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
Why Every Business Needs to Pay Attention to Triple J's Rebrand
Have you seen Triple J's recent rebranding? It's a solid example of how branding is evolving to align with cultural tides. In this episode, I'm exploring how understanding generational shifts and societal trends can prevent your business from becoming irrelevant. I highlight the critical role of creativity in the future of branding, and why this is a warning to everyone for what's to come.
As mentioned in the episode, here is the Bouba Kiki Effect psychology breakdown.
P.S. Want to stay ahead of the curve and evolve your brand to truly kick ass? Jump on the waitlist for The Laboratory and join a crew of forward-thinking entrepreneurs who are on a mission to make moves.
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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 say, think and feel. I'm your host, tara Ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of Brandon Design Agency. Your one and only. Welcome to this week's episode of Brandon Butter. I am diving into the intricacies of brand evolution today. So what we've seen in this past week and if you are an australian listener then you will know youth radio straight, youth radio station triple j just gone through a big rebrand and I want to dive into the detail of where this is going and why this rebrand is so important. What I'm seeing is the adaptation of branding, and I'm not talking about visuals, although this one is heavily visually orientated, but the role of culture in how brands need to be. Well, brands need to be making sure that they are in line with where culture is going, because if they are not, you are seriously going to be left behind. So great examples to give you would be Kodak. They went out of business off their own invention, might I add. They invented the digital camera, but they didn't embrace new technology and therefore they went out of business because they decided that they didn't want to move into that space, because they thought that they had such a stronghold in print Now, they did have such a stronghold in print. Now, they did have such a stronghold in print. However, everyone moved to digital and they just weren't equipped to deal with that change so quickly. The same thing happened with Tupperware. Recently, we saw their distribution model, which was, you know, at home parties where they put their. That was where they built their you know revenue, and people just weren't doing that anymore. So the behaviors of their audiences changed and therefore they had to scramble to get online and it was just too little, too late. They completely missed that next generation and they fell off the bandwagon. And I'm I'm sure that there are plenty other reasons for that one to go out of, you know, out of business, but that's a story for another day. And then, of course, we've seen, you know, blockbuster. Netflix pitched their idea to Blockbuster and they turned it down, and so we saw video streaming, you know, or videos go out and streaming come in, and they just went out of business as well and streaming come in and they just went out of business as well. So we're seeing not just small brands. We're seeing huge brands with big reputations and big audience strongholds simply fade out and stagnate because they failed or just didn't want to embrace new technology, or not necessarily technology, but embrace new cultural shifts. So what we're seeing at the moment is a big shift in the next generation, or not even the next generation, but a big shift in societal change, in, you know, environmental change and all of these things that people are closely aligned to with their behavior and their value alignment, and people buy with emotion. So what we're seeing is this big identity shift and people are stuck, brands are stuck, and if you have a business, you have a brand.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people assume that only big businesses have brands, but that's not true. Every business is a brand, whether you think so or not, and it's up to you to dictate what narrative you set so that people create the right perception, because if you just don't say anything at all, what happens is people just create their own narratives and until you're there to kind of counteract any negatives, even any positives, then people will just start to make up these rumors, and we all know how Chinese whispers works, and that's essentially associations Someone heard from someone else and someone heard from someone else, and, without you to kind of lay it out straight, they're just going to assume that that's what. That's what happened. So that plays a big role in brand reputation and brand recognition and how people retain memory about your brand. So what we're seeing at the moment is culture shifting and now everyone's going to be experiencing this for the first time because we age and so we as if you're whatever age group or whatever generation you're in would have seen it from our parents and our parents go through a change that we were going through and us thinking that, oh they're, they're just not adapting. Well, this is happening to millennials now, it's happening to gen x now and we're seeing that next wave come through, and not only just generational in terms of age, but we're seeing, you know, the way people evolve language and the way that people are consuming and the way that they embrace change from the younger generation through to the older generation. It's like fixed first growth mindset. It's really important, if you're older, to kind of look at what the younger generation are doing, because they will eventually be the ones to lead the cultural change. And I think it's really important to just be aware of your own bias, because a lot of the times we assume that we are always the target market when in fact sometimes we just are not.
Speaker 1:So, bringing it back, triple J have just unveiled their new brand identity and is, in my personal opinion, phenomenal. What they've done is create a variable brand identity, meaning it's dynamic and it can shift, adapt and change to whatever the narrative is that they're talking to. So what they've done is they've mapped sound and they've created a custom typeface that I guess transitions with the sound. It's really cool. So you've gone. There must be like 24 different fonts to full, just full transparency, because a lot of people confuse this.
Speaker 1:A typeface is the family and the font is the individual font within that family. So if you have, let's just say, helvetica, for instance, that is the typeface and then Helvetica bold or Helvetica regular are the fonts within that typeface. So you may hear people with the terminology. Most people just say fonts because you know it's easier, but that's what you'll see. So they've created this typeface which involves some. It's huge, huge. It's like 25 different fonts with inside that slanted, thin, bold, distorted they're all really cool and people are wondering how are they meant to maintain consistency?
Speaker 1:And I think that that's just it. It's got that much movement in it that it can allow the overarching umbrella to become the look and feel and you can get really meticulous with how you execute that, so long as that overarching umbrella remains, you know, identifiable, then you can kind of get a little bit creative with how you then execute underneath. So this is where something that I heard at South by Southwest really starts to come into play, something that I heard at South by Southwest really starts to come into play. And they said keep the strategy sound and get creative with the execution. So that means when they've created the brand strategy, meaning that there are pockets of things that you need to understand that are within a brand strategy.
Speaker 1:So your purpose, mission, vision, value, so like what it is that you stand for, what your intention is and how you lead. And then, of course, there's your positioning where you sit within the market and how you plan to place yourself within that market. You know channels would be there, whether you're, you know, a high luxury, or whether you're affordable, or whether you're urban, like all of these things, and then of course you align the personality to that, or whether you're urban, like all of these things. And then of course you align the personality to that. So if you are high luxury, you would see that bougie kind of alignment with that status. You know personality type and then you would see if you were urban and like cool and street, you would see that real, like playful, kind of edgy personality. And that is why that's so important to understand, because then that comes through tone of voice, visuals. You know even the way that you present yourself in the studio or in your workplace, your culture, who you hire.
Speaker 1:Jb Hi-Fi is a great example of this. You know, back in the day you used to go in and you could tell from the type of person that worked at JB Hi-Fi that they were like a scene kid. And then of course, course you've got perception. So how do you that's exactly off the back of that is like how do you look and how do people perceive you? And do you look like a high luxury brand and do you act like a edgy brand or an outlaw brand? And all of these things kind of come into play. And then the last one's promotion. So it's then how you then execute and continue that narrative so that people understand who you are.
Speaker 1:So when you understand the narrative in-depth play of the strategy visual identity is part of that strategy. Verbal identity, messaging, voice all of that stuff is within a brand strategy then it's then you take that to marketing and they then push that message out. This is who we are. You know you've got brand marketing and you've got sales marketing. You've got brand awareness, all those types of things. So there's different marketing messages that go out. But if you don't know your brand strategy, you are not going to know how to execute the marketing strategy.
Speaker 1:But coming back for a rewind, what the brand strategy of Triple J have done is they've created this identity that enables them to transition, so that gives them the capabilities to then have a play with how they then creatively execute. So this is the rulings of how to use the brand, which would have to be very specific. And then, of course, they're allowing that creative freedom to express how they think. I guess the communication would marry up. So if you've got something that's like light and fluffy, or you know a ballad or some kind of artist that comes on and they're very, you know, soft natured. You can then align the visual identity to match that artist you know and the sound of the music that they have, and then you've got that real connection of sensory kind of visuals marrying up to that sound and the identification of what you can connect in your own mind.
Speaker 1:Now there is a huge alignment with psychology here. I don't know if you've heard it, I think it's a Bobo or Kiki effect. What they've done here is they've married up shape and sound. So we in our head stitch up how we want or how we assume sounds to or visuals to align with sound. For instance, they did this thing where they saw the word boboa, boboa, boboa. Anyway, I'll figure that out, connect it later. I'll put the study in the show notes.
Speaker 1:But people associated rounded sounds. Now that also could probably be because when you hear the word B it's rounded, b-o it's also rounded, so you would align mentally those rounded type shapes. However, when they use the word kiki, which is K-I-K-I, it's sharp and it's pointed, and so then sharp natured alignment in terms of shape and symbolism played out in people's heads. So unconsciously we are marrying up this visual of what we think something should look like based on how it sounds, and that is a huge thing to think about if you are a brand, because if you are saying that you're one thing and you're looking another, there's a disconnect and, without even realizing, there is an element of distrust there because people go.
Speaker 1:That doesn't work together and this is where a lot of people screw up their visual identities. And if they don't screw up their visual identities, they screwed up their verbal identity, and they are both not the same thing. Your verbal identity is how you sound, the messages that you use, the story that you have. It's the words that align and the things that you use to explain and communicate. And then you obviously have your visual identity, which is the exact same thing in visual form. So when people say that you know one's more important than the other, it's actually not, because if you can't read anything or you know, on two, two seconds, you have something to glance. This is where design's so important driving past a billboard or, um, you know, seeing something flash up in two seconds. Visual hooks are also a thing watching someone do something. They are both married up.
Speaker 1:It's the reason and I've said this before it's the reason why my three-year-old can identify an oreo box over an arrowroot box, because he can identify the color and the symbolism and the design of the box without even being able to read. And then, of course, we look into semiotics, which is the universal language of symbols and signs, which is all over the world. Regardless of what language you speak, that is something that you can translate. The walking man across the road you can know that when it's red it means stop and there's a symbol that signifies stop. And then there's also a walking man that's green, so you can identify that that is green. Now, in Australia I'm not sure what they do overseas, but in Australia they have different sounds. So if you're blind and you can't see that, you can identify the sound. And, of course, if you're deaf, they also have the visuals for you to align to, which is the same as most people, and if you're colorblind, obviously it's the symbol. So all of these things are then thought out really clearly and there's also Braille on the button when you cross the road.
Speaker 1:Now, all of these things are thought out to align and communicate to a diverse audience, not just someone that can hear or read. It's deliberately designed to be Understand it or translate it, to interpret it. It's what I'm looking for by a wide audience from a brand point of view is are you alienating an audience if you are not including all aspects of of communication within your material? So, visually, alliance to people that can obviously hear and that can. This is why alt tags are also very important. Putting alt tags and writing a description gives people that are visually impaired a way to understand what that graphic means, because, without even knowing, you could be creating something that just aligns from a visual point of view and then also choosing color sets that are obviously, you know, have a heavy contrast, so that if they are seen in someone's colorblind or they can't see the the contrast that those two color pairings are identifiable if they're translated to grayscale or black and white and totally steered off track.
Speaker 1:But what triple j have done here is they've created that ability to be very, um, very diverse in the way that they execute their identity and I find it incredibly cool because it it, if you see it from a top level perspective, and they and they will need help in rolling out. They will need help in rolling out. They will need help in rolling out those initial first few months and that would be part of their process. But it's like creating those recognition points so that people become familiar with the widest set of graphics and distinctive assets. For them to then go, okay, that's triple J, then it'll work, because then they can then get really specific. We do this a lot with color and we use color segmentation. So if there are different audiences or different product lines or something that you want to align, we use color to then differentiate based on that.
Speaker 1:Or we use a certain type of layout with a lot of our clients for people to be able to like instantly, look within a collided feed and go, yup, they're talking to me here or yup, they're talking to this specific product here, and it allows them that extra way of being able to communicate in a much simpler and quicker way, because, as we know, people have a. They don't have limited attention spans. It's just that you have to fight harder to gain attention these days, and if you can break through by explaining something in a much quicker way, you will cut through that noise. And this is what it all comes down to is who can reduce the mental load so they can take what it is that you mean away instantaneously, without having to play mental gymnastics to get there. This is why programs and products like ManyChat have skyrocketed, because people then take away two steps to get in contact with you. They don't have to leave what they're doing go to the profile, click on the profile, find the right page, like you've taken three steps. They just comment a word, go straight to the inbox and they go exactly where you need to be. Qr codes do the exact same thing reduce the mental load.
Speaker 1:So it's all about reducing and saving time. It's it's got nothing to do with well, it's got everything to do with saving time, but nothing to do with your messaging not cutting through. How can you get it through as quickly as possible? And a lot of the time that comes through creativity. A lot of people think creativity is a nice to have, but what we're seeing as this thing evolves, as branding evolves and as the world becomes more busy and noisy, is that those that cut through with really good creativity, whether that be through story, whether that be through visual execution or sound this is why we're seeing an uprise of sonic branding is that you will cut through the noise purely because you've got something different Now.
Speaker 1:Execution is key here. So, while I've just gone through and said that you do execution. Last you do, but it needs to marry up to what it is that you intend to do. So what's the objective? What are you doing? How is the strategy aligning to that? And then go hell to leather on how you execute that. So long as the execution aligns to what it is that you're trying to do in terms of your strategy, you'll absolutely knock it out of the park and you can just try different things until you figure out the right framework. I think people are doing different things.
Speaker 1:When we talk about consistency, this is when it's actually really important to have some kind of framework or a process, because doing things the same way over and over again makes a pathway in people's minds and, I guess, a way for them to retain who you are and what you do and the way you do it, so that they can then become familiar with how you do things. Now we all look at Quentin Tarantino and we go yep, this is definitely his movie because of the way that he does an on unchronological order within his movies, and so he'll always start with the ending first, and then it's all about piecing together what happened to get to that ending, and then so they go through the whole story and then at the end you're like, ah, I get it now. So it creates that curiosity of getting from the beginning to the end. Some people hate that, but it is his style and that's his framework. So you can start to see how frameworks and processes and the way that you do things are actually hugely aligned to branding, and the way that people then retain your information, processes and systems are huge.
Speaker 1:Internal culture is also huge. External culture, internal culture. What I like to say is that business brands are in the game of creating community and culture, and personal brands are in the game of creating community and culture, and personal brands are in the game of personality and connection. And if you don't understand that, you're going to miss the point. If you don't look on the inside out, if your brand isn't nailing it from an internal perspective, it won't reach external perspective, because a happy team extends beyond the walls of the workplace that's there, and I have this conversation with so many people whenever I you know if they're trying to do something, I'm like what's going on inside the house?
Speaker 1:Because if the house inside is broken, externally, it will be broken too, and so what we see with Triple J is that they've got now. I've got that visual identity which they've always had, but that visual identity that marries up to the way that they want to then take it down from marrying up sound, which is all what they're about. So they've married up the visuals to the sound aspect and it's it's just really smart and this will really really well not necessarily offend, but it will put a lot of noise noses out of joint because people will think you can't break that rules. You can't do this with typography and you know what. This is where it's going. I've seen these, this trend of typography change and the way people are doing things, and it's really cool and it's like well, this is just where we're moving to now and why can't rules be broken?
Speaker 1:The differences are, when you know what the rules are, you can then break them, because once you understand balance and tone and and and structure and composition, like, then you're able to kind of push those boundaries a little bit more. It's always really good to listen to, in my opinion, the younger demo, because they come in fresh-minded, without those rules and regulations. Sometimes, and with someone that's got those rules in mind and someone that doesn't, you can meet in the middle and it can create something super powerful. So I think, as we understand that, as soon as you have your your finger on the pulse of understanding cultural change and cultural narrative, you will then be able to really transition your brands. But what we're seeing right now is people can't like, they're not moving because they don't understand their audiences properly.
Speaker 1:Everyone has changed the way that they buy. There's a Calavio report has recently reported over eight and a half thousand people that took the survey that 97% of people have changed the way that they spend their money off the back of inflation 97%, that's massive. And so, if you're thinking about that in terms of the way people are engaging with your brand, this is where brand marketing is going to really cut through, because once that inflation dips down and people kind of feel some kind of sense of normality or regulation again, to feel confident in their spending, what's going to happen is those that were continuing that brand messaging of this is who we are, this is what we do, this is what we're about, this is who we're here for, those people will have been trust building that whole time when everyone else was trying to sell, and those messages of selling aren't emotional. Therefore, they're not going to be remembered. And so, when people are ready to go, the people that have been really focusing on brand messaging are the ones that are going to win. And also, as we see people spending more for performance metrics in terms of this ad performed and this ad didn't, they completely miss the strategic long game message of the brand, message that is not instantaneously trackable.
Speaker 1:It takes, you know, 12 months, two years, to be able to maintain that growth. Two years to be able to maintain that growth. We did this recently on our own website, where we saw a huge increase. It was like 121% increase in hits from last year. Just off, you know, off brand market and mostly brand marketing. And I mean that would be stupid if we didn't, because that's literally our game, but it's been deliberately done of speaking about our process, talking about the hardship, rebuilding the business back up, because that's where a lot of people sit.
Speaker 1:That is something that people see themselves in, that's a story that people can align with, and so when they get past that point and it doesn't matter who you are, you could be a business that's absolutely killing it they will still see a dip in the way people are spending because the vast majority of the population have reduced spend. It doesn't mean that people aren't spending, but it does mean that it is not the same that it was before. So you cannot compare, you know, pre-2020 time to right now and even then we're even talking about 2020 time. You're looking at people that had grants given to them by the government. So we did see a big jump in in spend because people had that, you know, that handout or that grant that they were given to be able to spend that. So it's really it will be really interesting to see how things shift.
Speaker 1:But a lot of good businesses are made in hardships like this. We saw Netflix and Uber and Airbnb blow up during the GFC. So it's brands like that that start to evolve and come through during those times because we see culture change. So it'll be interesting to see which brands are willing to invest in their brand because at the forefront, so it'll be interesting to see which brands are willing to invest in their brand because at the forefront, even prior to, what you sell is brand, because people align their identities with who you are.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter what you do. If they align to your brand and your messaging and if they feel like that, you are the person for the job. It doesn't matter if you're more expensive. They will choose you because of an emotional alignment. It's like when you go house shopping and you're looking for somewhere to live, whether it be that to rent or to buy it's not even just about the price. Those things get pushed aside. It's how you feel when you're in that space, and if it doesn't feel right, it doesn't matter what the cost is. You just won't buy it or you won't rent it, and that's what people need to understand that it's the emotion that drives purchasing. Logic comes in, but emotion is always going to be the reason that people will choose your brand.
Speaker 1:So what I think Triple J have done really well with the dynamic identity is that they've created something that can transition, evolve, but also emotionally connect in a way that people wouldn't even see. It would be such a deeply aligned connection in terms of the way that they visually articulate what it is that they're communicating that people would be like that works, and I'm not even sure why. And that's the thing. A lot of people don't know why they act and think the way that they do. Sometimes a lot of marketers are very cluey on the way that they can persuade you to do things and there is so much involved in that space, which is why we created the brain love. But yeah, it's just. I think that those that will start to watch where culture is going and how it's moving will win.
Speaker 1:So I hope you liked that episode and I will chat to you all next week. Did you like that episode? I hope so, because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at yourwannanonly underscore au on instagram or head to wwwyouwantanolycomau.
