S15 E3: How to Actually Think about Branding

0:00Nik:Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nik Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at nik.co slash email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, all so you can unlock your next$100 ,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.

0:34Nik:If you're a Shopify brand, pay attention. Roku Ads Manager is built for growth marketers and makes connected TV way easier to test. Go to advertising.roku.com slash limited supply. All right, John, welcome to Limited Supply. It's a pleasure to have you here. It's been a long time coming, I think. We've worked on a few projects together in the past. so excited to have you here and i'm excited to talk about something i don't really talk about too often which is um diving straight into branding but before we get into the tactical side of branding and positioning and all those good things um why don't you give us a quick background on yourself your company how we know each other and then we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of it let's do it um well the feelings are mutual nick i'm super excited to be here.

1:24And yes, it, it does feel like a long time coming. And I know every time I see you, I gas you up because I've never met anybody more consistent with like super valuable information every Sunday or almost every Sunday. I know you're hitting me in my inbox recommending I have a cold beverage in hand and it's like the marketing version of Mr. Rogers coming into my, into my home. So I appreciate it. Um, of course. So yes, I am, uh, the co-founder and chief creative at Herman Shear. We are a branding agency and we work with businesses at any inflection point to help them grow through the lens of branding.

2:10And for us, brand and business are synonymous. So when I say inflection point, that could be zero to one where founders have an idea to bring a company to market or for businesses that have grown really well in a direct-to-consumer channel and now are looking to go omni-channel or come retail, or they've got a new product that they want to launch and need help figuring out how to position that product within the wider brand strategy story. So at any point, we're there for you. And so that kind of permeates its way through strategy, identity, and then any of the kind of go to market production oriented touch points, be it packaging, web, photo and video content, etc.

2:59And cut me off when my intro gets too long, Nick.

3:02Nik:I know you're good. I think it's good because it just gives the listener some good context on the stuff we're about to talk about. Yeah. What you said was interesting is you help grow brands through branding. So I guess if we were to start from infancy as a brand, where do you think that branding is first important to play a part or start working on? A lot of times people who are listening to this, they might have their product ready to go. They might understand what their messaging is in terms of how best to position their product and sell it. Either because it's a problem solution, or it's a demonstrable product, or it has some unique technology in it.

3:49Nik:But the branding piece is so unique because there's so many examples where you have two companies that sell the exact same product, sometimes made by the same manufacturer behind the scenes, but to a completely different audience. And that's just really a function of branding. And a lot of times I find that usually founders really get branding. They get it from the beginning. They understand its importance, how necessary it is. And a lot of times they're down to spend extra. The same way they would spend more on product development, they're down to spend extra on branding. And then there's the other camp, which is the complete opposite.

4:24Nik:They're like, well, let's just get to market first. We can figure out branding later. Position doesn't matter as much. How do you think about that dichotomy? Or even just how do you approach founders when you talk to them about the importance of branding? And the last thing I'll add there too is that chart where you have a really long, maybe a line chart, and you change one degree above or below at the beginning, and it makes a huge difference way down the line. To me, that's branding. Like when you make those one degree decisions up front and you're very meticulous about it, it impacts very much down the line.

5:01Nik:But you can't quantify that. It's not a short term dopamine hit. And so I think a lot of people forego it. So I'll leave it there. Totally. You know, I actually think a lot has changed in the last five years in terms of the importance of brand. So back in like 2020 to 2022, the barrier to entry to launch a new product, a new idea, people were really hip to be able to spin a product up, get on Shopify, take advantage of what was really humming at the time of the meta marketing funnel. and also venture capital was really accessible for a lot of people. Like people were able to raise a million bucks to start a adaptogenic guacamole brand, you know, whatever it was.

5:55And, and, and so I think the idea of like move fast, learn and adapt as you go, like that mind state made a lot of sense then because there was more capital to be spent on it. You could just move quick and break things, as they say, and brand wasn't as important. But now the barrier to entry is still low, but capital isn't quite there. As you have been preaching, the marketing mix now is so much more complicated, but the competition is still there. And so I believe, you know, if you ask a surgeon, should we do surgery? They'll likely tell you, you know, surgery is going to be the best option. So I, you know, I know I'm biased in saying this, but brand to me is synonymous with business strategy.

6:48And so when you have a sound business strategy up front and brand strategy up front, to me, that sets the foundation of what you're building as a business. Who is it for, at least to start? And how then that's the strategy, right? At the most basic level is what is this? Who is it for? also understanding how to differentiate it against all the incumbents and any potential newcomers. And then the manifestation of that into identity is how do we look, sound, and feel through that lens? And I believe the most important thing to do upfront is to define what are you building? What are you growing into?

7:34Because if you go out there and you just start throwing spaghetti at the wall, it's going to get real expensive, real messy and real hard on internal teams and agencies. If you just go out there, put something out and just iterate and test and pivot and do different creative over and over again, like that'll definitely, you're going to grow a business that'll be worth something, but you'll then likely lose sight of what you're building because you have no foundation. There's no, there's no blueprint to work from and work towards. And so I think a lot of times what I see get messed up or people get confused by is the difference between brand positioning and product positioning.

8:20And, you know, a lot of the companies that we work with, they'll start with an amazing initial skew, one product, and then they're like, we've got an idea for this. But they don't know how to talk about now the brand and the product and the new product because there was no foundation for them to grow into. So that's one of the big inflection points I see to help people through.

8:43Nik:Yeah, I also feel like there's definitely anomaly. There's a number of anomaly examples of companies that I think also they grew really fast or they grew to be big companies because their product is so well-liked and well-known. Hintwater is a great example of that. before 2017, there was no real brand. Everything was kind of all over the place. There was no cohesiveness to the design, to the packaging, to the website, nothing. But people loved the product so much that it just grew rapidly. And I think companies like that turn into almost product businesses. Now, when they went to go launch sunscreen and toothpaste, deodorant, even caffeinated water, none of that brand really came in and helped support.

9:39Nik:We did a successful sunscreen launch in retail, but that was because then we went out and branded sunscreen really hard amongst influencers, podcasts, creators, newsletters. But there was no brand carryover from that because it was really a product business. It was a flavored water product business. And I think that speaks to exactly what you're saying. On the other hand, I'm thinking, what a lot of people see at branding agencies is this really beautiful execution across every touchpoint. Whether it's social, whether it's email, whether it's iconography, animation, motion graphics. But then you look at companies like a Home Depot or a Lowe's, and these guys never have beautifully designed emails or social posts.

10:20Nik:How do you think about branding in that way? Or is it that because they're so old, they don't necessarily need that kind of... you know, like when you look at a net new artist today, right, they're putting out insane amounts of content to break through the noise, become heard or get attention. But then these more, you know, older school artists, they don't need to put out as much content because their name holds that notoriety. Do you think it's very similar in the branding world? Yeah. I mean, legacy businesses who have decades under their belt building brand equity, the kind of the beauty of it all may not matter as much especially like for something like Home Depot it's very utility oriented and there's not a whole lot of competition but I tell you what if I got a chance to work with Home Depot what a fun project that would be um but yeah I think I think with Home Depot example they've just they've been advertising and in more traditional ways for decades.

11:22And so people know what it is, they know what they're going for, and they've stayed really consistent with what they're doing, what they offer and who it's for. So they still have sound brand strategy at the core of it. You don't see them stretching in ways that confuses their customer base where they're like, hey, Home Depot, now we're going to introduce this whole flavored water, right? Like they're not, they're not going there and, and, and missing up. People are buying into Home Depot versus let's say a Lowe's like, you know, so they're buying into what Home Depot stands for, or maybe it's just because people live closer to Home Depot, you know, I don't know, different, different use case story for all of it.

12:06Um, but I think what, what we were circling around before is like, yeah, are you buying, are you setting people up to buy your product? Are you setting people to buy into your brand so that no matter what you come out with, they're going to buy it? And in the case of Hint, had the founders and executives at the business been like, hey, I have a vision for Hint where we put a hint of flavoring or a hint of scent in a really organic, natural way into any product. And that becomes our, our vision. Now, whether it's water or sunscreen or deodorant or whatever, people are understand, oh, this is hint where they add a hint of natural or organic flavor.

12:50Nik:I don't really remember hints, whole differentiation. basically that. Yeah. So that's to me is kind of like a retrofitted brand strategy where it's like, Hey, let's set out to educate people that hint is a lifestyle brand or however you would position it that adds a hint of delicious, subtle flavoring or scent cues to everyday items. And then that set them up for success. Yeah. I feel like too, the one thing you touched on with Home Depot and those is their consistency. Their photo shoots or their ads today probably can look synonymous with their ads from 10 years ago. And one other thought on that is for a brand that's either getting started, or let's say a brand is even five, six years in, how do they even go about...

13:42Nik:Okay, let's say they say, all right, we do need to go educate the market. We do need to go better brand ourself or establish ourselves as X. How does one even go out and do that? Is it just making sure that at every touchpoint there's consistency in messaging? Or are there channels that you recommend to clients that they go out and do things or events or whatever it may be? I'm not sure. I think brand at a certain scale becomes equally important internally as it does externally. And what I mean by that is I think there should be a great effort to do some consumer insight work with existing customers, lapsed customers, prospective customers to really understand and get answers to whatever you may be confused about internally.

14:30Do people know us for this color orange in the Home Depot exam? Do they know the orange or are we just forcing it? Or, you know, does this value prop and that value prop, do people care about it? Do they care that we're a B Corp? Like whatever you want answers to, ask your customers, get some insights. And then also understand from your employees and your team, are we all aligned? Are we saying the same thing? Like, do we have the same vision for what we're doing here? and alignment internally and with partners, be it an agency like ours or working with somebody like you, like alignment is everything.

15:10And once you start having all those vectors shape up of like, here's what the consumer says about us. Here's what we think. You can start to thread the needle and just get ultimate clarity. To me, brand is synonymous with like clarity of who we are, who we're doing it for, why we're doing it, what it is. It's just clarity. And then all the pretty stuff gets layered on top of with those insights. And what I mean by pretty stuff is like thoughtful, easy to understand, perhaps clever educational messaging. Then any design modifications to any touch point. I think one of the things I'm going to get on my soapbox real quick here.

15:55One of the things that irks me as a branding professional is when people review or talk about a rebrand when it's, and they just look at the logo, like, oh, so-and-so rebranded. And it's like, the logo is one tiny little component of probably all the work that went into behind the scenes of a repositioning or whatever else that went into it. So I, you know, The brand mark, the word mark, the logo, it's just one piece.

16:28Nik:What are some of those other important pieces? For me, I always say too that a rebrand is a great thought, but really what you're getting at there with the rebrand and what moves the needle is a lot of times the positioning and the messaging and how that's shifted. And then, of course, the copy, the execution of that. A lot of times, those two, three things will make a world of a difference on a website. Even in CRO agencies, a lot of times they might come in to a failing funnel and they're changing button colors or moving little sections around. But what they really require is a whole copy overhaul, messaging overhaul, positioning overhaul.

17:08Nik:Any thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, anything beautiful on top of, do you swear on here, Nick? Yeah, of course. Fuck yeah. Anything considered beautiful or design oriented on shitty messaging is lipstick on a pig, right? So, you know, without a thoughtful strategic foundation built on alignment between all parties involved, customers, internal, external, Once you layer on thoughtful messaging that speaks to those insights, then you can think about making things prettier. And, you know, like to me, the biggest fail once people do get that good messaging is not making sure that like when it starts to sing is when the visuals, be it the illustrations, the graphic decisions, the photography.

18:04when it all comes together with the copy and you can really understand it in context, that's when it starts to sing. And yeah, so I think having the least amount of strong messaging can sit like beat that drum over and over again. Of course, test different ways to say it, but trying not to say too many things all at once. A lot of the brands that we work with, they feel so passionate about their products or their service. And like, we do this and we do that, we do this. And that's also that. And it's also an appetite suppressant, but it's also a this. And it's like, hey, you got to pick one, maybe two and stick with those until people really start to get it.

18:50Nik:Yeah. In my head, when I think about that, my head goes toward, okay, let's take a handful of different ways that somebody might interpret our product and go test them all. with ads because we can understand the click-through rate, how many people land on the site, the ad to cart, the checkout, maybe even the LTV off of different messaging. How do you best think about arriving at, what are those few ways of saying something? Because I fully agree. I think two things came to mind as you were talking. One was the fact that just, yeah, that consistency, especially in a world today of where you have AI going out and doing its own research and gathering information, the consistency is going to matter even more.

19:32Nik:And the second thought that came to mind was sonic branding. You hear a jingle or a tag or something and immediately your brain knows what company... Quirky's pest control, everybody knows that jingle. And so how do you arrive on what those few taglines or headlines or whatever that is that you end up putting out and commit to staying with? I think a multitude of inputs can help give confidence to stick with that tagline. I don't think the single tagline is something companies should try to force at least early. I think you need a bevy of brand lines to test and iterate to your point. Also, because people get ad fatigue.

20:28Like if I see the same line of copy over maybe different images on my feed, I'm going to get bored, but like at least have conviction on the sentiment, uh, of what you're trying to say and try it different ways in. And then once you start, once something hums or something sticks or internally, like that's just how people talk about it, uh, then go all in and create a jingle, uh, if it makes sense for your brand. And, and then it, you know, and then it, And then it becomes the just do it or, you know, whatever that sticky one liner is.

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21:28Nik:now another thought i've had lately is i feel like 2023 you know coming out of covid and in a i forget what year we like came out of covid was it 22 or 23 where we were like fully out maybe 23 i don't know i think i think it was i think it was 20 like the beginning of 2022 we We were like, yeah, we were masks off. Let's go. Our jail cells were opened back up. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, one thought I had was like the years coming out of COVID, I think there was such a seeking by everybody for a sense of community. Yes. And the way that brands approached that was there was this mass inclusiveness sentiment.

22:14Nik:Like everybody is like, hey, we're for everybody. We can help you. And I think going into this year, what it's going to take for brands to stand out is actually being exclusive and provocative to some degree. Because I think everything has become slop to some level with, we're for everybody, our product works for everybody, blah, blah, blah. And I just don't think that's true. I also don't think people want to be a part of something that is for everybody. The same reason no one wants to go to Sew House anymore, because Sew House lets everybody in as a member versus one of these other fancy ones.

22:44Nik:But what are your thoughts on that? Do you agree that 2026 is going to be a little bit more provocative? I feel like we've started to see it too with brand campaigns coming out. I saw Lemmy did a big product launch campaign recently that felt super provocative. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? I love what you're putting down, man. Brands need to have conviction and have a point of view.

23:14You can't be everything to everybody. and nobody's, if, if somebody doesn't hate you, nobody's going to love you, right? Like you need that polarity or like we like to say, like friction makes fire. And so it's hard because businesses want as many people to buy their product or buy their services as possible. But if, if there, if there isn't a good identity signal for people to see themselves in it, beyond the massness, it's boring, right? And so I think you're exactly right, especially with, I think what's so good about the internet is people see themselves in the most specific, like my TikTok reels, right?

24:03Like you'll see something and somebody complains about something that you're like, I thought that was just me. And when brands can find those insights and little human truths and, you know, niche out on those, like whether you're a running brand, it's like, Hey, you know, do your nipples itch when you're run? Like we're the, we're the itchy nipple run club. Like, like having that niche, very specific point of view and identity markers. I think that's, that's how people buy into it. And, and, and yeah, and see themselves in it versus this is, this is, this is slop, right? This is for everybody.

24:40Nik:Totally. I think also part of that slop is like, there's so many brands. I mean, there's so many brands that I know you've probably met many of them too, where they, they have this fake founder story or fake kind of origin brand story. But you know, it's like some private equity guy who found, who did ransom Excel sheet and found that he can sell something at an arbitrage because his uncle owns a factory in India where they make linens and now he's importing them at a cost and his friend owns a 3PL. So they're, you know, getting an arbitrage on that. And, uh, they've now got to come up with this brand story, but you know, 90, maybe not 90, but like definitely probably 60 % of those brands, I feel like end up failing relatively quickly because people see right through the bullshit that, uh, you know, it's basically just another commodity trying to be marketed in some kind of of a special way.

25:33Nik:How do you like, I guess two questions. One, uh, is there a way to turn those around? Like, I'm sure you guys have maybe worked on one or two where you've been like, all right, guys, your brand story sucks. Your origin story makes no sense. You know, like the one you maybe made up also makes no sense. We need to completely change this to be something people can feel like they can fall in love with. And if so, like, how does one approach that situation? Mm-hmm. You know, the importance of a founder story all depends on whether there is, I'm going to, you might throw up in your mouth a little bit, whether there's an authentic founder story or not, right?

26:15Like that buzzword authenticity actually matters when it comes to a founder story. and the best brands give their customers some credit for, like you said, like seeing through the bullshit. And so if you don't have a good founder story, then come up with a great philosophy and lean on that. So it's like, it's kind of like either have a great brand philosophy or lean into a good story if you have one. But at the end of the day, make your customers, the protagonist. It's their story. And how does your brand enhance that story? It should not be coming out and being like, we are the best or we're better.

26:58It's how is this going to make your life different in a way that you value? Yeah.

27:04Nik:Do you have any good examples of that? Like either going from a bad founding story, you can even just make one up and then going into like a philosophy? Honestly, not off the top of my head. Actually, I believe Athletic Greens started with a founder story of an athlete who concocted, you know, a daily green powder mix that they were taking on a regular basis to supplement their nutrition. And they went through some amazing rebrand over the last few years. And obviously, they're killing it. They're expanding beyond just the green powder. They've got so many different competitors coming after them.