Why Branding Begins With Your Team Culture

0:00You know, over the years, you've heard me talk a lot about marketing systems.

0:30Tape Marketing 3.0. As a dad, I couldn't be prouder, but I want you to check it out at dtm.world slash unchained and get ready to take your strategy to a whole new level.

0:52Welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, Sarah Renee. And today I'm stepping in for John Jantz and I am joined by Ray Allen. So Ray Allen is the president and CEO of Peppershock Media, host of the Marketing Edition podcast and a business owner who knows what it's like to build a brand from the ground up. So welcome to the show, Ray. I'm glad you're here. Well, thank you so much for having me, Sarah. This is exciting. I know. And fun backstory, Ray and I met online through a different group and actually figured out that we're both in Idaho, about 25 minutes away from each other.

1:27And I haven't met a ton of business owners online from Idaho. So it was really exciting to connect with you, right? We had to go global to come local, right? Exactly. Exactly. Well, let's dive on in. We're going to focus on the topic really of branding and culture today, because that's one of your specialties, as I know. And so I've heard you say before, culture and brand go hand in hand. And so can you break down What does that mean exactly to small business owners? Well, what I always try to emphasize most is that your culture starts with your brand from the inside out. And sometimes culture can't necessarily be controllable.

2:06It's what it is, the experience that both your employees and the people who come to you for that experience of what you serve. And in an agency setting, culture is so important because it is our brand. It's who we are and how we represent what we do. And when we work with other companies that want to understand how they can continue to build and grow their culture in a positive way, in the way that they would like to see their brand exuded into the world, whether it's recruiting new employees or new customers and retention is always a huge part of it. So that's why I say culture and branding go hand in hand together for sure.

2:45Yeah, and it's great. I love that thought process. And what I've been doing for years at Duct Tape Marketing is whenever we hire someone new for a role within our company, we always start with the job description and we lead with here's our mission, here's our vision, here's our values. And so I want someone to read through all of that first on a job description, then I'll get to here's the role and the tasks and all the other details, because I want someone to be aligned culturally like that to me is one of the most important things. And because as you said, it helps people stick around for a long time and also represent our brand in the way we want to be represented.

3:20And then, you know, when we're going through the interview process, our first interview is always based on values. And so one of the things we're always trying to hire for is growth minded people, because in the marketing space, it's always continuing and evolving. And so I'm asking questions to identify if they're growth minded and then asking them skill specific questions. So that's just one of the ways that we've leaned into making culture and hiring aligned with our brand long term. Absolutely. And we do a variety of things. But one of the things that we set up is we call it culture and brand camp.

3:53So this one time at brand camp, we go through a process. And it really is about aligning the HR roles and the marketing roles together so that they're not siloed and they're working together to create the culture and brand that they really want to be known for and have that experience that they want. people to walk away from and feel the feelings that you want when you're in that process and going through that process. So we go through culture and brand camp and do a number of exercises to work together to understand both internal and external messaging. And when everyone's singing from the same sheet of music and saying similar terminology and able to articulate that in a way that is mindful of how they all can own it and have ownership in their own branding and how other people are going to perceive them because of the way that they have been able to articulate it and what experiences they want to have.

4:54And so going through that process and doing some team building exercises and some branding exercises and bringing the two sort of areas that are sometimes really siloed in companies and they don't always come together and work together. But then when we bring them together and they are in that mode of like, oh, we are in control of our own culture and we are in control of our brand that we have out there. So it's a fun exercise to go through and do that with companies to have them walk through those processes together and have that experience of their own together as well. Yeah, I love that. And I think that gets, I'm assuming it gets buy-in from the whole team and support behind the whole team.

5:34One of the things that we did fairly recently is we used to have values that John and I, our founder identified as like our core values. And we kind of made those up on our own. And then we would like tell the team about them. And we're like, that doesn't feel right. And so we did a session as a team where we had everyone identify like what they wanted the values to be. And we then collaborated and crafted our core values together. And to me, that was so much more of a rewarding, but also buy-in experience for the team because they were part of the process versus being, here's our values, go live by these.

6:06Yeah, now go do this. Yeah. Yeah, go do this. Whenever you can include the team into that decision-making process, they have so much more ownership in it. And to take it even a step further, having them tell stories around those values that you've selected and where maybe there's an example of something that occurred because of that value and then having them tell you about a time when, give me an example of one of the values that you and your team came up with, Sarah. Well, one of them is growth minded, like always being leaders and innovators and ahead of the game. So it's that whole idea of just like growth and always learning and evolving.

6:43So one of the activities that you can do just as an icebreaker to get people in the mode, anyone who cares to share, tell me about a time where this value came through. What was the occurrence, what happened, that you had this growth-minded mentality or somebody else can share about somebody else on the team. And now storytelling becomes this part of the culture, right? We know back in ancient history that storytelling was how culture was being able to get passed along in a generation. We have the hieroglyphs on the walls that were drawn. And so storytelling is such a huge part of culture, no matter what kind of culture we're talking about, whether it's company culture or, you know, if it's your indigenous people in the culture, the stories that are being told is the way that continues to happen.

7:31And it's really great for new people coming in to hear those stories when something has happened. And you can exemplify it. It also makes people feel really good when they have an opportunity to share about others and a circumstance that occurred that can help continue those stories. Yeah, I love it. And so a lot of what you're talking about there is like storytelling as a team, as a culture. Do you take any of that storytelling and bring it, you know, as a marketing or a branding initiative as well? Absolutely. And where it really can shine through is when you now involve your customers and they have testimonials and you can have them share a story about the circumstances or experiences that they've had with people that they've interacted with on your team.

8:12So we know it's all about the people sometimes more than anything else, the people that work with you. And so when you can bring that full circle and then you have stories that you can tell of the values that also shown through with your customers, your clients, then it really does start from the inside out. Yeah, I love it. A lot of what's happening in the marketing space specifically right now is a lot of people are putting out a lot of content at scale because of the evolution of AI. And so one of the things that I'm seeing growing in importance is storytelling and being more human, but also being authentic and maybe even making some mistakes in the stuff you're putting out there because it just feels everything feels so polished right now.

8:58So can you touch on, do you see storytelling and authenticity growing in importance these days as well? Absolutely. In fact, I just did a panel discussion and actually it was HR, the HR, sorry, public relations and then advertising coming together. So mine was all about personal branding and I created an acronym of keeping it real. And so real, obviously, you know, being authentic and having that realness about you. right? And then being able to extend that to others and share that consistently. And then, of course, authenticity, and then leveraging your network to be able to share that with others and showing up and keeping it real.

9:41So yeah, authenticity is definitely, I think, more valued than some of the AI that really ad nauseum comes out that's just not real, right? I mean, It's artificial intelligence. So having your own spin on your own words sometimes really does help with the content that's coming out. And I see that's a shift. Everyone was kind of, oh, we, you know, we're going to use AR to replace the people, the human touch of what we're putting out there. And I really think that it's, you can tell somewhat now. And I mean, it's getting really good where you can't necessarily, and it's trying to write in your voice.

10:17but there's still some quirkiness about the AI. And I still say it takes HI to use AI. So human intelligence. Yes, it does. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. And I think that's what I'm experiencing on LinkedIn specifically, just because I spent a lot of time there. I'm not saying it's not happening anywhere else, but like on LinkedIn, there's just a lot of generic content being published right now. And so I've, you know, shifted to try to be more authentic and more human. And so I've shared posts recently that like, I shared a post last week or so ago that was like my desk and it was my kids. They had decorated my desk just because.

10:53And that's just it's getting like that human content is getting so much more traction because people are like, oh, that feels more unique and more personal than this other post that anyone could have written. Well, and it's true. I mean, you can just take a look at, you know, the history of what you've posted. If we post pictures of our actual team and not just stock images, or if we do behind the scenes from video shoots that we're doing, or if we show real people in action, we get so much more engagement and traction and follows than we do if it's just a stock image or an inanimate object. And I love being able to showcase our people.

11:31And again, it's about the culture and showing what we're doing and the volunteer activities that they're about or, you know, showing when they were little and, you know, kind of what became of them. And, you know, just fun things like that are so much more, I think, engaging and authentic and real. Yeah, I agree. And kind of a funny story on that. I posted a new book coming out and I posted a JPEG of the cover. And luckily it hasn't gone to print yet. But someone pointed out that there was a typo on the cover. but her response to me was like so kind she sent me a direct message and she was like you know what i love about this it shows that you're human you're not just using ai for this content and so she actually was like very kind but she like appreciated a little bit of an error because everything is feeling very polished at this point and so i thought that was kind of funny well i'm glad you can that you were able to get that i was like there's always something and you've been so closely tied to it.

12:26You're always going to overlook something. There's always going to be something. Always. And like three people on my team looked at it, but still we missed it. Of course. That's how it works. You know, over the years, you've heard me talk a lot about marketing systems. Today, I get to share something really special. My daughter, Sarah Nay, who also happens to be the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, just released her first book. It's called Unchained, Breaking Free from broken marketing models and how small business can finally take control of their marketing, lead with strategy, and scale with AI. I know, a mouthful, right?

13:00But it's everything we've learned, taken to the next level. In fact, we're even calling it Duct Tape Marketing 3.0. As a dad, I couldn't be prouder, but I want you to check it out at dtm.world slash unchained and get ready to take your strategy to a whole new level. I talk a lot about, Because when I'm training marketing agencies, building and scaling a business and hiring team, I talk a lot about what we do for building culture. And so a lot of that is like we do show and tell on Slack every Wednesday and we do Happy Fridays and we have team meetings where it's just kind of fun. And so I talk about all that stuff.

13:36And sometimes I get the question of what's the ROI for all of that? Like you're paying people to do these fun things. And so I'm curious, what would be your answer to a question like that? Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, if you don't have a little bit of fun and incorporate the human aspect of living and working together all the time, and we spend more time with our work co-workers than we do with our spouses. Well, not in my case, because I work with my spouse, but a lot of times, if you look at how much time is spent with the people that you are with every day, it's your co-workers. So I feel like if you are just robotic in what you're doing and not engaging and not being, you know, that team player or having, being a part of the culture, you're going to make life miserable for yourself.

14:22Right. And so I feel like having time that you can naturally and be okay with spending some of that. It is an ROI in your, you know, you're investing in your people and you're investing in them wanting to stay right. Can that retention. And we know that when somebody leaves a company, it takes just twice as much or even more to replace them. And then all of the knowledge that has just been left behind because they've left the company. So you want to do the things that are going to help retain those people. And we spend time, we also do once a month now. We used to do it every week, which is a little okay.

14:59I get it. But now we do. So it originally started out as Friday fun lunch, but then people take Fridays off. Some of us do summer Fridays off and have the four day work week. Fine. So then we moved it to Wednesdays. So then it become lunch instead of funch. So Friday fun lunch and then lunch. And now everybody's is only, I mean, all of us are all in the office on Mondays. So now it's munch. So we, once a month go, we celebrate, you know, work anniversaries where I like to call workversaries or birthdays or something that we're celebrating. And we actually came up with some things that we always go through.

15:34So it's, it's successes and frustrations, celebrations and appreciations, new technologies or book or blog reports or anybody that's reading a book, tell us a little bit about it or a blog or something, new technology, something like that. And then a question of the day. And so we always come up with a random question. What's your favorite cereal as a kid? Or what was your favorite cartoon to watch? Or who are you rooting for the Super Bowl, right? So we always come up with something fun and we all participate and successes and frustrations you know if we're in a public place we are careful about our frustrations but it's important to acknowledge you know big successes big wins all the time and also if there is something you know that is frustrating people i want to hear about it and it's a safe space to be able to share that if there is some sort of frustration or something that needs to be acknowledged and then we can talk about it but and then of course celebrations appreciations and then the new technology book or blog reports is helpful because if people are learning about new things that are coming up or new tools or maybe a client wants to investigate a new tool or there's a new, you know, Adobe plugin or who knows what.

16:43We're talking about it and sharing that and it's purposeful, intentional so that we can make sure that we cover those things. And it's a fun thing to do. The other thing that we do every year, and this is one of the questions I ask when I hire people, is if they like to go camping or not, or if they're a glamper or like absolutely not. because every year all of us with our spouses, our kids, pets, everybody, we go camping together as one big, huge Pepper Shock family. And if you're not a camper, you're probably not going to really appreciate the culture that we've built. I mean, it's not mandatory.

17:17I mean, it has happened, but it's really important to us because we love the outdoors and especially here in Idaho, we have all of the seasons and it's definitely, we live here on purpose. We can do work anywhere, but we purposely choose to have, you know, Idaho is our back, you know, our back door. So that's a really important part of our culture to, to enjoy hiking and, you know, those types of things. And so it's fun and people look forward to it. It's, you know, what are we going to do this year? What are we, you know, are we going to go rafting? Are we going to go, you know, hiking? What are we doing?

17:48And so it's something fun and it's always been a part of our culture since, you know, since we started and it's definitely something that we really enjoy And so, yeah, there's definitely things we do. The other things that we do, Christy helps our graphic designer. We do volunteer time together and we've, you know, boxed food up at the food bank. Next week, we're going to go to, there's a local place called the Idaho Botanical Gardens. So we're going to get our horticulture on and bring our favorite planting tool and we're going to go help the landscapers and do some fun things there. but it's just a part of the culture.

18:23And yeah, I mean, it's otherwise paid time, but I want them to be involved in the community. I want us to feel and come together as a team and doing some things that are not your typical average workday all the time is really enriching for our people. So we wanna continue to do that. Yeah, that's great. And that's how, I mean, I answered that question as well. When people ask about ROI, it's you're gonna retain people longer, they're gonna be happier, you're gonna enjoy work more. And to me, that's like the best kind of ROI you can get. So I think that's great. And I love your examples because a lot of what you shared are in-person opportunities because you work in person where I run a virtual company.

18:59And so we're trying to do some of that stuff virtually, which is really interesting as well. And so we do things like I mentioned, like the show and tell on Slack. That's just like such a small thing. And all we do is we ask a random question every single Wednesday at a scheduled time and then people answer the question. but when you're remote you don't get time to you know what's your favorite movie what'd you do this weekend what you know you don't have time for like all of those things and so that question then you know someone might ask what's your favorite movie and then like three people are like oh my gosh that's my favorite movie i can recite every line and now they have this like bond that they wouldn't have had just through like work meetings and going through the motions um i know during the pandemic we definitely all worked remote and i even had a couple people move out of state to go live out their homes and with their families.

19:45And I can relate to trying to keep the company culture alive through Zoom. And, you know, there's different things that we did. We played pandemic reindeer games. Came up with some fun things for them to do, some trivia things and things like that. But yeah, I mean, it's important to keep your team together, even if they're not in the same room or same building. Yeah, for sure. Those pandemic times were weird times, weren't they? Well, we talked about a lot of great stuff today when it relates to culture and branding. If anyone's just kind of feeling stuck on this topic, how they actually create a culture and how they tie it to their branding, are there any final thoughts or any action items you would share with them?

20:27Yeah, absolutely. I think the important thing to remember is that culture is going to be there whether you help guide it or not. the culture can be what you want to mold it and grow it into, or it's going to become something that you have no control over if you don't participate in the culture that you want your company to have. And so I think if you can identify that there might be some needs in the areas of bridging the gaps between the different departments that come together and how they can work together to help build the culture that you want between HR and marketing and ops and, you know, all of the different areas that you have in a company, how can you make it to where everyone is singing from the same sheet of music and, you know, it's all in tune, right?

21:18You all have the same goals in mind together that they build together. So just recognizing that there is a need for that. And it's an ongoing thing. It's not an overnight like, oh, well, I did a company picnic. I'm good for a while now. Check that box. Yeah, you've got to continuously build it, continuously grow it and do things to continue to have your employees engaged. And I always say, if you've got happy campers, right, you're going to have happy customers. And so keep your campers happy. And, you know, at Culture and Brand Camp, that's one thing we focus on is happy campers then creates happy customers.

21:54I love it. Well, thank you for sharing all your insights. Lots of good stuff in this episode. If people want to continue to learn from you, where can they connect with you online? So a couple of different places. Of course, the Marketing Expedition podcast is free to listen to on pretty much every podcast platform. And then which is powered by Peppershock Media, our company. And you can visit Peppershock.com. And we're on all the social platforms, LinkedIn, all of that. So you can find me in Ray is R-H-E-A, Allen, A-L-L-E-N. So Ray Allen. and I would look forward to chatting with anybody that would like to talk about their company, culture and branding.

22:35Awesome. Thank you so much, Ray, for being here. And thank you everyone for listening to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Again, this is your host, Therene, and we will see you next time.

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