Episode 54 // Brand Identity – What is it and why is it Imperative to Your Business?

David Cosand:
There’s no more nuts. There’s a nuts shortage.

Mike Jones:
Aw, nuts!

David Cosand:
Thanks, COVID-25.

Mike Jones:
No!

Sam Pagel:
No, no, no!

David Cosand:
And the toilet paper’s gone again.

Sam Pagel:
I’m not ready!

Mike Jones:
This is why Justin Bieber broke his hip. Anyway.

David Cosand:
That’s true.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Because they were out of nuts.

Recording:
You’re listening to The Remarkabrand Podcast, where authentic brands win.

Mike Jones:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the very first and inaugural episode of The Remarkabrand Podcast.

Sam Pagel:
It’s both first and inaugural.

Mike Jones:
It’s first and inaugural, Sam. I’m here. This is Mike Jones, and I got David across from me.

David Cosand:
Yes, sir.

Mike Jones:
David Cosand.

David Cosand:
Hello, everybody.

Mike Jones:
I am so excited for this, David. And then over here to my right, David’s left, your center-

David Cosand:
Sam Pagel.

Mike Jones:
Center between your headphones. Sam Pagel.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. It’s a Sam-wich.

David Cosand:
It’s a Sam-wich.

Mike Jones:
Indeed. Oh, man. We’re starting off strong today. I’m really excited for this episode because we’re going to talk about our favorite topic, which is of course brand identity. How could we not? I mean, it’s our first episode of The Remarkabrand Podcast and we’re going to talk about brand identity.

David Cosand:
This is what we do.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. It’s what we do. And we’re going to talk about what it is, why it’s important, maybe give some examples. I think we’re going to get into some hot topics, like Russian vodka. I think that’s going to come up at some point here.

David Cosand:
Of course.

Mike Jones:
What kinds of cultural trends might be influencing your brand, and what you do about that. I’m excited for that conversation. But before we do that, we’re going to do something really fun that we’re now doing on every episode from here on out for the rest of eternity. We’re committing to it. We’re doing improv.

David Cosand:
Yes.

Mike Jones:
David, what’s improv?

David Cosand:
Yes, and, improv. Improv is making stuff up, pretty much. I mean without a script, just kind of making up stories.

Mike Jones:
I feel like you just made that up.

David Cosand:
I did. There is no script here.

Mike Jones:
No, there is no script. No.

David Cosand:
On this podcast we are making it up.

Mike Jones:
Technically there’s, I don’t know, 20 words written on a whiteboard?

David Cosand:
Yes.

Mike Jones:
I think that’s what we have for a script. Yeah.

David Cosand:
About 20. Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. But we’re going to do some improv.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. We’re going to do something called Name 10 Things. David, what is Name 10 Things?

David Cosand:
Name 10 Things. Okay, this is a great improv exercise that… it’s I guess like a warmup, right? It’s to get your blood flowing, kind of, in your improv brain, using those muscles that are saying, “Oh, I don’t know.” Trying to get you out of your comfort zone, get you out of the first few ideas that pop into your head. Go deeper than that. So that’s why we have 10 things, because those first four or five, okay, you can pretty much think of those first four or five things. But once you get into six, seven, eight, it gets a little wacky. And that’s good. And there’s no wrong answers, that’s the other thing. It gets people used to just making stuff up without fear of judgment, fear of being criticized. It stretches those creative juices. Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
All right. So, you guys ready?

Mike Jones:
All right, Sam. Lay it on us.

Sam Pagel:
Mike and David are going to go back and forth-

David Cosand:
That’s right.

Sam Pagel:
… naming 10 cultural hot topics from the future.

Mike Jones:
Oh, from the future.

David Cosand:
Wow. Okay.

Sam Pagel:
Let’s hear them.

David Cosand:
There’s nudity in Big Boss Baby 6. Jeez.

Sam Pagel:
That’s one. That’s a big deal.

David Cosand:
I think there already is nudity. They’re babies. One.

Mike Jones:
Russia uses NFTs to attack China.

Sam Pagel:
Oh, that’s two. Yeah. That’s good.

David Cosand:
Justin Timberlake fell and broke his hip.

Sam Pagel:
Three.

Mike Jones:
I don’t know. Justin Timberlake died.

David Cosand:
Four. Aww.

Sam Pagel:
Four.

Mike Jones:
From skydiving. Post-op from his hip replacement.

David Cosand:
Winnipeg, Manitoba became a desert. That’s all I got.

Sam Pagel:
That’s five.

David Cosand:
Five. Let’s go.

Mike Jones:
Texas annexes Northern Mexico.

Sam Pagel:
Six.

David Cosand:
Six. Your supermarket is out of toilet paper.

Sam Pagel:
Seven.

Mike Jones:
Your supermarket is back in stock with toilet paper.

David Cosand:
Hey, that’s a crisis.

Mike Jones:
There’s too much. It’s everywhere. Too much wiping.

David Cosand:
Electric vehicles all stop working at the same time.

Sam Pagel:
Ooh. Nine.

Mike Jones:
Elon Musk buys Amazon.

Sam Pagel:
10.

David Cosand:
Hot topic-

Mike Jones:
Hostile takeover.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Hey, that was interesting.

Mike Jones:
That was. That was weird.

Sam Pagel:
And Jeff Bezos buys Tesla.

Mike Jones:
They do a swap.

Sam Pagel:
They do a trade. Tradesies.

David Cosand:
I wonder [inaudible]-

Mike Jones:
I’ve always wanted a Tesla.

David Cosand:
Maybe Justin Timberlake broke his hip because he was getting out of the Tesla.

Mike Jones:
Ooh.

Sam Pagel:
Yup. Yeah, [inaudible].

David Cosand:
Yeah. Exit error.

Sam Pagel:
The real question there is, why are each of those things the cultural hot topics? What is everyone upset about? Oh, yeah. Aww, Justin Timberlake broke his hip because of… I don’t know.

David Cosand:
COVID.

Sam Pagel:
COVID. COVID-25.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Right.

Mike Jones:
Should have said something like everyone stops buying Italian ice.

David Cosand:
Oh, that’s a tragedy.

Mike Jones:
Oh, I know.

Sam Pagel:
Yep. Because of Italy.

Mike Jones:
Because of Italy. You know. You know what they did, right?

Sam Pagel:
Because of the spaghetti strike of 2019.

Mike Jones:
The spaghetti strike.

Sam Pagel:
I mean, 2029.

Mike Jones:
They stopped making pasta. No more pasta.

Recording:
Find your frequency.

Mike Jones:
David, I am so excited. We’re going to talk about brand identity.

David Cosand:
Sweet.

Mike Jones:
Why are we going to talk about brand identity, though?

David Cosand:
Well, who cares? That’s what we love. That’s what we care about.

Mike Jones:
We do. We do care about it.

David Cosand:
That’s our thing. We are championing authentic identity.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. But why? Who cares? Why authentic?

David Cosand:
Yeah. Why is it important?

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Well, what is it?

David Cosand:
Well?

Mike Jones:
Maybe that’s where we start.

David Cosand:
Yeah. We believe that identity is something that’s not superficial. That there’s actually an objective identity that can be discovered. We believe this is true of people, and we believe that because brands and companies and organizations are made out of people, it’s not just some kind of thing. No, it’s these people that make this company. Because there’s people there, then that brand then has an identity that can be discovered, that’s authentic.

Mike Jones:
And there’s almost a unique kind of grain to that company because of those people, right?

David Cosand:
Exactly. Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Okay. I like that.

Sam Pagel:
So there’s no such thing as a faceless corporation?

David Cosand:
Well…

Mike Jones:
Ooh. Man, we’re already getting deep.

David Cosand:
You’re already jumping in the deep end, man.

Sam Pagel:
Sorry.

David Cosand:
We’re just dipping our toe in the water, and then he goes all the way to the big, big, yeah, questions.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
But, yeah, it’s important. Why is it important? Because people do business with people. People have relationships with people, and people have relationships with companies. And there’s ways those relationships can be impacted deeply by the brand and how well articulated or well defined that brand is, and the feelings that are associated with that brand and that play into that interaction between the audience and the brand.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. And I think something that we’ve talked a lot about over the years is that brands exist to serve people, right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
That’s part of their identity, is finding out, “What is it we’re uniquely suited to do in this world? As this group of people on this kind of mission with this kind of purpose, who are we best able to help?” Right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
“Who can we serve best?” And if you don’t really nail down what your brand is, you don’t know what this identity is, you don’t have answers to any of those questions, then you’re not able to serve people as well as you could as an organization. And I think that that’s part of it, too. It’s like relationship, but it’s not just like, “Oh, we have a relationship because we want money.” Or, “We have a relationship because we just want to have a sense of connection. Those are important, maybe. But it’s that, “Hey, we’re here to do something, and we really want to help people.”

David Cosand:
Right

Mike Jones:
I mean, well, I’m sure we’ll dig more into that, either in this episode or another one. But I think that’s a really key part of this, is that this is not intended just to be like, “Oh, let’s figure out who we are just so we can feel better about ourselves,” but that we can actually go and do something well for someone else.

David Cosand:
Right, and too often it’s kind of skipped over. Companies are quick to get to the what, and-

Mike Jones:
Yeah. “Logo!”

David Cosand:
Yeah, yeah. Right. Or just the, “What do we sell?” Right?

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. “Products!”

David Cosand:
“Let’s get to the revenue. Let’s get to the sales.” Right. But, well, let’s think about the why, and the who, and the how.

Sam Pagel:
Kit Kats.

Mike Jones:
Yup.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Kit Kats. We just want to get straight to the candy, right? And we just, “It’s so sweet, and I want a break.” I don’t know. See, so right there there’s a brand association with Kit Kats.

Mike Jones:
So, well, okay. Let’s take this. Let’s run with it.

David Cosand:
Okay.

Mike Jones:
So, I’m a company. We’re a group of people, and we make candy bars.

David Cosand:
Yum.

Mike Jones:
Okay?

David Cosand:
I could go for one.

Mike Jones:
So if we’re thinking about our brand and we’re thinking about, “Okay, how should we look? How should we sound?” We could take a lot of inspiration from our candy bar, right? Couldn’t we?

David Cosand:
Sure.

Mike Jones:
We could, “Well, it has nuts. So maybe our brand looks a little brown, because it’s covered in chocolate. And it sounds a little crunchy, because there’s some wafer in there.”

David Cosand:
Right.

Sam Pagel:
And we’re kind of nutty in how we talk, because we have nuts in there.

Mike Jones:
And we’re a little nutty. Yeah. So is that okay?

David Cosand:
I mean, is it okay? Is it permissible?

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Well, no. Not just permissible, but is that-

David Cosand:
Is that the right way to think about it?

Mike Jones:
Is that the kind of depth that we want to think about here?

David Cosand:
No, there’s not a whole lot of depth to that. In fact, you’re just going straight to the what instead of thinking about the why.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Yeah, so what’s the downstream issue with that, right?

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
I mean, I talk about this all the time and it’s like, “Okay. So if you brand yourself after your product, well, I’m probably going to guess that within three years you’re probably going to want to add a product to your product line.” Right?

David Cosand:
Yeah. Especially if nobody likes nuts, or if you ran out of nuts.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. You ran out of nuts, or-

David Cosand:
There’s no more nuts. There’s a nuts shortage.

Mike Jones:
Aww, nuts.

David Cosand:
Thanks, COVID-25.

Sam Pagel:
No.

Mike Jones:
No, no, no.

David Cosand:
And the toilet paper’s gone again.

Mike Jones:
I’m not ready.

Sam Pagel:
Or everyone has a nut allergy now.

David Cosand:
Right. That’s true.

Mike Jones:
This is why Justin Bieber broke his hip. Anyway-

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Because they were out of nuts.

David Cosand:
Aww, nuts.

Sam Pagel:
He was trying to find more in the tree.

Mike Jones:
So, but yeah. Or maybe even, you did such a great job selling candy bars that everyone who wants your candy bar has your candy bar.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And you’re like, “Oh, we kind of want to do more,” right?

David Cosand:
Right. Uh-huh.

Mike Jones:
“We’re creative. We want to create something else. We want to help more people feel better about the sugar that’s going into their stomachs.”

David Cosand:
Yeah, but you’re now the nut brand and everybody… Like Sam said. I like that.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. So you can’t do anything but nuts now, right? Hmm.

David Cosand:
Right. And you had a nut allergy. Well, then, do you care about those customers?

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. So, hmm. Hmm. It’s limiting.

David Cosand:
Right. But also, it’s superficial, right?

Sam Pagel:
It’s superficial.

David Cosand:
There’s not a whole lot of depth to it. And if you’re selling candy bars, okay, how deep do you need to go? I can hear somebody being like, “Well, what’s the big deal? Why do I need to spend so much time and effort into the why, and the values of my brand for a candy bar?” Well, we have some examples of companies that have done well with brands, and then that increases their bottom line. That increases their longevity. It increases the perception of the way that customers stay in relationship with them, that you have loyal customers that stick around for a while, right?

Mike Jones:
Yup.

David Cosand:
Branding helps with that. It enhances that relationship that you have.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
So it is important, even if you’re selling candy bars. Or-

Sam Pagel:
Even if you’re selling nutty candy bars.

David Cosand:
If you’re like B2B service companies, that kind of thing. Yep.

Mike Jones:
No, and I think that that comes up a lot, because we work with a lot of B2B companies and they’re like, “Oh, that’s just for those B2C companies.” And it’s like, “Well, are you still serving people? Are you building relationships?” In fact, I would argue it’s maybe even more critical to be deep with your B2B brand, because you’re having to build relationships across multiple people at your client organization, right? You’re having to interact with probably at least three, if not five to maybe even a dozen decision makers in a single sale.
And that means that if your brand is off at all, or there’s any confusion to it, that sale’s not going to happen. Right? If one of those decision makers has a different idea about what you do or how you do it or why you do it, then it’s probably not going to happen. There’s a lot less room for air in my opinion, right? Selling candy bars? There’s room for air, but there’s a little less, right. You either like it or you don’t.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And you probably only have one person that’s going to sit there and make a decision to buy it. But-

David Cosand:
Yeah, and it feels like the temptation is just to do something quick. Whether it’s B2B or B2C, just come up with something that looks good. Looks good is very subjective, though, and what we’re arguing for here is that there’s something objective about identity. There’s something that’s unique and intrinsic to that group of people, that organization. So I think that’s the hard part, is do you want to just settle for something that’s good enough? And a lot of companies do this, and it might still be successful. But we’re arguing that there’s something deeper there to be discovered, which gets you a bigger payoff in the long run. Right?

Mike Jones:
Yup. Yeah. And I think the good enough is only good enough for now, right? It’s never good enough for the long term, and we see that time and time and time again working with clients who… And at some level, I don’t fault anyone who’s just getting started. You have no money. You’re bootstrapping your startup or your new business. Yeah, you just kind of do what you need to do. Maybe you don’t even know really what you’re doing yet. You don’t really have a sense of product and service yet, and you’re just trying stuff and you’re taking on clients and you’re just doing the work.
And there’s probably an element of, yeah, just, it’s okay. It’s okay to have something less thought out, less deep. But just know, if you want to grow you’re going to have to get to a point where you have to start answering those questions about, “Well, why do we really exist? What are the values by which we do business? What is the personality of this firm that we’re building, and this culture that we have?” And that’s not just on the customer side, that’s also on the staff and employee side, right? Those have benefits not just for relationships outside of your organization, but also internally, of who’s a good fit? Who’s going to really make sense here, and help us grow? And who’s going to maybe hold us back because they believe a different way of doing business, or they’re just into something totally different than what we’re doing, right? They’re not as passionate, and so they’re not going to last.
And so I think there’s ways to think about that, like, hey, brand is a lot bigger than just the marketing side. It’s really about the whole identity, the whole culture, the whole sense of who you are as an organization. And that has benefits across all of your relationships, not just on the marketing side.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Yeah, the phrase we use is find your frequency. And I kind of wanted to dissect that, if you don’t mind.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
There’s a lot there. There’s a lot of juicy nuggets. And that find, it doesn’t mean go invent your frequency, go create your identity. No, it’s discover it. Your, meaning it’s specific to you. It’s not what you see your neighbor doing or what you see your competitors doing. I mean, yes, you can admire other companies and what they’re doing, sure. You can take cues and see how they’ve been successful, but it still needs to be unique to you. And then frequency, there’s this deep kind of resonance that we have. That’s the imagery that we like to use at Resound. But there’s this kind of core frequency that is deep underneath the surface that we’re trying to discover, that belongs to you. It’s unique to you. And it makes me think of when you’re getting out of high school and into college, and out of college going into the job market, trying to figure out who you are. You kind of discover by trying things out, right?

Mike Jones:
Mm-hmm.

David Cosand:
The early part of your career is not going to look like, most likely, the-

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Let’s just try stuff, and see what sticks.

David Cosand:
Yeah. So, but there’s a temptation to keep trying to reinvent yourself. And I think that’s what we see with our clients sometimes, or with companies out there that are like, they’re trying too hard to invent, or to put some new fresh coat of paint on, right? To-

Mike Jones:
Mm-hmm. Or just taking cues from outside of themselves as to what they think they should be, right?

David Cosand:
Right. Yup. And that’s not the… It’s missing out on the discovering aspect. Sure, you’re going to try different things as you’re starting out a business. You’re going to make acquisitions, you’re going to get acquired, you’re going to have shifts in products. There’s no more nuts, whatever. So that’s going to affect kind of your strategy, and ow you think about identity and how you think about branding. But as long as you’re taking the moment to stop and kind of reflect, like, “Okay, what have we learned? Let’s kind of…” And maybe have someone on the outside come in and help you with that, right?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Like, “Let’s help you evaluate. Let’s help you discover that.”

Mike Jones:
Yup. Yeah, and it can be… it’s not just a plug for consultants and agencies, but even having that conversation with your customers, right?

David Cosand:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Mike Jones:
And asking and diving deep with them, of-

David Cosand:
“How are we doing?”

Mike Jones:
“How are we doing?” And, “What brought you in, and what keeps you here?” Right?

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
“Where do you see us line up with… When we say these things, does that line up with what you know about us and the experience that you’ve had?” And then the same thing internally, asking your team, right?

David Cosand:
Oh, yeah.

Mike Jones:
And really trying to uncover it. Like, “Hey, Joe. You’ve been here six months, right? These are our core values that we talk about. Does that resonate with the experience you had coming into our organization? You came in pretty fresh, you haven’t been here that long. What’s your experience bee? Do these things resonate, or do you see disconnect?” And same thing for Julie who’s been there 40 years, whatever Julie’s doing. My first thought, somebody that’s in a position in a company for 40 years, is like, “They’re probably the accountant.”

David Cosand:
That’s what I thought, too. Yeah.

Mike Jones:
I don’t know why that is.

David Cosand:
Julie the accountant.

Mike Jones:
Julie the accountant.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Do you have some examples of brand identities, Mike, that you think have stood the test of time?

Mike Jones:
Well, yeah, but they’re cliché. So I mean, we should talk about them. I mean, Nike is the one that always comes up.

David Cosand:
Swoosh.

Mike Jones:
The swoosh. And I talk about, are there certain circumstances within a single example that you’re like, “Those aren’t duplicatable”? Sure, right? There’s timing, there’s other elements to that. But I do think there are elements and there’s principles that Nike has taken over the years, and we can argue about whether they’ve strayed from those more recently. But if you think about, what do they really stand for? What are they all about? Most people know them from their product line, primarily from shoes, right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
And there’s a history there. They’re rooted in shoes. They were a shoe company making running shoes for professional runner. That’s how they started. That was the only product they had for over a decade. But you think about, okay, what’s their product line now? Oh, yeah, they’re shoes, but all types of athletic shoes. There’s athletic apparel. You can buy Nike Swoosh basketballs. You can-

David Cosand:
Don’t they have headphones, or something? I don’t know.

Mike Jones:
They have headphones now. I mean, they even have a running app, right?

David Cosand:
Yeah. Right.

Mike Jones:
So kind of software, tech is in there. They’re doing a lot of things, but what kind of ground everything they do is, “Hey, we want to help people achieve athletic victory.” And so when you think about, okay, what is the Nike brand? That’s at the heart of it, and it gives a sense of purpose. It not only provides a sense of direction, right? Athletic, right? So there’s a direction there. There’s certain things they’re probably never going to get into, because they just don’t have to do with athletics.

David Cosand:
Like vodka?

Mike Jones:
Like vodka. That could be weird, Nike vodka.

David Cosand:
Nike vodka.

Mike Jones:
It’s got electrolytes. But on the flip side it also provides a lot of opportunity, right? They’re not branded on a specific product. They could’ve just said, “All right, we’re Nike the professional running shoe company.” But that’s all they would ever do, right?

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
If that’s how you branded it. But they didn’t. They said, “No, we’re about athletic victory.” And that kind of leaves it wide open in terms of the actual products and services they provide, as long as they fit that mission. And there’s certainly a sense of way of doing things, there’s an aesthetic to what they do. Even just a conscious decision that they’re going to be very celebrity-forward in a lot of their messaging, and showcasing and sponsoring people who are achieving athletic victory. But it’s all rooted back in that same kind of heart of what they’re doing. And I think that’s one of the reasons why they came up with that tagline, Just Do It, with Weiden+Kennedy, their agency, back in… I think it was like ’87? Something like that. One of the reasons why that was so great was because it wasn’t rooted in a specific product, it was rooted in the ethos of Nike. Just do it. And it stood a lot longer than most marketing taglines stand because of that.

David Cosand:
Yeah. I mean, I don’t even know if they have to use that tagline. People still… it’s so well-known, they just associate it with it.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Yup.

David Cosand:
And I guess, so I’m curious, why would… Not should, but why would Nike make a decision to be like, “Oh, we’re not going to be about athletic victory or achievement”? If they suddenly decided, “Oh, we’re going to be about mental health and wellness, and they kind of start blurring or moving into that direction or something, when would they choose to do that? Should they do that? Why wouldn’t they do that? I don’t know, because I’m thinking about brands that change or shift, or maybe you didn’t find kind of that sweet spot just yet so you’re trying to experiment, explore. Nike doesn’t have to do that, I guess is the point, because Nike’s already established themselves.

Mike Jones:
No, they don’t. I mean, yeah. And that grain… again going back to the idea of, if Nike is a piece of wood, it has a certain grain to it, right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
And so if you’re into carving wood, there’s certain things you can or can’t do with a specific piece of wood because of the way that the grain is naturally in it.

David Cosand:
Right. It makes me think of paper, yeah.

Mike Jones:
Paper. You don’t want to carve against the grain, right?

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
It just makes things really hard, and there’s certain things that you’re going to have a much harder time doing. And so, there’s already a pretty established grain at Nike. At the same time, even if you go all the way back to the 1970s version of Nike, it’s like, their market was really small. It was professional runners. But it was still about athletic victory. So I think that’s some of it, is kind of determining as soon as possible, what’s the center of what we do? What is it that we’re just uniquely suited to do in the world? And maybe we don’t know exactly what product we’re going to do that with, or we don’t know exactly what market we want to go after with that that’s going to have that resonance. But we know that there’s a certain ethos to what we’re doing. And maybe that’s not on… I mean, I think that could be on day one. I think a founder could have that sense, if they’ve done some soul searching and some deep thinking and saying, “Hey, we don’t exactly know what product.”
And I think you see that over and over and over again with big companies, that we all perceive as really successful, right? You think of Nike, Starbucks, Apple. I mean, and we could probably go down the line and name every Fortune 500 company. The first 25 years of those companies is a lot of trial and error, right? It took 25 years for Apple to come out with the iPod, which was really the only… That was their first big, mass-market hit product. Before that, they had computers. They’d gone through almost bankruptcy after Steve Jobs left. He comes back. Even then, they’ve got the iMac with the weird colors and stuff.

David Cosand:
I had one.

Mike Jones:
And people bought them, but it was pretty niche. It was creatives. They were pretty hot in the education market, because they did a really good job getting into schools. But nobody working in a 9-to-5 office job used a Mac, right?

David Cosand:
No.

Mike Jones:
And they certainly weren’t your personal computer of choice that you had in your house, for most people. And it really wasn’t until the iPod, and that took 25 years. Starbucks is the same thing. It took 25 years for Starbucks to get their thousandth store in the United States. And so I think there’s an element of, you can’t wait 25 years to figure out what your ethos is, right?

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And what the center, or the essence of your brand is. You need to have that figured out sooner than that. You might not have all the extensions of that, like, “Okay, well, how are we going to live that out? Who are we going to sell these things to?” Well, that’s to be figured out. But having a sense… I think almost from day one Steve Jobs was like, “We’re all about design.” Right? “Everything at Apple is going to be well-designed. It’s going to be about the user experience.” Even down to stuff that the user never sees, like the hardware.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
He preached to his hardware teams all the time about, “It has to look really pretty inside, even though no one’s going to open these things out. Everything’s got to be laid out really well.” He’s like, “I want that ethos to carry through in everything that we do.”

David Cosand:
And it’s interesting that it wasn’t until he came back, Steve Jobs that is, that they started to kind of regain that focus. And it extended across, whether it was iTunes or iMacs or iPods or iPhones or iPads, that ethos came back. That belief system, that identity was on full display.

Mike Jones:
Yup. And I think that’s a good case study, and you see that in a lot of these companies. You think of Phil Knight with Nike, you think of Steve Jobs with Apple, you can think of Howard Schultz with Starbucks. Someone has to champion that essence, and hold it really tightly.

David Cosand:
Fight for it.

Mike Jones:
And say, “This is what we stand for,” because there’s going to be so much temptation to stray from it.

David Cosand:
Well, yeah. Because in the case of Apple it was like, “Oh, well, we need to make clones, or license things, or…” They didn’t know what they were doing.

Mike Jones:
No. No, and some of that was the market demands.

David Cosand:
Sure.

Mike Jones:
And if you’re publicly-owned, and there’s stockholders, and they’re demanding higher stock value. And the more external voices you bring in that have a financial stake in the company, the more opportunity there is for you to shift gears probably in a wrong direction. I think we’re seeing a lot of that right now, right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I was hoping we could talk about that. So when do you advise, “Yeah, maybe you should start exploring, or you should start changing”? Or maybe you haven’t… Is it when you haven’t found that ethos yet, and you’re still exploring? Or when it’s, yeah, you have something that’s kind of caught on and it seems to resonate with customers, but something on the outside or maybe something on the inside of the company has changed. Then what? Do we now… is it safe to go, “Well, is that who we really are? Maybe we’re really more like this”? And I’m thinking about acquisitions. I’m thinking about takeovers, like Elon Musk, you know?

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Well, yeah, and I think those are really tough situations because I think if you haven’t done that homework… Right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
If you don’t really know what your essence is yet, everything’s fair game. There’s nothing constricting you from saying yes or no. There’s nothing to really guide you. I’m sure, I mean, you can do a quick version of that and try to figure it out on the fly. But by the time Elon Musk is trying to take over your company, it’s probably too late, to be honest. Or if you’re doing a big acquisition that has dramatic… It’s one thing to be like, “Okay, we’re an 800-person company and we’re going to acquire a little five-person company and just absorb them,” right? The brand isn’t going to be there any more from their side. You’re going to continue to move forward with your brand. I mean, that’s a talent acquisition really, or maybe some IP.
But if you’re like, “No, we’re going to merge with another 800-person company,” and you’re an 800-person company, okay, well, that’s going to have significant ramifications. Do your cultures even align at all? And I’ve talked with a lot of people who’ve gone through mergers and acquisitions where the cultural element is always on the table. It’s always something they’re concerned about. But it’s funny to me how often it’s like, “Oh, well, the stated values are pretty much the same, and so I think we’re good.” And then you talk to them like three years later and you’re like, “Hey, who’s left?” “Oh, well, we lost about 80% of our managers in the merger over the three-year period.” Yeah, because your cultures didn’t actually match up, right?

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And so you actually ended up basically forcing one culture over the other in that process. And maybe there’s a business decision in there of, “Well, it was worth it for the brand that they have and the client list that they have.” And, “Yeah, we triaged out a lot of people in that process, but whatever.” That’s a lot of pain to go through, though. That’s a lot of pain.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Yeah, so I guess the state, or the maturity level of how well you’ve discovered or defined that identity yet.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. And I think that’s one of the cases I would say is an argument for doing it sooner than later, right? The sooner you can kind of get on that train of, “This is who we are. This is our essence. This is our identity. We’re not going to stray from it. We’ve done it in such a way that we know the depth of it, so that we have room for…” The products and services shouldn’t be what drives the identity, and so if your identity is rooted in something deeper than product and service it leaves a lot of opportunity on the product and service side, right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
Then you can consider spinning up new products, spinning up new services, perhaps acquiring another product or another service. But it’s always within, we’re holding fast to this identity when we do that. And anything that might jeopardize our identity in extending what we do and who we serve… if it’s going to jeopardize that we’re not doing it, right? And I think there’s an opportunity there. It is a business. You can spin up a new identity, right? But-

David Cosand:
Yeah. Well, before we go down that path, I guess I’m curious. Would you say, then, that you have better chances of success if you’ve defined your identity and then gone out and changed products, or chosen a new avenue to pursue, than the other way around?

Mike Jones:
Yup. Yup.

David Cosand:
If your identity was tied to that first successful product, and then you go in this other direction, it feels jarring to a customer.

Mike Jones:
TASER.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Oh, tell me about TASER.

Mike Jones:
I mean, that’s my… It’s the easiest example.

David Cosand:
Axon?

Mike Jones:
It’s now Axon, right?

David Cosand:
Uh-huh.

Mike Jones:
Why is that? Do you know the story of-

David Cosand:
No.

Mike Jones:
So TASER sold tasers for like 25 years.

David Cosand:
Right, stun guns for police.

Mike Jones:
Stun guns for police officers.

David Cosand:
Police officers, right.

Mike Jones:
They basically sold one to every single agency on the planet, and after 25 years there’s no more market. And they tried to go into consumer; that failed. It didn’t take.

David Cosand:
I want a taser.

Mike Jones:
But they had other products. They had other products that they were spinning up that were body cams, or cloud hosting the video.

David Cosand:
Sure, sure. Sonic pulsar weapons.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, that were named Axon. And so what happens when they go, “Hey, we have to shift our strategy to go and sell all these other products and not the tasers any more”? Because the taser itself doesn’t… it’s, “We’ve maxed out our market. There’s no one left for us to sell to. And, yeah, maybe these agencies’ll re-up in like 10 years, but in the meantime we’ve got to keep doing business. And we have these other products, and the TASER name is holding us back now.” And so, they rebranded into Axon.
What’s interesting is, if you think about… Okay, well, if you did it the way I would do it, you would’ve gone back somewhere between year five and 10, maybe sooner if you could have, and said, “Let’s not name our company after our product. Let’s brand around what our essence is, what our identity is, not around a specific thing that we do.” Right? And then you wouldn’t run into 25 years later having to rebrand your company, which for them cost them tens of millions of dollars, right? Not just the fees for an agency and all the creative, but you’re talking about how many physical things have to swap in order to rebrand like that for a very established company.

David Cosand:
And I guess… So, last segue. Question about outside pressure, like reasons to change your brand. Again, so you’ve found your frequency, you’ve found your identity, and you feel like you’re pretty crystal clear with what it is. But now people are like, “Oh, tasers are bad.” Or, there’s this overwhelming pressure in society that says tasers are ugly tools of the devil, or something. I don’t know. Maybe it’s-

Mike Jones:
That’s probably in a tweet somewhere.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Maybe that’s the wrong example. Maybe like Russian vodka, whatever. It’s not popular to have Russian anything right now.

Mike Jones:
And it’s so hard, because I think every case is a little different. But I mean, for one, consider how many times outside pressure is just a temporary trend, right? I mean, even the Russian vodka thing, it’s like, how long is that really going to last? To a point where people are like, “We’re just not going to buy anything that’s named Russian.” It’s not even that it’s from Russia, right? The real issue is you have these companies that sound Russian, totally not Russian at all at the source of their vodka, but that kind of… Because vodka originated in Russia, right? So it’s like, I just, I have a hard time believing in that example that you would want to make some fundamental shift of who you are as an organization so dramatically based on some temporary pressure.

David Cosand:
Or these social issues, or these-

Mike Jones:
Yeah. So I mean, you have to, I think, consider that. How long-term do we think this is? How integral is it to our brand? Is this something that our brand would naturally fight for? If no one was screaming at us to do it, would we fight for it? Right? I mean, you think of Patagonia, right? They fight that at their heart they are an environmentally conscious company, and so they don’t have to be force-fed from the outside to be environmentally conscious. So regardless of whether that’s politically correct at the moment or there’s a lot of loud voices in the room at the moment, that’s what they’re going to fight for, right?

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And so I think that’s where it’s like, yeah. Do that hard work to find out, “What are the causes, what are the issues that we’re really concerned about?” And if we’re just not concerned about them, let’s not go there, because then they become distractions. And I don’t know if I want to get into specifics with a specific big company that everyone knows right now, because it’s a lot harder for me to talk about that because I don’t know what’s going on.

David Cosand:
Sure.

Mike Jones:
But I have conversations with business owners here in the Phoenix area who, some of them own significant 800, 900-person companies, who are having to make these decisions right now about social causes that they’re like, “Yeah, we see the danger. We might even personally be really called to one of these issues, but it’s not core to who our organization is. It’s not core to our brand.” And we’ve seen directly from them, they’ve seen that these become distractions in their company. And they take away from their ability to serve the people that they actually have been serving for 10, 15, 20 years.

David Cosand:
Yeah. So maybe to bring this home, it sounds like going back to finding your frequency, a big part of that isn’t just knowing who we are and what we do want to do, but it’s about what can we say no to?

Mike Jones:
Yup. Yeah.

David Cosand:
It’s like, here are all those… well, we’re going to call them distractions. And be so super focused, hyper-focused on what we do want to do, what we do pursue. And that way we can say no to all nine million things that get thrown at us.

Mike Jones:
And if your employees are really into that, there’s a contingent of them that are really passionate about one of these issues, it’s like, great. You’ve provided a job that allows them on their free time to go do whatever it is they want to do, right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
But we’re not spending organizational time and energy on those issues right now, because that’s not who we are.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And those might be important issues, right?

David Cosand:
Sure.

Mike Jones:
I think there’s a communication element in there of, “Hey, we’re not saying these are not good issues. But-“

David Cosand:
Right, but it’s not mutually exclusive. I don’t know. I was thinking about, it’s like a capital-V Value versus a small-V value. Maybe these capital-V Values are the ones that we’ve identified as, “This is us.” That doesn’t mean that the small-V values are not important. They’re just not core to who we are and where we’re going.

Mike Jones:
No. And if you’ve already established that they’re small-V values, if you let them become big-V Values, something else has to leave the table, right? One of your big-V Values is going to get pushed out.

David Cosand:
Well, and then you’re also introducing just the opportunity to kind of adjust to anyone’s whim, right?

Mike Jones:
Yup.

David Cosand:
You cater to whatever is the prevailing opinion of the day, right? And that’s dangerous for your company, too.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. I mean, how many companies have we seen… And not just on social issues. I mean, even the marketplace, right? Customers demanding a certain product, or a change to your product, because they have a personal preference. Right?

David Cosand:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones:
And you cater to them, and then next thing you know it’s like we have bloated product features, right? Especially, and this happens in technology, right? Where it’s like, “We kept adding more features for all the different customers who are very loud and very opinionated, but were a minority of people.” Right? And the next thing you know, you have this product that nobody really likes because they’re like, “Aah. It’s just-“

David Cosand:
Trying to do too many things.

Mike Jones:
It’s doing too many things, right?

David Cosand:
I got a question for you.

Mike Jones:
Yeah? Yeah, yeah?

David Cosand:
So, this might be a cliffhanger. Forgive me in advance.

Mike Jones:
Ooh. Cliffhanger.

David Cosand:
Can an authentic brand be canceled?

Sam Pagel:
The Remarkabrand Podcast is a project of Resound, and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with hosts Mike Jones and David Cosand. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at remarkablecast.com. If you’d like more episodes, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. To contact the show, find out more about The Remarkabrand Podcast, or to join our newsletter list to make sure you never miss another episode, check out our website at remarkablecast.com. Copyright Resound Creative Media, LLC, 2022.