Latest / Online Reputation Management Podcast / Is Branding the Only Real Protection Against AI? Building Business Brands in 2026
Transcript
- James Dooley: Is corporate branding important? As we trying to build business brands, should we be spending more time and focus on this? Is this the new digital mode in the AI era? Would you be now trying to build out corporate brands? Craig Campbell: Me personally, I just don't like corporate brands. I think they're shitty, but uh I think overall corporate brands is going to argue that point. Uh I'm not very corporate guy, but yeah, I think absolutely, you know, for for everything you're trying to achieve from uh business perspective, whether you're trying to sell or whatever, building a big corporate brand brand and you'll sell out for 500 million or whatever it is, it's going to be massive for you, you know, that's a dream. Um and but, you know, building a big corporate brand is very similar to a personal brand, but also everything else that goes into SEO, building a corporate brand, you know, all of the data, the traffic, and everything else that we've already spoke about on previous sessions, all goes into that. Uh and and you know, even the CTR and all the all of that kind of stuff goes in to all of it, feeds into all of that as well. So, I think absolutely, you know, that the lock realistic goal uh for you if you were starting a new business would be to build an entity like that where you can off and and you know, retire with with a billion-pound buyout, hopefully, or whatever it would be. I think that would be the dream, and I think that's anyone's dream, isn't it? James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I would I would say is I'm like business branding, I quite like the idea of James Dooley personal brand is the founder of Fat Rank business brand. James Dooley personal brand is the founder of Promocell business brand. And trying to build the business brand out to kind of promote them back the personal brand. But I do get where you're coming from, and we've spoke about this off air with regards to you start looking at personal branding versus corporate or business branding. And like you look at let's say Elon Musk versus Tesla. And Elon Musk is way bigger than Tesla. Then you look at Richard Branson versus Virgin and Richard Branson is way bigger than Virgin. You're looking at Cristiano Ronaldo versus every single Premier League football club. He's got more followers than all of them combined. So the personal brands and what you've done with personal branding is insane and it can build businesses. But I still do try to score what can I do? And this is why sometimes I get FOMO shiny object syndrome and you're going what's the return investment of building that business branding as well. But I'm like trying to define that entity. Craig Campbell: But no, so here's the thing, no one's going to buy it till you come unless you James Dooley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not. I mean once I'm gone it's gone. I think anyway. So I think the right way is to build that and exit. You know, you've always got to have that exit strategy as well. So I think leveraging your pet like Cristiano Cristiano Ronaldo could go and launch a perfume tomorrow. You know, and it would blow massively and you know, using his personal brands. I think using your personal brand to leverage into that and with a view to potentially selling some of your brands off for you know, whatever and and taking yourself out of them because I think that's I've been stupid we are you know, I just ran into it because Matthew Woodward was doing the personal branding thing at the time. So it wasn't anything I thought about and then after that you know, you I've seen people selling agencies. I've seen people selling this, that and they've been able to detach themselves and and you know, it's the business that's been bought rather than the person. So I think you you are setting yourself up for a better future solely relying on a personal brand. But obviously Cristiano Ronaldo would also argue my personal brand is everything that it's it's made me what I am and I've built 10 other businesses. I mean he's probably involved in a lot more than 10, but whatever other business he sees involved in, he's leveraging his personal brand in a massive, massive way. And obviously guys at that level uh you know, they're probably going to be even richer dead than they are alive. You know, Michael Jackson whether uh the rumours are true or not, was borderline broke when he died. And and now because he's dead and the royalties and everything else and you you know, he's worth more dead than he is alive. So And I think the same will go for uh Ronaldo and stuff like that. But for us uh where we are nowhere near that level our personal brand dies when we die. So where do I go then? Like so with regards to now So we're saying that business brands is very important because if you're beginning with the end in mind you're looking to sell the asset, which is the the business. You want to build that business brand. So someone watching this that says, "Okay, well I've got my website. Is that Is that enough to have as a a brand?" And obviously we're going to be saying, "No. You need to build everything around it. Like the whole moat around who you are, what you do, and why you're freaking brilliant." And I think that repeating of the entity, so like I'll start off with citations, like business listings. Someone Every business that's got um an address should go and get as many name, address, and phone number NAP listings on the internet as possible repeating who they are and what they do with the NAP listing. What other things would you say for like entity stacking some people call it or trying to define the entity and improve the entity to build a business brand online. What other things would you be doing to try to grow the corporate business brand online? Craig Campbell: All that stuff like the knowledge panels, the you know, even just the the social platforms uh the podcasting platform like you Again, the list is endless. Like I think you need you know, you're going to throw all of that out because these are all assets to the business. So, you know, if you've got hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and everything else, your brand and that's adding value to your brand because you're not just selling e-commerce e-commerce store and everything else. You're saying, "No, we've got a mailing list of 500,000. We're also selling the social media that generates XYZ." That all adds to your multiple and and strengthens your position to sell that because you're not just selling the you know, the the profit and loss of of that business. You're you're selling other assets there that are only ever going to be able to grow if they're utilised properly. So, all of that kind of stuff you want to be building and and you know, like we both know, um whether it's a corporate brand or a personal brand, they're very very similar. You want your knowledge panels, you want this, you want that. Google needs those trust signals as well um cuz websites don't rank as well without a person or whatever behind these things. So, I think that those knowledge panels, those those just podcasting, feeding the LLMs and everything else that goes into that, you know, all the transcriptions and the stuff that you're doing with your podcasts, you know, it's all LLM feeding, it's all just future growth and future-proofing the business. James Dooley: A couple of things that's worked really well for me is getting the Crunchbase. That was a really really like powerful one. What another one is for each of my podcast series um on IMDb, not not only do I create the IMDb for me personally and the and for the podcast, I create the companies that I'm attached to as long as it's relevant to what the podcasts are about and the distribution and the distribution companies. Craig Campbell: Yeah. So, like on UK Lead Generation Podcast, I'm saying that FatRank is the distribution company and that then get creates a page on IMDb, which is a really trusted signal, and I can put same as schema, and I can link through to the Fat Rank website, and stuff like that. And then, if you're writing a book, you can have the company, whether it's Fat Rank or Promo Sherpa or whatever of the brands, business brands that I'm attached to, I could say, "Okay, that's the publisher." James Dooley: Mhm. Craig Campbell: And then that that's thing. So, I'm just trying to find different ways of how I can connect those nodes together and those entities together to try to Okay, that powers up that, which powers up this, and this is connected to that, and stuff like that. And I think it has very much changed a lot more into being like an entity-based algorithm. James Dooley: Yeah. It is like obviously if anyone doesn't watch what Dilly's doing, you see him cleverly getting people on podcasts and tying yourself to those people in that industry, you know, I always joke, you know, you're getting photographs with people, and I'm like, I don't know you think you're even like that guy. You're a Uh or woman. Uh Like because I'm tying this and tying that and mentioning them and linking them and do do do do and you're like, "Ah, right. I see exactly what you're doing here." Uh and I was only joking when I said I don't like that guy, but you're like, he's not really your pal, though. Do you know what I mean? Like, you're not doing this just because you're only mate, and you know, you're doing it for an Instagram post. You're like, "Ah, I see what you're doing here, and and you're joining all those dots, which obviously we know through Crunchbase, you know, LinkedIn profiles, social media profiles, IMDB, and everything else. You You're connecting all of those entities together and tying yourself to other people in your industry, you know. I know you're not friends with Neil Patel, um but would you have him on your podcast? You'd go, "Absolutely." Um because uh you may have already had him on. I don't know if you have. Craig Campbell: Yeah, but I have him on there. So, you go, right. I know you two are not mates. You don't You stay here, and he's in America. You're not boozing buddies. But why would you have him on? One, he's got a massive following, and I think he's a very smart guy. Two, uh probably probably more for you, going to untie me to him. Um so, you know, for me, from the outside looking in, I'm going to That's what this is doing. James Dooley: Yeah. Um cleverly doing it, by the way. Um and I I think that's Craig Campbell: Do that as well with businesses. You can like if you look up to a business and go, "I want to be like them." James Dooley: Mhm. Craig Campbell: You can with listicles and other things like that, you could be appending your entity to their entity. Which then starts within the That's a database and stuff like that. That he starts to make you more and more closer and overlap with the company that you want to look like. And I think it's key, I think connecting those nodes and stuff the entities together, I think is is really, really key for business branding. I think it's a And you've got to do it, and it's a slog. Again, it's not just that I I can't sit here and say do it, and you know, you can do it for 200 quid a month. All of that stuff takes, again, time, effort, manpower, you know, just being in podcasts with people that you might not even have anything in common with. You're like, any time I sit with that person, because they're a better person than I am. James Dooley: So, on that, I've spoke about that, like listicles and connecting yourself to other entities. To build a personal So, I'm sorry, to build a business brand or a corporate brand, would you recommend the business owners to be doing press releases over, let's say, awards that they might have won, reviews, or like that they just had a record month and stuff like that? For the business? Craig Campbell: Huh? Absolutely. You know, especially in the airspace, right? We can't put out a press release going, "Duly elected another week, Jim locksmith website." Whatever. That's not interesting. No one's even interested in reading that press. So, you know, you have to make up stuff like record-breaking months or stuff that's a bit more newsworthy and more exciting, And if, you know, it's it's inflated slightly or whatever, I think, you know, you always want to I'm not saying to do a press release every month or anything, but again, it's probably very very wise to do that and then you'll just get brand mentions and everything else out there and and you know, I think all of these things are hugely important for my Google trust and ranking perspective as well. So, you know, saying you won an award, saying you done this and saying you've done that is absolutely the right thing to do, especially in an industrial world where there's not a huge amount of exciting news with the stuff that we do. You know, you bought an old reading domain name, you've done some canonical abuse and done this and done that. It's not going to make the press. And you obviously you don't want to tell people exactly what you're doing anyway. So, it has to come from what else can we say? And in our industry, it's a lot of awards and other James Dooley: So, I've got a consensus one here. Like everyone that could split decisions of being like, what would you do here, right? So, business owners looking and they're saying, "Oh, you you're chatting on about reviews, testimonials, which I can get even though they're hard to get from my existing customers. I can get them on my Google Business Profile. I can build that part out. Case studies. I've got loads of case studies. I can get the before and after photos, attach the testimonial to that case study. Brilliant. I can build that part out." So, business owner says, "I can do all that, not a problem. But awards, majority of industries don't have awards being given out willy-nilly and just randomly in the post. You don't want to get a big trophy sent through going, "Well done, you're the best plumber in Manchester." Right? However, there's certain places where they might want to send you an email through and say, "Oh, we've got an awards night next Friday. For £1,000, you can attend and you get five people and you get a meal. And by the way, if you do buy this table, you win the best plumber in Manchester award." Should business owners be looking to do that? Because we know the importance of awards. And if you're not doing that, then you're not winning the awards, which then means for the part of reputation query finder, you don't tick that box. Craig Campbell: I I You know, that's what the Chambers of Commerce do. Do you know what I mean? That's the exact pitch they give you. Uh and you know, it's everyone who's paid for that table, whether it be a grand or whatever, that wins the awards. They're just not telling you that you're going to win the award. They They can't say that, but they're kind of saying it. And they you know, one from an SEO perspective, you get a nice link from a powerful website, which is obviously a good link. It would cost you a couple hundred bucks anyway. But the the PR and the other stuff that all goes round about it and the noise and social media and everything you get and the selfies at the awards and all that kind of proof that you were there and you actually won an award, even whether it's, you know, horse or not. Uh absolutely. Um I think that, you know, all of these things are important. It doesn't matter what industry you look at. You know, you've got the builders, the the SEOs, the you know, whatever is out there. And like when it goes to sports, at BBC Personality of the Year, I think the person that wins that every year is not got a personality, arguably. Um but it's nice for them to have a day out and and you know, everyone's spending a few quid and get nice new suits and get their selfies and the photographs and the red carpet treatments. It's a day out. Uh you know, for people to get drunk and network with our old sports buddies that, you know, that that was no what the and otherwise. But they're getting links, they're getting press, they're getting everything else that goes along with it. And you're going to take it, so it's no different really from niche to niche. Um so that that's kind of how I view it. And sorry for any BBC Sports Personality that might watch that. You may see, "No, that that's That's vendor acclaim." Even the Ballon d'Or, you know, they're all going to Dubai and swanking about there and all that. I know that probably do care less about the ego in football, but you listen that's another piss off, you know what I mean? And you know, it's it's never the right guy that wins it, is it? James Dooley: Well, I'm not even saying about Messi or or Ronaldo, but it's always debatable um with some of the other guys that won it. You know, that's quite a bit rigged. Somebody Somebody's got to slip somebody a few bob there or bought a bigger table or whatever it might be and Craig Campbell: Got the award. So, I'm kind of sceptical uh on James Dooley: But you would then for businesses though. You would actually be Craig Campbell: Absolutely. But then it's James Dooley: Yeah. But I mean I I don't know what I think I think you have to. I think that otherwise you don't get you're not getting the awards. And it's it's not you that's done the like they're basically saying we want you to attend by the way to have this table and by the way well you've won this award. It's not you've not done anything wrong. It's the award if anyone's done anything wrong, it's the award people that I I tell you what, I'll go one step further. See if there was no award in my industry, I would make one myself. Craig Campbell: Yeah. I'd just do the PR and get the likes. James Dooley: I think he's need he need to get get get your mum to award that you're the best SEO. Craig Campbell: [laughter] James Dooley: Yeah, I don't even know if she'd agree with that. Um but no, you see it happening and why not? Craig Campbell: Yeah, for sure. Anyway, hope you like the episode on business brands and is it important to grow out in 2026. There's another episode about is personal branding important in the blog section. Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure. Cheers, buddy.