00;00;06;23 - 00;00;32;29
Speaker 1
Hi. Welcome to Dig In the podcast brought to you by Dig Insights. Every week we interview founders, marketers and researchers, from innovative brands to learn how they're approaching their role and their category in a clever way. Hi, welcome back to Dig In. I have an awesome sort of lifelong agency person with me today. We've got Sue Gillmeister joining.

00;00;33;08 - 00;00;37;26
Speaker 1
She's an SVP of planning at Havas. Thank you so much for joining us today.

00;00;38;09 - 00;00;39;19
Speaker 2
Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

00;00;40;11 - 00;01;05;23
Speaker 1
Today, we're going to talk the fundamentals of brand strategy, which is I mean, we've done a lot of stuff around market research, which is obviously our bread and butter at Digg. But a lot of the time we're speaking to people on the brand side or, you know, on the more classic marketing side. So I think this is going to be really useful because you've got so much like a wealth of experience working in this area.

00;01;06;03 - 00;01;09;11
Speaker 1
So why don't you tell me a little bit about your background?

00;01;10;13 - 00;01;22;14
Speaker 2
Well, it's funny when you said I spent my whole life in strategies and say, well, not my first 20 years, but the reality is I'm the daughter of a creative director. So my dad talked ads my entire childhood. So I.

00;01;22;14 - 00;01;23;05
Speaker 1
Can imagine.

00;01;23;21 - 00;01;49;11
Speaker 2
Yeah, he just drank a little bit less. But I spent my entire life in advertising and fascinated by what's behind it. And, you know, I know that you're a literature student. My undergraduate degree is in English literature. And it's that's the meaning behind what's being said, which is the fundamental of advertising. Communication is like the short story really short in a lot of times.

00;01;49;11 - 00;02;12;10
Speaker 2
But it's that level of packing it in and I got it. And when you think about and I'm again doing the academic, highbrow for the for the the master's in English person over here but it's a short story it's somewhat times harder to write that than a novella or a novel because you've got to pack so much. Yeah, we are into a short period of time.

00;02;12;10 - 00;02;32;10
Speaker 2
Well, imagine in advertising when you're doing a print ad or a 32nd TV commercial, it has to have a story because people remember stories don't remember facts. So it is sort of making sure that you get the really pithy, resonating human truth in there that you can tell a story.

00;02;33;10 - 00;03;00;15
Speaker 1
That's so true. I think that's what I love about marketing as well, is the story element and figuring out manipulation is such a dirty word, but figuring out how you can sort of manipulate something or position something in such a way that it can open people's mind or make them more likely to do something if that means like that is something that I find really interesting.

00;03;01;19 - 00;03;29;26
Speaker 2
And you know, it is true technically, but it's not I don't use the word manipulation because I think what it is about connecting on an absolute human level, and I think that that's you're not living, then you are actually having people say, I'm not buying a product or a service or whatever it is that is or even an idea change because public service is often idea change that they're advertising.

00;03;30;10 - 00;03;59;09
Speaker 2
But you are you are finding something that connects with how you feel. So, you know, the old I think it's Maya Angelou, but one of those attributed to everyone quotes is that people remember how you made them feel. Yeah, that what advertising should do, It should make you feel and you feel you act on that feeling and you remember that feeling and if that's manipulation, then people who love you manipulate you.

00;03;59;09 - 00;04;00;16
Speaker 2
People like.

00;04;01;28 - 00;04;22;09
Speaker 1
That. Yeah. No, I, I don't necessarily like, I don't if I rounded that point out because I don't see it as a negative. Like, I see that ability to position something around a human truth. A lot of people, I guess, would think of not think of that. But advertising can get a bad rap like it can come off as.

00;04;23;01 - 00;04;51;15
Speaker 1
But you're completely right. Like it's about getting someone to sort of access a feeling. Some of the best advertising is all about nostalgia and how it sort of I mean, I think about the the Christmas ads in the UK. They're all about like the John Lewis ad. I don't know if you're familiar with those ads, but they're all about sort of taking you back to a feeling that you get around Christmas or about Christmas.

00;04;51;25 - 00;04;55;03
Speaker 1
So I totally agree with you. I think it doesn't have to be a negative.

00;04;55;18 - 00;05;17;17
Speaker 2
Well, even think back to the drama, the just what's his name, the apple. He was he was Mac and the PC was some dweeby guy. Yeah. And what that did more than anything else was not Yes, it sold Apple, but it made technology accessible to people who thought they couldn't be accessible. Technology like Apple was much more user friendly.

00;05;17;25 - 00;05;40;15
Speaker 2
It made people think that I could have a laptop, which I know sounds ridiculous to say now, but that was 15 years ago. Yeah, but. But people who thought a computer is is. That's too much for me. Don't give me that. Or an iPad or whatever it was. It made technology seem approachable. And whether you ultimately get a mac and then have enough confidence that you think you could manage a cheaper PC or whatever.

00;05;41;08 - 00;06;05;13
Speaker 2
It's an enabling thing, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It gets people, you know, to it to advance. I mean, the famous now and every famous quote I know, but but I think and marketing is what advances civilization. I mean, Henry Ford is famous for saying if we'd ask people what they wanted, they would have said faster, faster horses.

00;06;06;24 - 00;06;27;29
Speaker 2
They had to come up with something that they realized was, you know, it would be easy to say, no, that's all right. That looks very, very, very complicated. I don't want that. I just want to I just want a better horse. And advertising is what convince people that that is what they want it. It's now and even more so in 2022, when there are way more products than you could ever keep track on.

00;06;28;13 - 00;06;42;26
Speaker 2
Advertising is how you understand what is available and what could make your life easier. So, I mean, sometimes it's just straight wants, but getting your wants often makes you feel good about yourself and who doesn't need that?

00;06;42;26 - 00;06;49;00
Speaker 1
So what is your so where have you worked? What's your what's been your background? Are you always been on the agency side?

00;06;49;28 - 00;07;06;19
Speaker 2
I have always been on in the service business. I did market research for a while, so that but that was an agency as well. So it was still within clients and provide it. And it was more strategy consulting through market research. So always been on the agency side, except for my short stint with the NHL early in my career.

00;07;06;19 - 00;07;15;20
Speaker 2
But no, it's always been agency side and it's always been driven by that fascination with storytelling.

00;07;16;14 - 00;07;25;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, amazing. And is there anything sort of unique about your current role? Let me try this again. I'd have us. Have us.

00;07;26;27 - 00;07;44;05
Speaker 2
Well, different for me, probably not unique, but I work and hundred percent in health care. And if you're like me 20 or 30 years ago that, you know, I could work on a health care brand because really when I started in advertising, I wanted to work on Coke and I wanted to work on.

00;07;44;12 - 00;07;44;27
Speaker 1
Writing.

00;07;45;01 - 00;08;10;01
Speaker 2
To you and I wanted to work on beer, Molson or Labatt and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, health care didn't seem that exciting. So and, you know, everyone is quick to say, I'd never take any of those drugs. They spend 30 seconds telling me all the things that could go wrong. But it's not just TV advertising and it's still connecting with people.

00;08;10;07 - 00;08;30;29
Speaker 2
So what I've realized over the course of working on the fun brands, different the brands that my friends would say, Oh, wow, you work on that. That's so cool too. The more functional and then to health care is, regardless of what you're selling, you have the same audience and I'm saying the same audience. And everybody is a human being at this point.

00;08;31;17 - 00;08;52;28
Speaker 2
You know, we're not selling to maybe we will in the future and I'll have to tell a different story. But yeah, we're selling to human beings and whether your somebody with cancer, somebody with eczema, a doctor treating somebody with eczema, a surgeon, an ER doc who is, you know, saving lives on a regular basis, you are a human.

00;08;52;28 - 00;09;28;23
Speaker 2
So what resonates with humans resonates with you and the same principles as selling laundry detergent in terms of understanding those universal human truths, the specific human truths that pertain to your interaction with that category, and then the specific ones that pertain to your interaction with that product. It's all the same human understanding. And I think when you start thinking that, well, they're a patient, they must be different.

00;09;29;02 - 00;09;46;04
Speaker 2
First of all, nobody, unless you're actually on your deathbed in a hospital, No. One describe yourself as a patient. If you have a doctor, your patient goes around saying, yeah, you know, you're all these other things. I'm a patient, too. Yeah, you are. But you wouldn't describe yourself as that. So you're still a person. Like that's who you identify with.

00;09;46;12 - 00;10;11;17
Speaker 2
But every doctor is a person as well, just because that's their profession and they may identify as that they're still a person. So if you can connect with people and understand that need to internalize that, that human quest for understanding and making things make sense is true in every context.

00;10;11;17 - 00;10;50;19
Speaker 1
Definitely. I mean, I think that's a really, really important point, especially given you've worked in so many different industries. And I'm wondering how that how that works into sort of the way that you form campaigns or the way that you attempt to or the way that you do sort of research into consumers. I'm like, do you have to adopt anything when it comes to health care from what you might have done from a strategy perspective for more of sort of a classic like FMCG or CPG industry?

00;10;52;02 - 00;11;16;04
Speaker 2
Well, from a research standpoint, you have to be way more empathetic because someone who can't get stains out of their clothes and they need a better laundry product is even though they identify with I'm a good mom and my kids always look clean and I don't worry that they smell chocolate chocolate. Now those are all important, but very few people are going to start to cry about it.

00;11;16;23 - 00;11;17;03
Speaker 1
Right.

00;11;17;18 - 00;11;42;19
Speaker 2
And or, you know, so the stakes are so much higher and there's so much more personal in health care. So but, you know, nobody compares someone's their disease to someone else's. So whether it's a terminal disease or a chronic disease that you feel has limited your options in life, that level of understanding that this is one of the more important things in your life is really, really important.

00;11;43;00 - 00;12;04;05
Speaker 2
And, you know, not to take for granted. I mean, they can assume that if I'm speaking to them that I probably don't have terminal cancer, whereas when I was interviewing people with laundry issues, they could very safely assume that I had a I also couldn't get the grape juice out. So you have to have that that greater level of empathy and willingness to hear their story.

00;12;04;05 - 00;12;30;09
Speaker 2
But you're a researcher, you know that that's what people want to do. They want their story. So it's a greater level of empathy. But you've got to walk that line between making sure that you're empathetic and not seeming like you're pitying because you're going to lose some. And if you lose the connection, even in the research setting, you're not going to get that that pithy, crystallized insight that's going to help you reach people, that person and people like them.

00;12;30;29 - 00;12;51;24
Speaker 2
So it's I think it's I think there's two things in health care. It's a it's a greater level of difficulty because you're talking about things that are difficult to talk about. And the stakes are so much higher. You know, worse comes to worse. You buy a new white blouse, you don't get a new organ if, if, if there's a problem.

00;12;51;24 - 00;13;20;01
Speaker 2
Yeah. So it's but it's really important to remember that there's still people and they still are motivated by the things that motivate people. And you just have to look at those elements and, you know, the old Maslow's hierarchy of needs pertains to everything and you got to deliver on the basic ones. But most times when you're advertising, you're going for those higher order needs, which are harder to identify, but so much more important.

00;13;20;29 - 00;13;45;05
Speaker 2
And you know, I made the joke about if you if you if after she makes you want something and you get it, you feel good, this is to take that away from certain ability of purpose. But if everything convinces you that there's a treatment that can make you feel better and it does, even providing hope, that's a really big thing.

00;13;45;06 - 00;13;50;23
Speaker 2
It's even bigger than the neighbors will be really impressed by my new car.

00;13;50;23 - 00;14;08;04
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's such. That's such an interesting point. I didn't even think about that. Just like the the value that that could bring to someone's life where it's not just the hope, but then it's also like when it does work, that's really, really cool.

00;14;08;20 - 00;14;23;18
Speaker 2
And the thing to remember too, is and in Canada we have a public health care system and most people can get access to a doctor. So if they have a question, then they don't. You know, they're trying to self diagnose or figure out their solution. They can ask their doctor. Yeah, in the US.

00;14;24;14 - 00;14;24;29
Speaker 1
The different.

00;14;25;19 - 00;14;49;10
Speaker 2
But different models for access. And a lot of times those and I'm sure everyone's seen the U.S. ads talk to your doctor about that is often that wakeup call to say this may not be normal and more importantly that this may be fixable. Maybe I should invest in going to see a doctor. So, you know, it is not pharma self-serving.

00;14;49;10 - 00;15;14;08
Speaker 2
It is actually pharma trying to make health outcomes better for more people. So so I mean, again, I'm not trying to say I've always been noble and now that I'm doing a health care advertising, I'm even more noble. But I think it's important to remember it's an information source. And if you can connect with people and make it relevant to them, it's a powerful and important information.

00;15;14;08 - 00;15;14;18
Speaker 2
Source.

00;15;16;09 - 00;15;46;06
Speaker 1
Yeah, no, very good point. I, I want to bring this back to this idea of the fundamentals of brand strategy. So we've talked about sort of what's unique about health care brand work or health care marketing, what is sort of the same across the board. So when we think about the work that you've done across so many different industries, what does it mean to create a brand strategy?

00;15;46;06 - 00;16;11;02
Speaker 2
Because you know, it is it it is a theme across everything. And you'll hear this nonsense for me because I didn't invent it. And it's in the principles of strategy in most business school courses, that kind of stuff. I mean, the first thing is you have to look at culture because what was important in different periods of time is less important other periods of time.

00;16;11;02 - 00;16;34;01
Speaker 2
So you need to understand what is going on in the world and what is important. I remember one of my first bosses in advertising when people would do the I don't watch TV sort of, you know, I'm above all that. She'd say, Well, then I'm not going to hire you because TV reflects the culture. And now I understand popular cultural culture.

00;16;34;08 - 00;16;59;13
Speaker 2
You can understand what's going on with people because media reflects culture, and culture reflects media. And, you know, they they become back and forth and they're entrenched. So the first thing is you have to and I going to quote that same boss, be a student of life, you have to listen to popular music. You have to understand the nostalgia part of old music.

00;16;59;22 - 00;17;17;24
Speaker 2
You've got to watch movies, you've got to watch TV shows, you've got to watch stuff. That's not just the stuff that you like. You know, if everybody's talking about Wednesday, which is on my list to watch, I don't think it's targeted to me, but I need to watch it because I can't pick up my phone without seeing her dance.

00;17;18;01 - 00;17;43;06
Speaker 2
And there has to be more of that. And so you've got to know what's going on in the world. And that is not in the world of health care or the world of computers or the world of cars or the world of soft drinks, if that's what you're working on. It is the world. You need to know what's happening, what's important, because that is the the setting for, you know, everything that's going on.

00;17;43;06 - 00;17;52;29
Speaker 2
It is, you know, again, I got to go back to literature when you but when you do period literature, the first thing they teach you is this is the general politics and sociological conditions of the.

00;17;52;29 - 00;17;54;10
Speaker 1
Time, the context.

00;17;54;23 - 00;18;22;16
Speaker 2
Because that's the context for advertising and that's where it works. So that's the number one thing. And so you would look at the culture, but you've got to drill down to the one cultural insight that relates to your targets interaction, involvement with your product. So then the next thing you look at is, is the category. What else is out there?

00;18;24;00 - 00;18;45;11
Speaker 2
Who else? What are they saying? Is there a white space? You know, sometimes you can just watch. I'll read all the read all the print ads, watch all the TV ads and figure out, well, there's nothing over here. There's nothing that's promising this. And knowing where that white space is is really, really important, you know, because you want to be a little bit different.

00;18;45;11 - 00;19;08;09
Speaker 2
You know, nobody if you're are the same, then people will pick the thing that they've always picked. Then you look at the human and then, yes, the human interacts with all of this. But what is that basic human need? Again, tons of them. What's the one that's relevant to this therapeutic area if they're in health care or or this product area, this interaction with the product, What is relevant for them?

00;19;08;09 - 00;19;31;06
Speaker 2
What's the human need that hits them? And then you look at the brand and you look at what the brand offers. And if you can not if you can, this is strategy because the bottom line strategy is making difficult choices. We would all like to be the product for all people at all times. But you can't because if you're you know, if you're for everybody, you're for No.

00;19;31;06 - 00;20;04;12
Speaker 2
One. So you make those hard choices. You find the cultural insight that is going to anchor your strategy. You find the human insight that is relevant to the cultural insight they connect and applicable to your brand. You look at what the category is saying and some of that's points of entry, so you can't ignore all of it. But where after the price of entry is or space and you look at where the brand is and if you divide to draw those four concentric circles, your strategy lives in the center of that.

00;20;04;27 - 00;20;33;09
Speaker 2
It's where it's founded in the culture. It's founded in a a meaningful human insight. It's relevant to the category and it's supported by the brand and when you can do that, that's that's where the magic happens. And it's a lot of circles in a lot of places. You can find a really brilliant human insight that runs through everything that is not remotely relevant to your brand.

00;20;33;09 - 00;20;56;14
Speaker 2
And you've got to move to the to the other thing. And you think about it as human beings. We there's many other, many areas that stimulate us. So it's not like there's one insight. You've got to nail that. And in fact, I would say in the early days of advertising strategy as a form of discipline, which would be the late eighties, the nineties, they tended to look for universally universal insights and hang everything on that.

00;20;56;14 - 00;21;20;12
Speaker 2
Like women are time starved and everything was about how convenience was the key now scratching the surface. That's not you know, that's not that deep level. What does it mean in this situation if you can get into that too, due to what really is driving that, then I can say the strategy writes itself. But there's that moment of, oh my God, it closes.

00;21;20;18 - 00;21;43;25
Speaker 2
That means. And then you pressure test that and you know, you you never go back and and ask your consumers, is this the right strategy? But you find other ways to do it. You have conversation with them to see if that's where they lead leads you to like that seems to resonate them. And you can certainly test the strategy in other ways than writing it out.

00;21;43;25 - 00;21;59;22
Speaker 2
You don't show them the concentric circles and say die nail, because that will that makes people feel they are being manipulated. And they and it's not that they're being manipulated. It's the same way because we're in the health care world. It's the same way they take all your test your lab results and triangulate that to figure out what it what disease you have.

00;22;00;02 - 00;22;27;14
Speaker 2
We're taking all the different test results trying to look for because it's not triangulating, but getting to that point where you bring everything together and you find that sweet spot and it's an art. It's not a science, but there's a lot of numbers behind it that feed into the art, which, you know, gets to. And now I'm going to quote David Ogilvy is how you use research and you cannot do strategy without research.

00;22;27;14 - 00;22;55;08
Speaker 2
Everything is founded on what you know or don't know, and that is in your cultural insight and your human insight, your category insight. It's in your brand insight. So you need to know that you can support everything you're saying. So when you take that leap of faith about why these are the for that matter, it's strongly supported. So when you're saying you mostly talk to brand people and I love brand people, they're all my clients, but I'm usually want more research than they do.

00;22;55;28 - 00;22;56;09
Speaker 1
Right?

00;22;56;26 - 00;23;17;16
Speaker 2
Because the more that it's sort of, the more you know, the more you can guess because, you know, because if you can't get to a the research will tell you the answer in the data of what it's going to say is you have to be careful to avoid using research the way a drug use the lamppost. You heard that one?

00;23;17;24 - 00;23;21;02
Speaker 1
No, I haven't heard that.

00;23;21;02 - 00;23;22;16
Speaker 2
So I was.

00;23;22;16 - 00;23;23;29
Speaker 1
Like a crutch essentially.

00;23;24;08 - 00;23;26;00
Speaker 2
For support versus elimination.

00;23;26;11 - 00;23;26;22
Speaker 1
Right.

00;23;27;01 - 00;23;50;12
Speaker 2
So you use research to shine a light on all this stuff that you don't know. And I spend 90% of my day looking at something saying, oh, my God, that's really interesting. Why? I'm like a two year old. Why, why, why, why, why, why, why? And when you get to find out why, there's that aha moment when you know, you know, when you get to the end of the whys.

00;23;50;12 - 00;24;00;05
Speaker 2
But that is, you know, you cannot do strategy without if you do strategy for that research, you're just too great a writer. You may be a really good creative writer, but you're not a strategist.

00;24;01;07 - 00;24;27;09
Speaker 1
I mean, thank you for that. That's I honestly, if I wasn't actually asking the questions, I would have taken a pen and paper out to write that down, because I think the way that you describe that is really, really helpful. I'm just wondering, when you talk about the strategy, how does that relate to to say, your client needs like a messaging framework that goes along with the strategy?

00;24;27;09 - 00;24;40;02
Speaker 1
So you've got that human insight in the center or the strategy in the center, sorry, Like how does that ladder down or ladder up to other activities? I don't know if that's a very clear question.

00;24;40;02 - 00;24;58;24
Speaker 2
I have to do that, too. So what's the overarching strategy? That's your North Star. That is what everything should be leading to. And you've got to get your client, your creative team, everybody to hold hands on that and say, yes, we're going for that. So that is always at the top of your message architecture.

00;24;58;24 - 00;24;59;20
Speaker 1
But. Right.

00;24;59;21 - 00;25;26;29
Speaker 2
Okay. In that there's claims throughout there and you know, every brand uses different I mean, we all talk about being single minded and single mind is delivering that ultimate feeling. But it's also focusing on, you know, I'm going to take car ads because or car marketing because most people have seen a car ad, you've got TV ads that just give you that sort of thrill of driving.

00;25;26;29 - 00;26;06;13
Speaker 2
And isn't it beautiful, sort of idea? And then you've got the print ads that will talk about the anti-lock braking or, you know, or the superior. No, no, I don't even know enough about engines, but superior mechanically in the car. Then you'll have something else that may be a whole thing on safety in the car. So. So what you end up doing is and so in a car you would have your overarching whatever that Northstar was, but then you would have the technical messaging, which is about how it how it performs and why it performs your safety story, which is how many crash test dummies were sacrificed to make this car safe.

00;26;06;26 - 00;26;30;29
Speaker 2
You'll have the design features, you know, where you get you get to talk about how many coffee cups there actually are, like way more than people you could ever have in your car. And and then, you know, so you have all these different message areas. And the thing is message architecture. You know, you've got the foundation, which often is kind of the hierarchy of needs thing.

00;26;31;06 - 00;26;46;11
Speaker 2
The basic reason, like the product attribute that supports that. Then on top of that message, you've got the, the, the functional benefit, you know that right?

00;26;46;11 - 00;26;49;09
Speaker 1
And then would it go to emotional benefits?

00;26;49;10 - 00;26;50;08
Speaker 2
Emotional benefit?

00;26;50;11 - 00;26;50;21
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;26;51;21 - 00;27;29;13
Speaker 2
And then it's sort of the way in like why you make that important, you know, so bad example on the Cupholders there are 16 cupholders in this vehicle that seats five people. And so the functional benefit is your coffee cup is not going to spill on you and distract you while driving because that's where it came from. I mean, if you were holding your cup or balancing it, you don't have two hands in the will or it spills and you're either scolded or you're worried about the fact that your coffee is now leaking into the engineering of your car.

00;27;29;26 - 00;28;00;22
Speaker 2
So what's the functional benefit is your coffee will not spill the emotional benefit is probably twofold that you're confident that you're not going to get into an accident while dealing with your coffee. But also it's like being at home. Yeah, and the higher level sort of way in is probably something along the lines of you spend 4 hours in, you know, 20 hours a week in your car shouldn't, you know, I'm not doing car am I.

00;28;00;22 - 00;28;08;23
Speaker 1
Like now putting you in now you're basically just coming up with a strategy for a car company, why a messaging framework.

00;28;09;26 - 00;28;36;12
Speaker 2
Is going to even the messaging framework, the car has its own story. But if but I don't know. We didn't start with what that Northstar is. But the Northstar if you know if okay I'll take BMW is where it I mean there's tagline is the ultimate driving machine but but it gets to the fact that there is no other car like this and for some people the cupholders will be part of that story and so there will be there will be that element of it.

00;28;36;27 - 00;28;39;26
Speaker 2
Hopefully it won't be what sells it on them. You know, I've got this great car and.

00;28;41;12 - 00;28;43;24
Speaker 1
I don't only reason I bought it was for the Cupholders.

00;28;44;04 - 00;29;08;18
Speaker 2
But, but you, but you have to have all of those mats. It cleans within that because different media has different claims and you know and claims re claims are also in customer brochure is on the packaging like they go through everything so the claims all have to ladder down but you know it you have to be to go from the top and from the bottom.

00;29;08;18 - 00;29;22;15
Speaker 2
But where we like to go from strategy is start with the strategy. Because if you start at the bottom and start with the product attributes and build your way up, then you're creating a need for your product.

00;29;22;23 - 00;29;23;13
Speaker 1
Right?

00;29;23;23 - 00;29;55;06
Speaker 2
If you start with those human insights about why it's important, like even on the Cupholders, just the idea that you spend so much time there, it should feel like somewhere you want to be coming from the ultimate drive machine. Because I'm not promoting BMW, but it's but when you start there, then you were saying to people, you're missing something, you have a problem, we can solve it versus I've made this product and I think you should buy it.

00;29;55;06 - 00;30;18;22
Speaker 2
Yeah. And clearly, well, this is it. Clearly the product was made first kid in. Everything is never made first. But a lot of really great product innovation comes exactly that way. Apple is looking for white space all the time and then thinking, you know, a computer's too big, a phone is too small, let's have a tablet. That's where that comes from.

00;30;19;13 - 00;30;40;12
Speaker 2
So, you know, the iPod came from the fact that the Walkmans a great idea, but it's way too big and way too limited because you can listen to one cassette because you're not going to walk around with 12. What are we can store all this music on it, you know, So great products come from the top down as well, right?

00;30;40;12 - 00;30;48;07
Speaker 2
You know, if they build it, they will come. Is not really true. Well, I guess it is in that case, because he established that everybody wanted it. So it was.

00;30;48;15 - 00;30;48;23
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;30;49;19 - 00;30;58;09
Speaker 2
But people don't buy products. They look to fulfill needs and sometimes they don't know what that need is.

00;30;59;09 - 00;31;22;13
Speaker 1
Yeah, 100%. I mean, this what you talked about BMW, we've talked about Apple. Are there any like recent brands that you've come across or even just a really smart campaign that you've come across where you think like, wow, they really got it? Like they nailed that human insight.

00;31;22;13 - 00;31;33;01
Speaker 2
You know, And it does the sad thing to say is a lot of the ones that that I would suggest they really nailed it are smaller campaigns.

00;31;33;29 - 00;31;34;09
Speaker 1
Okay.

00;31;34;25 - 00;31;45;09
Speaker 2
That people may not have seen. So I use them as examples. They're going I don't know if I saw that, but because they have smaller budgets, they have to make it harder.

00;31;45;09 - 00;31;47;03
Speaker 1
They've had to be scrappier.

00;31;47;03 - 00;31;57;07
Speaker 2
So I'll pick Canadian one that it's won awards globally that you may not have seen if you seen the Harley-Davidson tough turban, no campaign.

00;31;57;07 - 00;31;59;23
Speaker 1
So we'll we'll include it in the show notes. We can link to it.

00;32;00;07 - 00;32;22;12
Speaker 2
Okay. So it was developed in Canada, but so you have to wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle in Canada. That's a law in some other place. It's just a really strong recommendation. But if you're Sikh, you have to wear a turban at all times. You can not get a helmet to safely fit your head and wear the turban.

00;32;22;29 - 00;32;57;25
Speaker 2
So you're forced to decide between maintaining your religious beliefs or maintaining the rules of your religious beliefs. Yeah. Or choosing to ride without a helmet or to ride a motorcycle. But what if you really want to ride a motorcycle and you're really, really strongly believing that you are going to uphold the turban rule? So Harley Davidson developed a turban and it's it really is a thing that is made out of that is a helmet.

00;32;58;06 - 00;33;18;27
Speaker 2
It's a turban now, but it provides all the protection of a helmet. So it fits the legal requirement and more importantly, it fits the safety requirement. And it is a turban helmet and it's branded tough turban. And so I wish I loved the ad so much. And you should you should go watch it.

00;33;19;06 - 00;33;20;03
Speaker 1
Yeah, check it out.

00;33;22;03 - 00;33;48;13
Speaker 2
But it's the but people said to me when I said how much I loved it, they said, I think there's that many Sikh motorcycle enthusiasts like how big is that market? But it's not average. I mean, yes, this is a great thing. But what this says is Harley-Davidson is dedicated to the motorcycle enthusiast and we'll do everything in our power to make it the most.

00;33;48;23 - 00;34;09;10
Speaker 2
So for someone who is Sikh, it's a tough turban, but it tells you more about the company and their approach, you know, their passion for motorcycles. You know, I don't know how much you know about motorcycles, but a bit much less for me. But I do know that they drive the Harley will go to the Harley Davidson store in any city they are to get the Yankees.

00;34;09;19 - 00;34;42;22
Speaker 2
Then Los Angeles, Prague, Berlin shirt. So it's important to them. But the bigger message isn't the unmet need wasn't simply of yeah riders need it is we want to be the brand that is for all motorcycle enthusiasts and that's how they did it. The other one that was talked about a ton about a year and a year ago is remember the now I'm going to Lord I think it's extra the gun commercial where it was all about when it's excelled yet is excel.

00;34;42;25 - 00;34;44;25
Speaker 1
Yeah yeah I know what you're talking about you.

00;34;44;25 - 00;35;04;10
Speaker 2
Know it was a whole when we all came out of isolation and it's all the people coming out and it's a couple running and kissing because of course gum has lived on fresh breath for kissing for years. And when there's two years of you weren't kissing too many strangers or to be that this was the big freedom thing.

00;35;04;10 - 00;35;21;24
Speaker 2
And it got so much hype and it was an every award show. And every time I looked at it, I thought, yeah, it's got to important cultural insight. You know, that when we get out, we're going to go out with a bang. Not literally. That was not a bad thing. We're going to, you know, we're going to kiss.

00;35;21;24 - 00;35;44;08
Speaker 2
We haven't kissed before. So you've got the brand, you've got three, you've got the right, you've got the culture in that We all want to get out there again. You've got the human thing that I have to give someone so long. My breath is like sort of idea. You've got the category idea that fresh breath is what drives gum use for a lot of people.

00;35;44;22 - 00;36;00;07
Speaker 2
But what you're missing to me is brand. I said the beginning, I think it's Excel and it's Excel because I've talked about it. But if I didn't talk about it and you asked me what brand I would say that gum had, and so it.

00;36;00;07 - 00;36;00;27
Speaker 1
Creates.

00;36;01;09 - 00;36;04;02
Speaker 2
You got three pillars, but not the fourth one. I mean.

00;36;04;02 - 00;36;08;07
Speaker 1
You literally did just say, I don't know if it was Excel or not at the very beginning.

00;36;09;25 - 00;36;34;26
Speaker 2
So but I knew that the other one was Harley Davidson. And you think, exactly what do people who work in advertising your marketing say, Oh my gosh, this great commercial asset, I don't know what it's for, but it was so good. I'm thinking might have been a lovely piece of great commercial. You don't know what it's for. So I think the important thing and the toughest thing is to link it to your brand in a meaningful way because really, while we love to entertain and we know that if we entertain people, remember it more.

00;36;35;05 - 00;36;54;21
Speaker 2
If they don't and to the brand, it doesn't. It does not matter. So so that's where that's one that got a lot of hype because it's so resonated with people. But it could have been it didn't even have begun. It could have been certs, it could have been a it could have been tic tac, it could have been toothbrushes and toothpaste.

00;36;54;21 - 00;36;57;19
Speaker 2
Like, it could be anything that, you know, it could be mouthwash. It could be anything.

00;36;59;06 - 00;37;20;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think that's why that concentric, that fourth concentric circle you talked about, like it has to relate to the brand or it has to I forget your exact wording, that's why that concentric circles is so important, because the other three could still have related to the strategy, but without that brand piece. Yeah, you you end up in a situation like that.

00;37;20;28 - 00;37;26;12
Speaker 1
Got mad where it might have been really entertaining, but you don't really know which brand it's for.

00;37;26;12 - 00;37;36;11
Speaker 2
And there are other ones which I'm trying to come up with. The second where they could hit the brand insight, the human insight and the category inside, but doesn't hit the cultural sector. Nobody cares.

00;37;37;14 - 00;38;09;13
Speaker 1
Yeah, totally. I'm going to use that now, like as the head of marketing for Dig. Like, that's not really the way I've thought about. And I honestly asked the question about the messaging framework from a purely Gallic personal perspective, because that's something that I find can get really muddled. This idea of like I understand what the North Star is like from a positioning perspective, but how do you make sure that all of your messaging is related in a meaningful way?

00;38;09;28 - 00;38;21;25
Speaker 1
And I think you can get quite muddled for a lot of people when they're starting out in marketing or when they're just starting to be someone who leads a marketing team. So yeah, no, I found that really helpful advice.

00;38;22;15 - 00;38;45;08
Speaker 2
Well, I think if you think too of your brand, as you know, we often personify brands, but if you think of it as a character and because we tried that story before is anything the messaging should sound like it could come out from from that character. You know, sometimes when you're watching a TV show in a movie and a character says or reading a book and a character starts doing things you think that doesn't fit, that's not, you know, at them.

00;38;45;25 - 00;39;09;25
Speaker 2
Everything should be. And that's why you have that North Star, because that's what guides what that that brand's personality. So it's it's how they think, how they talk, how they, how they present themselves. And it's not just that it might not be remembered is when you have a brand that sounds different every time it talks to you. What do you think about people who sound different every time they talk to you?

00;39;09;27 - 00;39;31;19
Speaker 2
You think they're phony, You don't, you know, Yeah, they're hiding something. You think that there's something you don't know which one is real, that that consistency. And again, if you're going to commit to consistency, you better know where you are. And that's why I like that. Not that. Why, why, why that knowledge base, that really knowing everything that comes in those circles is so important.

00;39;31;27 - 00;39;45;06
Speaker 2
Which isn't to say a brand can't evolve because people evolve as well. It's just that you have to manage that evolution so they can see that it makes sense that you went from here to there.

00;39;45;06 - 00;40;07;03
Speaker 1
Okay, so I'm very aware of time and I feel like we could probably talk for another like 2 hours about all of this. But I'm going to move on to the rapid fire questions that we always ask people at the end of an episode. So first question, if you gained double your budget tomorrow, what would you spend it on?

00;40;07;14 - 00;40;10;08
Speaker 1
It's kind of an interesting question to ask someone from an agency perspective.

00;40;11;19 - 00;40;56;15
Speaker 2
This I'm getting double my budget. Tomorrow would be a reason to expand our strategy into areas we didn't know enough to go into before because in theory we should feel good about the plan we have. So unless, you know, we felt that we were really underspending, I would be more interested in being more targeted, knowing more to be more targeted so that you might go after an element of your target that you you couldn't get before because you were doing the broadest possible, you know, not not the appealing to everyone, but appealing to your broadest target.

00;40;57;00 - 00;41;22;05
Speaker 2
Right. If I had more money, and especially now with social start doing all those stronger connecting to two sub targets. So that's what I'd spend the money on is is understanding it more so that doing that deep dive into whether that was primary research or meta analysis of existing research or buying secondary research, but it would be going into that.

00;41;22;05 - 00;41;35;10
Speaker 2
So double my money. I would, I would, I would be looking at how we could become hyper targeted and really, really relevant. And the great thing about media now is you can be that targeted.

00;41;35;29 - 00;41;45;12
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean the potentially a less fun question to answer is if you lost half of your budget tomorrow, what would have to go?

00;41;47;06 - 00;42;18;23
Speaker 2
I might get in trouble from my company for this one. In a selfish standpoint if the brand you know because if we lost half the budget and we hadn't spent anything yet. So you know, is the reality is such a sunk cost and that's what you're left with. Yeah, but if we had seen anything, I would protect the research budget because I would want to make sure that if we were saying it quietly, more quietly, that correct, that brilliant person at the end of the table, that you lean forward to hear what they're saying.

00;42;19;23 - 00;42;21;25
Speaker 1
Okay, love.

00;42;22;15 - 00;42;27;03
Speaker 2
What you say. If you're yelling, someone's going to hear you eventually. If you have to be quietly, better be pithy.

00;42;28;26 - 00;42;35;08
Speaker 1
And finally, what's one piece of advice you'd leave the listeners with?

00;42;39;06 - 00;43;02;07
Speaker 2
You know, it goes back to what I said earlier is don't decide and I'm going to say this because I'm not your age. Don't decide what was you know, nostalgia is a big play, but you can't live in the past and you have to know what 20 year olds care about, what 30 year olds care about, what 11 year olds care about.

00;43;02;17 - 00;43;30;24
Speaker 2
And the only way you can do that is to absolutely immerse yourself into popular culture. You can't be snobby about it. You have to recognize that all of that stuff matters. So, you know, we talk about research as something that is requested and bid for, and then you go through the process and that's formal research. But watching something that you've heard of on, but have no idea what it's about.

00;43;30;24 - 00;43;54;01
Speaker 2
But everybody's type it on Netflix is research. You know, walk into that store that you don't even know what they sell is research listening to the people behind you on the plane talking about something that you don't know a lot about. It's also research. Just be quiet or that you're actually listening that that, you know, if you want to be a good strategist, you have to be perpetually curious.

00;43;54;11 - 00;44;06;03
Speaker 2
You have to know that there are more things you don't know than you know. And as soon as you think that you know all there is to know about strategy, you're done.

00;44;08;04 - 00;44;17;15
Speaker 1
Mike Drop. Thank you so much, sir. This is such a pleasure. And yeah, I will. I'll talk to you soon.

00;44;18;11 - 00;44;26;00
Speaker 2
Okay? Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Bye.

00;44;26;00 - 00;44;32;28
Speaker 1
Thanks for tuning in this week. Find us on LinkedIn at Digg Insights. And don't forget to hit subscribe for a weekly dose of fresh content.