Today we get back to basics to talk about some fundamentals of brand. Derrick Daye from The Blake Project and Brand Strategy Insider joins us to talk about what separates companies from brands, and the limits some just aren’t willing to cross.
Transcription by Otter.ai
Adam Pierno 0:02
Alright, welcome back to another episode of the strategy inside everything. This is going to be a good one, we’re going to have a very organic talk. And ironically, I think that’s the topic that we’re going to be discussing as well. Today’s guest is the co founder and managing partner at the bleak project, really, really doing some impressive work on branding for a very long time. Mr.
Derrick Daye 0:52
Sure, thanks for having me on the show. And I appreciate everyone tuning in.
Adam Pierno 0:57
I appreciate you making time we have been trading emails back and forth for a while on a on a couple of different topics, you were kind enough to publish some writing on your site branding strategy Insider, and I was very grateful
Derrick Daye 1:12
that you’ve really brought a lot of value to the agency world. And so it’s very clear that we needed to add some of your thought pieces to branding strategy Insider, a, a collection of thought pieces that we’ve been sharing from a lot of different marketers since 2006. So
Adam Pierno 1:36
I will definitely link to that in the in the show notes and elsewhere, because it’s, it’s a resource, I use a lot. I send my RSS and I read the articles as they come. But if you’re in this industry, and you haven’t read it, you’re you’re missing a good opportunity to learn two or three times a week.
Derrick Daye 1:53
Great. Thanks, Adam.
Adam Pierno 1:56
Hey, Derek, Would you do me a favor? Before we get up and running on topic? Would you give people a little bit of your background and tell them?
Derrick Daye 2:04
Yes, happy to. So my name is Derek de has had him introduced me, I’m the managing partner to play project, which is a strategic brand consultancy. And just a little bit about the business. And then I’ll talk a little bit about me. So the four key areas of our expertise, our brand research, brand strategy, which includes some of the usual suspects, like positioning architecture, we even get into a strategic side of story. And then also help folks think through complex marketing challenges. And then the other two pillars of our business are centered around brand growth, and brand education. And I just want to just share this, this point of difference. And in our business as a consultancy, it’s it’s actually in the education component, we really believe in preparing ourselves clients for the journey ahead. And so we infuse this brand education and everything we do, which actually is very unconsolidated, like because consultant consultants either, you know, they’re they’re often preparing their clients for dependency. And we’ve gone the other way, said, How can you know what, maybe if we make folks folks better stewards of their brands, they’ll get better results, and it will go on to have longer, more productive relationships. And that’s exactly what’s happened. So me myself, my background, I was a broadcast journalist for several years and covering stories around the world and and on radio, and then TV. And then I made my way to the ad agency world, where I worked at a few different respected ad agencies, including Saatchi and Saatchi, where I worked in strategy until I founded this company in 2003. It has been rewarding challenging, and I’ve been really fortunate to work with many of the world’s leading brands, but also with many of the world’s leading thought leaders. And an early mentor of mine is someone that I hope a lot of people know. And that’s jack trout. You know, he coined the term I know you, you know, this Adam, he coined the term positioning back in 1969. And him and his partner galleries, they went on to really champion this concept brand positioning, and owning this unique value in someone’s mind. Throughout the 70s, and well beyond. And when I started this company back in 2003, I met jack trout. And, and he contributed 109, five pieces to branding strategy Insider, our time together, obviously one of the legends and in building brands, and you know, so he had a big influence on my career.
Adam Pierno 5:12
Definitely, yeah, I mean, the idea of being a lifelong learners, getting better at everything you’re doing and, and understanding it more deeply and growing your brain at all times valuable.
Derrick Daye 5:26
Yeah, I, I really am to this day is also you got to be really careful that even if even as you get, you know, further on in your career, you’ve got to stay humble, there are always new things to learn. And these ideas are often even coming from folks much younger than you that are, you know, you know, so you shouldn’t be discounting anybody based on their age.
Adam Pierno 5:56
Know?
Derrick Daye 5:57
Exactly, exactly. I think part of being a great marketer is being a great listener
Adam Pierno 6:06
in the context of our our topic today, which is really about flexibility of brands, just before we started rolling, you said, you know, brands aren’t finished, which really, I circled, I wrote, I wrote a note and I circled it, and I put an asterisk next to it. How do you? Well, let’s, let’s start at the at the beginning, you know, you do a lot of work with really deep brand measurement. What I’d like to know is take me through the foundational measurements that you, you know, will typically recommend, and then I want to discuss, how are you setting those things up to measure growth and change over time?
Derrick Daye 6:54
You know, and watch the thing flying be free out in the world. Yeah, so left unpack there, Adam, I want to answer that with this caveat that I’m not a researcher. So but bringing closer to one of the things that we do spend a lot of time with, in that’s brand equity measurement, where some of my partners specialize this and and can go much deeper on it. But brand equity measurement, essentially is, is getting at that private voice, the private voice of your customer, and really understanding what it is they value about you versus your competition, and brand equity measurement. There’s a few different components, that that is included in brand equity measurement from measuring the brand’s health and vitality, understanding how well the brand is positioned against his competitors. uncovering any underlying weaknesses that require intervention. brand equity measurement is also good at identifying opportunities to further strengthen the brand, and providing information from what your brand scorecard can be built.
Adam Pierno 8:17
So that did about the competitors is very highly overlooked. I mean, if you’re not creating that context, over time, over the years, I would imagine your the competitors coming in and going out or telling the story just by who the competitors are directly and indirectly.
Derrick Daye 8:35
Yeah, definitely. You know, we have to understand what’s going on in our marketplace. And certainly, our competition is, is very important. In that understanding. There is an overarching thought, though, on that note that, that actually, we need to focus on our customer, not the competition. But the competition is an important part of this insight. And what the competition is doing for us and what the competition is doing against us. And you know, what it’s doing for us, it’s, it’s helping shape, what the value is in the category, you know, points of parity, help help folks make choices, you know, okay, if this looks like a bank, maybe it will be a bank. So there needs to be some points of parity, but points of difference, we can also by understanding our competition, and just understand what our customers value and what is attracting them to our competitors. So there’s a lot to be learned from the competition as well. So in some ways, our competition could be seen as, as a friend, as they help us shape this, this value in the customers mind, a brand equity management. It is not surface work, it’s it’s not asking a few questions, it’s going very, very deep. And getting to that place where you can be in possession of the truth, which is what every every researcher wants, they want to be in possession of the truth, what’s what’s really going on in the minds of my target customer. And this is part of that triangulating against, you know, the brand, the customer and competitor or the category. Yeah, so what what you want is insight into the category for sure, insight into the value that you’re creating for the customer, whether that’s a product, or service. And then ideally, you also have insight that’s within the organization, you know, something that they know, within the organization. So you try to get those all at the table when you’re doing brand positioning work. So ideally, and maybe a clear way to say this is you have the voice of the customer, you have the voice of the clients and and the expertise that comes with that. And then the voice of the consultant or agency partner, that’s in the process as well.
Adam Pierno 11:40
Are you typically working with an agency, you know, an agency partner, the outside of the Blake project? Are there usually multiple agencies involved?
Derrick Daye 11:49
Yeah, I’m glad you asked that. Because as brand consultants, we’re often working with clients that already have agencies of record. And so we are we have a process where we invite the agencies into our process, we’re all trying to reach the same goals that client has. And, and so we, we welcome the agencies and now ultimately, the client decides whether they want the agency in the in the strategic work that we do. But nine times out of 10, we recommend that they’re there in the room with us, how can they
Adam Pierno 12:35
do their job, if they’re not in the room? I mean, when they get assigned to do something, and activate on this brand, or use this, use the brand equity measurement and figure out where to go? How can they do that? If they’re not participating? It that blows my mind?
Derrick Daye 12:52
Yeah, Adam, they really can’t. But there’s this x factor in the work that we do and the work that you do, and that’s the, you know, the human factor and, and there’s some of it, and every project you’ll ever work on. And and that’s
Adam Pierno 13:07
people ruin everything. Yeah.
Derrick Daye 13:08
And there’s there’s politics, politics, I’ve actually worked with a global brand, where, you know, just to tell a little bit of a war story where, for some reason, at this brand, the HR person held way more power than anyone else, outside of the CEO. And in our brand new initiative, the HR person was trying to cut out the CMO. Now, if you can imagine why how or why a CMO wouldn’t be involved in their own brand strategy work. It’s quite quite mind boggling. But that was the nature the culture there, and we were able to, you know, help the HR person understand that the CMOS presence was central, but I think
Adam Pierno 14:01
you should put the word culture in quotes in that case.
Derrick Daye 14:06
Yeah, definitely. So.
So this this work, it used to be in the domain of consultants, it used to be in the domain of agencies, but really, it’s in the domain of the entire senior leadership team now, and including HR, because, of course, you know, brands need to be built from the inside out. So it’s not just an external exercise. So everyone needs to be aligned. And certainly agency partners. I, as I, as I said, ultimately, ultimately, the client decides.
And there were times when they think that
their agency partner is,
you know, should not be in the room I
you know, we can make, just like any practice, petitioner, you know, you can make recommendations, but that’s as far as you can go with a client that ultimately will be up to them if they take the recommendations.
Adam Pierno 15:12
Let’s, let’s, let’s go back. So let’s say where we set up the the scorecard. You know, let’s go, let’s say we did it in 2017. What are you looking at? going forward? Like, I think we all agree brands are based on? There’s so many factors, internal and external. And one of them is people making decisions about direction making directions, making decisions about product service, advertising, packaging, that the brand is changing in real time. How are you measuring that? And have you found any shortcuts are not shortcuts, but any, any kind of bookmarks that you have on? This is a real question metric?
Derrick Daye 16:01
Well, as I mentioned, this is a real robust study, and it’s typically repeated nine to 12 months later. So you had you have time, it’s usually done before any even big campaigns are about to take place. new behaviors are about to get in gear. So you can actually, in the second time, it’s done, you can see a few indeed, move the needle, the measures that that we think are important or unaided brand awareness, including first recall, also brand relevance, Top of Mind brand associations, Top of Mind points of difference, personality attributes, brand value, brand accessibility. Another really important one, emotional connection to the brand, brand vitality, I liken this to a full medical workup, just as if you were going to get a physical, at the doctor’s office, you really have to take, you’ve got to walk around the brand, and get a full understanding of what’s happening there.
And it also needs to,
it needs to be part of what I’d like to see is and an honest assessment of what’s going on. So there are no, and when you get out and talk to your customer, you’re, you’re able to capture that you’re not there’s no one standing in your way internally that is trying to shape something that is is is is false, is and I’ll emphasize this, to really get to the outcomes we all want. We need to be in possession of the truth. Yeah.
Adam Pierno 17:57
How do you how do you? How do you define brand?
Derrick Daye 18:00
Well, is we all know, there’s many accepts the definitions of a brand, I think I’ve counted up to 15, and probably one of the most popular ones is that a brand is a promise. My favorite definition is a brand is the sum of all experiences a customer has with you. So it’s the totality of everything coming together. You know, and, and, and looking at it through that lens, I think you understand the importance of having everyone involved in all of these, all of these pieces coming together and moving in the same direction?
Adam Pierno 18:42
Well, yeah, because by that definition, it can never be finished. If if we’re doing our job and continuing to engage with our customer, they’ll have more experiences, they’ll, you know, come at it from different ways, they’ll, they’ll learn more, they’ll see another competitor. So it’s
Derrick Daye 18:58
always going to be changing, it’s always going to be changing and and in brands are always fluid, you know, they have to be and I think that’s one of the things that’s harder for some organizations versus others, you’ve got to have a culture that’s that’s, that sees it that way. And that’s moving. Nothing is staying the same. And that’s kind of the paradox of of branding is if you have to change to stay consistent.
Adam Pierno 19:35
When when you measure you said the emotional connection of customers to the brand. How are you measuring that? Or how do you think about that? Even if it’s not specific to measurement?
Derrick Daye 19:45
Yeah. So, you know, that’s, I think one of the most important things, important opportunities for brands today is to really get an understanding of what that emotional connection is. And there is an exercise that will do and some of our more sophisticated approaches to this. This is actually a study that takes us outside of brand equity measurement in itself. And that that’s where we we work with the senior leadership team, and we have their over 300 recorded emotions that one could have. And we put these on cards, three by five cards, all of these emotions, and we put them on a table inside the the workshop room. And we asked senior we asked senior leadership questions around what they want their customers feel about certain things. And then we go and ask them to pick certain cards that describe the emotions they want people to feel, is what we’re trying to get people to in that work is if you could make your customer feel one thing about you, what would it be? Or one thing about the certain things that we’re talking about? It’s it’s interesting that we’re in a business where leading brands have the strongest emotional connections, and we know that 100% of all purchase decisions are driven by emotion. It’s interesting to me that there is not more focus on what do we want other, our customers to feel? Totally, you know that that seems to be a real missing thing. There’s a missing piece, and I don’t, I don’t want to get off track. But here here, here’s another. There’s another missing missing piece out there. And that is around memory. What do we want our customers to remember about us?
Adam Pierno 22:15
Let’s, let’s dig into this. Yeah, because this is something I don’t. I’m so skeptical of brand, emotion and brand, you know, memory structures. But what do you how do you guide clients to think about that? Well, what do we want? What do we want a customer or prospect to remember about the brand?
Derrick Daye 22:35
Well, this gets into the work of behavioral scientists, where where they’re looking at things. I think from a little bit different aspect and marketers but but it’s, it’s certainly
it’s certainly getting into our domain. Now.
One example here is, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the peak end rule. While the peak end rule is essentially, it’s been proven by psychologists that people will remember the end of an event more than they will any other part of the event. So
Adam Pierno 23:25
I didn’t know the name of it. But I heard that
Derrick Daye 23:27
Yeah, so the idea there is, especially when we think about customer experience, or even brand messaging, that whatever it is, that we want our customers to remember, we want to emphasize, at the end, we want to have our big punch at the end.
And
it surprises me that
we don’t think about how we want people remember us more, more in the work that we do, even if statistically and and just just I’ll use a presentation as an example. Statistically, 90% of all presentations are going to be forgotten. This includes even the workshop setups that we do, where there’s educational components in the workshop. So knowing that 90% of the information will be forgotten, what we do is we identify the most important 10% and then we reinforce that through the presentation. That’s, that’s what we should all be thinking about what’s the most important 10% of what we’re communicating. That’s what we need to reinforce. And of course, to do that, you’ve got to really drill down and, and, and understand. You know, what your customers looking for what’s what’s most important to them. And then decide on what is the most important message that needs to be communicated to them. And then stay committed to that message. The obvious example, probably be Nike, just do it. So that campaign is over 30 years old. Now. One of my partners was one of three people at the center of that campaign.
The top researcher, Jerome Conlon
so the idea there is and and it’s not just about Nike having a big idea, but it’s having the commitment. To stay with that big idea. Too many times, especially at large organizations, new marketers come in new leadership come in and comes in. And they have this they have this thing in them that says, I have to change something here to prove my value. And you’ll see mistakes happen. So not too long ago. State Farm change the 40 year old tagline, like a good good neighbor, State Farm is there into something that just didn’t resonate with anyone get to a better state. So it, it’s, you know, these are the signs of of in some cases where the marketer becomes a threat to the brand.
Adam Pierno 26:30
Yeah, because that tagline for State Farm probably has more equity than some of their competitors on a brand level.
Derrick Daye 26:38
Yeah, definitely. And it has this emotional appeal. Which there, there’s a camp out there that that will say, longer tag lines are more emotionally appealing. Now that, of course, is in contrast to what we just talked about, Nike’s Just do it. But in the insurance category and being
I have to agree.
Adam Pierno 27:03
I mean, just do it is is the rare exception, because it has been able to have 30 years of context around it. So no matter if you’re in your 40s like I am, or if you are, you know, 16 and a sneaker head, you are getting your own context for what just do it means based on the communication that you see around that brand. And so it breaks the it breaks the rule, but by virtue of breaking the rule.
Derrick Daye 27:31
Yeah, definitely. And and we know that we’re in an age of rule breaking. So you know, to be Yeah, yeah, I mean, actually, the idea that I try to stay with is if it’s not broke, break it. You know, you know, it’s it’s better that you the brand owner breaks breaks it than your competitor breaks it. So even if something’s working for us, we should be
evaluating it?
Adam Pierno 28:12
Well, I have a question to that end. So let’s say you, you are working with a brand. And the brand has been out there, you know, you’ve you’ve set up a benchmark, and you’re seeing that it’s stagnant. What, how do you diagnose that problem? How do you diagnose stagnation of your vitality or the emotional connection? I mean, unaided awareness is there’s that’s probably simpler, but the emotional things, the things that really relate to customers having experiences with the brand, what’s your, what’s your process there?
Derrick Daye 28:49
Yeah, so
just taking the situation that you’ve given it, which is it’s, it’s been determined that it’s it’s fading are stagnant or not moving. You know, we know that we’re either growing or dying. So the stagnation is is a threat, it’s, it’s, it’s not a good place.
So I think that things that are
come out in brand equity measurement, or some of the other emotional connection measurement that we do, our brands have, have drifted away from what they were once known for, which I, I think this is a real common, probably one of the more common problems, they’ve decided to try to extend the brand, into places that don’t resonate with their target customers, which, which is also a is also going to have an impact on emotional connection, people aren’t just going to be emotionally connected, the things that are have morphed into something that that is not what they expected. This is touches on a little bit of what we talked about with the State Farm example and changing their tagline. And one of the power, one of the powerful things about brands is, is that to consistency, and brands can be counted on to behave a certain way or, or a certain way. And we when we see that there is a weekend response from consumers on these emotional measurements. We know that something has there’s there’s we know the change is constant. But what’s where’s the change coming from? Is it been based on changes that have been made internally? Or? Or is the consumer changing? Because we know that even you know, brands, their promises, can change over time, because the needs of the customer change over time. But, but oftentimes, and now we’re seeing this more than ever, we can map these things back to internal problems, where the senior leadership team is off track. And they are or they’re out of touch with what is really going on in the marketplace. And they said, is that
Adam Pierno 31:29
usually more of a disconnection with the customer? Or is it a disconnection with the category or is just overall lack of focus.
Derrick Daye 31:38
And I think it’s a combination there. I think the lack of focus is is for the for all that has been said about importance of focus and business and all that has been written. It’s still alive and well as a problem within organizations. And this is a breakdown of senior leadership teams not talking to each other not working together as closely. Making decisions in bubbles. There’s a lot of things and it ties back. it all ties back to the decisions that are making made in in the organization. Interesting. And I’m just the point here, because I know there’s a lot of your listeners that are agency folks. I spent, as I mentioned, I spent time with I worked for agencies, Saatchi and Saatchi being the last agency I worked for, before getting into brand consulting. And, you know, the focus of brand consulting work is is really about the inside. And a lot of my time in the agency world, it was about what’s going on in the outside. So it was a new, you know, there’s a lot of kind of a new new perspective, my perspective was shaped and in, in this work. And what I’ve found is that a lot of those, those things that just aren’t going right for a brand. They’re the external forces aren’t as they’re there. But we’re seeing to I’ve seen so many times when it was the leadership that was taking the business in the wrong direction, where they weren’t reading, the signs are the people factor was was getting in the way we’re decisions were ego driven, rather than research driven, right, or insight driven.
And
it all comes back to the people, the caliber of the people that are working for us and with us are so critical to the ultimate judgments that are made the decisions. That result? Maybe you maybe some of you guys already know this, but this, this is going to speak to the employees more. But Starbucks spends more money on health care than they do coffee beans. Yeah. So of course net, because they attract, they want to attract high caliber people. So to do that, you have to really take care of people, to get them to get to attract them, right. So it all goes back to the people.
Adam Pierno 34:36
Just making sure that the people in the organization are taken care of so that they can be thinking about doing the right thing by the brand and not just doing the clock watching thing.
Derrick Daye 34:45
That’s right. And you know, of course, I would say in the last 20 years, where HR has been invited to the conversation about building brands, or even maybe 25 years. And also the emerging companies like Google and, and Facebook, and then the emphasis on creating working environments that are you know, they account for a lot of shiny objects in the world of employee benefits. That’s all about getting the best people to work for them within the organization to the to a point where when you talk to folks that are freshly minted, MBAs are freshly minted graduates. You know, it’s it’s harder and harder for companies like GE to get them to recruit those people because they are, they’re all thinking I want to go to Apple or Google. I want to, I’m drawn to these customer benefits. So I know this is a little off track and what we started talking about, but
Adam Pierno 36:03
because it ties into the emotion around the brand, it’s just a different constituent you’re looking at
Derrick Daye 36:08
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What Well said, Adam, I mean, these emotional connections are are, you know, inside and out.
Adam Pierno 36:17
And but when I hear when I hear, for example, Starbucks gives part time employees health benefits and access to education through their their s cap program. I think differently about the brand as a consumer, you know, I’m not I’m not going to work. But I will tell you my daughter said the other day, she can’t wait till she’s old enough to get a job at Starbucks because they’re going to help her get her education. She’s 11
Derrick Daye 36:46
Wow. Wow. Yeah, there’s, I mean, look, it is it is a new age, and it’s a better age for employees. That’s the way we’re we’re moving. You know that you reminded me of an example of a brand that we You and I have that Rochester New York connection. And and we talked about a little bit before the interview. But yeah, I lived there for seven years. And you you’re working for an agency there. And Wegmans. Now. Yeah, Wegmans. And for those who do not know Wegmans is a privately held grocery chain. And I think they’re in six or seven states now. And their whole idea? Well, first, I should say, routinely, the number one company to work for on for
Adam Pierno 37:45
it makes Whole Foods look like. Yeah, like, yeah, people love if you live in a language trade area, you are smiling right now, people love like,
Derrick Daye 37:55
their benchmark, but many different companies way outside of their category. And it goes back to this one idea where the customer is not number one, the employees not is number one. And the idea there is if we make our employees feel like they’re number one, they’ll transfer that feeling to the customer. And it works. And
Adam Pierno 38:22
what does it trickle down brand pride?
Derrick Daye 38:24
Yeah, exactly.
That’s the one trickle down that works.
So he typically might be right, you know, so it’s, it’s, it’s great to see that, that example alive and well.
Adam Pierno 38:40
Well, especially because that break because groceries have such razor thin margins. You know, they make sense, essentially on each skew they scan so that they that they were wise enough when they did do invest in the power of brand. And the experience that you get a grocery store, and they stayed consistent with that is is a testament to whoever’s running.
Derrick Daye 39:06
Yeah, it’s a family owned. And you know, another Testament is they had several opportunities to sell that company. And they, they’re committed to keeping it a family business. And they didn’t want to lose control of quality. That’s why they’ve been slow to expand other states. So if they don’t think that they can
keep that promise.
They won’t just grow for growth’s sake. It’s very, it’s a careful manage growth. But the demand is there once you’ve once you’ve had a taste of Wegmans, you desperately want that in your community?
Adam Pierno 39:50
Well, it spoils you for other. Yeah, just go to your regular grocery store after you’ve been to Wegmans and it’s, you’re like, what, what is going on? Is all of a sudden the grocery store feels like a bodega.
Derrick Daye 40:03
Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s really interesting. It’s, it’s really interesting. It reminds me of another example from a long, long time ago. And forgive me, I do not remember the name of this grocery store chain. But I think it’s worth mentioning here, there was a grocery store chain only, I say, chain to use that loosely, I think they only had two or three stores. But they decided to do zero advertising, zero advertising. And they use the hundred percent of that budget, to instead reward their customers in the customer experience. So so the word of mouth was where the power was, and this was before social media. So where this would manifest is on on Thanksgiving, they would give out turkeys to their customers, things like that, that they they they really became some by doing the opposite of their competitors. And really understanding that we’re going to be we’re going to create something special special for a small group of people that really understand what we’re all about, and really appreciate that and share values with us. Do you think that is more powerful than advertising? I think in that case, it is I think there’s, as we all know, there’s lots of ways to win. It depends on what you want. As a business owner, there are plenty of successful business owners and I’ll go back to Wegmans. That family is, you know, wealth beyond you know, what a lot of people will attain, and they’re comfortable with that, with how they’ve grown. And, and they don’t believe that they have to be nationwide. To have a feel a sense of accomplishment, you’ll see the same thing and I’m in Los Angeles, you’ll see the same thing out here with In and Out Burger. They could easily take this thing nationwide and and completely take on the other chains is they out here, there’s a cult following there there is there are no fast food, hamburger chains that are even in the conversation. And no one dares to open up a Wendy’s or Burger King next to in and out because they just will not get into this.
Adam Pierno 42:27
And she said the the new CEO who’s been there, I think two years, said that she’s she’s not considering an expansion was not interested in it just wants to keep fine tuning and getting it right. where they are.
Derrick Daye 42:41
Yeah. And so I, you know, back to your question, Adam, there are ways to win. And I think for I think there are ways to win where advertising is not part of the game plan. And rather, it’s its customer experience.
And that’s okay.
We’re in the in the world of business, you know, you’re trying to mean something to a target customer, and you’re trying to create value for them. And in turn, you’re trying to build a successful business, so why not? If that’s going to get you to where you want to go. And in advertising, as we all know, the world has enough advertising right now. So I actually would, would also explore ways where you can focus on building brand advocates, because the more of those you have, the less you need to spend on advertising. Yeah,
Adam Pierno 43:56
yeah, that’s, that’s for sure. You just get one person to nudge the next person in line and get them moving over to your, your brand. Yeah,
Derrick Daye 44:05
yeah. And, you know, Adam, there’s a, there’s a quote, that I think would be good to share here. And that’s by a Persian, ancient Persian philosopher, Rumi, or some folks have probably read, read some of his poetry, but what you seek is seeking you. And I really believe this, in in the, in the context of brand, you have customers out there that are looking for a particular type of value that you create, they’re looking for that. And you’ve created this value, because it’s part of who you are. And oftentimes, it’s just this layer of awareness, that is keeping you two apart. And that, of course, is where the power of advertising does come in, and is important. But as advocates, as I said, Can can be the messenger. But if you think through that lens, that what you seek is seeking you, it kind of makes you think about, well, who do you want to be?
Adam Pierno 45:16
If you can’t decide on that, you don’t know how to shape anything else. That’s where all the decisions flow from.
Derrick Daye 45:23
That’s right. And, you know, just just a note on our own business here. Even a brand consultant can think about this, and say, well, who do I want to work with? Well, it’s those that appreciate our value, the brands that may be out there on an assignment to just check a box, and a CMO that’s just got to go through this process, because that’s a new job description. And yet they they may or may not
activate the work that we’ve done.
We don’t want to work with those folks.
Adam Pierno 46:09
Right? You want people that are passionate about it? For sure.
Derrick Daye 46:12
Yes, exactly. You know, we want to see it come to life, you know, so
Adam Pierno 46:16
you want to be fulfilled in the work you’re doing. And since to do that you need people that are on the other side of the table that are seeking the same type of fulfillment. Yeah,
Derrick Daye 46:25
yeah. And I do feel bad for a lot of client side marketers that that are, you know, on the job for less, you know, two years or less, and they’re just constantly in this race. And they’re not, they don’t have an opportunity to slow down and, and actually, you know, think about things and they, they’re there on the clock. So yeah, so I think it’s, you know, we were fortunate we’re able to find folks that are actually trying to create value in the world, and they want to do things the right way.
Those are the folks that are out there seeking us and we’re seeking that.
Adam Pierno 47:09
Yeah. And then what you seek is seeking you Yeah, I think that’s a perfect place to leave it.
Derrick Daye 47:14
Yeah. Great, Adam. Well, again, thank you for inviting me. And
Adam Pierno 47:19
kidding me. Thank you for making time. This is this is fantastic. Well, great. Anytime, Adam. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you online? Yeah,
Derrick Daye 47:28
well, there’s a couple places. There’s branding, strategy, insider calm, and then also the leak project. com. And of course, you can easily find me at Derek day on Twitter or LinkedIn, and Facebook, and I would be very happy to connect with you their day with any Yes, they would any will link to all those places for sure. But thanks
Adam Pierno 47:54
again. I really enjoyed this talk.
Derrick Daye 47:56
Same with me, Adam. Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai