Righting Branding Wrongs

(00:00) That's my mission, is to clean up the world. Mike. I'm not just talking about logos. This is bigger than all that. This is a mission to make the world a nicer place to live. And part of the... One pixel at a time. One bad logo at a time. It's a mission. Wow. Yeah.

(00:32) Welcome to the Marketing Team of One podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike.

(00:43) So, Mike, what are you crying about today?

(00:50) Trying to manage the chaos of all the things for just keeping a brand consistent.

(00:59) What do you mean by that?

(01:00) I mean, you just put a logo up there, put it on the website.You're good. Right?

(01:06) I mean, you could do that. But, I mean, I think it's the brand.  The brand is so much more than that logo.You know, it's…where else is that logo used? Is it used consistently? What I'm thinking about is like an instance where three different logos were being used for a company at the same time.That's what I'm crying about. That is...That seems so avoidable and so easy to avoid. 3 different logos.

(01:41) Unforgivable. Yeah.

(01:42) Yeah, that can’t happen.

(01:44) I, I think it's a, I think it's a really real problem, especially if you've got a smaller team where you're trying to maybe you're the person in charge of managing the brand and the marketing and, but sales needs to just put some sales sheet out there or there's, you know, the secretary wants to put something on official letterhead.

(02:04) And I think it's the they're just trying to get their job done. And if you don't have things in place and to let people do the right thing on these things, it could just it could spiral out of control really quick. Like a toolbox or something.Like something that's like something everybody can go grab from and use consistently.

(02:25) Just some kind of like basic guidelines.You know, in our circles we call it like a brand guide or a style guide or a brand standards or something like that. It might not be something that a lot of companies are aware of upfront, especially if they've just kind of started out with it, like they just got a logo off of some from somewhere. I'm not going to bad mouth anybody here.

(02:44) Let's time out here because we're saying brand, but then we say logo. I'm confused man. What do you mean what's the difference? Is a brand. That's the thing that they take and they put in the fire. And then the cow comes through and they just stick it right on the rear hindquarters. That's the branding, right? Is that what you're talking about?

(03:05) Yeah. I think people maybe have taken that and run with it in a bunch of different other ways too. In theory. When I think about the logo and the type that's used, the colors that are used and everything, I kind of think of that as more like brand identity.

(03:19) Right.

(03:20) Those are the visual components that make up your how you're shown to the world. I think brand encompasses so much more than just that brand identity. Branding can be, how you talk about yourself the, the tone, the voice that you communicate out to the world. It can be, how people answer the phone. People still use this phone?

(03:47) You mean like where I go scroll Reddit?

(03:50) Is that what you mean? Yeah. That thing. Okay. Yeah.

(03:52) But you could, like, hold it up to your ear.

(03:55) And do what? Listen to Reddit?

(03:57) It's like. It's like face time, but without the face.

(04:02) Oh, it's just an audio experience.

(04:04) The audio, it's like the audio voice. Thank you.

(04:06) Oh, okay, I remember that. Yeah. I remember seeing pictures scrawled on cave walls. of people picking up and dialing.

(04:17) That was you.

(04:19) That was old school. I was, I remember those days. You probably don't. 

I do. Oh, okay. We had one.

(04:25) It was fun to play with. 

(04:26) It was a child toy? I got my hand smacked.

(04:30) God forbid you got a dial an 800 number or something.

(04:33) You’ll be there all day. Yeah. 

(04:35) I think the brand is so much I think a lot of people think of brand is kind of like you're talking about like that. It's this thing on the end of a metal stick that you burn the flesh of cattle with.

(04:45) Yes, that's that's where I go.

(04:49) I think it's so much more and there's so many different pieces and some are more visible than others, and some are more apparent to others.

(04:59) Well, it's funny, we mentioned that, you know, I was prepared today.

(05:03) I did a little bit of homework.

(05:04) Homework? Yeah. Homework. I was told there was no homework.

(05:07) I know, but I just make up my own torture. I build my own homework because I'm a glutton for punishment. I got three different descriptions of what a logo really a brand is not a logo. Yes. It's not.

(05:21) This is Marty Neumeier, very famous brand guy. In his book Brand Gap. He says your brand isn't what you say it is. It's what your audience or your customers say it is.

(05:33) Yeah.

(05:34) Do you agree with that?

(05:35) Yeah. So it's really something you got to manipulate and kind of control what's out there in the public, so that the perception is a consistent, positive force working for your organization.

(05:49) Yeah, for sure.

(05:50) So that makes a lot of sense to me. Seth Godin, he's pretty smart guy. Yeah. Marketing. Yeah. Great writer, great marketer.

(06:00) Yeah.

(06:00) He says a brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken altogether, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another.

(06:16) Yeah.

(06:17) Who am I to question him? Right? Yeah.

(06:20) One last one from the great American Stephen King, great American writer Stephen King. How did he writes about branding? He's also chiming in on branding. Stephen King says, a product can be quickly outdated. A product specifically. Yes. But a successful brand is timeless.

(06:40) I thought that was pretty good, right?

(06:44) That's interesting.

(06:45) So a brand is more than a logo. It's it's everything that encompasses what represents your company. It's everything that's out there. It's the voice, it's feeling. It's the impact that you have, over your customers decisions to buy things.

(07:00) So just wanted to establish that right out of the box. As you put together those definitions of what a brand is, think about how - can a logo do all those things?

(07:10) No. The logo alone? Does the type that you're using on things say that? Did the emails you send out do it alone? That's kind of all encompassing, right? It's all the things you're doing, right? So when you think about it that way, you think that not one person could do all that work. Not one person can be the full brand. Right? Like how do you you can see how it canspiral out of control.

(07:39) Yeah. You almost need and we used to call these people and they're still out there. Brand cops. Yes. And those brand cops exist within the organization to enforce the rules around a brand. So those are people that say, here, use this color, not that color or let me see that before it goes out. Let me see that email or whatever it is. So they're there to be the enforcer, the muscle.

(08:08) Do you think those are people that are seen as, creativity killers?

(08:12) I think that's a that's something you kind of got to get get right with. Because, yes, you could interpret them that way, I think. But there has to be limits on things. I mean…

(08:26) I think about it like it might be if people are saying that kind of thing, that they're not really mature in their evolvement of their skills or something like that, because, like, I think a brand, when you establish those things for your brand, they might at first glance seem confining. But like, I don't know, I think it's healthy to have some boundaries around things and structure, around what you can do. And if you can learn how to play within those things, it's actually less decisions you have to make less round about, like trying to get the right thing going on. Like if something’s set up front it kind of simplifies things down the road.

(09:09) How complex does this brand set of rules need to be?

(09:14) I think it depends on the scale and how many people you're trying to and how many different areas you're trying to extend all those efforts to. But I mean, I think you could start relatively small, right? I think when we talk about brand identity, that's one of the easier, I think it's probably one of the easier things to try and corral and put a few simple rules in place to make sure that things stay somewhat consistent. Right? Because I think the the big takeaway from all of those quotes that you said is you need to be consistent throughout to build that type of thing.The brands that they're talking about, I think you need to be consistent. Right?

(09:51) So having something small that you can work on to help promote that consistency, you know, not just for yourself but for other people at the organization who are going to be using this stuff. if you if you can do the work up front, you can make it easier on yourself. You can make it easier for everybody on your team or in your organization to do the right thing, too. And, and it help overall helps elevate the brand.

(10:19) So there's strength in limits is what you're saying.

(10:23) Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. How many people are scared of the white the blank white page. Right? If you can give some things to work with that you don't have the blank white page. At least you got something to work with. That really helps.

(10:38) But Mike, I've got this special new deal. They just told me in the back room I've got this new product that's really exciting. I mean this has got to be slightly, I mean we got to, we got to break out from the boundaries of what we're usually putting out there. This needs to be really different because it's so much better than everything else we've been producing. Right?

(10:58) That seems like a complicated thing to unpack. Especially if you don't have that's another that's another thing where like the consistency could kind of be broken.

(11:08) Well that's, that's I think those are the scenarios that I've seen where it's like, wait, no, this new deal, this new offer, this new market, whatever, we got to come out. We're using lime green for everything. Well, wait, our brand color is purple. Now, this is going to be isn't that okay to do that or that I think what would you as a customer or consumer seeing that, what would you think about seeing something that does that?

(11:33) I know I weigh it pretty carefully. I would weigh that against like, is this, okay. Is this a short term product? Is this going to be like transforming or is this going to transform the business? Like this is the the company's putting everything into this product is a big deal. This is the future. This is where - how we see the future. Well then maybe you might be a little bit more willing to let that rebrand, lead a rebrand a little bit or a realignment of things, but is it a flash in the pan thing?

(12:04) Is it a the, how important is it kind of a thing like.

(12:09) Is this a limited time offer type thing? No, I wouldn't I don't think that's worth changing things up. So its kind of evaluating the risk reward of all that knowing that consistency - I think consistency is the most important thing.

(12:23) Yeah.

(12:24) Because I think from my perspective too, it's really important to not confuse your customer, consumer or your audience with something that's even if it is something different, one way to think of it is great, it might be a new something, but let's present it in this shell of our brand so that people feel safe and comfortable knowing this is still part of company, whatever - ABC, this is still under the management, guidance, control of this organization, but it is different.

(13:01) So it is something that that's where I think that consistency of brand, color, type, all those things are very important because it gives you a playground, it gives you a sandbox to work in that is still tried and true and tested and and put out there in public, and consistently been put out there in public that then allows you to have fun within it.

(13:26) So I think that's one thing, is that we need to make sure that you can still have fun and communicate that a little bit, but that description of what fun is with your brand is still within many of the guidelines that have been established. What are some of those steps that you, you would, you would want to kind of explore as you're developing your brand? If you were an internal person, tasked with kind of controlling the environment or bringing in, reining everything in.

(13:52) I think the first thing I would do is do an audit of everything that we have out there. Where is our... and mostly from a visual point of view, that's where I would lean towards a little bit because that seems a little bit easier to task as a solo person. I would do an audit of everything like look, grab all the samples of everything, you know, and see what's the common thread on these things. Right. and then also just look at what's. Okay.

(14:27) And so here's the common thread behind where's the strongest like where's the strongest examples of those things. And I would start like highlighting, you know, okay, if I have three logos, which one of those is the best one. Which one's. which. One's the cleanest. Which one do we use more than the others this one's been used for.

(14:46) It may not be I mean some of that so much of this could be subjected to. but is it used more in. Is that what people recognize more. Because I think when things aren't, when when you break from that consistency a little bit, even if it's like in little ways, people may not notice it right up front. But there's probably this like underlying tension that people might feel like, yep, it's that weight. Something seems off about that.

(15:12) Is that a knockoff version of that brand that I'm looking at? So it's from a different, you know, sort of other.

(15:19) Yeah.

(15:20) I thought, right.

(15:21) With the same name.

(15:24) So I would do like an audit of all that stuff. And then what I would try and do is collected that into, if you don't have a style guide, there's a great place to start, right? Being able to. Okay. This is our official logo. These are official colors. This is the typeface we use. And I would just I would start there and then put that into some kind of guide.

(15:49) I know there's hundreds in all of the hundreds of templates available just start to put some of those things in there and distribute it to the team so they know what they know how to make the good the good decisions. The right decisions. How do you promote the brand consistency. The other part of it is I would take those elements that you've got and put them somewhere where they can easily be grabbed to like you just put it, lock it up in a PDF document, say hey use all this stuff.

(16:18) But it's still hard for them. Right. All those things, you know, it's on a shared, you know, Google Drive or server or something like that. It's not gonna get used either. So try and make it as easy as possible for the people to do the right thing.

(16:31) And it's important to to kind of think through all of the different applications of how you're going to be using that brand and where it's going to be living. It's important to think, too, in terms of, oh, we're going to a trade show. I need to put it one color reversed out of a blue pen, so I need it in white.

(16:47) I need, you know, there's a lot of different scenarios that you need to think through that need consistency applied to that as well, so that even if it's a four color, full color logo and you translate it down to something that's very tiny and only one color, it still has that same feel as what your established brand is. That's where it gets a little bit more challenging and, you know, takes a little bit more expert eye maybe.

(17:15) No one said being a cop was easy. So yeah, I mean, I think you're your brand cop. You want to make sure that your job is as easy as possible, to people so they make the right decisions is really good. So you got your type. You got your colors. the the correct logos in a bunch of different formats that they can use. So if they put it on a pen and they put it on the website make it easy to do the right thing.

(17:42) Yep, yep.

(17:44) So I think that, photos is another angle that would be a little harder because there's so much subjectivity. And like, I mean, as designers, we have a gag reflex. Always the obvious stock photos, right?Where it's like, you know.

(17:58) Or the hand shaking. It's still my favorite.

(18:01) I think that establishing, like, what you what you're looking for, kind of feel that you want to evoke.

(18:08) Like a style of a photo. Is that what you're talking about?

(18:10) Yeah. So some kind of style of photos, but also get a bunch of them, put them in a place where they're like, hey, these are here's a pile of images that approved easy. You know, throw them in what you're using. Here. You know, there's a happy, happy person with their kids in the right style.

(18:30) yeah.

(18:32) We have a library of those. Right next to where the type is and the logo is in the same bucket. I know, I know for photos when we work with certain clients. It's interesting how particular strong brands are and curating that curate photo collection. So just a tip you know, pay attention. Is that person looking at the camera for every photo, whatever the subject is, is the person looking away? Are they inside?

(19:00) Are they outside? Is the lighting more this color scheme? Is it less? Is it very saturated and yellow outside or is it very cool and inside office? Is the environment in all those photos fairly consistent? Because those are all things that and this is, I think, hard for people to understand, is that your audience is all over the map. They come to your organization, your website, whatever it is, and they come there with certain levels of sensitivities to those things, and they might notice something that you may not notice.

(19:33) And that's what's really hard to, you know, you don't know what you don't know. But I think what I'm trying to point out is have your radar tuned up pretty high on that sensitivity level, because you never really know how sensitive that viewer is. I know for myself, being a visual person, I'm triggered by things that a lot of people laugh about. You know, when I point them out to them, they're like, what?

(19:57) I didn't even see that. And I'm I'm completely off the rails and, you know, getting out the pitchforks and, to go against that company because they use the typeface that maybe I don't like. So, you know, there's design snobs.

(20:13) Sorry.

(20:15) What did you say?

(20:16) I said Papyrus.

(20:22) Yes. Off every list. Would never use Comic Sans. If I see another logo with Comic Sans on it.

(20:30) I saw a guy who took Comic Sans and tweaked it and made a logo out of it and it was really good.

(20:35) Yeah. It's impossible. You are off your rocker. There's no way. There is absolutely no way you can make a nice logo hobo.

(20:45) Hobo’s worse.

(20:49) Comic sans really? Yeah. Okay.

(20:52) It's heavy illustrator work to get it to work, but a lot of the pieces.

(20:56) So it's really not Comic Sans fonts. Accustomed to past.

(21:01) You know, the logo designer, you're never just taking the type. Just typing the type and saying You know, and saying, all right. I'm going on break! Never

(21:09) No. Yeah.

(21:11) I don't do that ever. No. It's always even if it's Helvetica, I'm always this. No. Okay. That's a better E than the Helvetica E. That's how crazy I am. So. Yeah.

(21:21) I don't know if you have any tricks, so let's say you're, you've identified that, you know, you want everybody. You never want somebody looking at the camera. You always want them looking off, you know. You've got, you've identified some of those things, you know ideally you'd have somebody go you know talk to figure out, you know amass a bunch of custom photography for all that.

(21:41) But that's not realistic for a lot of people. Right. That's uh…

(21:46) Especially small organizations. You're going to be living in a world of, you know, I stock Adobe Stock, just another tip on that is, you know, when you're searching for those photos on whatever platform, the robots are smart enough now to where you can kind of type in a lot of those restrictions.

(22:03) It has to be cold, it has to be interior, it has to be office. That has to be male female. It has to be multiethnic. It has to be x, y. You can put all that in your search box and it'll it'll produce a pretty good collection of photos that you can then start to curate from a that's that's a stock photo tip there.

(22:20) One thing I think has been really helpful for me, especially in this like idea of consistency too, is to I'll find like do a search like you're talking about and then look at who's the photographer, the artist attached to that and look at their catalog of things because they, they are in a lot of cases, they might have a similar. Approach and style and look.  And so you might be able to find other things that kind of match that same esthetic.

(22:50) Yeah.

(22:50) Because a lot of times what they'll do is those photographers go into a certain situation, they'll build a set or they'll go into an environment, light it all out and then shoot 150 photos that they'll throw up on any of those sites. And then you've got at least, you know, at least 50 to choose from, maybe let you go through.

(23:07) I mean we've talked a lot about like the visual looks that those are still what I would call more like the brand identity side of things. another really important thing and us as visual people, we.

(23:21) Kind of go in there right immediately.

(23:23) Yeah.

(23:24) But like, there's so just as many people that are going to respond to the words and the feeling that comes out from messaging the next thing I would try and do is get some alignment from this is going to be a little harder to you get a you ideally are going to pull an upper management ownership, like that. What's the tone and voice that you want to want to convey? and putting that into some kind of document is very important too, because then you can you can identify who's your audience. you know, what are their needs.

(23:56) How are you speaking to their needs? Are you going to be more, flowery in your language? Are you going to be more like doom and gloom if you don't work with us? This dog gets it,  or you know, like, more brutalist, maybe it's a I look at it too, is like you're the pictures and the logos and the colors all create a visual story right there for you to see with your eyes.

(24:23) The words you need to think relate directly to what those visuals are that create a picture in your mind of what that brand is representing. So you've got those words that you're using, the tone, the nature of how you're speaking to your audience should match directly to what those visuals are, in a kind of a ethereal sense.

(24:43) I know that's hard to, you know and what you're talking about brand messaging and the the words behind things. There's got to be is there exercises people can go through that seems like a much harder thing as opposed to, here's the 20 photos you can use. Here's the colors you can use. What's part of the what are some of the steps you need to take? What what have you seen success as far as do you just say we only use these five words or like how do you.

(25:08) I think it's so much harder than. For me personally, I think it's so much harder because I think, if you take the visuals out of it and you make people focus on the, the words, things, people probably start paying a little bit more attention to it. You're gonna have trouble, from everybody, if you just try and do it all yourself.

(25:30) I think you really need to be talking with, Heads of departments, something like that, to make sure that you're hitting the right thing. I mean, that audit that you would do, you could find examples of messaging to like, hey, this is really good and try and dissect it and reverse engineer it to create some messaging. Whereas it might be better to, let's say talk to the sales staff and, and say, hey, what are some problems that you or some questions, problems that our customers have that you hear frequently?

(26:08) That's great. Yeah. it takes a lot more background and about who the customers are. Right. And I think and being able to respond to their needs and their wants, and then also maybe getting some more, like, demographic type stuff about who they are, like, is it is our audience, you know, primarily female? or is it primarily male? You know, you want to have that kind of.

(26:29) Build an avatar. This is that person that we're speaking to. You know, something like that.

(26:35) If you don't have one in me, I think that's one of the really helpful thing is to start and you have to get into the…I'm not a big fan of, like, the super deep personas where they say, hey, this is a 32 year old male who, who likes listening to podcasts on the way in while she makes her avocado smoothie and wears her, you know, flip flops.

(27:00) That psychographic, I guess, is one of the words that they use to describe.

(27:05) I think it gets a lot in for big companies.

(27:07) I gets a lot more important, like getting some of those details can be very important. I'm not saying it's not - It's not valuable to have the a picture of those people that way. But I think for small businesses, I think if you can focus on who is the person, what are their big problems where their wants, you know, what do they need? and then and then also think about what does success look like for them.

(27:33) How do they like to be talked to. Yeah Because some people yeah. Like I, you know, sometimes it's good to be funny. Like if your product matches with a funny then you need to focus on - lean into that funny. I think if that's part of what you're offering, if it's serious and it's critical and its medical or something along that line, you need to kind of and your audience is that matches to that. You need to be, you know, using those kind of words and those language. I think in two, two terms, two of like education level one, you know, when I speak before about logos and typography, you know, I'm a design snob, so I may end up shopping or making buying decisions based a lot more on how things look and feel that match to my sensitivities.

(28:20) Understanding that they probably hired a high level graphic designer to do things, because it's very evident in everything that they're putting out there. And so I respect that and I'm going to reward that. What are your audience members doing? What do they reward of that same way, maybe they don't care how things look at all, you know, in that sense, just try not to confuse them and don't try to confuse them with the words that are mismatched to how your brand is as well.

(28:47) Totally. As this idea reminds me of the conversation we had about the place that you didn't would refuse to go to because they didn’t pay attention to the visuals.

(28:54) You know, my gosh, this is just it's just, you know, if you're going to start a restaurant, I'm going to just leave that. I'm not going to say more than that.

(29:03) I'm going to keep poking you, I think you might need to -

(29:06) I'm not identifying them specifically, but they invested. They redid a whole giant building. They, I'm sure, spent tons of money. They're in a, you know, they're in a neighborhood where I'm sure a lot of people will be tempted to go there, and then they pull up short on the logo. I'm like, hello, I'm never going to eat there.

(29:29) You will not be rewarded with my cash. You've obviously spent too much money on something that you think matters, but if you're a restaurant, isn't the brand like to attract people?

Like, I mean, there's word of mouth, I get it, there's Yelp or, you know, one of those services out there. But if you're a new business or a new restaurant or something like that and you've not invested in some, you know, the building was beautiful. I mean, it's an amazing place. Here's the problem. I question their decision making if that's what they're going to put out there. What other where. Also, they cut corners.

(30:08) But on the flip side, I've been sucked in by beautiful branding and the food is awful.

(30:14) Okay.

(30:14) But rather than focus on the food, I think the whole idea behind a restaurant, especially a new one, is get people in the door first, then it's yeah, game on. But if you're going to start there, I ain't going.

(30:27) So I think one of the most entertaining thing with clients that we do, and it's an exercise I think could be fun to bring in internally is this thing we, do called brand attributes. And it's a we ask that the client to brainstorm one word adjectives that describe their business, how they want in actually three different categories, like their voice, like how did they want the outside, people outside of their organization to, perceive them? Okay, so it could be like energetic, thoughtful, knowledgeable, like those these are a lot of the words that get thrown out. And so.

(31:09) So when I hear them speaking, whatever that means, those are the words that come to mind. It's like, oh, they're energetic. Oh they're experts.

(31:19) Okay. Quirky and something like that. Right.Those are like different things that those ideally are things the that starts creating the voice that you will draw people in.

(31:28) It's like a style of talk. Okay.

(31:30) That could be really that could be really helpful. It's a fun exercise. It might not take more than an hour. With the team, you could gather a team together and go through some of those. We also in our our process, we go over, the how people feel when they are interacting with you, how you want your customers to feel when you're in their, you know, when they're you're delivering the product or service.

(31:54) You're eating that food, you're like, this makes me feel I'm in a good place. Okay.

(32:00) I feel like I'm being taken care of, I feel we do that. And then what we try and do is prioritize three of each one of those lists. And that gives us a really good idea of how how their brand wants to be portrayed across their customers journey with them.

(32:18) It creates that vision in their head, not a vision of the actual vision, but a feeling, a sensation in their head that is that brand that they want people to have when they're experiencing that organization or company.

(32:30) You might want to evaluate that against your brand identity stuff like, you know, like, our brand is, you know, mostly black with a little hint of red, but we want to be seen as bright and cheerful. Well, maybe there's a mismatch. and that's a bigger problem to try and solve. but having that established that, that, that those are some really key pillars that I think you can help to help build of your brand.

(32:53) The other part of it is give those things to any copywriter. Test what's being written against those, the voice and the feeling things and you’ll - That would be a good way to kind of promote consistency. I've even seen lately, a lot of the AI tools will allow you to put in some of those brand voice type.

(33:14) Yeah, you can train them to…

(33:17) So if you're relying on, you know, to write stuff for you or get a good first draft, you can get even closer to a good first draft because they'll be aware of, you know, the brand voice, things that you're trying to put in there.

(33:29) That's really important. Yeah, I think that word part of it is a bigger challenge because it's it's so much there's it's a bigger it's a deeper ocean. I guess you could say. Yeah, it's not easy.

(33:41) I should I don't want to…Let's say to those you could spend an hour and get it right, but an hour with everybody and get alignment on those things will set you forward. and you can then you can start crafting some other pieces that will be your brand voice in your brand messaging pillars for going forward.

(34:00) And that could be a long process to get to those that those guidelines around how you're sounding and how you're communicating and is probably most prevalently seen on a website. And that's probably what you should start with. Maybe just look at what the website's talking about, how it's speaking, and then maybe you have to craft some things or adjust your brand a little bit, but at least you're working on kind of refining and making things a lot more easier for your customer or your audience to understand.

(34:29) Yeah. what what kind of tools are we talking about here? What what what's going to be helpful to have in that tool kit for anybody who is that brand cop, as we like to call them, I think.

(34:41) I think first and foremost, having some kind of like, shared document that everyone can look to and that is filled out with everything that you've, defined as being the, the rules for talking about your, your company or your brands. Right. So, there's, there's, you could do a bunch of searches. We have one that's available that you can download.

(35:05) it's a real simple version that you can put in your brand identity pieces. Some of your brand messaging pieces. And that could be like a PowerPoint or a slide deck that you can use. I've seen other things where there's like an online platform where you just build it all out. we put a link in the show notes. I forget what was called off the top of my head. in that instance, you can not only show the the rules, but you can also for the assets that you want people to be able to download, you can link them directly there.

(35:36) So they see, hey, here's how to use the logo. Oh, here's a link to where I can download the logos and use them. So there's some great tools from that side of things. I think having a really solid shared drive structure, you Google Drive, Dropbox, you know, Microsoft's product, whatever it, wherever your files are, you have a folder where it's clearly delineated where all the different pieces are that people can grab it.

(36:05) It's all about just making them, making it easy for everybody else to do the right thing. It's a I think that's, do the make the decisions up front for everybody. and they'll probably thank you for it. There's not going to be a bunch of people who are like, oh, this is too confining. Most of the other people are going to be doing this.The people who are going to, chip away at your brand consistency, intentionally doing it. I think it's because they, they don't have the things at their fingertips. They have to rework it, or they have to do whatever it is. And they they do it in their vision of things. And it's not malicious. It's not it's not intentional.

(36:46) Well, and I think I think the one thing to keep an eye on is also those people within that organization, maybe outside of what that marketing team of one person is in control of, is that they're other people may put a bigger hierarchy. No, this is much more important. So we have to make this look really different because it's really important. And it's it's really outside the the fight that as much as possible I think.

(37:14) Right.

(37:14) I mean, it's still it will confuse people first and foremost, even if they want to make it a splash and different.It's going to confuse the audience. And it's not working towards the best interest of the organization at all. There's ways to have fun with it. Yeah, within the boundaries of what we're what you were just talking about,

(37:34) I think. I think you want to avoid that. Like simmering tension like Doesn't feel right. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. On the website side of things too, larger websites, it's really helpful to have what they call, what the nerds call a design system. It's a lot of the components, that are that make up the website. In a way it's almost like a set of Lego blocks that you can use for building out your pages and that way you know that your pages are being built with some consistency. that's a huge thing.

(38:04) That's a big undertaking, too, when it's a it's really helpful if you don't have a giant site, but you do have a, you know, small, manageable, manageable site that you have to take care of, having a simple style guide that has all your headings, colors, headings with the font sizing and everything. that's, that's a huge head start. And then you can go back to your shared folder, you know, on the server and grab the photos and the other pieces that.

(38:35) There's also I think what's great now is that a lot of these tools have been democratized. I'm thinking of like Canva templates that might be something to if you want to invest some time in building out, here's what maybe a sale sheet is going to look like. Here's what a presentation is going to look like. Build out those elements too. I know that when we've developed brand guides, we've done one sheet versions of them all the way out to 150 page versions of them, where we actually say, this is what the newsletter looks like, this is what an email looks like.

(39:02) This is what all of the elements in your communication system are going to look like.

And that's a big ask for one person to build out and that takes up very long time. But that just gives you an idea of exactly how robust some of these systems can be and how important they are.

(39:17) And I think if you are the brand confidence me, it would be helpful if you start seeing like targetable offenses. So to speak. Like you would that you could look at that and go, oh well they're, they're doing that because there's a need there. Like you'd be able to be flexible and go, hey, you know, let me create a template for that. Yeah. And then kind of and it's, it's a little bit of like spot check or like fighting spot fire. Spot fires, you know. But, but it can help. Overall your brand will be better for it if you, if you put in that little bit.

(39:52) All right, so it sounds like consistency is the biggest issue.

(39:56) I think it's the most important thing. Like, I don't I think you can consistency with things can overcome a lot of other shortcomings with brand identity and brands. As long as you're consistent, you'll be.

(40:07) I think building in those limitations.

(40:10) Yeah.

(40:10) Making it even if it feels boring it's also going to provide so much more efficiencies within your organization to where you could probably empower multiple people on the team who are not part of marketing, to maybe help build things.

(40:24) Even yourself. I like watching cooking shows, but I'm not a chef, right? Most chefs don't like pull everything out and start like doing things and then throwing events. They prep a lot of things up front.  like most and I get the feeling most of the day is prepping to be able to home for dinner time. Right. So like think of your job that way as a brand copper as the the the king or queen of brands. That you're that you're prepping a lot of those things upfront. And the reason why you do that is you can you can be more efficient in your job going forward and you're not driving yourself crazy.

(41:02) Mise en place, I think, is what they call that. Yes. Everything in its place. Yeah.

(41:08) Here's the chopped onions, here's the tomatoes, then it's time to start cooking.

(41:15) Boom boom boom. You're cooking, you're slicing, you're going, you're sauteeing. Yeah.

(41:19) And then all of a sudden that's a beautiful wonderful meal. Even if the logo is terrible. 

(41:25) Mike, thank you for a wonderful conversation about branding. This has been great.

(41:30) I'm dragging you to this restaurant. It's happening.

(41:32) No. No way, no way.

(41:34) I'm hanging on for dear life. All right.

(41:37) Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.

(41:39) Thanks, Eric. It's been fun.

(41:41) Thanks, everybody.

(41:42) See you next time.

(41:45) Thanks for tuning in.

(41:47) For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the marketing team of one podcast on YouTube, Apple or Spotify Podcast Networks.

(41:54) You can also chat with us on the r/marketingteamofone subreddit, or visit marketingteamofone.net to learn more.

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