Episode 6: Brand Personality

Brand personality is one of the most dynamic ways to differentiate your brand, especially in the Age of Hypercommunication. It might be the only way to stand out from the crowd, depending on your industry. In any case, it’s exciting to develop and satisfying to actualize.

Welcome to episode six of brand frontlines. We're brand building industry. Today we're talking about brand personality. I'm Marissa la Brecque, founder of Hyperflore.

00:27

And I'm Eric la Brecque, principal of Applied Storytelling.

00:32

And yeah today we're gonna talk about personality. I love personality and sharing personality with clients and guests. You know, often depending on your industry can be one of the most differentiating parts platform and also living and getting eager to start expressing the brand in the marketplace.

01:00

In some ways. I think brand personality is what many clients associate with a brand first and foremost graphic design firms have been creating interesting personalities interesting looks and feels for a long time. And sometimes when you think about the logo, and the colors, that's what people think of as branding. So obviously it goes way beyond that, but there's a lot actually two that look and feel that you can get kind of strategic about and that's what we're going to talk about today.

01:38

And later in the episode we'll be speaking with Cynthia and her name.

01:42

Cynthia is a great colleague of mine, she's a brilliant visual strategist. We've collaborated on dozens of projects for gosh, we were trying to figure it out about 15 years now. Cynthia's work on brand personality, look and feel for the Smithsonian Smithsonian American Art Museum for the Henry Ford for many of our tech clients, and has a lot to say on the topic. And so I'm really looking forward to diving into that with her.

02:20

I'm also curious and he has worked for one of the biggest for agencies in the world and she's also worked for herself and she's worked with midsize firms. So I'm excited to hear about just that behind the scenes experience of being a designer in different formats and structures. But before we dive into personality, Eric, what are you working on today?

02:46

Well, actually a big part of the day does have to do with personality. So we're presenting our first pass at some brand personality attributes sort of the underlying ideas or just qualities that we want the brand to express for a company in the EdTech space. It'll be consumer facing most of their clients most of their audiences is schools, vocational schools in this case. So we're gonna run some attributes by them and see what they think about that. It's kind of a different approach for us, mainly, and I think we're going to be talking about a lot today is, is how we, you know, arrive at that personality through exercises through interviews through looking at the competition, and in this case, we didn't really do that so much. We, what we've done is we've looked at the company itself and looked at the space and just kind of knocked out what we think some attributes might be to engage them about it. So we're kind of putting the cart before the horse or working backwards working from the end backwards. We'll see how it goes. What about you?

04:06

Well, I've been rebranding my business. I'm working on my own personality. And also, yeah, I'm kind of in the middle of a interesting brand quandary for one of my clients. She has a boutique business in the food space, and artisanal food space and she has a new competitor because basically what she does and is going after all of her vendors, which is a core part of her differentiation, it's her incredible sources. And you know, being the only one to offer these and so this much bigger business is going after her sources and, you know, realistically could knock her out of the marketplace. But as we're talking, we're realizing that you can't really replicate you can't scale authentic and artisanal. And we can already see the cracks in our competitors game plan. It just doesn't scale. It's gonna break the vendors business model. And, you know, a lot of people have tried it and failed. Not that I wish failure on our competitor but I you know, there's something too if you're in a space where you're doing something artisanal, handcrafted, small, super connected to the source that staying small, can be an end game in itself and can really be a point of differentiation.

05:43

Yeah, that's a really interesting topic. You know, we've seen and in our own business, companies that have really struggled or even I mean to the point of being driven out of business, by what looks like a really great opportunity, initially, you know, the Walmarts of the world, the Amazons of the world, say, hey, look, you know, we'll buy, you know, a ton of stuff from you, and you've got to ramp up. You've got to change your operations to make that work. And that's great. They're gonna generally ask you for pretty great consideration on the margins. So your profit margins are gonna go down and then you know, you're dependent on them. And there are those rules of thumbs like in business. I don't know if it's really true, but you only want to have a certain percentage of your business coming from one source. That way you're not volatile, your risk is lower if there's a problem with you know, one of your customers when your clients

06:44

Yeah, I mean, I experienced that myself. I had a food business and you know, we got offers from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and, you know, they're extremely tantalizing. But in the end, you're really, for us, we were just growing in order to feed the vendor. We weren't really making any money. We were just growing to grow and kept hoping around the corner was going to be that bump in the profit margin just never came. So anyway, we're working on positioning her as as trustworthy and you know, exciting as this big competitor that's coming in, but also super authentic close to source and can keep delivering that connection that she always has.

07:40

Hey, I just totally crossed my mind I thought I'd bring up to so what's happening right now out in the world is a couple days ago. Speaking of the big guys, Amazon announced that it was opening brick and mortar retail locations. That to me is really interesting. And it's going to be a great acid test as one of the core principles of, of branding really, which is you know, how elastic can your brand be? Can Amazon which is known for you know, being the marketplace for kind of everything actually succeed? Do people think that Amazon cares about being in retailing or does it just look like one other opportunity? So on one hand, you're going to have, excuse me, you're going to have obviously they're going to be pricings. They're going to be all the kinds of efficiencies and customer delight techniques that Amazon knows and probably a lot of analytics that help them to get inside your head and your taste. And on the other hand, it's like do you want to buy fashion you want to buy clothing from from Amazon, or are you looking for something that's a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more special? So I'll be interested to see how that works for Amazon. I, frankly, it's gonna be a little bit of a struggle for them.

09:06

Yeah, there's anything available as soon as you put it into a building by definition, it has walls so

09:18

yeah, so personality. Why don't I just ask you, Risa. So, tell me about a personality exercise that you've done for your clients. Have you had any buddy recently who's you've kind of gone deep into the personality world with?

09:37

Yeah. Personalities lately? I think. I usually start with research. I look at if they're already an existing company, if they're in the marketplace, I look at everything that they put out there. And I look at the competition at the same time, and I show them what their personality is right now. Sometimes that's surprising. Usually it's not. And then by looking at the competition and what I perceive their personality to be based on the same things, their social their website or newsletters, their packaging, show them, you know, are they do they have similar personality attributes to their competition? Does that make sense? Is there an opportunity to maybe get a little spicier or whatever it is, and stand out from the competition? That's usually where I start. Unless they don't exist yet and they're a blank slate. And then I start with some exercises.

10:48

That'll be fun to talk about those exercises in a minute. I love going through those exercises. I think it's important just to note something, a couple of basics about personality. So when we're talking about personality, we're not only talking about the visual side of things, we're talking about the tone and copy the tone and speaking and we're also talking about other ways that you can experience the brand. So that could be the way an environment is organized. That can be the way a trade show is set up that can go into things like sent even, or audio branding. So personality touches all of those and when you have a well defined personality, it helps to bring all of those things together in a nice cohesive way. So the scent feels right for the look and feel feels right for the retail environment or whether we're kind of environment you're walking through, and the tone of the words that are coming to you whether they're on a screen or on a page or their spoken all feels like it hangs together, just like our personality, right? So one of the other basics of personality is that when we're building them anyway, we're looking for qualities that you would use to describe a person that really helps us to get a handle on what the personality is. So for example, some people think, well, we want to be innovative is innovative, a personality attribute. I don't know about you, but I haven't ever met a person who I thought was innovative as a core aspect of who they were, they might be an innovative person. But that doesn't lead me to understand how they're going to dress, how they're going to talk. What does it mean to talk in an innovative way? I have no idea. Maybe somebody can do it, but I don't know if I want to meet that person. So those are just a couple of things to keep in mind when we're talking about personality is the reach of it. And the fact that it's really kind of grounded in human qualities. In the end, that's what makes the brand really relatable.

13:04

Yeah, so we usually land on you know, around five personality attributes. And another thing about a personality being well defined is that while there's usually a couple, one or two personality attributes that lead your personality, as a human, and also as a brand modulate if you're on social you might be more outgoing. You might be more upbeat, depending on which platform you might be, you know, more serious more incisive, you might, you know, be different when you're talking to your customers. You might be a little bit different when you're talking to your shareholders. And that's okay, we all do that. And the personality should be complex enough and well defined enough that it has the space to be to respond to different environments and needs.

13:59

So another thing that what you're saying brings up for me, Risa is is the fact that so much of our work starts with words and starts with definitions. And that might be surprising to people because while it extends to all kinds of things that are not visual, the visual part of it is so central, right? And it's kind of like, you know, describing yogurt without ever having tasted it. There's this need most of the time to begin with just you know, labeling what those qualities are that you're going for and providing some written definition. Obviously when you're doing the research to go back to what you're saying you're looking at visual stuff, but you're trying to start with words. And those words, if you get the right you know, definitions around them descriptions are what the visual designers and the writers can take to interpret and shape further. But it begins as these ideas first of all, and that's that's really kind of how we start and you know, I think we should probably post some examples, so people can take a look. Yeah, yeah.

15:16

And on a process know, if you're building a personality and you're often working alongside design team, you know, whether that's part of your own team or different firms that the clients brought in. Once you have the personality, you can kind of sell the design team to start their work. Everything on in a brand platform should inform the visual identity but that's what they really need to start.

15:46

So realizing that this could get kind of technical sounding kind of kind of quick here, and I'm just wondering you know, I'm realizing how technical this can get pretty quick. And it might be a good idea just to start with a intro exercise. That will put you into the personality mindset. So let's start with your own personality. Take a minute, get a sheet of paper. You don't have to do this now. But the idea is get a sheet of paper and then think about yourself. Think about all the situations that you've been in all the interactions you've had in trying to describe yourself and just list a bunch of words just put them down on paper. Are you energetic, outgoing? Private? What are those words? You know, put down as many as you can, you might find is pretty hard. And that only does the exercises that we're going to talk about next, but just to get you in the zone, just think about all the qualities that you have. And hopefully at a certain point, even if it's challenging, you realize wow, there's a there's a lot on this paper. And if I'm going to give this to somebody and say here, you know, here's me, it might be hard to sort you out from all those different qualities. So the next part of the exercise is to say, Okay, I've got whatever you know, a dozen, two dozen of these qualities listed. I'm going to pick three that really define me that at least I hope people pick up on more than the other ones. The more central to who I am, the more obvious whatever the case is. So circled.

17:39

You can also look at what you're not list you know, 10 personality traits that definitely do not describe you. Maybe describe someone that is off putting to you to like get it into your head. And then you know the opposite of that or you know something a little different than that can suggest a personality trait that strongly.

18:04

Yeah, that's a great point. So the bottom line is you've got all these different qualities and you have to choose, you have to choose because the idea or the thing that you're asking somebody to do and describing you is going to be too hard. If you have too many things to give them there. They can't focus. So you narrow it down. And this is what we do when we're working on a personality profile for a brand. And then you know write out what those mean. To you. Put a little definition by them. And then think about how and where in your life you would see that you know is are these things that come out when you're with your friends in top? Are these things that come out in your writing, if you write are these things that come out in the way you've organized your space, and the kinds of pictures that you choose to hang on your wall, in the clothes that are hanging in your closet. And that begins to give you an idea of how when we're describing or setting out what the qualities are. People want to know okay, well, where and how are these going to be expressed how we're going to use them? And so that's kind of roughly like what we're talking about right here. So part two of this exercise again, just to get you in the zone and think about your personal brand, if you will, is to set that aside. And then ask a friend of yours to run through the same exercise and see what they come up with. And they end up with the same words. The same ideas. If so great. Probably there's going to be a little bit of a gap there and that's going to be interesting thing for you to kind of work on or workout. So Discreet little, you know, palate cleanser, you know starting point for some of the exercises that we'll share. Coming right up digging into defining personality. Exercises are really handy. They're not actually where we start. We start by asking stakeholders for the brand for the company. What they think their qualities are, what their personality is, and like probably like you, when you did that exercise. You realize you know, it's not that easy. We're not really that Sure. Is there anything you can tell us to help us you know, get a handle on that. That's where the exercises come in. But we do want to year first of all, okay, you know what, what do you think you are? How do you think you are

20:36

where the overlap is right? The exact same the same qualities and Okay,

20:41

exactly. And what we're doing all this time is we're listing out all the words that people use, we're just gathering all those terms and some of the definitions and some

20:51

one thing I I do if I feel like the conversation is a little stunted, or people don't quite know where to begin or feel self conscious. As I have sort of buckets depending on the industry of quality types. And I'll start with those like humor. Are you funny? How funny Are you? Are you sarcastic? Are you silly? Are you you know fun loving, okay, that gets a conversation going. Are you cool? Are you How cool are you? Are you like untouchable, aspirational or are you more relatable, etc, etc. That can be a little nudge to get people talking.

21:32

Right? We're looking for nudges So next, we want folks to compare and contrast themselves to competitors. I'm going to be drawing on an example today for a pretty good sized video game company headquartered in Canada. And so when we're looking at competitors, we're showing them companies like EA Electronic Arts, which is a really big company, Riot Games, smaller companies located in different parts of the world that have some kind of relationship to them. Key for games. Nipple out of Korea Supercell companies like that if you care to look at them. And one thing I want to say just before we get into talking about this specific example is when you're a video game company or you're a company that produces a lot of content, like Disney, for example. What people are mainly going to associate you with are the personalities of your products, right, your movies, your games, and so on. So, the personality in this case where it's really valuable isn't necessarily for the general customer, because they're mainly relating to you through your products. It's for talent. It's for folks who are going to engage with you in ways that go beyond your product. So we ran through all these competitors with this particular company got a lot of interesting insights. And then we went to some exercises and again, we're just trying to give people some, some hooks to kind of relate to and one of the first exercises which is very common, and lots of companies use this. We're not sharing anything that's unique to ask by any means. This is what you know, brand strategist, pretty much everywhere will use is to ask. Alright, well if you could pick a an individual who is going to be your avatar, you think they have your qualities you look up to them you'd like to be like them. Who would that be? In this case this company picked Indiana Jones and what they were relating to there was the adventurous risk taking really smart, versatile, worldly accomplished quality. So we're noting down all those all those qualities, right? What we're basically doing is we're building a big Bible, of all these qualities, and then we're going to see what's emphasized what kind of relates to what else and how they kind of group. So that was exercise number one. And then we said okay, well, is there somebody in the company who really embodies these qualities? Oftentimes a leader of the company will have a lot to say about the company's personality, but not always. This particular company is very it's not real hierarchical. The leader definitely has a strong personality, but everybody has a voice in this company. This is a real slack driven company, by the way. And there was an individual who other folks thought really kind of represented the company well, and this individual was seen as engaging, positive, super helpful and generous. So we're noting that down now, think about it. The Indiana Jones example and this individual accompany had different qualities that were cited. And that's totally fine. We don't necessarily expect to see overlap. What we're looking for is groupings and sets of qualities at the end of the day, as Marissa said earlier, we want to lock on like three to five attributes that really anchor the personality and if there's a quality that's not grouped, you know, that's not one of those are really close to one of those. That doesn't mean you don't have it, that just means it's not one of the things that defines you. So, next exercise we asked, Well, imagine you're putting on an event for the company. What would that event be like what would really express the spirit of the company and people share different kinds of events one was actually like a space tourism event, which was kind of cool and really out of the box. I thought the entire company would love to be in a space vehicle partying above the earth. And the words that came out of that exercise were exhilarating, impromptu, comfortable, in a weird way, like making everybody feel comfortable. So we weren't expecting that. But that was one reason that they shared that experience, being very current and something that had a lot of movement,

26:24

just a cozy impromptu space.

26:30

Next thing we asked was okay, so imagine you know, we're doing a we're gonna do I'm making a kind of a video about all of you about your company to share with the world. at large. And we want to know, what's the soundtrack? What's the music that would go along with that? That's another window, right? Another source of insight into your tastes, your preferences, the way you want to come across, which is what we're talking about here. And in this case, I think the answer was like the Star Wars soundtrack or Guardians of the Galaxy was an even better example. Kind of heroic, you know, so happy, energetic positive, a little dangerous, exciting, powerful, but you know, a little bit of a tongue in cheek or down to earth twist, little sense of irony there. So, Totem this is one that always yields a lot. So if you you know, we're going to be represented by an animal or could turn into an animal. What would that animal be? what's your what's your brand Totem? If you will, and there were two, one I'm not going to mention because it's actually the name of the company, but the other one that came up was a beaver. So beavers are you know, very hard work.

Conversation with Cynthia Murnane

There are also five phases to the plan. So there needed to be extension logos that would support each of the five phases. So, when we look at things, three identities,

00:18

yeah, right, and the client, right, and the client loved one and the client chose one, which is great, pretty enthusiastically, too, doesn't always happen that way, but it's great when it does. So. So picking up on that, you know, clearly when we look at something visual, it has a personality we can tell things that make us feel down can tell things that have energy and so on. The questions I have have to do with how you shape that and how you control that right so when you think about well, I guess I mean like, is it possible? I think you probably were working from some idea what the personality was that you wanted to convey. But if someone said, hey, look, I don't really care about personality, just design stuff. Just make it pretty just make it whatever. Can you do that? Do you need personality?

01:10

There are lots of people out there who do okay. And I will say me personally, No, not anymore. And you know, I'm very deep in the work that you do, Eric and so as a strategist, connecting with that on the visual side is my absolute passion. Absolutely. What I think makes the very best identity for clients. So even if we don't have a formal personality that we're working with, for example, Danville we're not working with a formal personality that we've we've articulated. But in my mind, I have to put a personality together to be able to do the work. So I kind of listened between the and you know, listen carefully to conversations we've had I do my own research and I formulate some hypotheses that might inform different directions. Yeah.

02:07

Yeah. So that actually sets up an answer to something or because the answer something else I was gonna ask about, which is you know, how you go about developing a personality for a brand even informally. You kind of spelled it out there and a really nice short form. Let's go back to Danville. So is this little city, you know, located in southwest Virginia, and what were some of the things that you were striving for? How did you you know, what were the qualities you were trying to get across? And how do you decide those were the qualities you wanted to shoot for?

02:45

Well, some of the things that were in the sort of creative brief and formed it and they put forward quite a bit of pre research that they had done and collected quite a bit of information. And then I did quite a bit of looking online to see you know, I can't I'm not visiting. So I have the disadvantage of not being there in person, but I did everything I kind of could to get behind understand who that community was, because ultimately, we were speaking to residents. We want the residents to come out and engage with this plan and be a part of it. So it's really lives and as solid and as actionable and gets gets implemented correctly. So I tried to put my head in into like, what is the resonant of Danville? You know, who are they what's important to them and then of course, hearing from our team or what was important to them that they had said, so for example, one of the things that they had said was super important was to be very forward thinking and you heard that today, forward thinking and technologically advanced kind of having that sort of science for store, you know, more advanced kind of approach to what their city was going to look like in the future. So that's one piece. But then you also have to hear, be thinking about well, who are what, what are the qualities that exist now and what do they not want to lose? You know, so that kind of informed my approaches in terms of them being a close knit community and really valuing the environment that they were in, as well as where they want to be in the future. So not having a formal personality in this case, which probably would have narrowed down my choices. I was a little more broad, because I didn't have a formal personality to work with. I had to kind of think about what are possible personalities.

04:46

Yeah, what you do compared to what I do with personalities starts to seem like magic in a way. Like I get the same qualities that you do, and I'm trying to interpret how they sound and copy. And, you know, you just have a lot fewer cues when you're working with words than when you're working with colors and images and patterns and all those things. It's a pretty rich palette that you have. And so I was wondering a couple things I've always wondered this. So now I can ask you like if you let's say you have some qualities you've decided on, you know, the personality needs to be this, this and this and you're going to explore it right so you're gonna come up with options. Do you really start by saying Well, look, there are three different personalities I could have. It's kind of schizophrenic or I'm going to interpret the different qualities in different ways to come up with three different interpretations of it. That could be very different. And do you ever find I mean, we'll load too many questions on you. But do you ever find like you get when it's when it's formal, right when you developed a formal personality or probably more likely, in this case, when you get one from somebody? Do you ever say You know, I just, this is really hard, it's too broad or it's too specific, you know, so maybe you can separate my questions out, but they all have to do with that relationship between what's on paper or in your head, and what you ultimately translate it into and share with a client.

06:18

Well, first of all, I'd like to take a step back and say, I think that the the words that inform the personality are probably the most important part. Because even if I don't have a written description of what personality is, I have to think about those words and what what those words would be. But a brighter such as yourself, is able to give like a really beautiful translation into what those personality you know how those words should come out as a personality and grouping. And then what I would say is, that's the role of the strategist is to make sure that it's not too broad and it's not too narrow and the personality is is sort of just, if that makes sense. And so my best work is always when I get to work with you and you hand it off a person or other

07:09

strategist.

07:11

Well there's plenty of other Yeah,

07:12

sure. But I mean, yeah, we collaborate all the time

07:15

to work together and so and the you know, when when the personalities just right, it allows for that multiple interpretations because it's not too narrow or you know, it's narrow enough so I don't go too broad and I'm not coming out of left field. But I will say that the best scenario is when it's when it is evocative when there's enough cadence to it, and I get to do multiple interpretations of something narrow enough so that I know I'm sort of on target.

07:55

One thing I've wondered about is mood boards, and where they come into play, mood personality. They're similar words. And I don't know that I've always seen you use mood boards. I don't know if they're a big part of what you use or you use them sometimes but not others. Where do they fit into visual development and by extension, personality as a as a tool?

08:18

Well, they're a tool and I use them quite extensively and various various projects that they've had. I think that they're super helpful to help the client articulate what they're looking for. And so visually, you can put a palette together and say have three different mood boards that describe sometimes clients have a hard time with the translation of what a word would mean, right? You agree on the personality. So sometimes those mood boards can actually help them. You know, that I sometimes use carbs,

08:53

right, right. Yeah.

08:54

Do you an exercise I put a bunch of cards. I have tons of cards that are just abstract images, I put them out on a conference table and I make the clients pick and by doing that, they're actually picking the personality for me. So at least we're getting closer so we can then translate that to some words on a board or whiteboard or something and agree on four or five of those. So we have a place to start. So that's like a way of backing into personality without actually doing a formal personality exercise.

09:26

Yeah. Well, that's a great exercise too. And I, I mean, I've been with you when you've done that. And, yeah, they're picking things and they're responding to the most what they're seeing in the choices that they made. And that's where you get this sort of collection of words. And ideas that you can kind of group right, I mean, that's sort of the idea.

09:47

Yeah. So I think that there is really you know, I don't always use the visual tools to get out it like work, but I think they're totally great. And it's a great way to go to

09:59

when asked me about something else having to do with you know, one big area where personality plays which is color the use of color, right? I saw a brand guy that was done by a company that we're doing some other work for, and the strategist who's in House who's you know, obviously, you know, very competent, did something that I'm not used to doing and I guess I'm not comfortable doing I don't know that there's it's right or wrong, but she was explaining the choice of colors that the company was using by talking about what they symbolized. And it sounded like they were very absolute, like we're going to be blue because blue is this we're going to be yellow because yellow was this and I kind of thought like, Okay, I know there's a language of colors like there's a language of flowers, like there's a language of any other set of symbols you want to play with, but doesn't blue mean different things in different situations? Doesn't it mean something different when it's next to yellow? As opposed to next to green? Doesn't it mean something different? If it's really saturated or really pale? I mean, to what extent do colors come with sort of prepackaged personalities and to what extent are they what you make of them?

11:16

For sure. Um, well, you know, we have we have some clients where we've done that kind of exercise, at least one that I can think of or we've looked at a color meal, and we kind of thought about color that way, but I'm in your camp. I think that yes, there are some definitions out there about what a specific color is, for example, blue being very conservative, blue being thinking color, for example, and so forth. But I literally have done a bank in HR, all reds. And I think that there is no absolute because it is it is what's appropriate, back to your personality. What is the strategy behind the organization you're doing? The work for? And what kind of organization what is it that you want to express? How do you want that to come out? And I I'm just not a believer that there's, I believe in preconceived notions about colors, but I think you can change people's perception, and I absolutely agree with what you said like blue is one thing if you put it with a green depending on what even what kind of green right but if you put blue with red, it's like a fully other, not thing I do very often but you know it has a whole other energy to it and it means something different so the color itself isn't necessarily it. There's some so much more to it. Yeah.

12:40

That ties to something else I've been curious about. I'm wondering what your take is. I'm not sure I have a take yet. But I guess I'm sensing that personality is we're getting better at it. I think as a profession. I don't know that we're, you know, as far along as we could be in terms of understanding exactly what we're doing and explaining it well. But it seems like over the years we brought more detail to what we're a little bit more process a little bit more detail to what we're providing. I feel like when I put things together that you use, they have more in them than maybe they did 10 years ago. My sense also is that we're allowing for more flexibility or variety in personality the brands have like we're kind of understanding that you can have a wide range of moods or expressions and still be recognizable still be consistent in a way just like you know you can be out with some friends of yours from childhood, you know, talking smack and really doing things that you wouldn't really want to be seen doing or talking about in front of a client and it's still you right, so Are you sensing that there's more range and expression these days, or is that just me?

14:04

No, I think actually brands need to have a range of expressions, because they need to exist in different environments. If you think of like the online environment or say a tick tock or an Instagram, what you are there, making very different than your sort of everyday presence. As you talk to clients. And that's accepted. It's almost expected really, but you're going to have that different personality. So I think it has gotten a little bit more complex and the big companies big brands need that. That variety of different expressions that they put on. Yeah,

14:43

yeah, it's such a difference from like the ancient days, right, you know, back to the 80s and 90s, where it was about locking things down. I remember creative director who I think you know, as well, who I have a lot of respect for Alfredo Moo Chino, who was with an agency called liquid down and very big agency, very successful agency down in San Jose, saying, you know, what you really want is a consistency of spirit. You know, as opposed to a consistency of you know, exactly these colors exactly these words etc.

15:21

So, furthermore, I would say that that's why defining a brand platform all the way through all the pieces is super critical. Because then you know, kind of what's your the core, and where can you go from there. Can you be this right? Can you be this far left? Can you be this far right? You know, like we're Where are you and what what is appropriate for you what makes sense and is genuine.

15:48

Yeah, you know, something else that I think it's really interesting that this phrase is is kind of I guess, in a way, I think that guidelines have gotten kind of looser, I think I've seen you, you know, certainly we as a firm have created situations where we're doing so much but then we're bringing it to the client and we're kind of saying, hey, it's not like fall within these lines. We're saying, Hey, here's some, you know, suggestions, almost like serving suggestions, you play with it, you figure out where it can go. I think the Henry Ford is a great example of that. They've evolved all kinds of interesting things on their own that kind of push the limits but consciously do so. You know, and as long as they're aware, and they're skillful about it, they can evolve the brand personality on their own, you know, in really interesting ways and create unexpected things using the toolkit that you know, we might never have guessed that right. So

16:50

I think in house teams play a really great role. There's so many talented people on those in house teams, and they were different for different groups was a weakened set. You know what I do being a consultant, I can come in and set up the like you said the toolkit, but there's so many talented people now very different than when I started in my career. It was a more limited pool of people. Now there are lots of talented people out there. And it is really actually I think, almost necessary that they are given enough leeway to be able to develop the ideology about in its own with the company itself. Yeah, versus a consultant coming in and, and dictating that, every now and then you get a client where they're asking for very strict rules. And I think that that's typically when they don't have a very big team. And they don't they really don't have the bandwidth to think about it. They just need a prescription.

17:49

Right? Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, so we're moving

17:53

to sounds okay, too, because, because there's different you know, different levels of need, and that's, that is perfectly acceptable.

18:05

Yeah, I mean, they're really in many areas. There are no hard and fast rules about what guidelines should be or what they should even contain because it comes down to as you say, the culture that you're interacting with and the resources available to create stuff and manage it. So yeah, that's great. I'm just wondering as we kind of wrap up and get ready for dinner. If you were kind of looking out at personalities that are interesting. Do you see any anything I don't know just maybe even from your recent work where you thought that's really distinctive? I think it's worth noting anything out there that you've seen lately

18:50

and I see brands all the time that I yeah,

18:53

I'm putting on the spot. If you don't have any answer, you know, that this this part won't be you know.

19:01

This is this is where I always fail and then in the later I think of 20,

19:05

exactly. What is that like? That like slow retrieval thing that we have? I was in a situation like that the other day too, you know, but

19:15

you know, recently this is gonna sound funny, but recently I saw on brand new, which is a blog that I follow, you may follow it to a rebranding of m&ms, and they brought m&ms They took it, it was kind of dusty and, you know, ordinary does some good chocolates. And they have totally revitalized it. And I don't know if this answers your question, but they took kind of a modern retro kind of feel to it and they did all these super cool things with it. And they made it sort of relevant to diversity that's going on today and an energy current energy and almost gave it like a flower child but like flower power of today. So that was just one thing that comes to mind. What after we get off this call, think of plenty other things, but yeah, yeah. But I think, you know, the ones that I have always paid attention to are brands that continue to evolve and revitalize you know, the brands that don't stay the same but just as you were saying stay true to spirit, but just keep evolving. It's so cool to see how they do that. Those are the interesting. Yeah, there's always a core theme

20:33

can be really delightful to when you encounter them on the shelf. You know, personality I found really interesting lately as Monster Energy maybe because I've taken to drinking them from time to time, which is not a good sign. But it's such a crazy I mean, like there's this really aggro streak in, in energy drinks. And so some of what's expected in that category. You know, Monster Energy represents pretty well but the language is so predatory. I realized like, and maybe this is true for other drinks too, but I'm like, really dialed into it with monster like this is a drink that's targeted for a gamer and the personality is designed to really respond to a sort of aggressive predatory combative mindset. You know, it's just, it doesn't beautifully, you know, it's a it's an interesting personality. So, anyway,

21:34

if we were had one takeaway it was, it would be that like, whatever that personality is, I think that's why it's so important to define it because you want to be something that nobody else is, right? You can have values that maybe other companies have and values are not what we're talking about here but that personality layering that on is what is super distinct and there's only you you know, there may be a couple of other brands who share similar thing but so you that you then get to play with that and amplify it and that is I love seeing that in a brand

22:08

which the most you like unique thing in your wardrobe or in your style. We're all like if if someone were to say whoa Cynthia that is so you and so weird or so offbeat or so. So not anybody else that you have any any like clothing item or fashion item that does

22:26

actually I love Superwoman bracelets. I haven't big Well, no, you haven't really even seen me wear them. That's over time, but I guess I'm true to form because I recently bought one, like bracelets that are more like cuff bracelets and silver and that kind of thing. But recently I was visiting my son in Idaho. And there was in India I needed one that was

22:50

like a cuff and I had to have like I had to have it. It just belong to me.

22:55

And whenever I'm home and I told my husband this is what you're buying me for Christmas. He's like, Of course I am.

23:03

It is absolutely you so

23:06

anyway, that's awesome.

23:08

It's first of all,

23:09

it is like that is

23:11

it on and it's uniquely you.

23:14

Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm glad we could chat. It's been great. We could keep on but you know, we'll be seeing each other and working on personality further soon. Absolutely. by Cynthia thanks.