How To Transform Your Brand (Featuring Emmanuel Probst) | Ep 11

[Music] The word loyalty, maybe it's the word loyalty that bothers me, I think people can have emotional affinities with brands. I think few brands command loyalty, meaning few brands have strong enough emotional bond with their audience so that people will come back and back again. The reality is I think for most brands, people are not loyal towards brands and that's why it is so important to work on what can the brand do for me. Making a world-class cognac involves finding the right combination of ingredients. The process is called assemblage. It's an unusual metaphor to describe the creation of a brand, but Emmanuel props is a guy used to bringing an unusual perspective. He spent the last several decades advising some of the largest brands in the world and currently leads a consumer and market research group at Ipsos. In this episode, we'll learn how leaders at some of the most enduring companies in the world think about building a brand and how you can use their techniques for your own work, no matter how big or small your brand happens to be right now. Here is Emmanuel Propz, sharing how to transform your brand on this week's episode of the Non-Avias Show. Welcome to the Non-Avias Show with your host Roe Hitbar Gaba. This is a podcast about unusual stories to open your mind. Every week we feature conversations with fascinating people sharing their biggest non-Avias ideas. Follow your curiosity. Be more interesting. Be more non-Avias. Our next episode starts right now. What makes assemblage non-Avias? Yeah, what makes assemblage non-Avias is this perspective from consumer psychology. Let me articulate for you most marketing books. Starts from the standpoint of a brand's strategist. Here we take a big step back and we put ourselves in the shoes of people not even consumers people and we want to understand what are people trying to achieve. We know that people are well with brands and starting from this perspective of consumer psychology, the book guides you through this art and science of create brands that are going to transform people and the world they live in. Now there is a drab American pronunciation for your title but that's not what we're going with. We're going with the French pronunciation but the title itself is an interesting choice and I know there's a fascinating story behind it. So share the story of why you chose to title the book assemblage. Yeah, assemblage or assemblage is inspired from the way we make cognac or the way we make whiskey or bourbon or a great wine. What this means is when you create a bourbon you pick and choose from dozens, specifically hundreds of different brand these and you're going to pick different flavors and different aging processes from different barrels and so on and so forth and you will do so to create a product that is unique and differentiated and on brand that aligns with your brand values and your brand image. So assemblage is a metaphor to say that when creating brands and to create strong brands we can and we should also apply this same process of picking and choosing what is going to create the right brand. In your experience you've worked with hundreds of brands. This seems like a very strategic and intentional way of thinking about a brand. Our most brand marketers thinking this strategically about how to relay their brand in the world. To set strategic and intentional. It's a strategic because that's how we build a brand in contrast with a tactic meaning to often these days when strategies are obsessed with lower phenometics, with conversion today and tomorrow and that's good, that's important but that's not how you build a brand. Brand strategy is two to five years. How are we going to create a territory for the brand? How are we going to earn widespread in the marketplace? And you also mentioned the word intentional and this word is so central to the book and in my opinion so central is how we should build brands today. An intention is a co-creation process with the audience. Let me contrast intentions and expectations. Consumers might have expectations. Expectations are do me if you will that is I expect the product is going to work well. It's a good price and also it's reliable. So that's an expectation. An intention is this co-creation process between the brand and the audience. How are we going to evolve the brand? What we want the brand to stand for? What we want the product to stand for? How can this brand and this product make a positive impact on me, the individual, and also the world around me? So I think that's a major transformation, that's a major shift for marketers, for advertisers, for brand strategists is to understand that you no longer control the narrative. You are going to guide this brand narrative and co-create this brand narrative with your audience. So what happens when you're co-creating the brand narrative and the audience comes up with something you don't like or you don't agree with? You co-correct if you will that is you establish the foundation support the brand stands for. You co-correct when people don't necessarily interpret these brand values the way they could. You also know that the new cycle is forgiving and what I mean by this is if someone says something not good about your brand this morning on social media. Well, that's a bit on the radar. It's not going to detract to all the great, important work you've been doing, the government has few months, several years to build your brand. So you have to accept this. There is a part that you cannot control. There is a little bit of risk. But again, what's most important is what does your brand stand for? How it's going to make a positive impact on people and the world, what you intend to achieve? And that's the strong foundation that you should care for and you should care about. That's so much good girl's wallet on social media this morning or yesterday morning. Yeah, it's good advice. Brands and the people working for them often do tend to overreact to whatever was posted on Twitter this morning, for example. I know that there are two sides, oftentimes to branding conversations where one is we need to build a brand in order to generate the loyalty and have people kind of know what we sell before they actually encounter it. And then there's the other side of marketing, which is it's all about conversions. We need to have the numbers and the analytics. Building a brand is nice, but we just want to sell our stuff. So when you encounter that sort of perception gap between the sell the stuff and convert and only do marketing that is direct and sells versus the person who says, well, we need to build the brand so that people know it. And even if we don't sell anything, the long-term brand value of building the brand is worth it. How do you get those two sides to beat in the middle? OK, here's the dirty secret on why people obsess with lower-final metrics with sales and risk results. And I will say it out loud. It's because number one was metrics are so easy to understand. You can train any college students in two hours on click through rates and conversion rates and all those good metrics you get from Google and the likes. Number two is because most people are goal-setting on sales and care about moving products. This quarter, possibly this month, possibly this week, possibly today. And last but not least is that in my experience, vast majority of marketing professionals know matter what level they are at. They don't necessarily intend to stay in their role, let alone with the brand their ways for any longer than maybe two years or three years. So the true faith is that people want to admit this and that saying people like diligence or commitment and simply saying that it's hard to project yourself in building a brand at three, four, five years. If I have a back of your mind, you're considering leading your driving in 18 months, 12 months, six months. Yeah, and the average, I don't know what the latest numbers are, but the average tenure of a CMO at a large company is pretty short still, right? Oh, it is indeed. I keep looking and I won't name names, but I keep looking at it was being a party and living companies and it's a high risk, properly high reward, but it's a very high risk position to be in. So really to address your question specifically, the root of firm is to invest 60% in the brand and 40% in sales. To be clear, I understand and I encourage brands to move products. I get it. You want to drive traffic to your e-commerce platform. You want to drive food for to your store absolutely. But in order for you to do so to generate a sustainable stream of business, that's where you have to be intentional and that is where you have to build a brand. anyone can buy traffic. You and I can spend 500,000 dollars and do I visit us to a website to do it tomorrow. That's pretty easy to do. - What's hard? - But they come and they leave. Exactly. Precisely. It's to develop this important relationship customer lifetime value so that people keep coming back and back again, spend more with you until their friends and family. That's what you need to encourage so that you don't end up in that situation that's sustainable and that is financially very high risk to simply buy traffic. Do you think we're living in a time where brand loyalty even exists? That's a great debate and Byron Sharp from Aaron Bergbas in Australia would argue that no, there is no such thing as loyalty. You agree with him? If a word loyalty, maybe it's for what loyalty that bothers me. I think people can have emotional opportunities with brands. I think few brands command loyalty meaning few brands have strong enough emotional bond with their audience so that people will come back and back again. The real thing is I think for most brands people are not loyal towards brands and that's why it is so important to work on what can the brand do for me. Let me clarify this. Too many brand strategists, too many brand managers are obsessed about the brand and again, going back to assemblage, the book, The Art and Science of Brand Transformation is let's take a step back. Remind ourselves that the consumer is behavioral, not the brand. The brand is here to facilitate this process of transformation from who am I and who do I want to become. And I think as a brand strategist, as a brand manager, as an advertiser as a marketer, if you understand this and you position your brand so that it facilitates this transformation for people, you're having better shot that developing a strong emotional connection with your audience. Whose responsibility ultimately do you think it is to craft that brand narrative? Based on the responsibility of the brand and its agency, I'm not pointing at a job title in particular because job titles are misleading and by the way, that's our thing that really doesn't matter to consumers. People reflect on Equinox health club deployed in new campaign in January by saying, "Oh, we don't do January at Equinox because we don't believe in new years resolution." And this campaign was all over the news and that's to say that it doesn't matter if it's the CM or the head of brand or who exactly at Equinox did that. It is the responsibility of all employees, all the associates at Equinox to carry this message to the audience and to demonstrate this message to the audience. One of the things you write in the book that is so true is that perception is truth. And part of what I see you advocating for throughout the book, which is a major challenge for many companies is alignment between the customer service, the customer experience and the actual people doing the billboard ads at the same time. How does that happen in an organization? Is it just a cultural thing as in the organization is flatter and so people talk to each other more? Is it something that can be mandated from the top? I mean, how do you get that to happen, particularly in a larger organization? Yeah. In a larger traditional organization, it's harder because those organizations have to adapt from the all the way of doing business, being siloed between a offline and online and all that. In your organizations, it's easier because they grew as any channel organizations. So to address your question specifically, it has to come from the top. It has to come from the top that we will deliver a unified message. And there has to be financial incentive, or should I say financial transparency, that everyone is in the same boat, meaning the goal is to convert prospects into loyal customers and generate sales no matter what channel the business, the revenue comes through. So that mandate has to come from the top and it cannot be just a well-walled email. It has to translate literally into people's compensation structure. Again, that's easier to do for the direct consumer firms or the firms that the brands that came up over the last five years because they grew as only channel brands to begin with. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to how people are compensated. Do you feel like every brand needs to have a higher purpose in order to be successful? That's a good question. And purpose has been the best world in the industry for five, seven, maybe nine years now. For short, I don't say it's no. I don't think that all brands need to have a higher purpose. However, we see in our studies that it's also said, I elaborate on this in the book that consumers expect more for brand studies, they expect brands to make a positive impact on the economy, on the environment, on the world around them. So, the short answer is it depends. Some brands have built around purpose and I can think of a brand like, of course, Patagonia or National Geographic, right? Because brands have built around purpose. All of your brands can adopt a purpose. It has to be authentic. It has to be genuine. And importantly, brands have to demonstrate this purpose and not just talk about it. But a success example here is, if I look at a big brand, I can figure out unique level who dove and their beauty project to reflect what real beauty is about. That's all to say that this project resonates with people, this purpose resonates with consumers because it makes sense for dogs to promote what real beauty is about as opposed to pictures that are of early Photoshopped, if you will. So, many brands, most brands can adopt a purpose. Again, they have to be intentional about it. They have to be authentic, genuine about their intentions. Yeah, it's so important. I mean, when they do it well and when they're able to deliver on that, what have you seen the effects to be? Yeah, three things come to mind reflecting on the work we've been doing at Ipsosar on purpose. Number one, all things being equal, people are more likely to choose a brand that has a purpose. For example, sustainability. So, that's because you have 150 years of upcom and toothpaste and so on the shelf. So, all things being equal, you're more likely as a consumer to go towards a brand that demonstrates a purpose. Number two, we also see that people are willing to pay a premium for brands that demonstrate their purpose. Now, mind you, people are not going to pay twice. The price, people are not going to be double. Okay. People will be willing to pay a reason equal premium. If you tell your audience that you're doing the right thing for the local community, for the environment that you're supporting farmers that you're supporting an educational project and so on and so forth, people will be willing to pay a premium. And the third part, we're going back to this emotional connection between the audience and the brand. And I'm very hesitant to use that for the loyalty, as you said, people will switch very easily. That said, we see for sure that demonstrating a purpose is going to strengthen this emotional connection between the brand and the audience. So, you really have two dimensions in this relationship between the brand and the consumer. One is functional performance and one is the brand desire. The brand desire is this emotional connection. Carapace definitely benefits, supports this dimension of brand desire, which in turn leads to a more loyal audience. One of the ideas that you close the book with as responsible consumerism and the rise of that, is that something that really is taking over? Yes, I think responsible consumer ism is going to be perhaps the most important. One of the most important dimensions driving forces for sure how it should brand. So, we're here to work your leading to responsible consumerism is to set up after years of other consumption. We aim to bring more responsibly. We want to keep products longer. We want to keep those products a second-life instead of just disposing of those products. It's counterintuitive, but there's an opportunity for brands to sell less and therefore make more money. That is, you no longer want to encourage fast fashion whereby people will test genes and T-shirts every six months. You want to encourage people to recycle and upcycle those items. That is to bring these items back to the store to give them a second life to sell them to someone else. That sounds very counterintuitive, but you're going to develop an emotional bound with the consumer, give them some stock credits, and enter and build the basket and sell more items and all sell items with higher margins. So this imperative for responsible consumerism and of course I give plenty of directions on how to implement this in the book. I think it's the challenge but most importantly the opportunity for brands for years to come. That is an excellent place for us to finish. I have been talking with Dr. Emmanuel Proffs. The book is called "Assemblage, the Art and Science of Brand Transformation." Thank you so much for joining me. This was a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you. Thank you, Rohit and thank you to our listeners today. It's great connecting with you. I appreciate your opportunity. Thanks for listening to the Non-Obvious Show. To listen to past episodes visit nonobvious.com/podcast. See you next week.