speaker-0: This is Speak Easy, the podcast where I talk to our guests about their beverage of choice and lessons learned from lives lived in the marketing trenches. I'm Doug Stanley Hunt, founder of Catalysis, a digital marketing agency here in Seattle, and your host and bartender here in the cloakroom, the hidden bar in the basement of our home in a hundred-year-old former church. In this episode, we're here with Alan Brown, founder of the advertising agency DNA and Stone. Today, we talk about his path from product sales at P &G to founding and growing an advertising agency. We cover collecting debt, A hot take campaign for Maxwell House Coffee that I couldn't believe when he told me about it. If a hotel room was branded by Apple, what would it look like? Finally, we explore radical empathy and how it makes a big difference in creating advertising. He also has a love of Black Manhattans. The drink. So let's go learn something. Alan, welcome to Speak Easy. I want to start by making you your beverage of choice. What would that be? Manhattan, and look, we have the ingredients right here. So.
speaker-1: of Black Manhattan. ⁓
speaker-0: We start with the rye and we like to use a local crater lake rye, which is from Bend, Oregon. What do you think the rye, why the rye for a black man?
speaker-1: It's the foundation of the drink. It's really what the drink is going to build upon.
speaker-0: ⁓ It's got that, it's got that little bit of spiciness, think. And then the next is Averna, I mean Amaro, and we use Averna. Amaro here. Talisises. Cloakroom, speakeasy. And why that?
speaker-1: Well, that's my favorite tomorrow, by the way. And ⁓ that to me adds the, it's the interest. It adds kind of this kind of sweetness to it, the flavor of it. I love the herbal.
speaker-0: The herbal oil is the numero. And so it's stirred, not spaken.
speaker-1: Yep.
speaker-0: And the one thing that brother. drained into a chilled glass. Oops. ⁓ geez. Well, because it's morning, we're doing a small cocktail here. And of course, the cherry. ⁓ and the bitters, darn. And I use cherry to stir the bitters. But I like them to float on top. I don't know, some people like them mixed in. Thank you, it's a choice.
speaker-1: The bitters? Cheers. Cheers. It's good. It is.
speaker-0: That's really good. for a morning cocktail, when they all come together, they make something wonderful. So let's talk about you and your history. And I really think that you've been doing this and you founded an agency and like I did, and we came from different backgrounds from traditional, I think traditional MBA to marketing to, you came from sales. I came from theater.
speaker-1: Yeah, I- It's very good. Yeah. ⁓
speaker-0: Who knows why, right? So what do you think was fundamental in getting you into this?
speaker-1: Well, first of all, you said you came to get an MBA in theater.
speaker-0: No, I didn't have an MBA. ⁓ I didn't have the MBA.
speaker-1: ⁓ got it. I was going to say, well, I came from, you know, I was a C student at a state school in Ohio State. And, you know, I think the way I got to this is of what I actually kind of did in college. You know, I did a lot of things in student activities and that's kind of where I found my passion. didn't really find my passion academically in college, but I found it in the other things that I was doing. And so I really had a passion for marketing and for persuasion and things like that. I ended up, yeah, mean, taking my first job at Procter & Gamble and it was ⁓ in sales. And ⁓ I really kind of found my groove there in terms of, you know, what I liked to do. I worked on Folgers coffee. We had a test ⁓ orange juice called Citrus Hill and a tea called Tenderleaf Tea. Those are both in test market. Which I was fortunate to work on those. So that was great.
speaker-0: Where you selling? What was your attitude towards product research when you were in sales? Did you gravitate towards it in terms of how you sold?
speaker-1: or yeah, mean, there's all kinds of stuff the Procter & Gamble provided to us to kind of back up, you know, how we were positioning the product to sell it. Like one of the things that was interesting is ⁓ there is a recession going on at the time and P &G was very innovative and they developed a coffee called Flaked Coffee, which is weird, I know, but what they would do, they'd take the grounds and then they would spin them down to get more surface to the grounds so you would get more production when you would have drip coffee from this flake coffee. it was, ⁓ you'd pay the same price for a pound, there was more. can make their. Yeah, yeah. So it was a kind of a recession type of coffee, which I thought was really interesting. Did they advertise that? They did, yeah.
speaker-0: more pods of it. That's interesting. they saw a need and then they created a product and do know how they launched the marketing for that or the branding?
speaker-1: It was really positioned as a more affordable, know, it was kind of addressing a costing. I mean, at the time everybody was drinking coffee at home, making coffee in their home. So, I mean, that was a way to not have to cut into the budget for coffee in the morning.
speaker-0: Or I remember in a... What was it? Have some Senka brand. It was always the brand. I remember Senka brand coffee, but he never drinks coffee after dinner. No, and I remember Folders was Mrs. Which is so weird because you think of like Mrs. Olsen on one end and you think of Juan Valdez who was introduced thereafter, but not for Folders. I don't know what brand it was, but he was about the contact with the terroir. We're just kind of funding for like...
speaker-1: of the This is Olson. Yeah.
speaker-0: Did you know who he was?
speaker-1: Yeah, I don't, but ⁓ they use one Valdez to promote coffee in general. One of the more unbelievable ad campaigns for coffee, and I believe it was Maxwell House, was when the husband came home for dinner and was complaining to his wife about how she doesn't make coffee like the girls at the office. And she is just devastated. And so as she's talking to her girlfriend in the next shot, it's like, he doesn't like my coffee and what do I do? And she's like, well, try Maxwell House. The next night he comes home and there's candles at the table and she has in his coffee and is like, wow, this is better than the girls at the office. Just like, ⁓ my God, seriously?
speaker-0: So you had another interesting job, you, before you left college?
speaker-1: Yeah, had a couple of different jobs in college. mean, really weird. I was a bartender in college. I was a phlebotomist in college. And I also collected debt for an insurance company. In this case, these people were, they had these loans and they had collateralized stuff that I don't even know if they existed. Like they were like, the collateral for people would be televisions or radios or... lawnmowers or whatever, it was just weird. And they were late on their payments. And so my job was to get them to make a payment. what I, and in talking to these people, they really had terrible stories, some of them. They didn't have the money to make the payment, right? And so to save them from having this go further into a bad situation with a collection, figured out if they made a payment that was half of the monthly payment plus a dollar, it would credit them for their monthly payment. and get them to the next month, right? So I could buy them some time, you know? And so that whole thing about like, you know, I mean, everybody comes from a different place. They have a different life experience and also like just that flexibility and adaptability. Some people just need a little help and how can you work with them?
speaker-0: this was all before your phone calls with them were probably not recorded, unlike what the guy in the Incredibles where he helped the lady with her insurance payment and figuring out how to get what she needed from the insurance company. ⁓ Did you get in trouble for that or did they look fondly on somebody who could help out?
speaker-1: Although... the ⁓ No, I didn't get in trouble for it. And actually, ⁓ my boss was actually... ⁓ His boss was looking at production in the office in terms of how many accounts they got up to date. And so it was moving, you know, accounts up to date. And so he was perfectly happy with that. And they started allowing us to do that.
speaker-0: Made it look good. So, in a way, the costume of behalf, it made everybody happy. Yeah, I think that's good. think that's... Interestingly, Amy Johnson, who was a guest on this podcast as well, she started after college collecting debt or working with expired student or overdue student loans for Sallie Mae. And similarly, it taught her a certain emotional empathy, which she brought to later in her career. She... she wasn't on your side of business, she was on the product side of the business, but do you think that empathy has influenced the way you've approached advertising? ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, mean empathy We talk about the agency we talk about radical empathy Which is a little bit different than empathy because I think when you're empathetic you you try to understand somebody in there They're coming from sure radical empathy is really really trying to put yourself in their shoes, right experience what they're experiencing and I grew up in a lower middle-class family I mean, I remember the days when my parents would get those phone calls from the power company or know, they're bill collectors and they didn't have the money to pay the bills, you know, and so it put a lot of stress on the family. And so for me, having that experience, that radically empathetic experience, I could really feel what those people were feeling when they got a bill collector calling for their money. How I've taken that forward in our business is, like one of the things we talked about is, Being empathetic is like being in a conference room and looking at research and data and understanding consumers, right? Like, I look at the data, I think I know what they're about. Being radically empathetic is being able to like go out and spend time with them. In Seattle, it's not like looking at somebody standing on the street corner and pouring down rain, it's getting out of your car and standing next to them and feeling the rain on your body. You're like, oh, now I know how it feels, right? So in marketing, if you can put yourself and experience what they are experiencing, you can create advertising that is way more emotionally connected and authentic to what those people need to hear, experience, whatever, from the brand. ⁓
speaker-0: Would that mean, I guess in terms of brands that do that, would that mean then your positioning is hyper specialized versus broad and is there an advantage to that?
speaker-1: It's not hyper specialized, but it's hyper specific. Okay. And I think there's a difference. we don't, as an agency, we don't specialize in like lower funnel, know, marketing, performance marketing or PR or whatever, but having the specificity in terms of how we approach consumer insights and how that affects the work that we do, I think is a specificity to how we do the work. And it produces something different.
speaker-0: So, after Procter & Gamble, you were selling, what made you go to the other side of the business?
speaker-1: I saw that, by actually both my experience at Procter and Gamble and then I worked for Pepsi, I saw that all of the fun was being had on the creative side of the business. The advertising agencies that we were working with were creating these amazing campaigns and really doing what I thought was the fun work. And so then I made the shift after that to the agency side of the business.
speaker-0: So Pepsi, what did you do for Pepsi? What were you seeing what was going on at Pepsi at the time?
speaker-1: I was doing both sales and marketing at Pepsi and we had, you know, national ⁓ accounts and I was working with regional accounts at the time. So ⁓ in what they called fountain sales were, you know, on premise. So I'd worked with like bars and restaurants and stadiums to really help them market and pushing more Pepsi through there.
speaker-0: hours. So you were fighting coke. So what do you think the secret sauce was at the time for Pepsi doing so much, gaining so much ground at the time?
speaker-1: Coke was like the established brand. It's the Kleenex of soft drinks, right? Kleenex brand. Kleenex brand of soft drinks. So it was our tissues, right? Pepsi at that time became the cool brand. They really leveraged pop culture and cultural moments to connect with people and younger people to drink Pepsi. So when I was there, they were working with... It was when Michael Jackson, you know, was, when the thriller came out and they had a whole thing with the thriller campaign, know, Madonna and the... ⁓ yeah. And then there was the Don Johnson, you know, ⁓ thing. And so it was very influential and it was like very cool. It very, very in the moment.
speaker-0: or to tour. It's interesting because it was sort of way before social media marketing. Coke was this overarching brand that was selling kind of a feeling. know, the polar bears or what Coke is life, think was that around the time. But you all were using at Pepsi people or celebrity influencers going up to cool people. How would you see that working or not working today? How would that play out?
speaker-1: who were. Well, it's still worse today. It's just that, you know, ⁓ I think back then the pool of who is influential and who are celebrities and who can drive that kind of content was much narrower, right, to major, major stars, right? Today, I mean, there so many influencers that, you know, you and I don't have any familiarity with, right? But our kids do. ⁓ yeah. You know, so you look at, ⁓ I mean, a lot of brands, you know, tap into not only those influencers to... ⁓ endorse products or they're gonna carry a message forward, but also like ⁓ just those platforms. mean, know, things become popular like in a matter of like, yeah.
speaker-0: Like who would have known? I mean, I would think back to Cabbage Patch. I mean, it's not any different than the Cabbage Patch or what was the other one? Beanie Babies. started, but those didn't start in the social media universe. So ⁓ I think we talked about this, that there's a timeframe for that to be successful.
speaker-1: Yeah, the amount of time it takes to spread word of mouth took longer then, right? It's like getting a telephone, right? But these days with social media, it's instantaneous. So when stuff happens, it spreads across the world like, you know, wildfire.
speaker-0: And your supply chain needs to be ready. Because that's other thing I think. I it maybe took a while to ramp up because it got more and more popular. not overnight. there were still, remember there were supply issues.
speaker-1: shoes with all of that? well, and I think also because those things weren't anticipated, right? So if you're, you know, lot of brands today, we talk about planning for spontaneity, right? So you have to be ready for spontaneous moments. And if you have a strategy where that is gonna be, you if you're using social and influencers and that, that ⁓ those channels, you know, you are ready for that today versus before, it like, you didn't know what was gonna catch fire necessarily.
speaker-0: But if you're planning for that and it doesn't catch fire, is that costly?
speaker-1: It can be, but I think what you do is, mean, if you have a really strong brand position and you know what things you are going to try to capitalize on, so you know the kind of moments you wanna be in culture. Yeah. Okay, off the top of my head, if you're Pampers. Okay. And you wanna have a strong social ⁓ connectivity. mean, if there's an influencer who becomes pregnant.
speaker-0: Let you an example.
speaker-1: you know, there may be an opportunity to, or has a baby, you know, may want to kind of tap into that moment. I mean, that's maybe not the best one, but you know, it's. Yeah, well. Yeah.
speaker-0: It's the Kardashian Pampers. mean... ⁓ my God. can't... Yeah. Only now. I'm sorry. wouldn't... that is interesting because Pampers is something that you think of as sort of a... You said it's not a great example, but playing that through, there isn't that much differentiation between Pampers and Huggies and Kroger diapers or Walmart diapers, except Price, right?
speaker-1: Well, yeah, but I think in the mind of the consumer, there's a huge difference. I remember when I had kids, I was Pampers through and through. I I worked at P &G. I perceived Huggies to be an inferior brand based on absolutely nothing. Nothing. Other than brand perception. And Pampers to me kind of felt like the gold standard of diapers. mean, what did I care? I mean, was like, your kid... Yeah, but there was a perception of like doing the best for your kid and you know, that kind of stuff.
speaker-0: Zero to all it does, right? So I want to talk a little bit about, ⁓ you mentioned really looking to the individual and you used an example of your son as somebody that taught you that. And I think that's interesting for me as well because tell me about some of the secret sauce that you use to make really impactful advertising.
speaker-1: Yeah, I think there are a couple of things and it kind of gets back to this idea of radical empathy. You have to really, first of all, suspend your biases. So we all come to things with biases, And so we're talking about our kids, right? And so as a parent and an adoptive parent, mean, are, well, it's no different for any parent. As a parent. Yes. you have expectations in some ways and dreams for your kids and you see something that you want in their life, right? And so to really truly ⁓ understand a person and be there for a person like with my kids, I had to basically ⁓ suspend my expectations and my beliefs and my biases on what I wanted them to be to enable them to be who they are. And I think ⁓ that's just a personal ⁓ example of that. Yeah, I hope so, but I don't think many people do. I think those expectations make it really hard on kids when they're trying to live up to their parents' expectations, as opposed to a parent just ⁓ accepting their kids for all of the wonderful things they are and all the challenges they have and knowing that they're beautiful human beings too.
speaker-0: Hopefully I'll go through that with our kids.
speaker-1: And in marketing, ⁓ I think we come to, it's easy to make assumptions about, if we look at data, look at consumers and like, all consumers think X, Y, or Z way about things, right? And a lot of clients also bring those biases to things. So I'll give you an example, ⁓ in healthcare. know, doctors think that, well, what people need to know is we're the best doctors. We have the highest ratings. We have the best technology. I mean, all these things because we ⁓ going to save you, you know? And we did work recently for one of our healthcare clients ⁓ to talk about their cancer institute. And in doing research and talking with cancer survivors and cancer patients, What we learned is that the moment you hear you have cancer, it is a life-changing moment. And there's nothing more important than the empathy that someone shows you at the moment that they tell you you have cancer. And the entire campaign is based on that moment. It contrasts how life is going on at this moment. The moment you hear everything changes, everything changes. And that is where the spot stops. having that empathy for somebody to say, hear you, I'm putting myself in your shoes at that moment. is a major, major difference in terms of ⁓ how a patient will look at a healthcare provider to help them on their cancer journey. They don't care about the technology at that moment. They don't care about your degree. They don't care about the number of ⁓ treatments you do every year. It's like, you gonna be there for me? ⁓
speaker-0: That's interesting. I... So I've had cancer multiple times. And the first time I heard, it was a Friday night and I'd had an ultrasound and I was... ⁓ The doctor wasn't there, but they said, you need to go to the doctor's office to make an appointment for Monday morning. And I said, why? And they said, well, we can't really tell you. And I said, I need to know. And so the doctor got on the phone and I was standing in a hallway to tell me, well, we think you might have cancer. ⁓ And he said, ⁓ quiet Jordan. Daddy's on the phone. That was the name of his child. I still remember that, I don't know, 25 years ago. I found out about this on a Friday and I had all weekend to do research on Dr. Google or whatever, you know, and it was a terrible experience. And hearing you say that, that's interesting because it would have been lovely if there were a team of people that said, I'm getting teary here, said, oh. this isn't so bad, we can work through this, we'll do everything we can. This is really hard to hear. And it was like, very difficult thing. But I hear you and I think that resonates with me as a cancer survivor. if, not just the branding, but if the doctors had had that training.
speaker-1: Exactly, and that's where this idea about radical empathy really has ⁓ where it's most powerful is when you have, you can have radically empathetic understanding of consumers and of your clients and of the culture and of the brand. And when they all come together in that way, you've got something really powerful. Because even if you try to take that kind of like a marketing approach, if the experience is not gonna align with that, you're gonna... ⁓ it creates more extremely high dissatisfaction. Yes. Yes. Low back. Yes.
speaker-0: ⁓ Let's talk a little bit about the consolidation that's happening in the advertising space right now because I have a very strong, I wrote an op-ed about it and I feel like I have very strong opinions about where creativity lies and when one, and talking with you, you had mentioned, not in this interview, but when we talked before, you had mentioned you loved commercials growing up. And it's interesting, the people that I talked to that are in advertising, there's this almost universal love commercial that we saw as kids. And I don't know where I see commercials now, but that love of advertising or of ads was something that got us into it. know, and we wanted to be part of that creative. And as we see this consolidation happening, I think the industry is changing between the big agencies, much like the big accounting agencies versus the smaller boutique agencies that really can deliver customized service. What's your take on that?
speaker-1: that Yeah, I think the industry is just, ⁓ it's just not what it used to be. You know, I mean, when I grew up, like I said, I loved watching TV commercials and I love advertising and magazines, things like that. And ⁓ as media has proliferated, it's gotten way more complex. As data has become more available, it's become way more targeted and you know, you can be more specific. And so the pendulum always swings, right? And I think what's happened over the past few years is that the pendulum has really swung to short-term performance lower funnel marketing because it's clickable. can measure it. You measure it very well. Yeah. What's happened, I follow Les Bonet and System One and Adam and Eve out of London and they do a lot of data around this. And when the pendulum
speaker-0: quickly.
speaker-1: swings to that area and stays there and that's all you do, get bumps in short-term performance. You do not get long-term, ⁓ long-term, that doesn't sustain, okay, then continue on. ⁓ What I think is happening in the industry though is that there are, when you look at ⁓ returns, multiples returns on business, ⁓ profit, generation, those kinds of things, the holding companies are becoming data companies. So the consolidation is moving toward data, they're moving to a lower funnel performance. and they are taking creativity out of the mix. And so, because that stuff gets investment dollars and like I said, it makes the shareholders happy. In the meantime, consumers are, we're missing out on the brand relationship, the opportunity to really like, now what brands do I care about? Like, we're not getting that anymore. So, and that's where to me, I think there's this divide between the holding companies and independent creative agencies. The holding companies feel like tech companies. The smaller independent agencies feel like creative companies. There's more humanity there. We care more about ⁓ building ⁓ brand authenticity, ⁓ establishing relationships with brands, connecting on an emotional level to drive long-term, both short and long-term brand performance, right? So building that relationship Overall, brand performance. Absolutely.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Any examples of some brands like that you think do it well and you know what they stand for over the long term versus short term brands that are kind of in a bit of a model?
speaker-1: I'll tell about one that's in kind of a bit of a muddle because they made this huge shift to Starbucks. And it's been pretty well documented over the past couple of years that they've lost their way a little bit because they ⁓ had focused a lot on those performance metrics and they lost that idea of third place and that connection to community and everything has become... I appreciate the app and it's very convenient for me, but when you focus on just features like that... without the context of the brand and the specialness and the relationship you have, ⁓ you just become a commodity.
speaker-0: That's interesting you say that because Amy Johnson was here. ⁓ She's the one who worked in the She's the one who worked in debt collection, but she was head of innovation for Starbucks and she started the she talks about piloting the mobile ordering which made it so convenient and there was a big debate when they did it because They want they didn't want to give preference To the people who ordered outside versus it's a Democratic line at Starbucks Yeah, and so you come in and so they did all sorts of tests and they found out that the best one was one where you could order and pick it up ⁓ Now it's a different line and it's almost a different customer But it really hasn't given the ability to reconnect with the customers that choose to come in and stay in the store Yeah, I think they're working on that now I think that's part of their revamp is to reintroduce the third place
speaker-1: It is. It is. And I think that, again, when the pendulum swings in one direction, and I think for all the right reasons, I mean, I think, like I said, the mobile app and technology and making things more convenient for certain customers is, that's a great solution, right? But not everybody wants that. And I think, especially when you think about the relationship you want to have with that more cup of coffee and the people, like, just walk in and know the baristas, have a conversation. I recently moved to Chicago and I go to this Starbucks every morning and There's a different experience I have when I'm in a hurry and I have mobile order versus I want to have a chit chat for a second with people who work there.
speaker-0: That's better for your health, too. Did you know that? I'm sorry. It's better for your health. Locking to people with even light conversations in the grocery line, in a coffee shop. Just saying hello on the street, it makes you feel better about yourself and it promotes a connectedness and a sense of community, which I think is something else that's been lost with all these quick, very transactional experiences. ⁓ We did a ⁓ project with Starbucks years ago to help them regain their coffee authority. And one of the findings was that there's a very different experience. There used to be, there still is, but you go up and you order a beverage and they say, do you want it? And they'll customize it however you want. You want a cup of coffee to go, thanks. They turn their back on you and get your coffee out of the urn, turn around and like, here you go. And that was something that was for some people like New Yorkers, just give me my coffee and let me get out of you. It was a very different thing. And it was... costing them the ability to, ⁓ what they called... And it was costing them what they called their coffee authority. You went to Starbucks for a really good, delicious coffee, black coffee, creamed coffee experience. Now you go for a sweet beverage or an icy beverage or a Frappuccino, which is essentially an icy milkshake. Very different thing. And I think that was part of them losing the brand at one point.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: and trying to rediscover it and here we are again. Like you said, the pendulum swings and it swings and swings. You went to the agency side. Who was your first big client?
speaker-1: Sheraton Hotels, Sheraton.
speaker-0: Back then it was a unique brand and now it's so interesting because I think of consolidation and now you look at the hotel brands and they have maybe 15, 20 brands underneath them. How, when they're all part of one big Uber brand, you would think, okay, they're going for hyper specialization. But when I think of a hotel room, I think of location price and ⁓ I'm not particularly brand loyal. I just want a good clean night's sleep.
speaker-1: Well, I I think in the hotel industry, I yeah, I worked in Sheraton and they merged with Weston, you know, then all of sudden it was like, okay, well, Weston is this kind of a brand, Sheraton is this kind of a brand. Then it became like all this proliferation with like Four Points or like St. Regis was, you know, a brand. So, know, also you have like everything from luxury to budget, right? And it became this, again, brand proliferation to service the needs or the choices that consumers had. ⁓ But I was doing this thing ⁓ where I was talking about ⁓ hotel brands to some college students. And I said, you know, here's, I gave them three, ⁓ you know, brand positioning statements from, I gave them one from Weston, one from, I'm sorry, one from Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt. And I said, here are the positioning statements. Tell me which brand these are for. And they were indistinguishable. Indistinguishable. Then I said, okay, here's the mid-rate product for all of these brands. And I showed a picture of each of the hotel rooms. Indistinguishable. even though within their portfolio, if I'm like driving a car and I want something cheap for the night, I can choose a Hawthorne, whatever, or can choose a four points, whatever. But if I'm trying to choose, if I'm trying to establish brand loyalty, what do I want to stand for? How do I distinguish that? And I was giving them the example of, if you look at ⁓ if Nordstrom was in the hotel business, if Apple were in the hotel business, if Target were in the hotel business, you know, what would those hotel rooms look like?
speaker-0: and I can totally see what an Apple hotel room would be clean and modern. ⁓
speaker-1: Oh, all the best technology, it looked very fresh and clean. Nordstrom has been very warm and modern, more like an Armani looking. So yeah, mean, they're lacking that. And again, it's kind of like the holding companies and independent agencies. Boutique hotels do that very, very well. And that's why you can see that in your mind, because boutique hotels do that.
speaker-0: Yeah, and you want to go to them for that. There's one in Vancouver that we always go to because it's a boutique hotel and we know what the experience is and it's in a great location and we'll pay a little more because
speaker-1: But I want to know, like, I want it to reflect who I am, right? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk in, this for me anyway, I'm walk into a hotel if I'm making it on that decision, right? I want to walk in and feel like I feel at home. It reflects my personality and that's the experience I'm looking for.
speaker-0: That's interesting. I also think like you go to some hotels and the front desk, the human side of the equation also doesn't reflect their brand. And I think that's another thing that we haven't really talked about, but Starbucks used to have a brand for the barista. And now that they're being seen as union busters, you never know what you're going to get. know, whether you get a really... amazing person who cares about your beverage or somebody who's resentful of Starbucks because they're in union negotiation and just wants to get you your beverage and not get fired. Yeah. mean, how do you think brand can translate to or campaigns can translate to the human facing side of it? You as a debt collection agent, how are you representing the insurance company?
speaker-1: Yeah, well, mean, if again, it kind of goes back to the cancer thing we talked about. If you can align your brand position or your distinction all the way through the experience, then there's a breakdown there, right? And then that really makes the brand inauthentic.
speaker-0: So that's back to the question. How do you imbue a brand into a human element? Like it's not just something in a box or something on a rack. There's a human element to it. And Nordstrom I think of, have a friend who worked in Nordstrom and I always thought, wow, they have the best salespeople. They're amazing. They're helpful. They seem collaborative with each other. And she said, are you kidding me? We worked on commission and it was pit vipers in the back.
speaker-1: Woodstrom.
speaker-0: I never knew that. And so that's a real credit to Nordstrom that they're able to have that front of house, back of house that preserves their brand. But it is problematic because when you have a dissatisfied workforce, it always makes it into the customer space, in my opinion.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when agencies or whoever does brand positioning work or strategy work for a client, the most important audience is the internal audience. Because if you can't get the culture to align with that brand and the experience to align with it, everything else falls down.
speaker-0: How do you research, how do you make that happen and not just make it bunch of platas?
speaker-1: You have to include the internal culture and the internal teams in that work. You can't develop a brand strategy for any brand without understanding the workforce and the leadership and the management and their goals in which...
speaker-0: So back to what you said about radical empathy, you not only have to empathize with a customer, you have to empathize with those who are in charge of supporting, sustaining, and delivering the brand. And I think that's a very, very astute way of putting it because... Your way of putting it, not mine.
speaker-1: You're- Like these clients that say like, ⁓ have to work on our, ⁓ we have work to do on our employment brand. Why is your employment brand any different than your consumer brand? It should all be the same, right? All consistent.
speaker-0: So, there's only a few minutes left. I guess I'd like to talk a little bit about what's next for you. Where do you see the industry going and yourself? What interests you about that and where you see going with it? Or is it time for Midwestern summer golf?
speaker-1: It'll never be time for me to bust my summer off and not a golfer.
speaker-0: I know we were talking about politics and the fact that in the research, so many of the core issues that are important to people when we stop and listen are the same. Education, pricing, healthcare, it doesn't matter which end of the political spectrum you vote with, the issues are the same. And I think that concept of horseshoe politics is a great one where you're at the top and you're so close to each other, but you're on other side of horseshoe.
speaker-1: side of the horse.
speaker-0: How do you create that bridge?
speaker-1: I think by understanding the different frames that people look at those issues in, right? And so in trying to find common ground around those ideas, ⁓ and I think in some ways like advertising is a great equalizer in a lot of ways. People like ads, they wanna love the brands that they support, right? And yeah, there's some brands that reflect certain personalities in people in different ways. ⁓ But I also think that... ⁓ we have an opportunity and a responsibility to, through advertising the work we do to educate people and to bring people along, right? So I think this whole move to anti-DE &I over the past year has been, ⁓ I think, very damaging to our culture, but I think in advertising, think we have an opportunity to continue to represent wide diverse groups of people, to support them in a number of different ways. to give people a chance to get into our industry who may not have thought about it as something that's for them or that they have an opportunity to get into. I just think we have, we're kind of the center of commerce and culture. And when those things come together, I think that's a really exciting place to be.
speaker-0: Well, to that, think that's a great.
speaker-1: Cheers. Thank you. Good chatting.
speaker-0: Thanks for listening to this episode of Speak Easy. I hope you enjoyed our conversation or learned something from it. And I have a favor to ask. Please share us, like us, leave your comments. You know the game. And most of all, if you have any guests you'd like to suggest, please let us know. The full transcript and show notes are available at catalysis.com slash speak easy. Keep asking, keep listening, and most of all, keep learning.
speaker-1: of Black Manhattan. ⁓
speaker-0: We start with the rye and we like to use a local crater lake rye, which is from Bend, Oregon. What do you think the rye, why the rye for a black man?
speaker-1: It's the foundation of the drink. It's really what the drink is going to build upon.
speaker-0: ⁓ It's got that, it's got that little bit of spiciness, think. And then the next is Averna, I mean Amaro, and we use Averna. Amaro here. Talisises. Cloakroom, speakeasy. And why that?
speaker-1: Well, that's my favorite tomorrow, by the way. And ⁓ that to me adds the, it's the interest. It adds kind of this kind of sweetness to it, the flavor of it. I love the herbal.
speaker-0: The herbal oil is the numero. And so it's stirred, not spaken.
speaker-1: Yep.
speaker-0: And the one thing that brother. drained into a chilled glass. Oops. ⁓ geez. Well, because it's morning, we're doing a small cocktail here. And of course, the cherry. ⁓ and the bitters, darn. And I use cherry to stir the bitters. But I like them to float on top. I don't know, some people like them mixed in. Thank you, it's a choice.
speaker-1: The bitters? Cheers. Cheers. It's good. It is.
speaker-0: That's really good. for a morning cocktail, when they all come together, they make something wonderful. So let's talk about you and your history. And I really think that you've been doing this and you founded an agency and like I did, and we came from different backgrounds from traditional, I think traditional MBA to marketing to, you came from sales. I came from theater.
speaker-1: Yeah, I- It's very good. Yeah. ⁓
speaker-0: Who knows why, right? So what do you think was fundamental in getting you into this?
speaker-1: Well, first of all, you said you came to get an MBA in theater.
speaker-0: No, I didn't have an MBA. ⁓ I didn't have the MBA.
speaker-1: ⁓ got it. I was going to say, well, I came from, you know, I was a C student at a state school in Ohio State. And, you know, I think the way I got to this is of what I actually kind of did in college. You know, I did a lot of things in student activities and that's kind of where I found my passion. didn't really find my passion academically in college, but I found it in the other things that I was doing. And so I really had a passion for marketing and for persuasion and things like that. I ended up, yeah, mean, taking my first job at Procter & Gamble and it was ⁓ in sales. And ⁓ I really kind of found my groove there in terms of, you know, what I liked to do. I worked on Folgers coffee. We had a test ⁓ orange juice called Citrus Hill and a tea called Tenderleaf Tea. Those are both in test market. Which I was fortunate to work on those. So that was great.
speaker-0: Where you selling? What was your attitude towards product research when you were in sales? Did you gravitate towards it in terms of how you sold?
speaker-1: or yeah, mean, there's all kinds of stuff the Procter & Gamble provided to us to kind of back up, you know, how we were positioning the product to sell it. Like one of the things that was interesting is ⁓ there is a recession going on at the time and P &G was very innovative and they developed a coffee called Flaked Coffee, which is weird, I know, but what they would do, they'd take the grounds and then they would spin them down to get more surface to the grounds so you would get more production when you would have drip coffee from this flake coffee. it was, ⁓ you'd pay the same price for a pound, there was more. can make their. Yeah, yeah. So it was a kind of a recession type of coffee, which I thought was really interesting. Did they advertise that? They did, yeah.
speaker-0: more pods of it. That's interesting. they saw a need and then they created a product and do know how they launched the marketing for that or the branding?
speaker-1: It was really positioned as a more affordable, know, it was kind of addressing a costing. I mean, at the time everybody was drinking coffee at home, making coffee in their home. So, I mean, that was a way to not have to cut into the budget for coffee in the morning.
speaker-0: Or I remember in a... What was it? Have some Senka brand. It was always the brand. I remember Senka brand coffee, but he never drinks coffee after dinner. No, and I remember Folders was Mrs. Which is so weird because you think of like Mrs. Olsen on one end and you think of Juan Valdez who was introduced thereafter, but not for Folders. I don't know what brand it was, but he was about the contact with the terroir. We're just kind of funding for like...
speaker-1: of the This is Olson. Yeah.
speaker-0: Did you know who he was?
speaker-1: Yeah, I don't, but ⁓ they use one Valdez to promote coffee in general. One of the more unbelievable ad campaigns for coffee, and I believe it was Maxwell House, was when the husband came home for dinner and was complaining to his wife about how she doesn't make coffee like the girls at the office. And she is just devastated. And so as she's talking to her girlfriend in the next shot, it's like, he doesn't like my coffee and what do I do? And she's like, well, try Maxwell House. The next night he comes home and there's candles at the table and she has in his coffee and is like, wow, this is better than the girls at the office. Just like, ⁓ my God, seriously?
speaker-0: So you had another interesting job, you, before you left college?
speaker-1: Yeah, had a couple of different jobs in college. mean, really weird. I was a bartender in college. I was a phlebotomist in college. And I also collected debt for an insurance company. In this case, these people were, they had these loans and they had collateralized stuff that I don't even know if they existed. Like they were like, the collateral for people would be televisions or radios or... lawnmowers or whatever, it was just weird. And they were late on their payments. And so my job was to get them to make a payment. what I, and in talking to these people, they really had terrible stories, some of them. They didn't have the money to make the payment, right? And so to save them from having this go further into a bad situation with a collection, figured out if they made a payment that was half of the monthly payment plus a dollar, it would credit them for their monthly payment. and get them to the next month, right? So I could buy them some time, you know? And so that whole thing about like, you know, I mean, everybody comes from a different place. They have a different life experience and also like just that flexibility and adaptability. Some people just need a little help and how can you work with them?
speaker-0: this was all before your phone calls with them were probably not recorded, unlike what the guy in the Incredibles where he helped the lady with her insurance payment and figuring out how to get what she needed from the insurance company. ⁓ Did you get in trouble for that or did they look fondly on somebody who could help out?
speaker-1: Although... the ⁓ No, I didn't get in trouble for it. And actually, ⁓ my boss was actually... ⁓ His boss was looking at production in the office in terms of how many accounts they got up to date. And so it was moving, you know, accounts up to date. And so he was perfectly happy with that. And they started allowing us to do that.
speaker-0: Made it look good. So, in a way, the costume of behalf, it made everybody happy. Yeah, I think that's good. think that's... Interestingly, Amy Johnson, who was a guest on this podcast as well, she started after college collecting debt or working with expired student or overdue student loans for Sallie Mae. And similarly, it taught her a certain emotional empathy, which she brought to later in her career. She... she wasn't on your side of business, she was on the product side of the business, but do you think that empathy has influenced the way you've approached advertising? ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, mean empathy We talk about the agency we talk about radical empathy Which is a little bit different than empathy because I think when you're empathetic you you try to understand somebody in there They're coming from sure radical empathy is really really trying to put yourself in their shoes, right experience what they're experiencing and I grew up in a lower middle-class family I mean, I remember the days when my parents would get those phone calls from the power company or know, they're bill collectors and they didn't have the money to pay the bills, you know, and so it put a lot of stress on the family. And so for me, having that experience, that radically empathetic experience, I could really feel what those people were feeling when they got a bill collector calling for their money. How I've taken that forward in our business is, like one of the things we talked about is, Being empathetic is like being in a conference room and looking at research and data and understanding consumers, right? Like, I look at the data, I think I know what they're about. Being radically empathetic is being able to like go out and spend time with them. In Seattle, it's not like looking at somebody standing on the street corner and pouring down rain, it's getting out of your car and standing next to them and feeling the rain on your body. You're like, oh, now I know how it feels, right? So in marketing, if you can put yourself and experience what they are experiencing, you can create advertising that is way more emotionally connected and authentic to what those people need to hear, experience, whatever, from the brand. ⁓
speaker-0: Would that mean, I guess in terms of brands that do that, would that mean then your positioning is hyper specialized versus broad and is there an advantage to that?
speaker-1: It's not hyper specialized, but it's hyper specific. Okay. And I think there's a difference. we don't, as an agency, we don't specialize in like lower funnel, know, marketing, performance marketing or PR or whatever, but having the specificity in terms of how we approach consumer insights and how that affects the work that we do, I think is a specificity to how we do the work. And it produces something different.
speaker-0: So, after Procter & Gamble, you were selling, what made you go to the other side of the business?
speaker-1: I saw that, by actually both my experience at Procter and Gamble and then I worked for Pepsi, I saw that all of the fun was being had on the creative side of the business. The advertising agencies that we were working with were creating these amazing campaigns and really doing what I thought was the fun work. And so then I made the shift after that to the agency side of the business.
speaker-0: So Pepsi, what did you do for Pepsi? What were you seeing what was going on at Pepsi at the time?
speaker-1: I was doing both sales and marketing at Pepsi and we had, you know, national ⁓ accounts and I was working with regional accounts at the time. So ⁓ in what they called fountain sales were, you know, on premise. So I'd worked with like bars and restaurants and stadiums to really help them market and pushing more Pepsi through there.
speaker-0: hours. So you were fighting coke. So what do you think the secret sauce was at the time for Pepsi doing so much, gaining so much ground at the time?
speaker-1: Coke was like the established brand. It's the Kleenex of soft drinks, right? Kleenex brand. Kleenex brand of soft drinks. So it was our tissues, right? Pepsi at that time became the cool brand. They really leveraged pop culture and cultural moments to connect with people and younger people to drink Pepsi. So when I was there, they were working with... It was when Michael Jackson, you know, was, when the thriller came out and they had a whole thing with the thriller campaign, know, Madonna and the... ⁓ yeah. And then there was the Don Johnson, you know, ⁓ thing. And so it was very influential and it was like very cool. It very, very in the moment.
speaker-0: or to tour. It's interesting because it was sort of way before social media marketing. Coke was this overarching brand that was selling kind of a feeling. know, the polar bears or what Coke is life, think was that around the time. But you all were using at Pepsi people or celebrity influencers going up to cool people. How would you see that working or not working today? How would that play out?
speaker-1: who were. Well, it's still worse today. It's just that, you know, ⁓ I think back then the pool of who is influential and who are celebrities and who can drive that kind of content was much narrower, right, to major, major stars, right? Today, I mean, there so many influencers that, you know, you and I don't have any familiarity with, right? But our kids do. ⁓ yeah. You know, so you look at, ⁓ I mean, a lot of brands, you know, tap into not only those influencers to... ⁓ endorse products or they're gonna carry a message forward, but also like ⁓ just those platforms. mean, know, things become popular like in a matter of like, yeah.
speaker-0: Like who would have known? I mean, I would think back to Cabbage Patch. I mean, it's not any different than the Cabbage Patch or what was the other one? Beanie Babies. started, but those didn't start in the social media universe. So ⁓ I think we talked about this, that there's a timeframe for that to be successful.
speaker-1: Yeah, the amount of time it takes to spread word of mouth took longer then, right? It's like getting a telephone, right? But these days with social media, it's instantaneous. So when stuff happens, it spreads across the world like, you know, wildfire.
speaker-0: And your supply chain needs to be ready. Because that's other thing I think. I it maybe took a while to ramp up because it got more and more popular. not overnight. there were still, remember there were supply issues.
speaker-1: shoes with all of that? well, and I think also because those things weren't anticipated, right? So if you're, you know, lot of brands today, we talk about planning for spontaneity, right? So you have to be ready for spontaneous moments. And if you have a strategy where that is gonna be, you if you're using social and influencers and that, that ⁓ those channels, you know, you are ready for that today versus before, it like, you didn't know what was gonna catch fire necessarily.
speaker-0: But if you're planning for that and it doesn't catch fire, is that costly?
speaker-1: It can be, but I think what you do is, mean, if you have a really strong brand position and you know what things you are going to try to capitalize on, so you know the kind of moments you wanna be in culture. Yeah. Okay, off the top of my head, if you're Pampers. Okay. And you wanna have a strong social ⁓ connectivity. mean, if there's an influencer who becomes pregnant.
speaker-0: Let you an example.
speaker-1: you know, there may be an opportunity to, or has a baby, you know, may want to kind of tap into that moment. I mean, that's maybe not the best one, but you know, it's. Yeah, well. Yeah.
speaker-0: It's the Kardashian Pampers. mean... ⁓ my God. can't... Yeah. Only now. I'm sorry. wouldn't... that is interesting because Pampers is something that you think of as sort of a... You said it's not a great example, but playing that through, there isn't that much differentiation between Pampers and Huggies and Kroger diapers or Walmart diapers, except Price, right?
speaker-1: Well, yeah, but I think in the mind of the consumer, there's a huge difference. I remember when I had kids, I was Pampers through and through. I I worked at P &G. I perceived Huggies to be an inferior brand based on absolutely nothing. Nothing. Other than brand perception. And Pampers to me kind of felt like the gold standard of diapers. mean, what did I care? I mean, was like, your kid... Yeah, but there was a perception of like doing the best for your kid and you know, that kind of stuff.
speaker-0: Zero to all it does, right? So I want to talk a little bit about, ⁓ you mentioned really looking to the individual and you used an example of your son as somebody that taught you that. And I think that's interesting for me as well because tell me about some of the secret sauce that you use to make really impactful advertising.
speaker-1: Yeah, I think there are a couple of things and it kind of gets back to this idea of radical empathy. You have to really, first of all, suspend your biases. So we all come to things with biases, And so we're talking about our kids, right? And so as a parent and an adoptive parent, mean, are, well, it's no different for any parent. As a parent. Yes. you have expectations in some ways and dreams for your kids and you see something that you want in their life, right? And so to really truly ⁓ understand a person and be there for a person like with my kids, I had to basically ⁓ suspend my expectations and my beliefs and my biases on what I wanted them to be to enable them to be who they are. And I think ⁓ that's just a personal ⁓ example of that. Yeah, I hope so, but I don't think many people do. I think those expectations make it really hard on kids when they're trying to live up to their parents' expectations, as opposed to a parent just ⁓ accepting their kids for all of the wonderful things they are and all the challenges they have and knowing that they're beautiful human beings too.
speaker-0: Hopefully I'll go through that with our kids.
speaker-1: And in marketing, ⁓ I think we come to, it's easy to make assumptions about, if we look at data, look at consumers and like, all consumers think X, Y, or Z way about things, right? And a lot of clients also bring those biases to things. So I'll give you an example, ⁓ in healthcare. know, doctors think that, well, what people need to know is we're the best doctors. We have the highest ratings. We have the best technology. I mean, all these things because we ⁓ going to save you, you know? And we did work recently for one of our healthcare clients ⁓ to talk about their cancer institute. And in doing research and talking with cancer survivors and cancer patients, What we learned is that the moment you hear you have cancer, it is a life-changing moment. And there's nothing more important than the empathy that someone shows you at the moment that they tell you you have cancer. And the entire campaign is based on that moment. It contrasts how life is going on at this moment. The moment you hear everything changes, everything changes. And that is where the spot stops. having that empathy for somebody to say, hear you, I'm putting myself in your shoes at that moment. is a major, major difference in terms of ⁓ how a patient will look at a healthcare provider to help them on their cancer journey. They don't care about the technology at that moment. They don't care about your degree. They don't care about the number of ⁓ treatments you do every year. It's like, you gonna be there for me? ⁓
speaker-0: That's interesting. I... So I've had cancer multiple times. And the first time I heard, it was a Friday night and I'd had an ultrasound and I was... ⁓ The doctor wasn't there, but they said, you need to go to the doctor's office to make an appointment for Monday morning. And I said, why? And they said, well, we can't really tell you. And I said, I need to know. And so the doctor got on the phone and I was standing in a hallway to tell me, well, we think you might have cancer. ⁓ And he said, ⁓ quiet Jordan. Daddy's on the phone. That was the name of his child. I still remember that, I don't know, 25 years ago. I found out about this on a Friday and I had all weekend to do research on Dr. Google or whatever, you know, and it was a terrible experience. And hearing you say that, that's interesting because it would have been lovely if there were a team of people that said, I'm getting teary here, said, oh. this isn't so bad, we can work through this, we'll do everything we can. This is really hard to hear. And it was like, very difficult thing. But I hear you and I think that resonates with me as a cancer survivor. if, not just the branding, but if the doctors had had that training.
speaker-1: Exactly, and that's where this idea about radical empathy really has ⁓ where it's most powerful is when you have, you can have radically empathetic understanding of consumers and of your clients and of the culture and of the brand. And when they all come together in that way, you've got something really powerful. Because even if you try to take that kind of like a marketing approach, if the experience is not gonna align with that, you're gonna... ⁓ it creates more extremely high dissatisfaction. Yes. Yes. Low back. Yes.
speaker-0: ⁓ Let's talk a little bit about the consolidation that's happening in the advertising space right now because I have a very strong, I wrote an op-ed about it and I feel like I have very strong opinions about where creativity lies and when one, and talking with you, you had mentioned, not in this interview, but when we talked before, you had mentioned you loved commercials growing up. And it's interesting, the people that I talked to that are in advertising, there's this almost universal love commercial that we saw as kids. And I don't know where I see commercials now, but that love of advertising or of ads was something that got us into it. know, and we wanted to be part of that creative. And as we see this consolidation happening, I think the industry is changing between the big agencies, much like the big accounting agencies versus the smaller boutique agencies that really can deliver customized service. What's your take on that?
speaker-1: that Yeah, I think the industry is just, ⁓ it's just not what it used to be. You know, I mean, when I grew up, like I said, I loved watching TV commercials and I love advertising and magazines, things like that. And ⁓ as media has proliferated, it's gotten way more complex. As data has become more available, it's become way more targeted and you know, you can be more specific. And so the pendulum always swings, right? And I think what's happened over the past few years is that the pendulum has really swung to short-term performance lower funnel marketing because it's clickable. can measure it. You measure it very well. Yeah. What's happened, I follow Les Bonet and System One and Adam and Eve out of London and they do a lot of data around this. And when the pendulum
speaker-0: quickly.
speaker-1: swings to that area and stays there and that's all you do, get bumps in short-term performance. You do not get long-term, ⁓ long-term, that doesn't sustain, okay, then continue on. ⁓ What I think is happening in the industry though is that there are, when you look at ⁓ returns, multiples returns on business, ⁓ profit, generation, those kinds of things, the holding companies are becoming data companies. So the consolidation is moving toward data, they're moving to a lower funnel performance. and they are taking creativity out of the mix. And so, because that stuff gets investment dollars and like I said, it makes the shareholders happy. In the meantime, consumers are, we're missing out on the brand relationship, the opportunity to really like, now what brands do I care about? Like, we're not getting that anymore. So, and that's where to me, I think there's this divide between the holding companies and independent creative agencies. The holding companies feel like tech companies. The smaller independent agencies feel like creative companies. There's more humanity there. We care more about ⁓ building ⁓ brand authenticity, ⁓ establishing relationships with brands, connecting on an emotional level to drive long-term, both short and long-term brand performance, right? So building that relationship Overall, brand performance. Absolutely.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Any examples of some brands like that you think do it well and you know what they stand for over the long term versus short term brands that are kind of in a bit of a model?
speaker-1: I'll tell about one that's in kind of a bit of a muddle because they made this huge shift to Starbucks. And it's been pretty well documented over the past couple of years that they've lost their way a little bit because they ⁓ had focused a lot on those performance metrics and they lost that idea of third place and that connection to community and everything has become... I appreciate the app and it's very convenient for me, but when you focus on just features like that... without the context of the brand and the specialness and the relationship you have, ⁓ you just become a commodity.
speaker-0: That's interesting you say that because Amy Johnson was here. ⁓ She's the one who worked in the She's the one who worked in debt collection, but she was head of innovation for Starbucks and she started the she talks about piloting the mobile ordering which made it so convenient and there was a big debate when they did it because They want they didn't want to give preference To the people who ordered outside versus it's a Democratic line at Starbucks Yeah, and so you come in and so they did all sorts of tests and they found out that the best one was one where you could order and pick it up ⁓ Now it's a different line and it's almost a different customer But it really hasn't given the ability to reconnect with the customers that choose to come in and stay in the store Yeah, I think they're working on that now I think that's part of their revamp is to reintroduce the third place
speaker-1: It is. It is. And I think that, again, when the pendulum swings in one direction, and I think for all the right reasons, I mean, I think, like I said, the mobile app and technology and making things more convenient for certain customers is, that's a great solution, right? But not everybody wants that. And I think, especially when you think about the relationship you want to have with that more cup of coffee and the people, like, just walk in and know the baristas, have a conversation. I recently moved to Chicago and I go to this Starbucks every morning and There's a different experience I have when I'm in a hurry and I have mobile order versus I want to have a chit chat for a second with people who work there.
speaker-0: That's better for your health, too. Did you know that? I'm sorry. It's better for your health. Locking to people with even light conversations in the grocery line, in a coffee shop. Just saying hello on the street, it makes you feel better about yourself and it promotes a connectedness and a sense of community, which I think is something else that's been lost with all these quick, very transactional experiences. ⁓ We did a ⁓ project with Starbucks years ago to help them regain their coffee authority. And one of the findings was that there's a very different experience. There used to be, there still is, but you go up and you order a beverage and they say, do you want it? And they'll customize it however you want. You want a cup of coffee to go, thanks. They turn their back on you and get your coffee out of the urn, turn around and like, here you go. And that was something that was for some people like New Yorkers, just give me my coffee and let me get out of you. It was a very different thing. And it was... costing them the ability to, ⁓ what they called... And it was costing them what they called their coffee authority. You went to Starbucks for a really good, delicious coffee, black coffee, creamed coffee experience. Now you go for a sweet beverage or an icy beverage or a Frappuccino, which is essentially an icy milkshake. Very different thing. And I think that was part of them losing the brand at one point.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: and trying to rediscover it and here we are again. Like you said, the pendulum swings and it swings and swings. You went to the agency side. Who was your first big client?
speaker-1: Sheraton Hotels, Sheraton.
speaker-0: Back then it was a unique brand and now it's so interesting because I think of consolidation and now you look at the hotel brands and they have maybe 15, 20 brands underneath them. How, when they're all part of one big Uber brand, you would think, okay, they're going for hyper specialization. But when I think of a hotel room, I think of location price and ⁓ I'm not particularly brand loyal. I just want a good clean night's sleep.
speaker-1: Well, I I think in the hotel industry, I yeah, I worked in Sheraton and they merged with Weston, you know, then all of sudden it was like, okay, well, Weston is this kind of a brand, Sheraton is this kind of a brand. Then it became like all this proliferation with like Four Points or like St. Regis was, you know, a brand. So, know, also you have like everything from luxury to budget, right? And it became this, again, brand proliferation to service the needs or the choices that consumers had. ⁓ But I was doing this thing ⁓ where I was talking about ⁓ hotel brands to some college students. And I said, you know, here's, I gave them three, ⁓ you know, brand positioning statements from, I gave them one from Weston, one from, I'm sorry, one from Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt. And I said, here are the positioning statements. Tell me which brand these are for. And they were indistinguishable. Indistinguishable. Then I said, okay, here's the mid-rate product for all of these brands. And I showed a picture of each of the hotel rooms. Indistinguishable. even though within their portfolio, if I'm like driving a car and I want something cheap for the night, I can choose a Hawthorne, whatever, or can choose a four points, whatever. But if I'm trying to choose, if I'm trying to establish brand loyalty, what do I want to stand for? How do I distinguish that? And I was giving them the example of, if you look at ⁓ if Nordstrom was in the hotel business, if Apple were in the hotel business, if Target were in the hotel business, you know, what would those hotel rooms look like?
speaker-0: and I can totally see what an Apple hotel room would be clean and modern. ⁓
speaker-1: Oh, all the best technology, it looked very fresh and clean. Nordstrom has been very warm and modern, more like an Armani looking. So yeah, mean, they're lacking that. And again, it's kind of like the holding companies and independent agencies. Boutique hotels do that very, very well. And that's why you can see that in your mind, because boutique hotels do that.
speaker-0: Yeah, and you want to go to them for that. There's one in Vancouver that we always go to because it's a boutique hotel and we know what the experience is and it's in a great location and we'll pay a little more because
speaker-1: But I want to know, like, I want it to reflect who I am, right? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk in, this for me anyway, I'm walk into a hotel if I'm making it on that decision, right? I want to walk in and feel like I feel at home. It reflects my personality and that's the experience I'm looking for.
speaker-0: That's interesting. I also think like you go to some hotels and the front desk, the human side of the equation also doesn't reflect their brand. And I think that's another thing that we haven't really talked about, but Starbucks used to have a brand for the barista. And now that they're being seen as union busters, you never know what you're going to get. know, whether you get a really... amazing person who cares about your beverage or somebody who's resentful of Starbucks because they're in union negotiation and just wants to get you your beverage and not get fired. Yeah. mean, how do you think brand can translate to or campaigns can translate to the human facing side of it? You as a debt collection agent, how are you representing the insurance company?
speaker-1: Yeah, well, mean, if again, it kind of goes back to the cancer thing we talked about. If you can align your brand position or your distinction all the way through the experience, then there's a breakdown there, right? And then that really makes the brand inauthentic.
speaker-0: So that's back to the question. How do you imbue a brand into a human element? Like it's not just something in a box or something on a rack. There's a human element to it. And Nordstrom I think of, have a friend who worked in Nordstrom and I always thought, wow, they have the best salespeople. They're amazing. They're helpful. They seem collaborative with each other. And she said, are you kidding me? We worked on commission and it was pit vipers in the back.
speaker-1: Woodstrom.
speaker-0: I never knew that. And so that's a real credit to Nordstrom that they're able to have that front of house, back of house that preserves their brand. But it is problematic because when you have a dissatisfied workforce, it always makes it into the customer space, in my opinion.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when agencies or whoever does brand positioning work or strategy work for a client, the most important audience is the internal audience. Because if you can't get the culture to align with that brand and the experience to align with it, everything else falls down.
speaker-0: How do you research, how do you make that happen and not just make it bunch of platas?
speaker-1: You have to include the internal culture and the internal teams in that work. You can't develop a brand strategy for any brand without understanding the workforce and the leadership and the management and their goals in which...
speaker-0: So back to what you said about radical empathy, you not only have to empathize with a customer, you have to empathize with those who are in charge of supporting, sustaining, and delivering the brand. And I think that's a very, very astute way of putting it because... Your way of putting it, not mine.
speaker-1: You're- Like these clients that say like, ⁓ have to work on our, ⁓ we have work to do on our employment brand. Why is your employment brand any different than your consumer brand? It should all be the same, right? All consistent.
speaker-0: So, there's only a few minutes left. I guess I'd like to talk a little bit about what's next for you. Where do you see the industry going and yourself? What interests you about that and where you see going with it? Or is it time for Midwestern summer golf?
speaker-1: It'll never be time for me to bust my summer off and not a golfer.
speaker-0: I know we were talking about politics and the fact that in the research, so many of the core issues that are important to people when we stop and listen are the same. Education, pricing, healthcare, it doesn't matter which end of the political spectrum you vote with, the issues are the same. And I think that concept of horseshoe politics is a great one where you're at the top and you're so close to each other, but you're on other side of horseshoe.
speaker-1: side of the horse.
speaker-0: How do you create that bridge?
speaker-1: I think by understanding the different frames that people look at those issues in, right? And so in trying to find common ground around those ideas, ⁓ and I think in some ways like advertising is a great equalizer in a lot of ways. People like ads, they wanna love the brands that they support, right? And yeah, there's some brands that reflect certain personalities in people in different ways. ⁓ But I also think that... ⁓ we have an opportunity and a responsibility to, through advertising the work we do to educate people and to bring people along, right? So I think this whole move to anti-DE &I over the past year has been, ⁓ I think, very damaging to our culture, but I think in advertising, think we have an opportunity to continue to represent wide diverse groups of people, to support them in a number of different ways. to give people a chance to get into our industry who may not have thought about it as something that's for them or that they have an opportunity to get into. I just think we have, we're kind of the center of commerce and culture. And when those things come together, I think that's a really exciting place to be.
speaker-0: Well, to that, think that's a great.
speaker-1: Cheers. Thank you. Good chatting.
speaker-0: Thanks for listening to this episode of Speak Easy. I hope you enjoyed our conversation or learned something from it. And I have a favor to ask. Please share us, like us, leave your comments. You know the game. And most of all, if you have any guests you'd like to suggest, please let us know. The full transcript and show notes are available at catalysis.com slash speak easy. Keep asking, keep listening, and most of all, keep learning.
