Brand and Butter
The straight-talking branding podcast for leaders who refuse to settle.
Brand and Butter delivers no-BS advice on how psychology, strategy, and design create brands that work. Host Tara Ladd, founder of Your One & Only brand design studio, breaks down the real influence and power of branding – how understanding behaviour and cultural shifts can transform how people see, think, and choose.
Sometimes funny, always honest, never dull. This is the podcast that cuts through industry jargon to talk about what actually makes brands stick.
Tara Ladd is the founder of Your One and Only, who design brands that breathe with culture through psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
Psychological Blind Spots are Killing Your Business Revenue
Most businesses aren't failing because of poor products but because they've become strategically invisible to customers, suffering from what I call "Same-Shit Syndrome" where brands blend together in consumers' minds. Psychological blind spots create a knowledge gap between what business owners see in their brands versus what customers perceive, making strategic repositioning essential for standing out and surviving in changing markets.
Episode mentions:
- Watch the Selective Attention Test
- Watch the Old Spice Ad: The Man Your Man Can Smell Like
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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 brand and design agency. You're One and Only hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. We're talking about similarities with brands today, or the same shit syndrome as our next real world show, but it's really speaking to. The reason why most brands are invisible and that is the core thing that I want to discuss today is distinctiveness, blindness. That's the whole thing. Real world brand confusion, brands that broke free, and then we'll also give some tips at the end. So I thought I'd give you a little bit of an insight as to what I'll be speaking about today, because I kind of ramble, but they're the main parts. So the biggest thing that is happening right now and it might sting a bit is that most businesses aren't failing because their products are crap. They're failing because they're well invisible Not physically invisible, but strategically invisible, obviously. But to give you a bit of a win right, there are so many brands that have been stuck in this position before, like that, but the reason that they're able to get out of it is because they sink into the messy middle, and a lot of people aren't willing to do that, because with that comes swallowing of the ego a little bit and and there's also the fact that you may need to outsource or that you are just looking in the wrong spot.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I know quite well is the repositioning phase. It's something that I've always really dived into. We have a lot of people that have come to us in the past and want to refresh or revise, and especially when we've come from that space of you know, I've been in brand for 18 years, but we went through the GFC and then, obviously, we went through the evolution of online and everyone needing to adapt their brand in the modern era. I put in adverted commas back in the day, but now it's a newer, modern era which we're in the same kind of shift, right. So that's why people are feeling really lost is because we're shifting into a new era and with that comes change, innovation, all of the things Usually comes a lot of loss of business that fail to adapt and a lot of growth of business that innovate and tap into the next best thing.
Speaker 1:So there's always, if I ask someone, I'm like, how are you different? They always think that they're different, but to everyone else the common knowledge of any other consumer, they couldn't tell you apart from the bar of soap. And it's really about finding something that gives you that difference, so that someone can clearly articulate you being different from someone else. You probably think your brand stands out, as I said, but your customers just can't tell the difference, and so that's what we're trying to do today is break down why this happens, show you some examples of brands that have done it before and break free, and then give you some ways that you can have a look at doing it yourself. So when we look at the psychological blind spot that's killing your brand or brands and there's a lot of people going through it at the moment we need to look at it like the way, I guess, parents can always pick their kids out from a group like a baby, where, to everyone else, they all look the same, and that's happening with your, especially if they're twins right, but that's happening with your brand. So you see all the details, all the uniqueness about it, but to the everyday eye they just cannot see that, and the reason is is because it's knowledge gap, right? So you know all of these things that you've done, all of these intricate details, all of the nuance of creating that space, it's all of the emotional value, but your customers and your audience just can't see that. Well, they just see another baby, right. And so it's really just diving into how we develop blind spots about our own distinctiveness or, the way I would say is your differentiation.
Speaker 1:When I ask brands or businesses when we start working together, or even people in the street that you know ask me questions in the street, just hanging out on the street, no, like if I go to a networking event or someone wants to ask me a question, a lot of it comes from how do I stand out or how can I make impact, and I really just come down to the fact of saying why did you start your business in the first place? And there'll be a bunch of different reasons and people will give them to me and it's usually there that there's a difference, but a lot of it comes from that internal work of finding why you started. Why did you start a business that you could have bought like the service or product from someone else? What gave you the idea that you could do things differently? And this is why money doesn't always work, because you'll just become a commodity. And everyone knows that a business is way more work than just making money and it requires a whole bunch of effort and a whole bunch of passion, especially if you've inherited it. That's where the original passion comes from, and unless you develop that passion as well, if you're the second owner, it can kind of fall to shit as well. If you're a second you know the second owner it can kind of fall to shit.
Speaker 1:There is a study and it's called the, I think, the selective blindness test. I will drop it into the show notes, but it's a team dressed in white basketball gear and a team dressed in black basketball gear and they're throwing a ball around and they ask you to count how many times you can count that ball. Naturally, you start count how many times you can count that ball. Naturally, you start counting how many times and at the end they go did you count X amount? I think it was like 17 or something, and you're like, yeah, I did. And they're like, but did you see the gorilla walk through? And you're like, wait, what? Sure enough, you rewind it and there is a person dressed in a gorilla suit that walks dead, smack bang in the middle of the frame of the camera and walks out. You just completely miss it, and the reason is because you're focused on something else, that it just blends into the background, and that's just what happens.
Speaker 1:We select out those things because it's just not catching our attention, and this is why everyone's feeling really same-sy. It's the same shit, repurposed, done again in a different way, with someone else's brand name on it, and no one's seeing any distinct difference. No one's seeing any real element of. I need to choose them, and so then we all become a commodity, right? So it does come down to these core differences that make you stand out, and they're usually in a lot of different places.
Speaker 1:What we seem to do is feel that what we're showing internally is portrayed externally, and this is the biggest problem. This is the knowledge gap. You have all of this information that you know, but people don't know that. You know that they don't know anything. So it's really what you're saying, how you're showing up and what you're doing over and over again. That is going to give those people that trust building mechanism to know that it is that you, that it's you that they need to be choosing. If you're not showing up, they don't know what you do, they don't know you personally, they don't know you from a bar of soap, and so it's up to you to showcase those differences. Internally, we're always going to feel that we're worth more, and externally, they're going to feel like you're worth less.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing as if you were to sell a house. The house you always want to sell for more. A car, whatever you always want to sell it for more than what the buyer wants to buy it for. And the reason is is because there's emotional alignment, there's emotional connection with it. So when you have a house, it's full of memories, same with a car. But when you sell it, that person isn't getting those memories. They're going to create their own memories.
Speaker 1:So they're seeing it at face value, and that's something that we need to think about when we're doing our own stuff, because we're biased, we seem to think that we know things and we can completely miss stuff, which is why we need to talk to our audience all the time. We need to talk to our customers. We need to get feedback and not just sourcing it from places that are going to give you the things that you want to hear. It's genuinely listening to people that are giving you advice and figuring out ways that you can embed that into the changes that you have if you want to grow, because if you do not do that, then essentially you will just die out. What will happen is that people will stop using you and if you can't service the need that they want especially if they're a prime audience you'll die out. It's that simple. They will go somewhere else for the thing that they need and you simply won't get their business. And that's the cost of blending in.
Speaker 1:It's basic brand recognition and recall. It's how frequently can someone identify your brand? How easy do you stand out? This is obviously why visual identity is important, but alongside that, the visual identity helps to attract. But the visual identity isn't what keeps someone around Once they've seen it cool. It's the brand experience. How are you treating them? What systems do you have in place? What's that end-to-end process like? How do you eradicate any issue? All of this type of stuff is what creates that memory. I've used this example before. It's like going to a restaurant having a really bad experience, and they might've had a bad night, but that's the only thing that that person is going to remember. That customer that went there and had a really bad experience is going to remember that bad experience, regardless of how many great experiences you provided others all of the nights before. And so each individual is different and it's up to you to make sure that you're setting that precedent. And it's hard right. That's the point. It's hard right. That's the point. It's costing real money every time a potential customer can't remember which business was yours after looking at three websites, or they don't want to go back to your business because you simply just did not address their needs.
Speaker 1:One of our clients the digital picnic now, they already had this conclusion already, but when we were speaking to them, when we branded them, we found that they were just such an inclusive business. Their culture, everything that they stood for, how they showed up, what they spoke about, the narrative by the way, all of these things helped to contribute to their overall brand presence, their brand image as a whole, their identity in terms of their visual identity, helped to identify them, obviously visually, but it was their conversations, their stories, the way that they wrote it was the way that they did their imagery, their illustrations that we now evolve out over time I've got other freelancers now evolving those out but they came from an original place of what that brand stood for at its core. All of the things that make them distinguishable from someone else do not come from the fact that they do digital marketing. That's their service that they provide. What makes them stand out is who they are, they provide. What makes them stand out is who they are. They know that.
Speaker 1:The conference that I went to and I speak about this often it created a safe space for neurodivergent people, and so that was the commonality that they took away. That was the recognition. This is a safe space for neurodivergent people. This is someone that is changing the game in the way that neurodivergent people show up in the world and how they run business and how they changing the game in the way that neurodivergent people show up in the world and how they run business and how they can be treated in the workplace, and all of these things are what created their point of difference and now they are so recognized for that space and Odette from Odette Co helped to push the PR out for Cherie on that, and they have absolutely owned that space, and rightly so, because, well, she is doing a great job. Cherie is in that space, but the whole team itself are full of amazing, creative people and that's what makes them different. They're diverse, they have great thinking, they do things differently. They're not the same, they're not trying to be the same, and that's what makes them stand out right.
Speaker 1:And when we look at this from an outsider's perspective and you're trying to look at working with an agency, you're going to find someone that resonates with you from a deeper level of just. I need to get this done Now. If you're not neurodivergent, then obviously that won't mean too much to you, unless, of course, you may have a neurodivergent child or a neurodivergent family member, or you are very inclusive in the way that you conduct business and you have morals or something that you want to align with your values, you know. And so that's when you will start to look into a much deeper emotional meaning as to why someone would choose that brand. And that doesn't mean you have to have something emotionally driven, but it's usually the reason. But to give you an example of. It's not a brand but more of a mission.
Speaker 1:That was the Australian government's stance on smoking. They did a huge job on changing our perception on the way that we saw smoking in Australia. So they managed to change the whole behavior around the way that we saw smoking, and it was a long-term thing, but it just goes to show this is what we consider choice architecture, by the way, it's framing things so that we're pushed into choosing a certain option, and this is persuasive tactic. But it's been done. It just goes to show that they can do it when they want to. But what they did was they changed the behavior around it, right? So first they changed the packaging of the cigarette packets. So they took the packaging, the branding away, so there was no I've got a pack of weenie blues, which was back in the day with us that simply just didn't exist anymore. They replaced that with cancerous and you know smoking kills messages. They put images of like gangrene feet and um, gross images of what smoking can do to you. They put warning signs around everywhere. Um, they, that was just that, right. That was just that part.
Speaker 1:What they also did was change the behavior around how people saw smoking. So in pubs and clubs they banned that around. You know, indoors smoking was banned. They banned it around food. They then also changed the way that we engaged with smokers. So if you were a and I put in adverted commas a social smoker, it was no longer social to smoke because you had to walk away from the social gathering in order to have a cigarette, and that was walking outside like you'd done something bad. Eventually that that changed. That changed the behavior. People's um smoking habits dropped off. It was a rapid, rapid decline. In fact a lot of other countries followed suit and it's pretty crazy when you live in a country where they don't allow smoking and you go somewhere where they do, you really notice the difference.
Speaker 1:But they tapped into so many psychological triggers into the way that we now see things. So we don't look at smoking as being cool anymore, like they did in the movies where you know, if everyone remembers grease, it was like you know, cigarette flicked down on the ground, toe in the ground, like rub it into the dirt. You don't see that anymore. You barely see smoking in movies. It's, it's not seen as a, as a cool status symbol anymore, and and so smoking changed. It's. It's actually without even realizing it. We see these things happen and it's just so unconsciously done that it's easy to shift how we think on the smallest actions.
Speaker 1:Now, a brand that I really love to reference because one it was cool, it was like one of the viral campaigns that went around back in the day, but that was when Old Spice transitioned from their old to their new brand and it was done so well. They originated as, like this old hat, very gentlemanly-like, gentlemanly, that was a mouthful. But they completely shifted it and obviously their sales were declining and they wanted to kind of re revitalize their brand, one would say. And they completely changed who they targeted. So instead of targeting pale style male, they decided to target women. Now, I don't know if you've seen the ad, and I hope you have because it's such a cool ad. It is the men your man can smell like, and I will link you to the ad in the show notes.
Speaker 1:But they completely shifted the perception. They used a different way of filming, they made it fun, they used a really buff African-American model who was very good looking and it was like this is what your man can smell like, and then there was all of these things that women love. It was like I'm on a horse. You know, here's some diamonds. It was really interesting and well, not all women, but most. And then, yeah, it was. They created this really funny kind of quirky way of and they reshifted their um, their identity, visually and they changed the perception to make it more visible and more memorable, and their results were massive, like they had such a great. I can't even give you the stats, it's not in front of me, it's just off the top of my head, but yeah, they had a huge uptick off the back of that and it became like an ongoing series. They were able to then repurpose that, that content or that creative campaign, to do more work with it, and it was just really cool.
Speaker 1:But there's like the common elements in a successful repositioning is, at the end of the days, is the audience. If you don't know who the audience is and you're not understanding what they're actually needing, it doesn't matter how good you think your product is this is where your emotions come in. You could think it's the best damn thing in the world, but if it's not good enough or you haven't sold it enough to your audience, they simply just won't buy it. So you need to understand the psychological principles that are at work, just won't buy it. So you need to understand the psychological principles that are at work, more so the biases at play, but understanding the cultural societal narrative that's at play and figuring out ways that you can tap into this or bring your brand into the conversation. And so these two are obviously different case studies here.
Speaker 1:One a brand, consumer brand. One I mean smoking was still a consumer brand, but it was more the government shifting a behavior. But they completely changed how both were seen. And that was done through research and understanding and listening and conversation and aligning to the social narrative. Aligning to the social narrative, aligning to the societal narrative. Culture had changed. People weren't smoking like they were, so they needed to shift what that was because obviously it was a huge impact onto health, probably selfish from the government, knowing they could have done it years ago, but knowing that it was probably costing them more that they were making and they needed to shift it. But that's essentially it right. So we saw the government change smoking. We saw that they shifted from smoking is bad or smoking is cool to smoking is bad and all of the social alignment to that completely shifted, shifted.
Speaker 1:We saw old spice change. They went from old, original dad deodorant positioning to fun and humorous and quirky modernized brand, which obviously at the time, you know doing that type of animation. It's very similar to dollar shave club actually. So, yeah, it was. It was pretty cool, uh, in the way that they did that and it went uber viral because it was just a, it was just a funny ad to watch it. They made it entertaining, very similar to the way that they would do it today.
Speaker 1:And so it's knowing that when you find out the reasons for doing these things, they're not. They're not massive ideas if you really think about it. These I mean expensive at you know, but when you're looking at things and there was like policy and things that needed to be done there but if you're looking at it from Old Spice, I mean they obviously had to do a rebrand, but what they also did was just shift the audience. They went okay, these guys aren't buying our stuff, so let's focus on the women. They're the prime buyers of the household still are, by the way so let's shift it there and, lo and behold, it made a difference.
Speaker 1:So sometimes it's not that you're doing it wrong, it's that you may be looking in the wrong places. So how do you know if you're suffering from, I guess, same shit syndrome, as I called it before? So what can you do about it? So there's ways that you can put your brand out there and see how others stack up against you. What are you saying? How are you saying it? Is it different? What tone do you have? What personality do you have? Are you saying are you doing the same things? Do you have the same service offering? What is it that makes you stand out? At least stack up a couple of your competitors and do a you know, a decent analysis there, right, and get someone who doesn't know any of the brands and ask them to give you feedback. And if they can't tell you apart, then there's a problem. But then there's also, like the positioning contrast exercise, right. So you go.
Speaker 1:While most businesses in my category focus on common approach, we focus on different approach. If you can't fill this in, you need to rethink your positioning, because if you don't know why you're doing things differently, then your customers certainly won't, and that's an issue. So that's what we need to be looking into. I think there's so many people selling these marketing gimmicks at the moment and it's really just, it's not that you need to do things massively differently, it's just that you need to kind of reposition because everyone's changed, like everyone's gone through a reposition. We've gone through our own reposition over the last two years and you need to revisit these things. It's important.
Speaker 1:But if you're sitting here thinking, well, how do I do this, we have a five-day email series at the moment called the Gap Strategy, a five-day email series at the moment called the gap strategy, and that will give you the four core parts that we dive into in breaking apart a positioning strategy, so some core elements that you might find and see the opportunities for you to tap into. And you'll be so surprised with this. The feedback I've had in the email has been from the email. I should say has been huge, so stoked with that. But yeah, jump in the show notes, you can go and download that. It's super effective. It just makes you think differently, right?
Speaker 1:Sometimes you get stuck in that same train of thought and you're like how do I do this? And then someone goes well, why don't you try this? And you were like great idea, didn't think about that. Very similar well, why don't you try this? And you were like great idea, didn't think about that very similar. So that's it for today. Um, we will be slipping in over the next few weeks, diving deeper into positioning, because we think that this is important and we obviously have something coming out soon that can help you in this space. But for now, we will chat 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.
