Brand Growth Bootcamp - Learn how to manage, grow & scale long-lasting brands (Course 5)

1. What is Brand Management?: Okay, so if we're going to do this properly, we need to start at the beginning. So what actually is brand management? Well, let me put it this way. You've put in so much work up until this point to develop your logo, the perfect brand name, the strategy, your website, your marketing strategy to actually get your brand out there in front of the right people. You've put in the work to understand your target audience, to understand your competition, not only understand your competition, but to understand how to beat your competition at the places that they are weakest. So what is brand management? Well, brand management is taking care of all of those elements and making sure that your brand grows and blossoms into the incredible brand that it can be. Ultimately, think of brand management like taking care of a garden, okay? You've planted all these incredible seeds, and they're all going to grow if you take care of them. Brand management is all about taking care of your garden to make sure that it reaches its full potential. Now, we all know what happens if you don't water your garden and make sure that all of the plants are taken care of. It's going to die or at the very least, it's not going to look very great. Now, at its very core, brand management includes managing and taking care of every single element of your brand. Everything that you are communicating as a company and as a brand, that is brand management. You're taking care of everything that the brand does, says, and is. Now, why is brand management so important? Well, the first thing and the most important by far is consistency. Consistency is the thing that keeps brands growing. It's the reason why a customer will come back to you again and again and again. And by managing your brand properly and doing so in a consistent manner, you can fill your customers with confidence that if they do business with you and buy from you, you are going to meet their needs and expectations. Look at McDonald's, for example. Why do you think the brand McDonald's is so popular. It's really simple. Let me ask you a quick question. When was the last time you ever had a bad experience at McDonald's where it didn't meet your expectation? Now, I'm going to guess, even if you don't eat at McDonald's anymore, that you can't remember a time where you had a meal at McDonald's and it was super bad. Like, really, really bad. Like, so below your expectations that you would never eat there ever again? That is the beauty of consistency. Sometimes, yes, the fries are a little bit crispier. Yes. Sometimes if you get delivery, they're a little bit soggier. But ultimately, it's always meeting your expectation. You always expect a certain standard and McDonald's 99.9% of the time always delivers. Now, this leads on to the second benefit of why brand management is so important and that is customer trust. If you meet a customer's expectation again and again and again, then they're going to trust you and they are going to do business with you every single time. And if a customer doesn't trust you, then it's probably because you're doing something wrong, or it's probably because you're not meeting the expectations. And this leads me on to the third benefit of a properly managed brand. And that is having a competitive edge. If you as a brand, are being incredibly consistent and you have systems in place in order to be consistent at all times throughout every single touch point and across your entire communication strategy, then that is going to give you a competitive edge to allow you to stand out in your market. Because the reality is most brands don't have that consistency, and they do not even understand what the concept of brand management is. So simply by taking this course and also the rest of the courses in our brand builder pro program, you're ultimately standing out already. At the end of the day, education is everything, no matter what market you're in, no matter what you're selling. So by you understanding everything to a completely different level to most of founders and entrepreneurs, it's going to give you the power to stand out without question. Now, there are actually two other massive benefits when it comes to brand management, which I didn't mention before because they're the ones that people don't really think about. And the first is market resilience. What do I mean by market resilience? Well, look at Apple's stock price throughout every single market crash since the start of time. In comparison to other stocks, Apple's doesn't really move at all. And this is because Apple is a strong brand. It's in fact, one of the strongest brands in the world. And the reason it's one of the strongest brands in the world is because it manages its brand flawlessly. So if you have a strong brand which is managed well, which is what we're going to be teaching in this course, we're going to be able to weather the storm far easier, which actually leads me on to the last benefit of having a really strong brand which is managed well. And that is premium pricing. Now, I'm not sure what most of the headphones cost, okay? But I pay $500 $550, maybe. For these Apple ones. Now, why did I buy them? Could I have got some that are cheaper that do just the same job? Probably. But the reason that I bought these is because I trust that Apple makes a high quality product. I also trust that if anything goes wrong with these headphones, Apple is going to take care of me, and I also know that they are well designed for the user to give me the best possible experience. Now, we've been using Apple as an example so far, but let's look at Nike and see how they manage their brand so we can understand exactly what's going on on the inside. Now, as you can see from Nike's, you know, various social media platforms and also their website, Everything is consistent. And it's consistency that we're going to be talking a lot about throughout this entire course and how you can make sure that every single aspect of your brand is consistent. If you've taken any of the courses in the brand builder pro program so far before getting into the brand management course, then you'll know that consistency is super important. And you can gain this consistency by thinking about your brand as a saw. Every single piece of the jigsaw has to make sense and fit together perfectly. And if you can do that, then when you look back, you're going to get that wholesome, perfect picture that you're looking for, which is going to inspire confidence in the target audience that you're wanting to connect with. Nike, for example, have developed every single asset within their brand, including their logo, their slogan, their name, their website, their photography, every single element, and there's probably hundreds that we could go through in this very video alone just off the top of my head. But you can see that everything all points in the same direction. That is why brand management is just consistently repeating the same message to a target audience again and again and again to drumming into their heads what your brand stands for and what you can offer them. Nike does an incredible job of this, basically making their customers the hero and motivating them to become the best athlete they can possibly be. Now, this may sound simple to do and execute, but I can assure you we are just scratching the surface with this lesson. So I will see you in the future video where I will dig a little bit deeper. 2. Key Responsibilities of a Brand Manager: So what does a brand manager actually do. Now, some people might just think it's a fancy title. And to be honest, in many cases, with a lot of brand managers, or should I say brand managers, it is. The truth is for most businesses or startups, a brand manager is a luxury. This means that it's usually the founder or just someone within the marketing team that manages the brand as part of their job. Now, just so we can actually understand what the role of a brand manager is and what responsibilities they should ultimately be doing on a daily basis, let's break them down one by one. So, the first thing a brand manager should always be keeping an eye on is the brand strategy. Now, this is something which if you are taking the brand builder pro program, you would already have covered as the first course in the program. This is because ultimately, your brand strategy is the direction and everything that your brand stands for and communicates, which then moves on to your visual expression, which is everything that your customer can see, touch and feel. Your brand strategy is the underlying message of what your brand stands for so you know exactly what to say. This includes other aspects in regards to your messaging, brand positioning, and also understanding your target audience and competition, so you can position your brand effectively. Next up is market analysis. So a brand manager should be able to analyze the market and spot opportunities for your brand to allow you to steal market share away from competition. A little bit like the marketing strategy from the Brand Builder Pro program, we're looking for opportunities where our competitors are weak or where their customers are not being served, effectively. This is going to allow us to say, Hey, we do something quite similar, and you should maybe check us out because we could actually have a better offering for you that you'd be happier with. And this is how we can still market share from competition that's already established in the market. A great example of this is a jewelry company that we worked with a little while ago that ultimately spotted an opportunity that all of their competition had really terrible packaging. And when you were gifting a piece of jewelry to someone or a necklace or ring or whatever, You didn't want the packaging to look cheap and tacky. So what they did is ultimately develop a completely new packaging system where they had an incredible user experience when the person opened the jewelry. This got them more social media shares. I got them more exposure, and ultimately, and most importantly, happier customers. Now, another thing that the brand manager is responsible for is the brand identity. Now, this ties into the brand's overall messaging, but just more in a visual standpoint. Because, for example, if you look at any advert from the likes of, you know, McDonald's, Apple, Nike, you will see a consistency in migrants to the phones that they use, the color, the composition, the standard photography, and just the overall feel, which instantly makes it recognizable and you can instantly connect it to the brand that it is representing. The brand manager's job is ultimately to make sure that every single touch point and every single word that is spoken by the brand, both virtually and just from a communication standpoint is all consistent with the brand's core strategy. Now, depending on the size of the business, the brand manager may also be in charge of marketing. Now, this could be part of the brand manager's responsibilities, and most of the time it actually is, or at the very least, they will be part of the marketing team working alongside marketing to make sure that they are getting the best bang for their book. Now, obviously, if they are part of the marketing department, then they will ultimately have something to say in regards to budget allocation as well. For example, if a brand manager sees an opportunity on YouTube because none of their competition is established there as opposed to advertising on Facebook, then ultimately, they would have to put that forward for, you know, the board or the founder to decide upon. And then from that decision, they would ultimately have been responsible for the allocation of the budget for marketing spent. Now, some of the things that people don't really think about when it comes to being a brand manager or wanting to be a brand manager are things like crisis management. You know, sometimes and, you know, part of my language, but stuff hits the fan, right? It's not always sunshine and rainbows. And when that particular Substance does hit the fan, and it goes everywhere, you can bet your backside that you need to make sure that things are in place to resolve that situation. And ultimately, it's a brand manager that usually does that. And that leads us on to the next responsibility of customer engagement. For example, if we're posting something on Instagram and then a customer comments on it, then who do you think is getting in there and actually commenting back to that customer in a way which is consistent with the brand's voice and also consistent with the objectives that the business has. And if that wasn't enough, The brand manager also has to track the progress and growth of the brand over certain periods of time. Ultimately, if we have to boil down everything that a brand manager is responsible for, they are responsible for the management and the growth of the brand. So every single thing that comes together to make that a reality is in the brand management's job description. Now, there are some really key things that all great brand managers do to make sure that they're always ahead of the curve. Now, the first thing is to actually understand the brand that you're working for. If a brand manager does not fully understand the brand that they're working with, then it's completely pointless for them to be managing and in charge of developing and growing the brand's presence, the brand's awareness, and also the brand's overall strategy and objectives. And that means being constantly informed, you need to be aware of market trends. You need to be aware of what the customers are saying about your product. You need to make sure that if the customers say anything bad about your product, that is fixed by the manufacturing plant as soon as possible. There are tons of things to keep an eye on. And ultimately, you need to make sure that every single touch point that customers have with your brand is as positive as possible. And that's not going to come with that as challenges. So you really have to be resilient and make sure you take the rough with the smooth because some days are going to be extremely positive for a brand manager and everything's going well. You know, the Instagram post got 1 million likes, and then you made a ton of sales for the company, which is all great. But then some other days beyond your control, you are going to have to clean up some mess that you did not intend happening. But ultimately, all the brand manager can do is just measure and adapt and consistently turn up every single day to make sure that they do their very best. Now, a brand manager, and if you are a founder or an entrepreneur that is building a company, then you are ultimately the brand manager. Unfortunately, so if you are actually trying to build a company and you're trying to grow the brand by yourself or maybe with a small team, Everything that we've covered in this lesson is ultimately your responsibility. You are the one that has to manage these things. Now, it can seem a little bit scary. We're going to go through plenty of these things in this cores. Do not worry. We're going to make it super easy to manage and super digestible, so you understand exactly what you're doing, and soon enough, it'll be like second nature. So I will see you in the next lesson. 3. Examples of World-Class Brand Management: So you know what brand management is now, but what about some examples of brand management done right? Well, in this lesson, we're going to be exploring some of the best brand management approaches in the world by some of the strongest brands out there. So by the end of this lesson, you're not only going to know what brand management is, but you'll also understand specific cases and uses where it's helped to save or grow a brand. And where better to style them with a good old coffee? At Starbucks. This isn't Starbucks. So in the mid 2000s Starbucks hit a crisis. What they done is they basically flooded the market with Starbucks stores, and where most would think that's a good idea, it actually started to devalue the brand. Now, this is called market saturation. And over time, the brand manager who was in charge of the global strategy for Starbucks started to realize that the declining sales figures were due to the brand management and the locations of the stores. Starbucks needed a revival strategy, and it was the brand manager's responsibility to find that strategy and execute it. So what did the Starbucks brand manager do? Well, the first step was store closure. The brand manager instantly looked at the sales figures for every single store across the entire global enterprise for Starbucks and essentially closed all of the locations which were underperforming or not turning over a profit. The brand manager then re evaluated the entire brand communication strategy and rebranded to align themselves with the target audience that they felt were their best customers and who were going to bring them the most profit in future. This ultimately being young professionals and students. Now, the next step was product diversification. Now, if you've been to Starbucks, you know that they have a wide range of different products to choose from for pretty much anyone with any sort of preference. This includes in reducing new beverages, foods, and also partnerships. So, what was the result? Well, Starbucks sprang back and it became, again, a high quality option on the High Street for coffee lovers everywhere. That was just one example of a brand manager really turning things around in a really smart way. But let's look at another example with the brand ego to see how that brand manager turned things around in a colorful way. Now, again, in early 2000s, Lego had over expanded their product range, and they had ultimately found themselves in a little bit of a pickle and were ultimately on the verge of going bankrupt. Now, that was until the brand manager revitalized the brand from the inside out. So how did the brand manager do it? Well, they cut back on product expansion and focused on the core offering of just ego breaks. With those bricks, they created packages and products which were ultimately linked to really popular franchises like Star Wars and Harry Potter. This was a super smart strategy because it allowed Lego to tap into other fan bases to ultimately bring customers into the eco system. This ultimately comes down to brand partnerships and linking with the right fan bases to ultimately grow your own customer base. And that is just one part of Lego's recovery strategy. Now, the second part is even more innovative and just super impressive. Lego knew even in the early 2000s, that digital was going to win eventually. Now, Lego really started to embrace technology by this point. And ultimately, they started to look at strategies where they could bring together the digital world with their toys. This would allow customers and children and parents to buy the toys of Lego and then using a QR code or a link to the digital world, ultimately play out different scenarios and different adventures with that particular toy in the digital space. This was unheard of in the early 2000s, and it's not something that a lot of other toy companies were doing. Now, obviously, since the early 2000s, we all know that Lego has went from strength to strength releasing things like movies and their theme park and just lots of other incredible innovations in the digital space. Now, one of the most famous brand management approaches was by Steve Jobs in the late 1990s. Let me just set the scene for you. Apple was on the verge of going bankrupt. Steve Jobs had been fired many years ago, and he went away to build the companies next and then Pixar. Pixar was having incredible success with films like Toystory and other releases. But it was when Apple were in their worst period ever that they reached back out of jobs and brought him back on as CEO. So what did Steve Jobs do to see if Apple in their hour of need? Now, the first thing is to streamline their product offerings. Instead of offering a wide range of different products, Steve Jobs refined it to just a core set of products and then focused on those products to improve quality. This is actually an approach which I personally recommend for every single new business. There is a natural urge, I think, in every single founder to want to offer as much as possible as early as possible to hedge your bets and basically give you the best chance of success. But as a matter of fact, it actually does the exact opposite. It is actually far more effective to focus on just one single product and one single offering, and then make sure that that offering is as valuable and as effective as possible. Now, by reducing the product line and making sure that they were only focusing on a core number of products, this allowed Apple to focus on innovation. This meant that if jobs was going to be focusing on introducing a new product to their existing product range, they needed to make something truly special. And this is how the iPod, iPhone and iPad were all born. Just to give a little bit of an insight in regards to how incredible Steve Jobs was really refining products and folks, non quality. There's a story that I heard many, many years ago of a developer coming in with the first model of the iPhone. And Steve Jobs looked at the iPhone and said, It's too big. And the engineer said, Steve, this is the smallest phone on the planet. It is as thin as any phone can ever be, we have cramped every single piece of technology as small as possible, and we cannot make this any smaller. There's no space to make it any smaller. And at that very moment, Steve Jobs picks up the phone walks over to the corner of his office, puts the phone above the fish tank and drops it in. And as the phone slowly trickles down to the rocks on the bottom of the fish tank, Small bubbles come from the phone showing that there's air inside the phone. And Jobs looks at the engineer and says, there's still space in the phone. Go and make it thinner and go and make it smaller. Now, obviously, I'm not sure if that's word for word, what was said. But I guess the only person who's going to know is the engineer that was in the room with jobs that day, but isn't that just an incredible insight in regards to how that man's mind works, and how much of a great brand manager he must have been really push the quality of every single product that Apple made. And that all comes down to design excellence. Like, for example, I really love on these headphones how when I need to wash These after a workout, I can just clip them off, put them in the washer and then just snap them back in. I mean, even the sound of this slotting back into place makes me feel like I'm in a sci fi movie. Like, I love the design and the usability of this product. And this all comes down to little stories like Steve Jobs dropping the phone in a fish tank. Now, I'm pretty sure that Tim Cook didn't drop these into a fish tank, but if he did, please don't drop mine because I really like this product, and I don't want to lose them. Because running without music just isn't fun. But anyway, I hope that this has helped you to see a couple of examples how brand managers can really help the company and the brand to get through difficult times and to ultimately overcome a crisis and battle through adversity to ultimately find success on the other side. Now, we'll be learning a lot more about certain tactics and approaches that you can use in regards to your brand development and growth. But I thought these little examples would be really fun to share. And it's also fun just to know a little bit about how the inside of these big companies actually works when a crisis hits. Anyway, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and I will see you in the next lesson. 4. The 5 Laws of Brand Growth & Management: Now, managing a brand can seem extremely complex, and sometimes it can be. But as long as you have systems in place and you understand the five laws of brand growth and management, then you can never go far wrong. Now, like anything in life, it's always nice to have habits, goals, and values and rules to follow. It just allows you to keep on track. And also, if you have a go off track, it helps you to recover far sooner and with less effort. So in this lesson, I'm going to cover the five laws of brand management and growth, so that no matter what happens to you on a daily basis with your brand as you're growing it and working hard every single day, You always know that you have these five laws to fall back on, so nothing can ever go too far wrong. Now, the first law, as I'm sure you ready may have guessed, is consistency. Now, I know I said consistency maybe 3,582 times just in the first few lessons of this course. But the reality is it is literally the most important thing to think about when it comes to brand building. And the better you get at managing your brand, the more consistent you will become? Now, the consistency all comes down to just making sure every single aspect from your visual expression to your copywriting, to your photography is all consistent and aligned with your brand strategy. So, again, if you do not have a brand strategy in place, then please feel free to check out the first course of the program because this is going to give you exactly what you need with a guideline to actually help you to figure out exactly who your brand is and what you should be seeing. Now, what is the actual cost of not being consistent and following this law? Well, if you're not consistent, it's gonna be very difficult for a customer to trust you. So that's going to reduce the likelihood of sales coming through and also a profit as well, which takes us onto our next law, which is having a customer centric approach. Now, every single successful brand manager knows that a brand story needs to be focused around positioning their customer as the hero. Customers do not care about what your brand has to see when you're talking about yourself. What they want to know is, what can you do for them? And by truly understanding your customer's pin points, requirements, and preferences, you're going to be able to communicate more effectively with that target audience and ultimately serve them better. So what is the cost of actually not following this law? Well, you may not go to jail, but your customers are not going to see you as an option. And this is because in every single market, there's going to be a brand or a couple of brands that are actually speaking on the same level as a customer and connect them with the customer or bring them into their ecosystem. We all know if we start talking to a new person or even a person that we know, and all they're talking about is themselves and their vision and what matters to them, we switch off very easily. It's exactly the same with your brand. If your brand can talk about something that your customer cares about in a way that connects with them, that is when the magic happens. So making sure you always have a customer centric approach to your communications and everything that you do is going to gradually build up that trust and ultimately get you the sales and the profit that you need. Now, w three is adaption and innovation. Now, much like the ego example in the previous lesson of this course, You saw how Lego adapted to the new digital world in the early 2000s that was coming to life so they could make the experience for their customer better. Now, simply by having a customer centric approach and also not being scared to adapt and innovate, they ultimately ended up saving the company from bankruptcy and going from strength to strength. Now, the biggest cost of not following this law is essentially becoming complacent. And if you do become complacent, then ultimately, you're not going to be around for very long. As you're most likely going to miss opportunities and also be too confident and the egotistical for your own boots, which actually leads me onto the fourth law of brand management and growth, which is authenticity and transparency. Being authentic and transparent is super important, both from a branding standpoint and also just being a nice person. So if you actually want to connect with a target audience who are going to trust you and give you the hard earned money, then Ultimately, you want to be authentic and transparent at all times, right? For example, some brands promise something, or see that a sale ends at a certain time, and then they basically extend it. So all the customers that have actually given their purchases before that time have just done it for no reason whatsoever because the sale has been extended. And you also see lots of ingenuine acts and marketing tricks that ultimately end up positioning the brand in a really bad way. So ultimately, being authentic and being transparent is all about being extremely honest and basically fulfilling on the promises that you put forward to the customer. And where it can obviously pay off sometimes to do a marketing trick and get some sales through the door, Although that's important, it's important to follow the last law of the five laws of brand management and growth, which is to have patients and to have a long term vision. Patients and having a long term focus for your brand is without a shadow of a doubt, the most important law out of all five. If you are just focusing on this week or this month or even this year, then you're never really going to get anywhere fast. And the reason for that is there are founders out there that are thinking ten, 20 years ahead and they're building a culture and a strategy and ultimately a brand, which is going to last the test of time. Now, I know it can be really difficult to ultimately have patients when you maybe don't have sales coming through the door, but that is ultimately the secret to what it takes. By offering things like marketing tricks and discounts and, you know, other packages, which is not going to position your brand in the best way, you're ultimately devaluing your brand. So while it might feel good to get some sales through the door early at a discounted rate, it could actually be harming your brand over the long term. Now, following these five laws of brand management and growth, are going to be super important to you getting the best results for your company. And it's also going to allow you to avoid some common mistakes which often trip founders and entrepreneurs up at this point in time. Now, the reality is that you do not need to come up with different marketing tricks and methods to basically get your customers to buy from you earlier when you could just wait a little bit and have them pay full price later on down the line. And we're going to be covering everything that you need to know in regards to managing your brand to get customers to see you with desirable option a little bit later on. So stick around for that and I will see you in the next lesson. 5. How to Measure Brand Awareness: So how do you know when customers are aware of your brand? And how can we track the different levels of brand awareness. When in this lesson, we're going to be sharing how brand managers can track the different levels of brand awareness for their company. Now, first and foremost, why is this important? Well, the level of awareness is essentially how fast your particular brand comes to the customer's mind when they have a need for your product or service. Now, this can be super important because when you're thinking about getting some food, for example, a McDonald's keeps popping up in your head? This is because every time you're walking down the street or driving You're seeing billboards for McDonalds and it's constantly repeating the brand's message to you to make sure they're always front of mind. Now, the first level of brand awareness is aided awareness. Now, aided awareness is where you essentially give the customer a list of brands, and they can select your brand out of that list as one that they recognize. Now, this can be super helpful because it actually shows that a customer that maybe isn't even your direct target audience still recognizes your brand. Now, this is actually really simple to do. All you need to do is just get a list of brands and just give it to a few random people and see if anyone recognizes your brand and understands what you do. Now, the higher level of brand awareness is brand recognition. So this is where a customer can actually recognize your brand without being aided. So without being given a list of companies to choose from, they can recognize your logo or something about your brand without being prompted. Now, logo recognition is by far, at least in my humble opinion, the best way to do this. So simply to show the logo to the person and say, do you know what this brand does? If they answer correctly, then that is good. The next level above that is brand recall. This is where the customer has actually had an engagement with the brand or an interaction or, you know, experienced a touch point, and then they can remember specific things about that particular experience or incident. For example, if you saw a Tiffany and Co store and you remember the blue from that particular experience, that is a sign of brand recall. And what this basically means is it means that there is something memorable about your brand that sticks in the mind of the customer, which is really important. Now, even higher above that is top of mind awareness. Now, this is the pinnacle of awareness, because it's essentially positioning you as the brand to go to for that particular category of product or service. Now, there are many ways you can track this, but one of the most popular is just simply by doing a survey. So McDonald's might, for example, hire a third party to go out into the public and ask 1,000 or 10,000 people a series of questions. One of these questions could be, when you're wanting something quick and easy to eat, which restaurant comes to mind? And ultimately, what McDonald's is looking for is to be the first to come to mind for the customer. Now, being able to track the level of awareness that you currently have in the customer's mind is super important. The reason being is, if you're not quite at top of mind awareness yet, do not worry. It is a journey, and you are going to get there one day, but it just takes a little bit of time. Unsten every brand that is out there and has top of mind awareness has been around for many, many years. So do not worry. Working on the level of awareness that your customer has for your brand is one of the best ways to actually elevate your brand's presence in the market. But you have to be able to stand out and you have to be able to look at things from an objective standpoint. So basically, if you're at the aided awareness level, then you know you need to invest more in making your brand distinctive and getting the word out there by any means necessary. Or if people can actually recall your brand and they know who you are and what you do, then it's not a case of just trying to get the word out there. You have to be more elegant with your approach to marketing. This means people already know what your brand is and what you do, so you should be focusing more on the actual customer and making them the hero of your story. Anyway, I hope you find lesson valuable. I will see you in the next one. 6. Disruptive Consistency - The Secret To Advertising: So what does it mean to be disruptively consistent and why does it matter? Well, in this lesson, we're going to be learning what it means to be disruptively consistent, and we're also going to be looking at some examples of brands that do this very well. So let's first define what it actually means to be disruptively consistent. Now, if we split those two words apart and we look at them both separately, it's going to help us to define the term far better. So disruptive basically means going against the status quo, not doing things as they are traditionally done, and just essentially standing out. Now, consistency, on the other hand, basically means to be uniform, to be very predictable in regards to how you do things and how you're seeing. This includes things like your visual identity, like your typography, like your copywriting, and like the overall feeling that your brand wants to convey. Now, if you merge these two together, that's when you get disruptive consistency. And Disruptive consistency essentially means to be consistent in everything that you're doing to make sure everything aligns with your brand's values, guidelines, and visual communications. But to do so in a way which ruffles a few feathers. Let's look at a few examples just so you know exactly what I mean. Now, Apple is renowned for its destructive consistency. Firstly, we have the famous Apple ad, which just completely shattered any expectation of what an ad for a computer company or any company for that matter should be like. And then, of course, we have the iPhone. So the iPhone completely revolutionized an industry. But as you can see, no matter whether we're talking about the iPhone or the Max or the AirPods AirPods Max. Sorry. Everything is consistent in regards to design, simplicity, and philosophy. For example, if Apple ever created a lamp shade, you would know that it's an apple lampshade just from seeing the design. Now, Tesla is another example of a brand that is consistently disruptive. Now, in regards to consistency, Tesla in regards to design and just overall feel has always been that sleep sexy brand that everyone desires. Or at least most people desire unless you just hear the planet. Now, in regards to disruptiveness, Tessa has done things which the average brand just would never do. For example, they've never spent a penny on marketing or advertising. Every single seal that has been generated by Tesla is being done via PR by their founder Elon Musk. Now, they've done so many PR stunts, but one of the most notable is when they sent a Tesla up into space and had a driven by an astronaut. Now, when I say rougher a few feathers, I don't mean you have to send your car into space, but I'm just giving you a few ideas. Now, Coca Cola is probably one of the most classic examples when it comes to being disruptively consistent. For example, I'm pretty sure you remember that global strategy that came out where Coca Cola started putting names on the bottles of coca cola. Now, this was an ingenious strategy, which is completely aligned in their brand messaging to essentially share moments together as a family or with friends, to ultimately get you to buy bottles of C for your friends. Or you can just buy some for yourself, but, you know, obviously, that's just a little bit weird. Now, this was a genius strategy by Coca Cola to one, get people to drink coca cola together and share in memories and moments. And two, to get you to buy la for your friends and family. The amount of people that got a bottle of coca cola with their name on it under the tree at Christmas that year, was remarkable. So why is it important to be disruptively consistent? You need to make sure you stay inside your brand's guide lines and communication strategy, but do it in a way which is a little bit different. So think about it like this. Being disruptive is what you actually say. Now, the consistency part is who's actually saying it. So you know who's saying the words, but what you're saying and communicating can be a little bit adventurous. Now, being consistent and even being disruptively consistent breeds the feeling of trust. Now, ultimately, the best thing about positively causing a little bit of a stir every now and again with your brand is to basically get you in front of the customer. If I put your arm out and then just poured normal temperatured water, over your arm, you wouldn't really feel anything. However, if I pour some ice cold water over your arm, you get a shock and you remember that particular experience. Most likely, you remember it because why is a guy just pouring water over my arm for no apparent reason? Now, what I'm trying to say is, if a brand is just pushing out the same Monday messaging again and again and again, then it's going to be lukewarm, and you're not going to feel anything. However, if like the ice water or even super hot water, it's a little bit risky, it's slightly on the edge. This is going to leave far more of an impression. Now, the secret is to do this in a way where it reflects on your brand positively. And this is going to be super important for you to be able to grab the attention of the customer to get them on your side and to steal market share from your competition. I really hope you find this lesson valuable, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 7. Understanding Share of Voice (SOV): So share of voice is a very important metric for any brand, but especially new brands and startups. Now, as a brand manager, they are responsible for ultimately dictating how much share voice we actually have. Think about it like a cake. The more advertising and promotional activity every single brand in your industry is doing, the more piece of the cake they get to take away. This is because generally, the more advertising you do, the more business you can bring back. So this is why big businesses always spend so much on advertising like billboards and TV spots because they know that, the more awareness they can generate around their product and what it means and what it can actually provide to the customer, the more they can make in return. And there are a few ways that you can actually calculate your share of voice in a really simple way. Now, the first is advertising spend. Now, this may be quite tricky for new brands and start ups because you don't really have this data readily available, and maybe you don't have much of a budget you actually start advertising or, you know, bud billboards or TV spots right now. So a more effective way to do it, which I think actually works really well, is to manage the size of your social media presence. Now, this isn't a perfect way to do it, but it does give you a free insight in Mags to how big your brand is and also how much presence you have within any given market. For example, within the fitness apparel market, you can see that these four companies all have different levels of share of voice within their social media platforms. Now, this does not directly correlate to how much they're spending on advertising. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. But what I'm trying to get across is it can give you an insight emg to how big the company is and how much they could be spending on their marketing. Ultimately, the bigger the social media presence of the company, the bigger the impact they can have with their share of voice. So why does share of voice even matter for start ups? Well, first and foremost, it means more visibility and recognition for your brand. If people can recognize your brand and actually know who you are and what you're about, then they're more likely to choose you later on down the line when they have a need for your product or service. Secondly, it all comes down to market share. For example, in your market, there are going to be competitors that are already existing within that particular space. Thirdly, it can give you a competitive advantage when you have more share of voice. For example, look at these two companies. Which do you think if they posted the exact same time, do you think would get more awareness? Which do you think looks the most credible? Which do you think looks the coolest? Well, obviously, it all comes down to personal preference, but you get the idea. And lastly, we have the advantage of being the perceived market leader. Now again, when we think about fast food, for example, at least for me, the first fast food restaurant that comes to mind for me, and I think many people is McDonald's. Now, this is because of the communications that McDonald's have been pumping out for years on end. And without getting into neurology and the science behind why brands are more prominent in our minds. Ultimately, the more advertising that you can get in front of the customer, and the more times you can tell the customer about what you do, the more likely the customer is to think of you when they have a need for your product or service. This is because on average. The first nine times a customer hears your message or something about your brand, they're not even listening to what you have to say, and the chances of you having an advert pumped out into the public and someone from the public actually needing what you have to offer at that very moment in time is just completely unrealistic. Yes, it does happen from time to time, but the majority of the time, you're going to have to consistently pump the same message again and again in order to get someone to make a purchase. The strategy needs to be to over time, consistently gain more share of voice as your brand grows. This allows you to invest more into marketing, and this ultimately will eventually allow you to compete more effectively in regards to marketing budget and share of voice with the bigger competitors in your industry. And as time goes on, the more share of voice that you win from your competition, the bigger and better your brand will become, and the more brand equity you can enjoy. Now, operating without a clear SOV strategy is essentially going to lead to a ton of wasted resources and time. Now, we're going to be covering more about building brand equity later on in the course because it's a really important aspect of brand building to get right. But I hope you've enjoyed this lesson, and I will see you in the next one. See you soon. 8. The Science to Building Brand Equity: What is the science to building brand equity? Well, let's first understand what brand equity actually is. Now, brand equity is essentially the commercial value of your brand in comparison to other similar brands offering a very almost identical product or service. It's the value that a brand brings to a pretty regular product to allow you to charge more for that particular product or service. For example, this t shirt probably cost about ten, 20 maybe $25 maximum. Now, if you put this t shirt in a Louis Vaton store and put a Louis Baton tag in it and maybe even a little logo somewhere, You could probably charge a lot more. Now, obviously, the T shirt could be made from a different material or, you know, it could be high quality, whatever. Again. However, what I'm trying to get across is brand equity is ultimately the trust that the customer has in your brand to allow you to charge more and to be trusted by the masses. So, what are the actual components of brand equity? Well, the first thing is brand awareness. This ultimately means that a customer can ultimately recognize and know what your brand is and what it does. Secondly, is brand association. So what does the customer associate your brand with? Is a positive? Is it negative? Have you had partnerships with other brands? What do they think about and how do they feel about your brand? Third is perceived quality. As I said before, if I put this T shirt in Louis Vtontore, you would automatically perceive it as being higher quality, just because it's got a higher price tag and because of where it's being sold. And lastly, brand loyalty. Now, when I see a loyalty, a customer is only going to be loyal to a brand if they actually fulfill their needs and requirements. A customer will not buy it from a brand, just because they love the brand. They love the brand for what the brand can do for them. Now, what brand equity can do is it can make you feel like part of the brand story, and you can see and resonate and connect with some of the brand story inside your own story. And that's ultimately where the most powerful brand loyalty comes from. Not because you necessarily love the brand, but because you love how the brand makes you feel about yourself. So now we know what brand equity is and how we can help your business. What is the scientific breakdown to how brand equity can be built? Now, this all starts with signals. So what do I mean by signals? Well, a signal could be anything that a brand communicates or puts out there in the world. A signal is something where you essentially are conveying or communicating what it is your brand does and also how you do it. For example, a signal could be a red rope and a red carpet in front of a Louis Vton store. This gives the perception of the store being extremely prestigious and ultimately being extremely important. They are treating their customers like VIPs. Therefore, you look at Louis ton as a more luxurious experience to H&M or Zara, where you can just walk straight in. And also, they have people at the door to actually greet you before you walk in to the store. And they also limit the amount of people in the store at any one time to make sure there's a queue outside the front door to make the brand look even more desirable. Another more simple example of a signal that is put in by a brand could be a social media post. So, ultimately, anything that is done by the brand to connect with the customer, and it could be both tangible and also intangible. So it could be literally anything that the brand does, says, or is. So these signals that the brand puts out into the world are then experienced by potential customers, and they are experienced through the five customer senses, sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. And those senses then create memories which is step three. These memories start to create imprints in the customer's minds to ultimately brainwash the customer and get the person to think about the brand in a certain way. And these memories, which takes us under step four, create energy. They create energy and emotion within the person to ultimately provide them with enough motivation and enough of a desire to actually purchase the product or service in the future. Which ultimately leads to the fifth step, which is sales, and then the sixth step, which is profit, which we're not too concerned about. We're more concerned about the first four steps. So let's look at an example of this actually working in real time. So let's pretend Lucy and her friend are walking down the mall and they see the Louis Breton store. They see that there's a big queue outside the store, and they're only letting in five people at any one time. Lucy has never seen Louis ton Store before. She doesn't even know who Louis Vitan is. This is the first time she's actually been in the mall without her parents. She's only young. So she sees the Louis Vtontore. She says, Why is that Store got a huge line outside where none of the other stores have. This is a signal at play. Now, Lucy and Lucy sensors are experiencing this particular signal, and they are creating a perception around the Louis V Ton brand. Even though she's never experienced Louv Ton brand before. She's never even heard of the brand, okay? She is putting it in her mind that the Louis ton brand is worth waiting around for. There's a huge que, and this can work at the CMF any type of business. If you look at two coffee shops, for example, and one of them is, you know, just pretty much deserted with just a little old lady sitting in the corner, drinking her, you know, very, very weak coffee, and then the other store is extremely busy with a huge lineou the door. Which one are you going to go to? So, anyway, back to Lucy. So Lucy has created this perception that Lou Viton is desirable and it's worth waiting for. That imprints in her memory. And when she gets to a point, not that day, but maybe a year or two, or maybe even a decade later, when she's at a point where she has a lot of disposable income and maybe she wants to treat herself, that's still imprinted in her mind. She knows that Louis Baton is something that people desire, and a Louis Baton band could potentially help her to raise her ranking in the social hierarchy, if that's something that she cares about. Now, this desire and this lust for acceptance, and, you know, this is a whole different story. But this can ultimately create energy and emotion within Lucy to persuade her and to motivate her to pay far more for a product which is ultimately priced extremely highly in comparison to what it cost to actually make the product. And this is the beauty of marketing and ultimately Brin equity. Over time, the brands are are the most patient and who can consistently communicate a story at every single touch point of luxuriousness or desire or ultimately, you know, just being an extremely good value for money, where in Louis Vton's case, that is debatable, as we all know, ultimately, it all comes down to how the customer feels about your brand. And that's ultimately what brand equity is. So when we're talking about building brand equity, If we actually look at it really closely, we're simply just building the perception and the feeling that a customer can feel towards our brand and the trust that they feel when they're thinking about making a purchase from us. For example, if I buy these headphones from Apple, I know for a fact that if anything happens with these headphones, I'm going to be taken care of and they're going to be fixed or replaced fairly easily. This is because I've experienced and had, you know, instances where I've had to contact the Apple support team, and they're extremely helpful and extremely to the point. So hopefully you found this lesson helpful, and hopefully you understand brand equity now to a level, which, to be honest, most people are never going to reach unless you watch this video and maybe do a lot of reading. Now we're going to be exploring some strategies and tactics to actually increase your brand equity over time so that you can actually use these tactics and action them within your own business brands and projects. Anyway, thank you so much for your time, and I will see you in the next lesson. 9. Brand Building with Emotion & Story: So how can you build your brand around emotion? Well, in this lesson, we're going to first understand what emotion is and how it can be applied to branding. We're then going to look at different strategies as to how you can apply emotion to your branding. And then, lastly, we're going to look at some real life examples of brands that are already doing this very well. So firstly, what is emotion in branding? Well, Think about a brand that you know, love and trust. Why do you think you love trust and are loyal to that particular brand? And this could be any brand. For me, for example, it's apple. I just love the products. I love the philosophy behind the company. I love how the products 99% of the time. They're always deliver apart from this mouse with the dodgy chargy thing, but that's a whole different story. Now, the reason that I feel emotionally attached to the Apple brand is simply because I know that it always has my back. For example, let us think it's really cool the fact that I actually bought my laptop in the UK. And then when I was in China, I could just take that laptop to the Apple store when it died and basically get it fixed or get a new one. Now, this just fills me with a certain level of trust and just gives me complete peace of mind. But what are the main reasons and ways to actually connect with your target audience as a brand. Well, the first is actually being memorable. In order for a customer to think anything of you or feel a certain way about you, they need to remember who you are. So being memorable and just being memorable about the simple stuff like, for example, how you treat a customer in an e mail or, you know, what you see when you pick up the phone, for example? All these little things all add up to ultimately being memorable for the right reasons. Next is trust and loyalty. So again, much like my Apple example, I trust that Apple is always going to have my back. If the product fails. And in fact, this exact keyboard had a little bit of a malfunction with the cap Slock button, and I took it straight to the Apple store, and they simply just replaced it for a new one. The best thing is, they didn't even check to see if I was telling the truth. They literally just looked at it and just said, Yeah, okay, no problem. We'll get you a new one. Now, another thing which is really important when it comes to, you know, connecting with your customers in an emotional way is to engage with them. And how you engage with a customer is literally everything about the experience that you provide as a business. You need to engage with your customers in a way which is respectful but also professional. And if you can do that over a long enough time span, the customer is going to learn that you are trustworthy and you are credible and you're established enough to serve their needs and serve them. Now, in regards to actually creating these emotional connections, how can we do that? What strategies can we actually use to make that happen? Well, the first step is to actually know your audience. So, for example, If I'm going to get someone to be emotly connected with me, they're going to have to have something that's either related to me or we're going to have to have something in common for us to actually get that spark and get things off on the right foot. And that is why all brands that are ultimately in the position to connect with the customer emotionally need to be focused on positioning their customer as the hero of their story. Great brands don't tell you how great they are. Great brands tell you how great you are. So by knowing your target audience, you can then communicate a story or a narrative from your brand, which can connect with them and resonate with them deeply, which takes us on to our next strategy, which is storytelling. You need to make sure that once you understand your target audience, you can ultimately tell a story which resonates with them, their struggles, their desires, and who they think they are as a person. This is the beauty of how branding can connect emotionally with a customer. Businesses out there that have no idea about branding tell you how great their product is. Whereas the brands who understand why customers buy in the first place, we buy with emotion and justify with logic afterwards, focus on how the product is going to impact your life and make you feel. We create this dream world, this alternative reality where their product plays an integral part in your life to help you become a better version of yourself. And you have to do this in an authentic way. You have to do it in a way where the person feels like this is realistic. This is actually something that could happen. If I use a mac, then it could unleash my creativity. If I wear a pair of Nike Jordan trainers, then I could leap like Michael Jordan, probably not as high, and you're probably not going to be in the NBA, but that's a different story. What I'm trying to get across is you see yourself. Using the product to better your life. And ultimately, that's usually enough to get you to buy something. And these stories can be told in so many different ways. It can be told via photography. It can be told via copywriting, communicated via video. It can even be communicated via a speech or, you know, just even just talking to the camera as the founder of a company. So now you know the strategies that you can use to actually connect with a customer emotionally. Let's look at some brands that do this really well. Now, the first brand that comes to mind is always going to be Nike because those guys have been doing it since in 1960s, and they are experts connecting with customers emotionally. Even the earliest Nike adverts all focus around a message of determination, pushing through boundaries and ultimately being the best athlete that you can be. And this message has never changed. And this is why when we think about Nike, we think about words such as motivation, determination, you know, top athletes, fitness, health, all these incredible things that really help Nike to stand out in the marketplace. Now, Coca Cola is another brand that has pretty much dominated the word happiness since I can remember. And the way they do that is simply by connecting themselves to things like Christmas with the whole Santa clause thing, which was obviously incredible. And there's also a little story that the reason that Santa Claus is red is because of Coca Cola, which is pretty cool. Now, Coca Cola consistently communicates messaging based around, you know, nostalgia and happiness and positive energy to ultimately connect themselves to the instances where you would be drinking a soft drink. Maybe you're at a party and you're wanting a mixer for some alcohol potentially, or maybe you just want a nice refreshing drink when you're out in the sun and enjoying time with friends. When you're happy and relaxing and with other people that you love and care about, coca cola should be the first soft drink that comes to your mind. Now, Dove is by far one of my favorite brands on the planet. And the reason I say that is I've never bought any of that products, but I know that their quality of product is great, and I also know that the way they communicate with their target audience is absolutely sublime. And the way that I can say that with confidence is they actually know what to say to their target audience in a way which is authentic and subtle. For example, they don't go out there and say, every woman is beautiful, blah, blah, blah, this, this, this. It's just never going to have as much impact as what they actually do, which is to create social experiments where real life women that the target audience can relate to see themselves as beautiful in real time. So they conduct these social experiments to prove to everyone, women, especially, that everyone is beautiful in their own way. We're actually a lot more beautiful than we perceive ourselves to be. Now, by using strategies like this and understanding how to connect with your target audience via storytelling, it's going to really help you to connect more emotionally with your target audience if you are managing a brand properly. Let me know if you need any additional support, and I will see you in the next lesson. 10. Brand Building with a Long-Term Vision: So what does it mean to plan long term strategically for a brand? Well, in this lesson, we're going to learn exactly what long term strategic planning is from a branding standpoint. And then we're also going to learn how to plan long term sustainably to make sure you can manage your brand effectively over the long term. So why do we start? Well, Short term planning is important for any company and any brand, right? You need to get sales through the door. But what about having a long term vision and strategy for your company? So, why is it super important for a business specifically who's trying to build a brand to have a long term vision or strategy? Well, let's break it down to the fundamentals. Any sale that has ever happened in the history of time has been an exchange of value, okay? So I want to buy this, and I want to pay this amount for that particular product or service. Now, this is the essence of business. You're exchanging one form of value for another. Now, if we actually break down what branding actually is, branding is ultimately the feeling of trust or the peace of mind that you feel when you're thinking about a particular company. Basically, if I buy these headphones or this laptop or this keyboard, whatever from Apple, then I'm going to know that Apple is going to take care of me. They're going to take care of me as a customer. And that is ultimately what a brand provides. They provide a certain level of trust and credibility and authority, and they can also connect with customers emotionally. So why is this relevant to this particular lesson? Well, when you have a long term strategic vision or plan for the future, what you're ultimately doing is you're building a brand which can eventually sell at a higher profit than others in your space. And if you know anything about business, you'll know that profitability is key. For example, you can have two companies selling the exact same product. One company is selling at a 50% profit margin. And the other company is selling at a 10% profit margin. Now, if these two companies are making the same amount of revenue, let's say, 100 million, then this company is going to be far more profitable and therefore, be able to spend far more on advertising, be able to acquire far better talent within their business, be able to ultimately expand far faster because they are more profitable, and why are they more profitable? Because they have a better brand more slightly, and they can also sell at a premium as opposed to their competition, who are ultimately selling a 10% profit margin. Basically stating that they are competing on price and not on brand or value. So now you know why it's important to have a long term vision and ultimately how branding can play a part in really helping a business to grow and become more profitable over time. So why should you have an actual plan or strategy that is going to stretch out to the next five, ten, or even 20 years? Well, one of the most important benefits is consistency. When you have a long term strategy in place, you can constantly revisit that plan and ultimately keep on track for the long term. If you don't have a plan or strategy in place and you have nothing to guide you, then ultimately, and inevitably, if something goes wrong or you maybe start leaning off track, there's nothing to remind you where you're going and what you're wanting to achieve. And this ultimately leads to the next benefit, which is resilience. When something bad happens in your market or, you know, just something rocks the boat, so to speak, you have a plan of attack in place to weather that storm. And this may not seem very important now because you may not be in a storm, but when you're actually in a storm, it becomes pretty darn important. Now, the third benefit is growth. Growth is obviously important because if your business is stagnant, then it's not really going anywhere, and your competition are going to overtake you, and then ultimately you will not be in business for very long, which leads me on the last benefit of having a strategy or long term plan in place, which is competitive advantage. The truth is a lot of businesses that are in your space will probably not have a long term vision or strategy. They probably don't even know who they are as a brand. So by you actually learning how to communicate effectively with maybe doing the brand strategy course earlier on in the brand builder pro program, and also making sure that links up with the long term vision, and you actually managing that brand effectively, you're going to have a competitive edge in any market that you compete within. So what are the components of an effective brand strategy for the long term? Well, it all starts with your internal branding. Now, if you haven't already completed the first course of the brand builder pro program, then I would really recommend that you check that out or even just do a little bit of research yourself online in regards to how to develop a brand purpose, brand values, brand vision statement, and brand mission statements. This is the core to building a long term, brand strategy, and ultimately understanding exactly why your brand exists beyond just financial gain. Your long term brand vision and plan should also map out key opportunities that you potentially have highlighted earlier on, which you want to explore in future. This could be for example, a new product that you want to release or a new way to do things to really ruffle some feathers and create a little bit of stir in the market. Now, your plan should also include some sort of objective or goal for each milestone within your brand strategy. For example, you should have a yearly goal, then a five year goal, ten year goal, and then eventually a 20 year goal. So ultimately, where do you want to be throughout that time? But do keep in mind that your five, ten, and 20 year goal may change if the market changes or new opportunities pop up, which weren't readily available before. So how do you actually develop and create a long term brand strategy? Well, it all starts with assessment. You need to analyze your competition, your target market, and understand exactly what you're trying to achieve as a brand. Again, if you haven't completed the brand strategy course within the brand builder program, then I would really recommend checking that out because it's really going to help you to understand every single step of the process so you can complete it easily without any hassle or confusion. The next step is goal setting. So you really need to set down some objectives and goals for your brand to ultimately measure your growth. For example, if you're a software company, then this could be, I want 1,000 users to be using our software within the first 12 months. And then what you can do is you can take that objective and reverse engineering to say, okay, I want 100 users in our first three months. And then I want to scale up that particular effort to start to really ramp up the users that join our program. Ultimately growth comes from measuring and managing every aspect of your brand. So if you can set key objectives so you can measure how effective each particular effort has been, then it's going to help you grow over the long term. Once you have your goals in place, you would then have to set out strategic actions in order for those goals to be achieved. So again, if you said that you wanted 1,000 users to be using your software by the end of 12 months, then how are we going to get people to become aware of your actual software and what it does? How are we going to allow them to consider you as an option? Then how are we going to actually get them to buy the software? If you want to learn how to develop certain tactics and strategies in regards to your marketing to really sell your product or service or brand, then check out the marketing course and the brand builder PO program because it literally covers everything that you need to know. Now, once you have those strategic actions in place, you need to set milestones within a certain period to evaluate and measure how effective your strategic actions are. And then, ultimately, as you go through that particular period, you are constantly revisiting those actions to see how effective they are and just switch things up to experiment to make them more effective as time goes on. Now, obviously, it's smart to leave a little bit of room for adaption, because you need to make sure that if anything happens in the market, you can maneuver and ultimately stay on course over the long term. But changing a few things every now and again, is not necessarily a bad thing. Just make sure that the long term strategy that you have in place is always in sight. Anyway, I hope this particular lesson helps you to understand why it's so important to have a long term brand strategy in place. And also, how important it is for your marketing strategy and your brand strategy to work together to help you achieve your long term brand vision. Any brand manager should understand how to develop all of these elements. So, if you have any questions or you need any additional support, please let me know I'm more than happy to help. But anyway, on that no, thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the next lesson. 11. Creating Actionable Brand Building Tactics: So what does it mean to have actionable tactics? Well, if you watch the video early on in this course, you'll know that the difference between strategy and tactics is very important. Your strategy is where you ultimately want to go, the objectives that you want to achieve as a brand and as a company. Whereas your tactics are all the twists and turns and all the little journeys that you take to get to your final destination. Now, it's important to have tactics because, although it's important to know where you're going, you need to understand how to get there. And ultimately, it's really important to get there in the right way as opposed to taking the long way around. And essentially, it's not just important where you're going, but it's also important how you get there. For example, there are multiple different ways to achieve the exact same objective. However, The specific circumstance that you are in right now is going to distinguish which approach and which tactic you take. For example, if you have $100,000 to spend on digital advertising, then that is essentially going to be a very different journey to if you have nothing to spend on advertising, and you have to do everything through organic reach. Anyway, this is virgin into marketing, which obviously is not what this course is about, but I just want to drive home that not every journey is the same to the exact same objective. This is going to help you to manage, delegate and ultimately prioritize far more effectively. The reason being is there are so many different types of tactics that you could choose from. You need to find the one that works best for you. But in this lesson, I want to show you not how to find those tactics, but how to strategize and break down a situation and an objective into small bite sized chunks, which are ultimately your tactics. So let's break this down into a simple to understand scenario. Let's pretend that you are a clothing company that has 500 T shirts worth of stock that you need to sell within a 12 month period. Now, these 500 T shirts have have to go so you can order the next round of stock, which is going to be ultimately what catapult your brand in a success. Now, let's say, for example, that for every 100 people that come to the brand's website, one of them purchases a T shirt, which basically means that roughly we need 50,000 people to visit the website in order to sell the 500 T shirts that the brand has to sell. Now, there are two different levers that we could pull in order to accelerate the sales generated by this brand. And ultimately help them sell more t shirts faster. Now, the first lever is optimizing their website because at the moment, one out of 100 people that come to the website actually convert into a paying customer. So that's ultimately a 1% conversion rate. Now, instead of the brand trying to get 50,000 people to their website and staying at 1% conversion rate, if they just double that, then that means that they would only have to get 25,000 to their website to sell the exact same amount of t shirts. And if we could just refine the website, a little bit more to get it to 3% conversion, so three out of 100 people would actually buy a T shirt when visiting the website, This means that this is again going to significantly impact the amount of people that we need to get onto the website to actually sell those 500 units. So that's the first lever that we could potentially pull. Now, the second lever is ultimately marketing. So whereas the first approach focuses on refining the website, the second approach is all around, focusing on the tactics to drive more traffic to the website. Now, as I've just mentioned before, with a 1% conversion rate, so one out of every 100 people actually buy a T shirt, we would have to get 50,000 people to visit the website and hopefully sell 500 t shirts. Now, the time energy and resources required to get 50,000 people to a website is all going to depend on, again, your budget, and ultimately how much time you have and what tactics you want to use, whether it be social media, peer advertising, flyers, you know, going to conferences and events to actually promote the brand. There are so many different tactics that you could use, and we actually have a course which focuses on strategic marketing and actually helping you build a full marketing plan to make sure that the tactics that you select are perfect for your brand. So, feel free to check that out as part of our brand builder pro program. So now we know what the two levers are and what impact they would have on the business. I want you to let me know which lever you would pull first. Now, this should be pretty simple. But if you think about business in this way and actually prioritize your tactics in this sense, because we could do both of those things. But ultimately, if we just get that 1% conversion rate to a 2% conversion rate, then it's going to allow all of our marketing from that day forward to get double the return that it originally would. And if you're wondering how to get a website 1-2 to three to 4% and beyond in regards to conversion rate, then make sure you check out our marketing cost because it's going to suit you perfectly, and it's going to help you to not just get the conversion rate up, but also get more qualified leads to that website and also allow you to have a structured plan to follow at all times. So hopefully, now this makes sense in regards to how you can prioritize the different tactics that are available to you to get the best result for your brand. And this is all coming down to leverage and making sure that you are pulling the correct levers at the right time to make sure that you can optimize your brand and move forward as effectively and efficiently as possible. I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 12. Structuring a Product Portfolio: Okay, so what do I mean by structuring your product portfolio? Every single brand that you know, that you love and appreciate has certain levels of products that they offer different types of customers. Now, do not worry. We're going to go into some real life examples later on with two brands that I'm sure you're fully aware of, Louis aton and Apple. Now, the reality is that your brand or the brother you're managing at the moment, needs to focus on just selling one single product or type of product at this moment in time. This is because having single product focus is going to help you to really understand your target audience and really understand how to connect with that particular type of person who wants what you are selling. For example, within my branding agency, we started out just doing brand name development, which is ultimately what we specialize in, but then we moved on to offering different types of services that complement that first service. And this moves me on to the first step of ultimately expanding your product range, making sure that it is relevant to the initial product that you're selling. So, for example, in my case, it was brand naming, and then we moved on to doing logo design and website development and brand strategy and lots of other incredible stuff to help a brand optimize its performance and be the best brand that it can be. However, let's take Nike for example. Nike started back in the day in the 1960s just selling running shoes. That is literally all they did. The co founder Bill Bauman made the first pair of running shoes using a waffle iron, and that was the first product that Nike sold. They literally sold nothing else apart from running shoes. However, as they started to develop their brand and grow, they eventually got to a point where they could start selling other types of apparel. Now they sell pretty much anything related to fitness and health. Let's take a completely different example. Amazon. So Amazon in the very very beginning, started off selling books. The reason that they started selling books is because there was a wide range of different books for their customers to choose from, and they also were easy to ship and store. This allowed Amazon to really refine the internal processes and their websites, and then ultimately start to expand gradually to a point now where they essentially can sell, well, they do sell pretty much everything. I mean, they are called the Everything store for a reason, right? So, that makes sense. So that's the first step that you need to make sure of when you're actually building a brand or developing your product range, super important to slowly build our relevant product expansion plans to ultimately start to offer more value to customers in different ways as you start to learn what the customer wants and how you can provide it to them. Now, once you've actually expanded your product range, it's now time to actually start to create a hierarchy in regards to your products and services. And this can be done by essentially categorizing your products and services into three main categories. And those categories are entry level, heart of range and top of range. Now, if you look closely, you can see this across every single business that is well established and who has a large range of different products or services to offer the target customer. This is especially prevalent with car brands, for example. If you go to a showroom, there will be one model, and then three different types of that model depending on your budget. One will be an entry level model. The next one will be a higher spec, and then the top of the range will have all the bells and whistles. But let's look at some more specific examples in two different industries that we are very familiar with as customers to make sure that you fully understand this concept. Now, the first brand I want to use is Louis Baton. Now, you can see with Louis Vaton that they sell a wide range of different products in the fashion category. Now, their entry level products are things like perfume, wallets and other small leather goods. Now, these products are simply there to welcome you into their economy. These products are your ticket into the world of Louis Vaton because they aren't super expensive, but you're getting a taste of what luxury feels like with Louis Baton. This is a really important type of product that you can have within your range. This is ultimately the lowest level of risk that someone can pay to experience what your brand has to offer. You see the exact same approach being taken with software companies, for example, that have three different types of software memberships to choose from one being free to the top of the range being maybe $299. They want you to take the minimal amount of risk to actually experience what the brand has to offer so they can sell you more in future. Well, Louis Vitan offers small leather goods to get people in through the door. The technology company is offering free membership, so you get hooked on the software, and then you essentially are ready to pay for it to unlock more features later on, which leads us on to the next level of products, which is hard of range. This is where most of the purchases are made. These are made by people who have already tasted the brand before. Are they know of the brand? Are they're very familiar with the brand and trust them, and they are ready to purchase one of the most popular and most common products that the brand has to sell. Now, Value Vitan, this is things like handbags and purses and things that you see very commonly on the high street or just out in public. These are the types of things that people buy more often. Therefore, Louis Viton can focus their manufacturing on making more of that particular product so they can sell as many as possible. Now, this isn't necessarily where most of the profit is made, but it is where Louis Vton can ultimately connect with the average person more often, which leads me onto the very tippy top of the pyramid, which is the top of range goods. Now, these are customized goods, which cost 30, 40, like 100 grand, which the average person cannot afford on a daily basis. Now, the top of range goods are very important for a multitude of different reasons, especially for luxury brands. And the reason that I say this is the top of range is for the elite. These are the customized bags that cost 30 $5,100,000 or pounds or whatever. And ultimately, these are only for people who have extremely high net worth. And the reason that the top of range products are so important is it allows you to connect with elite people who can ultimately be the people that others aspire to be like. For example, you may see a certain celebrity with a very specific Louis Vton bag that you can never get, therefore, increasing desirability because you ultimately cannot get the thing that you want. So you might as well get the next best thing, which is one of the heart of range products which Louis Vton makes more accessible. Now, let's take Apple as a second example. But they use the exact se approach just with a little bit of a change. Now the reason for this is Apple is not trying to be a luxury brand. They are a premium brand, but not luxury. There's a significant difference. Now, Apple's product categories are exactly the same entry level, heart of range, and top of range. However, they name them a little bit differently. For example, you can see the exact same framework being used with their AirPods range. For example, you have the entry level product, which is the AirPods. Then you have the heart of range product, which is the AirPod Pro, and then you have the top of range product, the AirPod Pro maxes. Each of these products are exactly the same in regards to what they give to the customer. But they are just higher quality, and they have different levels depending on the features that you need as a customer. For example, I was once given the AirPod Pro as a birthday gift, and eventually, I got to a point where I needed noise canceling headphones, and I knew that Apple created great headphones, so I managed to buy the AirPod Pro Max. So remember that having different levels of products is really important when you are developing your brand, but only once you've truly mastered how to sell one type of product and you have that product in place. Make sure that all of your products are relevant to each other. Don't go selling something completely random, which doesn't fit your brand and doesn't sell to or add value to the customer that has already bought your original product. I really hope this lesson has helped you think about the structure of your product offerings and also the products that you develop in future a little bit more strategically. Anyway, thank you so much for your time, and I will see you in the next lesson. 13. Allocating a Brand's Advertising Budget: Okay, so how do you allocate your brand's advertising budget. So in this lesson, we're going to cover the different ways that you can approach allocating your advertising budget to make sure that you are specifically creating a ratio that works best for your particular situation. Now, in regards to your advertising budget, there are two separate ways that you should be spending it. The first is brand building. So this means actually building brand equity for the company and essentially connecting with customers that are interested in what you have to sell by telling them your story and what you can offer them. Now, on the other hand, you have sales activation. So these are promotions and ultimately advertisements and pieces of marketing that are urging people to buy the product. Now, ultimately, as I'm sure you can imagine, this all comes down to getting the balance right, because if you focus too much on brand building, then you may not generate the sales that you need to keep your business alive. But on the other hand, if you just focus on sales activation, then you're not going to be building your brand, therefore, you can't charge premium prices later. And ultimately, your brand is just staying stagnant, so people are not building a trust or relationship with the company or brand itself. So how do you find this balance and get it right for you? Now, the first step is to set clear objectives. This means you have to define both your short and long term goals for your brand. Now, we cover this in far more depth in the marketing course, which is part of the brand builder pro program. So feel free to check that out if you want to learn how to do that strategically step by step. But for example, if your goal is to build a brand, which is eventually going to be a household name, then maybe you should start with a sales activation and brand building ratio of 60 to 40. This basically means that if you have a $10,000 budget to spend on advertising, then $4,000 is going to be going on sales activation and actually pushing forward the discounts and maybe promotions and special offers that you have to gain awareness in that respect. Whereas the $6,000 is going to be going around brand building, telling stories about your company, and ultimately, what makes you special? Now, this ultimately comes down to understanding the customer journey. You need to understand your customers what they actually want. And ultimately, if you're trying to position yourself as more of a luxury brand or a brand, which can offer discounts and promotions at certain times of the year. And ultimately, you need to test and learn and find out what kind of works, but a 64 reassure is usually what works best, at least in the very beginning when you're not sure what to do. Now, another thing to think about is the time of the year that you are selling and how that reassure can be adapted because of that particular factor. For example, an ice cream store is going to be far more profitable during the summer, I would imagine. So therefore, you should have more promotions and more discounts and other types of sales activation tactics that time of year. Which means that in the wintertime, I can imagine people buy less ice cream that time of year. You can focus more on brand building and you can shift the ratio in your marketing budget accordingly. So, for example, if you add $12,000 to allocate to your marketing for the full year, then it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to allocate that month by month having $1,000 per month. It would actually make a lot more sense to spend the majority of that, maybe $10,000 or $9,000 during the summer when people are buying more of your product. Then during the other months, you can actually focus on brand building and put that money aside to build brand equity and gain awareness ready for next summer, when you can resell out of ice cream every single day. Now, obviously, I'm not seeing you an ice cream store and you're probably not. But what I'm trying to say is you need to be smart about how you're actually spending your marketing budget and when you're spending and how you're spending. Now, if we actually break both down and look at brand building and sales activation separately, then you can see that there are different tactics that you can optimize for different approaches and methods. For example, for brand building, you have things like PR advertising, social media, content marketing, and making sure that your brand's messaging is consistent across every single touch point. But for example, sales activation tactics could be things like, marketing, paid advertising, and retargeting, limited time offers and discounts, and also things like referral and affiliate programs. Ultimately, it all comes down to making sure that the balance is right. Now, I personally feel that for a brand which is just starting out, you shouldn't be spending 60% on your brand building and 40% on your sales activation. I personally feel that in the very beginning, you need to first focus on understanding what works and what doesn't work. And that can be done organically. You don't need a massive budget in order to do that. So what I always suggest to my clients is start off generating content and creating content to share it with your target audience and the customer base that you have at the moment, then learn what works and what doesn't work. And then once you figure out what works, then you can push as much as you want behind that and then use that as a sales activation tactic or a brand building tactic to get more awareness for your brand. This is going to help you take a smaller budget and invested in marketing, which is going to get you a better return on your investment. Anyway, I hope this lesson was helpful, just to kind of support your thinking and help you to think differently in regards to allocating your budget for marketing in a slightly more strategic way. If you have any further questions, please make sure you reach out, but on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 14. Creating Iconic Advertising (On a Budget): So how can you create iconic advertising on a budget. Well, in this lesson, we're going to cover some examples of iconic advertising and also how you can do it at a fraction of the cost. So, first and foremost, let's just understand what I mean by iconic advertising. Now, iconic advertising is an advert that ultimately positions the brand in such a way where it is looked at as super desirable. The advert is timeless and it perfectly encapsulates everything that you need to know about the brand. Now, this is really important because it all comes down to communication. A iconic advert has nothing to do with how much money is spent on the advert. But it has everything to do with the contents of the advert and how it makes the person viewing the advert feel about the brand. And this is because the best and most iconic adverts all focus on making the customer feel like the hero. The brand itself is never the hero. The hero is always the customer, and the brand is simply a bridge to help the customer become the hero that they want to be. Because let's face it, who doesn't want to be a hero. Now, once you understand exactly who your target audience is, which if you don't know that, then that's the first thing that you should be doing. You can then start to understand who that particular target audience member wants to be like. And then you can reverse engineer that and connect that with what you actually offer as a brand. Now, the first way you can do this is by through creative storytelling. For example, the 1984 advert by Ridley Scaraa Apple really gets this down to a t. Scott created this distorpian world where everything was very mundane and very structured and very microsofty and then Apple basically drives through the crowds with this massive amount of creative energy and smashes the screen completely disrupting the entire advert. This positioned Apple as a disruptor in a dstorpian world. So ultimately saying that they are positioned as being more creative and free thinking. This is what I mean by Apple having a This is what I mean by an iconic and timeless advert. Apple is connecting with people who feel like they think differently. When as a matter of fact, they may just think the exact same. They just may value different things like design and, you know, the Apple interface. But that doesn't matter because Apple is giving you the opportunity to be part of this community where you can think differently and essentially fulfill your creative potential. Now, another way to create a really incredible and iconic advert is by using user generated content. Do have use this time and time again to create iconic adverts. Dove uses user generated content a lot in regards to their advertising. This is used through essentially getting women to talk about how they feel about their body, about their skin, about all of the things that the dove products can help to improve and make them feel better about. But then they show a different side of the woman after the woman actually realizes that her personal perception of ourselves is not really reality. It's just what she sees herself as, whereas the other people who are, you know, telling her how beautiful she is and how naturally pretty she is, et cetera, is essentially how other people are seeing her. Therefore, making the hero of the story, the woman feel better about herself and ultimately connecting that positive emotion to the brand. Now, another way that you can create a really iconic advert is strategic partnerships. Now, Nike has always had iconic advertising. And ultimately, even since 1988, when they did that just do a campaign, they've never stopped to basically create advertising that is memorable and can really roughle a few feathers in the industry. For example, one of their latest partnerships with Tiffany and Co really got people talking. This strategic partnership was absolutely perfect for both brands, because ultimately, it brought together two customer bases which were very different together to enjoy one single product for a one time only offer. I'm not sure if you know how much they shoe sell for, but they were a lot. Now, two things that you need to keep in mind when you are looking to develop advertising IDs One, keep the idea and the message super clear and simple. You need to make sure that the person who is listening to the communication and the message can digest everything in simple terms, and they don't have to get mentally fatigued thinking about it. And secondly, never neglect your audience. Remember that throughout every single effort that you're putting out into the world for your brand, whether it be brand building or sales activation, you need to make sure that you are communicating that the customer is the hero of everything that you do. And if you can do that and make the customer feel better about themselves, then trust me, you are never going to have to worry about sales ever again. So just to summarize, make sure that you focus on storytelling and positioning your customer as the hero of the story. Every single iconic adverb that has ever graced a TV or a laptop or a phone anywhere has always focused on communicating the customer as the hero. It's never about the brand. It's always about the customer. So focus on that, and everything should be ok. Anyway, thank you so much for your time, and I will see you in the next lesson. 15. Building Brand Channels & Sales Funnels: So how can you get more sales through mastering channels and funnels? Well, in this lesson, I'll be teaching you how to create different channels and funnels to ultimately get more sales for your brand. So first and foremost, let's start at the very beginning. What is a funnel or a channel? Well, a funnel of a channel is essentially a source of traffic or a source of customers that can ultimately become paying customers later on down the line. For example, let's imagine you have a website and you have multiple different social media platforms all driving traffic to that website. Well, those different social media profiles are ultimately channels driving traffic towards your website. And ultimately, your website's job is to convert that traffic into paying customers. Now, your job as a brand manager or as a founder, slash entrepreneur is to ultimately find the channels where you can put the least amount of resources, effort, and money and ultimately get the best return on that investment. And when you find that channel, you need to double down or ten x, whatever you're doing in that particular area for that particular channel to achieve the result it's getting right now so you can get an even better return in future. For example, let's imagine you have Facebook, Instagram, and Tube, all driving traffic towards your website. Now, just to put things really simply. Imagine you're creating three pieces of content per month for each of those platforms. However, Facebook and Instagram is only driving 100 customers to your website every single month. However, YouTube is sending 500 customers to your website every single month. Now, unless you have the capacity to basically start making more content overall, then it would actually be far smarter to take the three pieces of content from Facebook and the three pieces of content from Instagram and instead make nine pieces of content for YouTube, which will give you 1,500 customers going to your website every single month. This being in comparison to 500, 100100, which would only equal to 700 customers. So you're basically getting more than double based on creating the exact same amount of content. This is what I mean by optimizing the certain channels that are working best. You can only do this by tracking where your traffic is coming from and obviously tracking what it's actually doing on your website as well, using software like Hotjar and Google Analytics. Now, this all comes down to experimentation, but I need you to start thinking like a strlgist Because if you're thinking strategically, instead of doing more and getting less, you can actually do a lot less and get more as a return. So the first step is to actually experiment and try out as many different channels as possible and try it for a certain period, maybe one month or 60 days, just to see which channels are getting the best return on your investment. Then once you understand which ones are working best, channel all of your energy into those particular channels because they are the ones that's going to give you the best return on your invested time and energy. Now, channels and funnels are slightly different in the case that funnels are essentially the latter part of the customer journey, whereas channels are ultimately the awareness aspect of the journey. So channels are quite broad and they're just trying to gather as many customers as possible, like social media, for example, but the funnel actually guides the customer that is interested in your particular service or offering through the process until they eventually buy. Now, in order to set up an effective funnel, you need to understand your target audience, make sure your copywriting and pictures and overall brand is really resonating with the target audience that you're wanting to sell to. And you also need to make sure that whatever customer actually ends up within your funnel, they can actually buy what you have to sell very easily. Now, the channel aspect is all about gaining awareness and getting people into that funnel. And this can be done in so many different ways. It can be done as direct sales. It can be done on social media. It can be done in an e mail marketing format. It can even be done via partnerships. So just remember this simple rule. The funnel that you have is later on in the process to actually guide website traffic towards making a purchase. Whereas the different channels that you have comes beforehand, and that is ultimately driving awareness towards your different funnels. Now, what I would say is for a start up, I would start with just one simple funnel and maybe two or three channels to experiment with. That means that you should be working on refining your funnel to track it using Hotjar, for example, which is absolutely free. You can download and add it to any website very effortlessly. So as you're refining your funnel, you can then start testing and experimenting with the different channels to drive traffic into your funnel. And this ultimately just means experimenting with different types of marketing and awareness building tactics that we actually cover in the marketing aspect of the brand builder P program. So, feel free to check that out if you really want to, but just keep in mind that it is a process. And once you get everything refined and in place and you know what channels work best for you, it's going to be a lot easier, and you're going to be able to get much more back for your initial investment. Anyway, really hope you enjoy this lesson. I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 16. Brand Kaizen & Assignment: Now, Brankzan is a term which we came up with internally at Clementine House branding agency, the agency that I've been working with and building for the last ten years with my partners. Now, Brankzan means you are constantly improving your brand over time, whether it be your own brand or a brand that you're managing actively for somebody else. So how can you actually improve a brand over time? Well, the first thing that you need to do is to make sure that you are being consistent. And ultimately, it comes down to a three step process. The first step is to experiment The second step is to action, and then the third step is to assess. And this three step process is constantly going on again and again and again. In the first step, you're actually planning what you're going to do. You're strategizing. You're thinking how am I best going to approach this problem of generating sales for this particular brand. Which takes us on to the second step of putting it into action. So you're actually putting the tactics into practice and doing the thing that you think is going to take you closer to your objective. Now, every three months to six, maybe 12 months, depending on how often you want to be revisiting the particular objectives that you're wanting to reach, I suggest you assess how each of your tactics are performing. For example, the initial plan could be, okay. We are going to create one funnel for our website to sell 500 T shirts, and we are going to create awareness through Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Now, after three months, you may see much like the previous video that Facebook and Instagram just isn't driving enough traffic in comparison to YouTube. And what that means is you can then reassess things at that period of time and recalculate how you want to be allocating your resources and your time to get the best result over the long term. The word Kazan comes from the Japanese term meaning to change for the better or continuous improvement. It was first adopted at the end of World War two, where Japan needed to rebuild the country after all the destruction that had been caused. And by having that constant mindset of continuous improvement and always changing for the better, you are always learning from your past mistakes and ultimately making things much better all the time. Now, this may not seem like much, but if you've ever heard the story of the doubling penny, this all puts things into perspective. Now, just to put things straight, I'm not even considering for a moment in any form of reality that you can double your performance every single day for 30 days. But if you improve every single day, then even just if it's 1% or 0.1%, you are constantly getting better and closer to 100%, which we know isn't achievable. But as long as you're getting better, that's the most important thing, and it's one step closer to being the best you can possibly be. The reason the penny is super important is if you double a penny every single day for 30 days, you end up with $5,300,000 as a result of literally just doubling that single penny. And the fact of the matter is as long as you're making improvements to your offering or maybe your website, or maybe you tweak something to get something slightly better. This is very achievable. For example, if you have a 1% conversion rate on your website and you get that to 2%, then you've essentially doubled your revenue in one single move. And that's ultimately what business is all about. You need to make sure that you manage your brand and assess every period so that you can ultimately see, okay, if I pull this labor a little bit more, this is going to get me far better return or a far better return than if I pull this one. So prioritizing and making sure that you fully understand which labor should be pulled first is super, super important. Now, if you just dived into this particular course, and you haven't taken any of the other brand builder pro courses that we have to offer, then I would really recommend you check them out, and if there's any of that specifically appeal to you and the things that you want to learn, I would recommend investing in them, but even if you don't have the funds to invest in that yet, I do recommend that you reach out to me if you have any questions whatsoever, immigrants to brand management, brand building, marketing, or anything of that nature because I want to make sure that I'm helping you as much as possible. Giving you all the resources and information that I can to help you on your way to becoming the best brand manager or entrepreneur, founder possible. Now, as an assignment for this particular lesson, what I want you to do is just a little fun exercise is to think about a brand that comes to your mind and then think about how you feel about that brand. And then take a step back and just take about five, 10 minutes just to think about why you think you think about that brand in a certain way. And that's a little bit of a tongue twister, but just think about it because the way that we feel about the brands that we ultimately know and love is all based on our experience and our perception of that particular branding company. If we can reverse engineer, why we feel about certain brands in certain ways, then we can start to learn how we can adapt those particular strategies and use them for our own brands. If we learn how to do that, you're never going to have to worry about money again in your entire life because that is the secret source.