Episode 55 // Can an Authentic Brand be Cancelled?

Mike Jones:
What should our website look like? Oh, just go to their website, our competitor’s website, and instead of their color, make it green. Ah, okay. All right.

David Cosand:
Not a good strategy.

Mike Jones:
Probably not going to be a good strategy, and we should unpack that. What happens when you do that?

Sam Pagel:
You’re listening to the Remarkabrand Podcast, where authentic brands win.

Mike Jones:
Welcome to yet another episode of the Remarkabrand Podcast, where we have conversations about unlocking your authentic brand to build lasting relationships with customers, staff, and the whole wide world. I’m Mike Jones, your co-host with, David Cosand, and our wonderful producer, Sam Pagel.

David Cosand:
Woohoo.

Sam Pagel:
Hey.

Mike Jones:
Game show music, now.

David Cosand:
I’m sure that’s like a wheel of fortune.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. I’m excited for today’s episode. We’re going to talk about all sorts of fun stuff all related back to brand.

David Cosand:
Of course.

Mike Jones:
Of course, we’re going to talk about brand identity. We’re going to talk today primarily about chasing trends. We got into that a little bit on the last episode, and we’re going to continue that conversation. We’ve got a great cliffhanger question to kick us off from last time. And then, we will jump in all sorts of other great things about how you can do superficial branding. You want to do it really wrong. We’re going to give you all the tips and tricks on how to do it wrong. How to brand incorrectly, very superficially. And we’re going to talk about copycat brands and we’re going to talk about all sorts of other fun stuff. But first, we’re going to do a little improv because that’s how we roll. We’re all about the improv. Sam, what do we got today? What are we going to do?

Sam Pagel:
Oh, we’re going to do name 10 things again. David, can you give us a little quick refresher on what name 10 things is?

David Cosand:
Yeah. It’s really easy. Someone in the group says, name 10 blanks, And they come up with the random idea for what those 10 things that we’re naming is. Then, they put someone on the spot, quite literally, that person then has to name 10 of whatever that thing is. The idea, again, is to get you kind of just not thinking, get you out of your head. So, those first few ideas might be more normal, standard responses, but then once you get to seven, eight, nine, you’re free.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
You’re all over the place.

Sam Pagel:
And the only wrong answer is silence.

David Cosand:
That’s right. No wrong answers.

Sam Pagel:
All right. So, I’ve got it. We’re going to do ‘name 10 trends that you love that came out of the trend generator machine’.

Mike Jones:
The trend generator machine. I love it. I guess we’re doing it…

David Cosand:
We’re doing this together.

Mike Jones:
And go back to back.

David Cosand:
All right.

Mike Jones:
Banana puppets.

David Cosand:
Well, braille fortune cookies.

Sam Pagel:
Steak papers.

Mike Jones:
Oh, flat sodas.

David Cosand:
Wait, what?

Mike Jones:
Sodas that are flat.

Sam Pagel:
That was a trend because of the carbon…

David Cosand:
Carbon friendly wallpaper.

Sam Pagel:
Number four.

Mike Jones:
It’s made from cow dung. I don’t know. Fern in your house. Ferns are in.

David Cosand:
Wait, what?

Sam Pagel:
Fern in your house? It’s good for the environment.

David Cosand:
Using egg whites as hair gel.

Sam Pagel:
Oh yeah. Recycle.

Mike Jones:
Oh, that’s awful.

Sam Pagel:
That’s six.

Mike Jones:
Only eating food with your four fingers. Not four of your fingers, your first finger, index finger. You can only use the one on each hand.

David Cosand:
Okay.

Mike Jones:
It was a thing. You guys don’t remember that?

Sam Pagel:
That was hot topic.

Mike Jones:
It was hot. It was really hot. Back when there were like pogs. You remember those?

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. That’s six.

David Cosand:
That’s a good trend. Wait, I thought we were on eight.

Mike Jones:
I thought we were almost done.

David Cosand:
Nope. Bicycle shoes.

Mike Jones:
Oh yeah.

Sam Pagel:
Oh Yeah. Reduce emissions.

David Cosand:
Shoes that are like bicycles.

Sam Pagel:
That’s seven.

Mike Jones:
Oh, I was thinking like the bike shoes that have the little clips at the bottom and people are just wearing those all the time.

David Cosand:
The shoes are like, anyway…

Mike Jones:
They’re bikes, instead of the little rollies.

Sam Pagel:
Wheelies or something.

Mike Jones:
Wheelies.

David Cosand:
Oh, wheelies.

Sam Pagel:
Three more.

Mike Jones:
Ear implants.

David Cosand:
Good trend.

Mike Jones:
As an implanting ears.

David Cosand:
A nose massages.

Mike Jones:
Nose massage.

Sam Pagel:
I could use one of those. One more.

Mike Jones:
Bleaching the hair on your feet.

Sam Pagel:
Oh yeah.

David Cosand:
Oh boy.

Sam Pagel:
That’s number 10, and that’s going to end it right there.

David Cosand:
I think you miscounted. I really do. I think we need to go back. We need a review.

Mike Jones:
I’m going to scrub through that. Instant replay.

David Cosand:
Challenge, challenge. Get the coach’s challenge.

Mike Jones:
I challenge that. We’re going to lose a time out now.

David Cosand:
Scott Foster must be referee.

Sam Pagel:
There’s a trend.

Mike Jones:
Find your [inaudible 00:05:17]. All right. We had a cliffhanger last time and it was so good. I’ve already forgotten it.

David Cosand:
It was.

Mike Jones:
So, what was it, David?

David Cosand:
Can an authentic brand be canceled?

Mike Jones:
Oh…

David Cosand:
And by canceled, we mean… There’s this kind of cancel culture we’re seeing in this very intense political…

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Climate that we’re in on both sides of the aisle.

Mike Jones:
It’s just a wee bit intense right now.

David Cosand:
A wee bit intense. The extremes of both ends of politics in America. I don’t think it’s just America actually, it’s kind of overflowing into other countries and continents. But we’re seeing that dominate the conversation. And when I say that in the public social media ask type of content.

Mike Jones:
Public discourse.

David Cosand:
Right. We’ve seen some brands getting caught up in some of this back and forth, some of the crossfire between the extremes. But the question I have here is just, more simply, if your brand is authentic, if your brand has done the hard work of finding its frequency, knowing its purpose, its values, who it is, who it’s not, can that then be canceled?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Is it a bulletproof brand?

Mike Jones:
It didn’t make it in the episode, but we had some answers. So, I think we can answer this.

David Cosand:
Let’s hash that out.

Mike Jones:
I think there’s something really magical.

David Cosand:
I think it’s a great word, magical.

Mike Jones:
Magical. There’s something really defensible.

David Cosand:
Hmm.

Mike Jones:
About a brand that really knows itself. I think, on two levels, that’s really helpful for the brand in that kind of environment.
On one level, it protects the brand from getting caught in a dicey conversation. There’s some political firestorm going on, and I think the temptation for a lot of brands is to take aside or to have a really strong opinion. Maybe not because it’s authentic to them, but because there are loud voices in the room.
It feels like, oh, we should probably make some statement on this. I think if you really understand your own brand and your own identity, you’re better able to decide, is this really something that we should be talking about, that we should even be in the conversation about.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
So, you tend to not enter into conversations that get you in a whole lot of trouble, and when you do get into those conversations, you’ve already flushed out your thinking on that. Your stance actually aligns with everything else that you’re doing. So, it’s like, yeah, it makes sense. You can kind of think of like, when Ben and Jerry’s gets political, it kind of makes sense because they’ve always been that way.

David Cosand:
Mm.

Mike Jones:
And they have an ideological strain to their founders that they embedded in the company. They’ve said from day one, this is something that we care about. We care about ethics. We care about the environment. We care about certain political sides of certain political conversations.

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
And that’s just part of who their identity is. So, when they get loud, I’m still paying eight bucks a pint. It doesn’t seem to hurt them.

David Cosand:
Yeah. But again, it seems like they established that years ago, decades ago.

Mike Jones:
Long before any of these were like the hot topics…

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
The hot button night topics that they are, and I mean, you can find examples on the other side, if you’re looking at political spectrum, you can, I think, find brands on the other side where… I mean, to some example, and it’s a little trickier, I think with personalities, but we mentioned earlier before the show started, Dave Chappelle.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And he got in a lot of hot water for some comments about transgenderism. What was that, a month or two ago? He’s having sell out crowds at everyone of his shows. So, it’s like, okay.

David Cosand:
He just got attacked too in a way.

Mike Jones:
He did. But it hasn’t… And a lot of that comes back to the fact that, he’s always been the guy who just says whatever he thinks.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
So, even if people disagree with him, they’re like, oh, I’ll still go see him. Yeah, that fits him. That makes sense.

David Cosand:
His brand. Interesting. So, I guess, if you’re grounded in your values and your purpose and your beliefs and some parts of the global conversation starts creeping into that territory, then yes, we would expect you to have a response. We would expect you to have a well thought out intentional response, not just a flippant… We got to say something fast. It’s no, no, we don’t need to sit here. And oh, we have to react… We know what to do because we’ve been talking about whatever it is.
The environment forever. We have beliefs of it, but what I think is really tempting for brands and probably really dangerous is to jump into every single topic.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
Every thread of every debate that pops up. Because first of all, the social media kind of global conversation thing, it’s very quick.

Mike Jones:
It’s ephemeral.

David Cosand:
Yes.

Mike Jones:
It’s like here and then gone.

David Cosand:
It’s like a vapor. It’s poof.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
But people are so passionate about it. If you choose to make a statement or say something about something that might be really super temporary, maybe you’re going to end up back peddling and backtracking because you’re like, oh man, that got us in a lot of trouble. If we would’ve just not said anything. There would be a couple angry tweets here and there, but it’ll blow over and then they’re going to be angry at somebody else next week.

Mike Jones:
And is this really core to who we are? Is this something that really matters to our focus of our identity? What do we stand for on a day to day basis? Does this matter to what we stand for?

David Cosand:
Right. I’m thinking about, this is not a global conversation type of political type of instance, but I remember Southwest Airlines. So, Southwest Airlines has a very distinct brand, kind of a style to the way they do things on the plane, especially when you’re a passenger.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Like the way they might sing the safety instructions or…

Mike Jones:
Or just get a little creative.

David Cosand:
Yeah. They’re playful.

Mike Jones:
A little snarkier, humorous.

David Cosand:
They’re kind of playful, kind of snarky. So, I heard of an account of a flight attendant was doing the whole song thing, and then it was silly. It was goofy. And then they did something else where like, instead of delivering the snacks and passing them out, they’re going to have them at the very front of the plane and then have all the snacks go crazy, gravity do its thing. Somebody got really upset about it or something, and they’re like, okay, sorry that you can’t be our customer anymore. Because we’re going to keep doing what we do, because we’re going to back our employees because they’re an extension of the brand and we support them. If you don’t like it, then there’s plenty of other fit for you.

Mike Jones:
This is a trend for you.

David Cosand:
Right?

Mike Jones:
This is like, my buddy, Don, worked in the restaurant industry for like 20, 25 years. He’s like, there was a general rule with every restaurant I worked at, which was, you gave a customer three tries and it was like, okay. So, the first mistake will own that. That’s on us, whatever it is, and we’re going to get you back. We’re going to bring you back. We’re going to do whatever we can to bring you back so you have… Like…
You really have a chance to experience this the right way, because maybe we screwed up. We messed up your food or really bad server that day. Somebody just had a bad day. We’re just going to assume the best and that this is not working. Second time. You’re still angry with us the second time. Okay, let’s see what we can do to make it right. Maybe give you a gift card, have you come back. On the third try, if it’s like, this is not working, you are upset again. It’s not us, it’s you.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And it was always delivered. He said, we were always delivered as… We appreciate you coming here, giving us a try. This is the third time. We clearly are just not the right fit.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
It’s probably best if you just find another restaurant. There’s lots of great restaurants.

David Cosand:
Three strikes, you’re out.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. It wasn’t intended to be a penalty. But it was more like, this isn’t the right fit. I like it. I like that Southwest story. That was a good one.

David Cosand:
And that might not be, again, like this political kind of Twitter verse type of a use case, but it’s still…

Mike Jones:
I think, it’s similar though, because there’s just really loud voices that are like… This is my one issue and I want you to come along with me and you kind of, have as a brand, have to decide like, do we need to go along with someone just because they’re loud? I mean, if you own a business or you’re in leadership in a business and every… You just went with whatever every loud customer told you to do, I don’t know that you’d have a great successful business in the long run.

David Cosand:
Yeah. It’s just like relationships, I mean interpersonal relationships. So, I mean you pick your friends and you pick which relatives to avoid conversations with about certain topics because the relationship’s more important than being right in this debate.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. Back to your restaurant analogy, you can’t fire your cook every two weeks just because a customer tells you to.

Mike Jones:
No, that would be stupid.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Now, if it’s like every customer, okay. But you’re like, no we’re doing it right. Everybody’s acting according to the brand that we’ve set out to accomplish and build and this identity that we have that’s unique to us and you get a customer that’s like, I don’t get it, don’t like it, don’t want it. Great. There’s other businesses out there that can serve your need. We don’t have to serve everyone.

David Cosand:
I think the word that just pops into my head is just, there’s a confidence. There’s this… And it doesn’t have to be a cockiness or a… I don’t know, you’re not being flamboyant or what’s the right word…

Sam Pagel:
Overly proud.

David Cosand:
Yeah. You’re not being obnoxious. I think that was the word I was looking for.

Mike Jones:
It doesn’t have to be egotistical.

David Cosand:
But it’s this humble confidence. It’s like, we know who we are. We know who we’re for. We know who might have a problem with us and we’re okay with that.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Instead of, oh, should we say something? There’s kind of this panic button, ah, send out a statement or, oh, get the PR guy to, or whatever person.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
It can cause a lot of problems for you if you’re doing things in haste. I think that might be another… Idea is like…

Mike Jones:
Slow it down.

David Cosand:
Slow down a little bit. Like brands aren’t built in a day.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
Ben and Jerry’s years and years and years of… We know who Ben and Jerry’s is.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
Because they’ve responded consistently.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
Interesting. So, maybe an authentic brand can’t be canceled then?

Mike Jones:
I’d argue it. It’s pretty hard.

David Cosand:
It’s hard.

Mike Jones:
I think this is a case where I do think, to some degree, size matters. If you’re just getting started and you catch the wrong group the wrong way and they decide to cancel you… We’ve seen that over the last few years… Maybe, if you’re really small, you have a lot less leverage to outlast the storm, so to speak. Bigger brands, I think, have a better time with that. But if you’re not authentic and you’re a big brand and we’ve seen this, even the last couple months… You’re a big brand and you don’t really know exactly who you are and you’re not going to have that confidence, you kind of get batted around. Because for every storm, there’s a counter storm too on these political issues. So, you’re going to get caught. I think there’s a lot of times we’re waiting, being silent. Maybe, just don’t get into it. As much as you’re going to take some flack for that might be the better decision for a lot of

Sam Pagel:
If you’re authentic your fans and customers like you because you’re authentic, it’s who you are. It’s what sets you apart. So, at that point, if your brand is dragged through the political mud or whatever, even if you’re just kind of sitting back and doing your thing and something happens, like a war and your Russian vodka brand gets dragged through the mud, it’s not really your fault. That’s probably not a great example, but you can’t really be canceled with everybody. If you’re authentic, and that’s why people like you and they love you and they’re your fans. If you hold fast to what you believe and that authenticity, your fans and customers are going to stay with you through that. A lot of the times, they’re actually going to become better and bigger fans of you. Because they want to support you.

David Cosand:
That’s kind of goes along with chasing trends, right?

Sam Pagel:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
You see trends in branding and even your visual identity, you see people change. It’s almost like they’re changing clothes trying to put something on, that’s not really a good fit or…

Mike Jones:
In our book we define that as superficial branding, maybe taking elements of the things that you do, not going deep enough, really unpacking what those core values are, what your real true purpose is as an organization, not understanding the true personality, but instead just kind of saying, “Oh, well we’re the athletic shoe company because we make athletic shoes.” Okay. You do, is that all you do? Is that really why you exist? Is there more to it than that? Or heaven forbid, you just go rip off your competitor’s branding and you just say, do everything they’re doing except make it green, which was a comment I once got from a client.

David Cosand:
Yes.

Mike Jones:
What should our website look like? Oh, just go to our competitor’s website and make it, instead of their color, make it green. All right.

David Cosand:
Not a good strategy.

Mike Jones:
Probably not going to be a good strategy, and we should unpack that. What happens when you do that?

David Cosand:
You’re trying desperately to fit in instead of be yourself.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
And people, customers, employees, peers, competitors, they all feel that. You’re not being yourself. You’re not being authentic. And what does that do when you’re around someone that’s not being themselves, you almost feel tense and anxious for them on their behalf because you’re like, give it a rest man.

Mike Jones:
I mean, not only is it like kind of annoying or it’s shallow it awkward. It also just doesn’t give your customers anything to latch onto as to why you and not them.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
If you’re picking your brand color, let’s just use that example based purely on like, “Oh, we’re just going to do everything that our competitor does except just change the color.” So, people are picking you because you picked green? Really? I don’t think so, and I think it really… I don’t know if, consciously, people think about that, but I think customers feel that. Where they go, “You don’t have depth.”

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
You don’t actually stand for anything. You’re a copycat, really.

David Cosand:
Well, I guess I’m thinking about like… So, if it was… Early 20th century, some small town in Middle America, whatever, there’s probably just one of you or two of you in the town that do what you do. So, we’re the green ones and they’re the blue ones and maybe that’s okay to get you by back in the early 20th century.

Mike Jones:
Kind of worked, maybe?

David Cosand:
But now, anybody can buy from anybody anyway.

Mike Jones:
But that assumes like there’s only two of you in the market.

David Cosand:
Right. Exactly.

Mike Jones:
There’s no market like that anymore.

David Cosand:
Yeah. You can ship and you can buy and you can…

Mike Jones:
It reminds me of just going on Amazon now. You search for a product, any category and you’re going to find a bazillion brands that all look exactly the same and just have like slightly different names and they’re all like totally unpronounceable. And you look at it…
I remember talking with my wife a few weeks ago… I can’t remember what we’re shopping for, but something on Amazon. She’s just like, “I don’t trust any of these.”

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
There’s nothing that, out of them, comes like a sense of… You guys are trustworthy.

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Cause you’re literally the same. Whoever made this product, made it for all these brands and they all just slapped their own little logo on it.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
And there’s nothing intrinsically different about them. What actually comes out is not just like, oh, this is hard to decide. I guess I’ll just decide on price. It’s actually kind of, oh, I don’t really want to buy any of these…

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
Cause I don’t trust them. I don’t know who they are.

David Cosand:
That’s interesting. I was at the exact same situation. I needed a new backpack.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
My zipper was busted and I was tired of carrying this around. It’s ripping, and so, I’m like, backpacks, hmm, I haven’t bought a backpack in a while. You know, I’ve gotten some of those swag backpacks that are given to me for free, but I want a really good one. So, I went on Amazon, I searched for laptop backpack, whatever. Most of the top 10, 20… Going through a couple pages of results, I’m like, yeah. Exact same experience. I don’t trust any of these. Or it looks like something for some boomer backpack. Some brand that maybe is like, okay, well that doesn’t feel like is me. So, I’m like, well, what do I do?

Mike Jones:
A boomer pack is a Fanny pack.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Let’s just…

Mike Jones:
Right. Clear that up right now.

Sam Pagel:
Doesn’t Taylor Swift where a Fanny pack? Come on.

Mike Jones:
They’re back in.

Sam Pagel:
Aren’t they cool now?

Mike Jones:
Oh man.

Sam Pagel:
But yeah, I saw some servers over Christina…

Mike Jones:
Let’s say, I’ll skip a generation. I guess that one.

David Cosand:
I guess. But the point is I was, I didn’t know what to do about backpacks.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
So, I had to search off of Amazon first to find out which brands of backpacks seem legit, like they’re worth the money, like they fit my lifestyle, my vibe.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
You know, come on. That stuff’s important.

Mike Jones:
It’s really important.

David Cosand:
I’m not that picky about backpacks, but I want to at least look kind of good.

Mike Jones:
That you use every day.

David Cosand:
Yeah. So, I had to do the brand research first. It’s funny because I didn’t think about this until you just brought it up. But that happens on Amazon in particular all the time, because Amazon, essentially, became the new Walmart where it’s just the cheapest and the SEO juice at the top or whatever.

Mike Jones:
Well, all the trustworthy brands have left Amazon.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
They’re not on there anymore because they’ve chased them all out. So, everybody that’s left is these knockoff Chinese companies.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
So, if you’re on Amazon and you have some level of care about what you’re going to buy besides price, I think you end up, at some level, feeling dissatisfied and you either just buy it and you’re like, I guess I’ll just do it, and then you’re probably not super thrilled about it. Or you end up doing what you just did.
I just did the exact same thing last year with my backpack. I went on Amazon because I had bought my previous backpack on Amazon and it was okay. It was a good backpack, but I learned some things about what I wanted a little more specifically. I went on Amazon. I was like, they just there’s nothing here, no trustworthy brands. Nothing I really like, almost too much choice too. And then, I did some more research, just like you did, and I ended up with something I bought off. I didn’t buy it off Amazon. I bought it directly from the manufacturer.

David Cosand:
So, now, you’ve got copycats.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
You’ve got a sea of brands that all look the same and you’re like, I don’t trust any of these guys. I’m going to go. And I might go spend my money somewhere else completely. Not even on the site anymore.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
So, even if one of those knockoff Chinese brands invested a little bit…

Mike Jones:
I don’t think the bar is very high actually…

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
I think all it is, one, being willing to attach your brand to multiple products. I think that’s a big mistake I’m seeing a lot right now is everyone stands up these individual brands for each individual product. So, you don’t build any brand equity across your product lines, obviously this little more consumer product oriented. But I think even in B2B, I think that can happen, right? There’s this temptation like give everything its own identity and you kind of lose this ability to build trust with people over the long term.
There’s a reason why most really successful brands have a corporate brand that is actually really strong and it probably overshadows a lot of the product brand. It’s more memorable. It’s more interesting because they understand that every time they make a new product, they’re implying that corporate brand equity into that product on day one.
So, if you’re just spinning up products and you’re just throwing them out in the marketplace and they don’t really have any connection to one another, I think there’s a downside to that. You’re missing a lot of opportunity to really instill confidence in your customers and say, Hey, don’t just buy for me once. Buy for me twice, buy for me four times. We offer more than just one thing to people. And the reality is you probably do. You stand up all these individual product brands. You’re offering a whole bunch of different products, but you’re missing an opportunity to really build that trust at a much larger, deeper, longer term level.

David Cosand:
I guess what strikes me is that, that might be what’s easy…

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
But it might not be, what’s going to pay off in the long run.

Sam Pagel:
There’s an emptiness there. There’s just a brand that exists only to sell a product is going to, at some point, it’s just going to fall apart. There’s no underlying values holding all of that together. You could say the same thing in the B2B industry where you stand up a law firm or an accounting firm or a manufacturing company just because you want to quickly and easily make money doing that.

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
And eventually, it’s going to fall apart because if you’re just there to make money, you’re not going to care when things go south for a customer. You’re not going to be there when something fails and it was your fault.

Mike Jones:
Hmm.

David Cosand:
Are there particular industries where you feel like this is a plague where you’ve got too many copycats? The one that comes to my mind’s like credit unions, like local, national… These credit unions all kind of look and sound and feel the same to me.

Mike Jones:
I can probably name a few different industries. I think credit union’s a good one. Banks also to some degree, although credit unions have their own unique reason for it cause I think they’re small. I think that’s part of the issue. We see it a lot. I hate to throw them under the bus, but the accounting industry, it’s like all over the place. They all look the same. They all sound the same. They all say the same things.

Sam Pagel:
They all have the same names.

Mike Jones:
They all have the same names, taglines. It’s really interesting. And what I, in the law firms, I think you can say a lot of the same thing there. What I find is that there’s a common denominator and that they’re very risk averse industries. They’re industries where creativity, innovation change are not highly valued because of what they sell. What they’re selling is safety at some level.
So, risk aversion. If you’re a credit union, at the core, you’re selling savings, right? Keep your money with us and it’ll be safe. If you’re an accounting firm, you’re selling a risk mitigation against the government. That the IRS is going to want to come take your money, and you want to protect yourself from not paying too much or getting in legal trouble for not paying enough.
Law firms, that’s all risk mitigation. That’s all you sell as a law firm. Get you out of trouble when you’re in trouble or keep you out from getting in trouble in the first place.
So, these industries are built on services and products that are all about mitigating risk. And so, when you talk about, what’s like the easiest, least risky thing that you can do with your brand… Well, superficially, you’re going to think, oh, just do what everyone else is doing, right? Don’t rock the boat. Don’t stand out too much. Don’t be too crazy. We want people to trust us, and I think there’s this idea that like, if we look and feel like everyone else, but maybe change the color, then that’s just enough to stand out. But also have a sense of like, oh, they’re trustworthy. They look like all the other accounting firms, which I think is counterintuitively actually not what it produces.
I don’t think it actually produces trust. What I think it does is it produces kind of a, I guess I’ll settle. What I think people settle for is cost, ease of location, proximity, things that are just very tactical and don’t develop long lasting relationships.
These are things that can change very easily. Your costs, you don’t really totally control your cost totally. So, if the market changes, then you are hiking your rates and all of a sudden you’re out of all your customers or your customer moves while your location now is a detriment to you. These are tactical things that you don’t really control, and they’re not really, at heart, the basis of your brand, right? They’re not the true underlying, underpinning of your identity. So, I think it allows customers to have a superficial relationship,. If you have a superficial brand, you’re going to build a superficial relationship and it’s going to quickly lose its footing, whenever something weird or something goes wrong.

David Cosand:
How do you respond to those companies when they’re like, oh, we just want to be exactly like that website, but we want it green.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
What’s the… Or… Mike, that’s nice and all, maybe for like, Harley Davidson or Disney, but come on, man. I’m a local credit union.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
Be real.

Mike Jones:
I mean, I think there’s a hard conversation there about, well, what are your goals? We’ve had that conversation with a few different clients over the years of like, “Oh, you just want to stay the same size or maybe shrink? Then continue to do what you’re doing. You don’t want to grow. We see an opportunity for you to really have growth. We think that would be great for you if you’re on board. If you have that same vision, obviously, we want, we want them to have that vision. We want to follow their vision. But if they don’t have that vision, then… Status quo, continue to do what you’re doing. Not that you can’t have some success. Clearly, these accounting firms, a lot of them around 40, 50, 60 years. But what’s interesting is the way they grow is not organic.
The way they grow is even superficial. They go and acquire other firms. So, the way that to grow in that kind of brand is to just simply kind of buy your way into growth, which is very expensive. You get these firms where there’s 40, 50, a hundred partners who have equity in the firm.

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
It’s like, man, is this really paying off for anybody? Even at a financial level, let alone all of your other staff. You’re not actually driving demand. That there’s no demand if you’re constantly having to buy someone in order to get growth.

David Cosand:
So, don’t be a copycat.

Mike Jones:
Don’t be a copycat. Be your own cat, original cat.

David Cosand:
An authentic cat.

Mike Jones:
Off cat.

David Cosand:
Authentic cat.

Sam Pagel:
Unless you’re a dog.

Mike Jones:
Whoa.

Sam Pagel:
Oh, then you shouldn’t try to be a cat.

Mike Jones:
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Sam Pagel:
Nice.

Mike Jones:
Oh.

David Cosand:
That was rough.

Mike Jones:
Oh. So, how can we avoid being a copycat?

David Cosand:
Be intentional.

Mike Jones:
Intentional. I like that. It’s good.

Sam Pagel:
There’s a discovery process. When I started my business back in 2011, I knew roughly what my service was. It was video production.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
Outside of that, I didn’t know anything else. People would ask me all the time, “What do you do?” And I would have a different answer every time. It wasn’t until 2017 ish. I went through the brand process with Resound and it was crazy. It was actually really fun because I discovered, actually, why I was doing what I was doing. It gave me permission, I think you said this David maybe last episode, to say no to the wrong people. And business became way more fun because I was focused for the first time. So, there’s a discovery process. We tell people all the time, we’re not here to create your brand for you. It’s already there. A lot of times, it’s just dormant. It hasn’t been discovered. It hasn’t been uncovered or unlocked. So, there’s just a discovery process there. It’s almost like who you are, you have to discover that and then own it.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. I think owning it is a key piece to that. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve done the discovery process. We’re all feeling really good about it. The client loves it. You get it built out into a brand handbook and you have all these cool guidelines and it’s starting to be communicated and filtered through the company, but then you come back two years later and you’re like, it didn’t really get owned.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
It kind of sort of got implemented, but only halfway. There wasn’t really this true, like we own this hook line sinker in everything we do, we hammer it over and over and over the values are in just embedded in every decision that we make. I know that takes time. That’s not something that happens overnight. It’s not something you go, oh, on one day, you flip the switch, and all of a sudden, you’re really living out the brand.
But at the same time, if you don’t own it, all that other work really doesn’t have the impact that it could have. I think that’s, maybe not a copycat brand issue, but that’s maybe a half-hearted brand issue. Really just saying we’re going to lean all in and we’re really going to own it.

Sam Pagel:
Yep.

Mike Jones:
Hmm.

David Cosand:
What is the connection between OKRs? So, the day to day, quarter to quarter, year to year kind of operating pulse of a company and your authentic identity. That might be a whole another episode, but I’m curious because that’s really where wwning it comes into play.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
Decisions that I make.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
It’s not just the, what decisions I make, but the how I make them.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
How I do it, how I execute. That’s tough because you got to keep your why in focus all year long.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
But then you need to keep those values and the, how you go about doing things, in focus and the way it comes across. You have to be mindful of all that. You can’t just be focused on, let’s get this quarter’s revenue numbers where they need to be. Everybody needs that, right?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Everyone needs to hit their numbers. We get it, and this is a tough…

Mike Jones:
But how are you going to do it?

David Cosand:
The economy’s rough right now. Everybody’s in the same boat.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
I think the stock market went down like what? 5%? I don’t know something ridiculous.

Mike Jones:
Oh, it’s just crater the last few days. I think that’s something we should definitely dig into more. But if we want to do like a quick prelude answer…

David Cosand:
Yeah. How do you think companies should consider their why, their brand identity as they think about strategic planning operations?

Mike Jones:
I think, one element of that is just simply putting your brand identity in front of yourselves a lot.

David Cosand:
Okay.

Mike Jones:
I think, it seems…

David Cosand:
Like a motivational poster, Mike?

Mike Jones:
What if that’s what it takes.

David Cosand:
Okay.

Mike Jones:
You know, like…

David Cosand:
I mean, you’ve got one right next to you.

Mike Jones:
We do it, right. We put our messaging, we put our values on the walls. We remind ourselves every all hands we do each month, we repeat our purpose. We say it out loud. We look at our values and we evaluate how we’re doing on them. I think those kinds of activities, as simple as they seem, they just continue to reinforce and communicate to everyone on the team that these are really important. These are how we do business and we’re going to hold ourselves accountable to them, which I think is the next level.
The poster doesn’t hold you accountable. It does a good job reminding you when you look at it. So, maybe, find some other ways…

David Cosand:
Awareness.

Mike Jones:
More than just the poster. Maybe, there’s some other ways to communicate, have the awareness of your purpose and values, but then, okay. Let’s also hold ourselves accountable to them. So, let’s assess ourselves, maybe do an annual assessment or a quarterly assessment, have your teams talk about like what happened in the last month, through the last three months that showed that we lived out our values or showed that we didn’t live out our values. Where did we miss the boat? Where did we really kill it? We did a fantastic job and have each other recognize each other for that.

David Cosand:
Yeah. Let each other know like you did.

Mike Jones:
Yep. I think another thing that can be really helpful is saying, let’s move from these lofty, somewhat ideological beliefs.
That’s really what those core values are. They’re beliefs about how the world works and how we’re going to do business and start to make more applicable practical. What does that look like on a daily basis? So, we’ve done this and I know some of our clients have done it where they’ll take that value and having already defined it and put some definition around it over time. And this is not a one time thing. I think you need to keep doing it over and over.
Start to go, what are things that we do on a daily or weekly basis that show that we’re living out that value, right? What are the repetitive behaviors in our organization? Whether that’s… I’m trying to think of a good example here. We had local culture as one of our core values. We still do.
And at one point, we had said very explicitly, we’re going to try to shop local whenever we have a chance. Doesn’t mean that we have to only shop local, but we’re going to make that our first choice whenever possible. And we still implement that. So, we give gifts to clients. We give gifts to staff and we go and find local products from the Phoenix area and showcase kind of what Arizona has to offer. We have clients all over the US and they actually love it. We send these gifts and they’re like, wow, this is really specific. This is really interesting. I never would’ve… These are not products they would’ve ever found.

Sam Pagel:
There’s intentionality behind it. Yeah. Again,

Mike Jones:
So, it’s like, take that value local culture. Well, what does that look really look like? What are some examples or things we could do this year to really say, we nailed that one and then start building a list of those things and come back to it and keep auditing it.
I don’t think it’s… As we’ve grown, local culture has had to kind of morph little bit in terms of how we apply it when… We’re a distributed team. We have people not in Arizona now, and we have to work hard to kind of figure out, okay, how can you apply that wherever you are? So, it’s not just Arizona culture. That’s not what we meant by that. We had to make sure that was very explicit. We’re not just in Arizona company. We’re founded here. We’re based here. We have a lot of roots here and we still love Arizona, but local culture is about each person’s local culture. Where they find themselves. Let’s talk about what that might look like with the team right now. The people that we have and the places where they’re at.

David Cosand:
It seems like implementing these into the rhythms of your company throughout the year keeps you. There’s might be two things there. See if I can get them out of my head. When you change and you morph over time, it’s because of small departures away from your true path where you start to forget your identity, you start to go just ever so gradually, slightly down this path or down that path. When you implement this into your core rhythms… Oh yeah. It reminds you, oh man.

Mike Jones:
Back on the path.

David Cosand:
Can we get back on the path?

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Back on the path.

David Cosand:
And the second thing is, it might keep you from chasing those trends that you start to see as you go off that path, which would include being a copycat or which would include sticking your nose somewhere where you probably shouldn’t go.

Mike Jones:
We’re just being enticed by the loudest voice,

David Cosand:
The shiny object, the new novelty.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Everybody wants newness. I hear that word in business. It makes me cringe. Newness.

Mike Jones:
It’s so funny cause you think about the brands that we probably most recognize in our lives. You think about like Coca-Cola. What is Coca-Cola not known for? New stuff.

Sam Pagel:
Changing the recipe.

David Cosand:
New Coke.

Mike Jones:
Even when they do it, epicly fails.

David Cosand:
Now, they just don’t tell you when they do it.

Mike Jones:
Look at their logo. They haven’t changed it…

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
In a hundred years. It’s still the same Coca-Cola red.

David Cosand:
Shape of the bottle.

Mike Jones:
Shape of the bottle.

David Cosand:
Same thing.

Mike Jones:
But it’s funny. I never actually think about the bottles. I always think about the can. That’s what I recognize.

David Cosand:
Well, the shape of the bottle, that’s a branding story, because everybody was copying Coke.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
So, they created a bottle shape that was hard to replicate easily. So, you can’t copy the Coke. That’s why it’s the real thing. That’s where that whole thing came from. Yep, and that brand is how old? 140?

Mike Jones:
Very old.

David Cosand:
Longer…

Mike Jones:
Well, over a hundred years.

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
I mean, you think about other kind of standbys, right? Whether you love them or hate them McDonald’s man. Everyone knows the McDonald’s and they update things every once in a while. But it’s not a grand departure from where they’ve been. That’s still the same Big Mac.

Sam Pagel:
What if you’re in an industry where you and a thousand other competitors genuinely kind of have the same beliefs and values, how do you stand up?
The remarkabrand podcast is a project of Resound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with host Mike Jones and David Cosand. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and atremarkablecast.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.