Brand and Butter

The Cultural Impact on Brand Identity

• Tara Ladd • Episode 55

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TW: this episode touches on weight loss. 

What if your brand could go beyond your product and trigger a cultural movement? In this episode we’re talking the power of brand strategy and how it can not only capture consumer loyalty, but resonate deeply with their personal identities. Listen in as I unpack the deeper connection between branding, consumer behaviour, and big cultural events and how shared beliefs can transform brands into personal extensions of identity. 

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Speaker 1:

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 brand and design agency, your One and Only. Welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. And in the last week we have had some pretty interesting news and that has been a huge shift in the US election. But I also want to talk about why this matters.

Speaker 1:

This isn't anything about which side of the fence you sit on, but it does talk about behaviors and how it actually impacts the way people spend and the way people align themselves with certain brands. At the end of the day, what we need to look at is brands are an accentuation of someone's identity. Now, not every product that we buy is that deep, but when we're looking at brands that create loyalty or something that you want to have for longevity, genuinely, people will buy into beliefs and alignment and what that brand stands for. Now, coming off the back of what's happened these past few days. I have seen a huge behavioral shift in who people are following, how they're aligning with them, who they want to collaborate with, and, regardless of what you think about that, that's just basic human behavior, and why this is important is not so. You need to get on and, you know, amplify to the world what political preference that you have, but it is speaking to the importance of understanding cultural alignment and what people believe in and how people value and respect things, because they will place their money on what they value or what their values stand for. And so, when we're talking about buying and promoting and marketing, how you position yourself and what you say will, in fact, create a ricochet effect on how people will spend with you. Again, I'm not suggesting that you need to be political, but it does come through to how you value yourself, what you stand for as a brand and how you communicate that to the wider audience. So this is done through stories, this is done through intention and action, and it's not about just having a list of values up on your wall that you say, hey, we're, you know, good quality, I like that. Never have, by the way, never have quality as a, as a value that should be a non-negotiable, but it's things like, you know, integrity or transparency or things like that, but it's having something there that you lead with action and intention and purpose and being in alignment.

Speaker 1:

Business is no longer just about what you sell. It is very much about an identity, alignment and what people want to spend their money with and we're only seeing more and more of this as time moves on and where people are putting their money is very much in line with how they value and respect that business. And if you have a business, you are a brand. So let's just put that out there for people that are unaware or call themselves a business owner or call themselves a business as opposed to a brand, doesn't matter. You are a brand. Whatever you say and do, that is your branding, that is your brand, and people associate you as a brand, and so if you're not controlling that narrative, what that means is that someone else will control that narrative. So this is why brand strategy is important, because it says who you are, what you do, what you're about, who you're here for, and then you then promote that message to the wider audience. Then, obviously, if you can go back through our past, you know episodes recently.

Speaker 1:

We're talking about strategical and tactical marketing, where brand marketing is the long-term message. It's who you are, it's educating. It's like not for the people that necessarily want to buy from you straight away, but it is that love and nurture process of taking them from start to finish, of what it's like to work with you. How do they work with you? What other channels can they find you on? How can they consume your content? Can they see you in person? Can they work with you one-on-one? It's all like. Or if you're a product, it's more about what's behind the brand, who's running the business, what are their intentions? Where things are manufactured Like it's, what's their team morale, like Internal, external branding has a huge, huge impact on how people want to work with brands.

Speaker 1:

We've seen this when an employee is treated with disrespect and all of a sudden you'll see a boycott in people buying from that product, or people will, you know, put their money where their alignments are and they will literally tell everyone about that. So what we're seeing now is you can't just sit still on the fence. You can choose where you put your alignment, but leading with values and intention is very much where it's at, because people are and do associate their beliefs and their values with who they are as a person and therefore we choose to buy based on that. It was really interesting watching this past week, but I will say I mean I'm pretty sure most people would know where my alignment is, but I will say that Trump has done a very good job of positioning himself within the market.

Speaker 1:

His marketing has been bang on, and how he's done that is, I feel, like it should be studied, just the same way as Taylor Swift should be studied, and she is because it's been a way to create a mass following, almost like cult, like following. But also in the same way. It's very much because those two figures are very much in opposition of their beliefs and their values and when you're looking at it from that perspective, it's actually got nothing to do with what they. It's almost like they're you're buying into their movement. It's nothing to do with you know what they're actually doing or selling, for instance, but it's very much about the movement. So Donald Trump has positioned himself as this, like you know, fighting against the grain, doing it differently. Take that as you will.

Speaker 1:

But then Taylor Swift is, you know, smashing down the patriarchy and, you know, becoming a powerful woman both polar opposite conversations, by the way, and that's and that's kind of how you're seeing people follow and align with. It's like they will follow and be with people who they personally align with based on who they are as a person. And you know, some may disagree in some instances, like I do know that there is a big politically it's. It can be kind of hard to put your position openly to some people, but when we're looking at how people choose and the way that they behave, it all comes down to those unconscious and subconscious behaviors on where our emotions lie.

Speaker 1:

And right now, what we've seen in the States, specifically in the world, actually is that we're going through a financial crisis, the whole world is suffering, they're struggling, and so it's scarcity mindset and it's fear at 101 of how people are acting and behaving, and it's kind of like people want that really quick, fast relief of how do we get it better, how do we go back. And yeah, we've seen this come through and this is a knock-on effect for everything, and we see this with influencers that are online and they're selling their programs for a small amount of money, for a quick fix, and people are very much in line with wanting to invest their money into that because they know that they want that instant gratification or that instant quick fix of that pain to go away. And then the same thing is like we look at. We look at this with Ozempic, the weight loss drug, and you know there's no hate against it at all, but it's like people want that, they don't want to do the long term, and unless it's medical it's completely different, by the way. But like we're talking about, people just want especially those in Hollywood, that want that quick, fast, you know, weight loss. They're looking at that from that perspective and it's that again, instant gratification. This is why the weight loss industry exists. And so we're looking at the long-term game versus a short-term game and how that plays a big role in people's choices and especially their pain points. And so now we see at, the crux of literally everything is not only are they aligning with brands that suit their identity, but they're also aligning with brands that will give them that instant fix, because everyone's feeling the pain or they're feeling some kind of pain, and so at the core of it is psychographics Again, it's the audience, and it's really understanding behaviors and it's really understanding the way people are thinking, because if you don't understand that they're doing X to get X, then you're going to miss so much opportunity as to where you sit in the market and sometimes a lot of it comes down to just simply being blind with your own brand.

Speaker 1:

So if you are trying to attract a specific audience and you're not wondering why they're simply not buying from you, a lot of the times it could be a positioning problem or that you are not in the right place because you are maybe on instagram when you need to be on linkedin, or maybe you need to be on youtube, whatever that may be. How are your client, what's the lifetime cycle of your brand from, or the customer journey from? You know initial exposure into when they buy, like what, how long is that and what does that entail? So if it's a retail product, it might be short. If it's an expensive retail product or you're you know B2C product brand, like, if it's a quick purchase, it may not take that long.

Speaker 1:

But if it is a bigger purchase like I don't know, say, someone buying a Dyson vacuum cleaner for 1500 bucks or whatever, but and and they, they don't want to buy it straight away, but they need that little bit more. They're sitting on the fence and they need that bit more. You know, pushing over the edge of the line to get it. That's when you've got different types of marketing messages that come into play. But if you don't know who your audience is and what their pain points are and what it is that they're actually trying to, the problem that they're trying to solve, then you'll miss it. And if you're not in the right place to align and attract those people, then again you'll miss it. So it's actually just not about doing more. It's actually just about aligning strategically and you do that by being really aware with where we're sitting at the moment.

Speaker 1:

So this week, on your one and only, I didn't post anything on the feed. I just felt like it was a week where there was a lot going on and I didn't think that I wanted to contribute to that message. But I did get into stories because I still wanted to get behind the scenes and keep my current audience engaged and I posted a thing or two on LinkedIn. But the you can feel in the air that there is a lot of, there's a lot of happiness, but there's also a lot of not so much happiness. And, yeah, I just wanted to make sure that people had the moment. I'm definitely giving my opinion on my own personal profile, but definitely not from my business profile.

Speaker 1:

So, again, if we're talking about how to align your messaging and where to fit in the market, it's kind of being able to assess who your audiences are and sensing where their vibe is at, because if you say the wrong thing at the wrong time you can create a pretty bad rep. This is why you would have seen, during COVID, everyone was talking about being in it together unprecedented times, because if they would have pushed any other message it would have been tone deaf and everyone just would have tuned out. And so I guess, when we're looking at it from a wider lens, it's it's really looking into the behaviors of who you're trying to attract. And now we're seeing more than ever, which I've been spewing about for I don't know how long, but it's. I was calling it micro-initiation, but I don't know if it's the right type of words but what we're seeing is people just like subset within a subset. So, to give you an example of that, you have rock music that sits underneath. You know music in general, but then underneath rock music, so you have music at the top. Then you have rock music as a subset, as a genre, and then underneath rock music you have multiple versions of rock music. So you have indie rock and pop rock and hardcore and screamo and electro rock and all of these different subcategories of heavy metal that sit underneath that again, and what we're seeing more and more now is that those brands that are actually taking that one step down into, I guess, niching even further are the ones that are getting more traction. And now there'll be polarizing opinions on niching. And when I say niching, I'm not necessarily talking about a product niching, I'm talking about a personality niching, and by that I mean the type of audience that you want to attract and that can carry over different generations, it can carry different life cycles of the type of audience that you actually want to bring in to be customers or engage with, to, you know, create communication with whatever that may be collaboration, advocacy in the community but at the core of it is what type of person are you trying to attract? And then you separate that and segment that. This is where I feel a lot of brands are going wrong, because they're looking at different personas and they're saying that they offer a service and they're leading with the service when I think it needs to be. We're watching brave really.

Speaker 1:

Step in now, where people are looking at buying from a brand point of view as opposed to buying from. You know, the product and service is important. People will naturally go out and search for that, but at the end of the day, they end up choosing the brand based on the brand. And it would be either you know a story or some kind of example of what they've done, or their process of what they do, or the people that work there, the relationship they've had. And a great example would be if someone has messaged three or four different companies and one person was responsive and they were really helpful.

Speaker 1:

And that is branding 101 at play. It's like that culture. It's the alignment, it's the relationship building, it's the customer journey, and then that person gets chosen because, or that brand gets chosen because they've given them that experience. The brand is the experience. And so what we're seeing now and we've always said customer service is key but customer service is the brand, experience it's brand. You would shape or judge a company based on the way that they treated you or the way that you felt in there. It's all about the vibe. It's all sensory, it's all emotional. That's why we're seeing this huge rise in brand again, um.

Speaker 1:

But it's also like understanding that branding needs to adapt and shift with culture. So if you're looking at a certain type of person or a certain type of personality, it's really understanding those psychographics of their belief systems and their pains and pleasures and what it is that they do and how they live their lives. And it's's understanding those selfish desires, those egocentric things that make them want to buy, like, why would they buy a Toyota versus why would they buy a Beamer? Or are they looking for status? Are they looking for, you know, genuine value? Like? It's figuring out those things because then you can place those things within your messaging. And then, when those things are placed within the messaging in the right place, then you will really get them. And until people are ready to kind of break past that next barrier of narrowing down, then they're going to constantly hit a wall because they're trying to sell a service that everyone else is selling and without that real personality driven and you don't have to.

Speaker 1:

By personality driven it doesn't mean you have to be out there, it just means that you have to be really secure into who you are and I explain it to people. Like, if you had a group of friends, I'm sure that there's someone in that group of friends that you go to when you're sad, or someone that you go to when you know that they can just help you, or someone that you go to when you know you need to have a laugh, or someone that you go to because you just need a night out with, because they'll make you feel really energized and forget everything. There's always someone within each group that holds some kind of you know status, and that's because we know that and we trust them and we have, we understand their personality. Now, from a brand perspective, it's very similar. It's like what kind of traits do you want to be associated with your brands? Because people are looking at your brand as an association. So what kind of expectations and what kind of narrative are you pushing out for people to then go oh, they're reliable, or they're trusting, or they're funny or whatever it may be.

Speaker 1:

Liquid Death do this really well. They're just water in a can if you really think about it. But the way that they have actually shaped their personality is that they've changed drinking culture. They've made drinking water cool. They've put it in a different product. They've just made one product that's been very oversaturated, and they've just done it differently. It's not a matter of doing the same thing better. It's a matter of doing the same thing different, and that's why we, as individuals, really need to step into the role of pushing the boundaries as to who we are, because it's people buy from people. People buy from the difference into who you are. And when everyone's trying to be everyone else at the moment, it's one. It's boring as batshit, but it's also it's just the same old thing. And when you're the same old thing as that person over there or that brand over there, then all that people will compare you on is a price check and you will become a commodity.

Speaker 1:

And so this is what I mean to understand culture, understand what's happening around you, figure out what people are feeling and then really align the messaging that you use to fit with the people that you know are your people and only speak to those people. Your messaging should repel people that you don't want. At the same time, it should attract people that you do. So if you say something and you lose a bucket load of followers, chances are you'll also gain a bucket load of followers that will agree with what you have to say unless you really cock something up. Load of followers that will agree with what you have to say unless you really cock something up. But you know, it's just a matter of understanding where they sit from a beliefs, value, and understanding your values, because not only are you looking at attracting customers, you're also looking at attracting a team or future staff that may go yep, I want to work there. And every time I see someone say that they have trouble hiring, I always say what does your brand look like from the outside in? Because if all you are is just another job application, then of course they're going to look at you as just another business to earn money from.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people these days are searching for more than that. They're searching for a culture. They want to know that somewhere where they work is friendly, it's flexible, it's family friendly for some, or it allows them growth and self-development, or they're working towards a bigger purpose than just coming to work to do a job. And unless they're buying into that, because you think of how much we are at work, it's such a huge part of our identity, so much so that when people introduce themselves. They're like, oh hi, I'm blah'm blah, blah, blah, and I do. It's almost like the first thing that you explain to people about yourself and your identity. So if their job the job that is so centric to part of who they are is shit, then you know they don't want either that they don't want to work there or b they're not going to feel very motivated to be there.

Speaker 1:

So internal culture is just as important as external culture, and it's understanding that value set, the messages that are going out, understanding the alignment and figuring out how you want to, I guess, control the narrative so that you're building a brand that is not only just selling a product or a service, but you've created something that can transition the product that goes underneath it. At the end of the day, your brand should be so secure and positioned in a specific place that you could just interchange a product or create something else. I always joke about it and say that if Taylor Swift came out tomorrow and started to sell a range of vibrators, that it would fly off the shelf and you know what it would totally be on brand for her too. No one would go oh, that's a bit weird. Everyone would be like, yeah, that tracks. So it's about making sure that you've actually positioned your brand not your product or your service positioned your brand in a way that gives you the flexibility and, I guess, the allowance for you to kind of transition things in and out, because you could just stop selling something and the brands can continue.

Speaker 1:

So we've seen brands that have gone out of business Blockbuster for one but people still know that brand. That brand still holds recognition, it holds nostalgia, it holds a memory, and that's what brand is. Brand is a memory, and so my message is for everyone out there that is just simply thinking business is business is that you need to really step up now and look at what is it that your brand is, how does it align to and how does it extend on the consumer's identity, because right now, what we're seeing is people really putting their money behind brands that stand for what they do, what they're about. This is the purpose driven movement. It's not even about having this big, amazing purpose. It's more about do they have a great culture? Because people are more likely to support someone that has a great team, or that they look happy, or that they feel that they're doing better for the world, and so that's why it's really important to know culture, to understand what's going on around you. It's actually not just about your industry, it's about knowing your customer inside out.

Speaker 1:

And I've said this to one of our clients this week when they were on a call and I said she was just talking about all of the things that she's doing within her business and Rebel came up quite a lot. I want to be bold, I want to be rebellious, I want to push the systems and challenge. And it was funny because I said do you see why you probably were drawn to us as a brand now? And she laughed and said yes, and it's important because that's the messaging that we've put out and we've worked really hard over the last 12 months to really reshape our positioning and it's right up until now it started to work and it was only when I went back through our previous clients, when I was looking at some kind of retention strategy, that I was like you know what? They're actually out of alignment now the clients that we really want to work with have only been in the past 12-ish months, which meant that the messaging that we pushed out 18 months prior working through and educating for the last you know during that time. That duration meant that what we've done has actually paid off and we've got the clients that we wanted to get, and we're seeing the work now come off the back of that, and so things will start to evolve.

Speaker 1:

Now We'll start sharing all of the stuff that we've been working on, but there is that awkward transition moment where you move from this into this and so you're re-educating a new market. At the same time you're almost letting go of the old one. So it's about figuring out who it is that you want to be, understanding your identity, because a lot of what we're going through at the moment is an identity crisis from a founder's perspective, but also an identity crisis from individual perspectives, and if the foundation of the brand and the identities that sit within it is rocky, then that's going to be portrayed outward and it's very interesting. The narratives that we're seeing at the moment led with emotion and what we're and I mean me as I deliberately being quite honest with what I've been going through, because I think that the emotion that I was dealing with at the time was really needed, because, as we were rebuilding, I wanted people to see that emotion, because we always see people from starting and they say that they go through a really hard period and then they get to the end and they go oh, I went through a hard period five years ago where I was in the shit and then everyone's like, okay, but I wanted people to see me in the shit and I wanted people to know what I was doing in real time to rebuild the business back up.

Speaker 1:

And it did take hustle and it did take work and it did take a lot of sacrifice and I got burnt out and I was tired. But you know what? It was fucking worth it, because where we are right now is on the rise again and we're seeing big changes and we're seeing that strategy come into play. And it's all about being patient and a lot of people don't want to be patient. But if you can have a look at your brand strategy and identify where there's gaps because I can guarantee you that a lot of people will have gaps after all of what we've just been through and it's just about sometimes shifting something and in my case it was a word and it made a sharp ton of difference and so sometimes, when you look at a rebrand or you're thinking about having to redo something, it's actually not maybe not be as bad as that sentence came out with. It's not as bad as you think it may be, and sometimes it could be just something ever so slight that completely changes the trajectory of where you're heading.

Speaker 1:

And a lot of the times you just need one person that sits outside of your organization to be able to identify that gap, because when you are in the shit it's hard to identify the problems. And so, yeah, we're working with someone externally on some of the things that we're doing. We're always up to giving the best person the job, so if we know that someone's going to execute something better than us, I will brief that person in to execute it, because, at the end of the day, it's all about making sure that that impression really matters and what we're trying to say really matters, and taking our own bias out of it to make sure that we're getting the best results, not only just for our clients, but for ourselves as well. And so, yeah, we're excited because we've invested in some places that we wouldn't have otherwise invested in had we had not rebuilt the foundation of and found the gaps. That became quite evident to us when we had someone else from the outside looking in. So I guess my message to you in this really long-winded approach of an episode, is need to be really aware of where culture is headed, understanding the behaviors of what's happening in society and how that's really influencing how people are making decisions, because people put their money where their heart is. It's a very good example of me explaining.

Speaker 1:

I know that people say talk about emotion, talk about emotion. But really what I'm implying by that is like, think about if you were to buy a house or rent a house, for instance, and you look at it on paper it sounds really good, it's in the right price range, it's in a nice neighborhood. From the outside it's in the right price range, it's in a nice neighborhood. From the outside it looks great, pictures look great. But then you get there and something feels off. You probably won't rent or buy that house because the vibes are off. And that's what brand is. Brand is really making sure that you understand that feeling and you set that right perception and if you're not getting it and nailing it, then people won't buy. So that emotion is really driven. It doesn't matter what logic comes into play about, but this is right on paper At the end of the day, if there's a few decisions and one feels right, people will always go with God.

Speaker 1:

And so that's, in a nutshell, is to understand consumer behaviors, to really understand culture and to understand the market and just be very cautious of the conversations that are happening within your community or within your scope, because if you aren't aware of that and people just kind of post or do something that's a bit tone deaf, then there will be ramifications or, you know, stagnation into the growth. But you know you could do something that's a blinder and find something really good within those communities or the conversations. It's so important to listen, to not just speak but to listen and understand and observe. One thing over the past 12 months I've been learning about a lot of is just to really adapt on the fly and just to understand that sometimes what you think is right may not always necessarily be right. And it was that when we were doing the brand lab.

Speaker 1:

Of the launch of the brand lab was that we actually had a whole bunch of clients come back saying that they didn't want to be educated anymore and they wanted to have more hands-on. And so I created a one-on-one coaching program or like a group coaching program with one-on-one elements of it, and that was actually what brought in the money. So it's just being very wary, being ready to change the plan and just be very observant of what's going on around you and focusing in on who your audience is and only speaking to them so that you can gain traction with them. And that's it for this week. What a long-windeded one that was, but I feel like it's a very important thing to speak about, as we're starting to watch alignments and people with, I guess, very strong values really start putting their money where their emotions are.

Speaker 1:

Um, and so it's now more than ever, it's important to know your audience, to know positioning and to really nail down on how you want to be seen, heard and felt, so that you then get the right people in for the job. So, as always, if you would like to have a chat or there's something that you would love to ask, just slip into the DMs on your one and only, or you can send us an email and get back to us via the links in our show notes. Until then, check to you 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.

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Tara Ladd

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