 Hello everyone and welcome to today's Business Fields webcast, building great and valuable brands. My name is Sarah Gonzalez and I'm from Redback Conferencing. Today we're going to uncover great brands and really understand that they are more than just a series of value statements. I would like to welcome founder, principal and creator of brand crest, Jason Eisner. Thank you. Very good. Welcome. So today we're going to talk everything about brand with a little bit of culture integrated as well. But first of all, we just want to get some understanding of the audience we have online. So we're going to launch a quick poll now just to understand how people currently perceive their brand in the organization that they work with. Whether you're part of an organization or you've got your own business. The question is, do you think that you have a great brand? We're just asking people that now. Okay, so we can see that a lot of people do actually think that they do have a great brand. So first of all, let's hand it over to you because I think there is that question for a lot of people and it's like, well, what actually is a brand? How do we define brand? What is it all about, Jason? Yeah, thank you. Well, let's start with what is a brand. But I think even before you even start with the what is the brand question, you probably have to start with why do you even need brand? Look at that first slide. The world that we exist in today looks a little bit like this. In fact, everybody in the audience, I would gather thinks that the world is probably getting faster and faster. And the reason why this happens is that we as consumers, as people that receive messages are bombarded by thousands and thousands of messages every day. And you know, everybody talks about social media as kind of like this new way of communicating. But if you're a marketer or a brand, this new way of communicating is actually making it harder and harder to get your message out because there are now multiple channels that you can get your message out with. So you have all of these things from Twitter to Facebook, all of those different social medias, channels allow you to put the proliferation of messages go out. And so if you're trying to actually get cut through in that, it gets harder and harder. So that's why you actually need a brand. So if we go to the next page, what we can talk about is what is a brand? So from our viewpoint, the first point to know is that we think the best brands, the most enduring brands come from within an organization. It's not somebody's idea about a brand from somebody outside that organization. It's actually what's inside that brand and what's inside that organization. So when we talk about brand, as you can see here, effectively think of a brand as well, or your company, your organization as a person. And what we're trying to do here is all we have to be able to do for that person is basically articulate what that person says, almost the mind of that person and also how that person says it, the heart, the internal, the part that drives that person. So what we're trying to do here is just to find your organization as a person and it's the sum of all the parts that are within it. And what I should stress at this point is, yes, it might be messages, yes, it might be advertising, but most important are the people that actually work there. Okay, so just say we start with an organization and we're creating our brand and we're developing that persona. Or maybe we're looking to go through a rebranding exercise within our organization. How important is the process when it does come to these branding exercises and what does it mean for people out there who are looking to take on this role? Because it's pretty big, right? It's a huge process. I think the important point that you talk about, Sarah, is that it's process. For us, process is what drives and what needs to drive. Because at the end of the day, the issue with marketing and branding is that it can become very subjective. And you've got to try and make it objective. To build great brand, you have to be objective. And so what we turn to in this is we've actually got one of our mascots in BrandQuest and it's this guy called Sun Tzu. You might have all heard of it. He wrote this book called The Art of War two and a half thousand years ago. And if you get a chance to read it, it's one of the easiest books to read through not to understand because it's only about 50 pages. But it's full of these kind of like sayings. And one of these sayings he's attributed to was, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. And for us, what that says is to actually build brand, you have to get the thinking right. And to get the thinking right, you need a process. And so what we've done is we've created five brand questions. Now, the important thing about those brand questions is not that we've kind of got rid of all the marketing terminology. So one of the big things, we go into organizations and there are millions of different statements about what is a brand and that you might hear consumer value proposition and you might hear positioning and all of these different terminology. And the biggest issue is that might be fine for the marketers within the organization. But if you take on what we're saying is that the whole organization is part of the brand, that's not that's not useful to somebody who's on the reception. They don't understand those terms. So what we've done is we've actually built these five brand questions. And if we can go through those five questions, then you've actually got you're well on your way to building brand and you've got a process to doing it. OK, so let's start off with everyone's thinking right and getting on the right page. The five questions and this will help people get to where they want to go. Correct? Yeah. Number one. So so the first point here about building brand we think is just like GPS navigation in your car, you've got to work out where you're heading. And and it's got to be clear where you're heading. So where do you want to be is what you where you want to be? And we actually say when we work with organizations is it's not where you want to be today. Where do you want to be in five years? So many people might have heard of Jim Collins, Good to Great. He talks about setting goals that are like five, ten years out. So what we do is we like to set it five years out. It's not going to affect you tomorrow. It's not going to be your three year business plan. If you have many organizations, it's five years. So it's not going to affect you tomorrow. But directionally, it tells you where you're going to be. And importantly, where is should be articulated. So we're not interested in, you know, these big statements to say, we're going to be the biggest company doing X or Y. What we're interested in is what will your revenue be in five years? OK, how many customers will you have in five years? Or how many members will you have in five years? How many what's which where are you going to be competing? Are you going to be just local or are you going to be international? OK, all of these things come in it. But we want you to be as specific as possible. So can I just ask, because you did mention in the previous slide that this ties into the entire organization, who should be sitting down answering these questions? Because I would think that would be quite a strategic thing that people would know, maybe not everyone in the organization would understand where they need to be going in the next five years. So is this something that we sit down with the management team and discuss and then filter through the organization or who's responsible for this? Yeah, Sarah, that's that's a great question. When we do it, we actually look at having the people that run the organization. So it's it's it's getting them in a room. And what we also look to do is, however, and here's the caveat. There are people within your organization that might be on the shop floor. They might be at a teller at a credit union. They might be people right down on the on the cold face, so to speak. And they are just as important. And sometimes you just, you know, you need to bring them along. But the point is when you bring what we find is the senior management team have, you know, normally almost a hundred years of experience and so we can tap into that. Yeah, OK. And they obviously understand where the business and they understand where the business is going and so forth. But we're not actually just to pick up on that. Not quite. Yeah, we find that when we go into an organization, maybe they might understand where they're going to be in one or two years, but we push it five years and not many people. And if you do, this is great. But not many people actually think five years out. And so it becomes quite an interesting exercise because when we're forcing you to think about your, you know, your brand, your your person that you're going to be in five years time and what that person is going to look like and how big that person is going to be and so forth. So so it actually is quite an interesting thing. So that's point one and point two. And we find this is even more interesting to us is the alignment. So, you know, when you go into an organization, we often, when we before we start, we actually send out a survey and just check out what is the brand alignment. And so what we do there is we ask very top of mind questions. We're not asking the people to do research. We just want to know what do you think the brand stands for? Do your customers understand what the brand is? Do you know how big you're going to be? All these questions. And what we find is that actually nine times out of 10, the senior management team aren't a lot. They're not the ones. And so so that's where we go. So that's how we we get to that first question. OK, so the second question, what do you need to say? So is this about what you do as a business? So remember, when we were talking about when I said that what the definition of a brand is as is as a person, there's two parts to it. So the first part is what and that's it's the thoughts of the brand. So this is this is where you have to actually understand what the brand needs to say over and over again. So it's it's it's it's the mind. It's what if you met this person on the street, what would they say? And within that question is there's a number of sub questions, which are quite interesting. What market do you play in? Yeah. So market is an interesting question, because if I said to you market is market just if I'm in a cold, if I'm a caller producer, am I in the caller market, the soft drink market, the beverage market or the share of what goes down your throat market? So in in America, code measures what goes down their throat. So they look they add up all the soft drinks they sell and all the drinks they sell and they work out what that percentage is. The second part of that next question is who you need to say it to and who you need to say it to is your customer. Yeah. And once you understand what market you're in and who you need to say it to, then you can actually determine what makes you different to that customer. So that within there, what we have is we have this ability to actually target people that you want to speak to. So you can't be all things to all people. Yeah. And you might have heard this before because if you tried to do that, you ended up being nothing to no one. So what you have to do is you have to say, look, here's what the market looks like. Here are the customers in that market. Let's target people that we're going to be most meaningful to. And then once we understand that, it's actually quite interesting. It's quite relatively straightforward to say what makes you different. OK. Part three, how should you say it? So I think this is something a lot of people struggle with. Is this talking about channels? Not quite the how for us. So here's we'll get to channels in the next question. But interestingly, this question says so back to my person walking down the street. The what is the thoughts? Yeah. The how actually is the heart of the brand. OK. In our viewpoint, it's the essence of the brand. It's what makes that brand tech. So just if we were we were thinking that the thoughts are what words come out. The the the how you should say it is how that person's dressed. What the how they speak, how they how they do all these things. And it's actually absolutely critical to understand that part. It's it's you know, when you think of a person, they have both the thoughts and the and the and the heart and the essence. And that's what you've got to do. It's in combination. That's what makes it truly unique. OK. And then how you do what you say, which is a bit of a tongue twister to me, but what does this actually refer to? So this is now the channels. OK. So this this is where many people might have heard of porters, four P's or five P's product price, place, price, promotion. We had so many P's, so many P's. But it's actually a very good way to actually develop what your executions are. So this is where once you've kind of understood the what, you know, once you understood where you had it, then you understand what you need to say and how you should say it. Then you've actually got a lens. We call it a brand canvas to be able to then look at what you're doing now. So you can actually audit your brand in this and you can also plan into the future because if I if I can work out what and how, then I can look at what I'm doing now and seeing objectively back to this objective word, whether the things that I'm doing now is actually part of who I am as a person. So that's what that's question is. And, you know, last but not least, when should you say it? So timing is everything. It is. It's a bit like that. So that's now we've got all of those steps. We've got the steps that we've got. We've got the answers to the brand order. We've got the steps going forward. And now we can actually plan them and put them in a, in a, in a, in a, we can actually write them all down and we can actually put timing against it. And then we know when we're going to do it because we can't do everything at once. There are certain things we have to get right first and so forth. So I'm sure everyone else is thinking this as well. Why the red two and three? Is that just something to put us off? No, no, no. I think what we wanted to do is say, we'll look actually specifically two and three in our viewpoint, the absolute critical parts to get right. And so what you'll see is if we can take those two questions, the what, the thoughts and the how, the the heart, if we can take that and we go to the next page, what we're actually able to do is create what we call grand canvas. And that's the thing that we can do. We can look to see whether everything that we're doing is aligned or not. So this is our way of framing it. So maybe if we look at that. Yeah. And just quickly, before we go into the brain canvas, just on the how you say it question and that was number three, I believe. Well done. Yeah. So I'm getting there. I am actually paying attention. So within organizations, and this is something personally that we've done in the past as well. But organizations out there, especially when it comes to the marketing side of things. So you've got the content marketing, the blogging, using all these channels, all these different resources, resources, a lot of content creation. Is it best to have one voice within an organization? Or how do you, is that part of the how you say it piece? What would you recommend? Because sometimes it's hard to do everything. Yeah. So that's a really great question. The how is absolutely critical. And yes, so one of the things to build great brand is you actually need to build is consistency and discipline. So to get through that that that that first page of clutter, the you know, the world speeding up, you actually have to the actual and when it all comes down to it is you actually have to do the same thing over and over again. It's it's it's kind of like that old adage. Repeat, repeat, repeat, sweet, sweet, sweet. There's actually something in that. And so voice is another one of those things. Voice, if you think of like as I've been talking about that your brand is the representation of a person that's walking down the street, then that person has to be able to talk the same way over and over again. And what I'd say about social media and those channels is the big issue that you have is that everybody can get on there within the organization and make some comments. But if they make comments that are inconsistent, you're actually not building brand. In fact, you're doing the opposite. So it's really important. And I think it speaks to, you know, in the registration process as well. A lot of people were talking about that, but also the fact that, you know, everyone's responsible for brand, not just the marketing or comms. It's also the receptionist or you support people or the people who are on the front floor making sure that they're actually repeating, like you said, that brand and the voice of the organization. Yes. In fact, I would argue they're more important. And so what again, what happens is you can't have brand kind of like being sitting in a marketing department or a branding department that says, this is what it is. And we understand what it is and nobody in the organization understands it. That's in fact, that's actually also not building brand. And so that's why we find it's really critical. It's not about bringing marketing people along as much as they're part of this, but it's also bringing the, you know, the people that are running the general managers, the CEOs, the managing directors, that even the board of your organizations along because they are going to be influencing and they need to understand what we're talking about here. OK, let's go into the brain canvas. And I just want to let everyone else know it out there. If you do have a question, please feel free to type it through. I'm sure we're going to get a lot as we go through this next section. I've got an iPad here, so they'll come straight through and I can then answer or ask Jason everything that you guys want to know. So brand canvas, what's all about? It looks really, really confusing to me right now. Oh, that's great. So what we're doing is remember, I suppose this is just trying to show you that if you look at those red dots, their activities that you might be doing now, now you can fill them in, you just replace it with whatever you're doing. So if you've got Twitter, then just replace one of them with Twitter or just add them to that. But essentially, this is what we see when we go into a lot of organizations. You see all of these different things are going on. And there is no one objective way to work out, you know, are they doing the right thing or are they not? So remember that that answer to that question, what you need to say and how you should say it, well, if we have the answers to those two questions, what we can do and what we're trying to do really within branding is actually trying to basically do get all of your activities within the brand canvas. Now, and the tighter you make that, you know, the more message you are, the actually more consistent you are. And then actually the more cut through you're going to get. It's as simple as that. And the way to do it is answer that question, what you need to say and how you should say it. OK, so now we've got all the red circles inside the frame. What do we do now? Well, once you've done that, then we can now now we know that we're actually consistent in what we're doing. And I think one of the things that people say to us is they think that and as the things are moving around. But what we what we say is that. One of the things that we're trying to do here is that we're trying to be consistent and get that cut through and we're trying to make sure that over time that we build, we build a brand. And a lot of people will say to us, well, hang on, but you're actually saying I thought branding and marketing is about coming up with a big idea like we we're going to we're going to come up with an idea. And that's what it is. And what we will say is actually no, it's actually about containing ideas. And so what you see up in here. If you see a painting inside the frame, just what I'm trying to show you is just how how this can work, because you can contain creativity and at the same time be very creative. So everybody, I don't know if everybody has seen that the photo up there. Well, actually, it's a it's a painting by Monet. It's called Japanese Garden and he painted a lot of these things. And one of the interesting things about impressionists were at the time is that they changed the way art was viewed because for previous 600 years, art was fairly static. It was fairly what you know, you've gone to the if you've been to big old museums, you've seen that what that looks like. And then along came these impressionists. They took off their glasses and this came out now that very, very creative. But just to show you that you can still be creative within that same frame. If you go to the next one, you know, we've got Picasso there, very creative as well within that frame. And that's and what we're trying to show you here is that by containing creativity, by being consistent, by being within the frame, within the brand canvas, you're actually getting your cut through. You're actually building brand. So you also mentioned something with the what the key learning outcomes today as well. There's something in it that said be boring. Yeah. What's that all about? Because I read that and I was like, is this the typo, Jason? Should I really put that on? But what is that all about? Does that really play into this and sort of getting all ideas and make sure that we don't go too crazy with them? Yes, a little bit. So here's the thing. When you're in your own organization, you get bored of your marketing activity and branding activity much quicker than the average person outside your organization. And in fact, it's it's it's a thing where you because you see what you're doing all the time and you go, well, I've got to change it. Right. I've got to come up with the next big thing. I'm bored. I'm bored of it, right. So and one of the things that happens is is that you come up with these new ideas and if they're not within the frame, which is a lot of time if people don't have a frame, they don't have an objective way to do this. They're actually completely different to the previous idea. And in fact, that's actually not building brands. So what we say to a lot of our clients is be boring, but do the same thing over and over again, because here's the thing, right? Remember that photo that we showed you at the beginning? People are bombarded by thousands of messages. They're not going to see your message like the only time that, you know, there's statistics out there that you've got to hit somebody 15, 20 times before it starts to register, right? If it's my kids, they might be 30 times. But what we're trying to do is do. And so the only way you can do that is to be boring. So sometimes we're just close to it, right? Yeah. And we just, yeah, we don't realize that for other people, it may only be the second or third time they're seeing something. Or zero. Yeah. So we assume we put our hat on and we think that we're the people that we're marketing to. And that's kind of like, you know, you might hear it in an organisation. I think it should be this. It's I think is the worst thing that can happen within marketing and branding because it's not what you think. It's what you're in consumer, you're in person that's buying what you've what you've got. OK, so let me pose this one. We, you know, we talk about the brain canvas and we talk about those five questions and we talk about sitting down, really getting it right, whether you are starting fresh or rebranding. Should you get your customers or your members or any sort of stakeholders externally to the business to come in and let them know their thoughts? That's a really interesting question. Because sometimes, you know, if you ask for something, you're going to be careful what you ask for, right? Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to be a little bit more controversial here. I should say that in my background, I've worked for demand strategy and research houses. So I kind of, you know, I've spent a lot of time. I was admittedly it was in New York. It wasn't here. But one of the things that happens, we've found in Australia generalisation here is that people go to research before they actually understand for themselves what it means. So we would say to you is that if you bring your senior management team in, they collectively have the knowledge to build this that you actually know it yourself. It's deep down there. It's just about articulating. It's trying to distill what's in there because, I mean, over time, you've spoken to consumers, you've spoken to your members, you've spoken to the people that you're trying to go to gain. And what happens is it's just that it's hard to articulate. But if you get everybody together and you get them in the same room, you can actually extract that. And that's the power of this. And it's not about going and doing research to find out what your consumers think. They don't even know what they don't know where you're coming from. And what we say is if you're that person, you know, think of your brand, think of your organisation as a person walking down that street. Like you're the ones who know what that person says and how to say it. So get that right first. Get it aligned. And so that comes back to that question that we talked about, how aligned is your management team? If your management team isn't aligned, if they don't, if they're not consistent, I can promise you it's not worth going to any of your research or consumers to waste the time because you need to be aligned internally before you can be external. So does that then work on the other side as well? When we talk about measuring brand, because that's, you know, the holy grail for a lot of organisations and we don't know how to do it or it can be quite expensive for a lot of people. Is it that kind of feel thing? So measuring is a very big issue. That's an interesting question. We say, so there's a couple of things about measuring brand. So, yes, there is an internal measurement of brand and how aligned you might be. So absolutely. But, you know, what we say about measuring is you can then go out to measure specific facts like how, what your penetration is and those sort of things. One of the things what we tend to do, however, a brand quest is we think that measuring should be back down to revenue numbers and profit. So, and it actually ties back to that vision. So if you're planning five years in advance and you're actually using a metric vision where we say, we're going to be this big and we're going to have this many customers and we're going to have this many or this many members or we're going to have, we're going to be in these many markets, you can actually measure against that. And to us, it's those big metrics that you want to do that. I mean, if you're an organization, you might have a number of, you know, how many members you have within the organization. So you can measure that. But all of those big numbers are actually covered off in your five-year vision. And that's what you should measure against. Yeah. That's how effective it is. Yeah. And I think when it comes to measurements, like numbers are the best source to go to. Otherwise, you just start getting all these different ideas and if you get too bogged down in measuring and start to attribute everything to everything, then you just end up losing it, don't you? Yeah, yeah. Eventually, you just end up going, yeah, exactly. OK, so you did at the beginning speak a little bit about this, but I want to delve into it a little bit more. So how can we be objective rather than subjective when it does come to branding? So that's a really good question. The first point about it, and I'll come to this slide in a second, is that if you have a canvas now, if you have a frame that you look at everything for, then instead of having questions, and we've seen it all the time, we'll actually be in board meetings and we'll have these questions that come that say, you know, here's a strategic thing that we're going to talk about, which market should we be in or should we bring in a new product? And then they'll spend 10 minutes on that and then they'll spend half an hour on. I actually think the logo should be green rather than blue. Right now, that is the biggest waste of time of a board that you can even think of, right? It's just it's amazing because here's the people not in marketing, they get bogged down on that. Isn't it? Absolutely. It's back to that. I think again, right? I think it should be blue or I think it should be green. I think it should be red. There are people, there are actual designers who are really good at choosing colours. What you've got to do as as as people that run your organisation or work in your organisation is you need to define the frame. Once you define the frame and you sell it into the whole organisation, then you can objectively now say is this thing that we're doing, is this logo, is this brochure, is it within our canvas or is it outside of the canvas? That's how you be objective. Because something you're now not talking about, I think it should be blue or I think it should be red, right? Not that there's any problem with red, right? But that's what it thinks. And so, you know, everybody thinks in terms of, you know, you've all heard we've got to think outside the box. We've got to always think outside the box. Well, for branding, it's actually, you've got to think inside the box. You can still be, as we've shown you before, very creative. But don't think outside it. And hence, you know, this New York New Yorker magazine cartoon. Yeah, I think that's really important, because I think a lot of the times we tend to assume that, you know, brand is linked to marketing. And then with that comes creativity and everything else. So all of a sudden we need to sit down and brainstorm and be these, you know, this whole blue sky thinking inside of things. When really, and you did mention this before as well, is the is branding more linked with culture? Right. It's actually all of the above. So from my definition, if you go the it's actually more it's for us. And we're saying branding is all the touch points. It's kind of what your what this person looks like and so forth. What you're bringing up, though, with culture, though, is is a very interesting question because what you've done is you've actually said for the first time. If we think people like think about this, we think the people in your organization, you know, the staff, the everybody who works there, even your partners that work with you, they are actually representing your brand. Yeah, they're the ones that make your brand come to life. It's not the TV advertising. It's not the website. It's actually the people. And that, you know, we I think even in the in the spec sheet that we sent out, we've said one of the common questions that that a lot of organizations have is, you know, what do my staff say at a barbecue about what we do? And a lot of times they don't actually know what you do. They're so that the organization is so big or they just don't know. They only know their part. And and it's people are so important to that. So we are finding, you know, over the last 10 years of of doing this process is that actually the brand is the culture and the culture is the brand. Think about this. If I can give you an essence of what you are, how you should act, then we should hire people based on that. And we actually find that the people, if you have this, if we actually find that if we can articulate what that essence is and maybe if we have a bit of time, I can give you some examples of that. What we can do is we can actually hire based on that. And the people who who work in our organization act like that. And that's how we start to see that, you know, that's how the brand and culture comes to come together. So with all this talk and there has been more recently in the last few years about employee engagement and culture and satisfaction within the workplace. Do we then, if we're starting from scratch, do we then, you know, do the culture thing first and then work on the brand? Or, you know, how are we supposed to get the balance right? So what we're going to say to you is it's the same. It's all done. It's all part of the same process. So when we go into an organization, a lot of the times, you know, an organization might have started 20, 30 years ago and what they started with is not the same as what they are now. So what you've got to do to build brand is what we're saying is, no, what you've, if you're going to build a new brand, a rebrand, you get a part of that, what you're going to do is you actually have to talk. You have to talk. You're going to get the history of where the organization comes from because within the history is what's made that brand great. And a lot of people at the beginning, you know, you asked, you know, whether you've got a good brand. Yeah. Well, you've got a good brand because, you know, it's been, it's the culmination of a lot of history. So you've got to be able to grab that history and understand what it is that's made the brand great, how that brand is operated, how that brand thinks. And then what you do is you then you can then take that. And then when you articulate what the brand, what the culture is or what the brand or how you should say it, all you're really doing is articulating what it is that's the answer to how you should say it. It's it's it's not new. It's kind of embedded. Yeah. OK. So I just want to go back to this slide because this was brought up at the beginning and we're almost to questions now. So we've got some coming through. So thank you. We'll get to those in a few minutes. Let's just wrap up now. And we started with this. And we're looking to end on this. Why is this here? So as you said, I mean, if the world looks like this and and we've said again that it's getting faster and faster as you add the number of channels that you can actually send your message when it goes up. By the way, what I didn't mention at the beginning is the way we as consumers receive information is is also proliferating. So I can get a message on my iPad or I can get it on my phone or I can get it on my computer. It's everywhere. So it's it's more and more important in today's world to have a consistent message that comes through. And that consistent message is what you say and how you should say it. It's those combination. And if you can get those right, what happens is and all we have to do is all we're doing is it's kind of like if you were looking for a pair of binoculars and you just did that little the switch thing and it comes into focus. That's what happens. Because once it's in focus, then we know where to go. Yeah. And that's the aha moment, really. That's all I think it all comes together and everything you've been talking about for the past half hour. It's, you know, asking those questions, getting people involved, creating that canvas. And then once you have that, everything does become a lot clearer like we can see here. Yes. And once you have that, then no one can say, well, I think this, I think this is like, no, go to the brand canvas and then come and talk to me. That's exactly right. So it helps internally, too. It it's it has to come internal and then and then become external. OK, so just some key brand learnings for people out there and then we'll get into Q&A because we've got some coming through for people who are watching this today and they want to go out and they really want to make a difference and they're feeling inspired. What are the key learnings and takeaways? So the first thing to know is this branding things, not rocket science. It's actually, I know, common sense. I know people use that all the time. But like and I think I've taken you through this. You know, you've got to get the thinking right before they're doing too many times. People do the same thing over and over again. It's all about execution and they haven't really thought about it. So that's why we have to put a process in number two in place. And what we're suggesting is there's five brand questions to go through. Now, you it's just a process. It's a way of doing that. But the important thing about those five brand questions is we've got rid of the marketing terminology. And I've also spoken to you in number three about don't use. I think if you hear, I think run a mile. What do you use instead of that? This is what our customers need. This is what our customers. This is what motivates our customers. What should we how should we go that way? So it's a customer hat. If we can walk away without learning and change that today, then this has been worthwhile for me. So obviously, you can't not you cannot be all things to your all people. So that's why you have to target you too many times is your your workout. All here are all my customers that I can go after. And then we try to be all things to all those people. And that actually there's one color that comes to mind when that happens and that's beige. Then you end up just being nothing now. And I'm not saying anybody got beige walls. But what we're pointing out here is you've got to be meaningful. And the more targeted you are, the more meaningful you are. Perfect. And five is your own people are the most important asset. So you need to use that there. The most important part of marketing you need to have. And we haven't really talked about one person in charge. At the end of the day, marketing comes down to a decision. You need to make that decision and move on. And you can measure it and see if it's working. But you can't have multiple people trying to measure to to come up with you know, marketing by joint. You can come up with objectives and you can work out what the frame is. But then somebody's got to make a decision. You've got to think inside the box, the brand canvas. So that's so important in this. And that's what builds our objectivity in branding, of course, is about consistency and discipline. And we talked about being boring and here's one I throw in just something that you can use straight away. We go into lots and many organizations. We work with a lot of organizations, especially not for profit and government. And the use of acronyms drives me mad because effectively just just on a little aside here, an acronym is actually an internal language. It's it's almost a lazy way of talking about things like in certain situations you need it, you know, in the army, you know, in operating theater, you want a really shorthand way of doing it. But if if you're just put your customer hat on, if they don't understand what the acronym might be, even your company name, they don't understand it. Then they're going, they're not listening to what you're saying. They're actually trying to work out what it says. Am I dumb or do I get it? Should I know this? And and that's that's my little acronym thing. And the last point, of course, is our other mascot, which is. He said it, I suppose, quite a few years ago, but you've got to keep it simple. It's it's it's not complicated. If it gets complicated, you fail. He is just refining as well, isn't it? A lot of the time it's all about refinement and so forth. So that's OK. Well, thank you for that. Some great insight there. And like I said, some stuff that we can really take away and apply now, whether we are starting fresh, whether we're just here for curiosity or whether we may want to go through an entire rebrand, in which case, good luck with that. We're now going to go to some questions. So some have come through from the audience. So if you do have any more, please type them through the box. So first of all, oh, sorry. First of all, we have one here from Susan. So is there a difference between branding when it comes to the corporate, the government and the third sector? It's a great question. If you ask me, no, it's the same process. So when we talk about here, obviously, there are different channels you might use in the different markets, but actually those five questions. We use the same five questions, whether corporate, not for profit, whether you're a startup, it's the same five questions because it's that thinking side. You've got to get the thinking right. Yep. So your audience might be different, but the actual thinking behind it is the same. Absolutely. And there's a lot of people will say there's differences between, you know, B to C and B to B and all these things. But we at the end of the day, it's the same process. And yeah, and you are talking to people at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. Another one from a fellow Jason over here. So when it does come to branding, what is your favorite and least favorite brand? So let's spin that. Let's maybe talk about brands that, you know, you think do really, really well and think ones that you don't think do well. And that might be ones that we've heard about recently. Okay. So I'm going to be, all right. So the first brand that we always referred to. And when I say this brand, some of you might go, I hate that brand. And by the way, that means that brand's working because it's targeting. So the brand that we think is just amazing is Apple. Now, I mean, I know everybody goes, oh, it's Apple, it's Apple. Of course they're there. But if you look on any metric and we talked about measuring, they are a phenomenal brand. They are so pervasive that they, every time they bring out an iPhone, they change the GDP of the United States. They are bigger than their profit is bigger than like 50 countries put together. Like this, this, this, this person is huge. And, you know, the statistic that I often quote is this is that if you look at, if you go into a store, a retail store, and you go into a department store, you know, the average dollars per square meter, 40 meter is actually a measure for within retail. But just to give you an indication of where Apple sits, you know, Tiffany's has, has traditionally been the highest dollars per square foot. So, and you can understand within a retail situation, you can understand why high dollars that they're selling very expensive products. And they, and they don't have that big a footprint for that. In fact, Tiffany's is a phenomenal brand, right? That Tiffany blue is actually patented by Pantone. And the color is 1861, which is when Tiffany's was founded. Now, here's the interesting thing. So Tiffany does roughly about $3,000 a square foot. And it's in the highest, the most expensive category. You can understand that Apple. Now, if you think about Apple for a second, Apple's bought more as these huge stores in the most expensive areas in the world, right? They're in Times Square. They're in Piccadilly, like they're everywhere and big stores. And they're dollars per square foot in technology, right? Remember, they their product is technology. It's roughly around six thousand. It's it's way off the scale. So that's that's one of the brands I think, you know, you walk into an Apple store and the how you're greeted and the people there. It's all quite consistent, I feel as well. Very consistent. It's almost it's almost an army in terms of how you run that organization within like the the processes they have. So it's all about containing the brand. OK, now on the flip side, also, just want to let people know that if you do have to leave or you want to stay, if you could complete the feedback survey, that'll be great because type your details in there, let us know what you think. We'll send you some case studies that Jason's put together as well as a recording of today's session. So let's finish it off. I'm going to what I'm going to say about this is a little bit more controversial. I'm going to say to you, not about a brand I don't like as such. What I'm going to do is a controversial brand that's out there at the moment who I don't I think is a really good brand, but I don't it's not a brand for me. And that's the Trump brand. Yes. So forget whether you like him or not. And I gather in Australia, most people don't like that. Don't feel he's he's part of that. He's a phenomenal brand. He built a phenomenal brand. And and and there's actually a blog on our on our website that you can read about how good is Trump. Yeah. And the reason why Trump is an interesting brand is forget just Trump, the person, not he's the presidential brand, Trump. He was able to win that election that, you know, we all felt we voted in almost by he spent exactly half what Clinton spent. Half the number of dollars. He he was, you know, he doesn't appeal to us, but he was able to find a target within America that he does appeal to. And the reason and when you see there that everybody doesn't like all these people, the commentators are the ones that are the ones that, you know, can't believe he won because they weren't part of his target market. And so what people need to understand there is that he was able to find a target market that was a big enough for him to win the presidential election. And then he was able to message that target. And he came up with a really good line, how great, you know, make America great. And he did that, by the way, back in 2012, he won that thing. And he's already come up with the next line that he wants to use for 2020. So you think that this guy is not that smart. He's very strategically smart and you want to know the line? Go for it. Keep America great. But it works, right? It's inside the canvas. There you go. Well, I think that's true because I think a lot of the time and there has been some circumstances since he won the election where he does say something that's a little bit too positive and people say, Oh, God, what's going on? Because he's sort of going off brand and then he has to bring it back, doesn't he? Because he needs to sort of stay inside that canvas and stick to what he originally said. And you'll notice he does a lot of messaging back to the people that voted him. He'll have a lot of town hall. He'll go off and have meetings and just tell them how good he's doing. We might think he's doing great job, but to his audience, they love him. Yeah. Good one. Didn't expect that one to come out, but I'm glad that you said it. There's an article on there. You can feel free to comment and so forth. Well, thank you so much. It's been a delight for 45 minutes. I personally have learned a lot that I'm going to take away and we've managed to keep it to 45 minutes exactly. So thank you once again, everyone for joining. If you are thinking to revamp your brand, I guess, or maybe start from scratch and you do need someone to consult you, please contact Jason. His details will be in the recording email. And once again, thank you, everyone, for joining Redback Business Skills series. We hope to see you next time. Bye for now.