Brand Strategy For Designers: How to Get Started (Part 1)

so we know that um products are made in factories but brands are built in the hearts and minds of people and so every opportunity that you get to share an experience or build that reputation or create an expectation you have to nurture or influence that relationship so as a designer who's moving into brand strategy space you have to consider all of that and that's why I think people want to be brand strategist because you get to do something important you get to sh the company and I just want to say a quick thank you to the people who made this possible and we're going to move on today's episode is brought to you by teachable the platform that has helped hundreds of thousands of creators grow online businesses we've used it for years here at the future and we found it so easy to do things like hosting our courses manage Affiliates and processing payments it's been a crucial part of our one billion mission to help you make a living doing what you love if you'd like to sell a course or a digital product of your own head to teachable.com slthe Future to try it for yourself they've got an exclusive offer just for the future fam 3 months of their paid Pro Plan for only 99 bucks with the code the future 99 you'll save over $350 if you sign up today all right let's get back to the video so I'm going to start off today with like a couple of quick stories about how I got into brand strategy so there's some context for this conversation and where I went with it so if your expectations aren't fitting within that let's have a conversation and uh the the very first person I saw do branding it kind of blew my mind it's woman her name is Yo santosa and she runs a company called Pharaoh concrete she's an Arts Center grad and we went through the same program though what she was able to do was very different than what I was able to do and I I looked at it like I studied graphic design of course she went to school much um like many years after I did and she started doing branding I was just really intrigued by it because for a very long time we're a design design production companies we work with agencies like advertising agencies so they did the strategy they would write the copy we would figure out creative ways to bring that to life in video and animation but we didn't do the Strategic part so when I saw her doing this stuff and I was just like semi intrigued and really just jealous like how do you do that did we go to the same school and did you have some Secret Sauce so I started to study it and some of you who watch my videos understand like how my brain works I'm very logical I break things down and it just started to unravel everything and try to find the recipe for it I even interviewed her and asked her all these questions that I wanted to know in hopes that I would be able to share with all of you but she struggled with telling me how she did what she did that's okay cuz I figured it out all right and I'm here to share it with you and back I don't know in the early 2000s Pinkberry as a frozen fro yo place was just blowing up and she did some incredible work for for Pinkberry which opened my mind as to what designers could do they started to design copy the website signage and really worked with them in expanding their brand and when we talk about brand and we'll get into a little bit more later it's way deeper than what I thought was it was and what designers could do and her inspiration for the entire uh Pink berry look was she was really into high-end Cosmetics so if you understand that then you look at this you're like oh I see like if you look at the way Cosmetics are photographed the powders and all the serums they it's very clean it's white it's minimal it's very luxurious and it's simple presentation and and there in in the copy that she would write too like I didn't know you could do this instead of saying just open from 11: to 11 she would write swirling daily so she's working with copywriters and this really excited me I'll show you just a little bit more of her work to give you the context so for me this is what graphic designers do we design identity systems not branding now I know it's a very popular phrase that people use like I do branding no you don't if you don't shape the entire customer experience from point A to point B then you're not really doing branding you're using that as a buzzword because you think you can charge more money there's nothing really wrong with that you can call yourself whatever you want but if you're purist and you're like not not really you're misrepresenting there okay and so she would come up with campaigns write copy come up with image recipes she would design websites also apps and I was just like this is so cool and here I am just totally confused like that's not really me I'm like how how are you doing this and I just couldn't figure it out back then it was so mysterious and so sexy I'm like I want that and then I meet this guy Jose and Jose comes from the web design space user experience design he worked in Silicon Valley with startups and was part of that whole culture and he wanted to show me how did the user experience design and the story is going to come to a I'll Point here in a second so he showed me this thing that he had co-developed with some of his very smart friends about like what branding and you user experience it somewhere between the brand the user and the business goals is what they do and he developed this framework called core and he showed it to me and I I influenced a little bit of how it was shaped and some of you how many of you guys have purchased core are using core great thank you very much so there's three of you so you have an advantage over everybody else because what I'm doing is my version of it taking to whatever level applied for Branding and so this was an eye-opening experience for me because throughout my years in art center and and after after Art Center for almost 20 years at that point I didn't understand that we're designing for someone and you can't build a website or an app if you don't design for someone very specific cases so he introduced me to this concept of a user profile and so when you design a website you have to know who are the stakeholders who's going to be using it not just the end user but the administrators or the content creators and you design a use case for each one of those people and you see where they intersect and you create different portals depending on who's interacting with it like the classic example of an airline you think you design the airline website just for the end user but you don't you design one for the travel agent you might design one for the airline itself and all the different partners and so there's different ways of interaction but the big Insight was when you design for someone it really shapes how you think about the design makes sense right and that was a big like Epiphany for me like wow this is how you do it and of course he took it where you're supposed to take these things he would use it to build wireframes for websites or or flowcharts and then he would get into the Web Design This is actually literally from one of our episodes where I was designing a website the correct way for the first time in my life and I'm semi ashamed or guilty of designing websites as digital brochures I've done this before and you should spank me for it later so when he showed it to me I'm like wow I can come up with ideas for features and functions I was developing tools it felt really empowering to be able to do this now if you're squinting your eyes I know some of you are you're like what is going on here but if you're in the web space you understand this this makes a lot of sense so that's that's where the big shift happened for me was creating something built around an experience but I immediately saw something much cooler than this whereas Jose would start with Divi defining the brand voice and the tone and the culture of the brand if we're do doing user experience design shouldn't we be focused on the user first and he and I would butt heads on this I always wanted to start teaching and running workshops with a user point of view before we got into the brand it's much easier for the brand to understand the needs of the users and create products for them than it is to say we have a product now let's go find a user so philosophically it might look like it's the same but for me fundamentally it was a very different almost isic shift I'm semiconscious cuz my skirt's going to fall off here I don't I'm going to take it off in a little bit okay so I'm going to show you now the very first time we it's an apron we did brand strategy somebody call a skirt before I just went with that I'm like it's just an apron guys all right cuz you're like he's going to take off his skirt it's not going to work you don't want to see that either by the way the very first time we did brand strategy independently of Jose was for a client called go I'm the kind of person who learns a little bit and I'm super dangerous cuz I go telling people I'm going to do this now and then you get hired for it and then you panic and you break up in like a break out in a cold sweat okay so I'm going to show you what it looks like it's not perfect it's not perfect so we do the core exercises as I'm adapting it for Branding and building other things okay We Came Upon two insights these are facilitated full day workshops 68 hours in a room room where Executives flew in from across the country to meet with us keep in mind it's the first time I'm doing it by myself pretty scary and I've only done it twice this is like the second time all right so when we're talking to the chief Revenue officer I forget his name but he said something like Chris I don't know man what we do is not sexy but what we do is we save people money and that's a big deal for us they're an IT expense management company they help large corporations plug the leak boat if you will if you can imagine we have thousands of employees laptops and cell phones and cell plans there's lots of money wasted so they're able to help companies manage their it expenses makes sense right now I know that doesn't seem like a big deal but it took hours for us to understand what they did they use very complicated language and I'll give you one tip here when you're working with your clients and they say things you don't understand because you're going to be a brand strategist facilitator after this point if you don't understand something you have to be brave enough to say I do not understand what you're saying they started using acronyms and jargon I just didn't understand at all and I raised my hand kind of after hours of this I'm like my mind is going to explode I don't know what they're talking about and I have to make something from this so you have to be brave enough to say something I raised my hand I said hey everybody you guys are talking inside baseball I do not know where you're talking about you need to explain this to me like I'm your mom or fifth grader cuz I'm the guy who has to write the copy build to stuff that people use I suspect you're having problems with your website with your identity with your communication cuz you're speaking very inside baseball at this point no one understands and to my surprise and Delight they all just laughed and there was a big sigh in the room as if we I just let the pressure valve open it was really cool to do that so I'm going to continue on this theme where if you're fully transparent Embrace that what you know and what you don't know it's going to be much much easier but this was a really big insight Insight number two and there are many I'm just going to pull out two insights for you is that they looked at their customers with disdain they they considered them like a necessary evil and I know some of you I won't make you raise your hand but some of you think your clients get in the way of your ability to do good work that's a horrific combative way of looking at the people who make what you do possible so we want to get rid of that attitude too and so we kept working on defining their ideal customer their user the people are going to buy their service say and we found out that at the core of every 21st century business every operation is the IT person they're blamed for everything they get no credit and they're just looked down upon they're very much maligned I said they're just not the hero of every operation they're the superhero and for the first time you can see the energy shift again from disdain to deep empathy and gratitude our email server went down for like a day we all freaked out like it's like we don't know what to do we're looking at each other like like no one speaks English anymore and then I called up where ERS like can you fix this I'm on her right now have you ever had that kind of problem before yes so now you know it's like we don't we shouldn't be yelling at them we shouldn't be blaming them we should be thanking them okay those two insights started to drive everything else that you'll see here today okay in terms of like what I'm about to present to you so the company's name is Tango and we developed a bunch of logos Emily's an amazing designer she would do all these designs and then I looked at one of her designs I'm like wait wait change this do this cuz I have an idea on how to sell it this is the logo they ultimately bought and I'll tell you how I sold it okay I think the tiace is accurat for those of you guys that know your tiac is and she modified the descender of the G it's a two-story G and I I like just cut it off like that make it very stylized she goes okay I can do that so when I went to present all these different logo ideas I came up on this and I said you guys are about the bottom line like I get it they like show us no more logos we're done so sometimes a little customer Insight turns into a design expression that is abstract but has meaning to them and they can then take that and sell it all the way through through marketing through the CEO and every CFO don't you guys get it we're about the bottom line okay so then that informed everything else the use of lines and the colors some of you guys are like they look like future colors I'm like yeah who knows what happened all right so then we started writing copy something I've never done before and I'll read you some of the lines and given the two insights I shared to you they save people money and that's cool and the the people that work um their their their customers should be embraced as these Heroes of 21st century businesses right so there's the Leaky bucket it says it expenses out of control gain visibility of Shadow it because what they offer their customers is transparency you can know what where your money is going and you can plug the boat um it's just simple simple copywriting it's not trying to write just do it because I'm not that kind of copywriter but it's effective in its communication single syllable words fifth graders can to understand spend less do more uh they have this product called The Matrix so having this ability to look into a space and understand like where everybody's at so that that was a concept right like who's spending what what's her data plan look like so we're trying to show it visually uh super icial versus super fiscal of just a play on words there and something had happened to me when I was working on this project I realized I thought I got into design to escape words and copy but I was just like I think I can write copy now this is kind of fun to do to find the right word combinations it's difficult because you're going to find out tomorrow when you have to write copy but it's once you figure out that there's a game and there's a puzzle and a framework then it becomes much much easier so where do we get this superficial versus superficial because they're not just the hero they're the superhero so we started playing around with themes of the Justice League and superhero so you know where this line comes from check it out with great visibility comes great power that's the Peter Parker Spider-Man line right but it's like with great power comes great responsibility we just switch the words around the diligent dollar Defender and Titan of it and boosting the bottom line and then we would do this into mockups we designed their website please don't look up the website since working on it they fired the entire team somebody else came in like the entire SE Suite was like something weird happened they nuked the whole thing so now if you go check it out it looks nothing like this and it was wonderful too because then having done the logo their identity system their website and their copywriting they asked us to design videos for them so this just grows and grows like once you get to know the client's needs better than they can articulate it you're in real deep at this point so the engagement I think started I think under $100,000 and quickly blew into a quarter million dollar they paid $100,000 just for the video itself so this is the benefit of you being able to have this conversation when we took break for the first day that four hours that we're in he turned to me he said something amazing he said Chris you've been able to do more in hours than we have been able to do in months as as you know as a designer Who services people I'm like that feels pretty good to hear something like that and towards the end and if you're doing this right they'll stand up and hug you privately not allog together but they're like when the other guys are gone they just lean in and give you a hug I'm like this feels good I've been working in commercial production working with ad agencies for years at this point none of them ever given me a hug is because they saw me as a person who made things not as a partner trying to help them facilitate their goals and Achieve something and solve a big problem so terms and definitions it's important for us to share the correct dialogue when we're talking about things this is going to be like these really really rapid fire things I'm going to do with you okay so I just want you to complete this sentence a brand is what is a brand like two words gut feeling anybody else a brand is what okay perception customer perception perfect okay what else ability to deliver promises okay these are excellent oh you guys are too smart notice nobody said a logo I love it expectations you don't know I you don't you have not seen what I've seen okay very good so there are many definitions of what a brand is and and I think we're really really close it's like like 98% any one of those things that you said I think feel right to me there were no wrong answers there will be wrong answers that I guarantee it but so far so good the crowd is smart in Miami here okay so if we go to Mr Marty newm who writes about branding all the time a professional friend colleague and now yeah I think personal friend too a brand as a person's got feeling about a product service organization so it's what you say it is it's what they say it is and what who's they and he writes in a different book I think it's maybe brand flip when enough people share a gut feeling then you have a brand so inevitably when you read that or you say that out loud what the next question is how many is enough people I don't know I would say more than half half the people you're talking to then I think 51% that's your brand so we can see that then there's multiple interpretations of this because not everyone has the same experience so when we're working with our customers I'm sorry with our clients who have customers we have to understand what the perception is today where they would like to move it to okay so very good so we know that um products are made in factories but brands are built in the hearts and minds of people and so every opportunity that you get to share an experience or build that reputation or create an expectation you have to nurture or influence that Rel relationship so as a designer who's moving into brand strategy space you have to consider all of that and that's why I think people want to be brand strategist because you get to do something important you get to shape the company so if we understand what branding is I promise you the prompts get a little bit harder okay so feel free to write in your book whatever you think but you can write it in later too therefore for Branding is what so a brand is a person's got feeling it's about the promises that you make and your ability to deliver on those things it's about the character and your values and creating expectations then what is branding if that's brand oh now you're not so fast build building what those building those feelings building logo okay okay we knew the logo comments coming it's coming here we go what visual audio application all those principles the visual audio application of all those principles okay the feelings translated to visuals okay so now it's kind of real interesting we're starting to talk about tangible things now Cur curating experience okay hold on to that thought I need another marker here if this is a brand what is your name Liz Liz says it's shaping all of that that sounds pretty smart to me if this is the brand then branding is how we influence or shape all that that makes a lot of sense are you brand strategist by the way even better you're like I'm brand strategist by osmosis I'm been doing my sleep baby I got this so you're going to crush this right so we'll just say watch out for the table of three the three ladies are just destroy she's just not even trying and she's doing it that makes a lot of sense okay there was an article in Harvard Business Review I think it was the May June issue of this year I'm very much into brand and branding and personal Brands so when I saw this some many post it is online I had to go to the bookstore the news stand they still exist somewhere I'm like where's the copy of this so I'm my it's not my local news stand so I had to find a Barnes & Noble in Glendale and I wented there and I bought this and I read it and the article sucked hbr is not all that it's cracked up to be it's you read this have you read this article save your money just save your money right now I okay they're written by really smart people usually Harvard graduates but this one was really about like tuning your resume to get a job a j o I'm like I'm not interested that at all this is totally missing the point in my opinion but there was an article before this article that was much more interesting it was about how to measure branding versus marketing that article is worth reading we're not going to talk about the article today but it said something like your brand is being shaped at every interaction because someone's forming an opinion about you that's consistent with what we've been talking about right it's promises it's experiences it's people's gut feeling and so that gut feeling is being changed every single day some of you came in this morning with a feeling about me hopefully gets it gets better and then tomorrow goes down who knows what's going to happen but that's why you could never let it down this is also why you can't create a false brand because people are going to see right through it almost immediately because we live in a new time when companies no longer control our perceptions because of social media good work good news travels fast bad news travels even faster right so we the consumer now are taking over the brand we own the brand the customers okay and of course Jeff bzo says your brand is what people say when you're not in the room it's your reputation we get that go ahead okay the fake brand I'll give you the example back in the day when when companies can control the narrative they might say like something like quality's job one what company is that quality's job number one no no there's a very specific brand what no okay this is how old I am or how old you're not paying attention nobody knows quality's job number one they probably had to change this because it's not true it was Ford you guys remember Ford quality is job number one and I'll tell you something uh I'm an immigrant a refugee from Vietnam my parents when they came here we escaped communism and so my parents were so grateful for America my dad is Mom China that's terrible buy American buy American right so when he had the opportunity to we bought like a minivan the very first year the Ford Aerostar came out okay and I got to tell you something I was in high school and I was in the French Club and we had to like sell candy or stupid things to earn enough money to have this fancy French dinner in the Hills somewhere all right so my parents are driving me and my cousin and my my little brother it's a fancy French restaurant we're going to use all our French that we supposedly learned and we pulled up onto this Gravel Road pull up to the side I I'm like Mom see you later just park in the darkness we don't want to see you again please don't let any my friends see you I flip the door open the sliding door and the whole door falls off quality is job number one my face went like just totally red I just started sweating immedately my cousin time like hold the door so it doesn't look so bad like we're just like like saying along long goodbye or something right now help me put the door back on and the first time we took a road trip in that that Aerostar it was across from San Jose to Las Vegas it broke in the desert so my mom and dad super hot desert the My Three Brothers my two brothers my my dad and and my older brother had to run across the highway to hitchhike to go to the gas station quality's job number one that is a fake brand clearly it's not number one to this day my dad's like I guess we're done with Ford he bought a Honda it's never broken okay but I love this idea from Dr Christine lucer who teaches at The manura Institute the manura project and she's like Chris do you know what impression management is like yeah she goes what's an example of impression management so I'm going to ask you what is impression management deal with the way people see you or perceive you or you but give me an example how are you doing doing impression Management on a human level like politicians when they no like give me a yeah okay politicians politicians when they have to deal with something that's against what they are saying like finding a way to have an excuse that makes that is still believable okay let me ask you on a very personal level how have you personally have done impression management so if you want to say we'll throw the mic over to you okay here it's really easy it's a short trip for me the way I dress more words okay so when when before I'm going out in public I actually take a strategic approach a long period of time and I wear certain clothes for me that translate to you my brand okay give me one very specific instance I'm wearing a breast cancer bracelet by David yman his wife and he started the business and he used to be a welder my husband was a welder he's no longer with us everything that I'm wearing is my own trademark in my name my shoes were done by my daughter that's enough okay okay thank you that was excellent that was excellent so for sure like if you're on a date you're going to dress up for it you comb your hair you'll wash your clothes you do something because you want to make that good first impression if you're showing up for a job interview they say dress for the job you want not the one that you have so you need to connect culturally to them if they're very suit and tie three-piece suit don't come in in in shorts and and flipflops conversely if you work in the creative industry do not show up in a suit they'll make fun of you you know my brother went my younger brother when he first arrived in La he showed up for a job interview and he wore an ill-fitted suit and the guy said never come back again like that but we'll hire you and so he worked in the in the industry for really long time so you have to kind of match what the expectations are we get that right and so we can see that if we are managing Impressions that is branding we're trying to shape and influence it we can't control it we can't control people we can't control their feelings but we can definitely influence it for sure okay so I think we're all on board we're on the same page here that unfortunately the vast majority of people outside of this room that call themselves designers do not understand what brand and branding is for them it's this and there's real reason why they're confused by this right because when Nike over the last couple decades have done everything they can to shape your impression of them we come to symbolize it in a mark and then they think well the Nike shoe is not worth anything if you take that Mark away is that true or false mostly true mostly true because if it was a knockoff brand let's just say it was like Sketchers they both cover your feet they both have cushioning they both have materials but it's a totally different experience the one that we tell ourselves so that's why designers think it's the logo I created all the meaning um and I'm forgetting his name now I interviewed him on this he says the logo is just a container for meaning this is a critical thing for you to understand a logo is just a container for meaning everybody that's part of that company from the marketing team down to the customer service to the intern puts meaning in the container then the container has to be beautiful it has to be open it has to be something that can withstand the rigors of different applications and time so there is real value in creating that there are wonderful brands that I love that have a horrible logo that I just cannot buy because I'm a snob I shouldn't be caught up in that but the Aesthetics do matter to me okay as many of you will like yeah we're in that same camp so everything else that's underneath the things that we don't see the voice the messaging the behavior that bleed the values the entire customer experience is what makes that brand but the public sees that so we understand now why there's some confusion there today's episode is brought to you by teachable the platform we at the future have used for years to serve up our bestselling courses and templates right now you can get 3 months of their Pro Plan for just 99 bucks with the code the future 99 enjoy premium features to elevate your business