Overview:

The podcast discusses the value of branding for businesses. It explores how brands can build recognition and reputation over time to increase their worth and negotiating power. Grant shares strategies for differentiating a brand through visuals, messaging, and creating engagement with audiences. He emphasizes the importance of consistency in upholding brand quality and values. Examples are given of iconic brands that have lasted for decades by evolving while staying true to their core proposition. The discussion highlights how understanding brand fundamentals can help businesses maximize their value and sales.

Takeaways:

• Branding is about building recognition, reputation and value over time through consistency in messaging and delivering on promises.
• A strong brand allows businesses to command higher prices and have more negotiating power if they want to sell the business.
• Elements like color, logo, messaging, visual style all play important roles in making a brand recognizable and engaging audiences.
• Customer service is crucial for brand value - people will like brands more if issues can be resolved quickly.
• Storytelling and creating entertainment/engagement are important for brands to stand out and build relationships with audiences.
• Understanding audience and problem/value proposition are core to developing a brand's identity and message.
• Consistently delivering high quality products/services that live up to brand promises over time is important for building trust and loyalty.
• Innovation and adapting to trends help brands stay relevant over long periods of time.
• Competition analysis and positioning relative to others in the market are important strategic considerations.
• Branding requires ongoing investment and work to increase value and return on investment over the lifespan of a brand.

Automatically-Generated Transcription:

So next up we have Grant, Tom, and Grant is from brand scientists.

And what he's gonna be sharing is how any business, whether they're big or small, can tap into the value that's right under their nose.

Grant's got decades of experience in marketing, and he can show us, he's gonna show us how instead of being like 90% of businesses who fail to capitalize on their hard work, sell their business for eight times more within as little as three years via leveraging the latest branding hack.

So yeah, without further ado, over to, over to you Graham.

Thank you very much, Scott.

Thank you.

Good afternoon everyone.

Good to see everyone.

So, yeah, I'm overseas at the moment, so my screen's a little bit small.

I'm on this laptop, so I might not be able to see all the questions.

So maybe Scott, maybe you can just flag me if things are coming up.

But basically I, what a great way to start.

I, I just wanna just follow from Kim's presentation right now in the sense of how many people knew of the brand next door.

Okay, so when they went to, did a raise, okay for money, um, once again, they, the, the, their brand really looked on point.

Uh, the, the iconography is good colors on trend.

Uh, the type font is there.

Basically it had to build a lot of confidence in order for people to, to want to come on board and as it's getting momentum.

So it's, it starts to create that identifiable value and as it, it goes around the world and it starts to play an intricate role in what it does and how it performs and the value that it gives people from an individual basis or a company basis or a network basis.

Once again, the brand starts to, to have that attrition in relatively early days, I don't think it's as popular as what Facebook is, as a brand would be.

But yeah, there's a couple of mistakes that I made as a marketer where back in the day I laughed at the concept of, uh, bottled water.

I did think bottled water would take off when there was a tap, just a kitchen away, and now bottled water, fire cells, flavored drinks more than anything else.

Another mistake that I I made is that I laughed at SMSing or I didn't see the point of any form of SMSing and now we live with WhatsApp and some people A whole lot effect and exactly what they mean from the emojis that they put down as to what they think.

And the last mistake that I think I made was Facebook in a sense that I've, I thought when Facebook launched that I was gonna use Facebook as a business tool.

I laughed at it, and yet maybe Facebook became an intricate part of the strategies that when it came to having those conversations.

So I look at the, the brand of Nextdoor in the sense of how it's been style designed, its value proposition, and as it grows as to how that value of that brand's going to be one day.

And I think those are the, the attributes and the segue to what my presentation is about today, let just share my screen here quick and then you can, So I'm all about thinking outside the box, which I call brand outside the box.

'cause nine times outta 10, the brand is what is on the outside of the box in order for you to buy.

And one of the things that I think about is in the sense of how do you form that attractiveness?

How do you form that recognition?

How do you understand and anticipate value?

Because we all don't like being ripped off when we buy something that's of, of inferior quality.

But just to give a bit of background.

So basically I've, uh, run six international ad and digital agencies around the world.

I sold my interest in just two years prior to covid.

I'm still involved in the sense that Covid messed up the payer plans, but basically we're back on track going forward.

But my main, my main claim to fame is the fact that 15 of my clients were able to sell their brand or sell their business for the value that they were.

And it was through those lessons that I learned, uh, how it worked.

So whenever you wanna sell a business, they always go through the assets in the, of what the business is, the goodwill.

They look at the turnover, they look at the years of employment that, that the business has been around how many offices it's got, but nine times outta 10, whenever there's someone wishing to buy the business, there's a whole agenda in the sense of what they've done is the research is to why they wanna buy the business and what the price that are, they're prepared to pay for the business.

And what I learned was that nine times outta 10, it was the brand was the last on the, the agenda and was the quickest conversation.

And the main reason for that was because they were just threw it in as part of the goodwill thought as what it was.

And then I met a gentleman 20 odd years ago who actually went back to the table and he went and he sold the badge, and I'll show you what it is in, in my presentation.

But what he was able to put forward was the fact that the brand had value for what he went out and, and put together.

And subsequent to that, I noticed a lot of people as they were able to build the brand value, that they were able to leverage more money for the badge, more than what the other things were.

So if they were just trying to sell the assets and the goodwill and all those very vital components to to do sell a business, it comes down to the recognition in the sense that what is someone to prepare to pay and how quick will they make their money back?

And of course, if a brand has got more recognition in the marketplace, then naturally you can ask more money because the chances are the reach and the diversity of where the brand has has got to, will have that response as to the value when they take it on board.

I have minimized it.

So basically I, I talk about this thing from Napoleon Hill where more gold has been mined from the mines of men and then from earth itself.

And basically what I'm referring to here is the amount of businesses that I've met.

Nine times outta 10, every single business that I meet, I see people with great potential, I see with people who've got great ideas.

I see people who've got great teams and great initiative, and basically I see more opportunity in businesses than what I see mines trying to get out of the earth.

And I thought this was a, a very appropriate line to put in because every single business actually has gold with within it.

I started my days in, in advertising working for, uh, Ogilvy and Mefa.

I had the good fortune to actually work personally with David Ogilvy, and he was a strange character, but once again, ahead of his time back in the time when he was known as the forefather of what Brandon stands for today.

And then he always would comment about, in a modern world of business, it is useless to be creative original thinker unless you can sell what you create, connect with your audience, build trust, and sell your product and service, which ultimately is branding.

And these are some of the adverts that he would go and create.

And he was recognized for it because as you can see, he was not scared of negative space.

He was had great play with creativity and visual.

He had great headlines and played with copy, but he had a way of edutainment with his audience, with the view to engage and create, uh, communication and value.

And through that is where the foundation of what branding started to become.

Because as he would play with advertising, people would know what he was talking about and the value and the quality that he was talking about.

And these were the kind of essence that we've grown and and gone forward with going forward.

Often we ask the question, I've got a logo, so therefore that's my brand.

And the difference between a logo and a branding is that the tomorrow market is changing the rules of how we brand.

We must remember that 20 years ago we would've to see a brand about 20 times in order to recognize it or even remember it.

Now we are down to five to seven times.

And basically what that means is that we are paying a lot more attention to the value that we see when someone is communicating the brand.

But the science of branding is all about taking a badge, taking a brand, and be able to implement it into all the forms of communication that you've got.

You've always gotta make sure that you are bringing about your value, bringing about a proposition, bringing about a call to action, but at the same time making sure that people will remember you.

So therefore, the recipe of consistency and continuity is vital with the view to ensure that you're not looking all over the place that you, that you can stand by what you you communicate and that the value that you wanna bring forward.

So these things are, are on the cold front, seem quite basic and like straightforward.

But at the end of the day, when it comes to actually having it implemented and have it continues through that, if your company, your team, your your outside suppliers is to make sure that the brand doesn't deviate from the standard and the quality that you got and you set it up for, I put this slide in here as the start in the sense that I thought it was quite a, an appropriate one when the Queen was having its birthday, then Vegemite put a, a banner and was traveling around London with the view that they were turning 100 euro next year.

And basically just having a bit of, uh, tongue in cheek and just having a bit of a playfulness.

And I think it's important that brands, brands have the ability to be able to be playful.

And what I love about this is that Vegemite, what I've come to learn is got a love hate relationship.

There's some people who love it and there's some people who hate it, but at the end of the day, for 100 years, it's been in an existence and it has a value proposition with the view that it's still in business, it still holds a value, it still gets recognized for what it is.

And so basically I just love the way that this was playing and for a hundred years that it's been relevant and stayed on trend going forward.

This is the business that I was referring to earlier.

This is the one that I first had my, uh, experience with where I met the, the owner of this business, I was, uh, at his year end function, and he had just sold his business for a good volume of money.

Um, and he called me into his office on a Monday morning and I had, I, I popped in and uh, he said, look, I've sold the business, I'm happy with everything I've done.

I've ran this business for 25 years, but I'm ready to go, but I've just gotta do one more thing.

I wanna leave my mark.

And so what we had to do is I had to work on the brand, but there was a few rules.

I wasn't allowed to touch the font.

And those who would remember what RA set is, this was a RA set font.

So ra set is those little pieces of film that you'd get and you'd take a little like burner and you would rub it on.

And so it was done by hand.

It wasn't done by any computer or typewriter or anything like that back in the day, but the rule was you weren't allowed to touch the font.

And what I did was I just went and I just created the swish around the brand and we stuck it on.

But what was ingenious about this gentleman was that all these machines, these compressors and generators came in yellow.

And what he went and did was he went and changed them green.

And the reason he changed them green was that when he went onto a construction site at a glance, he could quickly see where all these machines were and he knew how, what a footprint he was having on that particular site.

But what he did was he didn't hire gentlemen, he hired ladies and he hired well-groomed ladies.

So for example, in men industry, he had these ladies rocking up, he had these machines that were in green, and he had a brand in the sense that I have never ever experienced anyone or in the world that has such a, uh, a company of passion like this company has because every single person is a salesperson in that organization from the guide the gate, they greet you to the receptionist, to the tea lady, to the actual, the gm.

They're all just genuinely passionate about what they did.

So when it came to wanting to sell this business, what this gentleman did was he went back afterwards and he actually asked for 30% more for the badge and he got it.

What I found also interesting about the story is that I've been working with them now for, for 22 years, and out of the 400 odd companies that Atlas Cop owned, this company's still green, hasn't gone back to all the other companies are yellow, and basically this brand is now worth $75 million today.

And it's because it's so valuable that it's a bit of a difficult entity to just go and change back.

You can see on the signpost at the, on the against the wall there, you know, our passion, you can see how they were professing what it was.

So as it, as basic as what this was, is it generate an air compressor company, what they did and how they delivered it was what ultimately gave it its brand pre preference in the sense of it's marketplace and its value when it was sold.

The ways of your brand is proportional to the opportunity that you'll command the value that you sell.

And basically what I mean by that, it's not by putting a big badge on a big box or a big badge on a small box, it's about determining the quality and the value.

It's to what you are when you place your brand on, on, on the product that you're producing.

Because at the end of the day, you've gotta be able to enhance the quality and the value as to what you are in order to determine the price and the value that someone's prepared to pay.

And for example, if you look at Apple, for example, when you buy that box, it's a very clean, simple box with a an Apple logo put on, on the outside of the box.

But at the end of the day, the the chances are by the time you've bought an Apple product, there's a good chance that you're 70 to 80% committed to the quality and the value because of the education and the past experiences that you may have.

But at the end of the day, it's not as big like a big logo.

It has been very delicately measured and placed with a view to determine the quality.

So I just wanted to show the next slide here in the sense that you can see how Apple had to pivot throughout the years.

They started in 76 and they had that funny logo with some vision of some lake in the background.

Then they changed to the 1977 Rainbow Apple where they were actually bankrupt on the New York stock market, but it was basically in 2001 to, to present where they started to command the value of what they are in the sense of the packaging, in the sense of the product, in the sense of the service delivery to a point that when you go into an Apple store, you don't need to now pick up a product and go to a till, wherever you stand, they bring the product to you and they pay and you buy it right where you're standing.

So the whole customer experience is around that, that personal delivery.

So we live in a world where we purchase round pits and served in square boxes, and we eat one triangle at a time, which means that we just literally just always got challenges and nothing is straightforward and simple.

But the one thing is we were in the pizza business, ultimately it's the name on the outside of the box that will determine the quality and the price that someone's prepared to pay.

Because at the end of the day, if there's no reputation attached to it and someone's charging an exorbitant price, the chances are we wouldn't come back or we wouldn't attend or we wouldn't support.

And this is what comes down to the importance why branding plays such a crucial role.

And because you may work in a business for 20, 30 years, it's well ultimately what someone's prepared to buy that business from you eventually one day should you want to sell it, merge, buy someone else or someone wants to buy you, that you have the negotiation power with the view that your brand has, has the presence because it's the following, it's your tribe.

It's the supporters that will determine how best you negotiate and maneuver when you're in a a particular deal.

There's a lot of exercises with the view to apply branding to go forward.

I know that I, I work on 20 and you must understand in the subject of branding, there's about 3000 topics about branding.

But just on the, on the exercise of branding, the valuation of brand is relatively misunderstood.

And without the valuation, it's partly about art and it's a hundred percent about science, but understanding the importance of how you place your brand can be the seventh gear in your business in the sense of how you can negotiate.

But you must think about it this way in the sense that when you sign up to a gym and you start training for a day, a week, a month, you don't just naturally start to see change.

You may feel it but you don't see it.

But should you stay consistent with your training and depending on the regime that you want to go after 12 months, you would see that there's a big dis distinct difference in maybe how you look and how you feel and how people recognize you.

But it's about the repetition of your consistency of that application of brand that is very important.

The second part is vision.

Think of yourself as a developer.

If you had to come to a piece of land and you had to sit on a particular corner, it's the developer that looks into the sky for the opportunity because it's what they build and how they build it.

That ultimately is where the opportunity, where the money sits.

And that's basically the same with branding.

It's that you may start off with something small and basic right now, but it's ultimately where can the opportunity really take be taken to and where can you go with it?

And the last one is about momentum.

So it's a known fact that if you take a Domino's and you place it next to another Domino's that's half the size, it'll knock it over.

But it's also known that if you had to have 26 dominoes that had to go up incremental size, it would, after 26 dominoes have fallen over, you can knock over dominoes the size of the Empire State Building.

So what that means is that you are 26 steps from greatness.

You 26 steps from knocking and conquering the world with what your brand can be.

You just need to make sure that every time you place your dominoes and you're not ready to knock the next one, you've just got a little bit more value in every time that you're putting it forward.

And once again, these are the kind of very basic hacks that you've gotta think about when you're trying to build your business in a sense of its reputation, its value, the price that you are determining.

And at the same time, what is the, the problem that you are solving, which is very important in the marketplace.

Basically there's lots of formulas in, in the sense of working it out, and I've just done a very basic formula here right now, is that the formula for productivity is quite simple.

Input of output is productivity.

You've gotta get things in and you've gotta get things out and you then you've produced something and it, and it's worth value.

But there's an evil cousin called time and time erodes away all profitability.

So if you cannot perform on time or you cannot perform within time, then basically you're gonna be running at a loss.

But if you are able to harness your skillset with view of the deliverables and, and now how to put it, you can now be profitable.

It's to be able to take that profitability with the view to put it into the brand formula.

So basically it's how much money are you prepared to spend with the view to educate the market as to what you are.

So if you look at the top line, the B stands for brand, the C stands for consumer, and the M stands for marketplace.

Basically, that's ultimately what you are striving for as to what you wanna be able to invest in and and, and be able to target and go for.

The g stands for your goals.

What are your goals within this business that you are, uh, applying for?

How big do you want to go?

How much leverage do you want to create?

Because divided by your goals into the opportunity is ultimately what what you'll get, you're gonna get into what you call the brand story.

That's the result.

And the brand story's got the repetition.

There are stands for repetition.

You've gotta be able to get that brand story out there with the view to continually be innovative with the view to create that edutainment, to create a bit of engagement, to create a bit of sort of partnership with the viewer and the reader because people do not want to be sold to anymore, but people want to be agitated.

And if they agitated to the value that you, they'll become fans.

If they become fans, they'll start to follow you.

And that eventually is what becomes brand value, which is ultimately fans, which is customers, which is footprints as to what you got, which is what you you want to get into when you're getting into these negotiations of sale.

Like I said, on the calculation, there's two vital areas, value and time.

And what's important about the value and the time is that the brand measure to that of the, the brand message to that of the marketplace, to that of the return of investment is imperative that you work out, that you are constantly increasing the value in the sense of what you're putting out there and how you're educating the market over the period of time that you've wanting to put it together.

Once again, it comes down to how much are you prepared to invest, how much, how important is the, the growth in business and acquisition of customer port important for you and how quickly can you get them on board.

Like I said to you before 20 years ago in a business with Launch, you would have to be able to be seen 20 times by traditional media in order to get recognized for who you just are before they even engage with you.

We are now down to five to seven times.

So basically we see something we like, we sign up, we go to a landing page, we inquire, we go down a funnel.

We want to understand very quickly what the value is to us before we move on because we live in a life of literally 3.8 seconds where we are ready to flick to the next opportunity if we don't get the answer that we are looking for.

73% of people love brands with great customer service, and this is very important, is that if they buy something and there's a problem and they can't talk to someone, then basically that really will impact and and harness a brand value.

But if they can talk to someone and the problem can get solved quickly, that definitely will grow.

And, and that part is, is very important.

72% of brands are made up of words or acronyms and those are the kind of things.

So a lot of people try and find names that is right for their business, but the best ones are the made up words.

The best ones are the acronyms, especially in the digital space where iconography is starting to play a vital role.

Now, iconography is all about the real estate on your smart device because when you've got an icon, you've only got a small space with the to get recognized icon store, they've got a very distinct look on what that icon looks like so that you can find it very quickly on a device that have may, may have many apps.

Once again, that iconography plays a crucial role in the sense that you get recognized the value that you could utilized.

If next door was to give you the value that you wanted in the sense of your reach, your impact in sales eventually, then basically you would look for that brand a lot faster every single time.

One third of the world's top brands has the color blue in their logo.

It's just one of those colors in the sense of it's safe in the sense of it's, it's just, it's got a reputation, it's conservative.

That's just basically how it's been.

But those things are starting to change in the sense of we are becoming more environmentally friendly, we are becoming more recognized by how good we are to the earth.

How good is the company being and what is the the carbon footprint?

So green is starting to take over in that particular role, and I'll be interested to see what those figures turn out to be.

Color improves brand recognition usually by 70%, but the true reality is that only 8% of companies sold in the last year were able to sell their brand for money.

Most of them just threw their brand in with all the other bits of, of the goodwill when they were selling their business.

So very few were able to stand on the attributes as to the, the, the the fan base and the following and the knowledge base that the brand and the badge would recognize.

The one thing that I've had, the good fortune is to work with Richard Branson and one of the most interesting discussions that I've had with him was the fact that when he was starting Virgin Airlines, he hired people in the airline industry with the you to come and start the airline company, but the biggest discussion was they weren't happy with the name Virgin because they were so used to K l M and Swiss Air and you know, it had to have an air name to it.

It wasn't like Virgin was the right name to go up against the market.

The lesson I learned from the likes of, of a Richard Branson was the fact that if he could make Virgin an airline that everyone got to know and recognize, then you can make anything, anything is what I learned from this exercise.

So there's no such thing as a bad name.

It it comes down to the science and the reputation and the value that you put out there on a consistent basis that will, will help people to be educated as to the quality that you bring them on a regular basis.

There are six things that are now required in the digital space going forward.

Yes, we've got design strategy and science equals brands, but there's the main purposes of of brand is to have purpose.

People are, are, are following brands that have purpose.

If they just there for the sake of being there, they have no more meaning, they're not gonna get supported or followed.

So purpose plays a a huge role.

Typography plays a a, a another vital, vital role in the sense of the font's gonna be on trend.

The font's gonna be, if, if the font looks oldy wy and it looks like it's a little bit dated, it's not gonna have the, the same kind of following motion video is now 40% of the communication channel.

So vo video is very important.

We we watching communication on our devices, so therefore we might not always be able to scroll through, but if there was a video plane and you had a quick look at it, it would have impact.

With that comes sound in the sense of the communication, the, the, the, the, the conversation, the script, all those kind of things of, of bringing quickly the value of what's been brought together.

Data, data is very important.

AI is playing a crucial role in the sense of how we place our brand, where we are found, where we track, where we find clean space, clean ocean to that of noisy spaces that we are not wasting good dollars in, in the wrong place.

And the final one is tone.

You've gotta know start now having, uh, brands are having the tone in the sense of how they're gonna get recognized.

And these are all attributes as to how we are now in a digital space receiving communication.

And it's all these six components that we will now use as triggers that have been a contribution towards how we now pick up a brand five times faster than what we used to do 20 odd years ago.

If I show you a whole lot of brands like this, you may know some of these, you may or know all of them, but at the same time, if you scan your eye very quickly all over these, you've got a good understanding as to who they are and what they are and how they do and, and how they've done it and what value they are to you at that point in time.

But it's once again that all these brands have followed the same methodology with the view to build a reputation that you can recognize, support, engage, and once again go forward.

But if these businesses were to sell, what is it that would be the attribute at the end of the day that would give them that, that extra bit of income from the sale price when they were in that negotiation?

What I find interesting with this exercise is that when I do the same exercise now recently, how many other brands are now digital brands to that of what I've just shown you previously, which is about 20 years old.

And we can see clearly how we are now pivoting in the sense of the way that the words are made, the names are made, the fonts being used, and the reason I've gone for black and white is I've tried to not bring any color into this.

I've really just tried to go in the sense of when you scan your eye over this, some of of them resonate with you, some of them don't, some of them you'll support, some of them you won't.

But at the same time it's about how brands are pivoting in a communication that is getting very noisy and the marketplace is getting very busy.

But at the same time, how do you stand out from the crowd is ultimately the foundations of what good branding's all about because there's no clean and uh, space anymore, but there's clean space when it comes to offering and service delivery.

If I had to invite you into my store to come and get your groceries and all the brands just look black and white, how much do you feel that color plays a a crucial role in the sense of the recognition as to what it is?

As you can see, it's looked very stark, very bland, and there's very like non-engagement.

We know what they are, but once again, they just don't look attractive.

And ultimately that's where the, the whole role of color, brand placement, value proposition is key in the sense of how we go forward with the view to make sure that we create that enhancement, uh, of engagements in getting sales over the line.

Branding is like these, uh, icebergs that you find in the ocean at the tip.

They look majestic, they look incredible.

That is the logo.

What floats on the water is very much the visual system.

So if you ever see an iceberg on the ocean, it just looks absolute incredible.

The colors of the tone, the the serenity of how it's just floating.

But the truth is that 90% of that, the weight, the structure of that iceberg is below the surface that you don't see.

But it is big, it is colossus, but it it's about the core purpose.

It's about the audience, it's about the tone, it's about the brand attributes.

That is where the strategy is that ultimately goes forward in order to enhance the beauty that is above the surface.

So what I've done is I, I broke it down into the pyramid in the sense that what on the horizon, in the sense of the position, the promise, the strategy, the brand language, the visual expressions, and the tagline is the essence of what.

But below the surface is your why in the sense your value and, and, and beliefs.

Your how in the sense of your promise, your position, your personality, the who in the sense of, you know, who's your best audience that you're trying to appeal to, and the what in the sense of the brand attributes and the value proposition that you are is very much the core and the essence of your company.

That is what you are made up of, of in the sense of how you're warned by the badge.

So you're recognized by the badge, you are, you are sought by the badge, you're supported by the badge, but ultimately it's everything that's below the surface that people don't see behind the scenes.

That is, that is the hard work that that sort of comes forward.

So I take the landscape of a business here, for example, and this is basically how it works from left to we deal with partners, we deal with main activities, we deal with, um, required resources with the future, just make a product or a value proposition in the middle.

Naturally we want to have distribution, we've gotta have target market and we've gotta have brand love.

But the left hand side is what's below, below the water.

People don't see that hard work.

The right hand side is what the essence about what we gonna go to market, it's all about the value proposition, it's the product and it's about the brand love that ultimately is what makes your brand and your business stay alive and, and be prosperous and have value to that of the marketplace.

So once again, you may do many things and I often say to business owners, have you ever tried to call yourself?

And a lot of them say, yes, I'll call myself, but they've got the direct number, but they will never call the number of their from how their customers would call them.

And if they did, there'll be a good chance that they wouldn't support their own businesses because of the way that they deliver.

So many times you've gotta right try and see the business from the outside in with the view to understand that when you are delivering the quality and the value of the, of the business, that you constantly make sure that you are and you and your team are trained and, and constantly, uh, supporting what the brand love is all about.

The biggest mistake that we make as business owners, that we like things fast, we like things cheap, we like things great and sometimes we like it free.

And the biggest problem that we have is that we create a lot of harm for our business when we want this request because when we want it fast and cheap, it's dipped in ugly source.

When you want it cheap and great, it's just a little bit too late.

And when you want it great and fast, it's uh, you get what you paid for.

And how many times have we heard that line in, in, in meetings, you know, you pay and you've got some inferior quality that just doesn't uphold the quality of the brand of your business.

So it's very important that we stay out of this loophole of, of trying to go and and and really understand what is, what are you trying to achieve, where you're trying to go and who you're trying to do it for, which is very important.

Brands brand design is for people interacting with brands.

So it doesn't matter what the shape, what the color, what the words that you're utilizing.

Ultimately it's about how you implement your strategy, how you implement your creativity, how you implement meaning with the view to create recognition for who and what you are in the marketplace.

Here's this little exercise I'd like to ask.

So I've taken a clip of of a brand I'd like to ask if anyone can recognize what brand this belongs to.

Anyone?

No.

Is it Adobe?

No, No, No.

It's Levi.

Oh That's right.

The street for me.

I shoulda known.

I so terrible.

So once again, it's to take those little things and create that recognition.

But what I find interesting is that Levi started in 1853 and in 1853 it's how it was able to transcend and trend as to what it was doing at that point in time.

It's still a valuable brand, it's still a sought after brand, but it was able to pivot and change according to the times.

Even now, the latest Levi brand is was done in 2003 and it's still re relevant.

It's still got the, the attributes of digital enhancement of of where we stand today.

It doesn't look old-fashioned at all.

But what I find fascinating is how they, they read the times, were able to make the adjustments with the view to be effective.

And if you look at each one of them, they may look a little bit old, but in those period they were well sought after for who and what they were.

Now this is my favorite chart at the end of the day because I call it the b******t chart because you get three forms of BSS in in marketing, you get b******t, you get brand science and you get brand strength.

And basically when it comes to trust, and we spoke about trust earlier around with brands we know the book about, so Jim Collins with Good is the Enemy of Great.

But the problem that we have with the the good is the enemy of great is that when we're trying to just go from good to great or from great to awesome or, or it's a lot of hard work, but you can quickly go from great or awesome or excellent, right down to good or sucking.

And when you down a good sucking, it's very hard to get up again.

So to give real service, you must just add something which cannot be bought or measured by money.

Something you can start with integrity and sincerity.

And I think that's ultimately what it is.

What I look for is I look for brand awesome brand stories.

So if anyone's got any incredible brand stories, please send me an email.

I'd love to put them into my repertoire of hanzi where people have done some incredible things.

But when we go to a particular hotel, I think the hotels do it the best in the sense that when you walk into that hotel room, you expect that room to be in, in its very pristine condition.

When you walk down the passage, it's, you can actually got a good smell when you're at the restaurant you serve very well.

But there's a lot of other businesses that just do mediocre.

They just do okay.

They just do disappointing.

And when you've done okay disappointing or suck, the chances are you're not gonna come back.

You're not gonna spend their money there again, but you're not gonna go forward.

So ultimately I work with brands in the sense of how do we create those touch points with the, to make them better experiences with the view that we go forward.

As I said, with b******t, you either you're shoveling it or you're containing it, but everyone's got s**t in their business.

It's just a case of how best can you set it up, package it, move it across, but at the same time, if you're displaying it, you're not going to be doing very well.

Okay, I just got stuck here.

What stuck, sorry.

Alright, so another great brand story that I really enjoy was this one of Guinness.

I went to Dur Dublin, I went to the Guinness factory.

What's fascinating is that Guinness started by a mistake.

The guy burnt the Hobbs by accident.

So it was not intended, but it just had how it happened.

But what I really love about this brand story was the fact that the guy was so confident when he started the brewery.

He signed a 9,000 year lease to start this brewery and he's only 300 years old, so he is still got a long way to go in his lease.

But when you go to the building, it's a seven story building where you learn about the, the brand story all the way to the top.

And when you get to the top, you have a Guinness and you just look at Dublin and you really see the world of satisfaction.

So once again, a a a a great brand story.

What I always recommend business owners is to create a chart as to where you are with you and your competition.

So for example, in a shoe brand where you're sitting, where it's a sports shooter, they have a lifestyle to inexpensive, to expensive, where do you sit?

Because once you know where you sit, then you know what you need to do because the very next step is to work out who you are you trying to attract.

If you're trying to attract another form of customer where you need to pick your game up, if you're quite satisfied and you work out what it is that you keep on doing to stay where you are at.

But also to be able to plot your competition plays a vital role as to how important you are with within the competition.

Perception and recognition plays a key role role.

There's two bottles of wine, they're both made, uh, out of from grapes.

They both put in a bottle, they've both got a a lid, they've both got a label, but the one sells for $24 80, the other one sells for $11,500.

Once again, perception recognition plays a vital role in the sense of what are you prepared to put into it in the sense of building that reputation recognition where you can command the price that you feel that your value is worth.

And that's once part of a, a brand story, part of a brand as to how you wanna make things become alive and have that recognition.

I look at Mont Blanc, I don't see many people in Mon Blanc going around for a shop, just for a shop around.

You're either going there to buy a pen or to buy a gift or to buy a refill, but very few people go and shop around at the the Mont Blanc shop.

But the brand has a distinction when you walk past that shop.

It's an expensive pen, but it's a good quality pen.

But if I had to show you Beck right now, we all know Beck, but Beck was design in 1954.

This brand has not changed once since 1954.

It's still exactly the same as what it was back then.

It's still a pen.

It's, we all know what it is.

Its reputation as to what it is as to how it is.

So once again, it all depends on the target market, the product and your profiles to what you're trying to put out.

What I love about FedEx was the FedEx created this brand and they created all their divisions and they paid with a little bit of color, but the brand was recognized.

But it comes down to one thing, the arrow, once you know that there's an arrow, every time you FedEx, you only see the arrow, you don't see the others.

And the third and the arrow is all about movement.

We get things done, we get things shipped, we go this way to get it done.

So once again, very clever branding.

I love where things are going right now in the sense of the, the, the bottling and the canning products because designers and brands are starting to have fun.

And that's what branding's all about is the ba to create engagement, to have fun, to have participation with the view that when you're on display, people can see you, recognize you participate, because it's all about getting your attention quickly and fast.

So if we were to talk about Rolls Royce and Bentley, I think you all know what it is.

I don't know when the last time you saw a Rolls Royce or a Bentley advert because I don't think that they do.

But if I was start a new brand company, a, a car company called Watson, what would we be thinking if we wanted to compete with a Bentley and a Rolls Royce?

What would go into the center?

The styling, the delivery, the output, the customer experience.

And these are the kind of things that you are challenged with in the sense of the marketplace and the competition that you want to go up against.

So it's very important to understand who you are and for who you stand for as to what problem you are solving with the view to make sure that there's value.

Because at the end of the day, these are two tough competitors to go up, but you are going to now launch this third car.

What I love about iconography is in the sense that digital has commanded us to come simpler.

Look at Google in 1998, it was amateur.

What was interesting in 2013, Google went and took their logo and they, they took the second G and they moved it by one pixel.

And the reason they said, why did you do it?

They said, because it was out by a pixel.

But what they did do was they got everyone to look at Google second time to say they changed their logo and they looked a little bit closer.

But look at the latest one in 2015.

Each flat color, each flat font.

It's not all the special effects.

Look at MasterCard, they went from something very busy to very dead simple.

Look at Qantas very like, like old fashioned to very like, simple and simplified.

Digital is all about simplification because it's about recognition and the value first and going forward, I do believe that these other digital trends will, or designer trends will come back.

But at the moment, digital is commanding the simplicity of how we work.

Once again, showcase essential to where we are today is that the simplicity as to how they pivot in order to be relative going forward.

Noting is also very important in the sense of how long do you remember a brand once you've seen it.

Noting is a term we use in marketing in the sense that when you see an adver on tv, can you remember the next day, can you remember it to weeks' time?

Can you remember from month's time?

Noting is vital for that of brand in the sense of its value and its recognition because branding ultimately creates sales.

Color plays an important role in the sense of recognition to that of profound effect to that of customer's emotions.

So once again, like we spoke about blue b****r a relatively color, it's a safe color, it's a conservative color, but there are other colors that are more vibrant in nature and color with the view of the pro from the trend is to to who and what, who they're attracting and who are they trying to impress.

The brand archetypes are very much important in the sense of what culture are you about, what is your characteristics, how do you wanna roll out?

And that becomes the, the bottom part of the, the iceberg in the sense of what do you wanna be as to how do you attract the, the the target market that you want to be part of?

This is a, a brand story I'd just love to share.

It's a hotel called Sun International.

And what they did was they took their brand and they went and did a survey and out of the survey they went and they, they worked out all the good points and they worked out all their bad points and they went and created artwork that they put in the reception of their building.

And what they did was they went and took every aspect of the good points and they put an artwork and put every bad point and they put an artwork.

And when they have guests coming into the reception, they say, oh, what is this?

And every single person in the company knows exactly what the brand story is all about.

And they go through the enhancement of what we're striving for and what we are fighting against.

And so therefore they acknowledge their weak points and they compliment their, their, their, their strong points.

And once again, just by the customers walking into the reception, they once again start to feel that these guides are really on brand in the sense of that they know who they are, they know where they want to go, and we wanna be part of them.

And so this was a, a very good formula that I do with quite a few companies around the world.

A brand is worthless if it doesn't connect with the right audience in, in a relevant way.

So one of the things that's very important is to understand that brand outside the box, be kind, be brave, but at the same time work on your value as to what it is.

And that's basically who I am.

You'd like to do something with me or you'd like to have a chat with me.

They use my details.

But yeah, I love branding and I think brands are worth more money than people know and people just need to know how to ask for more money for their brand.

Yeah, no, that's that, that's awesome.

Thanks Grant.

It was, yeah, so many takeaways in that, you know, in that presentation and I didn't know you had that, that Ogilvy Ogilvy background, but yeah, that's, that was fascinating.

So we might just do a couple of people just what your key takeaways were from that presentation and then we'll wrap up, we'll wrap up from there.

Yeah.

Jay, what was your number one takeaway from Grant's presentation?

Sorry, trying to find unmute, like, here's somewhere my stream deck died.

I think it just, the anchoring again to have the consistency and to, to really think about how it's gonna translate across different mediums as well.

So I love when you did the little, the snapshot of Levi's and then we're like, oh yeah, makes you think, okay, what's, what is iconic about the brands that you work with and how can you get that recognition when you bring back in the Google, like the simplification, not being afraid to like redefine and modernize when you need to.

Hi Jace, I didn't see you down there.

J Jace has come coming for a a three minute, three minutes at the end.

Yeah, that's right.

Better late than never, right?

That's Right.

That's, I Just had to see you and then Jade.

Hey, I was talking about Jade just a moment ago.

Hey everyone, this is Carissa.

Hello.

Hey Carissa.

Hey Carissa.

Do you, do you guys know Carissa Hill?

I I know of her.

I dunno her That's good enough.

Will we organizing a meeting to get Issa involved and she, I, depending on the date, wants to come to the event.

Yeah.

Awesome, awesome.

You have seven 8th of November Awesome.

In Sydney, So Yeah.

Yeah.

Fresh, Fresh cut mate.

You look like the six Backstreet boy to a tee now.

Anyway, continue on guys.

Yeah.

And just, yeah.

And, and Kim, what, what was your biggest takeaway from Grant's presentation?

I love branding.

I just, I love it.

That Levi's thing is incredible and I'm glad to know that I have Blue in my logo.

I'm Glad it's blue, you know.

But I did design it where Grateful Box would be recognized as just the dragonfly out of the box without the wording.

I did design that with that in mind with my 19 year old who's in there and she was like six at the time, but, or she was young.

But it's interesting to see the brands though, how they evolve.

Yes.

I took a lot of notes.

Yeah, they did.

Yeah, no, a awesome, awesome.

Now that's great guys.

I think that's a wrap.

The next event, I've actually moved from the 27th to the 28th.

'cause I'm going up to Ru Stevens has an event I'm sponsoring up in Brisbane and I got the flights mixed up.

So that'll be on the Friday, the 28th of October instead of Thursday the 27th of October.

And then we've got the November the 17th, which is the live event.

So that's gonna be in, in North Sydney.

I think Dan just dropped, dropped the link in there to copywriting that sells.com au slash elite.

We've got Ari gpa, John Dwyer, Ben Simkin, Johan Naura.

And then I'm finalizing, uh, some other speakers for that.

But that'll be, yeah, that'll be epic in Sydney.

The live events have just an energy, which is hard to get anywhere else when you get all these marketers together in the, in the one room.

Yeah.

So if you want to join us at that, just click on that link.

I think we've got about 30 or so booked in so far for that.

So that'll be awesome.

And yeah, thanks for, thanks for coming and look forward to seeing everyone in a couple of weeks.

If anyone does want to just stay on and hang out, I can hand the host over to someone else and you can, yeah, you can stay in chat.

But other than that we will see you all see you all in a couple of weeks.

Thanks Scott.

Thanks Legends.

Thanks.

See everyone.

Bye.

Thanks.

Thanks guys.

Thanks Grant.

I'm sure it was amazing.

Yeah.

One, I have to go to the recording.

You, you, you waited until the end before making your cameo cameo appearance.

That's exactly right.

Just gotta show my face just to make sure that people remember me and then Yeah, Yeah.

Anyway, you'll meet Carissa soon, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, no, awesome, awesome.

I think We're Facebook friends.

I'm not sure I Recognize Yeah, we're connected on, we're connected on Facebook, but I don't think we've ever chatted or anything.

I'll, I'll message you later.

Who better to connect and the number one connector in the world That That's right.

And, and the number one joint venture marketer after Tom Poland.

And now I don't see Tom on this call.

Where My spot again?

Peace.

See you guys.

See you guys.

We'll chat soon.

Thank you.

Oh, Good Stuff.

Thanks Scott.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks guys.

We'll chat soon.

That was great, grant.

Really enjoyed it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are they real books, Alex?

Or is that your No, I found a background man.

I've got a, I've got a white wall behind me.

I was actually thinking about ordering some memorabilia and stuff, but my, yeah, it just all takes too long and they've gotta reshuffle the office and my, my, the guys that I share the office with just said, look, we're about to move out.

Do you wanna take the whole space?

But yeah, I, I can't get this quite right, hence why I've got this now.

The, yeah.

Yeah.

I couldn't tell.

It's actually quite well done.

It's not, yeah.

Looks working.

Yeah, it looks good.

I Was looking for a good one, grant.

Really good content mate.

You've really covered quite a lot in that, uh, presentation.

And I guess the biggest challenge for myself, I've got quite a few clients who've got very poor logos, uh, that they consider a brand.

What would be your approach to potentially getting someone into a bit of a conversation in relation to the whole thing?

'cause I'll give you an example.

I've got a huge company that basically sells containers.

They are the biggest one in Australia.

They're not well known.

Their whole strategy is where behind the scenes moving things, but then they get basically a huge, uh, market share loss to small competitors who've got a really pretty brand like Royal Wolf or c c, uh, SS, c F.

You'll see those containers with those brands all the time.

So how would I approach something like that?

Yeah, just to get them into the conversation, to let's say introduce somebody like yourself.

Look basic, it's a case of just understanding where they're at and where they wanna be as to what the competition is, and then be able to just, like I said, on that grid workout, where the, where they wanna be.

And then from when they know where they want to be, work out, what can you do?

Because it, it doesn't always have to be creative, it just sometimes has to be, be a continuous campaign or a continuous something.

But if someone's losing market share due to recognition, it's just a case of just looking at the, the attributes.

You've gotta work with the, the culture and you've also gotta work in the sense of how brave they want to be.

A lot of people, or not that brave to want to go big, but at the same time, if you are losing it because of other people just being a little bit smart, it's a case of just working out what is your recipe with you to create that per, I'm quite happy to be introduced if you want to have an introduction conversation, I'm happy to just do that from a broad stroke perspective and just work out those mirrors as to what that is.

But it's, once you get into to understanding what it is, there's a lot of work, but at the same time, there, it's just so much to branding that you've just gotta choose the right components for that brand and that business.

Yeah.

I've got a couple of customers.

I would, I would love to connect with you.

Lexi.

Lexi, you there?

Alex?

You there?

You there?

I just heard the back end of that grant.

He might've frozen or something.

The Looks, yeah, it looks, If he has frozen, I'll, I'll connect you guys via, via email or ma maybe hang on a couple of minutes.

We'll, we'll probably pop back in, but if not, I'll connect you guys via email.

Look, Scott, I've gotta leave for a flight now.

Yeah.

I won't be around for too much longer.

Yeah, no, all, all good.

I can hook you guys up via, you know, via email, so Yeah, because I'm back.

That sounds good.

Yeah.

I'm back the end of October and yeah, then I'm back home in Aussie time again.

Yeah, yeah.

No, awesome.

Awesome.

No, that, that's it.

Thanks for today.

That was, that was really good.

Yeah.

Yeah, It's a hard subject in the sense that to everyone, it looks dead simple, but there's a lot of hard work.

But once again, not everyone believes in it, but it's becoming more the trend.

So, uh, I was happy that I, I had the opportunity to break my teeth on it, so thank you for the opportunity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I, I thought it was, yeah, I thought it was really good.

So, yeah, I'll let Alex's back.

I'll let you, I'll let you chat with him.

Yeah, Yeah.

Sorry.

We have, we've been having this bloody internet dropouts and I don't know what the hell's gonna happen.

Anyway, what I was saying, I've got quite a number of customers that are at the high level, but I think they completely have missed the whole brand conversation.

Now, I, I run a few businesses.

My main one being a digital marketing agency, whenever you're trying to run an awareness campaign without the brand set up first, it's, it's just a failure altogether.

Like, I'll give you an example.

I have a customer that I work with very closely, and in fact, I actually run another business with 'em called Emerald.

So if you're gonna Google up Emerald, guess what you're gonna find?

You're gonna find the Rock or the actual City of Emerald.

The town of Emerald, yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, but in fact, it's actually Emerald, uh, smoke Alarms, which is another business that I run.

I'm, I'm, I'm one of their biggest online stores selling that stuff.

Then there is basically Emerald Desk, which is smart electronic systems.

Then they've got the whole, uh, electronics, then they've got the government schemes, but they're trying to bounce off the whole Emerald thing and we're talking about a hundred million dollar company.

Like yeah, I had a good chat with 'em.

They've got five marketing managers and they focus too much on execution.

I was like, you are preparing yourself to, uh, enter a different market and I'll tell you more about if we get a chance to speak, but you guys are nowhere near, uh, ready for the marketing on the scale that you want.

So that's an example.

It's a good example, like you've just mentioned that people are wasting their dollars and they get frustrated because the performance is not there.

But at the same time, the brand is hard to find or hard to be recognized, hard to be remembered, and it's very confusing.

And that's why the choice of a name is so important and people believe their b******t so, so quickly.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, look, Alexia, I'd love to, to be in contact with you.

Do you, have you got some details for me and I'll be in touch with you?

Sure, absolutely.

I'll just type up my email, uh, address and my phone number if you just wanna get in touch there.

Yeah, fantastic.

I'm overseas at the moment.

I'm back at the, the end of the month and I'll be in touch.

Yeah, no, no rush.

And one more question if I may.

So with the, uh, Googles of the world and so on, obviously the company's called Alphabet and Google's now become the, the separate entity altogether.

Uh, at the same time they don't really market alphabet as such as a brand.

So going back to my shipping containers example, we've got a huge company, net worth, huge.

Uh, but they've got a couple of other things that they run, which they want to be the front.

At the same time, those new entities are fairly new compared to the old company itself.

How would you approach something like that?

Obviously Google's gone Google and then developed Alphabet with these guys.

It's actually the other way around.

They've got this no name brand, which runs a lot of small brands that are fairly recent.

How would you approach something like that?

There's no right and wrong way of how to approach it the way it is.

You wanna look at the opportunity as to what you're trying to achieve Yeah.

To that of what you've got.

And once you understand that opportunity, what you want to achieve, then you look at your opposition and then say, what are they doing?

Because like, I'll give you an example, like Swatch, swatch is watch, but they just put an Ss in front of it, right?

But that was their way of saying, Hey, we also a watch within a, a, a competitor, but they came after everyone else, so to speak.

So it is about just playing very smart, very carefully how you want to be.

The, the secret to this is to come up with a golden thread that you don't run out of the recipe in order to keep this campaign or the brand alive.

So it's to find those attributes that give you the legs to make sure that you can be playful.

So Google's a good one in the sense that you go into Google and you see their doodle pad, they forever doodling and it's that doodling they get.

You just look at the brand a little bit more is what they've done.

Yes, alphabets came along, but they've got a different plan for Alphabet.

But Google was the actual product.

It got difficult when, if they wanted to buy something or something got damaged, the company got affected.

Now, Google doesn't get affected, Google's a product.

So they went to protect it themselves by creating Alphabet.

It comes down to, I, like I said, the Richard Branson example, if he turned Virgin into an airline that would, that everyone in the world got to realize who and what he was, that's what it's all about.

It.

You can make anything as long as there's a recipe that can be consistent and you don't run out of recipe to add to it all the time.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

I I, I'd be very keen to have a chat when you're back.

So mate, flick me an email.

We, we'll make a time.

Yeah, fantastic.

It'll be early next month.

Yeah, no, no, drummers Alexi.

Alright.

Have a great day.

Thank you.

And you too, mate.

Thanks Scott.

That was excellent mate.

Yeah, really enjoyed it.

Thanks Scott.

I think he's run off.