Dare to build a world, not just a brand - Mike Perry (Tavern Agency)

24:11Radim:And yeah, it's like, I don't know, they all kind of make sense. I will say to rationalize the food, bed of hospitality and sports, like you were mentioning tavern and the name. When I was fishing this idea, everyone's like, oh, it sounds dusty and old. You're going to get pigeonholed. It's going to be a miserable. And I was like, no, like if you literally look at what taverns were in the United States, They serve drinks. They serve food, full meals. And then upstairs was literally a place to stay. It's like full. Everything was offered that we offer in a tavern. So it was a bit on the nose there.

24:45Radim:And sports too. You talk about sports or you're watching sports, and the more contemporary ones with televisions. But it all goes together. And there's the string between all of it is hospitality. And that comes from, I think, I'm going to land this plane somehow. That comes from my parents working in hospitality. Myself, I was a caddy, and then I also would bartend and serve in the country club and also at some hotels and bars and restaurants and stuff. And I was brought into that. And it's both service, food and beverage service mixed with hospitality that I think is the connective tissue here.

25:18Radim:I know we're talking about chaos plus hospitality plus big brand. I think that's the magic cocktail there, right? Like of how it comes together, why when you do it correctly, it works.

25:30Mike Perry:when you talk about hospitality it makes me think of my friends who work in hospitality and it's chaos there you go i know he listens to my podcast he literally says he used to work in what he's been working in hospitality for 15 plus years and then he had kids and he was like i was always ready for kids you know you're awake in the middle of the night you know dealing with chaos we're dealing with rowdy people little people i think the chaos part of it i think is a sort of through line for this conversation so far because when you think about branding these days it's easily formulated i mean we have been making the brands the visual systems you know making them sort of more refined they've been spreading faster and further than ever before so it became a bit more formulaic so i think that chaos element was slightly removed from it because it's easy to replicate something somewhere with small team rather than needing a you know big team and create a sorts of assets animations that kind of stuff but the timelessness is vanishing you'd be You're in a constant cycle, as you agree.

26:30Mike Perry:We're in a constant cycle of seeing new rebrands or satisfying the shareholders' price because, you know, is there movement? Is there noise? Is there, have you making enough noise around the brand? Because when you talk about Sailor Jerry or Hendrix, there was no rush anywhere. Like when you had a good idea, when you sort of settled on what it is, when you created that, that stayed what it was and it made incremental moves. Whereas we have worlds with a lot of heritage and we've got new brands with zero heritage zero stories and it's just like how do you mix those two together because you can easily spot the gen z fermented drinks or as a gut health drinks with the little stickers on them and then obviously next to you got something which is more of a heritage so we've got clash of the worlds but ultimately we play in the same game almost mostly the same customers so in your quest for chasing the timelessness and not trends where do you start in your challenging journey now it's very much our philosophy which is modern

27:29Radim:heritage and we work on a lot mostly heritage brands we do new to world definitely applies we do a startup brands as well and that absolutely applies it'll get very confusing if we talk about all of them i think like within heritage brands is the realm because they've existed for so long they may or may not be timeless already most likely they are not and it's timelessness is it's that thing you can never get right it's the point of the graph that keeps flattening out for some reason but it's also something you have to constantly work and build towards you keep going to not get it but that's what gets you to that level right it's not a thing timelessness doesn't just happen jfk or carolyn beset kennedy are timeless icons but they just didn't happen over time right i'm trying to pick people not brands on purpose right but there's an aesthetic there is like a world in which like they pushed and that kind of came out that might be a bad example because they're no longer with us but they've kind of grounded themselves in that because of that push and i think brands need to do that as well right nike is timeless because they keep innovating because they keep changing and because they keep pushing themselves forward if they were just another stuffy shoe brand we wouldn't be saying we wouldn't be calling out nike we'd be calling out adidas or puma or whoever vans converse it doesn't matter it is like trying to get to that point and you have to constantly build into it so how do we do it our philosophy is modern heritage no matter who you are heritage brand we have a three-step process which really boils down to discovery strategy and design we have cute names for it but i'll save that for this but not step one is really the discovery phase where you dig deep and you go into the archives you have to go to physical places like we were talking before we often go to historical societies or libraries and microfiche and we physically build archives and i keep saying our secret but the deep secret is not pinterest it's actually ebay so you find stuff on ebay from heritage brands that are sold because a lot of it is just like bottom of the barrel trade materials some weird clock that was made in the 70s has some mark on it that doesn't match any of the other marks that they were, you know, I've been using for the last 40 years or old matchbooks or whatever, you know, menus, things that individual restaurants underneath of a chain may have done in the 60s and 70s that are different.

29:55Radim:So you just have that. It's like the source material is almost never ending. And so we go and dig deep to find those things, the quirks, the difference. And, you know, that's the fun stuff. That's the real designery nerd stuff, which influences us a lot but you also now start to have a full visual archaeological timeline of the brand and you can really see what was happening visually speaking at least and we talk about verbal and strategy later but like you see what was happening and once you start to see what's happening things obviously pop out first of all we know you know it's a hundred year old brand we know that maybe they were famous in the mid-century and then died out during the 2000s and they need to be brought back or whatever.

30:39Radim:And so you can kind of understand their dips and their peaks on, you know, how they were performing in the marketplace. But then you overlay that on top of this visual timeline and see what was working, what was coming to the top then, and also what makes sense for now. Most of the stuff from the past does not make sense now. This isn't an exercise of retro or novelty by any means. It's very much identifying what makes sense. And so we take all of those things and use them as the starting point and modernize them and craft them for the current consumer but also with future consumer that's a really interesting process and like you

31:17Mike Perry:don't always get with the 100 year old brands and having time to actually spend time on ebay digging through stuff that's a real good secret that's a real good insight but you said about timeless a few times and it's not always for example people like me when you say timeless always comes to music i feel like what is the definition of timeless it's something that sounded or made you feel something in a really positive way and then you're replicated by every contact with it over and over again and when you mentioned nike because there's always an element of something that really worked and you see it it was like that still makes a connection there's still something what they did if it was a luck if it was a strategy if it was just a feeling like it just works and with music like you listen to a track you're like yep still sounds great still makes me feel something and it's just like how do you replicate that because those are moments that are almost physical you come to physical contact with something and you have that physical reaction and in that sort of treadmill of brands rebrands retooling like new launches new campaigns the world is much busier much more noisy like how do you make that moment because it would be really interesting to see how much of the things that we create now will become timeless

32:32Radim:right definitely and i like the music analogy i started with i don't know american icons which probably the worst example of timelessness but like fashion music give me a musical track that

32:44Mike Perry:you find timeless oh i just listened to cowgirl by underworld the other day it's got that famous everything line and it just it's from 2000 no it's from like 91 and 92 and you can think of like how some of the things really sound of its time i had a big discussion with a pova baxi about 1995 when they started dixon baxi it was like in 1995 the music that came out was most amazing and the albums that did something different but rooted in heritage and sort of more traditional sounds or sampling something that was more jazz based or film scores survived kind of stayed on and became timeless albums whereas some people who tried like the gimmicky like the new machines or whatever like the drums just sounded just a little bit of its time they didn't really last they didn't withstand the test of time and they sound like 1994 whereas some of the albums absolutely survived and it's hard to say like how you put your life and your heart and soul into something like this but that shines through to work definitely and i think there's a lot there

33:48Radim:but i love the fact that you said it was 2000 and then actually it was 1991 i think that proves the timelessly like you just rationalize your timelessness argument that i can't even pinpoint it it's always been there that proves that a bit of time workness and then you were saying in 1994 with your cheesy drum machines and whatever that's because the drum machine was trendy at the time Right. That was the trendy thing. That was what everyone was doing. And I think that falls into like the trend category. And it sticks to an aesthetic of a time period because that's what everyone's doing. And it's not because you're trying to make really great music and really great music is built upon the past.

34:30Radim:Everything is built upon the past, whether we like it or not. We just have to make sure that we ditch the wrong parts of the past, obviously. But it goes to a principle where I love this and I forget who came up with it. Some architect in the mid-century, I'm pretty sure. But it's called the Maya principle. It's the most advanced yet acceptable. That's how he applied it to architecture and building commercial buildings for people or something. I think you can apply it to anything, both music, branding, any creative endeavor, where we're not trying to reinvent the wheel and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

35:03Radim:We're trying to take all the good parts that everyone is familiar with collectively and then tweak them to where they still can be on board, but they're not going to be so, oh, this is left completely left field. And I think that's where that's the starting point of where you can really create timelessness and timeless brands or even music. So music, for instance, right? Like we can inch it up with some midis or synthesizers or whatever. if it was 1994. But it's when we go full bore into it, we're only using that and we're saying, this is our whole thing. It's not acceptable anymore, right? It's too advanced.

35:40Radim:And I think balancing that tension of, which is modern heritage, literally, it's like balancing the tension between heritage and modernity. You always need to, you need to be in conflict with that to get there. And I think that when you have that and there is tension, that should equal timelessness. If done correctly, repeatedly time and time again and protected but that's the hard part is the repetition of the

36:03Mike Perry:tension it can paralyze you like when you think about creating something that's timeless it becomes only timeless beneath proved its time it actually it works and whilst you were talking i had to actually have to google the release year it was actually 1994 when that album came out but i think it's all about putting the right effort into what you do i think it's just that element because so many things from a little longer ago still is absolutely amazing some of music that's come out you know 50 60 years ago crikey now you know it still sounds good because it's about the idea it's about the execution is about people believing what they do and the maya principle he talks about was actually raymond louis he was an industrial designer yeah because if someone is screaming if not screaming at the speakers going you know what it was 1994 and it was raymond louis we covered both now but i like that you used the word tension i like that your modern heritage is about tension and tension is a strong word that makes the process sound quite serious quite important how do you deal with tension how do you apply it how do you invent it and how do you keep it on

37:08Radim:when you say it and when you're relaying it back to me and very calm very serious voice it gives me anxiety just thinking about it which i think is good it's like that nervous energy when you're like have a project and you're like i don't know god we're gonna do it it's gonna be sick but i I don't know what the fucking answer is. We got to get into it. It's that. It should be that all of the time, which sucks, right? Can't just do the project. That's it. Move on. We did a good job. It'll go sell. It'll be cool. Everyone's going to love us in 10 years. We're timeless. No, this is all a grind, which I think took me a long time in design and branding and strategy, I suppose, to realize all of these things are never-ending pursuits.

37:53Radim:It's just because the project ends where we're going to have to apply to someone else and we're going to have to push. And I think what I like to do with our clients is we're quite young still, but like we bring on our clients and we don't want them to leave. I believe in the brand guardianship approach to branding to clients. You want them to stay for a decade. That's where the work doesn't happen in quarters, even though Wall Street wants it to, right? It doesn't. It does take time. And branding takes time, even though there's a rebrand every two years on most brands, which drives me crazy. It's a whole different podcast, probably.

38:25Radim:But it takes a lot of time to implement these things, to do it correctly, to really understand what's resonating. The tension is the litmus test, I suppose, right? It should be happening all the time. and as you're developing new and pushing assets or campaigns or platform strategies that you're kind of always making sure that tension is there and that you are forcing it and i think that kind of you know limit sets your barometer on is it working it ain't easy it's never over yeah it's

38:55Mike Perry:not meant to be easy that's the thing because when you said tension it felt heavy on this side i was like yeah you can have a perceived tension from the client side going this needs to be something because it comes from some sort of pre-meditated pre-formed or expectations some people think that's whatever they create and have to be absolutely most amazing thing and then you get people with open mind and it was like okay what we see let's see what we can find out but the tension always is like if you give a shit about what you create there will be tension because you will hold yourself to high standards to make sure that happens so the t-word is loaded but it's necessary Yes.

39:33Radim:And this is maybe a cliche, but we as designers and as creative agencies are literally on these brands most of the time, far longer than the brand managers. They kind of will shift off one to three years. Three years is kind of a lot even. They shift off and they transition to brands. And that's just how a lot of these brands, at least my entire branding experience has been. And I, again, maybe it's the cliche, but we are involved a lot more and we should care a lot more. And we should be, we have to be the guardians because no one else is. The umbrella company that's holding all of these brands is not the guardian in the same way.

40:11Radim:They want delivery, quarter delivery. Fair enough. And the marketers want quarter to maybe a little bit longer because they're going to be on the brand. They want to do something. I want to make a name for themselves and they want to put their thumbprint on it. again all fair enough i agreed that they should be doing that and us designers want all the same things plus our full creative expression on it plus we're going to be on here hopefully the relationship goes well long after you all and the brand's going to go on long after all of us hopefully if we all do our jobs correctly and so we got to keep that into consideration too so and that's where like that the heaviness it's a never-ending grind guardianship of it all needs to come we need to be protecting brands as well so we both need to be the innovators and the

40:57Mike Perry:protectors i suppose this is something really important you said as people that are working on a brand they just shift off within a couple of years and maybe that's part of the reason why we have so many rebrands so many refreshes because yeah people show up like hey this is what i think we should do when you think about it it's almost like a short term thinking like politics you go like people are in charge for like four years they fuck it all up then somebody else comes up they're trying to fix it and it's just it's a short-term thinking on a long-term project sometimes when you scale it up you know humanity society and then you scale it back to brands i didn't think about it even i've had that experience with my studio on situations where you get to the end and somebody new steps in no no not yet let's change all of it why you've been here for five minutes how do you keep that creative endurance and the guardianship in check that if you get new people on the other side that you almost stop them from making mistakes changing things or is that input valuable at any time the input is always valuable i'm going to contradict

42:00Radim:myself but there is a constant need to evolve is good so having new leadership shift onto a brand like this is good in theory because we do want to continually push the brand. The Nike example, you need to modernize consistently. And by doing so, you need to be innovating and doing different things or doing things better or changing how you go. So I'm not Ehrenberg Bass here saying this is your asset. Don't do anything but your asset and call me in 40 years. That's wrong. That's been disproven more recently. I do still believe in equities and key brand assets. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying do that.

42:39Radim:Short answer is I think it's good and I think it's healthy. But we, as the guardians, need to be very clear in developing the work. Let's say the project is a brand manager number one hires us. We rebrand them. Two years later, they shift off the brand. Someone comes on and says, we're going to rebrand again. I think it's really important to do that rebrand work the first time you do it really well. And make sure that it is set up for success. And if you are good at branding, you will create a brand that is impenetrable because that's the goal that doesn't need to be rebranded in two years. Because if you rebranded something that needs to be retooled in two years, that's a trendy brand.

43:20Radim:You follow trends. You stuck to the time period. It didn't work. If you did it correctly, it should last a minimum of five years. It really should last a lot longer than that, in my opinion, but I'm talking in the modern sense. And so if you do that, then everything else is iterative upon that platform you made. So in my opinion, why the hell are we just going to keep rebranding this beer brand over and over again every two years? Why can't we brand it once, make a really great brand platform for it that is strong, that gives us room to play everywhere else, to expand the brand world and expand it from a brand world into a universe?

43:58Radim:That should be the goal with everyone who comes on. So when the new person comes on in two years, they say, great, this brand is ripping. It is working. There's nothing to change from an equity standpoint. We just need to build upon our equities. Nike Dunks. Nike Dunks was red, black and white because it was after Jordan or whatever. And Nike Dunks are now into skateboarding, right? Into drops, into everything. And this is old news now. I sound like an old man now talking about Nike Dunks. It expanded beyond itself because it was good from the start. It had the athletes. It had the brand. It knew exactly who it was.

44:32Radim:So the agency, the designers need to be the ones keeping the brand in check while still going wide. And again, that's I guess that's another point of tension. You need to be strict to your brand and your brand guidelines that you created. But at the same time, you have to have room to play and go wide. So you got to go get to go really wide and do wild things within that brand, but then make sure that it's still tight so that you're not losing the plot. That's tough. that is really where brand guardianship from a design creative agency standpoint comes is really i think the gold standard if you get that right i love what you said about brand world becomes the universe that beautifully summed up what the goal is yeah i mean it just

45:15Mike Perry:becomes the universe you know that you can almost reach that timelessness and actually thinking about our t-words today we got tension we got timeless then you used another t-word which was trends and you believe that good design doesn't just survive trend cycles it transcends them trends and transcending where do trends come from why do they exist and why do even trend i mean that's a big question why does trend become a trend is it because too many people find it appealing it's a big question to ask why do trends work for a

45:48Radim:while? I don't know, but they are short-lived, right? Like just inherently a trend is by definition does not last. It is only a short period of time. And I think in our current culture, those trends are burning brighter and faster as we go because of the internet and social and whatever. So I don't know why a trend exists, but I know that it's not something you should be chasing as much as you want to. Look, in our own day-to-day lives, I'm sure we still do that. There is like, I don't know, the trendy new coat or jacket that you really want, but you know deep down you're going to have to buy a new one next year because you don't want to be caught dead in that.

46:29Radim:We inherently as humans know what a trend is, but they are so alluring that we convince ourselves that we need them, that we are going to follow them. And I think it's the same for branding. But the easiest way I have a one-pager that we take clients through and I coach new hires and stuff on, which is Branded the Heart. So it's branded, it says Branded the Heart, and we have all of the projects we've worked on and all different types of outputs. That output can be branding, that output can be packaging, it can be experiential, it could be Hendricks Gin, flying cucumber activation, or a giant pigeon that we floated down the Hudson River, which we literally did for New New York City Football Club.

47:10Radim:But it doesn't matter. All of these outputs don't matter. They are purely outputs. And they're outputs that disrupt the brand within culture. If you put the brand at the heart of it, nothing you do is incorrect because you're staying true to the brand. LaBubu. I'm just picking a random ass trend that's no longer a trend. LaBubu. Would it make sense for Sizzler to create a cheese toast LaBubu? That's really cool. I've connected it to the brand. who doesn't want a plush piece of toast i'm sure that that would disrupt quite a few weird internet collectibles communities that's building upon what the brand is at the heart of things the brand is a family steakhouse right hospitality good food accessible prices for families families are number one is the case so by doing that yeah that'll be a cool little giveaway it's just a flash in the pan type thing it's just a trendy little thing that you would do you would hope to trade for clout or awareness or whatever.

48:11Radim:It's just dumb. It just is a flash in the pan. It's alluring. I'm saying this, trying to convince myself that's a cool idea because it kind of is. That would be kind of sick and weird looking, right? But it doesn't make sense. It's going to be too much time effort for something to be also most likely dead. Going back to the trend cycles are faster. And the boob is already dead for months now. And so even being able to put that it to action you're already late to the game so now you're focusing all of your energy as a brand to do something that is perceived at the moment as trendy but by the time it comes out gonna be old news which is you know double paint not only did you do that silly thing when everyone was doing that silly thing you did that silly thing when everyone was not doing it you're late to the party which makes you look even worse and deteriorate your brand even further whilst you

48:59Mike Perry:were talking i was thinking about trends it's like they grow by exposure and they get killed by exposure literally just like they just go way too high up and then they die but i had a quote the other day and it was about pop songs and it said all you need is three chords and a truth that's what you need i mean we used to call it three chord wonder but someone i mean it was only the other day when i had a quote it was like you need three chords and a truth and that truth part was what made most sense to me because would you describe what you do with your work and how you do it you need zero trends and the truth you need three things off ebay and the truth and kind of find out like how you connect those together because the things that survive to survive for the right reason because they didn't jump up against too much and too high from the trend or survived and i think the way you're describing it makes perfect sense that you can go you find that longevity yeah i think you need three equities and the truth maybe maybe that's what it is yeah That's the way it is.

49:58Mike Perry:So your work is varied, obviously. You're coming from the world of spirits, but as you said, you've been floating an inflatable pigeon on the river. And I'm never one to ask people for like, oh, how do you see your future or what are you doing next? Because you could ask people 15 years ago, 20 years ago, like where do you see yourself in 10 years' time? Now we've been talking about where do you see yourself in 10 months' time. I think it's just everything changes so fast. But with your view on brands and with your way of how you think about stuff how you create stuff how excited and how apprehensive are you about what's coming next because we're going to get more of the same it's going to be a lot of work to actually make a meaningful change in the world of branding that doesn't seem as formulaic is it something that people need to embrace or does it come from good strategy that people look to the past or is looking

50:48Radim:to the past not always for every brand looking to our past i think the past informs the future so i I think for everything in anyone in human history and culture, I think it is beneficial. You learn from your past. It should inform your future. Good, better, or indifferent. Like, it shouldn't inform how you then move forward. Because the goal is forward movement. Ultimately, growth is always our goal. I'm excited by it. I honestly, I feel like in the last, you talked to me two months ago, I'd be like, it's going to be a grind. It's going to be an uphill battle. I'm weirdly optimistic in the last few weeks.

51:23Radim:And there is nothing, there's no data points and no proof of this optimism. But I feel in my bones that with AI, with social, with internet, and the getting back to analog slightly, I understand that's a trend as well. We're not talking about the trend of back to analog. I truly believe that people are wanting that. Also, this post-COVID world, people are wanting more of back to what things used to be, which felt more real and more human. I think it's probably going to take longer than I'm hoping, but I think we're going to get back there as a culture just naturally. And I think technology is going to push us back there, which makes me massively optimistic on what we can do because it's that then opens up the act of the world of honestly activations of brands coming to life.

52:09Radim:I wrote an article somewhat recently of IRL versus not URL, and that's how you build a brand. And I believe it. That's how you build friendships. Yes, we were talking earlier before on the call, like I did build a friendship with a designer on Instagram, like we all do, but like that turned into a real life friendship. That's the goal, right? Use the internet to get to the real world or to expand your real world, right? And I'm just like pining on why you use the internet now, but I'm optimistic we will get back to IRL more and more often, which will make brands more exciting and better purely because there's more touch points in which you can develop.

52:47Radim:And I think we've been in this stagnant phase of 10 to 15 years of branding. Let's just strip it all out, make it all clean. I know millennial branding is well over, but it's still this, it's this sterile millennial branding, Ehrenberg bass, stodgy ass way of doing branding. That's not the case anymore. And that's why I'm excited about every project we're working on. That's why we can do big ass pigeons and also store remodels, but still do fancy old booze. right like it doesn't matter and that's what i think is really cool so i'm wildly optimistic but

53:23Mike Perry:really only in the last couple weeks i'm glad i found you in a wildly optimistic face because when you said i'm optimistic but i don't know why i was like well you just killed my question i thought of like why are you optimistic then you beautifully articulated why all happens because i'm in agreement i think what's happened through covid and mostly like the more tools more apps I mean, everyone was on Clubhouse during COVID and all of that stuff. It just goes in waves and it oscillates. It goes up and it goes down. I think what was magic 15 years ago of having events to go to all the time, gallery openings.

53:57Mike Perry:There was buzz and movement and connection. And obviously, have you made it convenient? But convenience is a lie. Just because it's convenient, it doesn't mean that it's actually getting us anywhere further. So the way you articulate it was beautiful because I can feel that you're optimistic and I'm excited where it's all going. So, Mike, thanks for coming to chat to me today. It has been really good because I can feel your passion for what you do and I'm excited what's going to happen next. So, yeah, thank you.

54:26Radim:Me too. Thank you so much.

54:37Mike Perry:thank you for listening to this episode of daring creativity podcast i'd love to know your thoughts questions and suggestions so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels this episode was produced and presented by me radin malinage the audio production was done by Neil Mackay from 7 Million Bags Podcast. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode. If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design.

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