Brand and Butter
Always straight-talking (occasionally in-your-face), Brand and Butter is the no-BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Packed with clear-cut advice on the influence and power of branding - and how pairing associations, consumer behaviour, and design thinking can impact how we see, think, feel, and even taste.
Brand and Butter serves up refreshingly honest and never-dull conversations with some of today’s boldest brand strategists and architects. Sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable (and often unapologetically blunt), this is the podcast that you wish you’d listened to before launch.
Tara Ladd is the Founder and Brand Strategist at Your One and Only, a brand and design studio here for brands who refuse to settle. Evolving brand identities to stay relevant fusing psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
Sorting Out Your Strategy: Business vs. Brand vs. Marketing
Business, Brand, Marketing... Ever get them confused? Let's break down the strategy types! Whether you're a startup or a seasoned pro, this episode breaks down the differences between business, brand, and marketing strategies. Gain the clarity you need to navigate the jargon strategies so you can make smarter strategic decisions and drive your company forward.
The Brain Lab is almost here – In The Brain Lab (part 1 of 3) where we're diving into the Science of Persuasion. Think of it as your secret weapon for understanding the inner workings of your customers' minds. We going head first (ha!) into behavioural science, decoding hidden motivations and the decision-making process that shapes why people choose (or don't choose) your brand. Join The Laboratory list.
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Sign up for the Design Mind Theory Email – See how other Brands use psychology to nail their strategies.
you're listening to Brandon butter a straight-talking occasionally in your face. No BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior and design thinking can impact what people see, think and feel. I'm your host, tara Ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of brand and design agency, your One and Only. Hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode. I am going to do a quick one today, but just one that I feel like needs to be addressed because I feel that there is a lot of uncertainty out there in regards to what strategy is and how it, I guess, applies to your business, and so I don't mean the definition of strategy. Everyone knows that a strategy is creating a plan, but when it comes to creating different types of strategies, I think people are a little bit unsure about what strategy goes, where, the differentiation between marketing and branding and business, and I'm just going to do a bit of a quick run through today so that you can get a bit of an idea. So, if you're I know that a lot of the times I. So if you're, um, I know that a lot of the times I speak with someone or I remember being at a panel and the conversation that was coming up was brand and marketing and they were talking about how to market and how to do marketing and blah, blah, blah about marketing. And I was looking at the room and I just sense, checked, and I was like none of these people know the before stage and you know me, I am brand through and through 101. That is my role. Marketing is something that I do, but it is not a service that I offer. It is obviously part of brand but it is not the. So, like you know, the whole strategy and channel marketing aspect and figuring out all of that stuff is totally not in our realm. We can we have advice on that stuff because obviously we do these things and we know about them, but it's just not where we focus our attention. Our attention is on creating your perception and setting your I guess your presence and how people would judge you, and creating associations and building that narrative so that people want to engage with you. People would judge you and creating associations and building that narrative so that people want to engage with you, the conversations that you have, the identity that you have the identity that you have and basically wrapping that up.
Speaker 1:So I just want to give a bit of a brief rundown. So when you have an idea and you're ready to start a business and most people have already you know this is more for people that are probably, you know, a few years into their business by now, even people that have been in business for you know a decade. You know we're coming up to seven years soon and seven or eight, I don't even know anymore, but anyway we're coming up to our and it goes by so quickly and especially when you chuck that whole thing of what we just went through in the middle of it, like that, just I've got an almost five-year-old and I'm not even sure how that happened. Anyway, back to the story. I digress. We're looking at business strategy first up, right. So understanding the differences will kind of help you get an idea on where you need to be focusing your attention and how you should be, I guess, spending your money. I know so many people that channel money into marketing when they really need to be channeling money into brand or they need to be channeling money into something completely different, which we'll talk about in a minute. But basically, your business strategy is the overall blueprint for how a company will achieve its long-term goals right.
Speaker 1:So you look at business models and you look at ways that you can kind of approach things and it's like this overarching sense of what you're going to do. Once you're in business, you know where are you going to be, how are you going to position yourself. That ties into brand. But how do you want to do this? Are you bricks and mortar? Are you going to be online? This whole thing is like is before you start, and it kind of ties into somewhat marketing. But really it's kind of like your SWOT analysis. So your strengths, swot analysis, getting ahead of myself, swot analysis, your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and having a look at the landscape Is your business idea viable? Can you do it? Is it feasible? If you do it, who else is out there that does it? How can you do things differently? Like, you kind of start to look into this and that's when you kind of move into brand as well.
Speaker 1:But the business idea is essentially like where is the market at? Is it the right time to do this? If not, what are the alternatives? What's the long-term trajectory? All of those like big picture thinking like I'm going to start a business.
Speaker 1:Also, legalities, right, finances all of these things need to come into the equation. I think a lot of people miss the mark here, but that is so damn crucial. How much money do you have? How much money are you willing to invest? What are you going to, I guess, allocate to get this started? Do you need investors?
Speaker 1:All of these types of things are business strategy things, and when you start to look at the wider lens, it's so important to see like I have so many people that come to us and say this is the business that we've registered, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like that's great, you can't actually trademark that. And then they're like why not? I'm like, because a trademark is different to a business name and you can have a business name and trade under a business name, but you can't actually use it if someone else has that name and has been trading under that name. Now there is a whole thing involved here and you need to speak to an IP lawyer, but if someone else has been trading under that name, they can actually take you down for using it because they've got history of using that name. We had this whole thing with a client that had. There was so many of them using the same name that they all couldn't really do anything about it. All it did was just create confusion in the market. So you've got to be really certain that the name that you've chosen, you can actually build this into brand, which is where that kind of comes in as well. Don't just go to someone wanting to do like a brand strategy with all of these things in place without having done due diligence. So there's all these little intricate details that you need to kind of be aware of Pricing strategies and all of that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:How do you want to position yourself? Are you luxury? And this is where it trickles into brand right? So you've kind of got your idea. You know where you want to sit, you've got these intentions. Then you look at brand Purpose. So we're looking at like positioning and personality and perception. It's the actions that you will take to achieve your goals and connect with your target audience. So your brand is essentially shaping the persona, the humanized persona, that people will connect with. This is your values and your purpose and your mission and your intention. It's your brand messaging. This never changes. You can reposition and rebrand, you can attract new audiences, and that's when you do usually need a rebrand, is when your audience has changed, which is where a lot of the market is at the moment.
Speaker 1:By the way, a lot of people have a brand problem and they think they have a marketing problem Not my place, but I do try and help people understand that that your brand is the essence. So the way I like to put it is your brand is the person that you want people to be friends with, right. So it is you. You are the being right. It's the house to the letterbox, and then you have marketing, which is getting people to be your friend. So you already exist as the brand. It's everything that you've shaped, it's who you are, it's what you believe in, it's your belief system, it's your association, it's how you position yourself in market. It's what you want people to think of you. It is your perception. And then you look at marketing. This is telling people that perception.
Speaker 1:If you do not have that down pat, you are just throwing shit at a wall that doesn't stick. You know some things can take off and you can test right. So if you're at the beginning stages of building a brand, do not worry too much about extensive brand strategy. I definitely recommend, you know, research. That is super important.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you will find that what you think that people need isn't what they need and it's something completely different. And that's when you look at the, you go, oh okay, this is what people are really gravitating towards. This is kind of what I should be doing. So I always say the first two years are kind of like trial and error, and unless you've done a business or had a business before or some kind of experience in this space, you're kind of just testing it, testing things out, which isn't a bad thing. When you start to move forward and you grow, that's when you really need to start to get it all sorted, because if your brand blows up and you have not got the foundations in place, you will find you will hit a wall later on and it will always happen. It always happens.
Speaker 1:So we find that this usually happens when someone's been in business for about five years four or five years is kind of when people go, okay, I'm making okay money now and I'm ready to scale, but they find they can't scale because their perception is out what they've been saying, what they've been doing, what they look like, does not attract the audience, that they need to move to the next level. This is why brands rebrand because they need to shift in messaging or they need to reposition, and we've just done it ourselves for the past 10 months, and it's something that, uh, you know all brands will do. If they need to change the messaging, um, and you can just change the messaging, that's fine, you can just switch, but that's a whole educational thing. Whole educational thing, right. And sometimes you might want a visual identity refresh, which isn't a rebrand. You may find that it's just something that you know. Your whole foundation stays the same and you have a few messaging tweaks, but you might need to refresh the brand, and so that's when you would like give it a bit of a paint job, if you may know what I mean. So that's when you're looking at things a little bit differently.
Speaker 1:But then you look at marketing strategy, right. So off the back of brand strategy, you have marketing strategy, which is the plan for reaching your customers by building brand awareness and promoting products and services. So when you look at things, you need to have both long-term brand messages and short-term tactical messages within your marketing strategy. Long-term brand messages is who you are, what you do, what you're about, who you're here for values, story, mission, vision, all of that stuff so that people choose to work with you based on their own values and alignment. And that is so important these days because it is what is happening.
Speaker 1:And then we look at and your personality are you funny, are you serious? If you don't have any of that stuff sorted, it's really hard for the marketer to then start to push content out if there's no alignment. So they will always ask you what's your tone of voice, what's your personality? And if they're not, they should be and making sure that there is consistency across every single touch point. So if you have a team that works on socials and a team that does email and a team that's internal, every single one of those teams needs to be in alignment with the message that's going out, or brand will kick your ass. Any big agency should have. Any big business should have a brand person and a marketing person, and they're usually coinciding. That's what a brand manager is. They will make sure that the message that you are putting out is not being diluted, because you can have a bunch of different people that's putting marketing messaging out and it's just not right and you're going that's off brand.
Speaker 1:And you may see this, some big brands do this and you're like that doesn't, that was out, that was wrong, um, and you can test this stuff out, but that's just an example. So hey, just a quick one. Have you ever felt like your marketing is just like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping that it sticks? Wouldn't you rather have the power to predict what works and what bombs, a deep connection with your audience, knowing exactly what makes them tick? Well, get ready to level up, because we're introducing the Brain Lab, your secret weapon to crafting insanely persuasive marketing. This is where behavioral science meets real-world results. We're diving into the fascinating psychology behind why people choose the brands that they do. Think of the Brain Lab as your crash course in consumer psychology, audience analysis and the art of persuasion. If you want to join us to build a brand so damn irresistible your customers wouldn't think twice, then grab your spot, because we're getting started by kicking off with a free masterclass in two weeks. So this is your chance to get a sneak peek at the power of the Brain Lab. We'll put the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Marketing then subcategorizes. Marketing is a very big industry, and so you need to look at how that. Then you've got digital marketing and you've got paid ads and you've got you know social and you've got print and you've got there are so many different places. You have PR, like all of these things sit within marketing. Marketing is getting your message out and PR is also in promotion as well. But you start to look at how this then trickles down. So you have marketing strategy over overarching. You know that's the plan to reach. Then you have content strategy, so you have the plan for creating and distributing valuable content to attract and engage your audience through content. And then you have like things like advertising, which is um, an aid to communication designed to persuade an audience to take a specific action right, so it's used to make people do something. And then you've got promotion, which is a range of tactics used to increase awareness of a brand or product or service. So none of these things are the same, but they slightly cross over. And then you have sales, which is obviously aligned to those two as well. So you need to have a sales strategy and a promotional strategy and an ad strategy which works above those two. Marketing strategy which coincides of both long-term brand messaging and short-term tactical messaging. So now you start to see how this divvies up.
Speaker 1:Content can work in a range of different ways. So you can have content that works for blogs or podcasts or video and short-term messaging on or short-term readable content on posts or articles or whatever it is, or PR strategy. So you're going out to media and so then you need to figure out how that's going to work and all of these kinds of things need to be planned out. This is where everyone fails. They go, oh, I'm not working, people don't want my stuff. It's like, no, you just actually don't have the right strategy. And usually they have one strategy, but there needs to be like a knock-on effect. So I have a finance strategy and now I'm having a sales strategy. I have a product suite strategy how I'm going to get that out there and when you're looking at how to get your name out there from, let's look at a brand message, for instance.
Speaker 1:Brand awareness is getting people to know who you are. This is why brand story is so important who you are, what you do, what you're about this is what builds connection with people. These are the conversational pillars when you build that. I guess, when I speak about my son Ari, having a transplant, being a mother in business, I connect with my parents on another side. I'll speak to me having ADHD and creativity and understanding the overwhelm of being a business owner, and I speak to my neurodivergent audience, and so you need to understand that there's segmentation of conversational pillars, that you can have that work for you and you need to make sure that that aligns.
Speaker 1:So what we see, the biggest problem, is that we have a lot of people that are telling you that they can do X, y, z, when really they haven't gone back to the beginning. Because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated. It helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at yourwannanonlycom or head to wwwyourwannanonlycomau. And what builds long-term brand loyalty and advocacy. So that's it for today, but it gives you a bit of a rundown on what each of them mean and how you can use them for your own advantage. And if you want to know more, you know where to find me slip into my DMs on YouWantItOnly or I am Tara Ladd and we can have a chat about it. Until then, I'll chat to you next week.
