Business Builders Podcast

Shaping Opinions: The Power of Branding

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 3 • Episode 44

Share episode

Text us your comments

Your brand goes way beyond your logo or visual identity – it's the impression people have of your company and what they say about you when you're not around. So in today’s episode, we’re discussing the crucial role that marketing plays in shaping the perception of our brands in the market.

The topics covered are:

  • The history of branding
  • What is a brand and how does it work?
  • How to manage and develop a brand
  • Branding is an all-of-organisation endeavour
  • Advice about how to use your brand to develop trust
  • Different ways of building a brand
  • About the next episode

 

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

>> Follow us for more Business Builders goodness

>> Connect with our hosts on Linkedin


Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Hey there Business Builders. Your Brand goes way beyond your logo or visual identity. It's the impression people have of your company and what they say about you when you're not around. So in today's episode, we're discussing a crucial role that marketing plays in shaping the perception of our brands in the market. But Welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And Ron, it's been a big week here in Adelaide, we've had tasting Australia on again, for those of you who are listening internationally, tasting Australia is an event we do in Adelaide to sample what's going on in the culinary world around Australia.

Ron Tomlian:

It's fantastic. I love going to a tasting Australia, and I believe you did a masterclass?

Brenton Gowland:

I did. It was called How to wine. It was all about actually understanding how to talk about wine and how to have an intelligent conversation about I know that some people say to me, Hey, you know a bit about why not I know how to drink wine. But what I learned was really interesting, actually, they were talking the three winemakers that they had their there was a simile of a winemaker and a wine industry expert. And they said, What usually happens when they do a tasting, or they do a judging in particular that there'll be at least six judges, and they're all experts. And they said, how they really learned was to surround themselves with people who knew what they were talking about. And they would pick up on their vocabulary and learn from them. And I remember thinking at the time, boy, that's pretty much just like everything it is, you surround yourself with mentors with people, and you just pick up off of them over time. And to be honest, that got me thinking about some of the people I hung out with. And you know, they were talking about all sorts of things, what kind of smell you smell there. And and now we're talking about high end kinds of things. But I thought the people I hang out with this about 567 words that they use, and you interchange them and it sounds like you know what you're talking about, and those words are full bodied, medium bodied, light, dry, sweet, white, fruity, you start mixing those terms together, front palate, back palate. We'll see now you're gonna get it's just a catered on me. You're showing that you've been hanging around with people that are more adept at wine than the people I spend time with.

Ron Tomlian:

It's a fascinating area. I love learning more about wine jam, not just drinking it Rolo. I'm pretty good at that, too.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. And I learned the wines I like it didn't like I remember the last one we had with a sweet wine. And I remember thinking, Boy, that's diabetes and a cup right there. And some of the other ones were just really beautiful. And it was a great time. So I could rave on about that a lot. I like talking about wine as well. We live in a good state for it.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, absolutely. Best in Australia.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. So if you're listening internationally, we're really pushing a product here. Our wine is pretty good. But mind you we had some Italian wines at this masterclass.They we're really good as well.

Ron Tomlian:

I love Italian and Italian styles. In fact, in South Australia, we're doing quite a few more Italian styles and Italian varietals now, it's fantastic. I love it. I mean, we'd love heavy reds here, but the softer reds, just fabulous.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, softer tends to be a little bit, in my view, a little bit more sophisticated as well, because rather than getting that big hit of fruit and flavour and see now I'm starting to sound like I know what I'm talking about. I'm really just learning. But instead of getting that big hit, you have that much more subtle how it enters your palate, what it does, once it's made its way out of your mouth, the taste that leaves behind. I don't know what the term is for that. But maybe I need to hang out with some winemakers and learn their lingo.

Ron Tomlian:

And so much about wine is really about branding. So that's a fabulous segue into what we're going to be talking about today.

Brenton Gowland:

I really liked what you did there, Ron, because, yeah, we were getting a bit hooked up on wine. Can you tell what we like? But anyway? Yes, it is about branding. And like I said earlier, it's really no different to learning how to wine as that masterclass was is no different to learning how to brand or how to do other things. But it's surrounding yourself with people who know what they're talking about, obviously writing up doing all the things, but starting to really get that experience from people who know and that doesn't mean that they're necessarily older than you just means that they're more experienced and understanding how to do a thing. And there's one other interesting thing about our discussion. Everyone who listens should probably know that. Ron and I have a pre discussion before we do our podcast. And today we realise that we've done branding in the past, haven't we?

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, we have. I think it was episode nine. Yeah, who talked about how a brand can improve your organization's performance. So we've actually covered a bit of branding already. Yeah. So just go back and look at episode nine as a precursor to this if you want to get some of the basics.

Brenton Gowland:

But what I'm actually really enjoying myself is being able to go back and listen to what we've said and gone out there covered a few things and then we're able to go, well, what didn't we cover in that episode. And what we didn't really cover is the relationship between marketing and branding. And, of course, if you've been listening to the last few episodes, we're doing a series on marketing. And it's a very organic series, in the sense that we're letting it progress, as per natural and and Ron and I were talking this morning about the fact that we could do marketing for a year or more.

Ron Tomlian:

Or you could do a podcast series, the whole thing on marketing, and I think there are all there are definitely I listened to a few of them. Yeah, and the point is that, what we want to do is try and mix it up a little bit. So we might do some more episodes on marketing, and then change the tone, change the topic for a while, and then come back to marketing at some time in the future.

Brenton Gowland:

And of course, this is the Business Builders podcast, we all know that. And our definition of a business builder is someone who's wanting to develop themselves, their skill set, and their understanding of how to run a business, in order to grow their business, or develop their opportunities, etc. So everything that we're sharing is from a point of view of talking to industry leaders, or aspiring business professionals, aspiring business leaders, etc, etc. So that they can improve themselves. So marketing forms a big part of that, well, it should, it should do, probably in relation to what we speak to probably about a third, because you always speak about the fact there's three roles of a CEO, which we talk about a fair bit. And those three roles are, you don't have to say who said at this time, because you've said that many times in the previous podcasts.

Ron Tomlian:

I like to give credit where credit's due but chief sales officer, chief strategist and chief team builder.

Brenton Gowland:

Correct. So CEO has those three roles. And a lot of things fall under that but chief sales officer, and next episode, we're actually going to talk about the relationship between sales and marketing with a guest. But we'll get to that towards the end of the podcast today. But it just shows you that sales and marketing or that whole communication side of the business that sales is kind of related to is a really big part of what it takes to run a business. So that's why we talk about it.

Ron Tomlian:

And quite frankly, a lot of people are afraid of it. And what we're hoping to do is to demystify so bad that people can recognise it's not rocket science. It just means applying yourself to the area, and learning about it, and then doing something about it.

Brenton Gowland:

Now, that past episode that we had was called, I think, episode nine. How rebranding can help you grow your business? Is that correct?

Ron Tomlian:

How branding can help you grow your business? How branding, can you help me grow your business, improve your business?

Brenton Gowland:

Excellent. So today, what we're really focusing on, as we said, a few minutes ago, is the difference between marketing branding, and the reason we're bringing it up is how often do you hear that terminology that we're going through a branding project? Or we're going to do some branding? What does it mean to say we're going to do some branding? Have you heard that?

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we actually discussed that a little bit in that last podcast. But the real problem is that people equate the concept of branding with I suppose the way it originally happened, it was a brand on a cow, the physical manifestation, the logo, it's more than that.

Brenton Gowland:

So how to differentiate one steer from another. That's right. Yeah. And that would be when they're selling them in the stockyards. Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, it was actually to be able to identify that those are my cars, because they were open plains and the open range, they called it in the United States in those days. And if you're a cow wandered off, how do I, how can I say that's my cow? Well, if you branded it, you can say that came from the circle, K Ranch, or the lazy y, or the lazy Q or whatever you were using as a form of identification. So that's where it started. That's, in fact, it was Procter and Gamble, who was the first organisation to be able to say in the United States where the concept was sort of coined, this is mine. And because they were finding that their candles, which were being sold along the Mississippi, their candles were being counterfeited. Certainly retailers or general store owners were saying your candles own with a pinch of whatever. And they suddenly realised there were people who were trying to sell people Procter and Gamble candles. And in fact, they were counterfeits. So Procter and Gamble came up with a similar they put at the bottom of the candle to say this is a Procter and Gamble candle. So under those circumstances, that's where branding started. It was purely a form of identification. Yeah, makes perfect sense. But but the analogy I like to use, in fact, with modern concepts of branding, is it's more like the old heraldic shields. Oh, you know, the Middle Ages and songs by the hermetic shield was a relic shield was co revives, that's another way of putting it that was identified with a particular family. And the family used the symbols that were available at the time to identify the values of that family. For instance, a book meant we value scholarly pursuits, a sword or a spear, meant that we were warriors, we chiefs meant that we were of the land, sheep or cows indicated that there was a connection to husbandry, all these sorts of things, if there was a crown above the shield, that meant we were had legions to and we serve the king, etc, etc.

Brenton Gowland:

So there was a lot of meaning in the symbology that were included in those coats of arms.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. And, and the truth of the matter is, brand modern brands are more than just a form of identification. Modern brands convey a sense of meaning. In fact, if you talk to neuroscientists, when you mention a brand, what they can record in the brainwaves is that there are a series of neural pathways that are fired up. So there are a whole bunch of associations, that happens immediately in the brain when you mention a name, or you see a symbol. And that's what you're looking for, you're looking what are those associations? How can I make a thing by brand means something much more, and have all those associations, just by its presence. And so if you think about the classics, if you close your eyes, and I say the word, Coca Cola, immediately, there are certain associations that sprang to your head, and you can't stop it. And might be drips of water on a bottle, it might be the Coca Cola symbol that might be the colour red, might be Santa Claus, because they were the guys who invented Santa Claus.

Brenton Gowland:

I was literally just thinking that.

Ron Tomlian:

But that's, that's the whole point is is an association. And those things that happen immediately. And that's what a brand is, it's, in fact, a brand is what happens in your customers head or in the target audience's head. It's all those associations that happen immediately. And that's what you're looking for. Because what you're trying to do is create a sense of relationship and a sense of trust.

Brenton Gowland:

So I like to keep it really simple. And I love that background that you've given, particularly with the coat of arms. Because when you think about where the word branding came from, and that was literally branding cows. Boy, what was that the 1800s? earlier? No, would have been the 1800s 1800s. So you brand a cow. And that's literally a logo. But there was meaning behind it. Because let's say if it was Mr. Harrison's property and her big old hate on that cow, we know that Harrisons have better grazing land, or they've got better conditions, or whatever the case may be.

Ron Tomlian:

So it developed into that it developed into that. And certainly when they were eventually herded into the cattle yards, as now, a brand associated with a particular farm, there was a whole bunch of associations for the people who knew that particular brand,

Brenton Gowland:

And often case, the buyers because at the end of the day, the end user in that particular case didn't care so much, because they just wanted to buy the meat. And they knew if that they went to a certain butcher, that they would get the meat they wanted. And the butcher knew that if they bought a certain kind of cow from a certain producer, and they would build their brand and reputation. So on it flows down the line. Yep. But I guess the point I was getting at I love the fact that the coat of arms that you were talking about, talks about meaning right, which is getting closer to where brand is the way I see it, marketing, in very simple terms, is what we say about our business, our products, our service, branding, is what our customers say, based on what you were saying, right?

Ron Tomlian:

I would argue just the brand. Is that exactly what you say. It exists in the mind of the customer. Branding is the process of how we harness all that we do to create that idea in the customers head that we want. So there's a difference between what we want to be in a customer's head and what actually exists wrecked when we've got a good overlap between those two. We're doing our job in terms of branding.

Brenton Gowland:

And that brings us back to the whole point of this podcast, which is when you talk to the CEOs that you coach, how many times you come across someone that says I've got a branding problem, or I got to do something about my branding, or I got to do a rebrand. What do you find they actually talking about?

Ron Tomlian:

They're talking about their logo, they're talking about the physical manifestations of the brand. They might say, my brand looks all of my brand looks tired, and they're talking about how I can get the graphics to look a little bit more along the lines of what I want to look and that's important. Don't get me wrong. I think that whole visual communication is an important element in keeping an organisation Looking like the organisation they want it to be that a brand is more than that. It's the totality of everything you do that creates this idea in a customer's head.

Brenton Gowland:

So if branding is working really, really well, then when you go through a branding, rebranding process, or a brand progression, or brand, evolution, whatever you want to call it, it's about actually representing the way that brand really is aware it's going in a visual way, but also through spoken word. Because often we talk about tone of voice when it comes to brand, how does the brand speak? What kind of things does it say what kind of vocabulary doesn't use, and that's the essence of brand guidelines.

Ron Tomlian:

And those brand guidelines are important because they give a framework that will, in the minds of the people who developed it help reinforce and customers every time we communicate them reinforce the things we want them to think about the brand. Yep. But the truth of the matter is, the customer's experience of your offering in your organisation and your products will create the greatest associations for them. Yes, we can reinforce those if we do a good job with branding, but we cannot overcome poor products, poor service by good physical manifestations, visual manifestations. It doesn't work.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So let's get to the heart of the matter then. Right? So how do we manage and develop our brand? And with this series, it's through marketing, yes. But there's going to be other outcomes. So when we say branding, for those of you who are listening, my simple term, and you might add to this a bit is that brand is how your customers see you. So if we're managing our brand, and we're developing our brand, as per what you were saying, we want to produce, in people's minds, a perception of our business because perception becomes reality. Right? So how do we go about that, let's say and it always comes back down to what's the vision? Where do we want to go? So if we've got a vision in place, objectives, all that kind of stuff? The nub of this episode is how do we then use brand to be able to manage and develop that perception of our business to help us achieve our goals and objectives?

Ron Tomlian:

First thing is, if you go to graphic advertising agencies and so on, they will try and help you create a visual representation that is consistent. And the analogy that I use is light and lasers. Oh, okay. I heard that. Oh, and like this one? Oh, yeah. Okay. So it comes up with it, if you like integrated marketing communications using a jargon term, but it goes beyond that. If you think of a light bulb source of light, it's what's called incoherent as in it goes off in all directions. And nice little physics lesson here, it goes off in all directions from the source, you look at the sun, it's not only coming to the earth, it's going to all the other planets as well, the difference between that and a laser is in the laser process, you can actually direct all the photons in one direction, it's what's called coherent answer, there's a process that allows you to change that incoherent light going in all directions into a singular focused direction, right? I understand. Okay. So if you think about it, in the same way, with an organization's reputation, we can't be all things to all people, if we try to be people know us is nothing because we don't stand for anything. But if we can focus our attention, focus our communication so that we keep saying and reinforcing the same things. That's what happens in the laser, you reinforce the direction of the light, gotcha, yeah, reinforcing the same messages over and over again, you've got a better chance of meaning something to some people. Usually, that's your target audience, that's who you really want to talk to? Or that's who you really want to mean something to. And branding is about creating meaning. What do we want people to think of? What do we want our brand to mean to those people? And so reinforcing, having cohesion in the communications that you deliver, but not only the communications, the interactions, right? So when your people go out and talk to people do they talk in a certain way? And that's not about restricting them to use only certain words, but getting them to understand this is what our product or service organisation means. This is what we are all about. What are our values? What are the things we find important? What does our product mean? How does it help people? And does it solve their problems? If you can get cohesion on those things, you know, and are the words that we want to be known for? Yes. For instance, for a courier service, a word like quack might be incredibly important for a legal firm, not so much. So identify what are the words that you want to be known for.

Brenton Gowland:

So a legal company you'd want to associate with the word winnings somehow I would imagine.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh yeah, there's all sorts of all sorts of different things. It could be about winning. It could be about expertise. It could be about we understand you. And there are a lot of legal firms now who are going down the path, in my experience, going down the path of saying, well, it's not just about the legalities, is about business outcomes.

Brenton Gowland:

Now? Well, that's it's very interesting what you're saying, because it's, it is 100%, about branding. But I think we really got to bring some definition to this because it can I think it can seem a bit nebulous, in a sense, what we're talking about. And I'll give you an example, what I'm talking about. What we're talking about now is really, in a sense, in my view, what I call niching, down or getting, as you said, laser focused, because, let's say a company who might have done that might have been, I don't know, someone like Xerox, they do one thing. But they do other things now, but they started out doing one thing and what was it making? Photocopies photo copiers, right. And so reproduction, but what they did, they did so well, that Xerox became the actual word for doing that. So that even if you bought a Fuji copier, they'd say, can you Xerox that for me? So the branding was so successful that they actually created vocabulary.

Ron Tomlian:

And you can say where I originally came from, you don't ask for a tissue, you ask for a Kleenex? Correct? Like you don't talk about sticky tape. You talked about scotch tape, because the brand of sticky tape that was three M was called scotch tape. So if your brand is that strong, it becomes the meaning.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely. And can you imagine how hard it is like some businesses have done it? So well. I'm gonna use Microsoft as an example. Sometimes it's the product itself, that becomes the whole brand. So there's a lot of different strategies at play here. And what I mean by that is, think about Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, what do we call them? Now? Do we use the word Microsoft anymore with most of those?

Ron Tomlian:

No. It's just, I'm doing a PowerPoint presentation, even if you're doing it in Keynote? was something else? Yeah. Because it's, it's become now become a vocabulary of vernacular, if you like, the common language, is become that name. Yeah. So you're talking about spreadsheets, you're talking about Excel spreadsheets.

Brenton Gowland:

But this is now we're gonna get into complex topics if we're not careful. But that's basically the product has now become its own brand, almost independent from the company itself, which in this case is Microsoft, you gotta go to Microsoft to buy Word or Excel or PowerPoint. But even if I've been using other presentations or a video, people will say, Hey, is that PowerPoint ready? And it's a video, or it's something else? Or just Canva? Project? Yes. Canva may actually be what we end up talking about in the future. Who knows? Because these things do change in the market. I'm saying that at the moment with different clients. And that's branding done really well out in the market. But where does that all come from? Right. So back to the Xerox thing. It came from the fact that Xerox, were basically the name of photocopying back in the day, because their product was so good. Xerox was streets ahead that the copy quality was streets ahead of the competition at the time. And so they became a dominant market leader. And because the quality was so good, they were everywhere. People started just for short, saying, Can you get me a Xerox? Meaning can you go copy my piece of paper, but the reason it's more complex than this, but the quality backed up the message they put out to market. The point I want to make about that is that if we take it back to our businesses, if we go out to market, we do all this great marketing. We make our brand look like what we want our clients to think about us, if the quality of our products doesn't stand up to it, and I'll take it a bit further. If the service we provide doesn't deliver on expectation or the way our staff speak, disappoints people, that starts to affect the perception of people towards our company, and ultimately our brands. So what I'm saying is a lot of the front facing stuff we're talking about. When we're leading brand change, it has to be a whole of business endeavour. Because branding is a whole of business endeavour means when you meet the BD person down at that event, the way they present themselves, the things they do on social media, our staff, the way they conduct themselves. influences what people think of our brands. So my point, again, back to that thought is that branding is, as you say, rightly, every interaction that we have with our customers. So if you bring that back to marketing, for a marketing, or a branding project to be successful, where we want to evolve the brand, we have to deeply understand what our clients think of us right now. And we have to have some sort of plan that includes the whole business, about how we're going to shift that thinking from where it is now to where we want it to be to achieve our objectives.

Ron Tomlian:

And so in that sense, while it can be orchestrated, supported by the marketing department, branding is an all of organisation exercise, just like marketing is an all of organisation exercise, because if you think about it, what do I think of the brand Telstra? Well, part of my it's evolved? Yeah, part of my view of Telstra is not just when I go to a shop, or not just when I see their advertisements on television, it's when I have to pay a bill gates when I get my bill in the post or via email and the information on it, how difficult that is to read how easy it is to read how easy it is to pay, how difficult it is to pay processes, how easy it is to talk to somebody at Telstra, how difficult it is. And that ladder is probably our experience of organisations like that, all of those will play into the brand. And once you create those perceptions, they are very difficult to change. And that's a biological fact.

Brenton Gowland:

And but there's a number of factors with that. And I just want to say if you're listening internationally, Telstra is the key telecommunications company in Australia that we've all been forced to use in one way or another at certain point in time. So there is a love hate thing with this company in different circumstances in our guess what you're getting at is 99% of the people you'll speak to will say it's so difficult to deal with them.

Ron Tomlian:

No, I think, as you say, a lot of times these things change. But the perception is quite different when they've had especially a negative experience.

Brenton Gowland:

And I've had many negative experiences with that company, and I've gone away from them. I've come back recently. Why do you think that would be?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, the reason I hear most people say is because the actual service is better in terms of coverage. So they have a technically superior offering. That's literally the reason and you'll put up with the rest of the guff, simply because of the fact that the quality of their actual product delivered is better.

Brenton Gowland:

But if there was an we'll do a whole episode on customer retention uses a formula for this. And I won't go into it now. But one of the things is having other viable options out there. And if there is other viable options there, that opens the door to move your provider. And my main reason for staying with Telstra was that I wanted to be able to go to a coffee shop anywhere and be able to get online so that I could work from anywhere. So if I went to a client, I could tethered to my computer so that I always had internet. And that's why I stuck with Telstra.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, yeah. Here's the interesting thing. If we talk about what customer satisfaction is, it's about meeting the expectations of the customer. What sets those expectations to a large extent is their perceptions of your organisation of your offering, which is your brand. So your brand is about Here I am, you know me. So are you have certain expectations about things like quality, reliability service, you've established those you've made those sit in my head. And now I'm going to match you against those expectations.

Brenton Gowland:

And look, I think we've got to the nub of what we're trying to get across what we're what we're really trying to instil when we heard conversation this morning, is we wanted people to understand that branding is an incredibly important part of being able to grow our businesses, because it's what people think of us and is that saying it takes a long time to build up a solid reputation, it takes moments to smash it down. So it is literally an asset that your business has that has to be protected at all costs. And if you see it that way, it's not just the job of the marketing department. But you want the marketing department to deliver actionable insights to you as a business so that you can make informed decisions about how you can get your whole business to work together to grow and maintain the brand. So look just in finishing, Ron, what advice would you have for business leaders is for Business Builders about the importance of brand, and how to use your brands to develop trust in the offering that your business has.

Ron Tomlian:

The thing I would emphasise most business leaders is you have a brand, whether you like it or not, it's your choice, whether you manage it or not. Now, that means using marketing communications, to manage it outside the organisation, and manage people's expectations and understanding of what you aren't about, and developing trust. But it also means using that marketing capability inside the organisation to create an understanding of what customers expectations will be, and how the actions of all employees will affect that whether you're in the accounts department, and dealing with customers on touchy tricky issues, because that will affect their perception of the brand. Or whether you're in the frontline customer service. And you're talking to customers on a regular basis where it's much more obvious. But how you speak to them, how you represent a brand will have an effect on their perception of the brand more. So it's sort of the acid test, more so than how good the logo looks, and how nice the advertising is. All of those things can only reinforce what people already think advertising and marketing communications in general, are really good at reinforcing what people already think that really bad, really bad at changing people's perceptions. You can change people's perceptions by telling them we're great, well, correct. Oh, great. You can reinforce their perceptions when they have something they already think about. Yeah, hopefully, that's good.

Brenton Gowland:

What I really liked about what you just said there is that if marketing can raise awareness of everyone in the company about brand strength, the brand and what they do that affects it, it encourages them to protect it, because let's face it, every one of your employees, every single one of them from the least important to the most important, is a custodian of your brand. Absolutely. There's companies out there that do it so well as some charities I can think of, again, one of the ones that I think does it very well is is Apple, or you walk into those Apple stores and all those people have got the same thing going on there an Apple Genius, all this kind of stuff. It's the first one that comes to mind, because I think they work reasonably well as a unit surely not perfect. But they all represent the qualities that the business has.

Ron Tomlian:

Why is that? Why is apple so good at that stuff? And I would argue, because the guy at the top understood how important the perception of the brand was.

Brenton Gowland:

100% as the guy at the top still, because I know we're talking about Steve Jobs. But now we've got another gentleman at the top.

Ron Tomlian:

I think he's doing an okay job. And I think.

Brenton Gowland:

You think he's maintaining brand rather than building brand?

Ron Tomlian:

I would argue that that you're spot on. In that case, the time will tell. We might be writing books about Mr. Cook later on down the track.

Brenton Gowland:

That does bring up an interesting point, though, there are different ways of building brand because Apple is still pushing forward in the innovation says they're bringing out financial products, they're doing a bunch of other things. In Apple's case, their brand development was really led by the person at the top of the point they're up to now. But I think now a lot of the products and a lot of the innovations they're bringing out slowly taking them forward instead of the quantum leaps they used to make that the finance thing could be it's in the States at the moment, but it could be a big thing.

Ron Tomlian:

It could be very interesting to see how our develops when it gets here to Australia.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So they've already got their brand reputation. And now if the these products come out that are better than the competition or more trusted, because we were I think we were in a session a little while ago with someone who was a futurist.

Ron Tomlian:

Let's give him a plug. It was Craig Rispin,

Brenton Gowland:

Craig Rispin, and the way he was talking was that trust has moved from politicians will give you stats on we'll get Craig on the show. How about we do that?

Ron Tomlian:

That's a fantastic idea.

Brenton Gowland:

Then I'll back up this comment because he could Well, I don't need to he can back it up himself. But he was saying that he was showing us graphs on the fact that trust has moved from politicians to businesses. So more people trust businesses now and business leaders than they do actual people in politics.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, after the experiences we've had with COVID around the world, I'm not talking only about Australia. I think there's a belief that perhaps politicians are moving away from a trusted institutional framework. So I ask, is that branding? Of course it is. We could go on for hours about what constitutes a brand. If you think about Adelaide, as a place. It's a brand. If you think about Kylie Minogue as a person is a brand.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, I think that second example you've given there is more akin to helping people understand what brand is is personal branding. What do people think about you before you walk in into the room, what do they think about you based on your actions? What do they think about you after you've left the room.

Ron Tomlian:

In market research, there is a recognised technique for trying to understand what people think about brands. And it's trying to describe this brand, as if it were a person. Correct? It's personification. And it's a very strong way of understanding what people really think about the brand. Is it male? Is it female? Is it old? Is it young? Is it sophisticated? Or is it uneducated, etc, etc.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so we need to finish off, we've been talking quite a fair while at the moment, but I think a really good place to leave it is, if you're listening to this podcast, and you consider yourself to be a business builder, that is someone who works on yourself to develop your skill set, develop yourself, to be a better leader to be able to help develop your business. And I'll leave you with this. You are one of the key custodians of the brand you represent. And maybe like a Steve Jobs or whatever your role is within the business, you have the ability to influence the brand of your business, whether it be by helping the marketing department, whether it be that you're part of the marketing department, or whether it be that you've got any customer interaction role. And our job as business leaders is to really champion that brand, protect it, like the asset that it is within our businesses.

Ron Tomlian:

And go back to Episode Nine to talk about all the ways that a brand can actually help build your business, because that is talking about an asset. And that's what a brand is.

Brenton Gowland:

I think I talked about branding being like dating back then did not you did. So what what did I say that?

Ron Tomlian:

Marketing is the invitation. Branding is the reason people accept.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, okay, that's.

Ron Tomlian:

I like that.

Brenton Gowland:

That's good. I like that, too. So look, next episode, we're going to have a guest with us who's going to be talking about the relationship between sales and marketing. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, how they work together. So again, we've got a few more episodes to go on marketing. And then as Ron was saying earlier, we'll make the shift to our next topic. But that next episode should be great because sales and marketing very often they compete with each other, that they should be working together to build our brands.

Ron Tomlian:

And what is the relationship that ideally exists between sales and marketing?

Brenton Gowland:

Exactly. So until then, it's bye from me.

Ron Tomlian:

And bye from me.

Brenton Gowland:

We hope you have a great fortnight.