What is your brand fighting against?

Welcome back to death to the corporate video. My name is Guy Bauer. I'm the founder and creative director of UMALT, a B2B video at agency. And today we're asking the question, what is your brand fighting against? And this is an exercise we make. All of our new clients do. It takes only a few moments, but it's a great way to think about your brand in a new way rather than just your ICP, your value props, all that stuff. Okay, so what do I mean by what is your brand fighting against? I'll explain it through some examples of popular brands and what I think they are fighting against. So if we think about Nike, what is Nike fighting against? So when I think of Nike ads and their whole thing, it's just do it. It's all about not hesitating. It's about believing in yourself. It's about just doing it and having courage. So Nike fights against hesitation, procrastination, and not believing in yourself. That's what they're on a mission to fight against. And if you put it that way, now all their ads become very clear, right? Let's look at Apple, right? Everyone uses Apple. It does an example for every piece of marketing thing. Why stop now? Let's do this. So Apple fights against, what does Apple fight against? All the way back to their 1984 ad, I think that Apple fights against conformity in Apple fights also against complexity, right? That's why all their products are very simple. They just work. They're all about empowering you to be an artist. And that's what I would say. It fights against conformity. Let's bring it back into B2B. So let's think about Slack. So when I think about Slack, Slack is a new way of communicating, right? It's really, to me, fighting against email. When I think of Slack, they are on a mission to get companies off of email and be in a more organized communication system. So I think they're fighting against disorder and email. I mean, I think you could really put it there that they're on a fighting against email. Let's think about HubSpot. So HubSpot with their marketing tools, their operations tools, customer service. I mean, they have everything. CRM, when I think of HubSpot, they are fighting against complex business tools. 'Cause the thing about HubSpot is, HubSpot is pretty user friendly. All right, so those are some examples. Oh, and then I forgot ours, umalt. So what are we fighting against? It's pretty easy. Fighting against lane B2B video ads. And when you put it through this fighting thing, right? It just gets rid of mission statements, ICPs, value props, the product itself actually can't, you know, you can't fight against your own products. So you can't talk about it. And that's what usually clouds us marketers. There's all these things that we have to account for. And this is a really simple way of just asking yourself, what are you fighting against? So let me give you some tips about this. So let's just say you're in cybersecurity, right? You gotta think deeper than just we're fighting against viruses. It could be the way you fight against viruses. Like we fight against non-proactive virus detection or whatever it is. So trying to think about a quality of something that you're fighting against. So think about liquid death, right? Liquid death. What are they fighting against? Well, their whole thing is murder thirst. They're fighting against thirst, but every other water company can say they're fighting against thirst. That's what I'm saying about the cybersecurity thing, right? All of your other competitors can say they're fighting against viruses. How are you different? What are you fighting against that no one else is fighting against? So if we think back to liquid death, I think they're fighting against boring because every part of liquid death is not boring. The cans are interesting. The commercials are interesting. There's just not one bit of boring in any part of liquid death's brand. They are fighting against boring. So that has nothing to do with water at all. Going back to B2B and think about like HubSpot and Salesforce, right? They both do pretty much the same thing. And I think this is where you can look at how things are done. So HubSpot fights against overly complex business tools. Well Salesforce, if you've ever used Salesforce, is definitely not fighting against overly complex business tools. It's virtually unusable unless you are only using a tenth of their tools. I mean, you need a Salesforce implementation person. So Salesforce is not fighting against overly complex business tools. I think they're fighting against non-robust business tools. So you can almost see there's a place for HubSpot, there's a place for Salesforce, and they're each fighting different things. And the people that are for those fights will naturally gravitate towards those brands. So that's it. Think about what your brand is fighting against. And I'd love to hear from you, send me an email, [email protected], UMAULT.com. Let me know what you think and tell me what you're fighting against. All right, I'll talk to you next time. Take care.