Doug Houser:
From Rea & Associates Studio, this is unsuitable, a management financial services podcast for entrepreneurs, tenured business leaders, and others who are ready to look beyond the suit and tie culture for meaningful measurable results. I'm Doug Houser. On this weekly podcast, thought leaders and business professionals break down complicated and mundane topics and give you the tips and insight you actually need to grow as a leader while helping your organization to grow and thrive.
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How important is your company's brand? As a business leader, you've worked hard to build a company on key values, instill a solid company culture and deliver an excellent experience. These qualities have all shaped your business's brand, but what if you were faced with a really tempting opportunity or decision that would ultimately take you out of sync with the brand you worked so hard to build? What would you do? Our guest on today's episode of unsuitable is branding expert Brad Circone. Brad has helped develop the brand voice of countless companies and today we're going to talk about why the brand is ultimately so important to the future success of your organization. Welcome back to unsuitable, Brad.
Brad Circone:
Thank you, Doug. Glad to be back on the show.
Doug:
Well, glad to have you as well, because you are just someone I look up to as a podcast host, and you've got a great new podcast of your own, right? Called Getting the Brand Back Together. Love the euphemism there with you and your music history as well, which we'll get into, but talk a little bit, you know, I listened to your episode last week and I thought this was phenomenal for all business owners out there, about these pillars of your brand. So, talk a little bit about that for me, if you can.
Brad:
Yeah. When we talk about the pillars of the brand, we're talking about those things that make you different and they're items that should be genuine to the brand. You brought up in the intro there, whether it's the company culture, whether it's putting people first, but typically when we build brands and we build the pillars of brands, we do it with what we call the five Ps. People, products, philosophy, process, and programs.
Doug:
Okay.
Brad:
We can align those five Ps authentically to the brand and then allow the customer to tell the story about how they feel about those Ps. All we have to do is give them a megaphone. A great brand is a megaphone.
Doug:
Yeah, great point.
Brad:
Back to itself, it doesn't have to be invented. It has to be cultivated.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Too many brands nowadays spend time trying to invent something that's game-changing, you know, and the truth of the matter is there's nothing better than watching an old Italian carpenter finish his piece of work and pound that wood into space and say, "Voila."
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
That's the moment of authenticity and that's why we use the five Ps as pillars to help our clients build and share that authenticity like inside of Rea.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
The Rea way is a magical statement that you guys use when we talk about our brand, and if you think about the Rea way, and these are very simple statements so the listener can understand what The Rea Way is, it is our founder's way, Rea's way, of doing business, and they're very simple, empathetic values, right?
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
He did a great job of that and that kind of just sets up cornerstones to build the brand. So, that's what we mean by pillars. You've got to start with what's true to the brand, invite your customers into it and your clients and your employees and ask them to voice how they feel about that brand to the world.
Doug:
Yeah. I think you put that so well and a couple of key things there, it has to be authentic and genuine, right? It can't be invented. Part of the Rea way that I take most personally, that I try to adhere to, and it's very simple, is be a Rea ambassador. You kind of mentioned it there, no matter what your business is or your brand, you want to be an ambassador for that. Right? It's got to be authentic and genuine. So, how does a company build that over time?
Brad:
Part of it is confidence in just being who you are and being proud of that. The other part of it is management getting the hell out of the way.
Doug:
Indeed. [inaudible 00:05:32].
Brad:
A big part of it is management allowing the people-first mentality to actually lead. If you think of premium brands, premium brands are very good at letting the product or the program lead the brand because they're premium. Yet when you get into what I like to call standard brands or even cost of entry brands, there's this selling cycle that starts to happen, this pitching, and that is what I call disequity in a brand. It's static, it's getting in the way of the voice. So, if you can build this confidence and you can get the CEO to be proud, but be a leader behind the brand, behind her people...
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
That is the moment. I mean, if you think of great brands. Who did that? Lincoln, Walt Disney. Bayzos, right?
Doug:
Right.
Brad:
Amazon, Disney. Disney, he's a cartoonist.
Doug:
Whether you like the product or what it is or not, you can't argue with the brand itself and how they're defined.
Brad:
And how you feel about it.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
So, really great leaders understand that the brand is the currency.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
And the ethos is what allows them to be great leaders. It's not them.
Doug:
I love that, the brand is the currency. We had this kind of online conversation, I think a week ago, you know, obviously your background in music going way back, what are the best brands in music? Not the best bands, right?
Brad:
Right.
Doug:
You brought up Kiss, and I'm not necessarily a huge fan of their music, but what a brand, right? I mean, you don't have to say anything more.
Brad:
No.
Doug:
Another one I thought of was the Grateful Dead too, the same kind of thing. I mean, Deadheads everything. I mean, you know what that brand is. You know what they stand for.
Brad:
Right, right, right. Well said. You know, I got some other comments on LinkedIn and Facebook, like ACDC.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
And Southern rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd or the original ALT band, if you will, country ALT band R.E.M.
Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brad:
So, you think about, these brands are creating entire categories. Right?
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
So, again it is about that brand, but the brands we just talked about, Kiss authentically lived the way they wrote.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Obviously so did the Grateful Dead.
Doug:
Right.
Brad:
Obviously so did ACDC. Obviously so did R.E.M. right? And Bono, one of the greatest brands ever, U2.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Just as a pure brand, and he's an ambassador for RED. You know, he's an ambassador for all the things that he believes in.
Doug:
Yeah. Yep. It's no doubt that it's a part of the whole way that it's authentic and genuine and how they live. So, no doubt about it. So, talk a little bit about... You know, you talked about that megaphone and kind of valuing the value of story holders. So, how do we get our brand ambassadors, our clients, and the people that we do work with, how do we get them to want to have that megaphone and tell that story out there?
Brad:
Just by understanding, I think the sensitivity, as in previous, podcasts you guys had used this word and it's called connection. Connection comes, and Doug, I've seen you with your clients and the ones you've had on as guests, you know, connections come with a great deal of trust. Again, that word confidence and competence, right? You know, we say in the brand business and the ad business, you don't lose a customer because you take a risk and it doesn't work. You lose a customer when you stop caring. One of the keys in, when we talk about branded leadership or a leader being a great brand for the company, is you have to understand that the brands, all of that brand equity is really personified through the customer's measurable emotional perceptions of the brand at that time.
So, how do referrals happen? Referrals happen because we love the experience we had with that person, let's say, Doug Houser. We love what's behind Doug Houser, this brand that we personify emotionally in our minds, and we say, "I like this so much that I'm proud about this relationship and I would like to share it with a friend who I also love."
Doug:
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad:
Right? That's how rock bands become huge.
Doug:
That's well... Yeah. Well said.
Brad:
The same way of how brands, whether it's a law firm, whether it's an accounting firm, which people think of as conservative.
Doug:
Right.
Brad:
They aren't. It's about how much can we increase the value of the relationship with our customers? It's not about, "Oh, we only got a tax return and we're not doing business consultancy. Gosh, I'd love to do business consultancy." Well, you have to earn that gateway. That gateway is earned through the value of the relationship.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Great brands, you know, if you think about that value, I talk about a brand being a currency, and that's what I always think about. It's a stock market. A brand is a stock market. Sometimes they invest too much in us. Sometimes we're too conservative when we should be pushing our relationships forward, right? But if you think about a connection, every action, every interaction with that customer does what? It moves brand value.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Do more or less with that customer just by moving brand value.
I once did a thing with a very... How do I say this? A very non-technology group that I was doing some educational classes for at Notre Dame.
Doug:
Okay.
Brad:
Higher-ed. I passed out a piece of paper I called a personification tablet. I use this in my podcast before people come on so I can get to know what their brand's about. I pass out this piece of paper and it says your favorite dog breed, what's the best book you ever have read, if you were going to work for a newspaper, what newspaper would it be? What's your favorite color? There must've been 65 people in this class.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
This was the icebreaker and I said, who likes Labrador, watches CNN, reads The Wall Street Journal, and loves the color red? Three people.
Doug:
Wow. Yeah.
Brad:
I said, "Well, this meeting's over." You people, [inaudible 00:12:02] together. Right? You're all getting connected.
Doug:
Connectivity. Yeah.
Brad:
Connectivity, and that's the key to relationship and brand value and that is what makes great brands great.
Doug:
So, is that... I never kind of put it together in that sense. That's awesome. Is that how you kind of made your way from music to what you do today, is that sense of connectivity? Because that's what you were trying to do with your band back in the day?
Brad:
I've never thought of it, but now that you say that and you and I have had many conversations on this subject matter, you are correct.
Doug:
That's so interesting.
Brad:
My whole life has been about performance. Whether it's academic performance, whether it's athletic performance when I was younger, as you can know, whether it's stage performance, right?
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Whether it's work performance or whether it's how am I performing as a friend?
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
You know? So, I mean performance by all those different connotations of the word and speaking about brand value, we have a thing when we onboard and it went to your connectivity about what you just said about that's what you're trying to do is make a connection. That's what it's about. We always tell clients once we onboard them because we're big on differentiation, Doug, you know, that's what we do...
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
When it comes to branding and we always say the promises you make differentiate you but the promises you keep define you and the brand.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
I mean, I wrote Melissa who, you know, with all being open here, Rea actually is my accounting firm for our firm.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
I wrote Melissa, just today, a note and at the end of the note, I said, "Thank you for being a professional who I do not have to chase."
Doug:
Yes.
Brad:
[inaudible 00:14:04] there's still service?
Doug:
Right.
Brad:
Because she was on a project that's very important to me, and that she cares enough to say what I know is nothing but as soon as I know something, I'll let you know.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Means I have the right person on the case. That's brand. That's not salesmanship. That's beyond relationship. That's brand.
Doug:
Yeah. Sometimes it's just all it takes is that empathy, right, because you wouldn't do that if it weren't genuine. So, that's awesome.
Brad:
Exactly right. Exactly.
Doug:
Now, you've always been a guy who's not afraid to break the rules, right? You know? So, how do you... You know, you've got to force somebody. Well, I shouldn't say force, but you've got to get that in your mindset, right, to not be afraid to break the rules. How does that resonate with a CPA firm like ours, when you say, "Ah, you know, you guys got to think about breaking the rules." We're like, "Oh my God." You know, you scare the hell out of us when you say that.
Brad:
Right. Right. You know, there's another way of saying that, and you've heard this analogy too, about stretching that rubber band. Right? But I think for... I would say that great brands, no matter their industry, create products, programs, people, or processes that break the rules. If you think of the Rea way as a value system, which it is, it's also a journey by the way, but the Rea way itself did... It breaks the rules today because it's such a legacy idea. Right?
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Is it so homespun Doug...
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
That it breaks the rules today? If you just look at the platforms today in innovation, well we can do this act does this, you know, let's use slack for this. We're doing anything creative. Right?
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
We've got Zoom now. Everything is solved by a platform, and yet Rea's business ethic, Rea's brand energy comes from these moments of human connection.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
So, even though that seems that that's how it was started when Rea started it, that's awesome, but the truth of the matter today, it's almost counter-intuitive.
Doug:
That's true.
Brad:
It's groundbreaking.
Doug:
Yeah. So, I love this. So, with your own, I want to get into your podcasts, Getting the Brand Back Together. I mean, you've had already some great guests, you know, Jamie Richardson from White Castle, and speaking of great brands, I mean, there's hardly anything more iconic than White Castle, right?
Brad:
They invented the hamburger chain.
Doug:
Yeah. What kind of things are you trying to explore on that podcast and that folks can tune in for and get more of this fantastic insight there?
Brad:
Thank you for bringing that up. It is this interdisciplinary look at banding, branding, and business building. I was in a band for X amount of years. I've been doing branding for the same amount of years. What's amazing is it's the same thing. You know, I talked to people behind my podcast that is all music guys and gals, and I say to them, "Branding is writing a song, right?" There's a verse, there's a pre-chorus, and there's a chorus. The chorus is the name of the company. It's its tagline. The pre-chorus is the moment before purchase intention when I'm going to buy from them. The verse, how that song starts, you think about a great Dylan song, a great Clapton song, it's the stroke of that C chord and all of a sudden these few poetic lines, that's the moment of introduction of you and a brand.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Right? So, I think really to your point, we have been doing... I have in my agency that I've owned have and now we're heavily into podcasting, we've been doing banding, branding, and business-building for a long time. You know, we say that we make smart brands entertaining and entertaining brands smart. It's because that's where we come from.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
You know, and CEOs in my... When I meet a CEO... I love to meet CEOs because they are the ultimate brand ambassador, right?
Doug:
Right.
Brad:
So, I think that CEOs in their way of doing it, every handshake, every lunch that they're walking on stage.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
They're walking on stage. Right? So, we call them rockstar CEOs and CEO rockstars and believe me, there are bands and performers that have done an unbelievable job with their brand. Right?
Doug:
Right.
Brad:
They act more like chief executive officers than chief entertainment officers.
Doug:
Yeah. Interesting.
Brad:
Well they do.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
Some of the greatest CEOs are actually chief entertainment officers.
Doug:
Yeah. You know, you say that and I think back. You're right. But they live that brand. You can tell. They're true ambassadors for that brand, and everybody knows it.
Brad:
Yeah. I was talking to Stacie Boord from Shadowbox live...
Doug:
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad:
Who I believe is, again, disclosing this, is a client of Rea's and we have been... They have been a longtime client of Circone. When I had her on, she said... I love Stacy, and she said, "I guess, Brad, you know, you're the wordsmith. You tell me, but this is just how I live."
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
We were talking about she puts on our CEO executive hat, right?
Doug:
Right.
Brad:
Then it's 3:30 and they have a rehearsal and now she's the chief entertainment officer. It's her. It's the same hat. She can't believe people go, "Well, you just changed your hat." he says, "No, I didn't. It's the brand."
Doug:
It's how I live, right.
Brad:
How I live. Right, right, right.
Doug:
It's apparent and it's authentic and genuine. It comes across that way. So, [inaudible 00:19:40].
Brad:
It does in their shows, the way they run business, and the way she says hello.
Doug:
Yeah. So, okay. I think to my world, like construction clients. So, if I'm a $25 million a year paving contractor, how do I reframe or re-imagine kind of that thinking into my business? Is there an approach to doing that?
Brad:
Yeah. That's a great question, by the way. I would just say to them, what we think we sell is not what we sell. Those things are called products. What we sell is not just creating the right solution because that's still an understatement to what we sell. What we sell is the impact of solutions. The impact of products. That's what great brands do.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
They sell the feelings of an impact way down the road. We have a client that puts in... Only installs floors for major brands. Some of which are from Columbus, Ohio, some from all over the world, but they aren't installing floors. They are creating the site lines for one hell of a branded experience for customers who are coming to a restaurant to celebrate their lives.
Doug:
Yeah.
Brad:
We don't install floors, right? So, this client's brand is based on its people just like people first, like Karen was saying.
Doug:
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad:
In one of the podcasts will be coming out on unsuitable, people first. Well, we don't call our flooring installer flooring installers because they have a protocol that they have to succeed through. It's a five-step protocol. They're master craftsmen.
Doug:
That's awesome.
Brad:
They are proud to be craftsmen of all kinds of flooring materials. So, you begin by reversing the brand. It's not a product, it's not a solution. It's the impact of the customer's feeling about what you do for them.
Doug:
I love that. That certainly can apply to any business and all of us in our lives and what we do.
Brad:
Yes. Absolutely.
Doug:
That is awesome. Well, I could sit here and talk about this all day and certainly, I want to give you a chance too. How do folks check out your podcast as well, Getting the Brand Back Together?
Brad:
Yeah. So, it's Getting the Brand Back Together and we have micro-sites that are at GBBT. GBBT.fm. Of course, they can get the podcast just by typing in Getting the Brand Back Together on Spotify, Apple, or wherever they get their podcasts.
Doug:
That is awesome. So, be sure to check that out as well as certainly future episodes of unsuitable. I know we'll have Brad back on to talk about this. You know, it's truly... I love talking about this stuff. It's fascinating and I always learn so much. So, thanks Brad for being on with us today.
Brad:
Thank you for having me, Doug.
Doug:
Absolutely. If you want more business tips and insight, or to hear previous episodes of unsuitable, visit our podcast page at www.reacpa.com/podcast and while you're there, sign up for exclusive content and show notes. Thanks for listening to this week's show. Be sure to subscribe to unsuitable on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to us right now, including YouTube. I'm Doug Houser. Join us next week for another unsuitable interview with an industry professional.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed on unsuitable on Rea Radio are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rea & Associates. The podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the professional advice you would receive elsewhere. Consult with a trusted advisor about your unique situation so they can expertly guide you to the best solution for your specific circumstance.
