Why Brand Associations Outlast Trends

27:20What are the principles we can replicate that are proven that if you replicate them, will lead to the same outcome? And you've seen a couple of companies in the U.S. took on that evidence-based thought leadership as well. I've become a U.S. citizen earlier this year, so I can say we have lost this global leadership over the last 30 years. And it's interesting because my book covers a lot of the science. I would say half of it U.S.-based, half of it non-U.S.-based. And when I show that to U.S. academics, I get pushback. You know, it's like, oh, well, I'm not sure this study is really validated.

27:59It's like, well, it's definitely more validated than the ones you proposed, you know. So you feel like a sort of like pushback. So the U.S. has lost the strategic leadership of what effective marketing is. Um, and it's probably going to struggle to regain it, but, but that's okay with me. I want to know what works. I don't really care if, if I read it with an Australian accent or, you know, with a German accent or with an American accent, as long as we learn what makes marketing effective and so powerful. So who are some of these, uh, global marketing influencers, leaders that you respect and are following?

28:35Well, I think the most influential one is, um, an institute called the Ehrenberg Bass Institute based in Australia. And they have written a couple of books that are also 15 years old called How Brands Grow or How Brands Grow Too. And what those are, it's basically a compilation of evidence-based principles that work and don't work in marketing. And they've been embraced much earlier, as I said earlier, in the rest of the world and slowly find a footing here in the US because of large companies. They have like big sponsor, big companies like, you know, Procter & Gamble or Mars Corporation and stuff like that, that sponsor them and that bring over this knowledge.

29:15So those would serve, for example, be big thought leaders. Another one is Mark Ritson, marketing teacher, who is now an online MBA, mini MBA academy. But again, he leverages this knowledge from these external sources, so to say. And here in the US, you have a company called system one initially they uh they focused more on testing advertising before it gets launched but so many and they're very data-driven now and so many of their learnings correlate with the learnings i was able to summarize so on what makes effective communication is similar to what makes effective brand building you know things like relevance differentiation emotional resonance and stuff like that.

30:01So there's all this learning that is coming together, which I later said, the U.S., I'd like to think I still have a little edge because not everyone embraces this in the U.S. market, but I do. So it's probably going to give me a three-weeks edge over everyone else out there. Three-week edge. I'm going to run faster. I try. So another thing that I'd love to touch on is around customer journey mapping because you had a strong thought on customer journey mapping, which I definitely have talked about quite a bit on the show with different CMOs of how they think about it. And I think you said something like you thought it was overrated or people shouldn't do it as much as they do do it or tell me it in your words before I just put my own words in your mouth.

30:47So that's why you need to change my voice and put a little bar over my eyes. I think most of the customer journey surveys are a complete waste of time and money. very simply. And not because it's not important to understand what are the touch points and what they do, but in most cases, we look at them as a branch has 26 touch points, and we're going to look at all of them as if they're all equally relevant and important, from the branded soap dispenser in the bathroom to the stand at the convention, the yearly convention. And that is complete. So you waste your time learning all these things, gathering all this information, but it doesn't tell you what is going to help you build your business or convert a customer.

31:39And speaking of science-based, there's proof now that in any given market, 95 % of your customers are future buyers. And so let's say in every given market, only 5 % of all your customers are actually in the market to purchase you. 95 % of them are not. So when you develop a customer journey, who do you focus on? The 5%, the 95%, it becomes very complex. What I've learned is try to identify one or two touch points that are really, that have the potential to be really impactful and focus on those. And let me give you an example. In the book I write about, for example, There's this restaurant owner in New York who decided that he wants to separate himself from his competition through the experience he provides to his guests, to his patrons, and to surprise them.

32:35So what does he do is, let's say, if you know that Stephanie is having dinner here, his friend has a great time, but they also know that you're parked outside in the street and your park meter is about to run out. What they do is they send a waiter out with a few coins and put it in your park meter so you can stay longer. It has nothing to do with the restaurant. It has nothing to do with the food, but it has all to do with the experience. There's also science and research that shows us if you are able to surprise your customer in an unexpected way, do something for him that exceeds their expectations and that has a human touch, This is worth 55 brochures, 65 case studies, and a cool little video that speaks about the future.

33:20This experience makes the difference between he's going to remember you and think about you at the next moment of purchase, or he's going to get a competitor as an alternative offering. And it's so simple. And the more important technology or the more pervasive and invasive technology becomes, the more important these little things get. I have a friend of mine who has a company who measures, he calls them excitement moments, which is basically I ask you, think about a company that you had an interaction with that really excited you recently. And they capture all that information. And one thing that surprised them is one of the things that a lot of people mention is chatbots that have a human personality.

34:01So, you know, when you log in somewhere, you immediately have a little window that pops up and say, hi, my name is Uli, how can I help you? And most of them are purely transactional, are generic, are cold. If you build in a language here that is quirky, that is more human, maybe has a little bit of humor, basically that has a human touch and that surprises the user in that moment because it's unexpected. These are things people remember. And these are things that influence the way people think about a specific brand. It's just crazy. Again, not rocket science. it's the 101 of you know human behavior and how humans react to their environment their stimuli and the way we make them feel yeah yeah it's it's like novelty will always be a thing surprise and delight will always be a thing and i remember i was at a crab house and all you can eat crab house in maryland which is where i'm from and you know you spend a long time if you are having all you can eat crabs you will be there for many hours of course and i i had my uh four kids with me Actually, we had six kids.

35:04We had my sister's kids as well. So we had six kids who obviously do not want to stay somewhere for four hours. And the server could kind of tell they were getting antsy. So they went over to this little arcade area. Of course, didn't have money. We don't have coins. And the staff started giving them money so they could stay over there and play. And I remember just being like, I'm coming back. I'm a lifetime customer. Like just that one extra step to, you know, have my kids occupied and having a good time and literally giving them probably over$20. I was like, I'm a lifetime fan. Well, I'm sure they got it back and you're telling the story.

35:38And I'm sure you were surprised by this generous gesture. And yes, that's typically what it is. I did a project for a client of mine who was in the B2B world. They were catering to kitchens in colleges and universities. So their core target audience were chefs in colleges and university culinary environments. They had done this big customer journey analysis and had a big document that wasn't used. So the business unit leader reached out to me and said, can you help us make sense of this and turn that into something we can use in our business plan next year? Because they didn't know what to do with it.

36:15But that's what I mentioned earlier. These were the 27 touch points, very descriptive, very thoroughly analysis. But you're sitting there like, OK, so what do I do? So the way I approached this is I talked to, I think it was like 15 to 20 of these chefs in kitchens and asked them the typical question, what magazines do they read, et cetera, et cetera. But very quickly through the conversation, what came through was they didn't want a sales rep to call them and say, so Joe, this month you want like five gallons of milk, 12 gallons of butter. You know, I have another company here that I sell products for.

36:52Do you want maybe some, you know, sliced meat? so they didn't want this what they wanted they wanted sales people that were ex-chefs themselves because what does a chef do when they meet another chef is hey let me walk you through my kitchen let me show you how i've organized let me show you what my tools are and every chef i've ever encountered in my life is proud about their kitchen and he's proud about the tricks they use or the machinery they use and all these kind of things. And just imagine walking a sales rep for 15 minutes through your kitchen and talking, oh, and here we have our dairy products.

37:30And oh, what kind of do you have? And why do you use this type of water and this one? All of a sudden the conversation becomes expert to expert, chef to chef, not sales rep to customer. And so what came out of this research was simply do your due diligence with all the other touch points. Don't continue to do it. You need to be present. But replace your sales team and your sales agent by former chefs that are now salespeople and send them out. And that was one touch point, the interaction they had with the chef itself, surprising him, validating him, making him feel good about himself. Hey, you know, Chef Uli showed Chef Stephanie his kitchen and was able to brag and show off about all the cool things I do.

38:14memorable like nothing no other touch point and those are sort of like experiences that then lead to yes you're a bit more expensive but that's okay i'll find another way to to you know get a shortcut these are the memorable things so the recommendation was very simple increase the number of chefs you have that reach out to these potential customers and your business will grow automatically and that's exactly what they did and it grew yes and it grew consistently and And it's, well, then COVID kicked in. So that damped the whole thing a little bit, but it has still been growing since then as well.

38:47So, and that is one touch point that really mattered and the way you can change and make a memorable experience that makes the whole world of difference in the process. Yeah, I love the idea of simplifying and not getting caught up in way too many data points of just like, what is the one delightful memory surprise can you bring in and have that be mapped in their memory network? And yeah, I could also just see an easy way to be brainstorming these kind of experiences just by going in chat GBT and saying, okay, I want a very diverse idea that's outside my industry that no one would think about.

39:22And then the first 10, throw all those 10 out. Now give me, because everyone's already, you've probably told those to 10 other people. So now give me a brand new list of ideas and just try and like bring worlds together, like a everyday human world into, you could do it with anything, software or, you know, just very diverse spaces. That's exactly right. And by combining these seemingly disconnected sources, you come up with really new ideas, right? It's like the Cirque du Soleil did that, this big entertainment thing. They looked at the circus, not as a circus with elephants and clowns. They looked at it as an entertainment platform.

39:59So how do we make it the most entertaining possible? So, yes. And once you ask the right question, the answers becomes very simple in a sense. because you change the way you think about it, not what would be the most effective sales call and how do I get the most orders in the shortest period of time and just check through. No, so how can I make the guy feel validated, important in his work and recognize the value he provides? Very different mental approach and angle. Yeah. So how do you get into a creative space other than maybe using ChatGPT and AI, but how do you get into a creative space that does bring in very diverse ideas or just concepts that maybe other people wouldn't think about when it comes to these kind of moments?

40:45Well, I'm a big believer in creative problem solving. So creative problem solving is different than creativity. Creativity is we brainstorm to come up with crazy ideas and drink maybe some wine and come up with even crazy ideas. That's my method. That's how I came to first the trousers and the shoes, to be honest with you. But creative problem solving is really trying to find a novel solution to an existing problem. And there are techniques and exercises you can do to change the way your brain thinks. And you mentioned already one very simple one is most brainstorms are useless because the first ideas everyone will come up with is the baggage we have in our brain, is what we've just seen with the neighbor do, it's what we've just read about.

41:31So it's expected, predictable knowledge. But the name of a good ideation session is exactly what you describe, is get to those first 20, 30 ideas and then push yourself to go further. And these ideas that you come up that go further, those are going to be the really interesting ones, the really creative ones. And there are techniques to do that, right? When you understand that the brain is lazy and you need to divert the way the brain thinks, then you can unleash basically the potential very simple example so you obviously you can hear i'm german we germans like to be destructive or critical you know so we do a brainstorm how can we increase or improve your podcast stephanie we could sit there and say you know others do this or i just talked about the dude from the diary of a ceo maybe we should check out so we could do that Or we could reverse the question and say, how do we make your podcast the most horrible, the worst podcast in the world?

42:35And I bet you if you do that exercise with your team, in no time you're going to come up with 100 ideas on how to make it worse than the worst podcast that you can possibly imagine. Our destructive mind is way more powerful than our constructive minds. You know, kids like to build towers with little blocks, but then what is the first thing they do? Knock it over. They break it. Exactly. But then obviously when you have the long list of negatives, you then turn those back. Well, if we turn that negative into a positive, what does it actually mean? And so that's a way to distract your brain and get to a result as opposed to, okay, let's come up with 100 ideas on how to make the podcast better, which is going to be difficult and it's going to be predictable.

43:19So, and then dozens of these techniques that you can apply to get your brain to not think about better solve the problem, better solve the problem, which is the worst way for your brain to be creative. So, and I believe that the strategy, that's what strategy is, right? Is we all have the same data. We all smart. We all educated. We all can analyze data, but that means we'll all come to the same conclusions. unless I use specific techniques and tools or ask different questions that will allow me to look at the data but come up with a different answer. So that's why I'm a big fan of this. And it's not random.

43:59It's systematic. It's rigorous. There's a method behind it. And again, I didn't invent it. I wish I did, but just read it up. You can find easily 20 exercises like this destructive brainstorm that will need way more interesting ideas understand what we are you know what what we all know and what we all think works out there yeah i have never heard of the destructive uh method to be creative i mean yeah i'm like this is great i definitely want to do with my team now are there any other fast ones you can walk us through to show us like how to get to more creative interesting ideas well the germans have this saying which which doesn't really rhyme in english but it's basically to detach yourself from a problem or to solve a problem, you have to detach yourself from a problem.

44:47And in German, the words are the same. So it sounds like the same, but you know, a simple idea is like, how do we, I'm making something up here. How do we improve the overall guest experience in our retail environment? One thing you can start, you know, again, you come up with a list of generic expected things, but you can also look at, well, let's imagine we are an adventure park or someone organizing expeditions in the wild. What can we learn from this guy that we can apply to our retail experience? And at first you think that's stupid or that's crazy, but very quickly, it's way easier to come up with lots of ideas about this expedition organizer and then translate them back to what this means for you than it is to focus on the problem you use.

45:34So it's really to distract your brain, to focus on another exercise and then bring it back to your assignment itself. The way I look at it is the brain is either your puppet master or you control it, right? So if you don't do anything, the brain is going to say, oh, familiar. I want to stick with what I know. I want to stick with ideas I'm comfortable with. I'm not going to go anywhere. To get it out of this mode, you need to really distract. You cannot force it, obviously, but you need to distract and say, hey, let's talk about adventures. Let's talk about, you know, motorcycle riding in the desert.

46:08Oh, yes, these are maybe excited to talk about that. And then you bring it back to the prop. So it's a way to divert the way your brain functions and the way your brain thinks. Please do the negative brainstorm and tell them what you come up with. I'd love to. I guarantee you, you'll come up with a couple of surprising solutions. Yeah, I'm definitely going to do that. And it also makes sense about the focus on a different topic. I mean, I see that even when I focus on someone else's business and I'm like, Like, let me help. Let me show you what I would do. And then I come back to my own. I'm like, oh, these were some hot tips I gave to someone else.

46:41Let me bring them back to myself. These are good. That is exactly right. Yep. And that's just how our brain is wired. It's focused on familiar and consistency and preservation, not on adventure, getting out of your comfort zone, exploring new ideas. There's the myth of that, you know, that, yeah, we all want to be this. you know if we have the choice we'll be sitting on the couch watching the tv programs we we are familiar with and eating the chips we like most that's that's going to be our default way of of thinking or it can be if you're into gardening is i'll go in the garden and garden in the backyard that's that's my comfort zone my my my safe space where my brain wants to stay it's simple it's very simple yeah so earlier we were talking about the 95 of buyers who are not even in market and I mean you can tell me I think this is a newer stat over the past couple years that has been floating around I had never heard it until maybe a year or two ago so whoever did this study great job I'm sure it's been a fact for a long time though no not that no no not that long actually and that's one of these principles that came out of these Australian university oh it came from there it's came from there all right now we know that one's the top I don't know how, I think it's like a few years old.

47:59But yes, it's really this principle of at any given time, only 5%. And this is true in B2C, this is true in B2B, this is true in every category. The percentage might change. So it might be 7 % or 12 % versus 5%, but the proportion is the same. And the idea is really that at any given time, only a small percentage of your potential customers will be in the market to actually purchase. 95 % will not be, but a smart marketer needs both to capture this 5 % and help with the conversion. But at the same time, he needs to or she needs to market to this 95 % that will be in the market in the future. Kantar, this research company, calls this create brand predisposition so that I'm buying ketchup this week.

48:52So Heinz wants me to think about them this week. You'll probably still have two bottles in your cupboard and you're going to go in six weeks and think, oh, I need ketchup. But I need to talk to you as much as I need to talk to me as a customer to remind you, hey, don't forget there's Heinz ketchup in the future of your purchase list. And you need to do both. And the way you do each differs. And there's science, right? We have studies now that show that if you combine both approaches, the brand is going to be more successful. So I don't know, somehow these new principles love these fractions. So this is a 60-40 principle.

49:29And there's also validated with a lot of data, which basically says 60 % of your budget should focus on long-term brand building activities. And long-term brand building activities means impactful advertising, emotional advertising, things that stick, things that trigger your emotions. and 40 % should focus on short-term sales activation for your 5 % that posts, you know, speaks about we have 99 % of the germs or we, you know, spin faster than the competition. So those are then more rational sales argument that, you know, when you're standing in front of the shelf that either determine, oh yeah, I want the one that have two dogs, three kids, I need a bacteria killer.

50:14You know, so I'm going to get the hardcore cleaning product. So you need the balance of both. And again, 60-40 depends on the category. Some will have 20-80. But the successful formula is really to allocate a budget to long-term brand building, your future audience, and 40 % or whatever focus on activation and conversion of those. It's not short-term. It's the people that actually want to buy at a certain given moment in time. Yeah, it's I mean, it's so interesting talking to so many CMOs the past couple of years and just hearing how brand really got cut intensely, I'd say, over the past five.

50:54And now a lot of them are being expected to be showing up in these LLMs and have good GEO and SEO scores and they cut brand. And so it's pretty hard to have this, you know, this brand association if you haven't been out there and building it. And so, yeah, do you have any thoughts for like how to do this quickly? Well, quick, there is no shortcut. Or well, the most the shortcuts, most people are not willing to take because they're risky. Because if you think about communication is the more disruptive and provocative my advertising is going to be, the more stronger the impact will be. But go to your CEO and say, oh, yeah, we have, you know, camels racing with, I don't know, penguin for i don't know whatever making up here there's gonna say are you crazy i want you to talk about my product and you know how great we are in this guy so creative risk taking is one of the shortcuts and one great example out there is um liquid death the water when you look at the advertising it's completely off the norm it's completely outrageous probably hasn't much to do with water at all but that's a way to really gain what's called this mental level get people to think about you quickly.

52:09Unfortunately, it takes time to build. It takes years and a lot of investment to build. But one thing I've noticed with my clients is the mistake a lot of people do is they start to think about their strategy when their business is going down. So I've had maybe 60 % of my clients are smart enough to know, okay, we're growing, things are going well, but where are we going to be in five to ten years let's reach out let's develop a brand strategy to help us get there so you know sales are up money is flowing all these kind of things and that is the perfect time to develop a brand strategy because it costs a bit of money it takes time but then you have the clarity you need to grow for the next 10 years i also had clients who come to me and say our competitors is eating our lunch our business is down the drain our profits are eroding what can you do for me you know and often it's like well can't do much for you because i need at least a few months to to help you with your strategy you need to maybe invest a little bit to understand what is really going on so often when when someone comes and the business is going down is it's almost it's not too late i mean we can still help them but you're you're putting a band-aid on on scars you know you're not developing a fitness program that's going to keep them healthy for the next 10 years.

53:32So that's what I would say. If your business is healthy and you're growing, that's the time you need to invest or think about the future and how you want to continue to grow. After that, it's a little late. You'll always find consultants and people that say, we can help you with that. But if you go to your doctor and say, I have cancer, all he can do is treat the symptoms and try to alleviate it. If you go early enough and do cancer prevention, then the likelihood that you're going to live healthy in a long life is significantly increased. So it's a bit the same in business. Yeah, makes sense.

54:06So, I mean, when talking about budget cuts earlier, if, let's just say, a CFO comes in to some of the companies you're working with and they cut marketing by 20%, marketing brand, all of it, what brand association building line items do you protect at all costs? Like, which ones are you like, do not take these things away? Well, what I would do is, and I'm not sure we're still in the world of brand associations here, because I've noticed a lot of my clients, when you talk to them, and I'm sure you have the same, is there are some techniques and tactics that work extremely well at converting clients, at getting clients that no one speaks about.

54:45And for me, it's first identifying those. And sometimes when I do my stakeholder interviews, I ask them, so you have a budget of$20 million, so I'm going to cut all that and I'm going to give you half a million dollars. Where would you put that money? What is the one initiative you put that money in? and often what surfaces is the single most effective thing the company is doing and then i would say well can we amplify that can we make that bigger take all the resources and put your money there at least you know it's converting at least you get an roi on your investment until you stabilize a little bit and when you look outside the world of b &b is the examples like i don't know if you're familiar with the blender vitamix it's like a so what is the single most powerful conversion tool of Vitamix is a dude at Costco mixing vegetables.

55:39Doing this demonstration of how powerful this machine is, is out of all the initiatives that Vitamix does, the single one that converts the most. So my rationale would be, well, send out people that do demonstration at markets around town, other retail environments, etc. The same with Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson has the problem to convert what they call dreamers, which is 90 % of everyone out there says, one day I'm going to own a Harley. But Harley would like you to say, no, I want to go buy a Harley tomorrow. So their market is like 99.9 % dreamers and then 0.1 % buyers. What is the single most compelling conversion tool R.A.

56:26has is they have this metal stand that costs$5 ,000 where you put a motorcycle on. That basically allows you to ride the motorcycle, revit, change gears, accelerate, hear the sound, feel the vibration without the bike moving. So it's basically a safe way to experience what it's like to ride a bike. $5 ,000 a metal frame in which you lock in this bike. the single most successful way to convert someone to a Harley Davidson. My recommendation would be, well, buy 50 more of those or 200 more of those and go out there at conventions, gathering of bikers and stuff like that to do that. So that's what I would do.

57:07Try to find what is the single most effective tool that works for you and then try to see if you can amplify it. And often it's not marketing. It's not advertising. So no marketer really thinks about it because in a sense it's unsexy. It's like, yeah, buy 200 metal frames. It's like, well, that's your strategy, seriously. But that's what works. So that's what I would focus on. Yeah, that's good. And I do think, I mean, a theme that I've been hearing when it comes to marketers is that they really need to be good at the business. And so a lot of people who are even hiring CMOs right now, and they're coming to us, you know, asking like, who do you know and who do you work with?

57:48They are like, we want a business leader who has a specialty in marketing, but we really want them to understand the business. So in a way, I mean, I think at least the world that we're heading into, it is really like thinking holistically about the whole company, even if it's the one unsexy thing and not the big flashy Matthew McConaughey campaign. It's like, well, this thing is actually performing, so maybe we should do more. That is exactly right. And that's what we do. We're business builders. right is marketing or I look at strategy it's a tool to get there there is no such thing as the well I guess there is the convention of marketers but we don't serve any role but to help a business grow elsewhere completely useless and yeah that's exactly what we do and if that means let's not do the typical marketing thing because we don't have the resources or something else is more effective let's not do it to give you an example that happened to me a few years ago I worked for a pet food company and i cannot tell you which one but the competition was from pocket and gavel and they were kicking our butts and a small salesperson in a state far far west did a small radio promotion and what it did basically he took a radio dj he gave him uh the pet food and a radio dj that he knew had a dog, gave him the pet food, and then told him, why don't you observe these five signs of health on your pet over the next few weeks, and then report to that to your audience on your radio show.

59:19This company did research, did advertising, did sales promotion, and it couldn't gain market share against this P &G or this strong Procter & Gamble brands that were in the category. And yet in California, the brand was growing. The brand was increasing its market share. For two years, the corporate team, so headquarters, ignored this tactic and the power of this tactic. And eventually, they noticed, because as I said, California was just growing, or not even California, it was Southern California. That was the only place around the country this company was selling more and more and more and more pet food everywhere else they were struggling and it took headquarters two years to realize that why because it wasn't a tv campaign had nothing to do with the segmentation study that developed and the strategic positioning of the brand what do you mean give my pet food to a dj and have him talk to his audience about that that is your strategy like yes and that is a highly effective and highly powerful way to convince people so much so that they applied it nationally, regained share.

1:00:31And then two or three years later, I think P &G started to apply the same tactic in Canada to try to do the same. So it's unsexy, but trust me, I think the sales guy in California, in Southern California, I think he got a nice bonuses, a bunch of bonuses over the last few years. So another typical example. Yeah, I love these examples. I mean, it's, like I said, it's just a very good reminder to just look at the one thing or just zero in on like less variables, which I know is hard because the world we're in now with so much data. And I mean, all these companies I talked to, they're just ingesting and wanting more and more and more.

1:01:13And so I can see why it's hard to do that. But simplicity, like especially in the space where we're in now feels very good. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the most difficult, right, when you have a gazillion data points is focus on identify what is the single most important thing and discard everything else. And that is true for strategy, framework, strategic decision, everything out there. It doesn't sound exciting, right? It's like, well, make sure your message is relevant, stands out and emotionally resonant. I was like, but getting there, doing that is extremely difficult. Having the rigor to do that and then stick to it is extremely difficult.

1:01:52So, you know, we're talking a lot about evidence-based marketing and the rise of evidence-based marketing. And I'm just wondering, like, why is America falling behind? Like, what's the noise happening that's preventing us from, you know, staying on top of this? I think from my perspective, it's a couple of things. is one is as well as it's out, but the rise of the internet and social media. And all of a sudden we have access to all this data and all these data points. And we can measure, you know, did you use your left index finger or your right index finger to click on this ad? I mean, literally the amount of data we have at our disposal.

1:02:29But this distracted us and made us, made the marketing discipline become more and more transactional. I mentioned earlier this training session I did for this brewing company. The CEO reached out to me because he said, my team, young team, smart people, bright people, really wanting to do the right thing. So nothing about the quality of the people haven't learned the basics of marketing, the basic principles of what works and what doesn't work. So things like they wouldn't know what a net promoter score is, or it's basically saying like, and you can argue, is a net promoter score good or bad? At least if you're in marketing, you should know what it is.

1:03:07You should know what a brand positioning is, those fundamentals. So I think this trend towards technology and then social media has depleted the importance of strategic marketing. And I think we're now slowly coming back and understanding that, oh, you know what? No, you need a strategy. Even if you want a social media campaign, you need a strategy behind that. and all the strategy, by the way, follows the same principles as any marketing strategy out there. So I think that is one thing. And it's a pity because a lot of young marketeers haven't learned those basics and have learned to evolve with that knowledge.

1:03:48And I think the second thing, and again, that's one of the unpopular opinions here in the US, is what I call belief-based or value-based branding. it's one thing i've noticed and i'm not sure exactly why that is is more and more people come to work projecting their own belief system and value system on the brands they're working on and this can be anything if you move into identity politics is i want all my strategies to be about diversity or inclusion it's like well you're selling toilet paper i'm not sure how that's going to work or how that's going to be irrelevant. But you see this desire.

1:04:31People want to have a bigger impact in the world that is aligned with their belief system. And same with ESG claims, right? Eco-friendly claims and stuff like that. And project this value system onto the strategies they developed, as opposed to ask the question is, what is the real problem I'm trying to solve? It's not that they don't believe what I believe. It's, you know, they think it's not going to do the job as well as another brand might do. So there's this replacement of, I project my own value system and belief system on the work I do because I want an impact in, I want a bigger impact out there.

1:05:11And that's when you have these catastrophes like Bud Light, like a couple of years ago, you know, I want to be more about inclusion. What they forgot about is that this was the biggest brand in the US with a really loyal core of users that all of a sudden felt rejected. And every marketer knows that, you know, don't neglect your current user base, make sure that the new strategy is aligned with what they think, even if it involves the way they need to think about your brand, but don't just ignore them and focus on what you want to do, because it's the noble thing to do, or it's the, you know, the the higher purpose thing to do so i think these two things is uh for me what distracted almost from evidence and the interesting thing is when i work you know a few years ago brand purpose was the big thing right and the interesting thing is when i talk to my u.s clients like oh everyone is about brand purpose when i talk to my european clients they're like what the f are you talking about we want you know uh increase the value of our company we want to increase our business Don't talk to me about purpose.

1:06:18Yes, we are running a business here, not doing anything else. So we see a big contrast again, in this case, between Europe and the United States. And I think these two distracted us from doing what actually works. And I think now we are in a stage where we realize, well, technology is not the solution to or technology only works if it's based on sound marketing strategies and value-based branding doesn't work anymore or doesn't work at all and we need to you know we wasted so much money on trying to do that now we need to go back to what actually works i think evidence-based marketing is slowly coming back in the awareness of marketers here in the u.s at least i hope so because that's where i'm betting my future on is evidence-based principles yeah yeah i mean the one thought i just had and maybe it's yeah maybe it goes against kind of this thinking but if let's just say Europe and Australia have better evidence-based marketing thoughts and tactics, but then, and this is where I might get in trouble, then they don't have many companies coming out that are big revenue drivers.

1:07:29It's like America has that. So how do you think about that? And that's a great point. And to make it even worse, Stephanie, is when I see a lot of strategists in Europe buy the BS from the US. So, you know, all of a sudden it's like everyone in Europe, strategists, not business people, strategists working in agencies. It's all about purpose-building initiatives or it's all about cultural branding. So this philosophy is brought to European strategists and makes the situation even worse. I think what the saving grace is, The good thing is you still have pretty big markets in Europe when you look at Germany and success stories there.

1:08:10And American business people are not stupid. They want to succeed. They want to build their businesses. So if they got distracted for a while and realized, well, that didn't work. So, oh, looks like this thing coming from abroad seems to be working. As I said, this Australian university has a lot of corporate sponsors from the United States that take over these principles and that experiment with this principle. and oh, look at that, they actually succeed applying this principle. And then everyone is like, oh, what is Proctor doing? What is Mars doing? What is Unilever doing? Oh, they're applying this principle.

1:08:43So maybe you should start to apply them as well. So it's sort of like this weird exchange of beliefs and information on what to focus on and when to focus on it, so to say. So it's really bizarre. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Love it. All right. We are going to move on to a lightning round. This is where I send a question your way. You have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Uli? I am. Okay. First up, what's the most overrated marketing metric that marketing teams should stop obsessing with? Brand awareness. Brand awareness. Wait, this goes against, I think, what you've been telling us. Hold on.

1:09:21Tell me more. Let me qualify this. Brand awareness and instead replace it with brand salience or what's called mental availability. And what I mean with that is it's way more effective for me to learn. Let's say if I ask you, Stephanie, mention to me any airline company out there. I don't know if I think maybe United Airlines. That's right. Southwest. Now, if I say, Stephanie, think about an airline. You would think about booking if you plan a trip to Mexico, which I put you mentally in a purchase environment. And then you're not going to say United Airlines. and then you're probably going to say Southwest or Spirit or whatever the Southern.

1:10:05That is the difference between salience, which is the brand you think about at a moment of purchase, and brand awareness, which is the brand you've heard about because your neighbor is working there. So that's what I mean with that. So the metric is important, but the right one is important. Awareness per se doesn't tell you anything. Salience or mental availability tells you a lot. Wow. Man. That's it. Okay. This is good. We should have hit on this one earlier. I mean, because now I'm thinking about how do you build brand salience? I mean, I see a lot of companies doing a great job building a lot of awareness.

1:10:42They're doing the Super Bowl ads and they're doing all of that. But when thinking about a specific purchase, yeah, now I'm wondering, like, how do you actually build that up? Can I close the loop for you? Yes. You do that by building strong brand association networks, by building strong memory associations with your offering that will automatically come back to mind when you think about that specific situation. That's the power of brand associations and memory structures. If I communicate to you, hey, Southwest goes from Wyo Austin to Mexico, and that's the part you remember, that is a memory I've created that is going to make you think about Southwest when you think about booking a trip to Mexico.

1:11:29That is what these association networks are and do basically. The faster a brand comes to mind with the relevant associations, the bigger its market share in the market. They're literally correlation between the two. It's just mind-blowing. So I'm glad you asked. Brand association networks. Okay, I love this. It also makes me think about looking into what is that person doing beforehand the purchase, like before they make the purchase, after the purchase, where are they going to be? And it seems like there could be a lot of personalized strategies depending on what you want to be associated with or where that person's located or where that flight's going or, you know, so.

1:12:08Absolutely right. and that's why you want to focus on things like you know coming back to southwest the brilliant thing about them is they have two core association they had two core association value airline so cheap airline low cost but there are a lot of low cost airlines there as well but it's a relevant benefit because you want to save money when you buy your airplane ticket the second one which i thought was brilliant was quirky personality quirky personality in the safety announcement and you remember there were like videos circulating around about the flight intent and making this quirky.

1:12:39What does this do? It creates difference. Oh, that's the funny guys. That's the quirky brand. And it creates an emotional response from your audience that strengthens all the memories you have about that brand. So you can even do it for an airline that is a low-budget airline to create this strong memory association. So when you think low-cost carrier, the likelihood that southwest will come to mind is very high unless you live in minneapolis like me and you think about trip down south you have an airline here which is called some country which i think is based here which is bombarding the minnesotan market with offers and and vacation deals so when i think about flying to the south i think about some country that's So the difference, again, between salience and brand awareness.

1:13:34Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. The first person ever to shift me out of the lightning round. Now I'm pulling myself back. No, this is good. I was like, I can't move on from that one. Okay. What is a favorite book or two? And it could be a marketing book, but also not a marketing book, something that's outside of marketing. So one book I really love, and it's one of the global bestsellers, I think, is a book called Persuasion by a gentleman called Robert Cialdini or Cialdini, however you pronounce it. And what I like about it, he explains how human beings are being influenced, but not necessarily in the context of marketing, just as we take us as human beings.

1:14:19That's for me one of the most useful books I've ever read in my life. And the other one is as well is a really old book and people are going to laugh about this but it's a book called how to win friends and influence people great one yes and it's for me it's like it was written about 80 years or so ago but it has so many numbers of wisdom in there so i have this bad idea you probably noticed that i mentioned your name a couple of times during the podcast to build rapport with you where does it come from you know how to win friends and influence people people like to hear their own name so yeah it's great every time i'm like yeah i'm awesome that's good stuck with you yeah i love it what is a uh a hobby or something that you do that most people don't know you do so one activity is um i ride motorcycles and not a big harley but a adventure bike and i have three children i run my own business i have a wife that i love i have two dogs.

1:15:22I have all these constraints. So jumping on the motorcycle and riding, and it's not riding to the grocery store. It's like minimum six hours until your butt really hurts. I like this long distance ride. So I try once or twice a year to take a weekend for myself and ride, I don't know, 1 ,000, 1 ,500 miles or something like that. So that's number one. The second thing is I'm obsessed with global expedition vehicles. And what I mean with that is there are these trucks converted into off-road camper vans, basically. They're just like a million dollar, way out of my budget. But there are so many videos on YouTube about either people going on an adventure with them or description videos.

1:16:07So that's what I said in front of the computer and tried to procrastinate. That's the first go-to place, global expedition vehicles that I go to. I love that. I actually just recently saw one of those and I'm like, I don't even know what I'd use it for, but I definitely want it. I have exactly the same. I try to think pragmatically. So I'm the person when I think about something, I go into the details of ownership and how often would I wash it and where in my garage would I park it? And I realize I have no functional need at all for a vehicle like that. Not in my current situation, but it's a must-have, yes.

1:16:41except for the fact that I don't have the budget. You're just in the 95 % right now. It's fine. That's right. You'll move into the 5 % eventually. That is so true. Okay. The last one, who is a business leader or just someone that you follow that you really look up to and respect? There are clients of mine that I've known for 20, 25 years that I highly respect and really look up to. And a couple of them were kind enough to also endorse my book. I don't know if I can mention them because if I mention them, those I don't mention will get upset. But let me put it this way. One is a CEO of said brewery I mentioned earlier, but I think he switched job now.

1:17:25And the reason is he's like me, a cancer. He's basically the same age as I am literally to the day. And he's very tough, demanding, but also very fair and data-driven. So he asks a lot of you. So you need your A game when you interact with him, but he's also receptive to ideas that don't come from him. So if you have a counter argument or a better proposition, he'll listen to it and he has the confidence to accept it. But he puts you at a level where you're like, okay, better don't mess up any single step in the whole presentation because that's going to come behind me and come back to me. So that's one, but a brilliant mind.

1:18:06And the other one is similar to the first one, but what he has, he's Argentinian, has worked in the United States for a very, very long time. And he has this Latin warmth when interacting with people. So strategic brilliance with Latin warmth, that is something I would fall in love with every single time because you feel welcome, you feel embraced, but you also feel challenged. And you know, again, you need to be at the top of your game. So in other words, I admire this sort of like strategic sharpness. They know what they want. It's demanding. It forces you to step up a lot. but then also this latin wolf that makes you feel welcome and you know makes you want to have a after he beats you up in a meeting makes you want to have an espresso with him or a caipirinha or something like that and go to a latin bar and hang out there for a few hours so not so much a celebrity but yeah an archetype to put it this way yeah i love it all right well uli this was awesome thank you so much for coming on marketing trends having fun with me sharing all your wisdom where can our listeners and our viewers find out more about you and your book and what you're up to?

1:19:21Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me. I got a blast. Really, really a great interviewer. Let me say Stephanie, they're recording the report. Thank you. And you can find me on LinkedIn or first the trousers. So first-the-trousers.com. But you can also just type Uli Appelbaum in Google and I should pop up pretty much everywhere as well. So fairly easy. Amazing. But reach out when your brand is growing and successful, not when you are in front of the precipice about to close shop. There you have it. That's always more challenging. Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much, and we'll talk again soon.

1:20:01Sounds great. Thank you.