Sell More w/ Authentic Branding - Howard Lim

0:00Welcome to The Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest, Howard Lim, proves it's actually about billion-dollar positioning. With 37 years of experience behind campaigns like Disney's Lion King on Broadway and the LA Marathon rebrand, Howard has cracked the code on what separates million-dollar brands from billion-dollar empires. The show starts now. All right, welcome back to the show. Today, we're with Howard, and we're talking about branding and so many other different things. Thank you so much for being on the show. Absolutely. Pleasure being here.

0:29So tell the audience a little bit more about you. I know you've got some amazing stuff. We were talking about this off camera, about all the campaigns that you've done and all the branding you've done. Tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you're an expert. Sure. I've been doing what I've been doing, but it's evolved quite a bit over the last 37 years. And pretty much everybody's been affected by one of the things I branded or positioned or built over the last years. Like, for example, I helped position Lion King, you know, the Broadway show for Disney to their investors. And now I think it's made over$9 billion.

1:03The UCSB access card, which became the standard for all campuses now. I think, if I'm not mistaken, it's about$20 billion annually across all campuses around the globe. And then the rebranding LA Marathon, which we had a startup participation. Now they're using that format for all LA Marathons, and that drives a lot of revenue as well. I'm very much about when it comes to branding ROI. It's all about ROI. So how did you get into this? How did you discover that you had this gift and that branding really was your thing? Really, quite honestly, it's going to sound kind of weird, but when I was five years old, the first time I ever finger painted, filling the paint.

1:44And back then it was like powder and mixing it with water. I just remember putting my fingers on the paper and I felt it was so magical that I was able to create wherever I chose to, whatever my imagination allowed me to do. And when I was in grade school through junior high through high school, the students noticed, excuse me, the teachers noticed that I was really into design art. So I'd be always taken to the side and given special projects. And I had a chance to go to, I think, two of the best schools in the world, Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo. and I majored in applied art design before design became even a major and studied packaging, photography, design, illustration, and the list went on.

2:28And then after I finished my degree there, I went to art center school in Pasadena. And that's like where the model Audi TT came from, Volkswagen, some of the greatest movies you've ever seen. So I really wanted to go to that school and they had the first Macintosh lab in the world and I figured out how to get things out of the computer. And that's where it really hit me hard. I was like, well, let me just do this for other companies, show them what's possible to get really creative. And fortunately, Fortune 500 companies understood what I was doing. So I started working representing like Apple, Xerox, and DreamWorks and started to show them what was possible.

3:06And lo and behold, by working with big brands, such as Fortune 100 companies, I started to learn what it really took to build a brand because brand is not taught in school. And so it really hit me that it was like, well, okay, what is the makeup of branding? The essence of branding, but honestly, if you really look at it, it's one design which has to do with engaging and designing things that are aesthetically pleasing to engage the consumer and hit their emotions. And then advertising, which is all about positioning. And so when I was growing up, it's like, okay, my brother was in advertising and he says, you have to choose between design and advertising.

3:47I said, why can't I do both? And that's kind of evolved to the branding as we know today. Now it's built with more layers, but that's the essence. So you talk a lot about how there's a difference in branding and that you've learned it and it started with fingerprinting and it all, and ended up with DreamWorks and all that, which is just wild that you go from that. What are some of the major mistakes that people do when they do branding? I mean, other than having to rename their podcast in the middle of the season so a lot of times quite honestly so there's two what i found are two ways to build a brand from the hip or by design right what's happening is that most people are doing it from the hip without understanding to different um you could say the different principles behind branding um and how could they know it because it has to do with a lot of school and like i mentioned design and advertising and so forth and so on that has to do with layerings of understanding and knowledge.

4:42So most people, and the other thing too, is that they're thinking that they confuse branding and the same with marketing. And they're totally two different animals. Walk me through that. How do you differentiate marketing versus branding? Because I think for most people who have done this, who have scaled, we get it. But some people would be like, wait, what? There's a difference between branding and marketing? I just thought branding was underneath marketing and it's not. How do you describe the difference between the two? so branding is about the long-term position of a company to build its equity to build its position in the market and to be understood based on like say some of the core principles like well what's your philosophy that's part of branding what are the values of the company what is position who's target market it's a little bit about marketing definitely but it's more about how do you want to get known in the mind of the consumer because a big part of branding is not what you're saying is what everyone else is saying about you the question is how do you get everyone to say who you are the first thing establish who you are and what you do the second part of this equation now now is using marketing as a like i say like a megaphone to broadcast who you are through the different channels whether online and offline i think one of the things that people never talk about is brand equity.

6:01The idea, and I'm stealing this, this is completely your example, where you sit there and say, hey, I'm going to take a warehouse that's full of Nike shoes, and I'm going to give you all the Nike shoes. They're yours, but you don't get to have the name. How valuable are their shoes? And I think that's the difference between brand equity and people just don't understand that in any way, shape, or form. They're so focused on how do I just eat? How do I pay the bills? How do I pay my employees versus how do I build something that can become a DreamWorks? How do I build something that can be this multi-million or billion dollar thing that you've been involved in.

6:29So one of the things you were also talking about is there's different people inside branding. There's different people that you hire and there's different environments. And most people just, I don't think understand that. I think like, oh, I'm just going to hire a guy for five minutes and my brand's done and I'm good to go. And I never have to reevaluate it again. It's completely wrong. Walk me through that as we go into those things. Yeah. So what's happening too, is like a lot of people, they use branding, don't do branding. It's so funny because the popularity of branding really happened about 12 years ago.

6:58I've been doing it way back, like over 30 plus years. The point being is this, is that it became more popular through like Tang magazines, Forbes magazines, Money magazine. Everyone's like to talk about branding, right? But then the next day, everyone says they're doing branding. And so there's a lot of confusion out there. So what happens is that a lot of people are not doing. In fact, quite honestly, out of all the hundreds of people I've met over the years that say do branding two people actually yeah it's a very complex world it is complex world so going back to your question there's different differentiations between different experts of branding basically there's three major camps so there's a camp as far as strategists the strategists are looking at the long-term play and i say that where do i look at is i design from your future and bring it into the now present so it's really thinking way down the road it's like here's my business model it's like someone comes to us and goes here's our business model okay how can we make it so you can maximize its value and quite honestly what is going to be the cycle of that life of that product service or information there's a lot of deep thinking that goes into it it's like well you have to answer like well what's your overall philosophy we starting off with not about even making money but starting off with what is to make you distinct and different from everybody else and what would yield adaptability and by the way what markets do you want to actually be able to be delivered in and what industry so there's a lot of like yeah it's like it's kind of like this you know you want to build a city you try to start off with the blueprint right you just don't start building piecemealing things together otherwise you'll have a pretty dysfunctional city.

8:45I think you talked about before, you know, people, it's some people do branding right off the hip versus planning it out. And it sounds like the difference between the people who have spent the time to scale and build, which are totally different things. Um, when they're going to do this, the difference from becoming a multimillion dollar business versus a billion dollar business all comes down to branding. And if they don't put the time in now, if they don't spend the X amount of days and ask specific questions, and I guess, you know, you talk about there's there's multiple versions of this we're talking about the strategist but remind me before we get too far away i want to tell the audience like the top five questions or 10 questions they should be asking so at the end of that after we go through the different ones let's definitely go into that and say hey these are the things that you should be asking because most people don't understand and if you're not watching the video of this howard did a really good job where he talks about and all these people that he's met this entire time he only met two people that were actually branders and i don't think most people ever come across people who are actually branders in that case.

9:39Because if you're doing this for 37 years and you come across two, the chances of people like me running across people like you were pretty darn rare. So if we've got the branding strategist, which we understand that, what is the next person? What is the next step in this? So the next part after the strategy to figure out who you are, what makes you neat, what makes you different from everybody else, then the next part is execution, which I call implementation. So it's now what I call you have your DNA, is now or you could say even your ingredients to let's say a beautiful cake or meal it's now making that meal it's now making that cake with those ingredients and that's where it takes like for example to be a strategist it in my book it takes about 10 years to master becoming a brand strategist it there's so many there's so it's like a whole different language in itself where you start to understand it like what's the brand architecture of your business who's going to be the ambassador to your brand.

10:35There's so many components to that, right? Then there's the execution, which is now let's build it. Okay, so you got the blueprint. Let's stick with the analogy of a city. You now have the blueprint. It's like, well, let's start figuring out the roadways. After we figure out the roadways, let's figure out the residential areas, let's figure out the commercial areas. Let's figure out how everything is to work around the water, electricity, right? And so now it's building it, okay? So the building part of it, there's, in my book, there's like five major components to it so branding memory is about not what you're saying it's what everyone else is saying about you the question becomes how are you going to influence them and getting back to that brand equity what's in the mouth help them become familiar with your brand with the face the brand so i call it the brand icon the brand icon is a name in a company it's the mark like a nike swoosh it's the font that you use like um apple is very clear what font.

11:29It's the color that you use. For example, Pepsi owns red and excuse me, Coca-Cola owns red, Pepsi owns blue. So these are the things that really, um, in a font that you use to the tagline as well. These five elements are what start to build the face to brand. Now, is that branding the logo for example? No, that isn't, that's 5 % to a brand identity. That's 5 % to a brand identity. okay now you're talking about okay that's the face to the company think of it like a brand like a person now it's the personality okay it's when you when you look at big brands think about this like commercials you got the main hand guy for all state you got flow for progressive you got the geico lizard for geico those are all personality the brands now why do people why do big brands do that is because they want to make it personalized and they want to be relatable to their target market right that's part of the design need in the strategy to figure out what kind of personality should we create for a brand and what are the associations with that personality so when you write the copy for a website or let's say commercial now you're going to have some consistency between how you're actually projecting that brand the storytelling the tone voice so what happens when people do it on their own and don't understand it it's called a simple fact i call it the simple effect would have all these different personalities out there of their brand guess what no one knows who you are right you're actually diluting your brand before you even started i never sat down even with everything that i've done never said okay what's the personality of our org what is it what is the personality and how are we coming across this and just while you were talking i was going through a couple companies that i've worked with and i was like oops so you know the idea that i'm like we never had this and we did great we had we exited we had a great multipliers we've never sat down and looked at our sales copy.

13:21We never looked at our website. We've never looked at our posts. We never looked at anything that said, okay, what is our personality that we're trying to come across? It was more about, can we get looks and views and can we get virality? Can we get, you know, is it going to close it? What is it going to do for the ROI? What is our upcoming sale versus, um, and it's interesting because when it comes to, cause you gave the insurance ones, there are specific ones I will not buy from because of the personality that he chose. I'm like, that does not resonate with me. I'm not going to do that. And it was one of those things that's completely subconscious that I didn't understand in any way, shape, or form.

13:55So when someone's trying to design this personality, I'm going to completely go here because this is fun. How do you find that balance? How do you find a situation where you might have gone too far down the road with one? Like for, you know, simple example, there's a very specific personality for political parties right now. And it just, it is what it is. is a personality. We get it. I'm not going to bash one side or the other. I'm going to leave it alone. There's not a political show. But I talk about this all the time that people don't buy products and stories. They buy, I'm sorry, products or services.

14:25They make story identities and ways out of pain. I'm going to have to add to that they buy personalities. Because if I told you and I asked you, hey, here's a guy who's got a four by four truck. Who did you vote for? Here's a person who drives a Fiat. Who would they vote for? Here's a person with a Louis Vuitton bag. Who's a person with a Whole Foods bag? You know who they're voting for. So I've always used these examples, but I've never understood it as a personality. So that's huge for me. When you're designing that personality, how do you design it in a way that you're not going to isolate?

14:55Right. And it's a huge chunk of the audience. Right, right, right. So it's a lot of it figuring out the persona of your ideal customer. You can't be all things to all people, right? Because that becomes a waste of marketing as well. Seeing that over and over and over and over and over again. So really, it's really what's called, and this goes back to when I was doing a lot of work in adding C's back in the 80s and 90s, which is still, it's now coming out. It's kind of like the trade secret of how good ads become very powerful ads. It's called mood boards. So you create the mood board to figure out your ideal customer and you're figuring out, well, what would it wear?

15:38What would it shop? You know, who is this character? Is it female? Is it male? Is it actually neutral? Okay. What's its age? And so you're really building in, quote unquote, in this dialogue is how its emotions will be and what its lifestyle is. Okay. Is it urban? Is it suburban? Is it a farmer? Right. No, absolutely. And it works. So how do you make sure you're not alienating? You make sure then you're figuring out that you actually have a brand that actually could maybe float between 25 and 50. Or let's say, why don't we get down to teenager, but also appeal to the elder. So this is where you actually think very creatively what kind of different campaigns could be created.

16:28Like what's the core? And in front of that core, what could be offshoot? like like what i always get with clients is i said okay what's going to be our core message i mean it takes about two hours to get down to the core message right the point being is when that core message doesn't even have different offshoots to appeal to those different market plays based on what channel they're at like are they on youtube are they reading a newspaper okay so because we got four different now we got the four biggest buying power the fourth one's starting to pick up the Z generation. But the point being is that you got to really understand the psychology of your buyers to figure out what would be the right persona for the personality to be relatable.

17:09And the reason why we buy from emotions. A hundred percent. It sounds like you're building, not only are you trying to identify your target market, but it's about who does the target market want to have lunch with? Who would the target market invite to their house? That's who you're building because it's basically completely off emotions. And it's something that I've never heard of before. Again, you've only met two of these in the world. I've never heard anyone describe it. I've always heard, you know, build rapport, get emotions, you know, avoid, you know, identify their pain, you know, find their watering hole.

17:39All of those things I've heard a million times. I've never heard anyone say it's about personality. What is your personality of your brand? Absolutely game changing. So going back, okay, so we've got strategist, we've got the implementer, we've got, you know, we've got the blueprint of the city. Okay, now who's going to build the day? What's our next step? What do we, how do we go from there after that? Okay, so when I always got like, when we were rebuilding WSS, for example, in 2010 in the recession, but a company that was not doing well at all, what we had to do is do a re-launch. And so we came up with a strategy.

18:14I worked with literally seven or VPs to actually come up with solutions to all of them. But the biggest thing was to come from the standpoint that we're all on the same page. Like everybody, because they had their in-house branding, marketing, advertising. And I also worked with the CFO and CEO, but everybody was moving in their own different directions. And I call that the silo effect. So the first thing was getting everybody were on the same singing sheet. And that's why that, what we call a master blueprint is so imperative to make sure everyone's clear where we're heading and how we're all been moved there.

18:48Cause it's everybody's business when it comes to building the brand. Okay. So I know this is going to come as a surprise, but you're telling me that when you go to scale a business that people don't talk to each other and inside the organization they're actually not each other's friends no all right so yeah surprise adobe all the time the biggest problem the organization is not the fact you're trying to get customers it's just internal your culture is broken and when you're doing this they're just completely the cfo hates the cio and the marketing person exactly hate each other it's the biggest problem you got to unify your culture when you run into this you've done this at pretty high level you know you've done this for billion companies.

19:25I'm completely taking us off course here, but what are some of the ways that you unified? What are some of the ways when you come in and you're like, Hey guys, I get it. Marketing thinks branding is garbage. Branding hates it. It hates fulfillment. How have you found a way when you come in and you help out these huge organizations, which is what you do? How do you say, okay guys, we all need to play nice to each other. Cause we don't like to eat in two months. How do you do that? What are some of the tips and trades that you do? So that's a great question. So I always start with the philosophy.

19:54And I always work with the spearhead, the founder, the CEO, or it could be the president or a combination, right? But whoever is in charge, okay? I get to understand who they are. And what's funny is that employees, like with companies that have been around for decades, even like generations, you could say the management positions finally get to understand who he or she is and how they think. So I always start with the very top to get the understanding what's in their head and questions that's never been asked before. So then we could actually start to figure out, well, what are we looking at, first of all, as a business and where we're heading?

20:37So I always start with the philosophy. And I have this very deep question that I ask this, quote unquote, the leader, you could say. And once those questions are answered, I form this statement. And that statement should not be more than two sentences long. any longer than that becomes not memorable for anybody okay and it's not a glossy paragraph right so what are the questions that you ask the founder what is the one that you walk in what are like the top two or three that you're like hey i need to figure out what you're the spearhead how do we find alignment here what do you normally at sure so one of the questions could be like if you're facing the you're facing the more horrific challenges with your business what values are so inherent your company would cease to exist?

21:25Gotcha. I can tell you most C-levels, because that's my world, I interact with the C-guys, I would say majority of them would have no clue how to answer that question immediately right up the hip. They would have to sit down and form that together because they've never thought about it. One of the things that I love talking to you about, Howard, is the fact that you're asking questions and you're bringing it from point of view, because you've been doing this for 37 years, that even as someone who I've done scaling and I've done exits, never asked these questions. Never even thought of asking these questions.

21:56So it's absolutely right. Okay. So that's one, you got another one for me? Cause I'm just stealing information. This is great. Yeah. So now I want to be like, um, what, what legacy do you want to leave behind? Legacy is huge. Yeah. What legacy do you want to leave behind and why? you know why is the big part on that one and so i you know you're right and a lot of times the ceo um um they've been asked this question so of course i help coach them through it what happens is though is that they start to see a bigger picture than they ever thought was possible the reason why i do this by the way is it's kind of like reverse working and in it's talking to over a hundred thousand business owners because i speak all over the world The point being is this, as I look at the common denomination and looking at patterns, and I realize that most companies only reach 25 % of their potential.

22:48So I want to create a model so they can reach their full potential, 90 plus. And so with these deeper questions, it allowed us to tap into what's the opportunity of really creating something with a huge or bigger ROI, but also deeper penetration in the marketplace. And actually having it where we're going to do more good for all stakeholders. So there's a reason why I start figuring out what is the questions that are not being asked that could actually create a company where it's a hell of a lot more sustainable, a hell of a lot more scalable, and actually a place that really people want to work with or work for.

23:22So that's why I went with this quote unquote strategy of going with deeper questions is so the client would actually end it with something with that deeper potential of a bigger business. Okay, if they chose that for themselves or to exit faster for that matter too. So it sounds like, you know, doing these things, you mentioned it earlier, that some of the stuff you did in the 80s and 90s, which no one was alive back then. No, it was so far ago. Some of the stuff you did back then is still reaping fruit now. Something 30, 40 years later, these companies are like, hey, we're still implementing it.

23:53And this is the value of branding, not marketing, about building this and sitting down and answering these deep questions. One of the things you told me about that you do is you work with, you know, yes, you speak go over the world and you've spoken to all these people, but you work with individuals and you, you really do a brand analysis for them. What does that sound like? Cause most people haven't ever done that. They'll just say, Hey, I need a brand. Okay. Give me a logo, which you already mentioned is like 2 % to 5 % of who you are. Right. Most people have never sat down with someone who is a brander.

24:19So if they're walking in and they're like, Hey, I'm going to work with Howard on how to do this. Cause I want to say a brander, but I don't know any other brander. So Howard, what are they going to be doing? What is that experience like for them? So no matter, and you're right, I work all the way down to solopreneurs, like literally. It's not for me the size of companies. It's more about the difference that they're making. And so my job for me is really is so honestly, so I look at this place, at this globe that we are on, and I look at it from a standpoint, how can you actually make it better?

24:58And so it's made up of all these different personalities and different individuals. so what i look at is like when i work with someone i always look at um are they operating of integrity do you want to make a difference are they coachable and do they want to have fun on the way i wish people would answer the third one are they coachable good god you know i always talk about it's not about this i don't care about the size of you it's a question that's going to scale you i've said this for years and years and years the coachable no holy moses i tell customers as well. It's like, okay, do they want your product?

25:34Can they afford your product? Will they buy your product? And then the last one being the most important, do you want to work with them? And people always forget the last one. So even when you're trying to coach people on scale, are they coachable? And that's a hard ball game. So when someone comes in, let's say they, they created a podcast name and it sucked and they have to change it on the fly. What are they going to be expecting to walk into? What are some of the questions? What does that environment look like? What should they prepare before they show up to have this conversation with you?

26:03So what I always start off with, no matter who they are, what size, what industry, or B2B, B2C, or B2G, which is business of government, I always start off with an assessment. An assessment. And I do it online. That allows me to work here and work with anybody. And so what I do is I ask them to turn in their logo, which we could talk about the difference between a logo and a brand mark, but let's say the logo they turn in their website they're turning brochure they do have a product their product their packaging even storefronts because i did a lot of design storefronts or billboards or radio spots tv spots their social media and what i do is i will look and critique it in a way to take it from good to great and it's it's usually an hour long and i work really fast and the whole thing's recorded and i'm marking things up and going okay where's your value proposition okay like their website for example the website um i have this process that i take companies through is like the way i look at website is that the home page should really be like a trailer to a movie okay most websites i see is that they're throwing everything in and plus the kitchen sink so everything's shouting at you right and the reason for that is because a lot of times these these people are designing websites are not designers they're desktop publishers desktop publisher is someone that has no experience in design that picks up a computer and then calls himself a graphic designer without any four years, eight years of schooling.

27:34And so what happens is that there's a whole pattern to reading a website, anything for that matter dominant, subdominant, subordinate, dominant, subdominant, subordinate. The headline should be the first thing that people engage in, like a really strong headline that's engaging. And And subordinate would be like the body copy to back that up, right? And subdominant would be a lot of times would be the subheadline. Just like a great newspaper when reading a headline that catches you and you read. It's this formula. And you're right. These principles will never go away. It's a while how we digest information.

28:10Right. And I think people don't understand that, that these ideas, you're talking about human behavior. Sure, there's different ways to get it. It could be a newspaper or it would have been smoke signals. And now it's social media. the core of it hasn't changed the delivery method has changed but the core of it of human humans are humans are humans are humans we talk about this you know i've talked to special force operators and we have this conversation all the time they're like just shoot to wound i'm like why would you shoot to wound why wouldn't you you know eliminate your target and they're like because the target has friends and i'm going to turn one target into four and i was like that's universal across the board it doesn't matter if it's a 50 cow at a thousand yards or if it's a bow and arrow at you 20 feet.

28:50So it's these core parts of the human idea and the human existence that if you haven't gone to school and if you don't have these level of experiences, you're going to run into it. I kind of feel like you're like a UX designer in a way, in the sense of, let me explain. There's so many times where someone who does UX, which is you as your experience, where they've designed this whole great thing and you get this very well-trained UX designer. They're like, yeah, you're changing everything. They're like, why? I'm like, well, people with colorblind can't see that. Your stuff's in the wrong place.