
19:16to act you know just like Joe does with his positively lovely message and the values that are really powerful that sit
19:22underneath that like that isn’t somebody else’s job to us that is part of
19:27defining the brand and the brand strategy because if you go out there in marketing saying this is what we do and this is why we exist but then you can’t
19:34engage people internally with well this is how we need to be and this is the sort of people we need to attract then
19:40there’s this huge disconnect right re yeah totally totally I mean I think this is this is
19:48what’s quite tricky actually being all of us as marketeers here today is that your new best friend really needs to be
19:55HR right and so often you know if you want to be a brand person not just a
20:02marketing person yes I do put brand higher it’s all right you know we can argue over that but if you want to be a
20:08brand person you have got to be in cahoots with the chro like you have to
20:14have the most amazing working relationship with HR the thing when you think about so
20:21when I think about engagement and I think about how do I get the organization to actually deliver on a brand strategy I can feel a sense of
20:28panic because it feels overwhelming I mean there’s so much that you could do right but please don’t feel like that
20:35never ever ever be daunted by the scale of what you could do because you’re not
20:40going to do it I just just really going to focus your energy there’s no you don’t need to
20:47map all the touch points you don’t need to control the whole implementation you don’t need to micromanage and know
20:54everything that is going on because that is not what’s going to make the difference what’s going to make the difference is your colleagues right the
21:00colleagues are your answer to everything because the way that they behave the way that they take
21:06decisions that is that drives the experience that your brand offers so if they understand this this intertwining
21:14you get this beautiful intering right where the customers feel in their experience the decisions that employees
21:22have taken and the behavior that they have offered right but you can also get
21:29disconnect if the experience for employees is not like the experience for
21:35customers it totally undermines the strategy because what it does is it says to
21:41them I don’t care about you so you don’t need to care about the brand right if
21:47the everyday culture of the business is the antithesis of what your brand is your brand strategy wants you to stand
21:53for you’re essentially telling your colleagues to ignore it you’re showing them how superficial your branders and
22:00there’s no way to get to maximum brand value if you do that you have to help them understand how to make choices in
22:07their everyday work in their business’s usual work that are on brand so things
22:13like basic hygiene uh by which we mean the phone calls that don’t get answered the
22:20opening hours on the website that don’t actually match when your store is actually open right the contact us form
22:26that doesn’t work that doesn’t contact anyone so hygiene basic hygiene then there are things are the antithesis of
22:32the brand strategy so for example you want your brand strategy to be all about Simplicity and yet your product is
22:40really fiddly and takes ages to get set up and working right so the antithesis
22:46experience and then you also have to create remarkable moments they are moments that innovate that differentiate
22:52that create memories that create these lovely peaks in your experience I mean one of these you know for the market
22:58Meetup today this is an experience where you where it creates fresh memories fresh love for the marketing Meetup we
23:05hope and fresh adoration for Joe and the team right and you the thing about these
23:10moments is that they can help you accelerate your pipeline they can help people make decisions they can help kind
23:15of spur on your buyers and your employees so you and the chro your HR
23:22colleagues you’re the conductors of this Orchestra right you’re going to Galvanize everybody to do it you need to
23:28invest time in this because it really really really matters right you got to think like a mentor to your colleagues
23:34you got to kind of take control of doing that but also give them the control to take the decisions in their everyday
23:41life and that sounds it might sound daunting I I totally get that I mean Rachel has done this like more than
23:48anyone I’ve ever met actually she’s been brought into an organization done it walk brought into the next one sorted
23:54out um and we did write a whole chapter on this in our book because it you know as a marketing it’s not something you’re
23:59naturally trained to do right from the beginning as you go even you know at University you don’t spend hours even
24:05learning about how you implement across the business right so I think it is a skill but once you if you’re rebranding
24:12and if you really want brand to drive value it’s that expansion of a skill set that is so so so key okay keep going
24:19some cognizant of time so myth is a brand is not a logo now you might be sitting there going oh I’m going to get
24:25my phone out now this I know this this is really boring right I know a brand is not a logo but to us it is a logo this
24:32is the myth the myth is too many people are now in that framework where the brand is not a logo and it’s and it gets
24:39to be kind of dismissive that like the brand and its assets aren’t that important and and the great thing about
24:46being marketers now is that we know so much about how Brands what brands are
24:53you know a while ago no one had a clue really but now we know through Neuroscience that brands are actually
24:58you know this network of nodes in our brain and there are associations and feelings that we have about a particular
25:03product or service Etc um but we also know that brands are assets that and I
25:10think that gets a little bit dismissed like um marketers and we spend so much time thinking about right we have to do
25:15long-term brand building and we know it needs to be 70 30 60 40 you know of our efforts and so we know we need to stand
25:21for a couple of really important things to cut through we know we need to build these associations and category enter
25:27points and then then this idea that the logo bit is not as important has kind of
25:32been a little bit of a message that we’re trying to um get Beyond now because I think the assets are just as
25:39important as the associations you know we know from Jenny Romano’s work right that the assets are the things that
25:45trigger the associations in the first place and if no one notices you and no one recognizes you um then it’s useless
25:51to try and build these associations because you’re not going to be able to embed them because no one can make that link between your name and what you want
25:57to stand for and then also you know these assets are incredibly important because they they
26:03help you to bring that consistency and that cohesion across all of your your um
26:08your marketing and all of your initiatives so we just wanted to give you a break from listening for a minute
26:13and give you 30 seconds to sort of prove this out a little bit um because we all hear it but like let’s prove it out so
26:19if you have a piece of paper and a pen or remarkable if you’re lucky which my son has but I do not so there’s
26:25something really messed up there right um right write a circle draw Coca-Cola in the middle and we’re going to give
26:31you a 30 second countdown to write as many things that come into your mind when you think about
26:36Coca-Cola that’s it so just just do it do that mind map whatever pops into your mind draw the lines off go 30 29 28 27
26:4526 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14
26:55133 12 11 10 10 98 7 6 5 4 3 2 one oh
27:06time is up maybe you know no joke can see the chat maybe just throw a couple of the things that popped into your mind
27:12in the chat and I’m sure there’ll be some consistent themes and there’ll be some very personal themes you know some of you might hate Coca-Cola and call it
27:19the devil’s drink that’s fine but you know let’s put in these associations that come up and I’m going to show you
27:25my personal one because it does become person to a degree right um so I suspect some
27:32of you will have written red and red and white and the font and the bottle shade that Joe’s noing it along and um maybe
27:39some polar bears maybe Father Christmas maybe refreshment maybe optimism
27:45happiness refres yeah and and to me it’s associated with holidays like I know I
27:51shouldn’t really be drinking Coca-Cola like I know it’s really not that good for my body but there’s a point where I’m always on holiday and it’s triggered
27:57by memories of you know a refreshing Coca-Cola being the only partner at Disney World all of this stuff and it’s
28:04not accidental you know some of it is personal right but it’s not accidental
28:09now up until 2023 Coke’s brand was all about optimism refreshment happiness
28:15that was their core that was what they said that was their that’s not me making up what they said that was their whole brand you know Essence and they spent
28:23all of this time building those ideas up but it’s triggered by all of these brilliant assets and so a brand isn’t just a logo
28:32right it’s all of the assets and they’re just as important but sometimes some marketers we’ve met kind
28:38of throw their assets out far too quickly there’s this sense that you get
28:43bored with them and you see even if you type into chat GPT why do people Rebrand
28:49first thing that comes up because they they the identity is boring and stale
28:55and and that is can be and not always but can be very much due to the people
29:00who just use it every day and they get bored of it like marketers get bored but
29:05your buyer may not even notice it in in a month and they may see it for two seconds right and and these assets that
29:12you’ve built over time they they get blown up and we’ve seen it far too many times they get blown up without that
29:18diagnosis phase that Rachel talked about of actually figuring out is that the
29:23problem they yeah go on yeah well so s and I were talking about this because because um we were thinking back on the
29:29times we’ve had the phone calls of can you come and help us fix this brand and and my experience has often been that
29:36things are in Dire Straits by the time somebody gives me a ring like they run out of money time energy you know
29:42willpower like everybody’s walking out the room and I’m like coming in Going H um but what’s interesting is the call is
29:49often because they need something sorting on the visual identity and what Sarah and I were discussing is usually
29:56you do the brand diagnosis which they often haven’t done and you find that actually that’s not the problem at all
30:02that the portfolio is too confusing and customers can’t work out what they should buy and so they just don’t buy
30:09anything or the sales team takes six months to learn how what what’s in the portfolio and to even be quota bearing I
30:15mean can you imagine not being able to generate revenue for six months um or the experience is quite potlock like you
30:22know good on one day crap on another um or there’s just lots of Random Acts of branding where you’re like why are they
30:28sponsoring hockey and then also being I mean just that kind of like weirdness
30:34and I so often the identity is like the way in to solving a problem that is much
30:39bigger for the brand right yeah I think it takes a lot of strength from marketers to stand up and go I know you
30:46think the identity is the problem but we need to diagnose what the actual problem is um and really what’s linked to all of
30:53this is this this we hear this phrase right familiarity breeds content you know and I think that is sometimes what
30:59happens in some businesses this is contemptuousness towards the identity oh
31:05it was done 10 years ago by that agency we don’t even like them anymore let’s let’s you know let’s change it but
31:11really the truth in brand identity work is familiarity breeds trust like the
31:16mere exposure effect Jenny Roman’s work right that it’s been shown that you know the more familiar you are with an
31:23identity the harder it’s going to work for you right and and I think this is such an important thing to to to really
31:30think about assets being just as important as associations and really being careful with them and
31:36understanding what the fundamental problem is so a brand is a logo and assets as much as its associations and
31:42our plea in rebranding is just that that isn’t necessarily the thing that needs
31:47to change and often is the wrong thing to change okay and there’s lots of different assets we’re not saying it’s
31:53just a logo right there’s a whole world of brand assets that we explore in the book and you you know lot of these already so let’s keep moving on because
32:00cognant of time so once youve defined those brand assets the trick then is to apply them consistently right
32:07consistency is king or queen yeah
32:12no just know we are oh it’s like catharsis to say this
32:19we’re really fed up with brand guidelines like really really fed up a brand guidelines because they take ages
32:25to make they cost a fortune um pages and pages of dos and don’ts
32:31nobody reads it right no one reads it even the people who produce it don’t really read it right um uh or they read
32:40a bit of it and then they have a go right and then they wait to be corrected they kind of show up going is this on
32:46brand and you go no and they’re like oh sorry and then you have to fix it for them right we’re also really fed up a
32:53brand rules you know like the logos always got to be bottom right and then you get to an next exhibition and you’re
32:58looking around and you’re like I can’t see anything oh no it’s because it’s down there buried under people’s feet
33:04right we really struggle with this idea because how can you define what’s going to work in execution until you’ve
33:10actually executed your brand right and how do you know what’s going to work in London or Manchester or Edinburgh it’s
33:17going to work in Tokyo or Singapore or Melbourne I mean let alone language
33:23other language speaking countries right we are also fed up with Des Skilling the experts right asking creatives to paint
33:32by numbers right stifling the creativity that their brand that you know like
33:38seriously that Our Brands need to get cut through and we’re just telling them these are the rules and the thing is if
33:43you issue a detailed set of instructions the best you can expect is that they follow them right that is literally the
33:50best so they’ll do that and then they’ll rinse and repeat you no wonder you will get bored like genuinely even if it’s
33:57still doing it job but the thing is you got to really get under why do we do this like we do this because we have
34:03been told that consistency is King and so we we actually sacrifice Effectiveness in order to get
34:09consistency and colleagues and agencies and people that we work with they always want to rebel they always want to do it
34:15differently I mean I genuinely walked down a corridor once and I heard people who just been briefed on the on the brand work singing Break the guidelines
34:23break the guidelines break the guidelines I mean it’s like just ignore them they’re just guidelines right so
34:29you get to a possession where everybody is either so obedient that it it sort of the brand feels dead or they just so
34:38disobedient that it feels chaotic so you’re offering a sort of Chaos versus Rigamortis kind of option for people to
34:45use the brand and then what we do sorry rant nearly over but we invest in
34:51policing the brand right but but we don’t want to do it no no no so we delegate it we delegate it to whoever’s
34:57just joined the team usually right and then we wonder why this upand cominging marketing talent that we were so excited
35:03about have moved on because they don’t want to do it either right the thing about Brands is they need to breathe
35:10they need to be adaptive they need to be responsive people who use the brand they
35:15have to instinctively know what is on and off brand right they have to feel it in their bones without looking it up and
35:21they have to Pride their creativity and their expertise because to get that recall and cut through the noise you
35:27have to be cohesive right cohesive and and fresh there’s a much better way to
35:34do it and we’ve written it up for you but it’s very simple you think of those
35:40assets like your logo and the colors and the font and all of those things that you have you think of them as ingredients that you cook with and you
35:47turn them into recipes and the recipes have to work for the situation that that
35:53execution is in so what is the channel and the message and where is the buyer being before they see it and what are
35:59you asking them to do where is it in the journey use the ingredients in that way
36:05to create the best possible execution right because you can then have the same
36:11ingredients completely different recipes completely different executions and it’s all on brand I mean literally Hallelujah
36:17right so think of those cooking as expert chefs respect them they will instinctively know if you if you show
36:24them the ingredients and you show them what good looks like in different situations they’re going to know how to get it right assume the best of them
36:30right don’t police them and I know agencies love a guideline but what they’d love even more is to work on
36:37executing your brand in real life situations because that is what gets them work for years and years that they
36:44can show how effective it is so that’s the wrap up of our our five
36:50um myths um so don’t start with a strategy start with your diagnosis right
36:57control the strategy instead of leaving it to the experts put buyers and employees first think of your customers
37:04always as buyers right because they can always go elsewhere a brand is a logo
37:09it’s the associations and the assets that you create in people’s minds and
37:14aim for cohesion right because cohesion is utterly brilliant don’t police so
37:21bust those brand myths because they will help you make your brand as valuable as it can be so Sarah and I we’ve been
37:28working the last year we have a beautiful book which we unboxed this morning honestly I could cry with
37:35happiness but anyway um which is out in April um and we’re hoping to offer an
37:40OnDemand course and coaching by sort of September time but that’s no use for you
37:45now so um on our website um it’s brutal but true right um you need something
37:52today so on Rebrand write.com you will find some very easy
37:57navigation so I’m not even going to tell you which pages but you will find that you can order the book but you can also
38:03download chapter one now chapter one is about the four brand factors that drive growth and actually it’s a brilliant one
38:09for sharing with non-marketing colleagues so download that for free and have a read um and understand what
38:17leverage you have that you can pull for your brand and then what went live five
38:22minutes before this call started um is uh the cred quiz so how you can do a
38:29quick diagnostic of your brand it’s 33 questions doesn’t take very long to answer but it will give you a score for
38:35your Brand’s health and it will give you recommendations for what to do we haven’t publicized it yet so you’ll be the first ones to to use it and it’s
38:42against those four factors in that first chapter so if you understand the factors then you can go in and go okay so where
38:47do we stand today against this and that again that’s totally free yeah it’s brilliant so that gives you a sort of
38:53almost like building a business case like here’s the health of our Brand This is why it’s important can we start
38:58talking about what we need to to strengthen the brand we really really hope that that will um be useful and
39:04also you can sign up for the newsletter and that will mean that you can hear about other things that we’re offering
39:09um so the book’s out 22nd of April course in September but actually Sarah
39:14has this amazing course called brand strategy Academy which deals with the brand strategy part of the book takes
39:21you all the way from diagnosis right the way through into implementation engagement experience how to do your
39:27Market top to bottom of funnel and measurement but there is a fantastic course um which
39:33takes you through the brand strategy which is already available and you can also get to that through our website on
39:38the courses page let’s take questions let’s take questions thank you so much for listening I really hope some of that
39:44was helpful possibly new possibly just a reassuring nod to oh yeah I know this
39:51and and it is true absolutely it’s so true you know um
39:56like there you will be able to see hopefully in the chat coming through now
40:02um just a bunch of Love uh coming both of you alwayss and it’s been like that
40:07throughout I I suspect you wouldn’t have been able to see the chat feature with the presentation on but um we’ve had
40:13people describing this as a therapy therapy for I know right so there is
40:20there is so much more and and so I have on my screen right now folks if you haven’t already found the link um then
40:25uh on the right hand side there is uh is the link to the book and the website and the quiz and the courses and etc etc so
40:32so please uh do find them there um let’s let’s as you rightly say Sarah head
40:38towards the questions because we’ve got 13 questions um luckily some of them follow
40:46the same theme so hopefully we’ll be able to group a few of them together um but while I’m speaking I hope you can
40:53both absorb some of the love coming your way so so the first question uh comes from
41:02an an an anonymous attendee um who um
41:08has asked about monitoring brand health and I guess this sits towards your
41:14diagnosis stuff but the the specific phrasing of of their question is as a small business with a limited budget
41:20what’s the best way to set up brand tracking to monitor brand Health um so
41:27the lovely thing about having you both involved today is that you You’ both been practitioners as well and so even
41:33if it’s um not the theory I’d just love to hear your experience in sort of measuring brand and and sort of speaking
41:39about that we’ve got a full chapter on measurement it’s actually the last chapter because once you have got your brand to be quite strong you need to
41:46know whether it’s working or whether you need to course correct and actually the data is amazing because it can tell you
41:52where to course correct you don’t feel like you’re Flying Blind but it you have to decide what your measuring so are you
41:58Ma measuring whether the Rebrand has strengthened your cred your Brand’s cred
42:04made it more cohesive more relevant more easy and more different or are you
42:11measuring whether it’s had the desired impact on the business or are you
42:16measuring how effective your marketing or your experiences are now that they are using the brand so we’ve covered all
42:23three in the book um what I’ve learned hard way is that you can over measure
42:30and under measure so measuring once a year on for example cred like is it are
42:36you are you actually moving the needle it’s really not useful Because by the time you get the results it’s like
42:42getting your school report sort of a year after you left school and you’re like well whatever I mean that changed
42:47I’ve changed yeah exactly I’ve changed I’ve had a haircut like I’m different now um so it’s worth spending a little
42:54bit of money every two or three months if you can to just check on brand Health
43:00a very limited number of questions you don’t have to do a massive number of respondents and there are loads of
43:06question pay to-play providers where you can just ask the the the very the very
43:11small group of of and actually even if you just measure brand the brand funnel and a few of the associations you’re
43:17good um doing a full brand diagnosis you can do it really quite cheaply or for
43:25nothing if you do it yourself it’s worth doing it every year and you know you’ve
43:30got to look at what’s changing in the market um how a buyer shopping differently um do you know has anything
43:37that’s what you’re listening out for so there are loads of different shortcuts like you know reading the analyst reports for your industry and looking at
43:44what your competitors are doing um but research doesn’t actually have to be very expensive you just need to actually
43:50know what exam question you’re asking for and not measure everything don’t get overwhelmed by what you can measure so
43:58um we have actually literally laid out what you should measure and how to measure it in that last chapter of the
44:04book um so if you can hang on for a month you can take that and go with it
44:10yeah that’s perfect thank you so much um thank you thank you so much um
44:16really appreciate the answer I’m gonna take the next one so in the time that um is taken to answer that question there’s
44:23been six more that’s come in uh and so we’re now at 19 open questions so um forgive me for Ping ponging it’s not
44:29that I’m not interested yeah we’ll be quick but also Joe if we can get like a
44:34copy of all of the webinar chat we can write up Q&A for this as well afterwards
44:40that be unbelievable thank you so much that’s really really appreciated that’s really kind um would love that and I
44:45will provide that um let’s take the next question which isn’t the top one but I think is a lovely segue into the rest of
44:52the Q&A um which is when you think about rebranding right
44:57uh what do you feel constitutes a Rebrand versus brand Evolution uh do you see a distinct difference between the
45:03two and and how do you know you’re gonna tell me there’s a chapter on this right so the whole
45:10book so no one is gonna agree on what the word Rebrand means right there just
45:15no one is ever going to agree to us it means making changes to grow the business making changes to your brand
45:21and marketing to grow the business end of that can be small Chang it can be
45:27large changes and it’s just an extent of how you are changing the brand so that’s
45:33that’s it to us that hopefully short and sweet short and sweet is wonderful and
45:39and you know actually it’s it’s really interesting to hear that answer because actually part of the insinuation there
45:45is maybe that you know focusing on you know the word Rebrand is not necessarily
45:51the most helpful thing in the world to do you know and so Brands evolve and change and see scale
45:57the weird thing is Joe is I think our Eternal regret of the book will be the Dilemma about whether we should have called it brand right or Rebrand
46:05right right we even had a brand to demand didn’t we at one point brand to demand recipe yeah um yeah yeah we own
46:12lots of URLs we’re giving them back slowly are you a business owner if you
46:18don’t own 50 it’s to me it’s to both of us it’s about making changes that
46:23actually grow the business love end off that’s great love that so much um let’s let’s take the
46:30next one cuz um the anti-brand guidelines ethos generated some chatter
46:37uh um so you described them as recipes in the talk which I think is such a a
46:44gorgeous way to to describe it and really really helpful um nonetheless the question has come in here which is um
46:51totally agree with the anti-brand guidelines ethos but what resources would you recommend to present the brand
46:57or easy to digest brand tips for the team um so you’ve spoken
47:04about um so you have your ingredients can I just do an analogy I’m big on analogies I think it’s because sometimes
47:09I feel very thick and so I translate it into my normal life and then I can get it right um so I think of it as
47:16ingredients imagine you’ve got ingredients to bake a cake so you’ve got eggs and flour and butter and milk and
47:21you know all sorts of things and some of those you have to use so there are like always ingredients so you’re like you
47:28have to use flour and you have to use eggs or you have to use eggs and butter or whatever and then everything else is
47:34optional and so what you do is you basically just document the ingredients on a page and then you do page after
47:43page of where you go so this this combination this recipe use these always
47:49ingredients and these optional ingredients and combined here’s a social
47:54post that worked really well on execution here’s an amazing event design that took that recipe and you show
48:01people how that recipe it’s like a little recipe card I mean it’s literally and I I’ve worked with teams where they
48:06going recipe 48 we need recipe for you know whatever Madness right but what’s
48:12brilliant about it is that at first you kind of don’t have enough examples and you have to sort of make some up and you
48:17know as you’re executing even if it’s just the internal examples for Rolling the brand out you put them on right but
48:23as people do stuff you go oh that’s a great example of of that recipe and you put it on to Showcase it and so what
48:30changes the dynamic changes because people executing the brand get to see their work as being held up as a
48:36brilliant example of a recipe and so it’s not that you don’t end up with guidelines it’s just they’re totally
48:42different because they’re just a recipe bar and some amazing executions and if
48:47you’re really kind marketer you’ll put who to contact because it’ll be like go and speak to Sarah she’s got a great
48:53event design kit based on this recipe take it right so it just it’s quite
48:59gamechanging doing that and you basically say to your agency you got the ingredients right we’re going to make a
49:04few recipes right let’s get on with making some stuff and they’re like you don’t want to do guidelines and you go
49:09no no I’ve got 16 assets I need you to actually make and the joy that comes from that it’s a different energy from
49:16your agency as well love that so much and I I think um you use the word
49:21policing as part of the the presentation today and it’s funny because there’s so many parallels to the chat that we had
49:28last week when we were speaking about brand consistency but it was again a framing away from this sort of policing
49:35mindset into a place which was more uh trusting and generous and and and uh
49:41supportive um and so radiel there where you were speaking about people’s examples being held up as great examples
49:48of the assets being used uh one of the great examples from the community last week was they just had a slack Channel
49:54where um yeah they would go in and every week they would sort of celebrate someone using the brand right uh well
49:59not right you know but certainly doing a great example of it and again I think that sort of encouragement and and joy
50:06and again one last thing to refer to your talk but when you sort of speaking about sort of lifting people up and
50:12making them feel part of it you know it’s what it’s all about and the representation of that brand so it all
50:17comes together and so thank you all so much um honestly the chat is going in a
50:23bizarre angle because Simon has asked about uh when you men saw pineapple and pizza yeah and also chef chef brand
50:31officer thought of that I like that might update my LinkedIn with that yeah
50:36you see you mentioned recipes and Simon bans in a question about pineapple and pizza and everything goes all right
50:43so um let’s take the top question in the Q&A um folks um if you see any that
50:49you’d love us to ask then uh please do give them a thumbs up in the Q&A as well um so we can make sure to prioritize
50:56them so um an Marie asked relatively early into uh your presentation today uh
51:03can you do an Ambi ambitious Rebrand completely in house and obviously we’ve discussed the language around Rebrand
51:10now uh how would you convince a CEO CMO to invest in external resources so a
51:17question around limited resources uh big ambition but then also uh gaining
51:23investment from elsewhere okay yeah I can take that one I’ve tried
51:29every so I’ve done worked on about 35 Brands and um between Sarah and I worked
51:36on about 90 so on the line share 57 like the Hinds number isn’t it um I would say
51:42that actually the problem you have doing um a a Rebrand in house like coming up
51:48with the with the not just the the strategy but the the words and the and
51:53the the visuals and all of that in house is not the problem that you think it the
51:58problem is is that it’s really really hard to get the leadership team to listen to the experts in the business
52:06about what is right for the brand they can be quite rude they can be
52:11very designed by committee they can be very I mean literally in one case I had a my mistress doesn’t like that color um
52:18there’s other times when Sarah and I have just rolled each other eyes at each other because it’s been like they’re going to want blue aren’t they I mean they’re just going to they want blue so
52:26the problem is is that um it can be really really hard even if you can do the best even if you have the most
52:32expert teams to get it through so you have to think about whether you need an external voice because sometimes that’s
52:38what you need you don’t need the creative internally you need the external voice in order to get your creative through I mean you literally
52:45have to think like a game of chess have to think about how do I excuse my language but passively aggressively
52:50manipulate the leadership into not doing this by committee but actually allowing the expertise to come through um so you
52:58have to educate them uh so if you’re going to do work externally um brilliant
53:04brilliant creatives are invaluable I mean invaluable but if you have limited
53:09funds pick what you use them for because you could use them to come up with ideas that help show how far the brand could
53:15go with what it has or what it needs and then take that work and do it in house
53:21um or you could just get a day or two of injection of creativity for your own design team um or you can build the
53:28business case I mean chapter one will definitely help them take this seriously um and there’s lots in the book about
53:34how to how to work with Finance so that they really fund it properly and how to think about your budget and all of that kind of thing but I would think about
53:41the Politics as well as the capabilities in trying to figure out what works um
53:47you can do it any way you like and make it work with also be my tip you just have to really understand what you’re
53:53navigating and stay the course and know that some people will adore you for it some people will hate you for it that’s
54:00okay it’s totally okay right yeah to yeah yeah there’s
54:08never one there’s never just one way and I think like one of the things we did in the book was to just be very careful
54:13about always having in every chapter if you don’t have a lot of time and you don’t have a lot of budget what would
54:18you do in this scenario because there’s always the ideal right yeah but it never is the ideal so you’ve got to paint the
54:24ideal picture and then you’ve got to make it realistic to your organization and and and yeah but I think there’s a
54:29lot in there about con yeah convincing of the value of brand I think a lot of CFOs and CEOs don’t know that yet and
54:36sometimes you literally have to put it under their eyes and show them it and get them to read something rather than you trying to present it just just can
54:43you just read this and and then can we have a chat next week and then sometime you just need that Kickstart about B you
54:49don’t you yeah totally yeah on I love that so much um I’ve got a very quick
54:54analogy that was hopefully useful um you know in the spirit and then we’ll move to the next question but today man
55:00united announced they were going to build a new stadium and the Chief Architect um was uh in a short video
55:08released by man united speaking about it and it was really really interesting because um in the video he did nothing
55:14else but speak about the vision the vision for the stadium the vision for the plazas the vision for etc etc and
55:21you know uh this particular chap was the leader of this organization that has uh delivered this project but you didn’t
55:28speak about the technicalities or anything like that it was all about the vision and it struck me when you were speaking there Rachel about sort of
55:34these external voices I imagine if someone from you know an architect from within the man united sort of structure
55:41had invested or suggested such a thing it probably wouldn’t have come with the same weight and so um I don’t know the
55:48analogy struck me as you were speaking there but I guess taking people to that place is just so so important well it’s one of the reasons when we’re thinking
55:54about our business that we’re thinking we do the book and we do the course because depending on how you learn and the course will have tools and toolkits
56:00but we realize from from years of working that what people need is is is like a person at the end of the phone
56:07who they can kind of wheel out for moments when they just need the advice to be hard so sometimes it’s about
56:13coaching people through the politics and idiosyncrasies sometimes it’s about helping teams who have run up against a
56:18roadblock and are going oh God computer says no we can’t do it and you’re like it’s okay it doesn’t matter swerve it
56:25keep going you’ll be fine um but often it’s like could you just say this aloud cuz they’re not hearing me and I think
56:32you just sometimes you have to know when to pull in I mean Sarah and I worked on and off for years because sometimes it’s like Sarah could you just go in there
56:38and tell them exactly what I’ve been telling them for six months and she’s like I’ll do that you know so um it just
56:45that you just got to you got to try and read the politics of the moment and figure out what the best way to be heard
56:51is to get it to get to do the brand properly and it’s a shame but it’s reality right right yeah you know yeah
56:58yeah absolutely 100% um let’s take one last question if that’s okay with the two of you um there’s there’s a a theme
57:06a ve of questions that have come through around creating Brands um so not so much
57:12about the rebrander although again we’ve had that conversation but you know something from scratch maybe someone
57:18working uh alone in the team or in a small team and there’s a lot of wide
57:23open questions around any tips um and I think that’s a big question but if if
57:29you’re in a situation of creating a brand uh working on it trying to bring
57:34it into life um where would you even start your thinking I think is probably where most people are grasping for with
57:40with wide questions I mean it’s weird because it’s actually sort of the same process yeah but you have to cut
57:48corners and you have to say on some things like I really want to do that but I can’t do it now I’m going to put a
57:54note on my diary for this time next year and I’ll come back to that you know
57:59um you you still need to know your Market you still need to understand your buyers you still need to understand the
58:05business strategy you still need to work your way through that and Define the answer to the brand strategy questions
58:11work out how you look and then you have to go through how can you manifest it in the product and the experience and the
58:16marketing and so on but I think that’s why Sarah was saying like we’ put loads of shortcuts in the book and lots of
58:23watch outs so you basically it’s as if you’re starting from scratch
58:29um and and you can do this in a in a without any money in the sense you know
58:34like I lit when I started my course brand strategy Academy then I was I I just went onto some Facebook groups and
58:41I said is look would anyone give me 20 minutes just to talk about what your you know because I was really thinking about
58:47designers because they often want to translate and you know add brand strategy I was like can we just have 20
58:52minutes to talk about the issues you have with brand strategy what you would love in a course so that you can do you
58:58can follow the process but you can do it in a very um you know in in in a timely
59:05way and in a coste efficient way and but it is about you need these insights you
59:10need to know how your Brand’s different relevant and authentic you need to get it into a strategy so you can answer these questions so you can be really
59:16clear on the associations you want to build with that limited money and effort you’ve got to put content out there what
59:21are you going to talk about and why are you going to talk about that um and you do need a brand identity and you don’t
59:26have to use an agency you know there are independent brilliant people have come from agencies and I think it’s about
59:32figure out where do you invest like we’ve invested in our brand identity because we’re not designers you know it’
59:38be awful it would be awful what I would do so um and so I think it’s making those calls on you know where do I
59:44really struggle personally where can I just not learn to do this myself and where am I going to invest and what can I just sit down and really work through
59:51myself whether that’s research whether that’s strategy you are capable of so much more than you think you are
59:57especially if you’ve got if you’re clear on what you’ve got to do and you feel really confident that that is the right thing to do it’s amazing how much work
1:00:04you can do yourself and so many tools that you can use that will make you more productive um but I yeah I it’s actually
1:00:12it’s weirdly the same thing creating something from scratch because when you are going to almost rebirth something
1:00:18like fix it twist it you know reposition it you still have to go back to what was the point of this brand you know who it
1:00:26why do they need it what’s our strategy which is which is exactly the same as what are we doing in this business what are we setting up how are we helping
1:00:32people yeah how is this thing helping yeah that’s incredible thank you both so much um like it’s been a phenomenal hour
1:00:40um there’s a there’s a chat comment that came in earlier which is like every sentence uh these Sarah and Rachel are
1:00:47saying could be a golden nugget in itself and so um for you to share your
1:00:52experience and and your thoughts so generously it’s been just absolutely phenomenal so so thank you so much and
1:00:58there’s been so much chat here and folks have been downloading the first chapter of the book like already so so that’s
1:01:04that’s really fantastic and we’ll be sure to share that um and we’ll also share the Q&A uh with you afterwards so
1:01:11for any unanswered questions you’ve got that and we’ll figure out a way we write them up for you for sure yeah that’s
1:01:18incredible thank you so much that’s so so generous everyone thanks for having us not at all a real real pleasure
1:01:28positively um before we head off I just want to say a big big thank you to our sponsors for this week because again
1:01:35without them it wouldn’t it wouldn’t be able to bring these sessions to you so a big thank you to Sticky be uh cage
1:01:41marketing College planable Redgate and front ofi um as I said without them this
1:01:46doesn’t happen so big big thank you to them um thank you to Sarah and Rachel we’ll be back next week um with another
1:01:53fantastic session so we hope to see you then and in the meantime have a great time take care everyone bye great to
1:02:00meet you guys