Category Archives: Podcast Discussion

Brand Fast-Trackers #204 – The Zestful Brand Refresh

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There are certain iconic brands from my 80′s childhood that just stick in my mind. If I asked you to sing the jingle for DoubleMint or Big Red gum, could you? What about Zest? Do you still remember the packaging of V05 Hot Oil?

Zestfully Clean . . . A Brand Refresh

Today, we are privileged to speak with a classically trained marketer (General Mills, Unilever) who brings iconic brands back to popularity. Nina Riley is the Vice President of Marketing for High Ridge Brands, including Zest, Coast, White Rain, V05 and Rave. Here on Brand Fast-Trackers, we’ve spoken with big brand marketers and niche brand marketers, we’ve spoken with venture capitalists/lawyers/developers, but I can’t think of a show where we’ve talked about how to refresh a brand.

High Ridge is owned by private equity firm Brynwood Partners. They specialize in buying iconic brands that have been neglected under bigger brand portfolios for years and flipping them. They’ve done this with Balance Bar, Sun Country Food and others.

As a marketer, what prepares you to thrive in a lean, private-equity owned brand? For Nina, her experience founding her own company is key to this lean culture, but more than that, successful brand refreshes requires three core principles:

You must have an inherent curiousity
You have to know where a brand comes from and what its heritage is
You have to know to whom that heritage/brand stance will appeal

For High Ridge, their brands appeal mostly to the value consumers, so that goes into all of their initiatives. Nina recommends to not be afraid of really delving into the brand heritage. With V05, she was able to discover that the “5″ actually stood for five essential oils in the formula. Turns out that v05 was using most of these before they became key ingredients in other popular hair products.

Overall, this was a really insightful discussion and one I think you will enjoy:

[Lead Image via High Ridge Brands]

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Brand Fast-Trackers #203 – Social Listening

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Say What? Social Listening

Consumers are having conversations every day; about the brands they are engaging with, the products they love, their interests, their ideas and their lifestyle. But how are we as marketers engaging in these conversations with them? Making our presence known and responding relevantly?

Today we connected with Zena Weist, VP of Strategy for Expion, who had a lot of great insights about how we should be engaging with consumers every day. Zena’s key strategy is a simple concept we all have been taught since our elementary years and is perhaps one of the most effective tactics all marketers should be utilizing. Stop and listen.

When we were discussing with Zena the most frequent “misses” brands have related to social, Zena
eloquently explained:

“You have to listen first. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. They
(brands) need to listen to the conversations that are going on. Not only about the brand, but by the people they are targeting. What conversations are going on and how can the brand become a part of those conversations in a very relevant and meaningful way? How can they organically weave themselves in? They only way to do this is to really listen to the conversations that are going on. They have to identify advocates and listen to the advocates. This is a time commitment. It boils down to customer relationship management.”

Zena ended this thought with a key take a way, “Social Media is more than broadcasting the brand. It is to stimulate conversation.”

That insight truly made me stop to think, how are we engaging in conversations? How are our brands relevant to consumers beyond the product itself? Are we telling consumers about our brand, or are we talking about it? For more incredible insights from Zena on how to reach your consumers please tune into the podcast below:

[Lead Image Via ICUC Moderation]

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Brand Fast-Trackers #201 – Venture Development

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In a lot of ways, today’s podcast completes the venture capital trifecta. In episode #137 with Dave Knox, we spoke about his work with the Cincinnati-based start-up accelerator The Brandery and why budding entrepreneurs have to act on their ideas. In episode #143 with Ed Zimmerman, a venture lawyer, we spoke about how he helps start-ups to raise the necessary funding to get their great ideas off the ground. Today, we speak with Frank Dale, the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at DeveloperTown, a venture development firm.

I had never really thought about VC firms vs. venture development firms, but Frank explained the different positioning of the two and how venture development firms are more hands on operationally.

For those of us who have thought of starting our own business Frank’s advice was surprisingly simple. Much like Dave Knox sharing that one has to act on the idea, Frank asks two simple questions:

What have you done to validate that the problem you are trying to solve exists?

What is your strategy for connecting the new product with the right consumer demographic on a large scale?

Simple, succinct advice. To hear more of Frank’s interview on thinking innovatively, finding gaps in the marketing and identifying the new needs of consumers. Listen below, on iTunes, or Stitcher.

[Lead Image via OnStartups.com]

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Brand Fast-Trackers #197 – Brand Managers Are Universal Soldiers

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As readers of this blog know, I have a particularly fondness for purposeful brands, that is, brands who are sustainable and socially responsible. This can come from many things from how they source their ingredients/materials to how they treat their employees and customers to causes they authentically align themselves and beyond.

Think Patagonia and their Don’t Buy Their Jacket campaign and their Common Threads Initiative. Was it a completely altruistic initiative? No. At the end of the day they want the sales, but it how they go about it that counts. I recently learned about another example of which you may not be aware. Nokia. Nokia has been in the top 5 on Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics for the last four years. But well beyond that, they developed a real-time text initiative for third-world farmers that allows them to check market prices. The idea is that each morning, a farmer can easily ping this network to know what prices his particular crop is selling for in nearby markets, so he can price his supply accordingly. All of this takes place via the tech-simple SMS message. Why is Nokia doing this? In the words of a Nokia exec I recently heard speak at Social Media Week, they do it because it is the right thing to do. Very powerful stuff.

So today, when I had the chance to speak with Joey Bergstein, CMO of Seventh Generation, I was particularly excited. I hope you forgive my nervousness on the audio as I was filling in for Brian. Our conversation was about much more than just purpose of course. Like many of our previous guests, Joey started his career at Procter & Gamble and grew is various roles in Canada, Europe and the U.S. across multiple brands. For Joey, his time at P&G taught him how to build and manage a brand. Obviously key skills for any marketers. When I asked him how he thought the role of brand manager had changed (and I am thinking back to our conversation with Dave Knox of The Brandery and also a former P&Ger), Joey shared:

The role of Brand Managers haven’t changed per se, but the tools have changed. Successful brands managers are universal soldiers.

We also spoke about how in this consumer-driven world that shoppers are essentially looking for everything. That is, they want value for their dollar, but they also want to find a brand that resonates with their lifestyle. This insight becomes particularly important for niche brands like Seventh Generation. I asked Joey what his strategy was for competing with larger, household brands with large budgets. His answer surprised me. They don’t really compete with those brands. Why? Seventh Generation appeals to a specific kind of customer. It seems to be in many ways, that makes a marketer’s job easier. There is no breaking through the clutter when the customer is seeking you out.

Lastly, I had to ask Joey about Rance Crain’s recent Ad Age piece Is the Era of Purpose-Driven Ads (Finally) Over? Joey’s answer was simple. If the brand attaches itself to a cause as a selling gimmick, consumers will suss that out and it will fail. If it is a genuine initiative to do business differently, the story and the opportunity changes significantly.

To hear more of Joey’s insights, tune in below.

Connect with Kat on Google +, LinkedIn or Twitter.

[Lead Image via Tagxedo]

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Brand Fast-Trackers #196 – SEO’s Long-term Game

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We spoken here before about content marketing and most recently about using your content to make more lovable marketing. It seems that content goes hand in hand with SEO or search engine optimization. As I think about SEO, I think there are two big misnomers or things that are misunderstood about SEO by marketers.

SEO is the same thing as digital ad buys via Adwords and other platforms
SEO is getting higher search rankings via shady tactics

Today we wanted to clear up any confusion, so we brought Andrew Dumont of SEOMoz on the show. Andrew helped to clarify a lot of the above. The days of black hat SEO are over. The key to high rankings is essentially high-quality content. What surprises me is how few brands are actively engaged in real SEO. We are basically looking at the 80/20* rule, but it is working against us. Markerters are essentially spending the bulk of their digital ad spend (and time) on platforms like AdWords, and yet that effort is only reaching 20% of consumers. Said another way, 80% of searchers prefer the organic content over the paid, promoted ones.

So why aren’t more brands engaging deeply with SEO in this way? For Andrew it boils down to this:

It’s hard. It takes work and it takes time. ROI is harder to calculate.

Marketers are often pinned to a marketing mix model or ROI calculator. Do things the way they have always done them. The risk of course is that sometimes sticking with what has worked in the past no longer means you are playing the long-term game. And that is the game we all want to win.

Which will you do?

Connect with Kat on Google +, LinkedIn or Twitter.

[Lead Image by HubSpot]

*Not exact figures

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