Episode 4: Brand Core & Drivers

Ep 5 on brand themes & drivers

[00:00 - 05:12]

Eric: Hello, welcome to Brand Front Lines with your hosts, Marissa and Eric Labrecque, me. Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the podcast, by the way, please subscribe and rate and share it with any marketing nerds, you know.

Marissa: And check us out on Instagram @brandfrontlines where we are continuing the conversation with some practical exercises and tools, so you can apply all of this to your own brand or your clients’ brands.

Eric: So, this is our first season, and in this season, we're diving into one new foundational element of a brand. And every episode, what it is, why it's important, and how to build it. Last episode was our first look at what we call the brand wheel, which is our model for a successful brand, a successful brand story.

Marissa: So now we are in the wheel, the very centre of the wheel, which is held by the core naturally, we're also getting into brand drivers today. These are really important themes to get right. They're pretty straightforward, but I see marketers describe them differently all the time. Today, I googled them, brand drivers to see what came up. And the very first thing that I saw was personality attributes. That's what we would call them.

Eric: Like what? What were some of the things that you were finding?

Marissa: It was a description on a marketing consultants’ website, like a little blog post she done on brand drivers. And for her they were, you know, she had a list of personality traits that you might, we would call personality, which is another ring of the brand a little further out but affable, fun, you know, authentic just personality traits.

Eric: Yeah, you know, so real quick thumbnail here. If you're using an adjective, it's probably a personality attribute. And if using a noun, you're probably talking about a driver or a theme. Think about a story, you know, a writer doesn't sit down and say, I'm going to write a story about the theme funny, you might write a story about the theme growing up. And it might be a funny story, you might inject a lot of humor into it. So just keep those two things in mind as you move forward in your brand work.

Marissa: Yeah, so we'll get more into it. But you know, we'll define them as we define them. And I want to reiterate, we talked about this in an earlier episode. But I think a lot of marketing programs and a lot of courses you can take online, start the brand, later than we do the brand work, they start at the stuff that customers can see, might start with a tagline or an elevator pitch, or even a mission and vision statement, which is very foundational. But you know, these are all things that might end up on your website or in your email communications. But there is some work that's a little deeper that might never see the light of day as far as customers go, but it informs everything that comes after. And it's so important. So, that's really what today is about. It's about that that stuff that is the foundation, it's underneath the building. And it's the platform on which everything else is built.

Eric: Yeah, you really put that well, I mean, just remember, as a brand marketer, you're a storyteller, a little different in many ways, but you share a lot with novelists and playwrights and screenwriters, and cowboys sitting around a campfire. And yeah, and all those people, even the cowboy has done some pre work to understand where the story is going to go and how it's going to hang together. And that's what we're saying, you know, we're about is doing that pre work. Before we dive into our exploration of brand core and brand drivers. What we've been up to today?

Marissa: Well, this is the first episode that we're recording after the quarantine. So, I'm working on, client works looking a little different these days, like I mostly am working with the same clients, a couple of projects got kind of put-on hold but doing different things like brands, most of the brands that I'm working with have shifted a little bit. So, a lot more focus on online sales, communications, pipelines, building email lists, all that kind of fun stuff. All of a sudden, got way more important than long term strategy. It was like alright, let's shift let's make sure we're still talking to everybody. They know where we're at. We're getting in front of them. And so it's been fun. I've learned a lot and I think deepened my relationships with my clients, we're like, in the trenches together on the brand front lines.

[05:12 - 10:24]

Eric: You know, I've been working with two clients today who called with sudden needs, they wanted to craft their response to current events. First, you know, a couple months ago, it was the COVID-19 crisis. And now it's their response to the real social conversation around Black Lives Matter. I don't want to get too anchored in the moment for the sake of people listening in the future. But basically, both of these events are singular. And yet, the clients, the companies, the brands need to consider how should they relate to them with respect to their brands? What's the right response? What's the right course of action? What fits within the story that they have? How can they be legitimate? Should they even make statements. So, relating the immediate and the near term to the long-term story is something that they're wrestling with, and we're working to help them with.

Marissa: Yeah, I've written statements recently for clients that they're almost are like PR work in a way. But because they matter so much, they really have to have integrity. And so it's just another moment when you really know your brand. And it really is authentic to you, then it's so much easier to speak to something that's important to you with authority and not be performative or cliche.

Eric: Right. And I think it's not only about speaking, that's part of it. But also, what conversations do you want to enter into and listen, you know, there's a lot to talk about right now. And there are a lot of conversations enter into, maybe it's still good to focus. So I think the brand is not only an expressive tool, but a tool to think about who you're going to interact with and who you might need to be listening to that maybe you haven't been listening to before.

Marissa: Yeah, reset your aperture. So, brand core.

Eric: So, what is a brand core?

Marissa: Yeah, let's define our brand core.

Eric: It's the thing that doesn't really change, that lives at the heart of your brand. It's the kind of essential truth of the brand, it's the business that you're in is another really basic way of putting it.

Marissa: Your genre.

Eric: Yeah, I mean, if we were talking about movies, it would be the genre of the movie. So what kind of movie is this? Is it a rom-com, is it an adventure, is it sci-fi? And that helps to set our expectations for what to come? That's one of the uses of the brand core.

Marissa: For what's to come?

Eric: Yeah, what's the rest of the story going to be, you know, put me in the frame of mind to start thinking about you in a certain way. So that's one useful thing about a core. Something else that's really useful about it is it it's always good to know what you are and what you aren't, you know, if you're starting a rom-com, and you start doing things that are a little sci-fi(ish), could be a little bit of an awkward fit. So it helps people internally and also, your audience, your customers start to get expectations and go with you on a journey in that sense to, you know, certain kind of clarity, a certain kind of focus.

Marissa: I'm very interested in science fiction rom-com.

Eric: Yeah, well, there are some weird blends out there. It's just, it's really tough to do, you know, it's tough to pull off. And I think even if we were to go find a really good sci-fi rom-com, we'd probably figure out at some point, it's a little more rom-com or it's a little more sci=fi, one thing's usually going to take the lead. The other thing is that it helps you to understand who you're in the market with and competing against. Yeah, so that's pretty useful too. An example of a brand core from a B2B client of ours, actually, we'll talk about an example of a brand core from a category. So cybersecurity brands, okay, there are a lot of them out there. And let's talk about one little part of that cybersecurity space. We have a company called Prisma. That is about cloud security solutions. So cybersecurity in the cloud. A competitor of theirs - Threat stack is about cloud security as well. They define themselves a little differently, cloud security insights, but basically the same core, and so on through Shift Left, which is about application security, automation, and sis day, which is about container security, and insights and Data Dog, which is about Cloud Monitoring. They're all about this cloud security idea. Each have a little different nuance, but mainly we're understanding that they're kind of grouped together. And it's really important to think about the core as not just thing that sets you apart. But the thing that you share with others so they can start to place you. In a traditional marketplace. The people who are offering one set of services are all kind of together like you going down an alley and all the goldsmiths are there, all the rug, merchants are down another area and helps people to know where to go to find you. And then from there, they can make a decision about who to choose.

[10:24 - 15:15]

Eric: So like, coke, soda beverage, like what do you call the core and that?

Marissa: Well, I haven't researched this, you're asking me off the top my head. And I think coke would say its core is an emotional attitude called enjoyment, I, most people top of mind are going to think about coke as a set of experiences around a sweet carbonated beverage. So, I would say that, that's its core. And other things like it would be other sweet carbonated beverages, soft drinks. Again, with all due respect to the coke folks, and how they define it, which is probably really useful for them hugely successful brand, it's tempting to get a little tricky with a core, right, like, mostly, we think of it as soft drinks, that's where most of their revenue is coming from. And when they have another idea for another thing to market. When coke does like a water brand, then they give it another name. And they tell another story about it. So, that's kind of an example that I think helps to illustrate just how basic arriving at the basic the core should be. Sometimes it's really hard for companies to arrive at what that what that is, it seems super simple. And sometimes it is. And sometimes everybody's very clear about it from the get go. You know, we make guitars, we make cars, whatever. But there are all these new technologies that create new marketing opportunities and new markets to go into. And that can be tempting to kind of try to redefine your core fuzzed it up a little bit because of these ancillary opportunities. And that's a risky thing to do, can be done, but it's risky.

Marissa: Right. Or to over identify with an aspirational competitor, like you want to be someday like this giant, you know, lifestyle brand. And so you're thinking in that, you know, in that pool, but it's like, you sell tiles. So let's start there.

Eric: Right, exactly. And I think you when you mentioned lifestyle brand, that's a real temptation is for brands that really are fundamentally about being in a certain category, to sometimes aspire to be lifestyle brands. And it can lead to some really interesting marketing experiments and experiences. But I'm not sure if it really moves the needle. An example that I think of recently of this is Taco Bell, that launched a hotel. All right, so a Taco Bell hotel with a Taco Bell experience brought to life. Well, Lord knows what that is, it might be a really cool experience. But it doesn't really change the fact that Taco Bell is a Mexican fast-food brand. Let's not mince words about it. And we normally think about it relative to other fast-food brands or other Mexican fast-food brands. When we're making a decision. We're not thinking about it so much in terms of where am I going to lay my head on the pillow tonight, just not, sorry. So there's some really, you know, legitimate efforts to shift your core it can be really hard to do. One that we were involved in years ago was with Starbucks, you know, Starbucks, most people think of it as a coffee house. Starbucks would like you to think about them as something more than that, they call the third place, and place where you go to hang anytime a day and night. Right. You know, and I mean, coffee houses have always been good for that. But, you know, part of that for Starbucks was, and this is a lot of research and looking at the competition in the marketplace and trends went into this. But basically, the need to kind of move beyond the breakfast segment, the coffee segment in the morning and offer food throughout the day. And it was really challenging for Starbucks to make that shift. I believe that they've succeeded to some degree in doing that. But it wasn't easy. It took a number of tries and a lot of marketing dollars to, you know, expand the idea, and I'm not sure it's fully there on our minds yet, but it was a very concerted effort and, you know, executed with great care.

Marissa: It's also good to know your core because as you're saying, that's a moment when if you're going to shift that, that's not just adding another menu item on your website. It's a serious discussion and a major shift in your identity.

Eric: For sure. And the biggest thing that we think about is how is that warping people's brains you know, they're going to think about you in a different way. And maybe there's a natural glide path for them to think now you're a little bit more than what we thought about before. But it can be a real disconnect, you know, in our town, there's that business on the outskirts of town, that's...

[15:15 - 20:17]

Marissa: Dairy supplies and pool.

Eric: You got pool it. My brain does work. Yeah. So like, I keep thinking of like a swimming pool full of dairy supplies. And it's just not a good picture, you know, like, and maybe there's some synergies there that makes sense. But it just seems kind of like a bad odd fit, that hurts my brain, right. So, there's a real temptation to do this, I think on the part of software companies, because it's so easy to go from one aspect of code into another. And we have brands that represent all kinds of things now, like Amazon, and Google and Microsoft are into all kinds of businesses. And I don't know if I could define the core for any of them. I'm sure they've got it somewhere. But, you know, Google was used to be about information and search, I think we all kind of feel it's about more than that. Mainly there, I guess I think about them relative to each other. They're all kind of jockeying for this kind of total information, delivery, benefit positioning, bears looking at. But anyway, there's a temptation if you're not one of them, too. But you're in software, we've noticed this too, you know, get a little squishy about what that core is, because it's so easy to make your software do something more or discover that it has a new use or application that you didn't think about. The market likes it in a certain way, that was a little surprising.

Marissa: Right. A pivot.

Eric: Yeah, one that you weren't necessarily even expecting, but it's, you know, it's a serendipitous thing that landed on your lap. And now we got to figure out, okay, how do we shifting like, so you know, I have a choice, I can shift my core, you know, off what I was doing pivot my brand at the very, very, you know, central place. Or I can say; You know what, I'm going to stay focused. And this is cool. And I'm going to launch another brand, I'm going to tell another story to a different audience that really wants this. It's not the audience I've been dealing with.

Marissa: So, what are some examples of some brain cores that you've developed or worked on?

Eric: Well, let's talk about the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, be a good, good place to talk about a lot of things today. We've been working with them on their brand for the past couple years now. And it's starting to come to life in some exciting ways. So it's a cultural institution. And our work, we needed to look at other cultural institutions that dealt with American Indians in some way. So, you have the Smithsonian overall, right? And this is part of it. So we need to understand what what's the core of the Smithsonian. And it's about discovering and sharing knowledge. That's really what it's all about, at its core. What about the museum's next-door neighbor, the National Museum of African American History and Culture? Well, that's about the African American experience. So, we're kind of triangulating in that way too. Then, you know, we have the National Portrait Gallery, which is about American portraiture. And that's also a brand that we worked on. Now we're getting into the next couple of examples are brand cores that are really closer to the specific core, whatever that might prove to be right for the National Museum, the American Indian, so the Museum of Northern Arizona, is about the culture and nature of the Colorado Plateau. And the Heard Museum is about American Indian art. So little different. Again, broadly, these are all cultural institutions, there are some things that start to suggest some differences at a really high level, maybe. But this isn't positioning yet. We're still really trying to understand the category understand who's in it. And sure, some of the nuances that make them different that we'll explore. But broadly, that's an example of some cores that relate to some work that we did.

Marissa: What category you're in, not where you are in the category?

Eric: Right. Usually, when you're doing core work, you might have one word in there. That's descriptive. That starts to set you apart a little bit, but that's not really the exercise. Again, it's not about differentiating, it's about figuring out who and what you need to differentiate against.

Marissa: So, what do you do if your business doesn't have a category?

Eric: Meaning like you're creating a new category?

Marissa: Yeah, like that.

Eric: Well, that's a really interesting question. A lot of people are asking that right now, category creation is kind of a thing in the brown world, especially in tech companies. There's a book actually, that gets into this that's pretty interesting and will definitely trigger some thinking called play bigger. So you might check that out. Basically, the authors of that book would say, I'm going to paraphrase here a little bit, you know, if you aren't able to create a new category, why are you even going into business? So they would say; Listen, category design is what you should be doing.

[20:17 - 24:34]

Marissa: It's very Silicon Valley.

Eric: Yeah, you know, and I mean, it's very thought provoking, they would say that, you know, positioning is kind of passe, you know, that's not what you should be doing, you should be looking to create a new category, I think it probably applies better in the tech space than in some others. I'm guessing I'm going to stay old school and still think that positioning is important. For one thing, if you create a new category, that's awesome for you. But if it's a good category, others will be in it. And at some point, you're probably going to need to position relative to them. So it's kicking the can down the road a little bit, although, certainly looking at that, if you think you have a new category is good. So we've gotten involved in category creation exercises a little bit. It's been truly valuable, I think, for some companies that we've worked with, but in other cases, I felt like, you know, this verges on category creation wash, like just being able to come up with a cool new label for something is one thing, but really saying and confirming that you are categorically different than other people is, is a whole other ball of wax. And you got to make sure that you're not into you know, marketing, spin innovation, when you do stuff like that. The final arbiter of whether or not you're creating a new category is the marketplace. The intermediary arbiter, who you really want to convince that you're in a new category would be a firm like Gartner. You know, that's really looking at what's going on in categories and can see from a really sound solid business perspective, if indeed, you're in a new category. The other thing that's important to mention just in passing about category creation, is that while there's a huge benefit in being disruptive, and that way, you're going to be hanging out there, right. So, educating people as to what the category is, and what it's all about, and getting them to kind of buy into it is kind of a Storytelling Challenge, you're going to have your work cut out for you, maybe very worthwhile work to do, but just know that, you know, in addition to the things you would normally want to convey, you're going to have to talk about the category and get people excited about that as well.

Marissa: Right. It's almost like another brand to promote. But you're also like, you still have to define why that category is different than categories that came before it, right? Or where it's leaping off from?

Eric: Well, to some extent you do. I mean, I'll give an example from my deep past long, long, long ago, worked with the first company to offer a laser hair removal. No one else was doing that. And so there's this new category, laser hair removal, an evolution of disruptive you know, hyperspace from hair removal, right. Categorically different experience, different level of results, all that stuff.

Marissa: Taking our current understanding of it, it sounds a little terrible.

Eric: Well, you know, it was a little weird, but it you know, it's a category that exists. And for a long time, the company that went into that had first mover advantage, no one else had that technology. And it was very disruptive. And they really own the marketplace. And it was fairly sizable. There was some product development issues that needed to be worked out. But before long... Well, you know, it was arguably not quite ready for primetime when they launched it, but it got there. Point is that in time, there were their laser hair removal, brands competing with it, and the brand we were working on, rested on our laurels a little bit too long and lost its you know, pole position, even though it created a category, right. So when you create a new category, you gain this huge advantage by being the first and hopefully you can really seize on that with brilliant engagement and a really awesome product that performs as promised, but really, you are creating a draft for other people to follow you. And they will. So you better be ready for that too.

Marissa: Nestled around the core and the brand. We'll move out one more level to brand drivers.

[24:34 - 30:25]

Eric: So, brand drivers are Yeah, they're themes. If you're thinking about this from a storytelling standpoint, and actually I have to confess that we're probably going to use the word themes and our communications to our clients and our brand work moving forward more than drivers. But drivers a good place to start because again, that's probably the most commonly used term for this part of the brand toolkit. So, themes I mean themes are important. I ideas that a story explores. So in a brand world, they're important ideas that the brand explores important. They generally come from strengths that the brand has things that the brand wants to engage you around experiences, the brand wants to create, like a good story, there's usually one that bleeds. But there are others that add richness and support that lead theme. When we're developing a brand story, we always start with lemon zest, or zesty lemon as a theme. And if it doesn't work, then we move on. So we're looking for a couple, we don't want to have too many, because then the story gets too crazy and too complicated, not focused and not interested.

Marissa: So, is this like a Netflix search, you've got you've looked under mysteries, and then your little gritty, political thriller.

Eric: No, those are talking about the, the tonality of it. The personality of it. Themes are just their ideas. Like, if you think about a, you know, a big novel, the theme might be coming of age, the theme might be triumphing against all odds, these are big themes, or you could say triumph, or the theme of reconciliation, these are big ideas. So an example the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian - NMI, three themes that we develop for that platform, inclusion, impact, and understanding. So many of the messages, so many of the things that were important to share that are important to share, really hinged around those three ideas. And we lock on those, then we can actually develop the narrative, using those themes, develop the messaging, and explore them, again, through content and experiences that might be created from that, you know, brand foundation. So, those three themes, inclusion, impact, and understanding which one do you think was the turned out to be the most important one?

Marissa: Impact.

Eric: Right, you are. Excellent. Yeah. So the positioning that we landed on is the National Museum of the American Indian that is global, in scope, relevance, and impact. So there are other museums out there, other museums that focus on different aspects of the Native American or the American Indian experience, but they're not global in their impact. So impact was kind of the lead theme. But the other things inclusion, very important to talk about a lot to say about and understanding as well, you know, creating a deeper understanding among all peoples of Native American experiences, contributions, lives, culture, really important, right. But in terms of driving the brand forward, that impact turned out to be the lead one. We need them all, though.

Marissa: Yeah. So this seems like something that could get very aspirational and not necessarily, like rooted in the reality of the brand pretty easily. Like, is it important to be something that's evidenced by what's come before? Or can it be, like a vision statement that's a hope of what the brand will achieve?

Eric: That's a great question that applies to so many aspects of the brand platform. There's always an aspirational element in the sense that you're always moving forward in time, you're always sharing the story with your audience, your audience is always sharing it back and sharing it amongst others. There has to be enough there to make that theme worth talking about, might be sort of like a Wikipedia article where it's kind of a stub. So there's enough proof, there's enough to talk about that you're credible. But over time, once you've identified the theme, you're going to enrich it, you're going to add experiences, and proof points, and develop, you know, your brand, to make those themes even stronger. And that's kind of an interesting point in itself, which is once you have these things which relate to the business, they can actually reflect back on the business and help you see where to focus, kind of a useful aspect of things.

Marissa: Are you embodying these themes? Are you keeping your promise?

Eric: Right. You know, because again, a good a well-crafted story, a well-crafted brand will explore its themes in a fresh and engaging way.

Marissa: So, other thing that's like, you know, as we said at the top, it's not something you're going to write about on your website necessarily, but it's always fodder for content you can always go back. Okay, these are what these are the things I want to be talking about how can I incorporate this into what's going on right now for the brand or in the world? And like we were saying, brands trying to meet a moment with integrity, like, you can go to your themes, your drivers and say like; How can I approach this in a way that fits with how I talk about things? And what's important?

[30:25 – 32:33]

Eric: Totally. Is this part of my story, really? Or how is this a part of my story? How do I frame this? Those are kinds of things that seems help you to do. And like you mentioned, I think at the top of our conversation, these are labels that your audience doesn't necessarily know. What we use them for is really to organize the value propositions that come out of the brand, the value propositions, the things that make the brand valuable, interesting, relevant, that people want to choose you for, and we organize them by the themes. It's not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence, there might be multiple value propositions that organize under each theme. But it's a great way to keep that organized. And so our messaging decks are usually organized by theme at some level.

Marissa: And you begin to see how these, this early work is really a foundation for everything that comes after. So that's core and drivers. Very important foundational. You can hit us up on Instagram if you want to ask questions about your brand or engages in that conversation, disagree with us, whatever you want to do. Thank you for listening. If you're finding this useful, please rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts and share with all your marketing junkies and solopreneur friends. We really appreciate your support. And check out brandfrontlines.com to see the brand we'll and some exercises to help you spark your own successful brand building. Next week, we're moving out to the next ring of the brand. We'll put the first of the three P's, positioning.

Eric: Awesome.

Marissa: Well, that's wildly important. You don't want to miss that discussion.

Eric: And in the meantime, if you have a good suggestion for a sci-fi rom-com for us, please let us know.

Marissa: See you next time on the brand frontlines.

Eric: Bye.