Focusing Your Brand and Organization with Allison Netzer of BrandThnk.co

0:00John Busby:How do you think like a brand and not a commodity? That commodity might be airline or bank or whatever industry you're in or product that you make. My guest, Allison Netzer, was on the podcast several years ago when she launched her first book, which was How to Think Like a Brand and Not a Bank. She's reworked and updated the book. And so we talk about that, why she updated the book, what's new, what's different, and what she's learned in the last few years and how these concepts apply to every industry.

0:33John Busby:Hey, Allison, how are you? Great to see you. Yeah, great to see you too. It's been a while. It has been a while. We were just remarking off air. I think you were on about 100 episodes ago. And at the time, you had just published a book, Think Like a Brand, Not a Bank. And I think it's three years later, maybe four. You decided to rethink, remix, republish the book, a new version. What was the reason for doing that? And then when you were going and reading your old work, what sort of stood the test of time? Time moves so fast now. And what was sort of the major thing you wanted to rework? Yeah, that's a good question.

1:14I think, and I get this question a lot. So I think the principles still really, they still stand, I think, the test of time to a degree. Because really, think like a brand, not a bank, it's about mindset, right? That was the longest chapter in the first book. But I think it's really been the application that's different and in many cases better. And that's also I wanted to bring the stories of a lot more fintechs and FIs that are really practicing that mindset. You know, in my company now, I'm able to, I mean, I have those conversations nonstop, right? So just the big motivation was, man, there's some people out there that are doing some amazing stuff.

2:02And so I wanted to take what little pen light power I have and shine it on that. But, you know, I've mentioned this in a couple other conversations. I mean, now that I mean, just being transparent, now that my financial well-being depends on these principles working, they can definitely be sharpened and improved. And that's that's what the second edition is really all about.

2:21John Busby:And while you focus on fintech and banks, they're really marketing lessons that I feel apply to every business. But maybe to set the stage for the audience, who are the types of clients that you work with? And what are their one or two or three biggest problems that you see that you're helping them think through? Sure, sure. No, and I appreciate that. I think I mentioned maybe when we talked those couple years ago, probably doing ourselves a little bit of a disservice with the title because as catchy as it is, it does apply to all businesses, right? And most of my career has actually been outside of FinTech.

3:08So the clients that I work with today primarily, it's about half banks and credit unions and about half FinTech. So, you know, financial technology firms that kind of fill the gaps that banks and credit unions aren't able to do for whatever reason. And the challenges, what's funny, well, funny slash sad is the challenges that they face are not unlike, you know, other industries that you and I both worked in. If you think about any highly regulated industry, health care, what have you. I think the challenges, they may not use these terms, but the challenges are a rapidly commoditizing industry from a product perspective.

3:53And how to not let that mentality seep in to the branding and the marketing, right? Like, it's a little bit of a tough love moment, but using commoditization of your product as an excuse to commodity or allow the commoditization of your brand is a big part of what I try to help folks with. And I think the second biggest challenge they face is activity, activity-based marketing, which is like my enemy, because that creates the noise that you're trying to break through. So it's almost like you're hurting yourself by just throwing as much stuff out there, doing as much activity. You're actually adding to the noise, right?

4:40You're not creating pull.

4:41John Busby:Can I stop you there for a second? Yeah, of course. So for activity-based marketing, just want to connect with you on what you mean by that. Is that like, we send emails every week because we've always sent emails every week? Because we send emails, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Did you know that Builders is sponsored by Business.com? I'd love to tell you about a new free membership from Business.com for small business decision makers. It's called Business.com Plus, and it's designed to address the pain in selecting new products and services. What is the pain, you might ask? It's things like knowing which vendor is best for your specific business, negotiating pricing, having access to someone who can answer questions for you.

5:26John Busby:The new membership, Business.com Plus, handles all of that with a dedicated advisor, pre-negotiated pricing, and solutions tested and reviewed by experts. Check it out at business.com slash plus. That's business.com slash P-L-U-S. Yeah. And, you know, look, it comes from a good place, right? I think as marketers, as any leader, you know, you've got to have that list of stuff you've done to kind of, you know, justify your existence and, you know, and get that sort of inner organizational respect. But in marketing, it can really work against you to just, hey, we're going to run these campaigns. We're going to do these things.

6:10And it's not that they're inherently bad, but you also have to ask yourself, who is this work for? Right. And if it's because someone internally asked you to do it or because the competitor has done something, that's when I really think folks should take a second look.

6:29John Busby:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And what you're saying about commoditization is really interesting when you apply it industry to industry or, you know, by cross industries, because I think about airlines where I think you've worked in airlines. Yeah, Southwest. Southwest. And what's the difference between air? They're all just getting you from point A to point B, you know, like and then, you know, there's price, of course. How much does it cost? But people have vastly different feelings towards airlines, loyalty, et cetera. And, you know, when you were talking about banks commoditizing things, I was thinking about this Saturday Night Live skit from the 80s, I think.

7:16John Busby:Y 'all should look it up, people who are listening. But it's a bank commercial where all they do is they make change. and the other one where like, if you have a dollar, I can give you four quarters or I can give you 10. It's very, very funny. And it was mimicking a bank commercial from the 80s. So let's get in a little later on on how to solve some of those problems as a financial institution. But one of the things that I was thinking about as a reason for maybe rewriting or updating your book is that when we last talked, like AI wasn't really a thing. It's possible that ChatGPT was being used by consumers.

8:01John Busby:I think our conversation was before then, but it wasn't really being embraced in a big way. How did that change, if anything, what you focused on in the new edition? Yeah, another really good question. I think it definitely played a part. I mean, so much of brand and branding, regardless of industry, is about, in my view at least, is about intuition and taste, right? Really that kind of that art, if you would. So at least right now, AI can't replace taste and intuition, at least now. um so i really think about uh and talk about the book you know ai is a way to to gain that time and that mind space to focus on intuition and taste um so i think that's that's where ai plays you know plays a part but i was talking to someone the other day they're like oh with your new book you know there's a bunch of ai stuff and you know whatever he's just getting and I was like, no, man, there's not a single chapter about AI.

9:11I mean, that would be, I think, a little silly to do in a print format as fast as things are going. That's true. But I'm like, it's a book about branding, and it's a book about mindset, so it's a human book, not an AI book. So he was like, well, good, because I want to read more about AI. So if you're considering it, yeah, it doesn't have a ton about it, But I think it's a good time to revisit models like this and others that really are about how do we develop and distribute our taste? How do we develop and distribute our intuition as marketers and as strategists? Because there's ways to do that and really lean into that human aspect that can make it a real differentiated story for your company.

10:03John Busby:Yeah, you're talking about the challenges of activity-based marketing. And to a certain extent, AI just makes it easier to do that. If you're not set up with the right brand, the right strategy, all of that stuff, are you really improving things? Maybe we can segue that into a new framework you have in the book, pain promise proof. And what I'm thinking that you're talking about is proof is like, you know, I have a different minimum on my checking account than another bank. as opposed to pain, you know, which might be, you know, I feel like no one will talk to me as a consumer or I feel like I don't, you know, those sorts of things.

10:49John Busby:Maybe talk through the framework, why it's so important in fintech and then how it sort of could apply to any marketer. Yeah, no, I definitely think it applies to any market. I mean, I think, you know, I started my career in sales a million years ago And we were always taught to start with the pain, right? The pain that the customer was feeling. In this case, it was, you know, with Dell, so we were selling, you know, large storage solutions to higher education. And the pain, at least again, a million years ago was server space, right? But this was back when they were in rooms. And so the pain we were trying to solve is we can solve your storage issue, physical as well as technological.

11:35And so that was the pain that they were coming to. We needed more servers, but we don't have the room. And what's happened over the last 20-ish years is this intense focus on differentiation, which I have some strong feelings about because I don't think we should focus on differentiation. We should just focus on being better. But this focus on differentiation has led us to start with the proof, right? We've won XYZ awards, or we have a 5 % savings account, or just these proofs of how good we are as companies. But that's one, that's about you. And two, it's not connected to what I'm going through or what I'm aspiring to be as a consumer, as a business.

12:26And there's no promise. There's nothing to latch onto to get emotionally connected, right? We know that emotionally connected brands or emotionally connected consumers have a 30 % higher lifetime value in financial services. So you need to start with the pain that your customer, your potential customer is going through. You need to make a promise that's big enough to encompass that and then you back it up but starting with we have the best product our product you know spins around in circles you know that kind of awesome but as a consumer and also neurologically I need to figure out where that goes for me right and so you're making your potential client do all of this work and spend all these mental calories trying to figure out

13:23John Busby:what box you fit in for them as opposed to just starting with it. So all three of these things have to be contemplated, but it's really the order in which you do them. And that's where I see a lot of folks in any industry really kind of going off the rails a bit. And then you're fighting against yourself at that point. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time in advertising and in MarTech. And one of the things that I see a lot is there's a table and there's 100 features and I have green check marks next to every single one of mine. And then my competitor has zeros or something like that. Harvey balls. Yeah, something like that.

14:09John Busby:And I'm not even sure you totally feel like those are, well, the opposite of disingenuous. You don't feel like those are necessarily authentic, because they're like a marketing spin on comparing all of those things. Or in heavily regulated industries, you're going to see an asterisk next to everything. You're like, okay, well, there's an asterisk next to this thing I'm being compared to. There's this notion of having a strategy and having something you're going to stake your brand on. How do you rally the troops internally and organizationally around that? Because sometimes, you know, and I put in my question to you prior to this, like not feeling like there's an emotional gimmick, but you're rallying the organization around, okay, we're going to be really friendly or okay, we're going to do that.

15:09John Busby:And how do you sort of have, because if the organization believes that the organization is acting authentically, it's going to work better in marketing. So how do you sort of approach the internal organization around what it means to be a brand or act like a brand or pivot something? Oh, if only I had the easy answer to that, I wouldn't be talking. I would be on a beach to wear. Listen, that's hard work. But I'll go back to your desk example is kind of the launch pad here. If anything that you're doing is 10 to 12 lines long when it comes to marketing your brand, that's where you kind of need to pause.

15:51One, because there's no way that everyone in your organization is going to be able to rally behind the 12 reasons why your table is superior. It's not going to be authentic. If you're superior in every, in all 12 facets and every competitor is at a zero, that's also not authentic. It's the one. It goes back to the pain, right? The old, you know, sell me this pencil. Our table will seat everyone for the holidays comfortably. That's what our table does. and that's something that folks in manufacturing can rally behind sales can rally behind it's got an emotional connection because everyone everyone can relate to the pulling up the card table you know no one has to be at the kids table with our table would actually be pretty clever do you see i'm saying so it's like just the the one thing and again it's it doesn't mean that you don't have 11 other amazing features.

16:54It's about the order in which you introduce them, right? That sort of show up and throw up, you know, which is what people really respond negatively to. It's about, you know, you never have to be at a kid's table at our table. Everyone can relate to that. Everyone in the company can relate to that. Everyone externally can relate to that. That is an authentic need or pain that people have experienced. And that's what you sort of centered around. So if you've got the, you know, what I call them or the contrarians or the people that fold their arms in every meeting when it comes to anything. It goes back to the business case for brand, right?

17:31Going back to just the numbers that we, you know, that we had in the first book and then I updated the second book. Even if I can't convince you on the like marketing-y side of things, those numbers are real. And if you aren't seeing those returns, you're really shorting yourself as a brand and as a business and frankly as a professional in that business. But I think rallying around a single concept, not a single verbatim, but a single concept is much easier to do than when you're trying to make it five, ten, or even three things. It just needs to be one thing.

18:10John Busby:In your last book, you talked about a North Star, and I think you've updated that with a new idea about aligning the organizational constellation. I'd like you to sort of tell a story about why you did that, but maybe as setting it up, and I'm not sure it relates, but it does relate to the person folding their arms. The contrarian, yeah. Because as marketers, when we're going in and talking to across a wide array of functions, we're talking about feelings, we're talking about brands, stuff like that. This is not how certain people vibe. Just like you and me might not want to go into an engineering meeting and hear about the merits of one code style versus another code style.

18:48John Busby:That just might not be important to us. But it is important to agree on the problem. And if everybody can agree on the problem, we're behind an industry benchmark in terms of LTV, or our pipeline isn't big enough, or whatever it is. And if we agree on the problem, we can sort of let the experts talk about how to approach that problem. Yep. You want to align on the problem the company is facing, certainly. I think you could argue that may not ring as true or as hard for folks who maybe aren't incentivized based on the corporate plan or, you know, are on the front lines of your organization. I've actually found it easier to align folks internally around the single customer problem.

19:40Right. Yes. And because one, they all play a role in it. If you try to sort of singularize a problem based on financials, to your point, frontline may not care. Engineering may not care. You're more altruistic. Executives may not care that aren't quite operated. And those folks do exist. So it's more, hey, can we agree on a common problem? Not that our customers only have one problem, but can we agree on one problem we want to solve for them and we want to let them know about. And that's usually what folks can latch on a little to a little bit easier.

20:19John Busby:Yeah, I like that. I like that framing better. Maybe that's a better example. What's important in my point of view is you're agreeing on the customer problem, but the problem is fact-based. You have data to say it's a problem. It's not anecdotal. I heard from this. I hear that, et cetera. So is that what the, the, you know, the new concept line, the organizational constellation is about or is it, or is that something else? And how did that come about? No, no, no. It's, it's absolutely related. I'd like to say that I revised the North Star concept because of some amazing mental breakthrough I had.

20:57But like with most things, It was actually my younger son, Jackson, correcting me. So, yeah, right. That would be a long, long conversation, John. But, you know, I think we all as marketers, we hear a lot about North Stars. You know, as a brand person, I talk a lot about a North Star because, I mean, it's a simple framework, right? It's North Star, it makes sense. But according to the astronomy, the North Star is actually a constellation. It's not a single star. It's actually just one star we happen to see more brightly. And when Jackson corrected me on that, I was like, you know, that's really interesting because if you think about it as a constellation on a single point, it hits on a lot of what we were just talking about, right?

21:43that internally and externally, people will latch on to your message for a variety of reasons and context. Not because they haven't memorized, but because the people in engineering connect with it in a certain way. And people in marketing connect with it in a certain way. So it's not the verbatim, you know, index card that everyone has to know. But everyone does have to connect with it. Right. And that's that's sort of the the nuance or the the update to it is as long as it's in that kind of airspace sky space as a brand marketer, I'm OK with that. Right. I just need to make sure that everyone can connect with it in their own way.

22:32So I focus more on the connection than the verbatim or the singular nature. If that makes sense.

22:40John Busby:I think it does make sense because, again, every function is going to connect with whatever your statement is in a different way. I want to talk a little bit about pivoting or launching stuff. And I had a question in mind, and I think your T-shirt reinforces it, where I'm not sure if folks can see it. But it's busy is not as big. Busy is not the same as bold. Yeah, it's less than bold. And I wonder, because I'm going through a pivot in one of my businesses right now, and part of it is launching new things. And I think that you recommend stopping at least as many things as you start. And could you sort of talk through why?

23:27Yeah, absolutely. I do. I'm probably walking away from a lot of business with that approach instead of being like, no, you should launch a bunch of things. But I do believe that brand starts with understanding what you as a company would never do versus saying what you stand for on repeat. because you've talked about differentiation, right? So many of us stand for the same thing. It's really hard to create a brand and differentiate from that point. So I think stopping and just what would you never do is just a really important decision for CXOs to make.

24:17John Busby:What's something that a bank might never do or financials might never do? So I think I'll give you an example from a current client. And, you know, as marketers, we get a lot of requests from a lot of different departments to support. And they were being asked to do something relatively simple, which is to sponsor. I think it was like a stock car or something like that. And it's like, I don't know. Should we do that? Should we not do that? and we ran the exercise of what would you never do? And I was like, would you ever put your bank brand next to an adult brand? No, we would never do that. We're a community bank.

25:04We've been here 150 years, whatever. Would you ever put your brand asset on something where you don't have full editorial control, full visual control? Nope, we would never do that. We absolutely would never do that. would you ever sponsor a stock car? Well, yeah, I mean, probably. I was like, well, hang on. If you said you would never do this and you'd never do that, that also means the stock car decision becomes a little easier because you don't have control of your asset in that particular case, right? It's gonna be stretched, it's gonna be placed by anything. It also gives you, I think, a much clearer decision-making framework by defining the things you wouldn't do.

25:51Because a lot of the things seem innocuous. Like, well, okay, well, it's a local race. We'll sponsor it. But again, it goes back to that's something you don't need to be doing. It's a bunch of activity. You probably aren't going to be able to get the ROI. But it also kind of violates the things that you said you would never do. So it makes that no easier, which I think as marketers, we need some help with. Because we need to say no more often, but we need to make it clear as to why we're saying no.

26:18John Busby:Yeah. What doesn't fit and fit into your marketing plans and activities and media and so on. It's interesting to me that you brought up your son earlier because in our last conversation, I was asking about sort of like advice and mentors and that sort of thing. And you didn't mention your son, you mentioned your father. Yes. And you said something your father told you, which is about you don't need a classroom to be a teacher. And I'm kind of curious as you moved into like version two or this phase of the book, what's something maybe one of the most surprising things a bank client of yours has taught you?

26:55John Busby:You go in there, they hire you to teach them. What have you maybe learned from a client? Yeah, I got to tell you, I learn as much as I teach. And that's one of the reasons why I just I love doing what I do. I'll give you a very good example. So I was working with a FinTech and I was helping them, you know, on competitive analysis and, you know, how to frame things up. And I mean, I was just like, just full down the road with it. And he shared with me, he's like, hey, are you familiar with the basketball coach, John Wooden? I was like, well, of course, you know, UCLA coach won 10 10 national championships.

27:40He's like, did you know that Coach Wooden never did a scouting report?