061 - Marketing vs. Branding — with Fabian Geyrhalter

Let's just say you have a product and you have $100,000. Do you spend that on branding? Who do you spend that on marketing? Hey everyone, welcome to the future podcast. I'm your host, Christo. What is more important? Branding or marketing? What's the difference between the two? Which efforts should come first? In this episode, I sit down with Melinda Livese, a brand strategist, and the founder of Marx and Maker. We're also joined by Fabian Gerholtter, who is also a brand strategist, and is the founder of Phineon. In this episode of the future, we discuss a video posted by Marketing Consultant, Donald Miller, where he speaks about his controversial opinion of how you need to be making $50 million before you think about branding your company. Melinda, Fabian, and I sit down and have a thoughtful discussion about how we view branding and marketing and which is more important. So sit back and listen to find out where we stand on the issue, and how we view the relationship between branding and marketing. So guys, when Melinda calls, I answer, and here we are, Melinda's like, I think it's time for another meeting. But the switch up today is that she's brought in another person that you are familiar with too, if you're familiar with the channel, none other than Fabian Gerholtter, he's here. And I think we're going to be talking about something that started to get under the skin of a lot of creative people. Donald Miller put out this video about the importance of marketing over branding, and he gave branding a short shrift for sure in this video. Branding, though, is a luxury. I think you need to be making about $500 million before you even start thinking a whole lot about branding. Get your colors right, your logo, and that sort of stuff. But branding, people have to be familiar with your brand in order to be trained to feel a certain way about your brand. Until then, you need to do marketing because marketing is really where you make your money. Marketing is when you tell somebody to buy your product and you explain why they should buy your product. Mostly because I think he's a marketing guy. Of course, he's going to talk about marketing. So I think that sets the stage for the conversation, let's see where this goes. So Melinda, what are we talking about today? We're talking about the difference between branding and marketing. Okay, so you have a perspective on this? Not yet. No, that's what I wanted to bring. This guy has a look at you. He's like, he's one little canary. It's like the cat, yeah, cheshire cat here. Okay. I'm sure I have an opinion on it that I'm unable to yet articulate. Yeah. But I would like to hear from both of you and your perspectives. Because as a brand identity designer, turn brand strategist, there's a lot of overlap in marketing and from hearing that Donald Miller video about like, we shouldn't even worry about it until the company was at what are these say 50? 50 million. He changed his mind throughout the video about 50 million. Yeah. 50 million? Yeah, you shouldn't even worry about branding unless you're a 50 million dollar company. Oh, okay. He started out with 500. I know it changed. Yeah. 500 million. And then it went down. Then he corrected himself to 50. Okay. And Fabian, you work with a lot of startups too. Yes, I work with you. Not at that point. With companies of all sizes and Melinda sent me the video and my head exploded. And I'm like, wait a minute, Donald Miller is a good guy. He's talking about story branding. Like, that's his brand, right? Yeah, that's a name, literally the name of his book story brand. Right. And I read it. And, you know, I liked it quite a bit. And then I see this video and I see the statement. And I was like, yeah, Melinda, I'm ready to talk about that. Okay. And I asked you because I watched it. And I think there was a lot of fire and fury before I watched a video. So I'm like, chill. Just watch it objectively. Try to remain neutral and watch this thing and see what's getting people all prickly about it. So you said your head exploded. So one of the things that he said that really made you think, I don't agree with this point of view. So I think that we did he position it. It was one of those quick videos. I think he, the way he framed it was a little bit misleading. And that's what gets everyone fired up, including myself. But rightfully so, right? Because you shouldn't frame something in that way. In my eyes, right? The way that he talked about it needs to be a 50 million company, a dollar company. Before you even start branding, it makes absolutely no sense. So to me, this is very much the card before the horse, right? Because you, this is a very like antiquated analogy here. But you cannot, you cannot talk about something. You cannot market if you haven't branded it yet. Like if you don't know what you're talking about, right? And in the video, he also talked about Simon Sinek's famous why. And he says, there's no need to ask why. You just need to send emails. At that point, you just email email email and don't ask the question why behind the company. And to me, that is completely against my fundamental ideas, right? Like you first have to create a platform. You have to create a brand platform to really derive why the company exists. You know, you have to create obviously the company name. I mean, it's basic branding pieces that need to be in place. The reason why he said it is because he talked about this 50 million dollar company that said we need to do branding. And he's like, no, you don't. So what doesn't work in this video is that, of course, the company already had to spend a lot of money on branding. Otherwise, it would have never gotten to 50 million dollars. Okay. Anything else? Not for now. Okay. Being so accommodating. Okay. I think let's first understand the structure of these kinds of videos because I make these kinds of videos too. They're designed to push buttons and to incite your emotions because nobody cares. If he's like, I love branding, I love marketing, the talk about marketing today. Nobody from the design side, nobody on the brand space would even care. Nobody would share this video and look, what do you think? So he's doing, I think, what many people that are really smart about positioning says, I'm for this. And right now, I'm not for that. So it gets all the people that are, yes, we're marketers. And I also want us to kind of be aware of our own bias or biases, right? Our biases, however you say that word, which is your branding guy. So of course, you think branding is really important. I think I didn't fully realize this before, but he's really a marketing guy. He's teaching people how to market their products and services. So he's a marketing guy. And I think this is our own kind of we want to shape reality the way we see it. So I'm just trying to look at it like as, as, as robotically as I can, what is being said and what is more important or whatever. So let's get into that, okay? Let's just say you have a product and you have a hundred thousand dollars. Or do you spend that on marketing? I think you have to divide it in a very smart way, okay? I mean, you should, in his 3070 rule is not a bad rule, right? I mean, out of that budget, you should most probably take 30% or so on branding because you have to establish everything, right? You have to create the word before you spread the gospel, right? And so marketing is advertising. It's basically putting the word out there. You need to do a ton lot of that, right? But you first need to define what the end of business for. So I think it does make sense that you split less for branding and more for marketing because if people don't hear about it, they're not going to buy your stuff. And if they don't buy your stuff, you're out of business, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. I think I can also imagine why he put out this video. Because he consults for firms, probably 50 million and up. And they're like, we're going to spend all the money on branding. He's like, well, you have no business. So after hearing that for a while, a piece like this comes up. That's why I like some people like Chris, you're really salty. It's like, well, I've heard this question and people beating their head against the wall so many times that eventually I come to the conclusion that this is what you guys need to hear. And let's cut out the BS. Let's get started because you're here because you don't have enough runway. There's not enough revenue to talk about. You're going to be out of business in six months. We've got to fix that and stop spending money on branding. Okay. So let's take a step back for people who are like branding marketing. These are like terms I use all the time interchangeably. Let's start with the definition of branding. Okay. The way that you see it, what is branding? You know, I have different ways, but I'll just, you know, off the cuff now, you know, what is branding? I mean, branding really is that it establishes the why behind the brand that establishes a look and feel. It establishes a positioning and a differentiator in the marketplace. And all of that combined is the beginning of branding. And so I think it gets complicated, right? Because in one of your posts recently, Chris, you talked about branding being something that gets people to come back. Marketing is something to get people to go there in the first place. That too, I think, is a fine line, right? Because without the brand being created, you know, you can't even market. So it's like branding, marketing, branding, marketing, it kind of goes in, it goes in this flow. Yeah. So branding on the one hand is establishing that emotional connection. And then on the other hand, is to keep it up, right? And go back to our values and make sure that we keep evolving our brand. But marketing is obviously key to getting the message out. Right. So when I hear this, it's like, okay, I'm a graphic designer. I've been calling my logo branding. What you're saying sounds a little bit different than what I've been doing. And so I think it's healthy for us to have this conversation and do like a public service announcement. That if you make a logo, if you make a mark, you're an identity designer. Your logo maker, a lot of form person. You're not a branding person yet. It's one facet, but it's just one very small facet, actually, right? So when you say it's the why behind the company, establishing the look and feel, differentiating through positioning, what does that look like? What are the things that you make when you help somebody brand their company, their product or service? So in the beginning, it's a brand platform as the industry calls it, right? So it's really identifying how it's kind of like a business plan, but a brand plan, right? What do we stand for? Why do we exist? How do we differentiate? How do we need to position our company to stand out? What is that big why? I call it the because statement, right? You know, this is why we exist. You know, what connects with customers and understanding the customers before you even launch, understanding who will these people be? What channels are they on? Right? How can we connect with them? Read the comments in social media and start becoming part of the psyche. All of that, even though it could be seen as marketing, that should be established as part of branding, before you even create a name for the company, before you even create the logo and the visual aspects. And then all of that needs to be derived in some sort of verbal aura too, right? Like a toolbox of what are the right words that we use? How do we want to speak? How do we want to be seen as a company? Are we, you know, are we different? You know, are we the leader? Right? How do we want to come across? All of that needs to be established. And like you said, the logo is one little component of it, but people think it's a huge component because that's what they see, but the rest they feel. And I think that is so crucial. And that's why Donald Miller's video, the way that he positioned it, was just like, because it was just positioned not in the correct way. Is branding a centric or client centric in your opinion? How do you mean it by a centric? Well, you say, well, why do we exist? What, what is it we're doing? What's the look and feel? Do we design that based on our values and beliefs and our purpose and mission? Or do we look at what customers want and design our identity around serving a community? Does it trap or shouldn't wait? No, absolutely, both in a way. In the end, it comes to shared values, right? But the values need to come from within, right? So I interview a ton of entrepreneurs every two weeks from my podcast. And every time it's the same story of, this is why I started this company. I have a strong belief. I'm really driven to this. This goes totally against the grain. But I need to do this. And I need to do this this way. And you know what? There are people out there who think like me. And those are the ones that I want to come aboard. So the entrepreneur knows it's not self centric because in the end, it's still all about the customer when they create a product or service. But there needs to be the strong stigma attached kind of like this. It's the soul attached to it. And there's nothing more natural than when the soul comes from, from the entrepreneur, right? Because then they can actually really lead the company and talk to talk. Right. So what you're talking about is if we are to draw two circles, there's an overlap between our beliefs and values and our customers beliefs and values. And where that alignment that crossover starts to become part of our differentiator, what we stand for, who we champion. And so we have to study the customers a bit too, right? Perfect. Okay. Now, the reason why I think a lot of people are upset over this video, I think it's a little misguided. And I'm going to share some of my opinion because marketing and branding, depending on your definition, are almost the same thing. There's a lot of overlap. Seriously, like we're like blood cousins. We might even be twins. And one just focuses on something else. And where this really gets, I think a little tricky for us is the traditional definition of marketing. We're not the same creature. But as marketing is evolving and our understanding of marketing as is branding, we're starting to see a lot of overlap between those two worlds. And that's why I'm like, if you just take the word branding and switch it out for the one he says marketing, you'll be okay again. Right. Right. It's because we need to do something that moves the needle for our clients. If our clients are not in business, if they're not getting the word out, if they're a nonprofit NGO, if we can't get awareness about what it is we're doing, then we don't exist. We're just talking to ourselves. And that's, I think, called insanity. So we need to understand who the customers are. So where I don't like get all crazy about this is I have a newer appreciation for the word marketing, depending on who talking about it. So when we talk to Seth God, and when we read his book about this as marketing, it's like, yeah, the old idea of marketing which is advertising is just repetition of message over all media and controlling the dialogue. Well, today, you know, you can't do that anymore. Push, push, push versus pull. Right. So now he's like, marketing is the generous act of helping other people achieve their goals. Now you might say, wait, wait, wait, wait, just let's use the word branding in there. Branding is the generous act of helping, or let's use the word sales. Sales is the generous act. So it's all kind of like we're starting to come up with a much more healthy definition. Of the role and purpose of companies as they relate to their customers. And you know, the best brand strategists or even visual brand people, right. The best ones are the ones that keep up with marketing and they understand marketing. And they're actually interested in marketing. They're interesting in selling, right. Because those sparks fly in the intersection of marketing and branding. Of course. Now you're successful. And you wouldn't be if all you cared about was like, me, me, let's do the look of feel and you don't actually help your customers get awareness, get customers, get traction, improve in the marketplace. They're going to be out of business, right. So you have to solve a real business problem and one of the biggest functions in business is sales. And in doing a little research for that Instagram post, I came upon this thing about marketing. And I can't remember, but it was the CEO of a very large multi-billion dollar company. He said, marketing is the most important thing that a company does. That's why we don't trust the marketing people to do it. And there are different definitions about what marketing is and marketing can include and should probably include product design, user experience, journey mapping, everything. So from top to bottom, because now we know if one part of your story is out of alignment, then it's all out of alignment and it's not true. This is why traditional marketing doesn't work anymore today because you cannot say something that is backed up by actual experience. You and I are more likely to go on Amazon, read the 300 reviews and see what people say. Then to see any piece of advertising and print in social or any other place because we just don't trust people anymore. But we trust people who we have some kind of connection to. That's why influencer marketing is quite popular and integrated branding is really popular. It's because now we trust these people and we rely on them to vet what is good and not good for us. And it's interesting to think about how these reviews actually ended up there. So I'm an author, so I wrote two books, I know you're writing too. You're in the middle of it. Almost done. What's the status? Done. There we go, pre-order link. Somewhere in the notes. It is not easy to get reviews. It is really, really difficult even if people rave about your book. It's really hard to get them to do it. So that process of actually getting people to review your book so that then others can read the reviews and feel like, "Oh, there's not even branding and marketing involved. There's still behind the scenes." So I think that's an interesting angle to look at. Something else that I was thinking about while you were talking. Think about universities. Universities branding, if it ever is being taught in universities and some I know it is, it falls on the marketing. I am 100% certain of that. So this is kind of like this curveball of how does marketing and branding really relate. I'm sure that there's a hierarchy that branding actually is part of marketing. It wasn't in my education. They were two completely separate things and they both looked at each other as, "Oh, that's horrible. You don't want to be in the marketing department." Marketing would look at us as. Oh, I still look the same. This is still kind of like the stigma, right? But I'm wondering, you went to art school. You went to design school. Right. So I think it's different than if you go to a regular university. I mean it is. But Chris, drop it because I'm interested to hear about that. That was just a thought that it kind of like bubbles up to marketing. What do you want me to drop? You're looking for a fight. This is maybe I'm looking for a fight, so let's give it to. I came in with this weird attitude this morning. You have to be prepared. Okay, so what do you want me to drop it? Which I drop? No, I'm interested in how you see. Do you see, because we're talking about branding versus marketing, right? And on my drive here, I thought about, wait a minute. If branding is taught in a regular university, it might be taught under the marketing umbrella. Do you see it that way too? Because obviously we feel that the two of them are very related, but yet they can be put into their own little, you know, area. Okay, I see. You're setting me up to say something that's going to be controversial, so I will deliver. I honestly think from the few exposures that I've had to how branding or marketing is taught, it's vastly outdated. It's very textbook, it's very analytical, and not much creativity is introduced in there. And I think it becomes dangerous when we start to apply labels and get into tribalism, where it's like the marketing people look down on the branding people, and the branding people, and the branding people look down on the marketing people. If all of us had said, what is the end goal of what we're trying to do, which is to improve our client's business to make an impact on their bottom line? Period. All the other stuff to me is tactics, like how do we get there, and what you call it, I don't really care. It starts to me, it starts with understanding who the customers are, and seeing how that would align with what we want to do in the world, so that we can find that overlap. So maybe there's a major called overlap, and we sit down and we study what users want and who we are. And then we teach people the different facets, but they don't have to go eight semesters into making one mark. Well, you're not talking about now, which was really the question you're talking about the future. Maybe. I should have Fabian on every show, because we just help promote every course, book, and initially we have. Maybe you just like to sound the fact that I bring my own. Yeah, I think that's the problem. Sarah, who's off camera right now, who's controlling audio, she just gave me basically part one of two parts of what she's learned in school and marketing. I had lots of questions for about one of the things that we kind of concluded was they teach you kind of the theory of it, the idea, but not so much like, now what? Now what do you do with this information? Is that fair? Okay, so that's kind of like where we're stuck. And you and I know there are classes at design schools that call it branding, but it's not branding at all. It's really identity design systems. Yeah. That's really all it is, because if you're not thinking about the name, if you don't understand positioning and marketing and messaging, copywriting and shaping the voice, not just the look, you're really not getting into that. So it turns out this is actually very difficult stuff. You have to be masters of multiple disciplines, and this is a tall order. I think in his book, the brand flip, Marty was talking about the skills required to be a really great brand strategist. And he says, what, 5% of people can really do this? So it's a very small group of people. You have to think visually, you have to be able to communicate and articulate with words. You have to think high level, the 30,000 foot view. So now we've pretty much chopped the whole field down, right? And you have to co-create, right? And I think that was important when you talked about things collaboration. When you talked about branding and marketing, they cannot be separated. But guess what happens with client work? Marketing and sales is separated. So it keeps all of these silos. And that's why all these companies have these issues. So when we create a brand with an entrepreneur and his team, most of them are marketers. Some of them just found a co-founder. When these people go back to the rest of the company, they were not included, right? And they're sales. It's like, oh, you just push. You just push. But that's not how it works, right? Hey, future fan, Ben here. We at the Future want you to work smarter, not harder to have a successful business. 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Looking for a balanced transfer credit card with 0% APR, they've got a winner for that, or a bank account with a top rate to hit your savings goals, they've got a winner for that too. I have a question about all this, so if labels aren't that important, but potential clients and entrepreneurs are listening to people like Donald Miller, so in their head they're thinking marketing, marketing, marketing, that's what I need. But then all of us who work on branding are calling ourselves brand strategists, or we do branding, and there's a disconnect then between entrepreneurs looking for an answer in marketing, but then we're all calling it branding. Would it be who some of us to actually say we're a marketing firm? To then connect with and attract those clients that are potentially looking at and listening to people like Donald Miller. I mean, you can call yourself whatever you want, but the proof is in the pudding. What is it that you really do? What are the functions of the company? And what are your goals? So this is a question that comes up quite a bit. There is this invisible pressure that people feel in the creative space to do more and offer more, and yet we know we know less about the stuff that we're doing. So calling yourself a brand strategist, a branding person, a marketer of integrated marketing, branding company, you can call yourself whatever you want, but here's the problem. I like to look at it the function, and then you can design whatever label you want around it, right? So if Donald Miller is out there and he's saying these things, he's just one voice, and I think we're over amplifying the weight and influence that this one person has. Because for every one Donald Miller talk about marketing, there's probably 35 branding people talking about branding. When you go to design conference, very few of them are titled like what to do with marketing. It's almost like identity design and branding. I know this because I go to conferences all the time. So again, I just think we're conflating like his presence and his influence and that he has a magical ability to reach out to all these companies that are hiring people and then to diminish what it is that you do. At the end of the day, if your focus is not to make a big impact on your client's business, you will be eventually out of business. That's it. So it's about priorities for you. And I think, I mean, if you call yourself a marketing firm, this implies to the actual client that you will do social media, whatever ends with marketing, right? Social media marketing, advertising, content marketing, content marketing, all these things that you actually might not do, right? So I think it would go the wrong way. There are still, there are all of these stickers on the things that we do, right? And the problem is like, we can unpeel them. We know what's behind, but clients don't, right? So it's really difficult to discuss what you do and who you are with one label. I think that's, and that's what Chris was heading to, you have to start coming up with creative ways of describing your practice of how you help clients. So for us, it's clarity and focus, right? Because that's really why people come to me. I realize they don't come for the logo. That might be an end result, right? But they come for clarity and focus. So I speak that way now because that resonates with them. When you're speaking more towards their problem too, so you're selling the problem. You're not selling a service. Yeah, I learned it from Donald Mill. Yes, no. Yeah, I think in his book, the one page marketing plan written by Alan Dibb, he describes this actually really kind of interesting scenario. He says, so like the circus is coming to town and this is your business and you have an elephant and you paint a sign on elephant. He's, oh, that's called promotion. Okay. And then you bring the elephant and march him into town and it happens to trample flowers. That's called publicity. And then the mayor is upset that you've trampled his flowers, but you talk it over and he's okay with it. That's called public relations. And if you hand out a bunch of fires saying the circus is coming to town, that's called advertising. And if you have people come up to the booth near the tent and ask questions about the circus, I think he calls that sales. And he's like, if you design the whole thing that's called marketing. So it's kind of interesting in his old definition. And so I probably messed up some parts of that story, but I remember it was like, it was a good way to look at this, right. And so we're all like very inclined to like define silos like this is my job is what I do. I only do sales. And that's probably a short-sighted thing because this integration, collaboration, co-creation is actually very important because we're starting to realize people buy and behave in very different ways than they used to. And so we need to build more versatile units of people collaborating and being cross-discipline with somebody who's looking at the bigger picture. Now, let's pretend I told that story correctly and I put the labels on it correctly. What do you guys think about that story and would you change any of the definitions? I would ask then how could branding be incorporated in that? I don't know, this is a book on marketing. It wasn't called the one. But I'm asking the question if you were to add to it. Like, what do you think? Where's branding in that? I asked you first. No, you didn't. You asked me second. I asked you guys, what do you think of that story? Working out stop squeezing. But that's my initial thought is this whole conversation is about branding and marketing. But you're part of the conversation, right. So I'm asking you, what do you think about that little story? Okay, here's how we should compartmentalize it to make it a little easier. Did any of the scenarios in the descriptions feel like they're out of alignment? Just replay it, you know, paint it, trample through the flowers, publicity, it's featured in the newspaper, right? It's publicity. Then the mayor's not upset. It's called public relations. And then you go to the tent and that's called sales. But the design of the whole thing is called marketing. It's the high level strategic planning of these things. The execution is tactics. Any of the scenarios sound like they're off to you? Painting our flyers. Does it sound like advertising? It does, right? It's like a repetition of a message. It's a one way, one to many form of communication. And I like your off. I like your question, right? Like how weird is branding fit into this, right? It's like, "Masha, masham, masham." It's like, "What about me?" Where am I in a story? Can we get back to what's important? Didn't she ask the question? Yeah. No. You're right. I was making fun of the question. That's all. Okay, there you go. Thanks. Because it is, it is, you know, now we compartmentalize again, right? The different aspects of it. But where does branding fit into it? I think it's a super interesting question. And I wonder myself, right? Because we as branders would look at it and like, well, the entire thing is branding, right? We've created that, right? Yeah. So are we the ones, and I believe that's how it would be, who are behind the scenes that tell the elephant to start going, push, right? And say, "Okay, now the elephant is ready. Now the elephant represents what we wanted the elephant to represent. Now the elephant looks the way that it should look, and you know, you know. And pick the right elephant, too. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the future podcast. In this episode, I sit down with Melinda Livsie, a brand strategist, and the founder of Marx & Maker. We're also joined by Fabian Gerhalter, who is also a brand strategist, and is the founder of Phineon. In this episode of the future, we discuss a video posted by marketing consultant Donald Miller, or he speaks about his controversial opinion of how you need to be making $50 million before you think about branding your company. Melinda, Fabian, and I sit down and have a thoughtful discussion about how we view branding and marketing, and which is more important. So guys, when Melinda calls, I answer, and here we are. Melinda's like, "I think it's time for another meeting." But the switch up today is that she's brought in another person that you are familiar with too, if you're familiar with the channel. None other than Fabian Gerhalter, he's here, and I think we're going to be talking about something that started to get into the skin of a lot of creative people. Get your colors right in your logo and that sort of stuff. Of course he's going to talk about marketing. So I think that sets the stage for the conversation. Let's see where this goes. Not yet. This guy has like a small little canary. It's like the cat that yeah, cheshire cat here. Okay, I'm sure I have an opinion on it that I'm unable to yet articulate. But I would like to hear from both of you and your perspectives because as a brand identity designer turned brand strategist, there's a lot of overlap in marketing and from hearing that Donald Miller video about we shouldn't even worry about it until the company was at one of these say 50, 500 million. He changed his mind throughout the video, about 50 million. Yeah, 50 million. Oh, okay. I know it changed. 500 million. And then it went down and then he corrected himself to 50. Okay. So they're not at that point with companies of all sizes and Melinda sent me the video and my head exploded and I'm like wait a minute. Don Miller is a good guy. He's talking about story branding like that's his brand, right? Yeah, that's a name literally the name of his book story brand, right? And I read it and you know I liked it quite a bit and then I see this video and I see this statement and I was like yeah, Melinda, I'm ready to talk about that. Okay. Well, I can ask you because I watched it and I think there was a lot of fire and fury before I watched a video. So I'm like chill, just watch it objectively, try to remain neutral and watch this thing and see what's getting people all prickly about it. So you said your head exploded so one of the things that he said that really made you think I don't agree with this point of view. So I think the way that he positioned it it was one of those quick videos. I think he the way he framed it was a little bit misleading and that's what gets everyone fired up including myself. But rightfully so right because you shouldn't frame something in that way in my eyes, right? The way that he talked about it needs to be a 50 million company dollar company before you even start branding. It makes absolutely no sense. So to me this is very much the card before the horse, right? Because this is a very like antiquated analogy here but you cannot you cannot talk about something. You cannot market if you haven't branded it yet like if you don't know what you're talking about, right? And in the video he also talked about Simon Sinek's famous why and he says there's no need to ask why you just need to send emails. At that point you just email email email and don't ask the question why behind the company. And to me that is completely against my fundamental ideas, right? Like you first have to create a platform, you have to create a brand platform to really derive why the company exists. You know you have to create obviously the company name. I mean it's basic branding pieces that need to be in place. And he's like no, you don't. So what doesn't work in this video is that of course the company already had to spend a lot of money on branding. Otherwise it would have never gotten to 50 million dollars. Okay, anything else? Not for now. Okay. Okay, I think let's first understand the structure of these kinds of videos because I make these kinds of videos too. If he's like I love branding, I love marketing, I talk about marketing today. Nobody from the design side, nobody on the brand space would would even care. Nobody would share this video and it's like what do you think? So he's doing I think what many people that are really smart about positioning says I'm for this. And right now I'm not for that. So it gets all the people that are yes we're marketers and I also want us to kind of be aware of our bias or biases or biases. However you say that word, which is your branding guy. So of course you think branding is really important. I think I didn't fully realize this before but he's really a marketing guy teaching people how to market their products and services. So he's a marketing guy and I think this is our own kind of we want to shape reality the way we see it. So I'm just trying to look at it like as as as robotically as I can, what is being said and what is more important or whatever. So let's get into that. Okay, let's just say you have a product and you have a hundred thousand dollars. Do you spend that on branding or do you spend that on marketing? I think you have to divide it in a very smart way. I mean you should in his 3070 rule is not a bad rule. I mean out of that budget you should most probably take 30% or so on branding because you have to establish everything. You have to create the word before you spread the gospel. You need to do a ton lot of that. But you first need to define what you're in the business for. I think I can also imagine why he put out this video because he consults for firms, probably 50 million and up. And they're like we're going to spend all the money on branding is like well you have no business. It's like well, I've heard this question and people beating their head against the wall so many times that eventually I come to the conclusion that this is what you guys need to hear. We got to fix that and stop spending money on branding. Okay, so let's take a step back for people who are like branding marketing. Okay, the way that you see it, what is branding? I mean branding really is that it establishes the why behind the brand that establishes a look and feel. Because in one of your posts, recently Chris, you talked about branding being something that gets people to come back. Marketing is something to get people to go to in the first place. That too, I think is a fine line, right? So it's like branding, marketing, branding, marketing. It kind of goes in this flow. Right. That if you make a logo, if you make a mark, you're an identity designer, your logo maker, a lot of form person. So it's really identifying how the, it's kind of like a business plan, but a brand plan, right? Why do we exist? What is the big why? You know, what connects with customers? And understanding the customers, before you even launch, understanding who will these people be, what channels are they on, right? How can we connect with them, read the comments in social media and start becoming part of the psyche? Toolbox of what are the right words that we use? Are we, you know, are we different, you know, are we the leader, right? What is it we're doing? Does it trap question? And you know what? But there needs to be the strong stigma attached kind of like this, the soul attached to it. And there's nothing more natural than when the soul comes from the entrepreneur, right? Right. So what you're talking about is if we're to draw two circles, there's an overlap between our beliefs and values and our customers beliefs and values and where that alignment that crossover starts to become part of our differentiator, what we stand for, who we champion. Perfect. Okay. Now the reason why I think a lot of people are upset over this video, I think it's a little misguided. Seriously, like we're like blood cousins, we might even be twins and one just focuses on something else. And that's why I'm like, if you just take the word branding and switch it out for the one he says marketing, you'll be okay again, right? Right? If our clients are not in business, if they're not getting the word out, if they're nonprofit NGO, if we can't get awareness about what it is we're doing, then we don't exist. We're just talking to ourselves and that's I think called insanity. So when we talk to Seth Godin and when we read his book about this is marketing, it's like, yeah, the old idea of marketing which is advertising is just repetition of message over all media and controlling the dialogue. It's push, push versus pull. Right? Now you might say, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's use the word branding in there. Branding is the generous act of helping or let's use the word sales. So it's all kind of like we're starting to come up with a much more healthy definition of the role and purpose of companies as they relate to their customers. The best ones are the ones that keep up with marketing and they understand marketing and they're actually interested in marketing. Of course. Now you're successful and you wouldn't be if all you cared about was like me, me, me, let's do the look and feel. And you don't actually help your customers get awareness, get customers, get traction, improve in the marketplace. And in doing a little research for that Instagram post, I came upon this thing about marketing and I can't remember, but it was the CEO of a very large multi-billion dollar company. He said, marketing is the most important thing that our company does. This is why traditional marketing doesn't work anymore today because you cannot say something that is impact up by actual experience. You and I are more likely to go on Amazon, read the 300 reviews and see what people say than to see any piece of advertising and print in social or any other place because we just don't trust people anymore. So I'm an author, so I wrote two books. I know you're writing too. Almost done. What's the status? Done. There we go, pre-order link, somewhere in the notes. It is really, really difficult. Even if people rave about your book, it's really hard to get them to do it. So that process of actually getting people to review your book so that then others can read the reviews and feel like, oh, there's not even branding and marketing involved. There's still behind the scenes, so I think that's an interesting angle to look at. And something else that I was thinking about while you were talking, if you think about universities, universities branding, if it ever is being taught in universities, in some I know it is, it falls on the marketing. They were two completely separate things. And they both looked at each other as, oh, that's horrible. You don't want to be in the marketing department. Marketing would look at us as. But I'm wondering, you went to art school, right? So I think it's different than if you go to a regular university, but Chris, drop it because I'm interested to hear about that. Which I drop? No, I'm interested in how you see. Do you see because we're talking about branding versus marketing, right? And on my drive here, I thought about, wait a minute, if branding is taught in a regular university, it might be taught under the marketing umbrella. Okay, I see. And I think it becomes dangerous when we start to apply labels and get into tribalism, where it's like the marketing people look down on the branding people and the branding people look down on the marketing people. If all of us had said, what is the end goal of what we're trying to do, which is to improve our clients' business to make an impact on their bottom line, period. All the other stuff to me is tactics like, how do we get there and what you call it, I don't really care. It starts to me, it starts with understanding who the customers are and seeing how that would align with what we want to do in the world, so that we can find that overlap. So maybe there's a major called overlap, and we sit down and we study what users want and who we are, and then we teach people the different facets, but they don't have to go eight semesters into making one mark. Maybe. I should have faith in you on every show, because we just help promote every course, book, and initiative we have. Is that fair? Sarah, okay. So that's kind of like where we're stuck, and you and I know there are classes that design schools that call it, they call it branding, but it's not branding at all. That's really all it is, because if you're not thinking about the name, if you don't understand positioning and marketing and messaging, copywriting and shaping the voice, not just the look, you're really not getting into it. I think in his book, the brand flip, Marty was talking about the skills required to be a really great brand strategist, and he says what 5% of people can really do this. You have to think visually, you have to be able to communicate, articulate with words, you have to think high level, the 30,000 foot view. And then you have to co-create, and I think that was important when you talked about things have to be merged. When you talked about branding and marketing, they cannot be separated, but guess what happens with client work, marketing and sales is separated. So it keeps all of these silos, and that's why all these companies have these issues. So when we create a brand with an entrepreneur, and his team, most of them are marketers, some of them just found a co-founder, when these people go back to the rest of the company, they were not included. Right? And their sales, it's like, oh, you just push, you just push, but that's not how it works, right? Hey, FutureFam, Ben here. We at the Future want you to work smarter, not harder to have a successful business, and quite honestly we need your support. No problem. Create a process that you feel confident in, so that you can save your time for things that actually matter. But then all of us who work on branding or calling ourselves brand strategists, or we do branding, and there's a disconnect then between entrepreneurs looking for an answer in marketing, but then we're all calling it branding. Would it be who some of us to actually say we're a marketing firm, to then connect with and attract those clients that are potentially looking at and listening to people like Donald Miller? What are the functions of the company, and what are your goals? Well, this is a question that comes up quite a bit. And so calling yourself a brand strategist, a branding person, a marketer, an integrated marketing, branding company, you can call yourself whatever you want. What is the problem? I like to look at it the function, and then you can design whatever label you want around it. So if Donald Miller is out there, and he's saying these things, he's just one voice, and I think we're over amplifying the weight and influence that this one person has. For every one Donald Miller talk about marketing, there's probably 35 branding people talking about branding. So again, I just think we're conflating, like his presence and his influence, and that he has a magical ability to reach out to all these companies that are hiring people, and then to diminish what it is that you do. That's it. And I think, I mean, if you call yourself a marketing firm, this implies to the actual client that you will do social media, whatever ends with marketing. Social media marketing, advertising, content marketing, content marketing, all these things that you actually might not do. There are still all of these stickers on the things that we do. And the problem is, we can unpeel them. We know what's behind, but clients don't. It's really difficult to discuss what you do and who you are with one label. I think that's what Chris was heading to. You have to start coming up with creative ways of describing your practice of how you help clients. So for us, it's clarity and focus, because that's really why people come to me. That might be an end result, but they come for clarity and focus. So I speak that way now, because that resonates with them. Yes, no. I think in his book, the one page marketing plan written by Alan Dibb, he describes this actually really kind of interesting scenario. He says, so like the circus is coming to town and this is your business and you have an elephant and you paint or a sign on elephant. He's all that's called promotion. Okay, and then you bring the elephant and march him into town and it happens to trample flowers that's called publicity. And if you hand out a bunch of flyers saying the circus is coming to town, that's called advertising. And he's like, if you design the whole thing, that's called marketing. And so we're all like very inclined to like define silos, like just my job is what I do. I only do sales. And so we need to build more versatile units of people collaborating and being cross discipline with somebody who's looking at the bigger picture. What do you guys think about that story and would you change and eat the definitions? No, no, this is a book on marketing. It wasn't called the white page. I know, but I'm asking the question if you were to add to it. Where is branding in that? I asked you first. No, you didn't. You asked me second. Okay, now stop squeezing me. But that's my initial thought is this whole conversation is about branding marketing. So I'm asking you, what did you think about that little story? Did any of the scenarios and descriptions feel like they're out of alignment? Just replay it, you know, paint it, sample through the flowers, publicity. It's featured in the newspaper, right? It's publicity. Any of those scenarios sound like they're off to you? Any of our flyers that sound like advertising? It does, right? And they feel off. Like, how weird is branding fit into this, right? It's always like, "Masha, masham, masham." It's like, "What about me? Where am I in a story? Can we get back to what's important?" Didn't she ask the question? Yeah. You're right. I was making fun of the question, that's all. Okay, thanks. Because we as branders would look at it and like, "Well, the entire thing is branding, right? We created that, right?" Yeah. So are we the ones? And I believe that's how it would be. Who are behind the scenes that tell the elephant to start going, push, right? Now the elephant looks the way that it should look. And, you know, it's-- And pick the right elephant too. Yeah, not the way one, not the way one. Just make it yours, right? So, but I think that that's kind of how it fits in. What do you think? It's bizarre. It's a bizarre conversation about the elephant. No, no, I don't know. Fabian, because the way I would look at it is where does the branding person fit in? I think the branding person fits in where you talk to the person who owns the circus, the Ringling Brothers. And you say, "You guys are entertainers. This is what you do. This is part of your family." And you like putting on big shows. Like, I wonder what people like the same kinds of things. Oh, small towns. They're like looking for a little magic and mystery. I wonder what their needs are. And then you start to align those two things and say, "Look, there's this thing. Let's call it the circus." Right? And we can bring in some exotic animals or maybe we can do something like performers doing acrobatics and tricks and lion-taming. Does that sound so we start to design and craft experience. And we think, "How will we get the word out? Why don't we bring an elephant? Why don't we paint it? Well, what color should we use? And how should that look? What kind of elephant should we bring in?" And then so on and so forth. And so to me, if I'm listening to you and I'm just going through your words here, it's the why. Like, why do we want to do this? What are we trying to do? Well, we're an entertainment company. Well, what's the look and feel? It should be kind of very, it should feel accessible. It should feel friendly and fun and joyful. Or maybe it should feel European. Like this, this is called the Cirque du Soleil. And that's what we'll do. Right? And we'll get rid of the animals because people don't like animals being treated unwell. Okay. So that's what we'll do. Instead of animals, we'll do this. And we'll use the acrobatics and lighting and pyrotechnics and hydraulics to create a show nobody's ever seen before. What should we call it? How should we talk about this? Circus of the sun? That sounds pretty cool. Let's do that. Let's come up with 15 iterations of a name. So that's where branding fits in. So if we use-- Is that okay? I mean, I'm just using Fabian's story here. Yes, I think there's a couple alternatives, too, that that's an intentional one. That's actually sitting down and saying, this is what we're setting out to do and in planning all of that and then moving forward. There's the others that do-- and I would say some do start with just the marketing. They pick a random elephant. They walk them through town. And they just go for it. But even in that, they're still branding that's happening. It's just not intentional. That's how I'm seeing it. Okay. How do you-- Look at this. I do have an opinion. I'm just processing your thoughts there. Let's take the same circus thing. Now, we know that there's been a big shift away from the traditional circus that we see in cinema and the ones that are successful in Alex Circus of life. So let's pretend this circus thing. And they did the whole bit, the promotions, the publicity, the advertising, all that kind of stuff. And they expected 1,000 people to show up. But 400 people showed up. And they keep doing this over and over again and so their business is dwindling. They're like, do we need a new logo? It's like, what are we doing? So they approach Fabian Design Consulting Group, right? Or Melinda Livesee Consulting Group. And they ask you, what should we do? So the brander says, we need to re-brand. Let's call it something else. Like, how much do we change of the client's core business to help them? The marketer would probably say, oh, I know how to market this. We got to get on social media. There's just new thing. So each person falls back on their discipline and what they think works. But the true person, this overlap person says, I don't know if people want this anymore. If you're, if you're joys to entertain people, it's not through animals per se. And if this is the problem in terms of how society is moving, what can we do with what's core to who you are and what people want? Let's get rid of the animals. Let's get into this business of performing humans, doing extraordinary, extraordinary feats. Let's do that. Let's change your whole business. So to me, that whether you call that branding or marketing doesn't really matter. This is what's going to move the needle. And to me, that clearly falls into the branding aspect. Right? When you said, let's give it a new name, let's give it a new logo. I think that's how a lot of people think about branding. But really it is, let's ask first why. Like, why do you even exist? Does this make sense? Is this the right audience? Should we even be doing this? Should we bring in rights? So I think it is, it is a, it is. I'm not in agreement with what you're saying. I understand, but I don't necessarily have the same point of view. Just saying. Okay, let me ask you this question. If we talk about positioning as a discipline and for our audience who doesn't know what that might mean, positioning is the art or the strategy of occupying a space, a position in a person's mind. And you say that's a vital function of branding. Is it, is it exclusive to branding? Or do people who do marketing also do positioning? True that, right? Yeah, okay. So if we were to pull our audience right now, those are people who are watching this. Let us know down below if you call yourself a branding person. How many of you guys actually do positioning for your clients and even know what the heck that is? I've been going to suspect it's going to drop. Like, okay, people who call themselves branding, people actually just did logo design. So that drops off most of the people. And the people truly do branding. How many of you guys actually think about positioning and being strategic about that? That number is going to drop. So now we have four people left watching. But if we were to ask marketing people, how many of you guys do positioning? I would say it's a pretty high percentage. Would you agree or disagree? Yeah, no, totally. Okay. So if this is my own bubble, which you are. So you are yourself some hybrid graphic designer, brand, brand strategist, incorporating certain facets of marketing, traditional definitions. And so then your definition of branding might be exclusive to you right now, because you're a unique person. Right? Maybe there are a lot of unique people like me to do a depth of majority. Right, and everyone who calls themselves a brand strategist, they would come from the same place of positioning as a 10 role for us to do that. And the people that do brand strategy are they more likely to have a background in graphic design or marketing or sales? That's an exquisite question. And I can't answer it, but I have a feeling it tends more to how it's marketing. And I might be able to. I don't think you're off of that. I agree. See, so now we're like, okay. So where we disagree and why we got all fired up over this, maybe it's like misguided, in my opinion, because maybe there's some truth to what he's saying. If we just base it on the law of averages and what we're seeing out there today, not where it's going, but where it is today, in terms of like the traditional role and responsibilities of marketing versus branding. Let's just say. So we still upset at Donald Miller for saying what he's saying. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Let's talk about it. What part's on it? No, no, the thing is, I don't like when little, you know, little YouTube clips are overly self-serving, sometimes a little bit, a little bit, you know, like misleading, right? Especially in today's climate, right? And so saying that you should not brand until you have 50 million, 500 million. That's something. That just is not correct, right? When it comes out of context, and it was out of context, you know, and not asking the question, why? And instead sending email over email over email, that does not make a lot of sense to you, because the email needs to come from a space of why, right? So, but other than that, he is fantastic. I love his stuff, but this was something good to pick on, you know, because it was getting us interested in, okay, so how does this really work, right? Melinda, have we put this issue to bed? Yes. It might wake up with a nightmare though. Yeah. Are we okay? I just breathe more questions. Okay. Well, I think that's it. Thank you, everybody, and thank you also Melinda and Fabian for joining me here in the studio on having this very thought-provoking conversation about the differences between marketing and branding, and perhaps our instincts is to go really kind of tribal and say, this is us, this is them, and it's war. When we actually step back, we're all the same family, it's cousins, and we're all better off by having broader, more open-minded discussions about different disciplines so that we can learn what to integrate into what it is that we do for the purpose of improving and impacting our client's business, the end. The future is hosted by me, Christo. The show was edited by Ricky Lucas and Sam Burns. Thank you to Adam Sandborn, who composed our theme song, to subscribe to the futures podcast, check us out wherever you find your podcasts. Don't miss out on any upcoming events or things like this by going to our website, thefuture.com. The newsletter sign-up at the bottom is the best way to stay up to date with what we have going on here. Make sure you rate and review us. It helps others find us. If you liked this episode, let us know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. @TheFutureIsHere. Thanks for listening. That's it for this episode. See you in the future. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. 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