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
Adapting Brands to Modern Cultural Shifts
Let's talk about the intricate impact of brand identity and the importance of adapting to cultural shifts to stay relevant. In this episode, I explain why understanding your audience's psychographics, rather than just demographics, is key to evolving strong brand associations. Specifically speaking to real-world examples and how the influence of current events and alignment of personal values drive consumer choice.
Visit https://youroneandonly.com.au/
Follow YO&O on IG https://www.instagram.com/youroneandonly_au/
Follow Tara on IG https://www.instagram.com/iamtaraladd/
Connect with Tara on https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarajoyladd/
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 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. Hey, hey, it's been a couple of weeks since I did the last episode and that's because I felt like there was a bit of noise going on everywhere and I thought you know what it's going to take. This could be a great conversation to have, as I've been discussing this a lot on the one and only Instagram page and having conversations with people over on LinkedIn, and it is about change, knowing your audience, but also about being bold, disruptive and changing the game with rebranding, but also knowing what rebranding actually means.
Speaker 1:So a couple of weeks back, we all witnessed the US election. I think this is a really good conversation to have, regardless of where you sit on the political fence, the algorithms that you would have funneled into, but we were seeing a lot of noise being made about Kamala Harris. We were seeing a lot of conversations around, I guess, alignments and support and celebrity status the back of that. We also saw Donald Trump, who has notoriously been the leader of what some consider a cult in America but also around the world for some weird reason. Sorry, you kind of saw my political alignment there, but the importance of that is he has always known how to target an audience. What happened in the US election was really interesting. We saw big support come from the other side but with we've seen support from both sides but what we saw there was he zoned in on the target market and he stayed to that target market and he kept consistent with what he said. And the thing about that is whether there's truth to what he says. There's a whole bias on illusionary truth effect, but whether there's truth to what he says is that when people hear something or feel that they're seen, heard and belong within a narrative, they will listen to what you have to say. And also when you speak to a big audience that feels somewhat neglected in the wider conversation, you will win them over from an emotional standpoint because they feel like they're being seen and heard in the narrative. So why that's important is because what we're seeing at the moment is a huge shift. We're going to move away from politics, because that is a touchy line. We're going to speak to the way that brand is changing and why it's so important for businesses to know what their brand is and what it stands for.
Speaker 1:And when I say brand, I'm not speaking to a visual identity. That is not a brand, that is a portion of a brand. If you want to crack out a Venn diagram, there are so many different attributes to that. You can skip back a couple of episodes and listen to the business. Best brand, best marketing conversation. But it specifically is, and the way that I would put it is your brand is the memory that is retained in your audience's mind. So, regardless of who you are and what you say, a lot of it all trickles down into the brand experience and the brand experience itself is personalized, it's individualized and every single person is going to have a different perception based on their interaction with your brand. So we're seeing things move into the personalization. We've seen this happen over the last few years, like it's happened.
Speaker 1:People want to be part of a group, part of a. It's a natural human instinct to be part of a group. It's a subsets. If you look at any cultural studies, it will talk about culture in general, subsets of cultures. And if you want to think about it like music and I think I've used this example before you would say music is the culture. Then you would have a subset of that would be rock music, classical music, indie music, and you know the list goes on. There's a stack of different genres and then you could go down into the subcategory of rock music, for instance. You could then subcategorize that and heavy metal, and you can have pop rock, and you know all of these different types of subcategories and eventually, if you're talking about rock in general, you could have two people from very, very different sides of the coin. So you could have someone that listens to screamo music, someone listens to soft rock, and both are extremely different types of audiences, or they may listen to both. Who knows? The point is, you need to be even more specific with who the audience is and how they feel like they align to your brand.
Speaker 1:Short message to anyone If you have a business, you have a brand. The brand is the association that people have of your business and it's up to brands to dictate that narrative and to control that narrative, and you do that with your brand identity. Now your brand identity tells people about who you are, what you do, what you're about, who you're here for, and then you speak to different marketing messages. So then you have your strategic, which is your long form, and then your tactical, which is how you get there. So think of it as I always use as an example your strategy is your marathon and your tactics are the things that you do to complete that marathon. So it's those goals across the board and it's the crossover between business, brand and marketing. But at the very core of everything sits your customers.
Speaker 1:Now I don't know if you've been living under a rock. No, I shouldn't say that. Everyone that is in the brand marketing space or in the business space would be, or in the car space would be very aware of the Jag rebrand, and if you aren't aware of it, I would highly recommend going and having a look. What I love about this is the reaction from people and it's human behavior 101. I am not a person to judge a brand identity on looks alone. That's essentially like saying that someone is an idiot because you don't like what they're wearing. And what people get really hell-bent on is the associations that that brand has and how that identity or visual identity connects.
Speaker 1:And so what we're seeing is the Jag rebrand completely removed the previous word mark and replace it with a rounded, very different styled typography. And it was interesting on the things that people were getting caught up on, like there's a capital G in a lowercase word and it's like, really, if anyone is watching typography in the brand identity space or in the design space in general, typography has been challenged a lot in terms of they are breaking every convention of what we consider to be the rule of what you can and cannot do with typography. People are distorting it. They've got capitals and lowercase, they've got wide text with skinny text or thin text and italics with, you know, block text. It's like people are really challenging that and it's because, as a culture, we're changing and we're needing to disrupt and we're needing to interfere and pattern break and these are how things are done.
Speaker 1:What's new has to be constantly changed and we're seeing things move so rapidly due to technology, due to, you know, I guess, information consumption. We are now we have information accessible at our fingertips at the split second where we could just Google whatever, like if we're watching a movie, you could crack open IMDB and you've got like the whole cast, and then you go down the rabbit hole of what that person's been in and all of these different things, and so you have this information just at your fingertips and so you're constantly being exposed to all of this different type of communication, all different forms of communication, and what we're seeing isn't a lack of attention, is what we're seeing is that you have to have something that's damn good to cut through, to grab someone's attention, which is why that instant hook is important and that visual hook is important, and showing someone's face is important, or that curiosity factor, or the intrigue and creativity disruption. All of these things are what are breaking the conformities of, you know, the pattern recognition of what people would normally see. So if they're seeing the same old shit, they're going to skim past it because it looks just like the rest of it. That doesn't mean that the content that you put out is bad, but it may mean that you need to level it up a little bit. And so what we're seeing is brands like JAG really shaking things up, and so I really love what they've done. There will be people that counter what I say but I really love what they've done, because I'm seeing this from an unbiased lens as someone that's in brand. I see a brand with years and years of legacy. We're seeing them completely cut the legs out from everything that they've done in the past and I believe that is highly intentional, because I think that their focus is on a completely new audience. I've been saying this across Instagram for I don't know how long, and across any of our workshops and masterclasses that people work in conversations that I've had.
Speaker 1:I think that they're really skewing the market. As we've seen, there's only one really big player in the electronic or electric vehicle electronic electric vehicle space and that's Tesla, and there are others that are coming into that. But yeah, we're really seeing that dominant figure there and I think that Jag are wanting to come in as, like, that sports car of that space and really rival Tesla in that. And what I think is really interesting is the dynamic of the approach. Product aside, right, they were losing big market share. If the brand meant so much to so many people, then why weren't they buying the car? Because it's kind of one of those things where you've got one and obviously that brand wasn't carrying through and that association of who they were wasn't carrying through, so they needed to do something different. I think what they've done is really bold, so they needed to do something different.
Speaker 1:I think what they've done is really bold. It's really daring and, regardless of whether it works or not, it's really shown people what it takes to make some noise. It is everything that is all across. I have Google alerts set out for all these different things and it has been filling my Google alerts for three weeks straight, and I think that this is a really interesting approach, because if they are targeting a new audience, and a completely new one which is what the Jaguar CEO said is that they're not really interested in targeting old consumers. It's kind of like, once you have one, you have one, but what they are targeting is a completely different market, which means that they need to shake things up and get really modern, and I really like the direction that they've gone in, and when people judge an identity based on the visuals, they are completely missing the point.
Speaker 1:A strategy takes a while to build. Now there are different strategies and tactics that you need to take into consideration, because if you do not execute well, it can tank hard. But I think and there are obviously some faults in the way that they've done something, but when they've, this is a brand that has years of legacy Having to do something. This ballsy is pretty intense, and I don't think that if it was a startup brand entering this space would it have had this much noise. I think because of the existing association and the reputation that they had regardless of whether you think the car looks good or not, or whether you think the identity looks good or not, they have created a bang. People are talking about it, people that don't even like cars are talking about it. You've got the marketing industry talking about it. You've got car enthusiasts talking about it, and now there are definitely some negatives, a lot more negatives than positives, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is what's, I guess, what everyone is thinking.
Speaker 1:So, coming back to what I was talking about, with the political alignment and the US election, we saw this big song and dance being made and a lot of things being said about the Kamala Harris campaign, so much so that people thought that that was the vast majority. And then what you saw was a total switch, a very different swing and a shock to a lot of people, because, when it came down to the action, it was very different to the narrative that was spoken by the large majority or the loud you know the louder version of it, and so what I want to say whether you know, whether you think that was right or wrong the interesting part of that is to watch people behavior, because people may say something in public but think something in private, but think something in private. That is very much how we act as people. So, as they always say, it's like market, with the fluffy message and the thing that people really like, and sell with the selfish desire, because, at the end of the day, people are thinking about themselves, even if it is for the wider scheme of things, you know. So they put themselves into the equation and their perspectives. Some people think broader in terms of other people, but they're still thinking about their perspective, their opinion, their narrative and what we believe in, what we're shaped by.
Speaker 1:All of these things shape how we make choice, and so this is something that I'm deeply invested in with behavioral science and why I continue to learn it and accreditate, certify myself in and get accredited in, because I really, really love this space, and the more I learn about people, the more I've learned to step back and just observe, because when you watch what people do, you can really see how people feel, and this is centric, like absolutely the core of what people need to be focusing on with their marketing messaging and their brand identity as a whole. When you're creating a brand identity, you need to be making sure that the people that you're positioning towards or you're targeting are the only people that you're trying to speak to. You can capture the outskirts of that, but you have to be really willing to eliminate people from the conversation. If you are going hard on a specific audience, that means that sitting on the fence can work, depending on which industry you're in, but if you're really there to make change and to have an impact, you need to make a choice.
Speaker 1:Now, some people call this niching, and I mean I used to call it micro niching. I'm not really sure I even understand the right terminology for it yet, but what we're looking at isn't necessarily niching into a specific topic. It's targeting a type of person. What type of person? So demographics are important, but psychographics are deeply important. What type of person is going to buy your stuff? What type of person sees themselves in alignment to your values and associations and wants to buy from your brand because it makes them feel something or it it creates a hey theutter. Then I don't edit this stuff either, by the way, just ramble on. It creates a part of their identity.
Speaker 1:And so when you're looking at so people buy. Who gives a crap toilet paper? Because it's sustainable, there is an alignment to giving back to the planet. It's feeling good, it's the you do good thing, it makes you feel like you're altruistic, it means you give and you like charitable, and then that is a core part of who you think you are as a person. So you lead by action. If you see yourself as a charitable person, you will donate to charities. Therefore, you will align to that. And there are people that will act in silence, and that's fine, but it's still who they are as a person and they will act and behave based on who they want to be.
Speaker 1:And this is something that's so deeply aligned to the way that we buy but no one really talks about. They talk about pain points and they talk about, like you know, pleasure points, but I genuinely believe that a lot of people don't understand the nuance of that. It's not just about what keeps you up at night. It's about what makes you the person you are. Why do you not want to be associated with that brand? To give you full transparency, I would never buy a fucking Tesla, and I say that not because the car's crap, but because I don't like the founder. There you've seen my political alignment. I don't judge anyone, but if we're talking about that, it could also be why I really like what JAG's doing, because it provides a polar opposite direction of my values and viewpoints. And so, emotionally and from a value alignment, and so emotionally and from a value alignment, I don't want to buy from Tesla because I don't feel like. I feel like a good person contributing to someone that I really despise. However, if there is an alternate to that, that's where my values align.
Speaker 1:And then we also look at identity stacking, so how you see yourself as a person and what takes priority. Some people will look at sustainability as the bottom line. Therefore, they may be able to push that you know that they don't like the founder out of their way to make that choice. However you may be all about, you know, inclusivity, which is very much where I stand, and diversity and equity, and then looking at that space of how that really matters and then steering down a very different path, because that's an opposite viewpoint from the founder. Now, some people don't think that deeply about buying at all, and this is what makes us all unique. But when we're as brands and we're trying to shape an identity, this is what is considered and why people spend big money in branding agencies to develop out an identity because it is a humanized attribute that makes people feel like they want to become part of that brand.
Speaker 1:If you want to build brand advocacy and loyalty, people do not commit and stay loyal to brands that are just ones that they don't emotionally connect with. So there's brands out there that don't heavily invest in the development of brand identity, or they may have a nice visual identity, but there's no guts underneath it that you know. This is what we stand for, this is what we do, this is what we're about and it doesn't have to be activism either. You know I've seen multiple different companies stand for things that or represent things that people want to buy from. At the moment, we're seeing a Woolworths strike with the distribution centers, and you know there are consumers that are now going. I'm not buying from Woolworths because they don't respect their staff, and people are moving to Coles or to Aldi. Personally, you'd probably want to go to Aldi because they're not one of the big people that were ripping off everyone during, you know. Anyway, that's a whole different conversation, but yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:This is where we're kind of looking at people, really looking at what they're spending their money on these days, because it matters, and so when you're developing an identity, it's about making sure that you're creating something that fits into the agenda of who you're targeting. So that can be not necessarily a demographic, that kind of comes into it into the equation, but it's definitely about creating the right perception and making sure that you're targeting the right audience in the right places in like making sure that you're understanding how they consume content, where they are, how old they are, like all of these things in terms of demographics matter, and then also then paring down what are these things that people really associate with us, what are the things that people are saying about us? And doing research, checking data. Data doesn't lie. People can say they hate something, but then all of a sudden, they're like following all of these other things. It's like when you're at school and you want to fit in with the cool kids and you'll buy something that may not be something that you like, but you buy it because it's in association of. If you buy this, you will be part of this group and hell adults do this. So this is a case of the tipping point and understanding how culture works and the early adopters.
Speaker 1:What we're seeing with JAG is going to be I'm just really waiting to see how this works because it could be this really interesting case of the tipping point. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this. It's obviously referenced everywhere, but it's like the early adopters are the ones that will invest in something because they think it can be something. This is where shares and investments and things like that. It's like the people that invest early are the ones that reap the reward when the reward wins but is high risk. That's the point. The lower down, the tipping point, like at the very beginning of the curve that's where the risk happens, because the majority of the think of it like a bell curve, right, like you're going. You're at the very beginning, like a rollercoaster. You're at the before the incline. That's the early adoption stage, and so that's when people start to look at do I, is? This is a risk If I do this. It may not work. No, it may not, but staying where you are is just going to see you rocking back and forth. So it's like what are you going to do?
Speaker 1:Jag, in this case, saw the fact that they were losing market share. They couldn't see a way out of it. There was something that they had to do that was drastic, and so what they did was they invested in making sure that they did something really drastic, and they did, and we're watching that identity now translate across the board. It works with their cars, it works with everything else that they're doing, and so this is why you can't judge a visual identity if you know nothing about where the brand's about to evolve from, because it will all make sense. I said this about Kia. Kia did something very similar Not as extreme, but still very similar and now, if you're looking at where Kia are today, that makes total sense as well, and so they've moved from that family-friendly, like cheap and affordable, into something that's quite stylish, it's very modern and yeah, and that's what it takes, and this is recreating associations.
Speaker 1:So what they've done is eliminated an existing audience to rebuild a current one. Doing it means that they sit on the fence in terms of risk with their current audience. Some may like it, some may not, but at least when we move forward there's some brand equity there that can be carried across from an existing Jag fan that would follow them until you know to the grave and that will have memorabilia everywhere. But you will piss those people off too. So there's it's a fine balancing act. However, you will take the ones that are future thinkers and want to do something and are ready for change, and then you'll have the ones that hate it and don't like change, and that's where it'll shift. However, they're still capturing some of the existing fan base that they have to carry through with the future of where they're heading. So I think it's really interesting on where they're going.
Speaker 1:But at the core of everything is understanding culture, it's understanding change, it's understanding the real emotional drivers, because it doesn't matter what anyone says, emotion always drives behavior. The hilarious thing is when someone says, oh, think logically. Ironically, it has to pass through the emotional center before people can think logically. It just must mean that when they're thinking emotionally that that decision that they're making maybe just isn't, as I guess, important or confrontational to them. But when we look at, I always say to someone think of it like this would you ever pay $500 for a bottle of water? People are instantly going not a chance, like, okay, but what if someone had your kid for ransom? And they were like, oh, without a doubt. All of a sudden that logical decision became an emotional decision and it was the emotional association that was tied to that choice that was tied to that choice that made that person spend that money. So this is why ransoms exist. Normally they'd be like a big F you, I'm not giving you any money, but hey, I've got your family member here. And if you don't do this, this is emotion 101. It's really important to understand how emotions work, how we act and behave. This is why I'm so deeply invested in behavioral economics, because naturally, we don't just choose by the standard formula. We do have a huge part of emotion.
Speaker 1:You know, I say to everyone if you wanted the housing prices to drop, everyone just needs to stop buying houses for a little while and watch that stagnate for a little bit. But the problem is, no one will do that, and so people keep outbidding each other and the prices go higher and higher and higher. And then we saw the same thing with the toilet paper saga. All of a sudden, you put a two-person limit, people go, oh no, it's running out. All of a sudden, you put a two-person limit, people go, oh no, it's running out. We're in the scarcity 101, grab everything you can. All of a sudden, people are buying two things of toilet paper when they barely even bought one a fortnight, which then created this knock-on effect of oh my God, well, if I don't get it, then I'm going to miss out. And then that's what created that thing. We had a paper mill here. We're never going to be running out of toilet paper. We had a paper mill here. We're never going to be running out of toilet paper, circling back to Woolworths, but anyway.
Speaker 1:So there is deeply embedded emotional choice in the way people will associate with your brand. So when it is being built out or when you are evolving it and brand is something that should be constantly evolving as culture changes your brand needs to change, and culture is changing really quickly. So this is where we need to get strategic and I'm looking at like dynamic ways of building out identities that can shift. So this is something that I'm heavily invested in with my clients at the moment and I'm watching it all play out really, really well. But at the very bottom of everything is brand story. How does the audience relate to you, how do they feel like they belong to you and how is that identity aligning with their identity in whether that's like social status, is it like feeling good, like you need to know the emotions that you want your clients to have when they're working with you and then you will absolutely knock it out of the park.
Speaker 1:The thing is, it requires effort and it requires work. Not many people want to do that. So to give you a full like, it's taken 12 months for you on and only to rebuild into the positioning that we're in now and, yeah, we're really seeing these benefits come through now. So, but that took a lot of reworking the narrative and figuring out what was working and trying new stories and making sure that we were repositioning and targeting a new audience and bringing in a new element of what we do, because human behavior is very centric to what we do in terms of psychology and assessing different ways of thinking and, as someone that's always been a high level thinker, it was about time that I brought that into the studio. So, yeah, what we're seeing now is that in action and we've been putting things in place for our clients. One of our other clients had doubled their income in six months. We're seeing people within our coaching program have hit their targets in three weeks.
Speaker 1:So it's it's sometimes it's all about validation as well, but it's the plan and it's the spending energy and time on the things that actually matter and making sure that sometimes it's not the content marketing Everyone's like make sure that your content's fine, make sure that your messaging's fine. There's actually a much bigger problem, not in terms of the, I guess, the extent of it, but when you're looking at an audience issue, which is, I can guarantee, most people have, and that requires work and research and understanding and listening and observing and all of these different things and interviews and when you nail that, then you go oh, I missed something here. Oh, wow, that now means that these types of people are over here, and then you all of a sudden need to shift your positioning, which means that you're no longer even in the same space that you were in before. So suddenly you realize your messaging it's not that your messaging wasn't working, it's that you were in the wrong place, talking to the wrong people. Your messaging. It's not that your messaging wasn't working, it's that you were in the wrong place, talking to the wrong people. And this is what is important about what we're building out with the laboratory. It's closed at the moment. Next intake is in February, but we're doing this in a three-part series, deliberately so that we can really expand what it means. So it gives you the ability to change and adapt as culture moves.
Speaker 1:So that was a um, just something that I kind of had a bunch of different things bottling in, but I wanted to make it like one podcast episode Cause I was like I could talk about this, I could talk about that, but at the very centric or at the very center of everything is people, behavior, the emotion and how that impacts what they look like, their identity as a person and then how that trickles through. Because at the very end, the business will only grow as far as the founder will, and if the founder isn't in charge, it will be someone who is in leadership in the decision-making. This knocks down into literally everything If that leader isn't in an innovative kind of growth mind. That's why creatives are always really good in a CEO space, because they're big thinkers. But you need those other people in the CFO spaces to reign them in.
Speaker 1:You want that really forward thinking, taking risk, doing things, calculated risk, doing things that will, you know, align to the plan. If you know the end goal and what you want to do, like, stick to it. Stick to it hard and go for it, because it will be uncomfortable, there will be bad things that can happen, maybe not, might be fine, but it's important to know the direction, because at the moment, most people are just changing their strategies to kind of fit to a pre-existing, you know, strategy that they built out five years ago, or they have no freaking idea how to actually build out a strategy, which is nine out of the ten times you start a business. It goes well, it grows, and then all of a sudden there's problems, whether that's a hiring problem, an internal culture problem, all of these things narrow down to brand, because the internal and external branding is a thing as well. That's's a whole podcast episode, but that's what I wanted to touch on today. So, yeah, I will evolve this out, because the evolution of branding is like we're in the thick of it. So because it aligns with culture and that is going through some huge societal shifts.
Speaker 1:So, if you have any questions because that was pretty heavy I'd love to hear them. You can slip into our instagram, dms, or if there's something that you want to ask, I'm happy to create a whole podcast episode on something that you are interested in, um, and giving that a good crack, or bringing in someone that can that can answer that question. So don't hesitate to send something in if you want it answered. Until then, I will chat to you next week. Actually, I will chat to you next week. See you later. 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.
