Activate Your Audience!
Welcome to Activate Your Audience podcast! Here, you'll find a range of episodes discussing all aspects of brand activation and audience engagement, from the latest industry trends to expert insights and best practices.We will delve into topics such as events and experiential marketing, business tips and tricks, and creating experiences, all with the goal of helping you achieve your goals and drive customer engagement.Tune in to learn from the experts and get inspiration for your own brand activation strategies. Subscribe to stay up-to-date on new episodes and join the conversation on @BeImperial on Instagram. Let's activate you, your brand, and your audience together! Learn more about how IBA can support your even'ts team at your brand activations https://iba.imperialbrandingagency.com/i3ba
Activate Your Audience!
Erin Andrea Craske - Crafting Brands That Endure
On this episode of Activate your Audience podcast, join us as we delve into the world of branding with none other than Erin Andrea Craske. Discover the keys to building a brand that not only resonates but stands the test of time as Erin shares her journey from global branding to coaching leaders for success. We dissect the subtle yet critical disparities between product and brand marketing, pivotal knowledge that could redefine your business strategy.
Prepare to explore the psychological intricacies of consumer behavior and the paramount role of emotional connection in fostering brand loyalty. Erin and I dissect the complexities of customer segmentation, advocating for strategies that transcend demographics and tap into the core values and emotions that drive purchasing decisions.
But our conversation doesn't stop there. Dive into the power of storytelling and strategic planning in crafting a distinctive brand identity that captivates and inspires. Erin's expertise extends beyond branding; she's here to empower business leaders to embody these principles for enduring success.
Listeners, don't miss out on exclusive offers! Visit https://linktr.ee/eacraske for Erin's book, with a special 50% discount for UK and EU listeners through the Great British Bookshop. Plus, mention AYA Podcast for two complimentary coaching sessions, a 50% discount on the all-in-one marketing toolbox using code "EFFORTLESS" at TGBBS checkout, and access to a treasure trove of freebies including business surveys, marketing frameworks, quotes, and strategy guide materials.
Tune in to gain invaluable insights into brand strategy and leadership, ensuring your business voice is heard loud and clear, and your vision is realized.
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So today we speak with Erin Andrea Kask. She is an award-winning strategist within the last 20 years in brand development, from her role as global head of consumer brands to her current position as an ICF certified business and leadership success coach, erin brings a wealth of expertise in guiding businesses towards impactful audience activation. Welcome to the Activate your Audience podcast, erin.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much. Great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:It's my pleasure All the way from our first guest, I think, across the pond. So let's get right into it. If you could, please give us a brief overview of your career, your personal journey from working as a brand professional to where you are now.
Speaker 2:Oh you know what, providing how many years I spent in brand development probably going to be a very long intro, but yes, I was progressing in the area of brand strategy, business strategy and communication strategy, working with around 40 big brands that pretty much house called names, and from there moving into coaching, so that you know, basically repeating what you've just said. But that's going to be a short summary. If there's anything that you would like me to dwell on, you know I'm happy to do that sure I mean you're spending too much time of your listeners sharing biographical information yeah, no worries, I get that.
Speaker 1:So with um, I saw you were at mars. You know earlier on, yeah, what were some, I guess, experiences from uh working at mars, what was your role there and maybe how you apply that to what you currently do now with business coaching?
Speaker 2:right. Okay, in this case let's go go a little bit further back, because I started in L'Oreal, then I moved to Recker Bank, hesa and if we talk about brand marketing, I have to say that the best company that was the brand marketing school for me and probably was the best brand marketing school at that time it was British American Tobacco. So if you can imagine the size of the industry, the budgets, the competition that we had, you know, and the sophistication of approaches because, again, you do have budgets, you do have competition that you do starting with research and all the latest research practices, you know we were implementing. We were the first one, the first companies you know tobacco industry to do so.
Speaker 2:Creativity you know totally crazy executions, mind-blowing executions, we had to do it. You know all different types of activation events, as innovative as it was required or prestigious, required by the brands. So everything that you would think about proper classic brand building. This is where I learned it. With Mars, it was a contract position and there, actually, I was blessed because I was chosen. I was selected by the guy who is a legend in brand marketing. This is the guy who created brand positioning for.
Speaker 1:M&Ms.
Speaker 2:And he picked me because he came from consumer marketing experience and we were working for B2B Division at that time, of course. And he picked me to lead the repositioning of four brands because it was like an offer that we were providing to B2B customers and it was global repositioning. And he picked me because we resonated in terms of how brands are supposed to be built and what brand positioning really is versus what people generally think it is Right. There's a big difference, to be honest. So that's how I appeared in marketing and I loved it because I have my own theory in terms of what brand marketing is and brand strategy and brand strategist. So for me, it's a combination of substance and style. Style is obviously your visual representation, your brand expression, and substance is psychology. So you can't be a brand strategist if you have no empathy and you have no understanding or appreciation of psychology so as simple as that and absolutely loved both I love that.
Speaker 1:Could you dive into maybe with the? You know exceptional execution. You know at the, what was the tobacco conglomerate again? British american tobacco so british american, some of the activation or some of, like the creative? Could you dive into what some of those look like?
Speaker 2:Well, it was a very long time ago, right? And in terms of activation, really depends on what you're looking at. You know, it could be as simple as promotion.
Speaker 2:It can be sampling, but it's never been, it's never was sampling. That was just pure giving away products. It always was linked to whatever events, right, we were organizing. We were creating different awards, brand specific awards, such as design innovation award that was sponsored by the brand. We were creating different events, uh, of high luxury, you know, luxury style, where the brand was represented through sensory marketing. They were never for a sake of having leads or for a sake of sampling or for a sake of, um, I don't know, having people signing up or you know whatever currently is happening, because in my world, activation has always been part of your communication strategy. It was activating your brand, positioning right. So leads, actually, they became irrelevant because it was about sensory experience, so the consumers could feel the brand and appreciate it and remember it. So it was translating the image through whatever you know tools were available to us yeah it wasn't just talking about the brand, it was experiencing it, and that
Speaker 1:was a big difference at that time, because now I think in certain cases it may look a little bit downgraded yeah, and I think, with you know, things like your net promoter scores, right, like you're gauging the consumers sort of emotional and referral scores for that, is that something that you guys would track? Is that something that you guys would look at Again, quantifying the return on investment for those efforts?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, absolutely, it wasn't a little bit? Well, it wasn't quite like that. This is exactly what I write about in my brand strategy guide that I recently published, and this is exactly what I write about in my brand strategy guide that I recently published. So, first of all, all these numbers and return of investment, actually it's going into the rabbit hole, right? It doesn't indicate the success of your brand or it doesn't indicate the sustainability of your business or longevity of your offer. Right, because they're short-term measures and this is exactly what you focus on when you start looking at leads or scores, or conversion numbers or return of investment. It's for one campaign only and it's very easy to track, but it has nothing to do with the success or longevity of your business, because if you want your business to be profitable and sustainable, you need to take care of profitability, and profitability is only long-term as a compound effect of different activities that all contribute to your brand equity. This is how it must work, and not moving from one activity to another one, because you are just spreading your resources, you know, and the incremental you're going to get it's not representative, it's not sustainable, it doesn't tell you anything. So, so what we had? We were planning our campaigns usually through the line and understand it's not always possible with limited budgets. You know to go through the line but there are ways around it. Or even using digital, you can still activate it through different communication vehicles, communication tools to create more of a 360 approach rather than just you know whatever advertising or digital activation you do and how it was planned initially. So you have your activity recommendation. Activity recommendation describes everything that should be done within this activity and then you explain the rationale why you recommend this and that and how it will contribute to the brand equity right. And this is how you measure the end result of the activity. So, first of all, after every activity, you're going to have evaluation right, and it's like I wrote in my book. I know it's sounding like a broken record, but I do like this sentence. It's like everybody became professional in assessing conversions without understanding why conversions don't convert right. So after you run your activity, you're supposed to run an evaluation, full evaluation of activity, to understand, realize you know which tools, which scenarios, which part of this activity contributed to what, why it worked, why it didn't work, how you can improve it in the future, measuring our brand image, attributes, brand equity and, obviously, trade marketing metrics in terms of sales, whatever. You know this kind of hard numbers, I think. I remember I think it was every two months or every quarter so you can see how your every activity contributes to the overall standing of your brand. It's not from here to now, it is a contribution and obviously from this contribution, you know, comes your sales. So this is how it works.
Speaker 2:And another thing I believe that people don't realize nowadays is that most of businesses, they start pushing sales and they put sales on the pedestal, you know, like this is where the money is coming from. That is not correct. Money is not coming from what you sell. Money is coming from what people buy. It's a very different, it's a massive difference because it makes you switch your mindset from me, my activity, my product, my sales to my customer. I know everybody talks about it, you know, but somehow I don't know, I don't understand why, but people don't follow it and often, you know, we perceive that our sales department and our sales people those who drive volume, but in reality, if you look at your company P&L, it's going to be your brand P&L, because this is the brand that you sell and this is what's behind right and your company will be as profitable as your brand profitability. Nothing to do with sales. Sales is a support function.
Speaker 1:Your brand profitability is driven by marketing and that is sort of the tension between departments, right, sales and marketing always have this sort of like. Well, you know, sales wants quality leads if you're into a service, right, or if you're, you know, promoting CPG and marketing and your brand is a, sometimes especially. You know it's changed now, but it used to be a harder metric to quantify. And you need to know inputs to outputs, right, we need to know at least, specially from an executive level. They want hard numbers, they want inputs to output. So what have been some of the um, in your opinion, the best ways to sort of?
Speaker 2:I'm really sorry. Sorry, but I believe in I'm being really harsh here. Very honest, it's from poor business literacy, because I understand that, uh, looking at these hard numbers, you know immediate conversions. It's much easier, it's much more comfortable when you don't have enough budget. What actually you do. You don't plan your activities beforehand, what you do, okay, so I do have a little bit of budget left. Let's try this activity. Let's see what it brings. Oh, it didn't bring enough, right, so we don't have budget further up for communication. Now let's try something else. Let's see what this will bring, right? So everybody is looking at immediate numbers.
Speaker 2:But if you only build your business on return on investment and immediate activities, you know cash earnings you will downgrade your business. You will downgrade your brand, you will downgrade your category because the margins you know are going to be affected, because this is what you do. You're constantly kind of trying to discount and promote through this product communication and also by downgrading category margins. You know you will downgrade your earnings. And usually, when you only look at activation, what will happen? You will condition your customers on buying through activation activities, right, instead of having an inflow you know constant inflow of customers that are not driven by your activities or activation, but they're driven by your brand and the connection that they have with your brand. They are not different things and there shouldn't be competition, because when you have a strategy, you know that is an umbrella for your brand. All activities fall under this umbrella and then your salespeople are going to get their quality leads. It's not either or there has to be work and synergy.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Now, pivoting into, say, business leadership, as you said, some of the issues, as you find it, are more like literacy, right? So what do you see in terms of leadership coaching? Are some of the strategies that you recommend for them to really understand that brand messaging, for them to be able to target their audience with maximum engagement?
Speaker 2:well, you know what. It's not a rock and science. So we're not talking about leadership skills right now, because it's a totally different communication or conversation altogether. We talk about one simple thing that if you are a brand owner or if you are a business owner, and even if you have this fantastic title, it doesn't always mean that you know how to run business. You know it's not exactly the same.
Speaker 2:So my recommendation would be, at some point, to step back and realize that you may not know everything right and probably following best practices because you don't know better, but because everybody talks about that and you just follow because you think it works. Probably it would make sense to step back and to look at classic marketing principles, look at profitability and what drives it you know. So basically, just enhance your knowledge. It doesn't mean that you're wrong, it just means that you may not know. There's nothing shameful about it, right. What is probably going to be shameful? If you stroke your ego because you are bread owner and because everybody is going to do as I told. That is shameful. Not knowing is not Right. So that would be my recommendation. And another thing that I would like also to mention, since we talk about communication I understand that activation is typically perceived as BTL activity. But you know what I also noticed, and it's about brands and products how much communication is targeted to promote products. So here is a rub Promoting product is not sustainable because you're always going to have a better product.
Speaker 2:You know, if you position yourself cheap, it's going to be somebody coming and offering cheaper. If you position yourself as high-tech, you know what. Somebody will learn from you, find your mistake and offer something better. Product communication is not sustainable, you know. And another thing that works, why it doesn't work? Because it immediately puts you in a category of commodities. And if you're a commodity, usually what drives customer, consumer decision-making is the price. You have no connection, you have no differentiation, because this differentiation that exists today won't exist tomorrow. And in a real world of marketing again, if we talk profitability, if we talk long-term business building, not here and now, in this case, your product-led communication takes around 25% of your communication topics.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's only 25% for product-led messages. The rest it can be anything image, value, belief, vision, emotional things, education, anything you know but not pure product, because you just simply can't get through the clutter, you know so so when you say not pure product marketing, what?
Speaker 1:how do you differentiate between product marketing and brand marketing? Are you saying those are two different ones, and what is the approach in terms of? Could you paint a picture of what each one of those look like for our audience?
Speaker 2:What is the difference for you between the brand and the product?
Speaker 1:So the product is as you said, it's the commodity, it's the thing itself. The brand is the ideal, the image, the imaginary narrative around it. Right, it's a story. So how do you look at and how do you give actionable tips for leaders or for individuals to understand the difference between the two if they haven't had as much experience within either?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the first tip would be to create brand positioning because, as you rightly said, one of the words that drive brands versus products product is going to be image, right, another one's personality. Then you have meaning, then you have emotions that you cultivate, right? So brand is everything that product is not. Product is tangible and brand is intangible, right. And when you create communication or creative advertising for something that is intangible, that would be called image advertising. You know, when you have advertising where your product and your product message will be the main hero, then it's called product advertising. Actually, I came across when I was writing the book, I came across uh article on the internet somebody saying, oh my god, image advertising is kind of getting popular, and they were referring to daf, famous campaign you know with ladies in white underwear okay, yeah
Speaker 2:yeah, uh, yeah. I was like what Image advertising is getting popular? The first image advertising it was in 1950-something. It was Marlboro man. That was image advertising, so it's not something that is new.
Speaker 2:There are so many things that get forgotten. Since we got this into rise of digital, we forgot about strategy, because we're all about tactics. We forgot about profitability, because now it's return of investment. We forgot about image and brands, because now it's a product with a brand name and a product message. So the whole area of marketing got downgraded. And now, you know, I was invited to speak on Australian TV and the message is strategy, business strategy is being elevated. No, it just happened that we all forgot about it. You know, it doesn't mean that it disappeared. So it's exactly the same with brands. So if there is, now they are on the rise understanding that brand is a little bit more than what we used to think. It's going to get great because those companies who switch their thinking from how to to you know they will be winning. It's actually easy, it's not a rocket science. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:It's a good fundamental approach shift and so with you. So say, for example, as a coach, right, how do you think about your image and your product marketing right In the commodity of coaching? What is your sort of right? Effortless coaching? Is your brand right? How do you look at positioning the product and the brand for something like a service, right?
Speaker 2:Oh that, oh my God. Thank you so much for this question, because that is incredible. You know, when I was looking for a job and I get so, I had so many years looking for a job, I have so much experience, you know, just sickening. And I was applying for different product categories and actually I do have different product categories in my past because I found it to be more fun, because you always enter a category with a fresh perspective, fresh pair of eye, right? And I thought it doesn't really matter because the principles of marketing are exactly the same. And I was applying for B2B and I never got interviewed, because it's a different type of brand strategy, brand building. I don't know what they meant and I always wanted to say, ah. So now I know why your category is so boring, right? Because you simply don't know how to build brands. And when you ask me about services or B2B or Look, it doesn't really matter, because whoever pays for what you offer, whether it's a product or a service, it's a human being. So tell me where the difference can come from. You know, having cloned financial services or cloned insurance services or cloned something else that is boring to death industrial services. Why Legal? Because everybody does it because we're B2B, and so what?
Speaker 2:And you can't create differentiation because you are afraid of focusing on your customers. This is what you're afraid to lose, or you're afraid to lose your face, because we're all in blue and white and this is our logo. You know our old technology. You know I used to have it in my book, but I had to remove all logos because of trademark issues and I have like a downloadable free of charge. You know, from the website. There are three categories finance, technology and pharma. They all use blue, but different shades of blue, and you will look at it and they all use exactly the same shade of blue within their category. It's insane, right?
Speaker 2:So how do you create differentiation? What do you talk about? Because we all talk about messages. Another thing that, sorry, I can't stop now. I don't remember what the question was about, yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2:Another thing that I absolutely adore is like loads of businesses, they ask for help with messages. I need a message. So my question how can you have a message if you don't have a brand? You know, it's not like putting something in front of the horse. It doesn't work this way. First you have to have the brand and then you have to have your message and if you don't have your brand, your message is going to be product-driven and they're going to be boring because you don't have much to talk about. You know how can you diversify your communication if it's all about the same product features. So, coming back to your question, in terms of services and, again, other categories, the approach is exactly the same.
Speaker 2:This you learn, you study your market, you study your target audience. You know, you look at who you are. In at least in my case, this is what I did and this is what I help some of my you know clients. It's not my kind of working coaches or sole entrepreneurs. It's not my kind of direction, not my business. But I'm happy to help and it is about understanding who you are first and foremost, whether you were brand as a person or whether your brand is a business, and then match it with your customers.
Speaker 2:But you don't stop at the level of features and attributes. You go into rational benefits, emotional benefits, self-actualization benefits and existential benefits. Because when you come to the level of existential benefits, this is where you can actually go further, up to your purpose and belief and, as we know for younger generation that I don't belong to. You know these are part of brand positioning that are quite important. You know the contribution back. So if you want to have your longevity sustainability and you want to stay with younger generation, well then do something about it. Reconsider your brand. Reconsider your brand. So yeah to um, to offer you a short answer.
Speaker 1:Finally, there's no difference in how you approach it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a, as you mentioned, consumer-centric approach, right, and I would imagine even with you know, a big pharma company, right, they're putting millions of dollars in research, they're putting sort of their, their test groups and their, if there's a logo rebrand, it's not cheap for them, but there's a reason why they stay blue in their mind, right, but, say, as a small business, or even them like, say, an executive who wants to create some sort of differentiation, it's not so much in terms of, like, a logo and color that may move the needle for them but, to your point, it's still in terms of how they identify to these deeper core ideas, these brand narratives of their product or of their brand that maybe you know, maybe they are all boring in the same and there's no differentiation.
Speaker 1:Or maybe, if you are, say, a doctor there or a client there, there is one heroic brand leader, marketing leader, leader that is actually thinking about the things with that person in the center of that clock right of the purchase model clock, right. So, with that, how would you say is, have there been any ways in where your coaching or where some of your clients have looked at whether it's developing their personal brand where they lean more towards on that journey. If their customer, their avatar, is at the center of that, do they focus more on a pre-purchase, post-purchase, you know, during the purchase stage of that process for building a brand, you know, like, if they are trying to double down in a certain area, is that something that you see applies more in a certain area or is it part of the strategy individual to that business and leader?
Speaker 2:Sounds to me like there's a presupposition that customers change depending on the funnel stage. Did I understand that correctly? In terms of this is what I understood from the question. You know when my clients look at post-purchase, pre-purchase. So again, my understanding is that the presupposition is that the customers change from one stage funnel stage to another. Right, yeah, if a customer is obviously, as you know, in the beginning from one stage final stage to another Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if a customer is obviously, as you know, in the beginning ready to purchase right, they're.
Speaker 2:All right, okay, okay, so that is.
Speaker 1:Versus somebody who may have already bought from you, right, who you want to maintain as a customer. They're at a different life stage, right?
Speaker 2:And is this thinking actually is behind creating avatars Multiple?
Speaker 1:avatars multiple avatars Right.
Speaker 2:Okay, right. So this is what I create creating a targeting mess. Because when you look at your customer, you look at their values and their lifestyle. You go much deeper. So you have I mean, usually have segmentation. But even if you don't first of all, you don't create avatars from imagination or from wishful thinking right? You still do your desk research, even if you don't have money for proper or you can buy yeah, some research agencies offer you industry-specific reports. That is much cheaper than segmentation study, but it will give you a better understanding of your customers.
Speaker 2:And when you create a segmentation, your segmentation is based on your customers' values, their emotional needs and their lifestyle. Nothing to do whether they're pre-purchase or post-purchase. What will differ? So you identify your target customer according to this deep thing that you have to find out what it is about as a human being, about another human being. What happens that? Later you will discover that within the same value segment, you will have people that I don't know, for sake of exercise, purchase online, some of them purchase offline, some of them purchase in bulk, some of them it doesn't really matter. So that's going to be your tactical. So this segment, your customer segment, stays exactly the same. But their activities, their tactical activities or preferences. They will change. So then you can target and communicate to different people according to their preferences, but they will still belong to the same value segment.
Speaker 2:You can't have multiple avatars, or at least you can say that they're all exactly the same people, but they shop in the morning, they shop in the evening, whatever the differentiation is. Because if you don't approach from this perspective, this is what I believe will happen. When you have your avatar and then you add an image All right, this is how it looks like this is my customer and then, through working with customers, you find out actually your customer looks something different, but you can't change this one because that was my original customer. What can I do? Let me add another avatar and let me add another one. So now I have like four avatars. It's not targeting, it's a mess. It doesn't work this way. So there was another thing that you mentioned.
Speaker 2:When we talk about pre-purchase, post-purchase, the difference between different funnel stages is that you apply different communication tools or approaches to the same person. We agree that it's the same person in the same segment. The difference is that you have emotional messages that drive awareness and consideration. You have rational messages, only ones that drive your trial, your first purchase. This is going to be your product information, price information.
Speaker 2:So typical, rational promotion offer messages, from trial purchase to regular purchase is going to be your experience. And experience surprise, surprise is emotional, because it's not only about using the product, which is fantastic, but using the product, this action will create emotions in your clients. I like it, I don't like it, basic right At least. So that's emotional. And then, when you go to loyalty and advocacy, it's 100% emotional. It's not about image any longer, something that works at awareness and consideration stages. Loyalty and advocacy is stages that are built on trust and recognition of your customers for human beings, when they feel they're appreciated, when they feel they're taken care of. That's going to drive your loyalty and advocacy, and not bribing them with loyalty offers. And not bribing them with loyalty offers because the latest research shows that they will use your loyalty offers but they're not going to stay long, so you're wasting your money. Basically.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Now let's jump into maybe some of the common challenges. Like, with your experience, what have been some of the common pitfalls that you see brands run into which, into which you mentioned some of them, and how would you recommend businesses overcome some of these run-of-the-mill challenges that everybody seems to find themselves in?
Speaker 2:well, we talk about most of those challenges. Uh, the biggest one that nowadays is very difficult, it's very challenging to find a company that builds brands. It's much easier to find a company that offers products and brands them, give them brand names. So it's not the same, and from this you know. Then comes the communication stage that we discussed at length in the beginning. Then comes the communication stage that we discussed at length in the beginning, and that's the return of investment and tactical activities and shifting directions.
Speaker 2:That's another thing, that drains resources and budgets and it comes from the fact that there's no strategy behind it. So when you have no strategy, you have no business. You have disjoint activities that waste resources of your people because every time they need to run into a different direction Instead of having one roadmap towards the destination where you want to be, where everything is aligned, people are aligned, resources are aligned. You know where you go right? No, instead we kind of whatever the first of command. You know we'll want to say we're going to do it, and then they change their mind and we're going to do it. So the first advice grow your growth mindset, learn, reconsider, accept that you may not be always right as much as you would like to be. Then we'll talk about leadership. You know to give trust to people, but in reality, just create a strategy. You know your value proposition, your brand positioning and they will dictate all your activities.
Speaker 2:Analyze your market properly. You know it's like we call innovation anything that's just a little bit remotely different from what is already on the market. So that's one thing Just let's adjust it and call it innovation. And another one is let's do something that consumers ask for or competitors have, whether we need it whether it's in line with our strategy, whether we have resources, whether we can properly support it, because we don't have portfolio strategy, because portfolio strategy is a different thing. But we start creating many, many different offers. I was talking to one of the companies. I find it fascinating. They don't do any research at all. They create new products, they want leaker products.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And they launch it and then they watch and they see whether it stakes off or it doesn't. If it doesn't, they bin it and they launch another one.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And I'm thinking have you ever thought of your people that always, in the process of launching something, the last moment just to see all the efforts going down the drain because it doesn't work, let's do another one, right? So if somebody thinks it's a sustainable business, you know, unfortunately it is not.
Speaker 1:You know it sounds like a lot of what you are bringing back to. Is the individual leader right? Or the team leadership team setting the foundation of strategy in place and not just jumping at shiny object syndrome of, like you said, our competitors are doing this or, yes, the consumer wants this and obviously we want to appease and serve the consumer. But when we're talking about innovation, we're really going back to the strategy, and the first route that you keep mentioning is the growth mindset, right. The learning right. We don't know what we don't know. We're always evolving.
Speaker 1:As you say, there's sometimes egos and there's like lay of the land that people don't want to admit that they don't know what they don't know. Right, and so where? If that is the one thing, is that what you would focus on, the one thing of the individual to learn? If that is the one thing, is that what you would focus on the one thing of the individual to learn? And if the individual obviously can't learn everything and has a team to support them, how do you sort of paint the picture of if it's learning and improving skillset or confidence or knowledge as the primary thing, what is the sort of trajectory to then influence the innovation and then the growth, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:Right. Okay, there's one comment I would like to tell you. I mean it's like the biggest truth and the most painful, but you ask for it. So you know that your business is as good as your leadership team, or your business performance is a reflection of your leadership team. So this is something to reflect on, I guess. Yeah, and with regards to where to start, start with strategy, we don't know what strategy is nowadays. Well, learn what it is. You know I'm not.
Speaker 2:I would love to promote my book, obviously because it's written for small and medium-sized and startups and it covers all possible strategies in kind of very innocent snippets. So it's quite a big book, but you don't, there's no water, right? You get, it's quite big book, but you don't, there's no water, right? You get, it's like a reference book, everything, everything that you need to know in there, and that in the end of it you will find the list of recommended reading for different areas that the book covers. So you can start from that place, or you can just look at strategy books and you know, go from there, but you know it's like nothing.
Speaker 2:I guess it's very challenging to survive or stand the taste of time without foundation If we talk about anything. So strategy is the foundation for a business. Without it, you may continue. I mean, it doesn't mean that you will die immediately, although if we talk about smaller businesses and startups, you know their failure rate around 50% the first three to five years and then it goes up to 80%. So, surprise, surprise, the first three to five years in business it's called strategic planning period. Right, it's as simple. If you don't have a strategy, your chances to survive become limited or you will stop enjoying your business, but you will be perceiving it as an everyday struggle. So it's entirely up to the person. If they want to struggle, if they want to fail, it's okay. Right, and learn from the failures, fine. You know, somebody is young and they have opportunity to learn from their mistakes. But if you don't, then it's probably easier to learn something about business or business strategy and start from this place.
Speaker 1:I love that, yes, as a main thing to sort of focus on, not only because it's the life cycle, or the beginning, I should say, of the life cycle of your business, but as an individual and even as a leader, which, as you mentioned, reflects how your your end product is, how your team is performing, how your business is valuing. To really focus on that. And yeah, why wouldn't strategy the thing that is sort of encompassing the tactical and all of the campaigns, the activities, the execution be the main thing, that sort of encompassing the tactical and all of the, you know, campaigns, the activities, the execution be the main thing? That sort of holds that together. So, with that being said, let's pivot maybe a little bit into storytelling. How do you look at creating storytelling techniques that are, you know, authentic in order to connect with audiences for businesses and brands?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, it's a very good one. Um, that's, I guess, depends on two factors. So the first one if you have a brand, it will have story behind it, because we said that a brand can be defined as a meaning, image, uh, and personality. So if your brand has a personality, it will have a story that comes with it. It's a big trend that started a few good years ago about humanizing your brands. So this is how you create it. You know there's no rocket science. Again, you have different act structures. That is already pre-written. So you just follow the act structure and you create the story for your brand.
Speaker 2:In personal branding, I believe it's a little bit more challenging because it depends how much you want to reveal about yourself. I do have my story on my brand on my website. I think I have two as a brand, as a person, but for me personally, it was a struggle because I'm not a big fan of talking about myself as much as I wanted to reveal, although I know I'm supposed to build connection with people. So it is individual for everybody. But I'm pretty sure that you always find something that you can talk about. You know, keeping your privacy unchallenged. Yeah, look for three-act structure. You know there are plenty of different guys that wrote about it with.
Speaker 2:What I recommend in my book is, you know, often when you tell exactly the same story again, it starts sounding like a broken record. If you want to avoid it, first of all, you can shift the story a little bit, depending on the occasion. You can emphasize one part and kind of hide a bit another one. So it's going to create a bit of diversification. Another thing there are different act stories offered by different people, so every time you can pick a different one and use it slightly different structure. So again, it will make you sound a little bit more diverse. You know, in your message, rather than saying exactly the same thing all the time.
Speaker 2:And another advice when I talk about products, about stories. So once it's a founder story, it can be a brand story. You know why the brand was created. You can have a product story, one of an amazing brand, um, of eyewear in the states, I think warby parker, this is how they're called. They have amazing product story the product, the story about how the product is made, even that.
Speaker 2:Or you can use your customer stories, and this is where your advocacy and loyalty will come from, when you listen to your customers, understand their stories and if you build connection to feature. So it shouldn't be story only about something. So it shouldn't be story only about something. Stories can be about anything, depending on your strategy, depending on your communication strategy. You know, because you do have, you're supposed to have, your communication plan and say this month we'll talk about that and next month we'll talk about this, and every time, because you rotate your messages, what you will get in the end of the day, you're going to get a more holistic appreciation of your brand and business, because out of all this, you know, messages will be the whole going to be created.
Speaker 1:I love that and with all of that right, it seems like it's work. Right. It's a long-term play. It's something that's going to live in hopefully eternity to some extent. In terms of the story and the business, how does a leader or a team think about the overwhelming challenge? Where do you position and direct people to start with that? So, once you've learned strategy, or as you're learning strategy, what is the first sort of actionable thing? Or, in the overwhelm of kind of meta approach, looking at the strategy to strategy, how do you think about all that over?
Speaker 2:that you will indicate the direction that you need to take. The strategy will indicate objectives. So from goals you go into strategy, from strategy you go into objectives and from objectives you go into implementation. Right, it depends on the objectives that you set for your business for a certain period of time usually it's 12 months, if you really want to achieve a transformation and these objectives will indicate what type of activities are fitted or can answer these objectives within the limits of our sources. Because it's not. You do plan it in advance, but you give different ratings to your activities something that you must have, must do, or something that is nice to have. So you will do it if your budget allows, right? You monitor your budget during the year and you see if you have money to invest something within you know nice to have category um, and if you don't, you cut it off. But it's not like you know what I recommend to do. It's what their strategy recommends to do, according to the goals that they want to achieve that all right.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna sort of run it back and highlight some of the stuff that stood out for me and then you fill in anything that I might have missed. So starting at the end, sort of the beginning approach is to look at strategy as a whole, and there are yearbooks, there are resources that an individual, a team can look at. Just learning fundamentals, learning what they don't know, being open to just sort of pay down the tax of ignorance, as I like one of our mentors saying. So just being okay with learning strategy and that being the guide that will inform you within your resources, within your bandwidth, what you can execute on right. The next point that I got is the experience being the last step of the strategy or the last step of the journey. Right, that stood out.
Speaker 2:So if you're in a trial stage, if you bought this product for the first time, you like the experience of purchase, consumption, unwrapping, whatever the product is, and you I think it's around eight purchases or whatever it really depends on the industry and if every time when you try it you get this positive experience, then you will move on to loyalty. There are different psychologists of different customers, some of them loyal, some of them kind of dating. Some of them date two different products at the same time. So really there's no cookie cutter at the same time. So really there's no cookie cutter. Every customer has that one psychology behind it. But in pure theory, people move into loyalty when they're consistently satisfied with the experience.
Speaker 1:Got it Perfect. And the next takeaway I got was to focus on one avatar and don't be afraid to change your avatar, instead of tacking on three or four avatars, being okay with switching out and knowing, hey, I actually listened or paid attention. Let me give this avatar a sort of center stage. And the next takeaway is B2B is brand building. So whether it's B2B business or whether it's a product, it's all the same. Your customer's at the center. You're creating this story. And then, finally, money doesn't come from what you sell, but from what people buy. I think that's a great reminder, very simple way of like emphasizing. It's not you know what you want to push down people's throat. It's about, like you said, understanding what the audience wants, but also the money will come from what they need. And it's a more giving, generous, service solution approach rather than a taking sort of selfish approach. Is there anything else you would add to any of those or anything I might have missed?
Speaker 2:So the relevant one why nobody questions the need for strategy in a war and why everybody questions the need for strategy in business, where there is a fight for every share point that's a good point.
Speaker 1:yeah, so, and as you mentioned, I think, within, as you know, with leadership coaching, just to highlight that a leader has this sort of respect and this sort of love and maybe a sort of fear, and the right leaders who, if you're in a general, if you're in an army, if you're in war, you follow what the strategy is, even if you're the soldier, even if you're the colonel who doesn't see the whole playing field. Yeah, so it sounds like with strategy, if you have a good leader, a good person who's actually invested and understands and has earned that love, that that respect and that that well suited power right, not egoic power, but power out of they've earned it competence Then the strategy would inform the continuity of that business. Yeah, does that sound right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's correct. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. Well, thank you so much. What else would you plug in? I know definitely mentioned the book. Is there anything else that we can learn about you or where can people find out and follow your journey?
Speaker 2:So people can just click on this link and find as much about me or the book as they'd like to.
Speaker 1:Love that. Thank you so much, erin. Erin is a resident of Cheche and who is an expert, as you have heard, on empowering impact-driven business leaders, and has equipped her clients with the tools needed to elevate their brand engagement to new heights. We look forward to chatting again.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, the pleasure was mine.