Discovering & Re-Engineering Your Brand with Barry Labov

0:00On Builders, I interview CEOs, authors, authors, and leaders about building businesses and careers. And today, I speak with author, marketing vet, CEO, and podcaster, Barry Labov, on how great brands differentiate themselves. We discuss the luxury car market, premium scotch, brand discovery, and much more.

0:24Hi, Barry. How are you? Good to see you. I am great, John. I'm very excited to be on the show today. So I think we'll have a really good time and discuss what I hope are some really interesting topics for the audience. Yeah, same here. And this one's a real passion for me, which is a bunch of nuances and important parts of marketing. And how do you differentiate your brand from others? You know, I spent a lot of my career in the advertising and marketing technology industry. And I was thinking this morning before hopping on the air that, that I'll walk into a trade show about the advertising industry.

1:06And there'll be a few brands that everybody knows, like Google and whatever. And then there are a whole bunch of booths of marketing tech companies I can't distinguish between. And I think so many companies in this space, in many spaces, struggle to differentiate from one another. Is there a root cause to this, in your experience? I think there are a few causes, John. And one thing we have to realize is that entrepreneurs are out there and we're willing to change anything and we're ready to go. And we see a competitor and we think, well, you know, they say this and that. Well, we could do that, too.

1:42And you find another competitor. Well, we could do that. Yeah, we could say we could do that. And then you look at other competitors and they're cheaper. You go, well, we could lower our price. And then what happens over time is what made you unique is erased or diminished. And you don't see it happening in front of you because it's so gradual. But, you know, we're only going to be great just as human beings were this way at one, two, three or four things. We're not going to be great at everything. We're not going to be the best in every single category. and what we have to realize in business is instead of trying to be like everybody else, we need to identify, discover what makes us unique and distinct and not necessarily superior.

2:33I can share that later too. It's not superior, but it's unique. It's different. And focus on that and let your competitors go. Now, wait a minute, they're doing this and that. Maybe we could try to be like that and they'll never be like us because that's who we really are. And so you've been focused on this topic for a long time. What prompted you to want to write and publish it in your recent book? It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it, but over the years, I've been in this position where I see the magic in others. So even when I was in my teens and I was in a rock band and I had actually a full head of hair and everything was going for me, I would be in a band and I'd have a really great group of musicians, but they were not perfect.

3:24They may not show up on time and maybe they weren't really good rhythm players, but they were a good solo player or a good singer, whatever. And I noticed that if I focused on what they did great, our band was a lot better. If I focus on what they did not do great and try to force them to be like other people, it was pretty miserable. As I learned all of this, I also worked with my children's sports teams and I found myself doing the same thing. I would go, hey, this kid's a great fielder. Let's really work with him on this, as opposed to saying, hey, you're a lousy hitter. Why aren't you doing that?

4:04Let's just focus on what he does great. So as I worked with my company and my clients, I delved deeper into it. And I found that it's not only smart, but it's inspiring. And it gives the people at your company, whether it's a one, two, three, four person company or 40 ,000 person company, a significance, they get a significance, a sense of meaning from it because it's like, okay, we're not like everybody else. We're doing a few of these things a little different and here's why we do them. And I'm kind of proud of that. I'm actually part of something that's special, let's say. So that's why. It's been a lifelong journey, whether I knew it or not.

4:50You went to the children's sports analogy and that's where my mind started going too. If folks listening are like a football fan, And like me, there's always this question about your quarterback and, you know, is the offensive coordinator doing what the quarterback can do well? Or are they trying to fit the quarterback into their system and it just doesn't work? So it's almost like any facet of life. You've got to capitalize on whatever the special sauce is. I started off talking about ad tech and marketing tech, and maybe I'll loop back to that at the end. But I'd like to talk about some of the brands that I've seen that you've worked with over the years.

5:29You know, you could think about someone on a business trip. They saddle up to the bar. They want to have a bourbon or a scotch. And there are tons of these bottles on the wall. Like, which one do they select? Maybe you could talk about your work with a famous single malt scotch. The Macallan scotch. And it's not Macallan. It's the Macallan. And that's another special uniqueness about them. Our challenge with the Macallan is that it is the world's most prestigious scotch, and it will fetch over a million dollars at auction. Okay, so I mean, it's really expensive, but you could go to your local restaurant or liquor store and purchase it.

6:14The challenge they have is that since it's more unique and it's premium, it is usually not something you can reach out at the store, pick up and look at. It's behind the cabinet or it's behind the counter. So our challenge was how do we bring that situation a little closer to the customer? So with the McAllen, we focused on training everybody who represents them, whether it's the person behind the counter, whether it's the restaurateur, the waiter, the waitress, the bartender. And we want them educated so that they think confidently that when somebody says, I don't know, I want a scotch, they don't go, well, hey, you know what?

7:02Here's a cheap one. And it's just about as good as the McAllen. Instead, they go, well, do you want the best? Do you want a premium scotch? I have the Macallan. Or do you want some, you know, well scotch? So what we've done over the last 10 years is create an academy with our clients at the McAllen that has educated thousands of people in 80 different countries and 19 different languages on the magic, the uniqueness of that incredible brand, which, by the way, is over 200 years old. So, you know what, they're probably doing some really unique things that are valid because they wouldn't have been around for 200 some years.

7:48You know, I was actually thinking, I think I was at an airport earlier this year. It might have been LAX where they had a, a, the McAllen tasting room. And I was thinking about that and they were, you could taste all these, all these different ones. And I was thinking, I'm not sure that that store is necessarily profitable for them. You know, everybody's taking a sip and it's expensive real estate and all that stuff. But I imagine there's a deeper brand goal behind that shop. You know, I've never shared this in all the podcasts that I've done, which is over 100 and some. And John, you just, I think this is interesting for the audience.

8:33The McAllen has done something very, very brilliant. They've said, look, we want everybody in the United States to be able to have our tremendous scotch. But they have identified there are about a half dozen markets that are their critical markets. Los Angeles is one of them. So they will invest very, very deeply into those markets, into those experiences in that area. So as an example, at LAX, they will have the McAllen experience there. And they are not only drawing people in to taste a little bit, but people walking by go, oh, it's the McAllen. Now they're seeing that there are individuals who come in and they're thinking at first, yeah, all scotch is the same.

9:25But then they start to hear the story and they start to learn more. And it makes that scotch even more special. And one thing to really share with our audience, and this is one of the rules that I share in my book, is that your brand experience is so critical. On the positive side, the McAllen is a great example because the consumer does not distinguish between the experience and the brand, meaning they walk in at LAX. They love this. The people there were so knowledgeable. It's incredible. And of course, it tastes magnificent. They walk off. I love the McAllen. But if we go the opposite way, let's say it's an auto manufacturer and you see a great commercial and you go, I want to buy that car and you go into that dealership and they treat you poorly and they won't even let you test drive the car and they're kind of condescending, the consumer likely will walk out and say, I'll never buy that brand.

10:30Right. That's what's so important. So you just talked about a master at the concept of experience and that is the Macallan Scotch brand. They conduct thousands of brand experiences worldwide every year because they want you, they want me, they want others to experience it with them. And they truly believe that it will expand the value of that brand. Well, it makes sense. And you also, you mentioned cars. I wanted to ask you about that too because I was thinking, I think about luxury cars. If you put a blindfold on me, you put me in the front seat of an Audi or a BMW or Mercedes, they might feel the same.

11:13I mean, the car manufacturer might disagree with that statement, but I might think they feel the same. But that's not how I feel about an Audi or a BMW or a Mercedes. How do those brands make conscious decisions on how to differentiate? They understand what they do really well. And they also understand where they're pretty good, but they're not the best. So a great example is BMW. The people there are brilliant. They understand that their driving experience is extraordinary. That's why they are known for that, right? That's what they're all about. The ultimate, they're the driving machine, right?

11:58They also know that their interiors of their cars are nice, but they may not be quite at the luxurious level that other cars are. It could be a Bentley or a Mercedes-Benz. So they're the ultimate driving machine, and they're letting you know that. But they're also saying to you, hey, by the way, if you're looking for super comfortable seats and a whole bunch of little extras in your interiors, we're not going to be the best. But if you really love the feel of an incredible machine driving down the road, there's nobody like us. So they have to pick where they're great and they have to really invest in it.

12:41Now, behind the scenes, they're constantly improving the interior, the design of the car, of course. But you've got to be able to say, look, I am not the best at everything, but nobody touches me in this one area. And that's what BMW has done. It's interesting. I'm looping that back to what you were saying about training and experience and so on. Because actually, I was in the market for an electric car four or five years ago. I test drove a BMW. you and one of the things that i was told in the test drive is there's this famous conductor hans zimmer or something like like that i don't know if you recognize the name yeah the salesperson told me that the sound that you hear when you're driving the electric car is like done by hans zimmer and for the the experience of it like the driving experience not that not the handling not the he didn't he didn't talk about that he did seats or anything you're exactly right he talked about that he didn't use the word driving experience, but that was what he was evoking for me.

13:43It's really interesting. Well, think how brilliant that is. Otherwise you're in an electric car and I've owned six of them. So I, I've been in a number of different ones, but on this occasion, that brilliant salesperson who was trained by somebody who was trained by the brand was able to give you the story behind something that is different about their product. Now, if he did not, or she did not give you that input, you're not feeling it or hearing it. You're not going, well, gee, Hans Zimmer must have designed this. You're going to go, I don't even know who this guy is. Instead, they told you the story and you then appreciated.

14:28and that was a differentiation. Otherwise, it's thrown out. Now, think about this. Here's why they did it and this is why they're a brilliant company. They contract an individual like Hans Zimmer who is going to be expensive. They're going to spend a lot of money. He's going to tune that interior sound and they're going to spend a lot of money and time on that and guess what? If they don't share the story so that you appreciate it, it's kind of wasted. right so it's it's brilliant it's not bragging it's not being uh you know it's not pontificating it's letting people know why you did what you did so they can appreciate it and then by the way john you're telling the story now on this podcast thousands of people will hear that story right right oh that's true so they so um so they have a different even even an elevated roi from that I want to ask another question because that salesperson, I don't think if I understand the auto world, they're not actually employed by BMW.

15:33They're employed by a dealership who contracts with BMW. How does it work to get everybody in that, everybody trained? Because they sell these cars all over the world. Some folks are direct employees, some folks are not. How do they approach something like that? Well, I've lived that world for a number of decades. So whether it was BMW, Audi, Mercedes or other brands, here's how it works. The corporate entity, the OEM, as they will call themselves, or you could call it the big name brand. It could be any of those names. BMW is an example. What they do is they will contract with a company that is going to train all these dealership personnel.

16:19Now, in the old days, it used to be only the salespeople. Then it became, well, you know, we ought to have our service advisors trained because after all, they're dealing with our customers after they buy. So then it became service advisors as well as salespeople. And the very best of those companies will produce what's known as blended learning. So some of it is online module digital learning. And that's what all of our McAllen training is, by the way. It's all online. However, in addition to that, since I mentioned blended, they will also send out, the OEM will send out a team of trainers to either go to the dealership itself and say, hey, John, guys, ladies, let's all huddle around for the next two hours.

17:10I'm going to train you on this. Or they may say, hey, you know what? We're not going to go to the dealership. We're going to go to a racetrack nearby and you can get in the car and drive it like a nut, have a lot of fun, and we're going to train you. So they try to immerse you in different approaches to training so that you start to really sing off the same song sheet. That makes sense. And that's a massive operation at scale. Yes, it is. Probably takes years to do. So I'm in marketing. there are tons of times where there's a there's a brand that i'm a part of and i say i got to do a rebrand when you work with a rebrand you don't call it rebranding i think you call it re-engineering the brand is is that right why is that and what and and why did you choose that word engineering well i can tell you're a marketing person because that's a great question because it's specific What we look at is not trying to create a brand.

18:05We want to discover the brand. And then once we discover it, we will then create the verbiage that accompanies it. We'll come up with the visuals. We'll do the execution. But then before any of that's launched, we celebrate it with the most important people. And that would be the people that are behind that brand. It could be the employees. In some cases, it could be the dealer personnel also. So why did I say re-engineering? Because, you know, most of the brands we have encountered that need help and say, hey, we really we're just leaving a lot on the table. We are not maximizing what our value is.

18:48Most of them have really great attributes. They just walk by them every day, look at them and don't pay any attention. So we get to find that magic and we name the magic and we tell the story behind the magic, like the Hans Zimmer story you talked about. We do all of that so that there's a meaning and a purpose behind this brand. So we will generally not say a rebrand, but it could be a refresh. The other thing I'll share with you, John, that I think is really important for anybody that's going to launch a product that's listening. I think what's really smart to do, if you're going to launch a product, do a nice little soft relaunch of the brand as you do it.

19:31Because theoretically, your product should reflect your brand. So as you're launching that brand new great product, make sure everybody knows that these great attributes, these differentiators that this product has are all part of the fabric of your brand. So it's reinforcing everything involving your brand, not just this one product. We've talked about the car market and the scotch market, and probably those are things that have tons of advertising behind them. Maybe, if you don't mind, talk about a brand that you've worked with that's in more of a pedestrian industry or one that's not as mass market consumer and how you think about reengineering a brand like that.

20:17We work with many, many brands like that. In fact, some of my favorite experiences are working with brands that are supposedly not very exciting and not very sexy. And I love that because they're the brands that have been ignored. And my company will jump in and our competitors will go, why are you wasting your time with them? That's boring. And we're going, no, no, this is exciting. So one example is we work with a copper processing company. They process copper wire. OK, sounds very unexciting. When they approached us, their very dynamic leader said, look, we are not making a lot of money. We don't have a great reputation.

21:00We need to do something. So we went in there and we went through our process. And the first thing was we listened to their customers. And we found out that their customers call them the cheap copper guys, the cheap copper guys. So I mean, I said, well, that could be your slogan. And he said, I know, I know you're joking with me, but that's what they call us. I said, OK, so we'll get through that. So we went through that. We looked at what made them unique. So we conducted what we call a technical immersion, which we do. I don't know anybody else that does this. We actually went into their plant and spent hours and hours with their technical people to find what they're doing that is unique.

21:39And a lot of it was right there in front of them. And they just went, well, that's just the way we've been doing it for 20 years. And we said, well, this is special. What we did in this case that I think was really exciting is we identified that this so-called cheap copper company was producing this copper from recycled products. So they were melding products down to get the copper. Okay, now everybody listening is going, okay, that's boring. No, that's called sustainability. That's called being earth friendly. And we said to them, you know, you're selling this product at the lowest price in the market, yet it's the most sustainable.

22:22It's the one that's the most environmentally friendly. Why are you selling it at the cheapest price? And the very brilliant leader said, you know what? We're not going to very much longer. The other thing we did is they had a really boring name. It was the name of their two parent companies. One was a steel company and one's a copper company out of Spain. And we said, you know, let's let's create an identity, at least a nickname or a moniker, if you want to call it that. So we named them Copper Works. And their slogan is this is where copper works. They have a lot of pride in copper. Their competitors were mining companies that did copper stuff on the side.

23:03They didn't care about this company loves copper. So we helped them with their relaunch of their brand. We created that new name. I just had the CEO on a podcast with me and he said they are now the number one selling product in their market and they are the highest premium priced product in their market. So that's an example. And I think sometimes if you have a very unattractive market or product in a market that's kind of blah, you have so much more opportunity than let's say Harley Davidson does in a market against 15 competitors that have been around for decades. So, you know, that's one story where Copperworks is a very inspiring moment in the history of our company.

23:54That is very inspiring. Very cool story. I wanted to ask you about social media and maybe we can loop it back to McCallan or something something like that where um they might say to themselves a lot of people are on tiktok we want to influence these these folks but maybe like like we don't know are they are they mccallan drinkers now are they the right age are they are they in la like um like how how has has social media and the and the kind of fragmentation of audiences changed how companies need to think about where to place their brand and how to do marketing. Social media has had a big impact.

24:35And I think it was only a few years ago that a lot of companies said, oh, we don't need to do social media. Nobody's really looking at it. And now today it's major. If you look at the little video shorts or the reels, they're very, very popular. The big thing in social media that we learn and that we truly position is that no matter the size of your company, you have to look at what is the real message you're sharing. Is the message all about you? Is it all about me? Look at me. I'm great. Somehow we're the cool people or somehow everything we do is perfect. Okay. That's not believable. Nobody believes it.

25:19Nobody cares. If your message is really in the face, telling people that whatever you are offering is superior, then you either back that up or you need to forget it. So I think you have to look at the fact that social media will bring in a lot of different eyes to what you're presenting. And if you're presenting your brand, as an example, from a political standpoint, if you're taking political causes, you have to realize that your brand could suffer from that. So social media is kind of like a loudspeaker that's blaring out there. And what's really critical in this is, my opinion, is you have to be as positive, as sincere, as helpful, as contributory as possible.

26:18Because most of what's on social media is not. So if you can stand out as a brand and have what I would call a positive image, that is legitimate. If you're doing something, as an example, if you're an ambulance manufacturing company, if you say we're the greatest and nobody's as good as us, I would say don't do that social media. If you say there have been 2 ,400 accidents involving ambulances over the last 12 months, what we're focusing on is blank and blank to better protect and in some cases save the lives of people. We believe blah, blah, blah is the right thing, whatever. Then it might be of interest because what you're doing is actually positive.

27:10and it's actually an interesting approach to something that maybe I didn't even know was a problem. So social media is not your website because a lot of times nobody's trying to access your social media. It's coming through and you have to be very careful of it. So that's how we look at it, it's very mass and it has a lot to do with how you position your brand. And you have to assume that everybody looking at it is very intelligent, is very skeptical, and you got to watch what you say is how I look at it. Barry, you mentioned the Copperworks story and your podcast. Tell the audience the name of your podcast and then why did you start it and what do you talk The name of the podcast is Difference Talks.

28:05So it fits the whole differentiation. So it's Difference Talks. And we started it because we wanted to have interesting people share stories, not just of how they differentiated their brand, but how they rallied their people to do it. How they, in some cases, faced challenges and made history. We thought it would be really interesting for anybody who has any interest in business and economics and the world itself to hear people that are very human and very engaged in it. And there's been a resonating theme that has been very heartwarming. And that is all these really great people could be authors, CEOs, Grammy Award winners.

28:58They're so focused on the human aspect. They care about how their people feel about what they're doing. They want their team to be proud. And it's very, very interesting that when it all comes down to it, it's not a group of these evil scientists that are trying to grab money from people. It's normal human beings like all of us who are in leadership positions under a lot of stress, and they're really looking to engage and motivate their teams to do even better. Well, to the audience, we'll put Barry's podcast in the show notes for you to check it out. And Barry, I loved our conversation. Thanks so much for joining me today.

29:45John, fantastic. I love the questions. You asked me a couple I've never been asked before. So kudos to you. Thank you.

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