00;00;06;23 - 00;00;28;20
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. Hello. Welcome back to this week's episode of Dig In. And my name is Meagan, I'm the VP of Marketing at Dig Insights.

00;00;28;20 - 00;00;54;04
Speaker 1
And today I am joined by a brand strategy guru. Though I don't know if Sarah would use those words to describe herself. Maybe not the guru part. Definitely the brand strategy part. So yes, I'm joined by Sarah Robb. She is a consultant now in brand strategy. Bran strategysarah.com, you've probably, if you’re at all interested in the topic you've probably seen her on your LinkedIn.

00;00;54;17 - 00;00;57;00
Speaker 1
Sarah, how are you doing Really well.

00;00;57;00 - 00;00;57;19
Speaker 2
How are you?

00;00;58;17 - 00;01;25;13
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm good, thank you. It's great to hear a British accent on a on a Thursday morning. I always I as as I'm sure we chatted about I've lived there for ages so I missed it. Yes. So really great to have you here. I wanted to. So we're going to talk a little bit today about, you know, some practical strategies for brand work.

00;01;25;24 - 00;01;42;16
Speaker 1
And we're going to try and dive into what really makes it different when it comes what really makes a difference. Sorry, when it comes to brand strategy work. But before we dive into that, I did want to give the listeners a little bit of background into your experience in brand marketing.

00;01;43;07 - 00;01;44;22
Speaker 2
Sure. No problem.

00;01;44;22 - 00;01;46;25
Speaker 1
And so, yeah, go ahead.

00;01;47;09 - 00;02;07;16
Speaker 2
Okay. I, I did a history degree and I had no idea what I wanted to do. And so I went to Japan for three years, came back, did a master's degree, and I was walking along the halls and I saw this ad on the wall and it said the dexterous springs required. And I was like, Oh, that sounds kind of like how I feel I am.

00;02;07;25 - 00;02;27;18
Speaker 2
And it was an ad for WPP Fellowship program, and it was they didn't want to anymore or they don't want to present, but they run it for about 20 years and they take a handful of grants and they let you live in WPP. And so you do three years in three different companies. So anywhere you want any all of that companies.

00;02;27;18 - 00;02;49;28
Speaker 2
And so I started off in research, in market research cancer, and then I moved over to planning a job with something in San Francisco at the time and then went into branding and brand strategy and London, which is like wear a happy place. And at time I was doing the other pieces of like, Oh, I just want to learn a bit more about what happens with the research.

00;02;49;28 - 00;03;06;10
Speaker 2
And then when I was in advertising, I would think, Oh, well, I just really want to understand who does that brand strategy, get the audience have the link to and then when I got to London, that's when I realized that was the thing I love to do. So my routine was really I'm really lucky one night sort of testing out.

00;03;06;10 - 00;03;25;10
Speaker 2
These are just the things first and then finding out that was where I wanted to want to stay. And so then I spent ten years in the agency world in New York, came back to London, and then the last 14 years I've been doing strategy independently for clients, working, working from home before it was going on.

00;03;25;14 - 00;03;40;29
Speaker 1
Yeah, very cool. What kind of clients do you work with? Typically on the brand strategy side is that you know, B to C or B to B, or is it kind of like a big mix of different clients?

00;03;41;11 - 00;04;03;12
Speaker 2
It's it's generally a mix. Although in the last few years I've had this weird specialism in luxury hospitality and tech, which have nothing to do with Cool, cool. I just happened to find a lot of things, different projects. I started off more B to C, but then more B2B. In the last ten years, I find that I just enjoy that bit more.

00;04;03;12 - 00;04;10;10
Speaker 2
But yeah, but it is a spectrum. It really is a spectrum. And I like the variety team for sure.

00;04;11;14 - 00;04;39;07
Speaker 1
Yeah. And we can kind of dive in to the differences I guess across those if any. But the first time I chatted to you a few weeks ago, we were talking about how you're sort of a self-described branding nerd or brand strategy nerd, and you told me kind of a wild story about how you you spent time running some research to get a sense of the most valuable brands.

00;04;40;09 - 00;04;43;22
Speaker 1
Was it globally or in the UK? Tell me that story. Yeah.

00;04;44;02 - 00;05;06;00
Speaker 2
And it is from a story. And the sort of short story is when I was working at LAMDA, I was running this big project for hosting the Global Strategy Fund some young, and it was really quite like this pinnacle part of my career and I've managed to get to a strategy and they said that they would never have one before, and it was really like this great project.

00;05;06;00 - 00;05;32;25
Speaker 2
And then I got this call from the CEO one day and he'd been on the subway, which was rare, and he'd seen an ad for a marathon. And he's like, Oh, American Express have this idea around realizing potential and our brand idea, which we got to, was around this idea of achieving potential for people within the organization and for clients, which is where that yellow beam comes from.

00;05;32;25 - 00;06;01;11
Speaker 2
If you've ever seen headlines I didn't see and he said, We've got to stop. We can't we can't do this anymore. When we were about to launch globally, this idea is can't do it because American Express have it. And at the time it massively triggered this sort of imposter syndrome thing that been going on for me, like rumbling on over like a few years, even though I was a senior brand strategist and a huge agency, I don't think it matters right if you are defeated or you don't.

00;06;01;11 - 00;06;33;27
Speaker 2
And I was really thinking, I'm a and it figured it because first of all, I didn't know how to answer the question. So, you know, does it matter Does it matter that Ernst and Young and American Express share the same sort of territory around potential? And I was like, well, do I really know the answer to that? And then the second part of it was, well, I know that's already and shouldn't I, as a brand strategist, know a bit more about the world of brand strategy, ideas, the world's biggest brands and what they stand for?

00;06;33;27 - 00;07;04;13
Speaker 2
So, yeah, I'm not full because of this reason, but I left the agency world and I spent six months doing this in-depth study of the 181 brands that sat across the three Global Brands valuation study. So this frenzy into brands and this brand finance, and they come up with that 100 each. So I took all the brands that sat across all those three studies and totally deeply sat there for six months and worked out and documented what their brand strategies were.

00;07;04;13 - 00;07;26;14
Speaker 2
So I have this big picture of kind of the world of brand ideas and what you know, so I could answer questions like, did they overlap? You know, does it matter if it's a financial services idea here and a tech idea here in the similar. And it really also helped me get over another issue I was having, which was all of the frameworks around brand strategy.

00;07;26;14 - 00;07;41;28
Speaker 2
So, you know, if you type in brand strategy frameworks online, you just get jargon. I mean, I know you've seen it. Meghan Right. You need a positioning, you need it's not exactly what you need from listeners. And we I have a brand onion. I mean, it just goes.

00;07;41;28 - 00;07;42;19
Speaker 1
On and then.

00;07;42;25 - 00;07;43;03
Speaker 2
And.

00;07;44;18 - 00;08;04;16
Speaker 1
Yeah, and then you have people like, you know, very well-meaning senior leaders being like and what's the difference between our mission and vision and why do we need a value prop on top of the mission and vision and how does this align with our strategy? It's so many and I'm so fascinated to hear what your your take on this is.

00;08;04;16 - 00;08;08;26
Speaker 1
But I just needed to jump in and say, like I told you, here you are not it's not.

00;08;09;07 - 00;08;29;29
Speaker 2
It's it's so frustrating and it puts so many people off learning how to do it as well because they start thinking, oh, I'd like to add one strategy to my skills. And they get stuck in this whirlwind of just jargon and like, Oh my gosh, I can't think that seems too complicated. So what I was trying to do with this study was also to answer the question for myself, like, what do all the words best friends do?

00;08;29;29 - 00;08;56;24
Speaker 2
Like what do they have? What quantities, what what things did have missions? Do they have vision? And the truth is, you know, that isn't there isn't a commonality on the labels and stuff that people, you know, IKEA have a vision statement making themselves a mission. But they both are fundamentally answering the question of why do we exist so I looked at this model of there were four big questions that all brands have to answer in brand strategy.

00;08;57;08 - 00;09;18;05
Speaker 2
And you just know that you can start talking to clients in a more human way about what it is you're trying to do to help. So, you know, talk to a CEO about brand onions and brand trees. You know, then they want to hear that they're never going to say that, you know, I mean, this is all about helping the business run strategy isn't about logos and stuff.

00;09;18;06 - 00;09;42;08
Speaker 2
It's about fundamentally helping all the levers of business. So you've got to be able to have normal, accessible conversations on brand in the boardroom. Otherwise you just get these looks of, you know, what are you talking about? What's the relevance of this to my business? So that's what this category was. I took. I thought I'd find commonality in terminology.

00;09;42;14 - 00;09;54;13
Speaker 2
There is not commonality in terminology, but there is great commonality in the questions they all answer. They just label them different things. So that was my little geeky six month exploratory piece in.

00;09;54;14 - 00;10;12;00
Speaker 1
All of this is fascinating. I mean, this is a podcast for research geeks and marketing geeks, so it's fascinating. So I have a couple of questions. I mean, can you speak at all about those for the things that they all have in common?

00;10;12;14 - 00;10;38;27
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing all great brands answer is why? And everyone knows Simon Sinek start with line, but he has. Yeah, read it. You have to identify why you exist as a business and if you don't know carefully, so you're not just talking absolute rubbish and in not coming across as credible and you have to do it all, the really, really good answers don't just talk to customers.

00;10;38;27 - 00;11;07;03
Speaker 2
They talk about employees and customers together. And that's like Microsoft. It's all about helping organizations achieve more and helping the planet and organizations and people achieve more. And you know, that idea isn't just about a customer. It's about all of that broader stakeholder groups. So you've got to answer why do you exist? And you call it whatever you want Purpose, mission, vision doesn't matter.

00;11;07;27 - 00;11;31;13
Speaker 2
You've got to answer who are we and how do we do things? And this is a bit lot of people miss out. They sort of think that runs just about words to inform design or work to inform something. But there's a big piece of who always an organization and how do we go about things, which is usually called values and behaviors, but that question, whatever you want to call it, has to be answered.

00;11;31;13 - 00;11;54;17
Speaker 2
Because if you say why we exist is to help everybody thrive, then underneath that you've got to underpin it with the behaviors and the organizational culture that will support that line. Right? This can't be two separate things. So the second kind of question to all, we have a few things. The third ones, how do we want to look for sound?

00;11;55;14 - 00;12;20;17
Speaker 2
So most brands have a set of kind of code words like McDonald's have words like playful, welcoming, unpretentious in their definition of how they want a film sound. And that isn't just, again, about design. It's about in advertising, about tone of voice. It's about any sort of customer experience or employee experience where the brand is sort of visualize or experience.

00;12;20;17 - 00;12;40;22
Speaker 2
You know, it's not just a visual thing, but any sensorial thing that brings to life. You've got to help give people guidance on how it should look and sound. If you're doing a trade base, what are you going to tell people about how they how would you want to design? You know? So that's the other question. And then the last one is simply, you know, who are you know, what do we do?

00;12;40;29 - 00;13;01;05
Speaker 2
What are we what do we do? And that's usually called positioning. But that definition of how are we going to talk about our place in the world and, you know, and working harder than saying, oh, where the company or or is that something that but actually what do you do for people? So they're the four and you see them across all categories, all industries.

00;13;02;06 - 00;13;12;23
Speaker 2
And once you strip the labels that people give them out, then the questions are really, really helpful. So that's what I use and then that's what I've used. So yeah.

00;13;12;23 - 00;13;57;19
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's really helpful. I think for everyone to just get a handle on what they need to be considering. Like even if they don't take the exact same approach, sort of these are the high level you absolutely need to consider. Yeah. These things to, to build a brand. I love that. I have another question. So I was fascinated because I've actually come up against in a previous role, I'd come up against the, you know, the CEO saying, Oh, I've seen this bubble tea company, for instance, with a similar visual identity to us, or, you know, I've seen this news sporting brand that has a similar slogan to us or similar messaging.

00;13;57;19 - 00;14;20;03
Speaker 1
And I worked in B2B SAS, and I was like, and he was like, can they is this the problem? And much like you, I was like, I don't know. And I probably just bullshitted my way through it, to be honest. But what do you think about that question like that your that your boss asked you around American Express and the new brand identity?

00;14;20;03 - 00;14;23;29
Speaker 1
Like, what's your answer to a question like that Now?

00;14;23;29 - 00;14;53;21
Speaker 2
So it depends. So if you're in different categories, the short answer is it doesn't really matter if you're in different categories, you know, Yeah, you've got to be careful not to come up with something that is so ubiquitously associated with someone else. Like you would never come up with an idea around prices, for instance, because MasterCard has owned the idea for so long and it's such a it's such a well-known phrase.

00;14;53;21 - 00;15;20;25
Speaker 2
It's associated with them and they've trademarked it. That was like that. You've got to be careful of the general themes around like achieving potential as long as you're not competing with someone who shares, that's what you've got to be careful. If you have a one statement that is exactly the same as one of your major competitors, you know, it's not legally fine because some of this is illegal, but totally, you know, you can you can do that.

00;15;20;25 - 00;15;46;14
Speaker 2
But you've got to remember that it's not just about customers, also about talent. So if you're trying to attract the best talent and if they can't differentiate between you and your major competitor, you're really nothing to help your brands and you're doing nothing to help people understand why they should choose you over somebody else. So when it's in a category, it's important to sufficiently differentiate things like values.

00;15;46;22 - 00;16;17;09
Speaker 2
You know, you're often going to see overlap in terms of some concepts in values like concept of innovation, right? Most companies, rightly or wrongly, will talk totally. And you can't, you know, and it's necessary. We can do it in a better way rather than sticking the word innovation on there. You know, you can do it in much clever way, like Facebook talking about we move fast and you've been talking about we see you know, we see the forest and the trees.

00;16;17;09 - 00;16;43;21
Speaker 2
Like you can talk about innovation in a much more memorable and impactful way. But you do need to use they often talk about some of the same things sometimes when it comes to branding. Yeah, slightly, slightly different. You know, I think like brands entity is about creating distinctive brand assets, right? And that that's now the kind of language around what you're trying to do with a friendly entity.

00;16;43;21 - 00;16;54;08
Speaker 2
So you've got to consider the fact that you will be in a world of other brands, whether you like it or not. And whilst.

00;16;55;19 - 00;16;56;00
Speaker 1
Right.

00;16;56;12 - 00;17;30;01
Speaker 2
You know, in a view risk of Tiffany's blue, right. And someone's someone sees it from a distance, are they going to associate it with you? Probably not. And I think part of the point of distinctive mindsets is to trigger an association and bring to mind your brand name. I mean, that's part of the job of it. So if you really, of course mean something else, then the brand that will come to their mind, unless you spend a lot of time looking at you and I think does that right, then you might be bringing in a brand to me which kind of defeats the object of getting that comes out there in what shape or form

00;17;30;01 - 00;17;53;24
Speaker 2
in the first thing. So it's a harder job. I have to think sometimes with brand identity elements, you know, to stand apart and you never going to be sued. Are you really going to be sued for taking similar color palettes of shapes or. But as soon as you start to do that right, you are you know, the concern is will trigger a different brand and not your own.

00;17;53;24 - 00;18;01;03
Speaker 2
And then it's a waste of whatever that communication tool was at the time since that as such.

00;18;01;15 - 00;18;35;23
Speaker 1
So no, definitely. And I think a really, really important point actually that you were that you were saying at the end around it is about those like emotional triggers or that like equity that brands built up around their visual identity or around how the, you know, how they make people feel that like it could it's important to bear in mind when you're making decisions about your branding that obviously that that context is is crucial because you could sort of be stepping in it.

00;18;35;23 - 00;18;49;28
Speaker 1
Your marketing dollars could essentially be going to waste to a certain extent if you are piggybacking off of someone else's branding, because they're not going to they're not going to think of you. They're going to think of the other brand.

00;18;51;06 - 00;19;08;00
Speaker 2
Yeah, I make the point this is called so yeah, cut through and for anyone to notice you and then be associate that with your brand. So I've seen I guess harder. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. That's absolutely yeah.

00;19;09;15 - 00;19;37;28
Speaker 1
Okay. Okay. I'm going to, I really want to dive into the second part of this conversation, which is really around sort of research and how that informs your brand strategy process. So there's a couple of questions I have. One is sort of like, I guess what is the over of process that you would take a client through maybe just at a high level, like, you know, what does that look like and where does research slot into your process?

00;19;38;10 - 00;20;07;10
Speaker 2
Yes. So you can't do running strategy without research. So like it's it's critical for anyone who says, oh, you can do that if you're in the workshop in a in a room with the I know that's not going to happen. So it the high level process is, first of all, alignment, which is making sure that everyone knows what you're doing because you've, you know, the brand strategy can influence a lot of change in an organization.

00;20;08;07 - 00;20;29;08
Speaker 2
And so you've got to start with ensuring that the CEOs row, the CMO, particularly those three, are on board, they know what we're really doing, they know the impacts of the work that's going to happen, that it's not just about, well, we need a new identity. It's about some of these definitions of the big questions every CEO and every business has to answer.

00;20;29;08 - 00;20;52;20
Speaker 2
And if you define them, then you've got to live up to them. So there's a whole alignment is where it all starts. And then there's kind of some really cool bits of any projects and they stand around like the three things you can find out. You've got to figure out how your brands relevant, you've got to figure out how it's going to be socially differentiated and you've got to figure out and you've got to make sure it's authentic.

00;20;52;20 - 00;21;04;23
Speaker 2
So those three circles of authenticity, relevance, differentiation of that is that like the Venn diagram we need to gather insights in things. So then all of that, then let's go.

00;21;04;23 - 00;21;06;15
Speaker 1
Cool. Okay. Now.

00;21;06;27 - 00;21;23;05
Speaker 2
So you've got to think of there's a three thing you've got to fill in, you've got to find out where the overlaps are. You could find how you're relevant, but not different. You've got to find out how different that's relevant. You know, you've got to really try and gather insights to work harder to build your brand strategy. FUND So then research is massively important.

00;21;23;05 - 00;21;45;09
Speaker 2
So relevance, right? We've got to understand how this brand could be should be is relevant to customers, how it is to employees. You've got to understand things like where leadership want to take the organization in order to understand and make sure your brand is going to be authentic, the strategy going to be authentic to where they are today and where they want to go.

00;21;45;25 - 00;22;07;14
Speaker 2
So that's also two different types of reception. A one on one leadership interviews as well as customer interviews or customer quantitative surveys or employee interviews or angle employee surveys. And depending on the scale of the organization, would depend on how much of that you do and how much you want. That is cool, but yeah, it's just massively important.

00;22;07;14 - 00;22;24;22
Speaker 2
And then competitive research, I know the type of research is making sure you're looking at the competitive strategies. You know, that's more like a desperate search process, but it's still still research, right? It's all of those things. You've got to gather all that stuff in order to get to the insights, to form the strategy from.

00;22;25;02 - 00;22;43;13
Speaker 1
Absolutely. And when it comes to, you know, you said scale of the company kind of determines with an hour it's all versus quant. Can you speak more to that? Like, what are the is it if it's a larger company, Quant makes more sense And if it's smaller, call or the officer. Walk me through that.

00;22;44;01 - 00;23;03;04
Speaker 2
Well, I mean the the kind of stereotype is again if you want to if you're trying to dig the people who are know how to do things, you should be reaching out to employees. Right. You can't you can't be doing that in an ivory tower. I know this is our culture. This is what people care about. These are our shared values.

00;23;03;04 - 00;23;26;12
Speaker 2
You've got to you've really got to engage the employee. So if it's like 20 of them in a small business, you just talk to them. You know, it's if it's like I'm doing literally this right, 2000, then, you know, if you really genuinely want to get everyone's input, then you need to do that from from one perspective. But then some industries lend themselves to different types of research.

00;23;26;12 - 00;23;58;19
Speaker 2
So luxury hotels, right? Their customers are these ultra high net worth individuals who, you know, are CEOs or they're princes or that princesses or, you know, their fashion designers or this, you know, little. So he they want that one on one attention. And it's an industry where luxury is very personal. It's about understanding that. So you wouldn't write in a survey out the you know, the top CEOs, you know, they wouldn't fit in.

00;23;58;20 - 00;24;03;13
Speaker 2
So you've got to do those on their terms where they want. Okay.

00;24;04;00 - 00;24;22;04
Speaker 1
I was just going to say that if it was a customer survey and it was like a telecom company or finance company, and, you know, they're really routinely emailing their customer base, for instance, and it might be easier to go with, you know, an online survey or something like that. So, yeah, that totally makes sense.

00;24;22;12 - 00;24;24;04
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. That's I think.

00;24;24;14 - 00;24;50;24
Speaker 1
Okay. So I feel like I feel like we've got a pretty good idea of what your process is. I think so we recently actually it was about a year ago now, which is crazy, but we went through a rebrand, a dig in upside. And so this, this conversation is really interesting for me. Just, you know, hindsight's 2020 and thinking about what what we did.

00;24;51;04 - 00;25;18;00
Speaker 1
I'm wondering, I think people always say the hardest part of a rebrand is often that internal rollout, getting people excited, taking them on the journey of a new of a new brand and a new brand strategy from your, you know, years of experience. You've got so much experience in this space. What would you recommend people bear in mind that maybe they haven't thought about before when it comes to that rollout with it within a company?

00;25;18;00 - 00;25;19;25
Speaker 1
What are your recommendations to your clients?

00;25;20;10 - 00;25;38;15
Speaker 2
You know, I think first of all, it can't come as a big surprise. Like, you know, one of the questions that like, how do you get people to care about you? And I mean, if you get into care by engaging them early on that you get them to feel like they have a voice in it, that it's their brand, too.

00;25;38;19 - 00;25;59;23
Speaker 2
You know, that it's not just like this. The board coming down with this is what we all know and this is the values you all must have. And you know, you know, So I think it's about finding a way as much as you can efficiently to engage. The important point is from the beginning. So that's one of the easiest and more obvious ways to do it is through the values piece.

00;25;59;23 - 00;26;27;25
Speaker 2
But like again, in luxury hotels, I would always talk to all levels of people and not everybody, but I'd always have some people like, you know, the doorman, you know, the head of the front office, the head of sales, the the waiter, you know, getting this cross-section of engagement so that when also when you're sharing the results and you're sharing why, you got to think you can use their voices, you know, use their stories in the way that you launch it.

00;26;27;25 - 00;26;37;09
Speaker 2
So it's not just like this is our brand heritage. It's more like you told us this, hence this is why we're doing this. You tell us this then. This is one of our I really.

00;26;37;09 - 00;26;37;25
Speaker 1
Like that.

00;26;38;13 - 00;27;05;06
Speaker 2
Store, you know, getting them in from the beginning, engaging them and getting their stories as much as you can around what they're doing that showcases the things you're going to talk about. So whether that's the big why you exist or whether it's particular values, you know, making sure you just have a story around it, it just brings it all to myself and then showing them and they see themselves in it and then like, okay, this is my I belong to this thing, you know, friends I love about belonging from an invite spectrum.

00;27;05;14 - 00;27;25;13
Speaker 2
So I think it starts before you launch anything. And then it's all I mean, it's a it's an ongoing, constant thing. It's not a here's the brand. There you go. Let's get back to work. You know, this is you have to launch it. You have to communicate. It has to be some point where you like this. It's this day.

00;27;25;14 - 00;27;43;16
Speaker 2
We all know. And you can do that in really interesting ways, Engaging ways, expensive ways, cheap way, you know, but just having some piece of line in the sand to say, okay, this is this is our brand. This is why we've chosen to see, this is why we exist and this is who we are. And so that needs to happen.

00;27;43;28 - 00;28;11;23
Speaker 2
But equally for that to happen, you've got to have all of these workstreams going on with each other and marketing on the CEO, on the leadership team so that it isn't just this launch and then no one has anything right. And they think, Oh, that was that, and what was that? And then has to like naturally go in to, you know, things like, okay, let's have a leadership meeting about when do we need to stop doing, what should we start doing?

00;28;11;23 - 00;28;41;19
Speaker 2
What should we continue doing? Now we've got this, you know, the all these conversations have to start. And I think also the way in which it can work or not work is if it's built into the whole employee experience, particularly job chats and renumeration and recognition. You know, the things that, you know, when it comes down to it are going to make you get promoted or not promoted like the brand has to work.

00;28;41;19 - 00;29;11;22
Speaker 2
That strategy has been you've got to build in these questions around, you know, why you exist and who you are and how you do things into evaluations. Otherwise it's just words on a page, right? Doesn't mean anything. So it's a long process to be honest. There's the customer experience piece of it, you know, and then there's an employee experience that you need two things working on that and embedding it in all the policies and procedures like the boring stuff too.

00;29;12;05 - 00;29;41;00
Speaker 2
You know, it's not just about, Oh, isn't this a nice launch thing, It's a portfolio. This is this is who we are. This is what we do. This is why we exist. And hence we see this and it's and we live it and we it's throughout our brand. So it's it's not an easy thing. And I think that's why I always have those alignment meetings at the beginning to sort of say, you know what you're signing up for yet it's that you've really got to plan ahead and then next year's planning place.

00;29;41;20 - 00;30;17;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. Before launch the thing so it's some but when you do it and you do it well, it's really rewarding and you really see results. And I think there's a ton of data now about how the impact of this stuff on employee satisfaction and, you know, motivation and, and profits growth, faster growth. And you know, there's tons a lot of data now that shows that if you get these questions answered right and you properly embed them, it can really supercharge your business and your talent and growth and innovation and all these things that, you know, make a difference.

00;30;18;05 - 00;30;31;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. So it's sorry so long is such a big question. It's such an important question to ask it and and it's it's not always done. Well that piece of it but if you don't empathic and.

00;30;31;11 - 00;30;54;07
Speaker 1
Yeah I feel I feel like it is a very big question to answer so I appreciate that that you did bring something new to the table. I think I really loved that point you made about belonging and how I think really that is from an employee perspective and how you get them to care about it. It's about feeling like that brand belongs to them too.

00;30;54;07 - 00;31;12;25
Speaker 1
It's not something that marketing or, you know, senior leadership cooked up that doesn't relate to them. And I think bringing bringing that piece of this is what you told us, and this is because of what you've told us, this is what we came up with. It's like so crucial. So, yeah, I just think the way you framed that up is really nice.

00;31;12;25 - 00;31;34;07
Speaker 1
So thank you for that. I'm conscious of time we've been chatting for for quite a little while now, so I'm going to, I'm going to finish off with some rapid fire questions. This podcast is obviously all about research and the consumer, so we'd like to ask each of our guests a series of a few different questions that relate to that.

00;31;35;02 - 00;31;45;13
Speaker 1
First being, can you tell us a new or a potentially novel or interesting way that you've gone about understanding an audience or a customer base recently?

00;31;47;08 - 00;32;15;04
Speaker 2
Oh, you know what? I wish I could. I can tell you what I've done, but it's it's probably not me. I think I just think that's okay. Listening. And so one thing I've done recently is I've run lots of live Q&A sessions for people in my course site, because I think most people who do courses, they like put this online content there and then just let you get on with it.

00;32;15;04 - 00;32;46;09
Speaker 2
And the research and the most fun you can get is just talking to people and having those letting people chat and going back to them with answers. So it's not a new form of research, but I do think it's important. I think one thing I've done recently whispering psychologists and that's been really useful. So I think the employee needs feature and we talk about feelings and needs and emotions and yet are we really experts in that stuff?

00;32;46;09 - 00;33;11;11
Speaker 2
Right? So I've been doing this work on defining employee needs for a client, and instead of just doing that, I came up with hypotheses and then I've got to psychologist to really talk about those emotional things that underpin some of the stuff we were talking about losing. We're talking about confidence, for instance, and then we go through this ladder of, you know, you can't feel confident unless you feel competent, can't feel comfortable unless you plan what you did.

00;33;11;11 - 00;33;28;20
Speaker 2
You can't feel pain unless you feel like you can ask questions. You can't ask questions unless you feel secure. So this is sort of emotional ladder laddering and that was really helpful for the client, sort of understand that actually you want to talk about this, but if you don't do these other things, you're never going to help the employee get to that stage.

00;33;28;21 - 00;33;42;22
Speaker 2
So that that was quite that was I haven't done that before. I'll do it again. This is such a different take on on deep, more deeply understanding emotions that we talk about. Something that I thought was fascinating.

00;33;42;22 - 00;34;06;22
Speaker 1
I've never had. I'm sure you've done it now. I mean, you know that that is really fascinating. I've never had anyone give me that answer before, so very cool. The next question is, who do you look to or where do you go when you want to understand where your industry is going next? So I guess in this case, industry is brand strategy, right?

00;34;06;23 - 00;34;08;08
Speaker 1
Yeah. Who's your go to?

00;34;08;26 - 00;34;42;18
Speaker 2
I go to books that CEOs have written. Now. I don't I mean, I look, you know, I know who's out there in my space. But I think the secret to the more we can link brand the business tightly together, the more effective our work will be. And so I I'm a ton more on, you know, CEOs biographies and like McKinsey book about CEO mindset because that's where it all has to jump together otherwise the findings it's so true.

00;34;43;10 - 00;34;55;15
Speaker 2
So yeah that that's much more where I'm going great books like my section in general and Microsoft's changed that that it's been more helpful in some branding pieces recently.

00;34;55;23 - 00;35;05;11
Speaker 1
I love that. I'm going to take that and run with it. My final question is, if you had one tip for a marketer that's listening or researcher, what would it.

00;35;05;11 - 00;35;35;29
Speaker 2
Be? You know, honestly, prior changing mental health, because I think we're all in this funny world where we're having to think for clients, right? Like marketing research, insights, strategy. It requires us to be able to sort of have that headspace to do really good thinking. And if you're feeling stressed or an eye watering schedule, you know, all these other things, it really takes a toll on your ability to do the job and enjoy the job and stay in the job.

00;35;36;18 - 00;36;00;24
Speaker 2
So honestly, that's really that because, you know, what we do is great and it's really interesting and we're really lucky to be able to spend time and indeed thinking about these questions and coming up with insights and writing strategies. But you've got to be able to do that. You've got to carve out time and space and population time and time for convergent thinking and divergent thinking.

00;36;00;24 - 00;36;11;16
Speaker 2
And you've got actually have quite a lot of strategies for yourself to be able to do that. And honestly, I think that that's maybe not what you're expecting.

00;36;12;13 - 00;36;42;17
Speaker 1
No, I think that's so important and I love it. I think more and more people are realizing how you can't do you can't really do good work if you're not feeling like yourself. So love that and thank you. Thank you for it. I know that we had wanted to kind of dig into, you know, we kind of bashed how many frameworks there are at the beginning or I kind of did, but I do know the frameworks are useful.

00;36;42;17 - 00;36;55;10
Speaker 1
So we had wanted to kind of dive into that. So why don't you talk to us a little bit about the course that you run before we before we go? Yeah, Yeah. Because I assume that baked into that course is some element of frameworks.

00;36;55;14 - 00;37;12;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely frameworks there. But the most important thing is the practical stuff. I think there's a lot of like there's all sorts of costs out there and trying to equal Susan, they usually give you a framework which is the person's own framework. I might have give you some examples, but they don't tell you exactly how to do it.

00;37;13;03 - 00;37;34;01
Speaker 2
So my course is all about practical. Here's a framework, here's why He's like, My strategy is important and he's how you do it. Like, here's all the questions you need to ask. He's like a research guide, a research survey, an employee survey, a leadership guide. Here's a scripted brand strategy workshop. See, just all you have to do is read it before you do before.

00;37;34;01 - 00;37;57;10
Speaker 2
He's what you do afterwards. He's an eight week brand strategy plan. Here's how you write a proposal. So here's how you frame the brand strategy presentation. He sends his client examples. He's a real case study where you get all the research so you can actually have a go at doing it. So my course is really to try and equip people with all the tools and the support.

00;37;57;10 - 00;38;24;11
Speaker 2
So I'm there 21 weeks. The other people say if they want questions, they can start the course and then they may start it. And then later on the selling strategy, you know, sort of the access to the questions. So it's practical tools, complete support and just really useful advice on actually getting done exactly how to get it done rather than here's another nice framework, but actually, how do I do it?

00;38;24;11 - 00;38;40;09
Speaker 2
Yes. So that's that's my angle totally, because that's what gives people confidence. And I think that's the thing that most people that I think loads of people could do from strategy. Yeah. You know, clear and confident enough to do it. So that's, that's what I'm trying to do with friend strategy kind of me.

00;38;41;07 - 00;38;55;14
Speaker 1
I mean he's saying we'll include a link to it in the show notes as well as your website. Sarah, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me on Dig. And we will be back next week. But yeah, until then I'll talk to you soon.

00;38;55;14 - 00;39;02;08
Speaker 2
Sarah Thank you. So again, great. Great to be here. Thank you.

00;39;02;08 - 00;39;09;05
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.