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Transcript

9/21/26 #ContentChat: Brand As Critical Infrastructure · #ContentChat

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone and welcome to Content Chat.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Erica Heald, and today we're going to be doing a deep dive on one of the count content foundations that wasn't covered in my book.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was alluded to, it's adjacent, but it was not a chapter in the book because, frankly, this is not my area of expertise.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why, as our guest today, I have Jennifer Cronin, a former colleague from Charles Schwab, who is a brand aficionado, a brand strategist, and somebody who has a little bit different way of thinking about the brand that really resonates with me.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we are having her on here today.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, first of all, Jenny, thank you so much for being our guest.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very excited about our conversation today.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad to be here, and it's always nice to catch up with you, Erica.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, before we jump in, um, I'd love it if you took a minute to kind of introduce yourself and share a little bit about, you know, what led you to brand strategy, which, you know, can feel in some situations can feel a little bit ambiguous.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like what made this your life's work?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because at this point, you spent more than 20 years both, you know, in-house, agency, and on your own um working on this.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So love to hear it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well one way to enter into it is that I was an art history major at in college.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I love the idea of taking an object and thinking about all the things that inform it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: What the means of production, why the color blue, all the symbolism, all the meaning that goes into this finished thing.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think I've always thought about a brand or a company or a process, a service as that thing, but it's informed by so many other things.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the better we're able to articulate those other things, the better we're, the more clarity we have about the ingredients, the better the final product will be.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so after 20 years, 20 plus years of working at different places, um that meets the advent of AI.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, I don't want to just read about it, I want to try it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna build what I wish already existed.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was the way in.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: None of this is original except for the combination in which it's put together now.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's all and your book covers them very well.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: You did yourself a disservice.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of good ingredients in there, but this is my recipe.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's so interesting because a lot of the discourse around AI is around, you know, oh, it's so terrible because it's ruining writing, etc., etc.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like so many folks are missing how it allows those of us who've been in, you know, have 20 plus years of experience to take all those things we've written, all of the conversations we've had, all of the workshops we've presented, to take all of that and turn it into a tool that helps people in their business.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that's what you've done with um your new offering, Truefold.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: I I really have.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Truefold, well, just say naming is an art and uh Truefold, think of it like origami, all these things fold together to create a shape.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um but that really came out of saying what let me put it this way AI will give you lots of good enough, but you have to have the experience to know what is the best right thing and what the goals are.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so if to the uninitiated, it seems like it's done in the first draft, and it is never done in the first draft.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: So and I think of AI as, and I often yell at it and and caps, you know, I am the human, you are, you are the tool.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: When it will suggest that I do something that it should do, it should do the filing.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: If I update a sentence on the brand on a page, that needs to go through all the way to the personas.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to open up 15 documents to update this one line that we decided.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: I want the tool to take care of that for me so that I can keep figuring out the best way for this company or brand or whatever to involve.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: The whole point is it's there to assist you in doing your branding work.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not taking over, it's taking away the tedious work that you would have had to outsource to someone in the past and then spend a bunch of time double-checking it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's the whole point.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, save me the formatting.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm happy right there.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I do like uh the ability to um sort of test different scenarios as well.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's a huge time saver, and I feel like I can say what if, and I can get a lot of answers, and then I can kind of decide what's right for a particular brand.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you recently wrote that people assume that they're aligned and that they already agree on the brand, but in actuality, you know, sometimes there's sometimes it is really just a semantics issue where they're using different words and they really are seeing this the brand the same way, and then other times the they are using the same words and they mean completely different things.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So how do people know if they are actually aligned when it comes to the brand?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's really interesting.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think the higher the elevation, the higher into the C-suite you are, the more people are saying, Well, we're all just saying the same thing.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then the brief or whatever comes out, and the people below are saying, that's not the same thing at all.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Or back to the ingredients analogy, yeah, it's two cups of flour, not two cups of sugar.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are we going to emphasize here?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's a I I've noticed it so much where people when things start to get a little tense, like maybe we're gonna discover that we're not aligned and this brand is at a flexion point about where we're gonna lead with this or that, they'll say, you know what, it's all the same thing.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's because truthfully, they are using a lot of the same words.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: But the emphasis and the priority of those words is what can really make a big difference.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I just worked with a nonprofit that that came out loud and clear.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Everything they said was completely um perfectly well said and could have been any nonprofit in the world.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And when they wanted to stand out about what they did, they were worried that it might um alienate some people.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I had to be there and say, that's good, because we don't you want people for whom it doesn't alienate to support you even more because they know what it is.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: But those are hard discussions because everyone wants to get along.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think it all comes from a good place.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't think anyone's has an evil plan to make brands complicated.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've worked with some folks that it was evil plans.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was evil plans.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna say that I I've heard a phrase about a blue about the color blue not being affluent enough or anything, but I've definitely, definitely worked with some quirky folks.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, you're right.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Their heart is usually in the right place, but they don't want to offend people, they don't they want to differentiate, but they don't want to stick out, and they want to align on that brand and just move forward with it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, how do you actually get them to figure out what the differences are and if they are meaningful?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes they're not, sometimes it is just semantics.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is just, oh, you're right.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: We do have to emphasize this particular brand value or brand trait when we're doing this kind of a project versus that other kind of a project.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that my process, so true fold is uh it's a process with an engine underneath.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: So my process, I have a pretty robust intake form, and it's not like I give it to them and say fill it out and we're done.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I am extracting that information and maybe having to ask questions in ways that aren't on the sheet just to get at what they're really hoping to say.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, I went to a board meeting and there were eight people in the room, and the first question was, how do you explain your company?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: And everyone looked at the CEO and said, I don't know, how do we?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think they were it was just a moment of that was exactly why we were there.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: And luckily they were very open to it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: But it's kind of saying, if we don't in this room can't say it one way, and I think this comes back to AI.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think AI is, if nothing else, a great amplifier.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have chaos, you will amplify chaos.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: The idea of how to get aligned before you spend a dollar on a new site or a new hire or a campaign or even an SEO search.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: What do you want to be known for?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: It starts to make a lot of sense.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're talking to the CFO, that's all she wanted to hear.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna save some money before we spend money.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you're talking to a founder, it may be all in her head or she may feel like you know, the this one woman I work with, and she's like, Well, I wear a button that says what we do.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: So people just ask me at the grocery store.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, that's not scalable.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's adorable, but it's not scalable.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: So how do we if you want to reach this amount in this time, you're gonna need approximately 14,000 buttons.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of I like to think of it as a keto.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sort of working with their own energy to get to a place that everyone can agree they want to be.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: We want, you know, to generate$2 million next year, and everyone's clear on that.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: How are we gonna do it?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: Then we start working our way in.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that and that's the difference between looking at it as being as the brand being this critical infrastructure that is foundational to everything the company is doing versus it just being, you know, the arts and crafts department and what colors you use.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, oh, this is our logo, isn't it beautiful?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And something that you just add on top that you slap on top after the real work is done.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but that's a pretty big change, you know.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: How it's a big change.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not an easy sell because this real work costs money too when all they want is a website or a logo.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I specifically don't do visuals.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: I work with people who do, and I have a great like pipeline.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm happy to recommend people, but those visuals aren't going to get done in my world without a brief.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the brief isn't gonna be written until we have a marketing plan.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the marketing plan is not gonna be written until we have a brand kit, and all those things need to inform each other so that I could hand that brief to five different people and they're all gonna get the same input.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna know the tone, they're gonna know the mandatories, they're gonna know the personas, all of that.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's not it's not brief as creative writing, it's brief as synthesis of what the brand kit and the marketing plan created.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: So um, when you're talking about your brand kit, what does that actually include as far as brand guidelines and messaging and and some of those other kinds of traditional uh marketing elements that frankly, despite being traditional, you go in, and too often organizations are running ahead and they're doing a bunch of marketing and communicating without that employees.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they're not able to measure it because of that wasn't built in as well.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: So there are 15 elements in the brand kit.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, as I said before, this is what I wish it existed the whole time I was doing this work.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: And even when I recently did this work for um a great company, I learned a lot about how I would do it differently again.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: And AI AI is just such a game changer.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so, I mean, it starts with a brand on a page.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Can you fit your whole brand into one page?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: What it is, what it does, who it's for, why it exists, what makes it unique, um, and support points.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a tagline just on a page?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: But beyond that, we can go into the bigger brand discussion.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Then there are things like a competitive, the two by two I really like to do to find out where you stand as an only, where you can claim only.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that is usually very eye-opening because then they're like, oh my gosh, we have to say that thing we were worried was gonna offend people, because that's the only way we will stand out.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Not offend, but it's a little scary to leave the fold, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then I do a lot of work with personas um to understand not the monolith, but what is the range of people you're gonna be talking to and at what stage.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I have messaging that comes out at the top of the funnel all the way to the retention and um uh recommending you to others.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: So four phases of the funnel with let's just say three personas.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: I I size it small, medium, large.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm sort of just speaking generally here.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: And also a messaging house, which I put on a page.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: I imagine I tell them there are two pages I want you to print out and hang on your desk.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: So analog.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's the brand on a page and the messaging house on a page, because beyond that, um you kind of have what you need.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's a lot, and you cover this so well in your book, but with brand voice, not just saying playful, but what does playful mean to you?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And what is a good example of it, and what is a bad example, the do's and don'ts people really respond to well.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, I think that's it on the top of my head, but with 15 elements that all build upon each other.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: So the first four is a gate, and once we get past that gate of the sort of positioning, who it's for, what it is, that's what I call locked.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then I moved on to the next about the personas and the messaging, and then that's locked, and then we talk about the brand voice and things like that.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: So again, it's just it's just the massive Lego structure, all comes together.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love the idea of asking people when after you've done this work to print it out and put it up where they can see it in their workspace, because so often you'll spend all this time, all of this money putting together this kind of a brand kit, and then it goes and it dies somewhere, usually in a SharePoint instance.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's a place where lots of things die, or in a Google Drive folder, and then no one ever sees it again, or worse yet, it is hoarded by the C-suite who never shares out all that documentation to the people who need to do all of the work.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, data purgatory uh or cemetery, depending on where it ends up.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think of it as again to go back to the ingredients.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: If the ingredients are good, I the recipe becomes the brief.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think it does.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't expect anyone's the last one I did was 30 pages long, and I mean it was a work of art, but I do not expect anyone's gonna be like, oh, I get to read that again this week.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a reference guide, but it also has informed what came out of it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: The brand can inform the marketing plan.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I like to start with a 90-day plan versus a year, because a year is a long time, but also you can sort of see what's working and what's not in a just like you were saying um earlier today, or I guess it was yesterday, about what a comp what a podcast looks like.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: And things evolve.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Clients evolve, needs evolve.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: So so having that 90-day as sort of a test is really helpful.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, updating because AI, it's so easy, update the whole brand kit and just sort of keep it as a living document, but not I think I divorce myself from the idea that they were going to um, you know, put it in a gold plated box and say, ah, hear ye, hear ye, the brand kit.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it would be the thing that informed, like this is the best ingredients to use for whatever recipe you're coming up with.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then if you change your ingredients, then the recipe will change.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just it's so important to have this documented because when you don't have it documented, that's when you end up in the situation where every single person who weighs in on decisions, uh marketing decisions, or who reviews marketing content or communications, then they're reviewing things and coming from a place of their personal preference, which even when we are part of the target audience for the brand that we work for, we are not the entirety of that market.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you shouldn't be making decisions based on personal preference.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think it can be really hard to get everybody on board with that and to recognize the difference between market needs and catering to the market with the branding and personal opinion about things like colors and typeface, etc., that are coming just from one person's preference.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a thousand trillion percent, and I think that's an aha moment when they realize two things.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like my I personally do not like this color combination, but it is the only green and yellow logo in the whole field of blues.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: So there's something to that, and for the brand, it might be the best thing.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I've recently seen a lot of aha about that I love is saying this is great for the clients we have today.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: But what about the clients we want in the future?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: What about when these donors pass on, for example, and we need the 30-year-old to come and and help, you know, with this nonprofit, for example.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's really intriguing because that it helps me to say, what if it's not you?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's just so visceral to them.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like what we all do this, we all have personal preferences, but the idea, if this brand is going to thrive, it's going to need an infusion of people that we're not even talking to now.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: So, how do we not alienate the those who are already there, but welcome those we want to have come on?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I've worked in or with founder-led startups, this is something that comes up because frequently there is that that friction and that struggle between the founder's brand and the company's brand.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And too often they're intertwined.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, is they can't be.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we worked together at Charles Schwab, which changed its name to Schwab.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why did they do that?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because Chuck wanted to be able to retire someday.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it couldn't be all based on talking to Chuck and Chuck's face being on everything.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it had the brand had to evolve.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Despite having a very well-known, active, beloved founder.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: And and the qualities of that founder are still free, you know, fair game for the type of company it may want to be.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but that actual person is is not able to meet with you all.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and frequently, you know, when you have um technology companies that are founder-led, you you end up in the situation too where some of the some of the events that the founder wants to speak at, or like some of the platforms that they want to be really active on, those are great for personal branding, but they're not necessarily driving any kind of um any kind of business results.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just, you know, you can have technical founders who don't want to be active on LinkedIn.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: They think it's boring.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yet LinkedIn is a great place to connect with those B2B buyers that they need to be reaching, versus uh the platform X is no longer a good place.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: To be driving traffic to any kind of B2B website.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have not had a client have any success using it in years.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's a great point and one that a great content strategy would address.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the difference between the founder's voice and the company voice, and when do you use one to amplify the other?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Giving those instructions is really helpful.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like when we're talking about, you know, things that are endemic to the industry, it should definitely come from the brand.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: When it's talking about things that are industry related, but also, you know, XYZ, then it comes from you and modulating that.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's not easy.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: I did that at Accenture as well for the whole thought leadership group and defining what those pillars were for each person.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, they all wanted to say innovation.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, here we go again.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And for you, what does that mean?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you talk about it in a way that the others aren't talking about it?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yet it's all still in this family where we're not making up words in order to sound different when we're saying the same thing.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's but I think a content strategy is a great deliverable to come out of the brand work.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I don't presume to deliver a content strategy.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: Eric, I know you know this so well, but and that was one of my titles back in the day.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: We've all evolved.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's that's not something off the side of your desk.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: That is a thoughtful piece of work.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And depending on the complexity, um, it can be a very meaningful, very huge part of the success.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: So but it doesn't get anywhere if you don't have all those elements in the brand kit, all those foundations in place.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can spend all of this time defining the strategy, who you're trying to reach, what kinds of, you know, um channels you're gonna use, and all of those things, if you don't have the supports in place to actually execute against it, you're just you know, you're just having the random acts of content and you're just lighting money on fire.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think about that all the time.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: One of my in questions on the intake um it is really like realistically, do you have people on your team or can you do three hours of work a week?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Can you do 10 hours of work a week?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do you if you have a whole team?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then I also recommend um a little bit of org structure.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like this person can't do these three things.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like you need someone dedicated to social, let's just say that.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: You can't expect that everyone's gonna do it in their spare time because they probably won't.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you get to that two million mark that you really hope for, you've allocated some of that to bring on a part-time social media person or whatever, so that you're building towards a sustainable way.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't, I try when I talk about the small, medium, large sizing, there's also uh built-in what that means for the client.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's a beautiful plan I can never use is not going to um have the impact we want.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, to your point there, um, using social again as the example, you people will think, oh, well, I will just outsource our social to AI.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that is insane because sure, maybe it can help give you some drafts that you can turn into something, but you you know, it comes back to the needing that human being with discernment, with the ability to understand the nuances of being a human and having the experience with the brand and with the customers.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have that human in the loop there because you also need to then engage.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because if all you do is push out content via social, you don't have a social media strategy.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have you're not, you know, executing a content strategy through social, you're just pushing out content, and nobody's gonna care.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have meaningful engagement with customers.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna do it.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's just noise.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're gonna spend the time and energy to create it, you you know, you might as well do it right.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's not there, are people who can do this for you.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that that's uh another sort of AI pitfall is that everything can be done, so you should do everything.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't recommend it to everyone.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: There they don't have the means to to answer or to be dynamic on the site, and they're just in a broadcast mode, and that's you know, that's just static.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: So and it's not safe to just turn things over to an AI agent, even though there's been so much conversation and promotion and marketing dollars spent around the idea of agentec marketing and how you can just have an agent on your website be talking to customers, it very quickly can devolve and go someplace you never wanted it to go.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that said, you obviously AI can be useful as part of branding.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd love to hear where you really feel with the work that you've been doing and with building um Truefold.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what has AI really helped with from a branding standpoint that you know took humans a lot more time to do?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great question.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And this is really, you know, full disclosure, this is really how I learned.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um I created Truefold and I work on Claude.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I started in um starting Google, so I created gems, but now I use products which are in Claude, same concept, which is you know different than a skill.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean a project.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: So project different than a skill.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: The skill is something it just knows how to do, but the project has all of the stuff we've talked about built into it.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: So before it starts, it's red the brand kit, for example.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's just um it saves a lot of time, but you need to you need to maintain it.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: I basically update my canon every day with new decisions.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I have rules like um, you are allergic to treacle.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: Rules that make sense to me, but I never want to see any writing that said, well, it is what it is.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I can't with that.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I did is um in order to test Truefold, I created another company that we don't have to go into a lot here, but I basically did my own use case.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: So it's named Vespera.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: And Vespera is again something I wish already existed.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's this wise woman who is super versed in art and literature and science and nature and the stars and tarot and all those things.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And you can ask her questions, but she'll remember you.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: So many of us have wise women in our lives, but they like forget key pieces of your information because they've got their lives.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Vespera lives for me.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: She lives for us.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I basically built Vespera using the Truefold process and launching Vespera through the Truefold process.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I was able to test it not on Truefold itself, which I was doing all along, but to have something very different, obviously, you know, other side of Woo.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but something that I just knew.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: If it wasn't right, I would know it wasn't right.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I and I think I've heard people say this a lot, that they might get something out of chat and put it in Gemini and then put it.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm basically doing that with versions of myself to make sure that what I said about how we build a thing is really how I want to build the thing.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: And um, that was a lot of work, but it was actually weirdly fun.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was really, really fun.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I use I use a lot of projects um and inform them and and skills as well.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then I am very adamant about keeping a canon, um, which gets pretty long, but so I update it at the end of the day, and that helps me to not relitigate myself.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: We decided on this.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Here's all the things that went into the decision.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna open that up again.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's so great.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: It how helping yourself be bionic sometimes is stopping you from making the same mistakes, it's not actually jumping higher, it's just helping you not fall down so often.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I also love that you um had a passion project that you created in in order to be a proof of concept for your branding, because you know, I've been doing that for a decade as well.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have a gluten-free blog, and it is everything that I talk about from a content foundation standpoint, from a content strategy standpoint, I can walk people through the decisions I've made on that site and with that content and with everything related to it.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what's amazing is somebody reviewed um my book Content Foundations last week with an a lovely, awesome review, including pictures of places that they'd highlighted things.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it warmed my heart, it was so cool.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the best part about the review is the woman, Sandy Markle, who was reading it, said, you know, I've been following Erica's gluten-free blog for a very long time.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then on LinkedIn, you know, I heard about her book and I bought her book and I read it, and that's when I finally realized that she was the same Erica in the two spots, and it was so lovely because I always have tried to have that feel intentional, you know, that I am this person and yes, this is part of my life, but I wanted it always to feel very intentional and very much its own brand, versus, you know, I I'm not Martha Stewart.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my two, you know, my projects that I work on, the gluten-free blog, is quite different from doing consulting around all of these content strategy supports.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it felt, you know, I always felt like they had to be separate but adjacent.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just wonderful to have that situation where somebody was like, I loved both of these things, and then I realized both of them were you.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't expect that to happen with me per se.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'll I'll be you know super flattered if if it all works out in the next you know 10 years, that would be amazing.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: But that um they're they were sort of chosen different, they were chosen by design to not overlap with each other, like yours.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't know if it was by design, but but yeah, that's Vera.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so if I when I have a new client, I open up my Truefold project and start from scratch, but I go through the same process I did.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a truefold process.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and it's again nothing that you haven't written about or others haven't written about, it's just putting it all together in one place and being kind of methodical about how it builds upon itself.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: So once folks have that brand kit in place, it frees them up to not have to try to write those 20-page prompts that have all the information in them, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because it gives them that base point that they can then give the context to whatever AI tools they're using.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is your context.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: I would just upload that as an artifact and be done with it, you know, and get on to the real work.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, and the, you know, the other thing is if like say it's a small agency or something, and there's you have freelancers and in-house and uh another agency you're using, or the briefs are all coming from one place.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it's sort of like you can manage it all from one single source of truth.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the freelancers are getting the same briefing that the in-house is getting that an agency is getting.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: So hopefully what you're getting back is much more consistent.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: I when I was at Schwab, I was editor of On Investing and the magazine.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: The award-winning on investing.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: The award-winning.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Remember magazines?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: And um I would get a lot of rough drafts in from different writers on different topics, and I still had to make sure it all sounded like on investing.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really hard, you know, my earlier days, I would basically want to rewrite everything.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that training has really helped me with AI to say, no, new rule, you are allergic to treacle.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then I never have to see something like that again.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's an economy of scale, but it also means you have to know what you are for and what you are not for.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: So in Schwab, I always use the the uh Trinity of smart, accessible, and on your side.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if I was reading something that didn't feel smart, and by that I mean smarter than me, about the a financial thing, and it's and made me feel like I could understand it.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: So it was accessible.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was always advocating for me, well, it's basically the fiduciary responsibility, but it was if it didn't meet all three of those criteria, I knew it wasn't ready.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it it we've always had filters, now they're just automated.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and then that makes it so much more accessible to more organizations of all sizes.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be an 18,000 employee company now in order to have a really um a thoughtful brand and have it infuse everything that your organization does.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can be a 10-person nonprofit with a bunch of volunteers.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have the right foundation in place, you can have that same level of brand consistency without having the infrastructure of humans.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it gives you that that it's basically saves every dollar you're going to spend.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Saves the money you would spend figuring that out in the real world.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: You've got it all sorted and of course able to adjust.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, like I said, I wish I'd had this all these years.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess it's in the the spirit of like manifesting what what we want to see, or no one's coming to save us, or however, whatever the thought is, du jour.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of what I ended up doing and really kind of fell in love with it.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, since you've been doing this a long time, I have to ask the kind of elephant in the room question for me, which is how what do you what like what advice I guess do you give clients after you've done this work with them and help them figure out their brand?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what advice do you give them around making sure it's a living brand, that it's not just something that is one and done and they keep running with?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you help them understand that it does need that care and feeding?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like how you, with your AI um assisting with your AI platform, you're going in every day and you're making those decisions and you're clarifying things, getting more granular.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: How do you help people understand that?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because that also I think is a big shift.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: People think of, well, you know, a brand is something you pay for once and then you're done.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, you know, from my experience, that's that's not quite how it works.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: The beauty of companies in our capitalist world is that the balance sheet tells some of the story for you.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: If it's working, they tend to think it's fine, and then you're just on sort of maintenance and you know, good hygiene.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: If it's not working, then they have bigger questions.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's part of why that 90-day marketing plan launcher is so important.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, not to get into the the weeds of this, but you don't have to buy all three.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: You can buy just the brand kit.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: You can't buy the marketing plan without the brand kit, though, because of course that's what informs it, or the briefs.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that having that that coming back to it and evaluating it is, you know, the least sexy but most important part of what did you want to accomplish through this?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: And if it's if it's working, um your your KPI should should tell you that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's all it's easier said than done.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I also think that we all from time to time just kind of say, you know, is this still what I want to do?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is this still how I want to be?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: And in the next 10 years of my company, where do I want to go?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: So not only am I positioned for right now, but am I facing the right direction to go where I want to go?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where some of the tweaks can take place.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I think we've all, as marketers, if you've worked in marketing more than 10 years, you've seen the phenomenon of, you know, CMO tenure can be a year and a half to three years.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if somebody stays as a CMO for longer than that, it feels like a miracle.
• 40:14
  unknown: Yep.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: And every single time a new CMO comes in, it feels like the first thing they want to do is re-brand the company, or they want to um go ahead and they want to, you know, redo the website.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you how do you know when it's coming from when the the brand pressure is coming from an a person with a preference and an opinion with an agenda wanting to you know feel useful versus the brand actually needing it?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean the KPIs, I think all of that's good, but like if you're in an organization and you see this happening, like how are you how can you kind of cure it or solve this problem?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can't be you can't fundamentally change your brand every few years.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's just not gonna work.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: It is not a solve a brand, a rebrand should be for a major change, a pivot, a change.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's something that is, you know, would get a press release, not necessarily literally, but just because you're now focusing on the mid-market instead of the end, it's not that, but it's like how you approach the business.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I go back to where do you want to be?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: And are you set up to do that now?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: So if you say the name of your company and no one can pronounce it, they're not probably gonna say it in the boardroom when they're trying to decide if they should hire that company or another one.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: If they don't know intrinsically what you do, it's hard for them to recommend you.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, how are you removing those areas, those those obstacles?
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: That said, fractional new CMOs, companies that have decided not to have a marketing org.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's those are my clients.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't necessarily want to discourage it, but I would start.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the things I offer is a brand audit.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what do you already have?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Let's see how it matches up with what I think is a solid brand kit.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: Figure out where it is you want to go and see where the gaps are.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's you know, I think again, using that Akido energy, all are welcome, but you might not get what you want.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: You might get what I think you should have instead.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: But we'll we'll use some analysis on that versus the colors.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're almost done with our time.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I do kind of want to circle back to where we started the conversation.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you are a marketer and you feel like you feel like there are a bunch of very passionate, good opinions about the brand, but that they don't line up, what is the first thing, one easy thing that you can do this week to try to figure out where the misalignment is happening in a very thoughtful and prescriptive way?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, I think the positioning, the purpose statement, we are X for Y, we do this for these people so that they can Z, uh, is really telling.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can't answer that yourself or feel that everyone else would have a hard time answering that in a more or less uniform way, again, semantics is notwithstanding, then I think that's a really good place to say from there, everything else is going to just become.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: A bigger problem if you haven't solved that main thing of why you even exist.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's probably the simplest diagnostic.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: If you said, can you write one sentence about what we do and why for whom?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it's very telling.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, people may say, well, we do it for schwab as an example for institutions, or we do it for single investors.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: Both are true.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you how do you have that conversation about a statement in a brand that is encompasses all but has room to segment?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: So your question's a little unfair only because um a single takeaway of how to do how to figure out the brand, but I think the diagnostic of is there a problem is pretty simple.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's totally fair.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, to go back to our shared experience as somebody who was on the institutional side, I frequently would kind of run into things where I was like, but it's a little different for what I'm doing.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing B to B, B to B to B to B, B to B to B to C.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, my world is very different than the retail side of the house, which just gets to talk to the end consumer.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: I always I always felt a little jealous that it was a little bit easier.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's where I think a really great messaging document is super helpful because those different personas have very different messages in different channels, in different tones, everything.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: But if you have a one-size fits-all, it's uh you're not as effective as you could be.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: It needs to feel like it's part of the family, not that it's clones.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: I always say you're wearing a uniform, but you can have different shoelaces.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can have your five pieces of flair.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: I have a red stapler here somewhere too.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's uh but that's important because that's where it lives.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, going back to my Accenture days, I was in tech, and there were a lot of big tech companies working with Accenture, like you know, Google, SS, Oracle, Workday, Adobe, et cetera.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: But we were all in tech.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we all had to sort of have the same structure.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: But each one has a really different um approach and take and something they want to highlight.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: So again, to your flare idea.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so we created a campaign that was why X, why now?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: Why Oracle, why now, why Salesforce, why now, et cetera, to be able to have that uniformity, but also the place to say this is where we differentiate.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: So important.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I've really been enjoying all of your uh recent LinkedIn posts.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um, as we wrap things up, can you share with folks where they can find more from you and about your approach to branding?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much, Erica.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um so on LinkedIn it's Jennifer L.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: Cronin.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to check out the Truefold site, if your interest is peaked, because it's it's actually kind of hard to explain the whole thing.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um and there's a sample on there.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's truefold.works.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Not dot com.works.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, and if anyone has questions or thoughts or ideas to make stuff better, I'm I'm really open to that.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: That again is another one of the joys of AI, is I you know, you get to a point with some other projects where you're like, don't say anything more, I'm done.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: I feel kind of the opposite, like there's just so much room for improvement all the time.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's a constant state, but you know, so far so good.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I would love to hear from people.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, make sure that in the show notes uh for the podcast that we have that info and we'll have links to your LinkedIn uh profile as well, so that way people can follow you and um chat with you about everything brand related.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: And Erica, when does your next book come out?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh goodness.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm working on something right now.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not ready to announce yet, but as I've already said, I am definitely doing another um another edition of Content Foundations because things changed.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: And just the the working sessions I've had um with marketing profs, and now I'm having an AMA uh workshop that I'm um conducting next month on Brand Voice.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely, definitely have to do a new edition of this book because people have you know given me great feedback of yes ands of what they'd like to see next.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: So stay tuned.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well I'll be watching.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's my pleasure, and thank you, um, everybody who's been listening, and we'll see you again next week for content chat.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Bye everyone.