The Brand Builder's Playbook // Getting Brand Buy In & Activating the Playbook // With David Aaker and Marcus Collins

27:15I mean, not only did you write the book on brand equity, but you also ushered in the idea of brand architecture. And this idea of brand as a portfolio really is about how do we manage the equity of these different parts of the brand, be it the parent brand, the halo brand, its extensions, its partnerships, its sponsorships, and the alike. And to manage that, you have to, by its very nature, move beyond just an alignment of assets, just an alignment of logos or of imagery. This is more so about the meanings that these brands hold and how that meaning is transferred in the different contexts in which brand extensions begin to come to light.

28:03And Jim, you mentioned differentiation. I find that it's not as obvious to others as you think. You go into somebody and say, what does your brand stand for? And they'll kind of tell you what they do. They'll give you their mission. You know, we make cars that are safe. And if we're a business school, we're global, we're entrepreneurial, we're social, and we're about leadership. And then you step back and say, isn't that what all top business schools do? It's really important to put differentiation up there. And I've added a dimension that I think helps, and that's to be intriguing. You really have to be not only differentiated and, of course, in a relevant way, but you need to be intrigued.

28:49You need to so differentiate in a intriguing way, like the Haas Business School's confidence without attitude. And that's just intriguing. And so I think that when I have this model of brand vision model, you develop these brand pillars, you know, three or four or five pillars, maybe more. And what we're looking for are ones that are differentiating and really intriguing and resonating. So Marcus, is the University of Michigan intriguing? I'm going to put you on the spot, David. Marcus can defend the University of Michigan. Thank you very much. I'll stick to Berkeley. Well played. Well played.

29:30I think the idea is that the brand has a point of view in the world beyond its products, beyond what it does. And this point of view guides what it puts in the world, how it does it, with whom it does it, and becomes a North Star by which everything is governed, by which everything is shaped and molded. And at its core, this is sort of where Byron Sharp's work becomes really interesting. What we're talking about is not differentiation based on the classic positioning statements. You should choose ours because of some value propositions relative to a category. But instead, they are distinctive because their separation isn't by what really is a parity product value propositions.

30:20but instead by points of view. And if those points of view align to how you see the world, you go, that brand is for me. And now we get to brand relevance. Well, if you ask the question, how do we be differentiated and intriguing, that'll take you in that direction. Amen. So David, you mentioned earlier brand energizers as a concept in your book. Can you talk a little more about that and how it plays out in the real world? Yeah, I think every brand needs energy and differentiation for that matter. And every brand has almost no way of gaining it. If you make toothpaste or if you make bar soap, there's no way to get energy.

30:58So what you have to do is to attach yourself to something with energy. And that's how one of the reasons I got into purpose. You know, I follow Jim Stengel wherever he goes. So you're the guy. A social purpose is a way to get energy. It's a way not only to help people, but it's a way to energize. And I love the story of Dove Real Beauty that took a$2.6 billion. Yeah, it's not Procter & Gamble, of course, but not everything is. take a$2.6 billion business and turn it into a$6.5 billion business, all on the backs of a social program called Real Beauty, and then its little sister called Self-Esteem Program.

31:47And so what I argue in my book, The Purpose-Berven Dranning book, is that you need social programs that help a business, because if you don't, it'll just be dead weight, and it won't thrive. But if it can help a business, if it gives it an energy lift, if it gives it an image lift, it gives it an engagement lift, then it's part of the business. And it's no longer something that you have to decide if you're going to give money to this year. And then, of course, the big problem there is you don't want to be looked at somebody that is doing it just to help your business, which, of course, you are.

32:26And so the way you avoid that is you find something you're really passionate about. You find something you make a long-term commitment to. You find something that you're willing to be not only knowledgeable about it, but be a thought leader in that area. And nobody accuses you of that anymore. Marcus, branded energizers. You like what you heard? Yeah. I mean, I would say it's this point of view that brands have about the world that gives it permission to engage in the cultural discourse. You know, if you sell toothpaste and that's the business you're in and that's what the brand is based on, all you could talk about is toothpaste.

33:06Not a lot of energy there. Not a lot of excitement there. But if you have a point of view on the world that transcends the category, whoa, that allows you entry and authority to have conversations about things that have nothing to do with what you do. You know, Nike is a great example of this. Nike sells sneakers. It's a commodity, right? We haven't seen any massive innovation with regards to sneakers since the 80s and the pump, the Reebok pump. Like nothing extremely innovative in the category. Yet this brand, until recent times, have been able to be so unbelievably impactful in the economy because of its point of view.

33:48Every human body is an athlete. Big, small, short, tall. We're all athletes. The only thing keeping us real as our best athletic self is us. That's why Nike tells the world to just do it. And when Nike enters the discourse, they're not talking about where they source their leather or how shock-absorbent their air cushions are. Instead, it's a point of view of what it means to be an athlete. Unbelievably powerful and so much energy that ignites us to buy the sneakers, not because of what they are, but because of who we are. Marcus, loved your book. It's been out for a little bit more for two years for the culture, the power behind what we buy, what we do, and who we want to be.

34:26what's been the reaction to that now as we are two years later well i would say the reception has been very very welcoming much to my surprise honestly i feel so humbled by it truly and it's not like a like linkedin humble brag thing like i truly you know it's something that i've been talking about for like well over a decade honestly and you know i've been in boardrooms on stages sort of proselytizing, preaching this gospel. And it's been like, oh, that's interesting, but never really caught hold. And for the thinking to now have a home in people's minds, and even in their organizations, I feel so unbelievably grateful.

35:07So the response has been, for me, it's been overwhelming as far as how I feel. And in the marketplace of ideas, I feel like culture has a much more concrete contribution to the discourse. Instead of culture being this sort of abstract, ethereal idea, people can talk about it with some concreteness. We have a better rose out of stone, but which we can talk about it. And for me, as a scholar, I don't know if you can be much more impactful. And as a practitioner, I feel like in some ways, maybe I'm holding the door for better thinking to build on top of what I've established. Interesting, Marcus.

35:51And why do you think it's had such resonance now? Just like any idea, it's not just the merit of the idea alone. It has to find its right timing. You know, coming from the music industry, there's so many unbelievably talented artists that never really caught on because they were a little ahead of their time, right? And not just nothing about me. I think that the serendipity met me at a time where I was thinking about this idea, had the articulation that was digestible, I suppose, and the timing was like really spot on. That people were talking about culture and someone probably said, wait, what are we talking about again?

36:30What does this thing mean? What does it mean to get out in culture? What does it mean to move at the speed of culture? Just culture, culture, culture, culture, culture is so much a part of our vernacular. And I think along the ways, you know, people just started to realize that we're talking about a thing that we innately know. We know it inherently in our guts, but we didn't really have the best language to describe it. And I think that my book just at the right time just had the right language for it. It just found itself. And for that, again, I'm just very, very, very grateful. Earlier in the show, Ryan and I talked about brand leaders that we admire.

37:03You know, it's tough to be a brand led leader, right? And I think Steve Jobs may have been the best of all time. but I want you to reflect on two years out from the book. Do you think it's harder to be a brand led leader now than it was two years ago? And I'd like David to think, weigh in on that as well. I don't think so. I think the same, the same pressures are at are presenting themselves. The same challenges exist. They may manifest in a different modality. Some would say the stakes are higher and I don't know if that's the case. Maybe they're more visible. So that's a little bit more challenging.

37:37but at its core, I think that it's very much the same and it requires what we've been saying. What's the point of view the brand has? And as the leader, do you hold that point of view and live up to it when it's not convenient? It's choosing to be convicted even when it's inconvenient. Unfortunately, we have all the points of view, all the purpose statements in the world that we evangelize when it's convenient. But the moment that we hit a rough spot, we go, ooh, I don't know, it's going to help shareholder value. So that was nice to have. We'll revisit that later on. But in the meantime, no thank you.

38:16And as I think about the brilliance of Steve Jobs, which I totally agree, probably one of the best brand people we've ever had. I see some of the contemporary leaders now. We talked about Dove and Unilever. AC Bracey, she's just unbelievably talented. The CMO at Unilever. XP &G, by the way, the current CMO of Unilever. Yeah, exactly. She's great. The global CMO at McDonald's, Morgan Flatley. The North American CMO at McDonald's who recently resigned. Tarkasan, unbelievable. And Corey Marchesotto at Elf, unbelievably talented. And these four people, and there are many more, of course. I mean, you look at the Forbes CMO list and you see them there.

38:57They're all there. But these four are going to come to mind at the moment. They are brand leaders. They don't just steward these marks of ownership that have all these cognitive and affective associations to them, but they believe in what the brand is trying to achieve, what it stands for, how it sees the world, and they lead accordingly. They influence accordingly. And I see not only the work and what they do inside the organization, but I see the impact that's having outside the organization in the marketplace. And you go like, this is the benchmark. This is the gold standard of what greatness looks like.

39:37David, let's bring you into the conversation. Yeah, I think, well, first of all, I think brands are pretty much more powerful than ever. But brand building has changed a lot. But I do think it takes a different set of skills now that it did in the past. Having said that, Steve Jobs would thrive today, I think, because one of the skills is innovation is more than more important. Disruptive innovation, I've done a lot of observing of categories and concluded that the only way to grow is with disruptive innovation. My brand's better and your brand just doesn't generate growth. So that means that there is a premium on those people that are able to adjust an organization that's set up in terms of personnel and processes and to run a business really well.

40:31It's not set up for innovation. To manage that and to also be able to take risk. I mean, the reason that Musk and Jobs are so good is because they were off the scale in terms of risk-taking, well, especially Musk. But they took these dramatic risks. And, you know, if you have 20 people taking risks, the top 10 % of those are going to be really, really well. But anyway, innovation is more important ever. And actually, when I was observing books on innovation like Blue Ocean Strategy, they have a half a page on branding, half a page in the whole book. And Christensen has no pages in his books. And yet it's all about branding.

41:13You have to become the exemplar brand. You have to position the new innovation. You have to build barriers to competitors. You have to scale it. It's all branding. So anyway, that's one thing. And the other thing is that the communication environment now is so hostile. There's not only media cover, there's amazing information overload. There is rampant skepticism. The audience is now in control. It's just a nightmare. I mean, the old days that Marcus can remember, you know, Whedon and Kennedy, all that brilliant stuff is not going to work today. Well, maybe some of it will, because if you have real breakout communication, that still works.

41:57But it's a different environment, which means that you need to do – And more than ever, you have to think about using humor, using stories, using emotion, which is an indirect way of telling your message. And it makes it harder to tell your message. I mean, there's a litany. There's a whole graveyard full of brands that had brilliant execution that people can't remember what the brand was that was being advertised. So you have to live in that world and make that work. And a whole set of ways to build your brand are coming up that we're kind of looked down on or put in the black burner or something.

42:41Things like sponsorships, things like events that you tag on to or events that you create. Those things are now much more important than ever. And using those is not easy at all. so i think i think it's harder i think the skill sets to your point uh require are required new skill sets are required but at its core i think it really boils down to two things know thyself and know thy people you know if you know thyself who you are not what you do how you see the world then to your point david it's about going to preach the gospel now the modality in which it's done has definitely changed right definitely changed back in the day you know you just put on television, print out of home, and you just kind of let it go in many ways, right?

43:29You kind of buy your way in, but now you can't, you have to earn your way in. So the stuff that you create doesn't require the media that you buy. It's about activating people who see the world similarly and go, oh yeah, I'm going to use that and share with my people. Again, not because I love your brand, but because I love me and my people. And it's an expression of who I am. Now you're leveraging the media people to propagate your message on your behalf, which requires new skills, no doubt. The other side of knowing thyself is knowing thy people, who we're going after. So to your point, it's much more hostile environment than ever before, for sure.

44:05Politically charged, ideologically charged, all the things. Even more of a reason why marketers have to say, I'm targeting these people, not them. And we know it's like marketing rule number one, you can't target everybody. So you got to pick somebody. You got to say, this is my people. I'm on some characteristics and I'm going to target these people because these people are most likely to move. Well, when it comes to belief systems, ideologies, points of views that brands have, the people who are most likely to move are the people who see the world the way you do. And it requires having the courage to say, well, it's not for you.

44:43Like, if you don't like it, okay, it's not for you. And I think to the point we've been saying, Steve Jobs, he would be the first person to say that today. Remember when the iPhone, they changed the casing for it, and people were like holding it and it was dropping the call, they call it the drop gate, whatever they called it. And his response was, you're doing it wrong. You're going to love Steve for that. I mean, today he'd say, if people were complaining about his advertising, about his marketing, about his brands, he'd be like, cool, it's not for you. Thank you. This concept of brand as asset, which we talked about in the first episode of the show, the former CMO of AB InBev on the show, he's written a lot of books about financial asset, brand is financial asset.

45:25Could you both talk a little bit about what you've learned, observed about how to inculcate that thinking into a company culture? Because I've talked to so many CMOs who tell me they're CEOs. They don't believe in what they do. They don't really believe in brand. I get that a lot. We're in this demand marketing situation. How do I explain to people? But at the end of the day, the way that you demonstrate value to the brand is you just ask the simple question. Okay, what is your strategy going forward? And what brand strength do you need to enable that strategy? That's the question. And when I wrote that first book, I put in about 15 ways brand equity can help business.

46:12And some of these are not obvious. Like you take visibility, for example. Just the fact that it's visible gives it some credibility because people say, I don't know what the hell this brand does, but I've heard about it. Now, if I heard about it, it probably has some success in the marketplace. There's a study done on branded features. And people showed in a laboratory experiment, if you brand a feature, people pay more money for it. even though they had no idea what that feature was. So that's one out of 15 ways brand equity can help. If you give them this list and say, pick out four or five that are really important in your world and use them to help people try to understand why they need brands and what kind of brand strength they need to make their business strategy work.

47:03To me, this is where the scholarship becomes unbelievably valuable. Unfortunately, over the years, marketing has become advertising and brands have become logos and marks, unfortunately. So when people say, I mean, I hear this in the agency world all the time, they go, oh, that brand doesn't do any advertising. They go, well, what do you mean? They don't do any ads. Rather, they say they don't do any marketing. What they really mean to say is the brand doesn't do any advertising. They use this sort of interchangeable thing that marketing is advertising. It's not the case. We go back to the literature, like marketing is going to market.

47:41right? Going to the people. I talk about this in For the Culture. Marketing is going to market, going to the people. And with what do we go to market? A product. Do we get that product away for free? No, there's usually some exchange, an exchange rate that we call price. And we get it to people through some pipeline that Jerome McCarthy called place. And then we communicate it through promotions, the four Ps, product, price, place, promotion. I know it seems so like rudimentary. It seems so, you know, sort of a surface level. But when we start thinking about marketing as that way, marketing is going to market, we go, okay, well, why do we go to market?

48:17What's the point of this? To get people to move, get people to adopt behavior. If you're the CFO, you go, great, people adopt behavior. That means money. If you're the CEO, you go, great. If people adopt behavior, that means money for us, which drives the stock market. Great. If marketing's job is to get people to adopt behavior, then it really puts more value in the seat that marketing holds in the C-suite. And this for me is why culture is so unbelievably important to this equation, that there's no external force more influential in human behavior than culture, full stop. If culture drives behavior, this is why marketing in the cultural frame is so compelling.

48:57And one would say that you cannot, with any intellectual sort of honesty, talk about brand without talking about culture because brands are vessels of meaning. And it's through our cultural lenses that we translate the world and give things meaning. That's why for some, a cow is leather, for others, a deity, and for some, it's dinner. Which one is it? It's all those things, depending on who you are. And that's how brands operate Also, these vessels of meaning that come with so much cognitive and effective value, the equity in which they hold. So if you communicate, marketing is that. We go to market to get people to move.

49:38And getting people to move drives the business forward. I don't see how anyone in the C-suite goes, I don't know what that is, or what's the real value in that? All right. We've got to wrap this beautiful conversation up. But I want to end with one question. And this is the final episode of the Brand Builders Playbook, episode eight. People who have listened or watched this for eight episodes are putting together their own playbook for themselves for building up a stronger brand and being a brand-led leader. What's one thing you'd like to share with them in terms of a tip to get started to become a better, more effective brand-led leader?

50:16Something to put into their own personal playbook. For me, I would say that as we've been circling in this conversation, the most powerful brands, they transcend the category in which they operate. They move beyond the value propositions and operate at an ideological level, a belief system that goes beyond the category in which they operate. So the question you have to ask yourself is, what do I believe? I know Simon Sinek brought forth the thinking of having a why, and I like that. I like it a lot, like the spirit of that. But it's not just words that we use. It can't just be communications. You have to believe it religiously.

50:56I really, really, really believe this. We talked about Steve Jobs. We talked about Elon Musk. These guys really, really believed. Lauryn Hill said it best. How are you going to win if you ain't right within? You got to know what you believe. And having a very clear belief system, that becomes the thing that not only operates how you behave, the people that you hire, it inspires people and gets to David's earlier point about innovation. The challenge with innovation is that we often mistake innovation for invention. Inventions are new things. Innovation is new things that people value. How do I know what people value?

51:32It requires understanding who they are and being relevant for them. But you can't do that if you don't know who you are. David, your turn to say amen. Amen. Yeah. Let me just, I have two things. Let me extend what Marcus said. And that is that I really encourage people to start off by figuring out what are your brand pillars and the label for each of those pillars is so important. The consulting company I'm associated with, we'd spend five weeks with five people trying to get just the right labels. Because if you get the right label and it can become a tagline or something, it's so magic. It's just because it will do with the kinds of things Markets is talking about.

52:15It's got to inspire. It's got to be intrigued. You've got to be proud of it. It's got to be something you want to talk about. And it has to be differentiated. It just has to be different. If you're a business school and you need to talk how you're innovation-oriented, you've got to take your tack on innovation. It can't be just innovation. The second thing I would think is maybe a little more tactical, but the lowest hanging fruit I've ever seen is you go into a business and you say, what's your secret sauce? What are you really proud of here? And they can give you a three-minute brilliant, articulate, passionate description of what that secret sauce is.

52:55And then you stop and you pause for a moment, just let silence carry the day and say, why don't you brand that? And they think and they say, well, I can't brand that. That's just a way we treat people. And I give a rattle off the three or four companies that have branded just that. They have a way of treating people, the HP way or something, and they branded it. You can brand that. Lowest hanging fruit, as I say, you find something that's important to you that's differentiating, that's resonating, brand it. And if it's lying around with a brand, but it's not activated, activate that brand. Guys, what a conversation.

53:41I mean, I just, we should take a vacation together. You named a place, Jim. We're there. This was so, I just feel like we're scratching the surface, honestly. Yeah, I love talking about this stuff. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for your wit, your intelligence. This has just been so good, so helpful, so useful, and so fun. And I'd love to get this gang together in person somehow, some way. I think that'd be a riot. Yes, please. I've been looking forward to this all day. So you all did not disappoint. Thank you both for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

54:14Wow, Ryan, that was, we knew this would be a good one. That was a really good one. What fun, we could have gone on for another hour. We've easily, we've had chatter about, maybe we should do a special series with those two. Maybe you bring in Kate. So what did you make of all that? I mean, what did you pull out as a couple key lessons, key pieces of learning? I think the first one is that great brands don't just sell, they lead. And I loved how David talked about the evolution of brand building and how today we've had a relapse. We sort of got into short-termism. It's all about today and clicks and last-click attribution and getting people to buy right now.

54:57and talking about the importance of or the importance of long-term relationships, even though you can quantify short and long-term a brand. I also very much enjoyed the importance of culture. As folks talk about measuring relevance and meaningfulness, something we do at Bera, how do you tap into that and the ability to navigate so many cultural headwinds and tailwinds? I thought it was fascinating to hear Marcus as an expert on culture, on the ways that brand builders can embrace that. And you have to be agile. Anything you disagreed with in that dialogue, Ryan? I think the long-term only piece, as I probably mentioned in the beginning, Jim, brand absolutely has a short and long-term contribution.

55:44And we can measure it today. And depending on your stakeholders, if you're the CMO, some companies need the short-term sales over the long term. and if folks think, well, it's just about short-term, brand could take a backseat, absolutely wrong. You would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Now, we've also had this tradition of sharing one thing that the audience should consider putting in their playbook and it was always fun to have Kate and Lindsay join us for that, but it's just you and me today. So Ryan, I'll follow you on this one. What's one thing from this amazing episode that you would recommend people consider putting in their playbook?

56:19Well, as you see two folks who've published a lot, both Marcus and David, a lot of the fundamentals remain true today, but we have to evolve. And I love that we have folks that have academic backgrounds rooted in a lot of research. So the ability to continue to measure and manage and maximize your brand to navigate the waters. Yeah, I think for me, it was just this whole notion of leadership. I mean, that's what we talked about when we opened the show. The thing I would put in the playbook for the audience is what are you role modeling? You know, what questions do you ask? What do you show that you value?

56:57Are you leading first with your brand in mind, whether or not you're doing something short term and tactical or something more long term? So this one's very much about think about how you spend your time, what people are taking away from you as a leader because you are being watched. And when you're middle to upper in an organization, people watch everything you do. and how are you showing up as a leader and what are your role modeling? I think that's what I would think about putting in your playbook. So Ryan, that's it for the series, the Brand Builders Playbook. After all this time of thinking about it, we did it.

57:29And thanks to the audience for joining us. We really do hope this has been helpful. We spent a lot of time thinking about what is the modern playbook and what are the topics that we should explore. And I just want to thank you, Ryan, for partnering on this and your team, which are so talented. This wouldn't have been possible without your team. And I think this show, it's right for this time. It's the right time with the right topics for the marketing people out there who are doing their best to put things into the world that move their business and inspire their organization. So it's been a real pleasure.

58:01I hope it's been useful. And Ryan, I'll turn it over to you for the last word. Yeah, Jim, absolutely. I love our friendship and our partnership. So really appreciate it. Looking forward to doing this again. I want to thank our viewers and our listeners. I think I've certainly learned a lot and the ability to have agile skills. So I think that there's a lot of practical lessons that folks, whether they're new or seasoned, can use to continue to put brand first. So thank you. We also hope you found that the worksheets that we put out with each episode helpful. We thought, you know, podcasts and YouTube shows are great, but what do you have to take back to your team?

58:38So we hope the worksheet that we created helps you talk to your team about the learning in each episode and what you can apply to your brand and your business. Absolutely, Jim. And folks, thank you already for the folks who've already given comments on each episode. Feel free to do so. And if there's any interest for future episodes or future topics or challenges that you have as a brand builder, please, we welcome the dialogue. But thank you again. All right, on to season two. Thanks for listening to the Brand Builders Playbook, where we explore the real strategies behind resilient revenue driving brands.

59:11If today's conversation sparked new ideas or helped you see things differently, do us a favor, follow the show on your favorite podcast app, leave a review and give us a like or rating. It really helps others find the show and keeps our conversation going. And if you know a brand leader or marketer who needs to hear this, share this episode with them. And don't forget to check out the worksheets in the show notes. We'll be back next week with more insights, more playmakers, and more of what it takes to build brands that last.