The psychology of brand building

How the best brands do it, on the Brand Sauce Podcast

In the first episode of the Brand Sauce Podcast, I review three essential books on marketing, and how they collectively explain how the best brands grow using our understanding of human psychology.

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Episode transcript:

welcome to Brand Sauce I'm your host Joe let's talk about marketing let's make it a little spicy this is the first ever episode of my podcast I'm recording this both for everyone who might be listening in the car or watching on YouTube but I'm also recording live on Tik Tok I'm here to talk about marketing where to start how does marketing actually work for us as people as consumers as people who see things over and over again I keep going back to something that I talked about with uh a friend of mine who also works in in marketing not too long ago and he said you have to talk to people like they're [ __ ] dogs and it was not directly related about marketing but he was talking about trying to communicate with people and he was just expressing some frustration over a very specific thing and I've thought about that a lot it's a graphic way to frame it up but when you are trying to effectively communicate you have to do it in such a straightforward simple way to have a message really connect with someone and have them internalize it it needs to be specific it needs to be simple and needs to be relatable so that they can remember it and that's a trap that I think a lot of young marketers maybe fall into is they don't necessarily think about that specifically they think about how can I prove out what this brand or what this product is that I'm trying to uh communicate and sell to a person without thinking how does someone actually think and react in the 15 plus years I've been working in marketing and studying marketing and getting a master's degree in marketing there's a couple of books that I come back to over and over again that I think are crucial for any anyone who is learning marketing to absorb and revisit time and time again one of those is thinking fast and slow by Daniel Conan I don't have a physical copy here so I'm not going to hold it up but the other two are contagious by Jonah burger and then how Brands grow volumes one and two I took the dust covers off because I think they look a little bit nicer like this but those are written by Byron sharp and Jenny ranc out of the uh nberg bass Institute uh for marketing in Australia and what all of these books do I think when you combine them together is give anyone no matter what type of business they are trying to Market in or what they're trying to communicate a really simple framework for how do you frame up that message for a wait I think it gives people a very simple framework for understanding how do people think and then how then do you communicate whatever your message is going to be whether it's selling a product offering a service or trying to influence change in some sort of political or social level how do you do it in a way where people are going to understand it and remember it so that they can act on it when the time is right human beings are not logical thinkers and we're not fast thinkers either there was a study that just came out uh just in December from Caltech where some researchers tried to measure how quickly the human brain processes information and the figure that they measure that at was 10 bits a second that is not remotely as powerful as a solar powered pocket calculator we do not process information quickly we are operating with essentially what are caveman brains that yes we are able to think and create amazing things but the main part of our brain that just is operating 24/7 is not particularly powerful and so going to that first book Daniel conoman Thinking Fast and Slow uh what that book really dives into is how do people get through the day with that limited mental processing power that we have if you've seen the film Moneyball or read the book by Michael Lewis a lot of that book and what happened with the Oakland A's is about how people misunderstood what value in baseball players was available to them because of the errors and judgment that they made over and over again and in the forward to the book that Michael Lewis wrote about Daniel Conan he said that after he published that book people came to him over and over again said why don't you talk to the researcher who tried to put a frame work around how people make those mental errors and that's Daniel Conan uh one of the founders of the study of Behavioral economics and what his book really gets into what that field of study is all about is the fact that our brains are processing a ton of information all the time and as I said earlier our brains are not very good at processing information quickly so thinking fast and slow he talks about system one and system two thinking in that that's just kind of this framework for trying to explain how the human brain works and there is a a mode that we can use our brains where we think very intently about a problem and we're putting all of our mental energy into it so think about taking a math test where you're going through and trying to put all the figures together and putting all of your mental energy into it versus when you're putting your socks on in the morning you know what socks are you know where they are you know how to put them on your brain just kind of on autopilot and that book talks about how much of our day even more so than we realize our brain is kind of on autopilot and just working by associations that our brain has built out over time and that idea that our brains are often working by association ties in really really nicely with how Brands grow volumes 1 and two because it takes that science or that understanding of how the brain works and tries to put that into a framework for strategic Communications for a brand or a company and how do you work your way through those mental challenges that people have just because their brains don't process information that quickly so how Brands grow volume 1 and two were published maybe 10 years ago now and I feel like there was a very strong uh interest in that within specifically the marketing Community because it is about marketing and branding in the 10 or so years that I've been working in marketing since those books were published it's been very interesting to interact and work with people who have either read those books and very much understand what they are trying to communicate as well as those who are maybe not familiar with them at all both of these volumes of books is try to describe the ways that you can work within the limitations that the human brain has to process and remember and recall information and what they do in the first book Is scientifically go through and look at all different kinds of categories and analyze the way that marketing campaigns might actually help a category one of the big things in the first books is talking about how the share of voice that a brand has so that's literally basically how much money they spend on Advertising so that leads to share of voice the brand that has the most share of voice typically in any category has the most share of the category and the second book Dives in a little bit more into how can we make a brand memorable and a few of the things that they get into really go back to this idea of being consistent over time and being very relatable to the ways that people think because if we go back to Conan knowing that we spend a lot of our time thinking through associations that our brain makes these books are all about how do we help build and reinfor Force those different uh those different Pathways that the brain has so when someone is in a situation where they might be thinking of your particular brand you can easily recall them one of my favorite examples of this that's a very easy one for people to understand because they advertise so much is referencing Coca-Cola uh Coca-Cola I think has done a tremendous job of building mental associations for people throughout decades literally Decades of focused advertising and consistent advertising to build associations not with the brand itself but to build Pathways where people can think of coke when they are doing different activities where you might want to have a soda whereas someone who's maybe you know fresh out of school and might think about a marketing campaign they might make a marketing campaign for Coke where it's it tastes great it has a lovely color Let's ignore all the other chemicals and stuff and how much sugar there is but hey it's just fun to drink and it tastes good whereas Coke the brand they're advertising again for 30 years as long as I've been alive live and aware of advertising Coca-Cola has been advertising about how much fun it is to have a Coke when you're at the movies when you're watching sports when you're at the Ballpark when you're having a barbecue or when you're cooking at home when you're at a concert when it's the holidays and by trying to Anchor Coke not to these different benefits or features of the product itself but instead saying here are all the different occasions where Coke might be good what Koke is doing is helping to simplify those Pathways in the brain so that when you are one of those situations where a Coke might be available and a coke might be enjoyable it's easy for you to think of and this is the power of really effective and consistent branding for either a large brand like Coca-Cola or a smaller brand that might be started up by just you know a guy in his basement or someone who is trying to start up uh you know some type of a social media influencing account about uh good makeup techniques or someone starting a gym or something like that building out a marketing campaign that is not about you that is not not about your product but instead is very closely connected to the types of occasions that people might find themselves in when they think of a brand is the way that a brand can most effectively anchor itself within someone's someone's conscious and give themselves the best chance of success when that person is thinking about purchasing from that category because when we're building out strategic Communications for any type of product service or anything else we need to understand that people are not going to think about that brand or that category first and foremost when they're going to the store they're not going to think about I want to have a soda because soda tastes delicious which soda tastes the most delicious I think it's Coke so they're going to buy coke instead they think about I'm having some friends over or I'm going to have a barbecue or I'm going on a road trip what are the things that might be nice for those specific occasions that I'm going to find myself in and how do I make that the best version of whatever that experience can be we literally could spend an entire series of podcasts talking about all the different ways that these books describe how to build out those associations for people no matter what category you're talking about or what you're trying to accomplish throughout both of the volumes of how Brands grow they emphasize over and over again how crucial it is to not have brand Communications be brand focused but consumer focused and what I mean by that is by and what they mean by that is by not talking about the attributes of your product or service but instead trying to be laser focused on what is important to the person that you are trying BR reach and how your brander product might fit into their life because that's the first part of building a strong mental pathway so that someone can easily recall you when they're in a situation where they might want to be buying a product or they might have a need for a product and the other one that they emphasize quite a bit throughout the books is the importance of consistency over time because it's not enough to see that message once or twice you need to see that 10 times 20 times 30 times not over the course of a week but over the course of months before that advertising is going to start really kind of gripping in the brains of the people you are trying to reach for them to be able to easily recall you and think of you when they're in a situation to buy recently I just posted a video on Tik Tok and Instagram and YouTube about Nike and how in the last couple of years under the leadership of John Donahue they had some initial success with their strategy of pulling a lot of their products off of shelves of Retail Partners like DW shoes and Foot Locker and putting more inventory either in their own physical stores or on nike.com And what I talk about in that video this is very much related to this is what that did for them which is maybe counter to what they wanted to have happen is yes they are able to bring people in and capture more of their data and get more uh more percentage of the profit off of every pair of shoes sold but because there are still so many people who do like shopping in physical stores will go to to physic stores to buy sneakers even if it's not Nike what they missed out on and what has been happening to them over time aside from maybe just a loss of cool factor for a few things that I'm probably not the most qualified person to talk about in terms of like what's cool and what's not but by not having as much physical inventory on shelves where people buy sneakers and think to go to buy shoes and giving an opportunity for other brands to take up more of that space seeing those Brands over and over again when you're walking buy a shoe store in the mall or if you're going in to buy a new pair of sneakers because you want uh you know something clean for U you know starting a new job or going out on a first date or your you or your kid is starting school and you want to have something that just looks really fresh and clean whereas there used to be maybe half the inventory being Nikes if that gets reduced down to 10% that's more place for New Balance for Vans for Adidas for Reebok for all these other competing Brands to take up physical space in those stores and what that does is that helps reinforce those Pathways for those brands with your same consumers over time and well you know maybe the first time they might go to nike.com or they might pick one of the pairs that's still there a Nike what what you have allowed the competition to do is to present themselves in an additional touch point and build those mental Pathways and over time what's going to happen is it's going to be easier for people to think of a different brand when they're thinking about shoes again thinking category first not product first it's going to be easier for those people who have gone to those stores and not found Nikes but seen a lot of other Footwear Brands to think of the Nike competitors instead of Nike itself and all this is just to reinforce how crucial it is to think about how people are thinking about your category and how your brand fits in instead of thinking about we're just going to put our brand message out there we're going to put our name out there and that's going to be enough the last book that I always emphasize for uh especially for young younger marketers we're looking to learn is I talk about Contagious by Jonah Burger this is a great book Jonah Burger studied at Wharton and cered under chip and Dan Heath who wrote a book called made to stick which is a very similar format to contagious Jonah Burger talks about how are some of the ways that we can show up in ways that are instantly memorable and attention grabbing because it's so crucial to cut through all of the noise that exists to show up to people and have them pay attention to what you're saying so that they can have that chance to internalize that message and build out those internal Pathways couple of examples that I love uh from the book there was one in the Olympics several years ago and now this is just proving the point I don't remember the name of the casino who did this stunt but some online casino paid a guy to put on a tutu and put their name on his shirt and sneak into the Olympics into one of the diving pools and jump off the diving board and a lot of people talked about this stunt but no one talked about the brand and no one remembered the brand I don't remember the brand when I'm telling the story and I've read the book but the point that Jonah burer was making there is that it's not enough to be big un audacious you still have to be relevant to who you are and to what is going to be important and noticeable to people so some of the examples that he shares are things that are big and audacious another one is anyone who was on YouTube uh maybe 15 years ago would remember Blend Tech so think of an industrial grade blender Beyond like a kitchen maid how do you make that stand out and make people notice and what blende tech did you know their $400 blender uh premium price at the time I don't know what they cost now instead of showing all the different smoothies you can make or how effectively you can chop through you know some co uh some cucumber or something like that they would take everyday objects like they would take an iPhone or an iPad when that was still a pretty big deal or an iPod and put it in the blender and show how effectively this blender could chop that up by showing in so many different videos how effectively their blender worked on things that weren't food they were effectively demon rating that it could be very effective on food that you would use but because they did such an audacious style of demonstration it was guaranteed to get people's attention and have them actually tune in and watch uh similarly there's another example for anyone who's a native of Philadelphia lives in Philadelphia or has visited Philadelphia you know the cheese steak is a big deal and one of the first stories he tells in the book is about uh this high-end steak restaurant called barklay Prime and how they knew that they had a good product they had a good menu they knew the quality of the food was good but they didn't have just that little it factor that they felt was going to be able to kind of break through the noise especially the local PR and get people to notice what they were doing so what they did is knowing that obviously we're in Philadelphia everyone has strong affinity for you know Goos or pths cheese steaks what if we take that humble staple of our city and instead turn into something incredibly decadent and what they did was they created instead of you know a $5 cheese steak you get from one of the any one of the restaurants around Philly they made a $100 version that had fuga that had Lobster it had Gold Leaf had all of these really rich incredible ingredients served to Perfection made to Perfection and they would serve it up with a half bottle of champagne now think about just how different that is from the typical types of things that people in that market would be used to that is catnip for local press and that is something that's going to capture people's attention and especially uh as in Instagram was starting to catch on in in the 2010s that's something that's very instagrammable too and so people are going to do your marketing for you in part by showing this thing that is so out of thee ordinary but still relatable that people are going to notice that and remember that Jonah has a lot of other great examples within that book to show how you can be effective with those touch points you have and make sure that whatever you are doing is still going to help reinforce those Pathways that people are building when they're thinking about the different occasions that they might go through in a day-to-day uh basis that will relate your uh your brand or your product to what is going to be relevant to people he doesn't say it in so many words but I think it actually is a very nice pairing with thinking fast and slow with how Brands grow all these books that were written you know 15ish years ago and maybe within about 10 years of each other I think they all tie together really nicely if I was to leave you with anything in this first episode I want you to remember that people are not good at thinking and they not logical about thinking in order to help support whatever brand or product that you work on or work on behalf of as a marketer ask yourself over and over again is this something that's related to what the person is going to be experiencing and how does it tie in can we tell that message consistently over time and have it be repeatable over and over again is the marketing that we're doing going to help that person be able to easily remember us when they're in a situation where they might be looking to buy the category we don't think think logically even though we think we do so what can we do in support of a brand or support of a product to help make sure that we're making it as easy as possible for people to think of us that's what I want you think about when you're thinking about the next email campaign you're working on or the next campaign that you're going to be outlining for whoever or whatever you happen to work on behalf of because at the end of the day even though we think we're smart we're not and we got to talk to each other like we're [ __ ] dog

this has been brand sauce thanks so much for tuning in you can find me on Tik Tok if that still exists in the US on Instagram and YouTube you can contact me at Brands sauce.co and if you have any ideas or anything things you'd like me to talk about in a future episode please send me an email at brod atgmailcom that's all one word Brans sauod gmail.com thanks so much for listening keep it Saucy out there [Music]