Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast How Brands Are Built

In this episode of How Brands Are Built, I talk with Alexander Foss about research—why it matters, what makes it valuable, and a few pitfalls to avoid.

Alex and I first worked together at Interbrand, where he was on the strategy team before moving more deeply into research and insights. In our conversation, he explains what pulled him in that direction: the feeling of backing up recommendations with something stronger than a "finger in the air."

We talk about the shift from agency work to client-side research, and how different it is when you're responsible not just for delivering against a brief, but for defining the business problem in the first place.

A big theme throughout the episode is purpose. Alex makes the point repeatedly: research should start with a clear question. If you don't know why you're conducting a survey, for example—what decisions it's meant to inform—you probably shouldn't be doing it.

We also dig into a naming research study I conducted last year—research on research—and the tensions it revealed between how namers and researchers think about the topic. Why are experienced namers often skeptical of quantitative testing? Which methodologies do namers and researchers recommend? And how much influence should research have over a naming decision versus other important factors?

Alex argues that research should inform decisions, but not make them. He uses the analogy of buying a house: you can quantify square footage and energy efficiency, but at some point you also have to decide whether it feels right. Naming is similar. Quantified consumer reactions matter, but they're just one input.

Finally, we discuss updating the research section of Designing Brand Identity, sixth edition, and what young strategists can do to build real expertise in a world where AI can handle more and more of the executional work.

If you care about branding, naming, or research—and especially if you've ever struggled with how much weight to give the numbers—this conversation will give you a clearer framework for thinking about it.

On today's episode of How Brands Are Built, host Rob Meyerson of Heirloom speaks with Robin Goffman—brand thinker, design strategist, and founder of Studio RBG—about her career path, her approach to creative work, and her experience designing multiple editions of Designing Brand Identity.

Robin shares the story of how she first entered the world of design, from early hands-on tutorials in Adobe software to studying art direction at Temple University. She describes how a single introduction—through her professor, Kathy Mueller—connected her with the late Alina Wheeler and ultimately set her on the path to helping design several editions of the iconic branding book.

In the conversation, Robin explains the unique challenges and rewards of book design, including the rhythm of multi-page layout, the importance of a strong grid, the process of curating case studies and imagery, and the extensive coordination required to keep a 300-plus-page reference book consistent and cohesive. She also talks about what she learned through years of collaborating with Alina—from creative rigor to the contagious sense of passion and curiosity Alina brought to every project.

The episode also touches on Robin's work as a creative strategist, how she blends design with big-picture thinking, and why she believes great design is as much about listening and problem-solving as it is about aesthetic decisions.

Listeners can learn more about Robin's work at robingoffman.com. Join us for a thoughtful, behind-the-scenes conversation about career beginnings, the craft of book design, and the creative lessons that continue to shape how brands are built.

A few weeks back, on LinkedIn and Instagram, I asked whether anyone had questions about branding, naming, or other topics I might be able to speak to. My plan was to do a Q&A episode—and this is it.

On this episode, I answer questions from branding professionals and others about branding, naming, and book publishing. Here's a sample of what was asked:

• How do you manage clients wanting to wordsmith your brand strategy work?
• What guidance should you give clients to help them implement your recommended brand strategy?
• How do you maintain brand consistency when people at your company won't use design templates?
• What is the current state of AI in naming?
• How can you attract new clients if you can't show your work online due to an NDA?
• Can you walk through the book publishing process?

Here are links to a few things mentioned during the episode:

• Brand Naming
• Designing Brand Identity, sixth edition
• David Placek, founder of Lexicon, on an early episode of the StartUp podcast
• AI-powered naming agency, Monika
• Tessera Trademark Screening
• Brand implementation agencies TenTen, Monigle, and BrandActive
• Clutch (B2B company reviews)
• Swiss Cheese Mono font
• Ohno Type School with James Edmondson

Thanks to everyone for your questions. If you have questions that I didn't answer, please reach out—maybe I'll do another one of these episodes at some point.

In today's episode of How Brands Are Built, host Rob Meyerson speaks with Jacob Cass, designer, brand strategist, and founder of Just Creative, about his recent venture: the Brand Builders Summit. This innovative, four-day virtual event featured 24 speakers and attracted over 20,000 attendees from 156 countries, significantly surpassing Jacob's initial goals. Jacob discusses the unique format of the summit, which blended pre-recorded sessions with live Q&As, panels, and workshops, emphasizing the crucial integration of brand strategy, design, marketing, and community. He reveals insights into the promotional strategies that generated buzz and shares logistical lessons learned while managing a large-scale event. The conversation also highlights the importance of speaker relationships, communication tools like AI chatbots for participant support, and plans for future enhancements to improve networking opportunities. Jacob's commitment to feedback and reflection post-event underscores his dedication to continual improvement. Listeners are invited to explore Jacob's work at Just Creative and look forward to the next Brand Builders Summit in 2025 (if Jacob decides to give it another go!). Join us to dive into an inspiring discussion on strategic marketing, community engagement, and the key elements driving successful brand experiences.

Today's guest is Alex Center, a designer and podcaster and founder of the award-winning design and branding studio, CENTER. From 2006 to 2017, Center worked for the Coca-Cola Company, helping build the brands Vitaminwater, Powerade, and Smartwater. Today, he and the team at CENTER are building the next generation of icon brands partnering with companies like United Sodas of America, Apple, HEYWEAR, Good Light, New Balance, SIMULATE, and Liquid Death.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to Alex today is because his agency, CENTER, is a contributor to the new edition of Designing Brand Identity. CENTER pitched in on the pages about package design and differentiation, and also contributed a case study for KatKin, "a nutrition, education, and community-focused cat-care brand based in the UK that works with world-leading veterinarians and nutritionists to develop food that gives cats the nutrients they actually need." We talk about these cases, how Alex approaches branding and package design, and more on this episode of the podcast.

This episode of How Brands Are Built is a live recording of an April 25, 2024 book launch for Designing Brand Identity, sixth edition, held at Noise 13 in San Francisco. The event included a panel discussion moderated by Rob Goodman. The panelists were Dava Guthmiller, founder of Noise 13, Rob Meyerson co-author of the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity, and Robin Goffman, creative director for the book. The discussion includes thoughts on rebranding, trends in branding, and how Rob and Robin first got involved with Alina Wheeler (the creator and author of Designing Brand Identity, who passed away in December, 2023). Panelists also talked about Noise 13's work for Adventr—a case study featured in the book.

Back in February of this year, I released the first Brand Names Report, an analysis of polling data on brand names from Brand New, the leading brand identity review site edited and written by Armin Vit.

From July 2020 to June 2023, visitors to Brand New cast a total of 22,769 votes across 131 brand names, rating each as Great, Fine, or Bad. These polls are the only easily available opinion data on brand names that I'm aware of. And while the data is far from perfect (I'll walk through some weaknesses on this episode), I wanted to see whether it could tell us anything useful about which brand names are preferred, and why.

To see the report as I walk through it page by page, visit How Brands Are Built on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@howbrandsarebuilt.

You can download the the Brand Names Report for free at https://howbrandsarebuilt.com/brandnamesreport/.

Rob Meyerson and Fabian Geyrhalter discuss brand strategy's balance of innovation and foundational rules, touching on brand creation challenges and successful launches in the evolving marketing landscape.

Today's episode is special. It's an edited version of a LinkedIn livestream chat with Fabian Geyrhalter, founder and principal at FINIEN, "a purposefully small consultancy based in Los Angeles." Fabian is a brand strategist and creative director and host of the Hitting the Mark podcast. He's also written several best-selling books, including How to Launch a Brand and The Brand Therapy Book. Lastly, Fabian is founder of Toneoptic, which we discuss on the show.

Fabian was a guest on season two of How Brands Are Built, and I had a great time talking to him again. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

To learn more about Fabian, visit www.finien.com. From there, you'll find links to his podcast and books. For Toneoptic, visit www.toneoptic.com.

Today's guest is Rob Goodman. Rob specializes in content strategy and creative content production, with experience at companies like Google, Wix, and Webflow. He's delivered award-winning branded content, content strategies, and comprehensive content calendars for these companies and other clients, helping brands transform into publishers built for engaging today's audiences.

Rob also hosts his own podcast, Making Ways, about the intersection of art and music. He interviews bands, like Melvins and Nada Surf, and the visual artists they collaborate with to create album art, music videos, and more. It's as cool as it sounds—I highly recommend you check it out.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to Rob is because he's also a contributor to the new edition of Designing Brand Identity, which I co-authored with the late Alina Wheeler. Rob pitched in on the pages about social media and a few others, but his biggest contribution was helping us update the content strategy spread, where you'll find the following quote from him: "The best content cuts through the noise, connects with customers, and drives the business—all while moving at the speed of culture."

On the episode, we talk about definitions of terms like content strategy, content planning, and content production. We dive into the different objectives of content strategy, and Rob shares some high-level process tips for creating great content. We also run through Jonah Berger's six "STEPPS" to viral content, and Rob shares his take on a few of them.

To learn more about Rob Goodman, visit robgoodman.com or find him on LinkedIn. You can listen to his Making Ways podcast at makingways.co. And if you're interested in the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity, find it on Amazon or at dbibook.com.

It's the summer of 2021—one year since the murder of George Floyd. And if you're wondering what that has to do with the season-four wrap-up of a podcast about branding, let me tell you: in early 2020 I had a plan for season four of How Brands Are Built. But in the wake of George Floyd's murder and protests around the world, my plan changed a bit. 2020 was already a pretty awful year for most people, and it just seemed to be getting worse and worse. So I started thinking about whether there was a way I could use this little platform of mine to do some good—or at least talk about something positive.

That led me to reach out to my most diverse set of guests yet, starting with Dr. Jason Chambers, who talked about the origins of racist brand names and what to do about them. I talked to female agency founders like Dava Guthmiller of Noise 13, Sunny Bonnell of Motto, and Emily Heyward of Red Antler about how they got started and the role of diversity in their agency cultures. The season ended with a two-part episode featuring Brian Collins and his agency's design apprentice, Diego Segura, who told me about one way to create opportunities for talented, but less privileged, designers and strategists. And along the way, I talked to Armin Vit of Brand New, Alina Wheeler, author of Designing Brand Identity, and Nirm Shanbhag of Sid Lee.

While I talked to guests about their agencies, books they'd written, or other topics specific to their areas of expertise, I also asked nearly all of them about what brands and branding professionals could be doing to improve the state of the world—in light of COVID-19, in light of racial injustice, and just in general. Are brands a force for good? Can they be? Should they try to be?

At the end of this episode, which features clips from every interview this season, I boil everything I heard and learned down into five ways brands—and branding professionals like you and me—can make the world a better place (sorry):

1. Be selective (and stick to your values)
2. Walk the talk
3. Wield your influence
4. Proactively pursue diversity
5. Don't underestimate the power of your work

In the episode, I break down each of these ideas in detail.

Diego Segura is a design apprentice at Collins, an independent strategy and brand experience design company with offices in New York City and San Francisco. In this episode, Diego describes how he discovered graphic design, his decision to drop out of high school, and what it's like being an apprentice at a prestigious branding and design company.

This is the second part of a two-part series; the episode begins with a continuation of my conversation with Brian Collins in part one. Brian shares his side of Diego's story—how Diego first got in touch, how he became a full-time employee, and why, on one of their early days together, Brian took him out to run errands throughout New York City.

After a short intro from Brian, the interview with Diego begins. I was eager to get Diego's backstory—it's fascinating (and inspiring) to hear how he got from a small town outside Austin, Texas to Collins in New York City. Along the way, he emailed with Michael Beirut, did multiple remote internships, and wrote The Dropout Manifesto (a chronicle of [my] crazy junior year).

We also talked about the importance of agencies and design studios looking outside the traditional design schools, like SVA and RISD—schools Diego wasn't even aware of when he was in high school—for new talent.

I'm telling you now: If I was out to start a studio today, I would practically build it solely on young ambitious people led by a really great creative director, head of design. Because the level of talent who reaches out to me personally, because they see I'm the design apprentice on the [Collins] website—the level of talent is insane. They are so, so, so good. ... There's no doubt they can add value. It's just, they didn't come from the same places that all the other designers came from, and we've gotta be okay with that."

– Diego Segura

To learn more about Collins visit their website. You can learn more about Diego (and see some of his work) at diegosegura.me and you can follow him on Twitter. If you're interested in checking out Diego's book, The Dropout Manifesto, it's available on Amazon, as is his second book, To a Man Much Like Myself.

Today's guest is Alina Wheeler, best known as the author of Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team, now in its fifth edition. One of my favorite memories of this book is seeing it on a desk when I arrived to my first day on the job at Labbrand, where I worked in Shanghai. I already knew the book, but seeing it in use, so far from home—that's when I really understood how influential of a book it is. In fact, it's been translated into Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, French, and other languages—and it's used by brand, marketing, and design teams, undergraduate and graduate students, and brand and business consultancies all over the world.

I wanted to get an idea of why Alina wrote the book and what she was doing beforehand (around 2003). Along with being an author, she's a designer with over 40 years of experience working with teams in the public and private sector. She's led the development of integrated brand identity programs, sales and marketing strategies, and design and communications systems.

I was excited to have the opportunity to talk to Alina about her career, the book she's created, and what the future holds for Designing Brand Identity. During the conversation, I learned that there will be a sixth edition but she won't be the author (!!!), how she gets case studies and quotes for the book, and the true identity of the mysterious Blake Deutsch. (It's hilarious—listen to find out.)

Toward the end of the conversation, I asked Alina whether there's anything she'd like to support and ask that others check out, and she talked about Simon Charwey, a brand identity designer and anthologist on indigenous African design systems and African Symbology. Simon's work includes the African Logo Design book, a compendium of 1,000 unique symbols inspired by indigenous African design systems, symbols, and culture. And off the air, Alina also mentioned Certified B Corporations, something else she's passionate about and recommends everyone checks out.

I found the conversation both enlightening and inspiring, and I hope you do too. To learn more about Alina and Designing Brand Identity, visit designingbrandidentity.info. Of course, the book is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. Alina's also active on Twitter and Instagram.

Nirm Shanbhag is the Chief Strategy Officer of Sid Lee USA, an international creative company. He's also my old boss. Back in 2012, he was running the San Francisco office of Interbrand, and he hired me as Director of Verbal Identity. Before Interbrand, Nirm earned his MBA from London Business School and worked in advertising, at firms like Mullen and McCann. He also ran his own, independent agency, Notch Strategy, for about six years between his roles at Interbrand and Sid Lee.

Nirm and I have worked together quite a bit—first at Interbrand, then as independent consultants. We've been called in on brand architecture projects a few times, and Nirm is one of just a handful of people I consider an expert on the topic. Since I haven't had too many (any) episodes focused on brand architecture, I was eager to get Nirm to share some of his insights into brand architecture—what it is, why it matters, and how it should be done. Throughout the conversation, Nirm came back time and again to the idea of keeping the consumer's journey front and center, considering their motivations and approaches to decision-making.

We also talked about brand purpose, and whether brands are good or bad for society (heady stuff). At the end of the conversation, Nirm recommended two very different books: The Experience Economy ("a seminal work and … one that not a lot of people know about") and A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.

I've probably read [A Brief History of Time] four times in my life. The reason I think it's worthwhile is because, yeah, it's about physics, but at its heart it's a book about perspective and recognizing that your perspective can change."

– Nirm Shanbhag

To learn more about Nirm and Sid Lee, visit sidlee.com. I also recommend you check out some of Nirm's blog posts on the Notch blog.

Emily Heyward is co-founder and and Chief Brand Officer at Red Antler, the leading brand company for startups and new ventures. Red Antler is the branding firm behind brands like Casper, Allbirds, Keeps, and Burrow. They also work with established brands like American Express, HBO, Google, and Gap.

Emily was named among the Most Important Entrepreneurs of the Decade by Inc. Magazine, and has also been recognized as a Top Female Founder by Inc. and one of Entrepreneur's Most Powerful Women of 2019. She's also the author of a new book, Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love from Day One.

I asked Emily what makes Red Antler different from other branding firms and what makes it, in the words of a 2018 Adweek article, one of "the surprisingly small group of branding shops behind today's top challenger brands." She says Red Antler was "the first creative services company that was designed and built to work with startups" and, as a result, "we've thought about brand in an incredibly holistic way … with obviously a particular focus on digital."

Next, we turned to Emily's book, Obsessed.

"The book really came out of 12 years of running Red Antler, launching new, disruptive businesses into the world, and seeing the ways in which brands' relationships with consumers are shifting. … The rules are not the same as they were, certainly 20 years ago, but even six years ago. Things keep changing."

– Emily Heyward

Then we turned to the events of 2020, and I asked Emily for her take on how brands should respond to racial injustice, as well as the COVID pandemic. Lastly, I asked Emily some wrap-up questions, including a brand/initiative she recommends checking out (the 15 Percent Pledge), a book recommendation (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous), and her advice to you people in the industry:

"Be curious. I think that so much of what we do is a response to the world around us—to culture and trends and what makes people tick. And when I meet with someone that doesn't seem like they're passionate about what's happening in the world, and what businesses are out there, and what they're seeing, and what they're loving—for me, that's an immediate red flag."

– Emily Heyward

To learn more about Emily and Red Antler, visit redantler.com or emilyheyward.com. Obsessed is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

Today's guest is Armin Vit, co-founder of UnderConsideration, a graphic design firm, and editor and writer for Brand New, the leading site for reviews of corporate and brand identity design work. Born and raised in Mexico City, Armin—along with his wife and partner, Bryony Gomez-Palacio—have created multiple other design blogs, co-authored books, and organized events like the annual Brand New Conference. I was excited to talk to Armin about design trends, blogging, and the pros and cons of being a professional critic.

The conversation started with some ancient history, going back to a blog called "Speak Up," and FutureBrand's 2003 redesign of Paul Rand's UPS logo, which gave rise to Brand New.

I asked Armin how he selects which work to review on Brand New, and he said he has a "little grid" in his mind. The more people are likely to be familiar with the client, the more likely he is to write about the work. If the client is small and unknown, the work has to be groundbreaking. Much of the work he sees is "fine"—but work that's just fine is actually less interesting than work that's terrible.

I meet other designers [that] will joke that they are always wondering ... what I might say. They're always thinking about, 'Oh shit, I hope this doesn't make it on Brand New. Or if it does, I hope it goes fine.' It just increases that level of stress ... but in a positive way that I have to make sure that what I'm saying is valuable to as many people as possible and doesn't put down anyone just for the sake of it.

Armin Vit

Armin and I went on to talk about a design trend he's seen lately: a stampede of wordmarks featuring geometric sans fonts, like Airbnb and Google, and the backlash against them, epitomized by the Chobani logotype.

Next, we discussed how design and branding can make a positive impact on the world, his experience as a Mexican-American immigrant and how it influences his thinking as a designer—especially given some of the Trump administration's rhetoric and policies toward immigrants and Mexico in particular.

I asked Armin for an example of some work he's seen that's making a positive impact, and he mentioned IBM's "Be Equal" campaign, which repurposes a bee designed for IBM by Paul Rand, highlighting an equals sign in its stripes.

To close out, I asked for Armin's book recommendations (he likes Branding: In Five and a Half Steps, by Michael Johnson) and his advice for young designers and people in the branding industry: "Look at a lot of brand design ... It's really about building your palate for identity design, how colors work, how typefaces work. It's not about copying anything, but taking bits of pieces from different places, and how you will apply that to your own lens, to your clients, or to your work. It's consuming a lot of identity design and letting it simmer in your subconscious." But honestly, he says, that's not just a pitch for Brand New.

To learn more about Armin, visit UnderConsideration, from which you can find Brand New as well as design work by Armin and Bryony, books they've written, like Flaunt, and events like the Brand New Conference.

On the podcast today: Sunny Bonnell, co-founder of Motto, one of the leading branding agencies in the country, with clients like Google, Hershey's, and Twentieth Century Fox. Sunny and her co-founder, Ashleigh Hansberger, recently wrote their first book, Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different. Sunny says the book started with a question: "What if you could take the parts of yourself that other people criticize—traits they call defiant, dangerous, and different—and turn those things into your selling points?"

We talked about how Sunny and Ashleigh arrived at the seven "virtues" in Rare Breed:

• Rebellious
• Audacious
• Obsessed
• Hot-blooded
• Weird
• Hypnotic
• Emotional

If you're curious which virtue applies to you, try the Rare Breed quiz. Sunny and Ashleigh also host a YouTube series, also called Rare Breed, where they sit down with guests like Charlamagne Tha God and Jon Batiste. I asked Sunny about Motto's origin story, the challenges of being one of very few female-owned agencies, the importance of diversity, and more. Toward the end of the conversation, Sunny recommended a few books: It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be and Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, both by Paul Ardern, as well as The Hero and the Outlaw, by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson. We ended with some of Sunny's motivating advice for anyone trying to grow their career: "Own who you are. In a world that wants to own you, owning yourself in this way can really hurt like hell. Being defiant, dangerous, and different is a gift. Succeed because of who you are, not despite who you are." To learn more about Sunny, check out her agency's work at wearemotto.com. Rare Breed is available now on Amazon and elsewhere. And, if you go to rarebreedbook.com, you can watch episodes of Sunny and Ashleigh's YouTube show and take the Rare Breed quiz. If you take the quiz or read the book, drop us a line on social media-I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I'm sure Sunny would, too. Episode sponsors

• The Brand Strategy Kit from Egle Karalyte. Available in both digital and print formats, the Kit provides structure and tools to streamline and gamify your branding process.
• Squadhelp. To begin a business name contest with hundreds of business naming experts, check out their services to get a fresh perspective on your company.

In this episode, I'm talking to Dava Guthmiller, founder and Chief Creative Officer at Noise 13, a brand strategy and design agency based in San Francisco. She's also cofounder of In/Visible Talks, and annual conference that celebrates the art of design and creativity, and In/Visible Project, which includes a collection of other events that bring people together over the process, inspiration, and challenges for design and creative professionals.

Throughout the conversation, we touched on diversity in the worlds of design and branding. I asked Dava what it was like to start Noise 13 as a young, female designer, and how In/Visible Talks is giving a platform to a racially diverse and heavily female-leaning group of speakers.

Next, we got into the weeds a bit on how Dava built the In/Visible Talks brand. She told me where the name came from and how the visual identity for year one involved a trip to the dollar store.

We rounded out the conversation, as we often do on the podcast, with book recommendations and advice for young professionals in the branding and design industry. Dava recommended The Empathy Edge by Maria Ross (see Maria's post on How Brands Are Built) and Marty Neumeier's Brand Flip. And she had several pieces of advice for young designers, including encouragement to try many different internships and jobs until you find the best fit: "Take internships. Find a mentor. Try it on. Try a small company. Try in-house. Try something big. This is your life. This is your job. Find the right project team fit for you, so that your life is not miserable."

To learn more about Dava, visit Noise 13 or In/Visible Talks. The annual conference will be on Jan 14, 2021, and early bird tickets are on sale now.

Season four has arrived, and my first guest is Dr. Jason Chambers of the University of Illinois. The theme for this season will be a bit looser than past seasons, but I'm hoping to get perspectives on the social impact of brands and branding. In other words, are brands a good thing for society, overall? In light of what's happened in 2020-the pandemic, protests for racial justice, increasingly extreme weather as a result of climate change, and even the U.S. presidential election-this topic felt relevant.

I first heard Dr. Chambers on 1A, a podcast from WAMU that's distributed by NPR, where he talked about "reckoning with racist brands" like Aunt Jemima and the Washington, D.C., NFL team. I was excited to talk to Dr. Chambers in a little more detail about these brand names, where they come from, why they should change, and how to change them.

Dr. Chambers's research is focused on the history of African Americans in the advertising industry, a topic about which he's written a book: Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry. Given his expertise, I also wanted to get his take on diversity in the agency world.

I don't often interview professors on the show (which makes sense, given it's a show about "how brands are built"), but I had so much fun talking to Dr. Chambers and exploring his in-depth knowledge of these subjects; I hope this is not the last time I host an academic or professor on the show.

To hear more from Dr. Chambers, I encourage you to check out the episode of 1A he joined, "Reckoning With Racist Brands." You can also find his opinions in publications like Ad Age, Adweek, CNN, Forbes, Black Enterprise, and The New York Times. He's written another book, too: Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship. Lastly, you can of course find him on the University of Illinois website and LinkedIn.

On June 11, 2020, Rob (creator and host of How Brands Are Built) joined Ilya Lobanov of Studeo on Instagram Live for a chat about brand strategy and naming. Ilya is an Australia-based designer and strategist who teaches multiple branding classes (available on his site and Skillshare).

Given Ilya's design background and Rob's naming experience, the conversation often covered similarities between design and naming. This special episode features the entire IG Live conversation (including live comments from viewers, which Ilya occasionally reads out loud). The episode is also available on IGTV and as a YouTube video.

If you like the interview, follow Ilya on Instagram (@wearestudeo), where he's also interviewed designers and branding experts like Michael Janda and Reagan (Frank) Mackrill of G'Day Frank.

Rob joins Jacob Cass of JUST Creative and Matt Davies on their new podcast, JUST Branding. We explored best practices for naming, positioning statements, and conducting discovery for brand strategy through the lenses of the company, client, and consumer. Rob shared actionable tips and real-world examples that will help you build a better brand.

Today's episode features a rare repeat guest: none other than David Aaker, Professor Emeritus at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, Vice-Chair at Prophet, a global marketing and branding consultancy, and prolific author of books and articles about branding.

Last time David was on the podcast, we talked about two of his books, Aaker on Branding, 20 Principles that Drive Success, and Creating Signature Stories. We also talked at length about his brand vision model. If you're interested in hearing that longer conversation with "the Father of Modern Branding," go take a listen.

This time, we're talking about David's newest book, Owning Game-Changing Subcategories: Uncommon Growth in the Digital Age. The premise of the book is that the only way for a business or brand to grow (with rare exceptions) is "to create or find 'must haves' that define whole new subcategories that can attract a loyal customer following."

During the conversation, David explains where he got the idea for the book, what he means by terms like "game-changing subcategory" and "must haves," and how digital has changed everything. He also illustrates his ideas through examples like Dollar Shave Club, Apple, and Airbnb. At the end of the conversation, David provides one final piece of advice to business owners and brand managers:

"Look for opportunities to create subcategory platforms—new ways [of] looking at what the customer is using and their relationship with the brand. And when you see one, think long and hard before you turn your back on it. ... Take some risks and make some investments, make some commitments. Because that's really the only way to grow."

Generally, I try to make the How Brands Are Built podcast evergreen. I want listeners to be able to go back any old episode and find that the conversation—whether it's with a namer, a strategist, an author, or some other branding professional—is still relevant.

But this episode is different. It's April, 2020, and we're in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. To say the least, it's been disruptive. (And not in the cool, buzzwordy kind of way.) Early on in the crisis, I read news of Zoom making conference calls free for K–12 schools, grocery stores creating special shopping hours for more vulnerable populations, and The New York Times taking down its paywall for all coronavirus-related coverage. I started keeping track of how companies were pitching in, and created an Instagram post highlighting six approaches, with an example for each.

Shortly thereafter, I started seeing similar content, including a blog post from Character, titled "A Brand's Responsibility In Times of Crisis." I wanted to talk a bit more about how brands are reacting, so I reached out to the authors, Lauren Wong, Associate Strategy Director, and Myra El-Bayoumi, Head of Strategy. (Myra's name may sound familiar—she was a guest on the podcast last season.) Lauren and Myra graciously agreed to hop on Zoom for a quick, impromptu chat about what brands can do, should do, and in some cases, should avoid doing, in times of crisis.

For the second mini episode of the podcast, I'm talking to Brad Flowers, founding partner of Bullhorn, a marketing company in Lexington, Kentucky. Brad is also the author of a new book entitled, The Naming Book: 5 steps to creating brand and product names that sell.

Regular listeners know that naming is an area of focus for me, so when I heard about Brad's book, I couldn't want to read it and ask him a few questions.

We started out talking about how there aren't too many books about naming out there (here's a list, which now includes Brad's). Brad wrote his book because he'd had trouble early in his career finding something that documented a replicable process for his team. The five steps Brad recommends are:

1. Establishing Criteria
2. Brainstorming
3. Compiling Names
4. Expanding Your Knowledge
5. Deciding on the Final Name

Within each step, Brad includes short worksheets and exercises. One that I especially like comes right at the beginning, when he asks readers to pick any three brand names and post-rationalize where the names came from. Brad says it "gives someone the opportunity to take a step back and start to just recognize the names that exist and how they're working, so that when you start to think about your name, you can understand that while Apple seems like a great name, on day one it felt like a really risky, and probably a pretty dumb name, really."

We rounded out the conversation talking about the benefits of sometimes going "off brief," how to ask other people their opinion on name ideas, and Brad's favorite naming story (involving his five-year-old son).

To learn more about The Naming Book, visit thenamingbook.com. It's available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.org. To learn more about Brad and Bullhorn, visit BullhornCreative.com, or find them on social media.

This is the first of several "mini episodes" of How Brands Are Built. Hopefully, you saw this mentioned on social media or in the newsletter: between now and the next season (TBA), I'll release a few short episodes on a range of topics—no consistent through-line, just some interesting, snack-sized branding content.

I reached out on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook asking for feedback on which mini episodes would be most interesting or useful. If you're one of the many people who weighed in, thank you! And now that the results are in, I'm happy to share this first mini episode, all about careers in branding.

I've spent some time reviewing interviews from the past two seasons, looking at the advice guests gave, and grouping them into themes. I've boiled it down to six pieces of advice broken out across three categories:

Category 1: Where you work

1. Surround yourself with good people—it's more important than getting to work on cool, big brands, especially when you're just getting started. And it might mean starting out at a smaller agency, where you could have more exposure to clients and experienced coworkers.

Category 2: How you work

1. Master the basics, such as running an interview, presenting, and writing, as well as gaining a basic understanding of how business works.
2. Pick a lane; for example, research or analytics.
3. See the big picture—always think about the problem you're trying to solve for the client. Know that saying, "To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"? Don't be a hammer.

Category 3: Why you work

1. Get out there—experience new things
2. Enjoy what you do

This episode goes into more detail on each of the six pieces of advice, with clips, quotes, and insights from interviews with:

• Jeremy Miller of Sticky Branding
• Ken Pasternak of Two by Four
• Fabian Geyrhalter of FINIEN
• Caren Williams, independent brand consultant
• Dennis Hahn of Liquid Agency
• Ana Andjelic, strategy executive and doctor of sociology
• Alan Brew of BrandingBusiness
• Myra El-Bayoumi of Character
• Denise Lee Yohn, author of What Great Brands Do and Fusion
• Tim Riches of Principals
• Erminio Putignano of PUSH Collective
• Allen Adamson of Metaforce
• Gareth Kay of Chapter
• Adam Morgan of eatbigfish
• Laura Ries of Ries & Ries
• Marty Neumeier of Liquid Agency (and author of Brand Gap and Zag)
• David Aaker of Prophet (and author of Building Strong Brands and Brand Portfolio Strategy)

Season three of the podcast featured my most wide-ranging conversations yet. I talked to guests about topics such as naming, social influence, and fusing brand and culture. Like last season, I talked to a mix of popular authors and speakers, like Jeremy Miller and Denise Lee Yohn, as well as some people I've worked with closely at agencies like Interbrand, Siegel+Gale, and BrandingBusiness. Thank you to all my guests this season:

• Jeremy Miller, founder of Sticky Branding; author of Sticky Branding and Brand New Name
• Ken Pasternak, president of Two by Four (formerly president and COO of Marshall Strategy)
• Fabian Geyrhalter, principal and founder of FINIEN; author of How to Launch a Brand and Bigger Than This
• Caren Williams, independent brand consultant
• Dennis Hahn, Chief Strategy Officer at Liquid Agency
• Ana Andjelic, strategy executive; PhD in sociology
• Alan Brew, founding partner at BrandingBusiness
• Myra El-Bayoumi, strategy director at Character
• Denise Lee Yohn, brand leadership expert; author of What Great Brands Do and Fusion

Thank you, too, for listening, sharing your thoughts, following along the website, social media, and the newsletter. The theme of this season, broadly speaking, was brand experience. In this wrap-up episode, I walk through what a brand experience is and how to create or improve one. First off, how should we define brand experience? About a year ago, before this season started, I posted the following definition: "The totality of all sensations, feelings, thoughts, and actions evoked by a brand." That pretty much aligns with other definitions I've seen from the likes of Marty Neumeier. (His, from The Dictionary of Brand, is "All the interactions people have with a product, service, or organization.") The episode kicks off with Ken Pasternak and Caren Williams each going into detail on how they think about brand experience. Next, we get to the four steps for creating (or strengthening) a brand experience. Sounds simple, but each step requires some serious work. In the episode, each step is fleshed out and supported with audio clips from the season's interviews. Four steps to create or improve a brand experience

1. Get the brand strategy right (should a strategy platform include experience principles?)
2. Outline the context within which the brand will be experienced (e.g., customer journey mapping)
3. Brainstorm ideas for the brand experience (often takes place in a collaborative work session with the client)
4. Implement, measure, and modify (organize ideas by impact/effort, mock up or prototype ideas, and always be iterating)

To learn more about brand experience and the guests from season three, listen to each full episode or read transcripts on HowBrandsAreBuilt.com. You'll also find a growing list of books recommended by guests this season and last. Thanks again, especially to those of you who've subscribed, left a rating or review, or connected on social media. If you haven't done those things already, please do-I really appreciate the support!

My final guest for season three of the podcast is Denise Lee Yohn, author of the bestseller, What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest. She's also an in-demand keynote speaker, and has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, NPR, and in the Wall Street Journal discussing business and branding issues.

Denise cut her teeth in lead strategy roles for the advertising agencies behind campaigns for Burger King and Land Rover, and has held client-side positions at Jack In The Box and Sony.

On this episode, Denise and I talk about the relationship between brand and business, why it's important to "sweat the small stuff," brand experience versus employee experience, and her latest book, Fusion: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World's Greatest Companies.

I kicked off the conversation with a question about the relationship between brand and business, something I've been interested in since writing an article on the topic for The Guardian in 2014. Denise and I agree that business leaders need to stop thinking of brand and business (or brand strategy and business strategy, at least) as two separate things. They are "one and the same," to use Denise's words.

Next, we talked about one of the seven "brand-building principles" from her book, What Great Brands Do. According to the book, great brands "Sweat the Small Stuff." Denise explains that the process she recommends for achieving this goal and introduces one of the free tools she's created, the Brand Touchpoint Wheel.

Later in the conversation, Denise and I talked about her latest book, Fusion, which explores the relationship between culture and brand. While she does not recommend creating employer brand platforms (partly because they create an unnecessary divide between the external and internal-facing brand), she does recommend working on the employee experience using a similar approach to that used for customer brand experience. The Brand Touchpoint Wheel can again prove useful when working on the employee experience, as can another tool Denise offers, the Employee Experience Architecture Framework.

As usual, we wrapped up the conversation with Denise's book recommendations and advice for junior/aspiring branding professionals. You won't want to miss it!

To learn more about Denise, visit deniseleeyohn.com. On her site, you'll find information about her books, speaking engagements, and consulting practice, as well as her blog, and more free, downloadable tools like the ones we mentioned in our conversation. You can also find and follow Denise on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

My guest on today's episode is Myra El-Bayoumi, Strategy Director at Character, a branding and design studio with offices in New York and San Francisco. Before Character, Myra held senior strategy positions at Landor, Siegel+Gale, and Interbrand (which is where I met her). Myra also holds an MBA from the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. Given Myra's experience, I wanted to get her perspective on the similarities and differences in brand strategy approach, philosophy, and deliverables among top-tier brand consulting firms. She has a lot of respect for her prior firms, but admits she's biased toward Character now that she's leading their strategy efforts. She says she's "better equipped to see the value of a place like Character because [she] grew up in the big shops," and that differences at Character include more flexibility, the ability to "blow up our process in service of solving" the client's problems, and speed. Myra describes the Character approach to brand strategy as arriving at answers to two key questions:

• Why did this brand exist, beyond to make money?
• Why should the world choose this brand?

The second question should be answered in a way that's relevant in today's culture but also "evergreen for the future." This link between the brand strategy and cultural trends is equally applicable for B2B brands, Myra says, citing the example of UberConference (a product of Dialpad, a Character client). "One of the examples of a B2B brand that we worked with, who I actually think does the brand experience thing pretty well is Dialpad. You might not know Dialpad, but you probably know UberConference, which is one of their products, and UberConference has that famous hold music. That's an example-and we didn't create that, so I won't take any credit for it-but we know those people now and we know how well that hold music-what it says, the sound of it, and the fact that it exists in the first place-represent the spirit and the DNA of who that company is." I asked Myra what components she thinks are necessary in a brand platform. She says purpose is critical, but that values and personality traits "lack precision, focus, clarity, and sharpness." We got into an interesting conversation about whether personality belongs within a brand strategy platform or should be removed, allowing design principles or voice principles to play a similar role, but "outside" of the brand platform. We wrapped up by talking about a brand Myra thinks is doing "pretty much everyhing right" (Billie) and a book she recommends (Mating in Captivity) even though "it has nothing to do with branding. It just has to do with humans." To learn more about Myra, visit the Character website.

Alan Brew has been in branding since 1985. In this, episode he takes us back to that year to explain how he got into the industry and what he's seen change since then. Along the way, he's worked with clients like Chevron, Elsevier, Tech Data, Royal Bank of Canada, Delta Airlines, and Huawei, as well as a number of startups and small-to-medium businesses. Now a founding partner at BrandingBusiness in Southern California, Alan's career has also included roles at Landor, Addison, and Siegel+Gale.

Alan and I met at that last one: Siegel+Gale. I was lowest man on the totem pole (I think that may have actually been my title) when Alan came in as Managing Director of the LA office. I remember an early meeting with Alan. We were in a full conference room with lots of smart strategists and designers sitting around the table. I was used to being a fly on the wall for meetings like this-maybe just taking notes or waiting for some marching orders. I can't remember what the meeting was about or what we were trying to decide, but I remember, vividly, Alan turning to me and asking my opinion on the matter at hand. Now, maybe Alan just didn't know how unimportant I was, but I took it as something else: To me, it was a recognition that my point of view had value, hierarchy be damned. That moment stuck with me, and shortly after Alan left, I followed him to his next agency and joined his strategy team.

I wanted to get Alan talking about his early days in the industry, including the origin of "global brands," the first time he saw the book Positioning, the age of the corporate narrative, and a fateful dinner meeting with Walter Landor, back in 1985.

Next, we talked about a proprietary tool at BrandingBusiness, the Brand Performance Platform. "The Brand Performance Platform is a databased research program that produces analytics, metrics, for evaluating brands on ... awareness, consideration, preference, and purchase intent-the classic sales funnel," says Alan. "But we can put metrics against those elements and look at where a company is succeeding or where a brand is succeeding. ... We can, on those four metrics, create an index, which we call the Brand Performance Platform, and say, 'This is your index and this is how you increase it,' and we can correlate that increase to revenue performance."

Afterward, we got into an interesting conversation about "corporate narrative," which Alan think of as an evolution of positioning. We talked about storytelling and content creation, with Alan explaining that brand strategy has "become more of a fungible externalized set of strategic components rather than just this inert strategic document that lives on somebody's shelf."

Lastly, Alan shared some favorite brands (Amazon and Subaru) and recommended some non-business books and authors he recommends every brand strategist and businessperson reads: Dickens, Michael Lewis (including The Undoing Project), Man's Search for Meaning, and The Economist.

To learn more about Alan, visit BrandingBusiness, where you can learn about his agency, read his bio, and see many of his blog posts. Speaking of blogs, you should also check out Alan's blog about brand naming: Namedroppings. You can also follow Alan on Twitter.

Ana Andjelic is a strategy executive with wide-ranging experience on the agency and client sides. Recent roles include Chief Brand Officer at fashion retailer Rebecca Minkoff and SVP, Global Strategy Director at Havas LuxHub. Past agency experience includes time at Droga5, HUGE, The Barbarian Group, and Razorfish.

Ana also has a PhD in sociology and has published dozens of articles about luxury and fashion branding, the experience economy, social influence, content strategy, and more. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, Fast Company, AdAge, Adweek, LeanLuxe, Luxury Daily, Glossy, Campaign, and Form Design Magazine.

In 2018, she was listed by Forbes as one of the top 50 Chief Marketers in 2018 who "serve as models of a new, emerging and disruptive chief marketer." She's been recognized as one of the "Luxury Women to Watch" by Luxury Daily and one of the top 10 digital strategists by The Guardian.

I kicked things off by asking Ana about her PhD-why she chose to pursue it and how it's impacted her career. Then we talked about a term she writes about "social currency." I asked what it means and why it's important. Next, we talked about how she defines "brand experience" and what brands should do to create compelling brand experiences and social influence.

Ana says, "These days, the strength of the brand is how successfully it can defy the strength of the algorithm." To do so, she suggests brands must exhibit at least one of her 4 Cs of the modern brand:

1. Community
2. Content
3. Curation
4. Collaborations

Throughout the interview, Ana lists quite a few brands she's interested in because they're "trying something new," including GOOP, Casper, Net-a-Porter, The Upper House (a luxury hotel in Hong Kong), Rapha (cycling clothing and accessories), Tracksmith (running gear), Away (luggage), Glossier, and MUJI.

Wrapping up the conversation, I asked Ana for book recommendations. She likes Value Proposition Design (by the authors of Business Model Generation), This is Service Design Thinking, and a series called Brand. Balance., which she describes as "little booklets [that explore] what iconic brands have done right ... a deep dive into the brand aesthetics, identity, and then the brand expression." She also recommends books in the field of behavioral economics, such as those by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Bruno Latour.

Lastly, Ana offered some advice to young and/or junior people in branding and marketing:

"I overall believe that people need to think more. They're too trusting of ideas-they just adopt ideas without critical thinking. Whatever can inspire junior people, or advance their critical thinking ... I would advise that. And then, ... I cannot underscore [enough] the importance of observation and being very aware that one's own perspective is limited. So, that means travel, expose yourself to other cultures, observe how people behave, observe obstacles, how they overcome obstacles in their behavior, and just be very open."

To learn more about Ana, visit her website or find her on Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Dennis Hahn is Chief Strategy Officer at Liquid Agency, a brand experience, strategy, marketing, and design agency with offices in San Jose, Portland, and New York. Dennis is responsible for the methodologies Liquid uses to address the strategic challenges of clients like John Deere, HP, Microsoft, Motorola, Nasdaq, PayPal, and Walmart.

During the episode, you'll hear us reference a 2013 video of Dennis talking about brand experience, in which he says, "To activate your brand, you really first have to understand what the brand stands for. So, understanding the brand's meaning is a vital component of that. Once you've figured that out, then you can use the brand strategy as a filter for thinking about the different dimensions of the experience. And those dimensions can go into different areas, such as the digital experience, or the experience with employees, or the product experience, or even the service."

Dennis and I discussed the dimensions of brand experience he mentions in the video, as wells as Liquid's approach to creating a brand experience for clients, which includes a proprietary workshop approach they call "Swarming." Dennis describes Swarms as follows:

"Swarming is our workshop methodology, essentially. It's designed to attack a problem from a number of angles and unleashing the power of simultaneous collaboration between agencies and clients. It's really a co-creation model, and that's where we use the design thinking and lean startup principles to guide clients through that co-creation process."

We also spent some time talking about a related concept Liquid focuses on these days, brand culture, which Dennis says is "the best possible relationship that a brand can have with its customers and employees."

To learn more about Dennis, visit the Liquid site, where you can find his bio, some blog posts he's written, and more information about the agency and its approach.

Caren Williams and I met in 2012 at Interbrand San Francisco, where she was a Director of Strategy. Caren's since become an independent brand consultant, working with brands like Google, Sunrun, and Sandbox VR. One reason I wanted to talk to Caren is because of her diversity of experience, which includes an MBA from University of Texas, managing brands at consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms like Proctor & Gamble and Nestle, strategy and innovation consulting at a firm called Jump Associates, and, finally, brand consulting. This background gives Caren a unique perspective on brand strategy and brand experience. I asked Caren about the difference between building brands in the CPG space versus corporate and B2B brands. She says that while the fundamental approach is the same, the inputs and outputs are often slightly different. Consumer product brands can require deep consumer research and the resulting strategy can revolve around functional and emotional benefits and "reasons to believe." Corporate brands, on the other hand, may require more internal stakeholder research to get to the "spirit and ethos of the entire company," and some of the strategic positioning pillars might be "almost tagline-y." Next, we talked about brand experience. Caren and I talked through a model we both have experience with, which breaks brand experience into four dimensions:

• People includes corporate office employees who don't interact with the brand as well as customer-facing people, like retail store employees or drivers for Uber/Lyft. The People category also includes performance reviews, job descriptions, and on-boarding processes.
• Places (and spaces) means physical places, like stores, lobbies, and conference room names, but also digital spaces like websites, assuming they can be considered "a place you can go. ... [Visitors are] entering into your brand world."
• Products (and services) are simply "the things that you make and sell." For Google, products include the G Suite, which houses Gmail and Google Drive. Caren says, "If you're trying to bring your brand to life, it's not just how you bring it to life across your advertising and your communications and your messaging. The things that you make and sell need to represent that brand."
• Communications include anything written or spoken on behalf of the brand. Most marketing and advertising falls into this category, including email marketing, social posts, responses to emails/chats/phone calls, as well as keynote speeches from the CEO and blog posts.

Then Caren shares some simple, straightforward tools and exercises (or "creative brain games") you can use with clients to tease out the best ideas for building a brand experience. She recommended an "old school" book called Why We Buy, by Paco Underhill that explains purchasing behavior such as "why we reach for things on the middle shelf versus the lower shelf." (To see another book she recommends, as well as recommendations from many past interviewees, check out the Useful List: Books recommended by branding experts.) To close out, Caren shared some great advice for people just getting into brand consulting. To learn more about Caren-her approach, the services she offers, and her client experience-check out her website at Caren-Williams.com.

Fabian Geyrhalter is the principal and founder of FINIEN, a Los Angeles-based branding agency. Fabian's also a prolific writer; you can find articles he's authored in Forbes, Inc., The Washington Post, Entrepreneur, and Mashable. He's also written two books: How to Launch a Brand, and his latest, Bigger Than This: How to Turn Any Venture Into an Admired Brand.

Fabian and I talked about his books, his agency, and the approach he uses with some clients to build out an entire brand platform from scratch in one very long day. We started off talking about his background as a designer and how it contributes to his work. He feels it helps him imagine the strategy coming to life in the real world-visually and verbally-which puts him "a couple of steps ahead."

After talking a little about the types of clients FINIEN helps, we got to a unique aspect of Fabian's process: the one-day strategy intensive. Throughout the day, he takes his clients through a series of exercises. As they work, they complete an interactive PDF on screen. At the end of the day, the PDF contains all the key elements of the brand platform: positioning, core values, philosophy, personality, mission, vision, target, and competitors.

"I figured, if I worked with startups, they are founders, they are entrepreneurs, they think very much like me; they want to get to the heart of their brands very quickly, and they don't have the time. Usually, literally, they don't have the time. They need to launch in a couple of weeks from now. Doing a couple-of-week exercise to talk about brand purpose, brand philosophy, and positioning is not going to happen with them." - Fabian Geyrhalter

Later in his process, he creates the brand's identity along with a variety of touchpoints needed to launch, which he refers to as the "brand atmosphere."

Next, we talked about Fabian's new book, Bigger Than This. He was inspired by brands like TOMS, which "are absolutely commodity-type products," yet consumers fall in love with them. He explored this phenomenon further, looking at many similar cases, and distilled eight "commodity brand traits." The book outlines each trait along with an example and some practical recommendations.

As usual, we wrapped up the conversation with some book recommendations and advice for junior people in the industry.

To learn more about Fabian, his branding agency, and his books, visit the FINIEN website. (Also, here's a hint: You can buy his books on Amazon, but if you want a signed copy of Bigger Than This, buy it through his website.)

Today's guest is Ken Pasternak, President of Two by Four, a full service advertising agency based in Chicago. On the episode, however, you'll hear me introduce Ken as President and COO of Marshall Strategy, a San Francisco-based brand identity and strategy firm he cofounded in 2002. A few months ago, Two by Four acquired Marshall Strategy, so Ken's role changed a bit. We recorded this conversation a little before that happened.

Ken leads major positioning, identity, naming, and brand architecture work. He's worked with clients like Apple, Symantec, MTV, Boeing, Sony, and UC Berkeley.

I've known Ken since 2007, and through the years we've partnered on quite a few naming and brand architecture projects. It was great to get to talk to an old friend and colleague-who also happens to be a brilliant brand strategist-and hear more about how he thinks about brands and brand experience.

We kicked off the conversation talking about Ken's interesting career path, which started out in Budapest. The common thread in his career has been storytelling, which took him from a degree in English literature to producing corporate videos, and eventually to brand strategy.

Next, Ken detailed his process for creating a great brand experience, including his definitions of brand and brand experience, and a few simple tools he uses with clients (including plotting potential brand experience touchpoints on a two-by-two with axes of impact versus effort).

Toward the end of the conversation, we talked about how Ken feels about Alaska Airlines acquiring Virgin America (hint: not great) and what they'll do to the brand. Then he recommended some books and gave his advice for new or junior brand strategists.

To learn more about Ken, visit the Two by Four and Marshall Strategy sites. I highly recommend you check out the Marshall Strategy blog, too-it's full of insightful, useful articles. Most recently, Ken's partner Philip, who you'll hear him mention during the episode, published a great article about what's changed-and what hasn't-in his over 30 years in the brand identity world.

Today's guest is Jeremy Miller, author of the bestselling book, Sticky Branding, and founder of a strategic branding and business development consultancy with the same name: Sticky Branding.

One thing that makes Jeremy different from most strategists I've talked to is the way he got into this business: He was working for his family's company, a Toronto-based recruiting firm, when the business started to fail. He diagnosed the problem, recognized the need for a rebrand, and-long story short-he helped turn the company around, and it sold in 2013. In 2015, he published Sticky Branding, in which he shares what he learned from that experience as well as his decade-long study of other companies and how they grow recognizable, memorable brands.

Now Jeremy's got a new book, and it's about a topic near and dear to my heart: naming. When I first reached out to Jeremy, I didn't even know about the new book (or I might've had him on season one, which focused on naming).

Jeremy and I covered a lot of ground in our conversation: We talked about brand strategy, brand experience, Sticky Branding, and the new book, Brand New Name.

To learn more about Jeremy and both his books, visit stickybranding.com or Jeremy's author page on Amazon. Also check out the Sticky Branding Group on LinkedIn, which has over 50,000 members (!).

This past season, I had a great time reconnecting with old peers like Miriam Stone, Tim Riches, and Erminio Putignano, as well as getting to talk to some other branding experts I'd previously only known through their writing and speaking engagements:

• Allen Adamson
• Gareth Kay
• Adam Morgan
• Laura Ries
• Marty Neumeier
• David Aaker

To all my guests, thank you for joining me on the podcast and sharing your expertise. On today's episode-the last of season two-I share five themes I noticed as I looked back on all nine interviews. These are ideas I felt like I was hearing again and again throughout the season-they're not necessarily the only themes or even the most important ones, but they stuck out to me, and I wanted to share them. Each theme is supported by two or three clips from the interviews, but most came up in other conversations, too. The five themes are:

1. Thinking of brand strategy in terms of questions to be answered [01:51]
2. Prototype, prototype, prototype [04:20]
3. Keep it simple [07:03]
4. The importance of category [09:43]
5. The flexibility of brand frameworks [15:05]

Toward the end of the episode [27:25], I play back-to-back clips with interviewees' advice to younger or more junior people in the industry, or anyone looking to get into the industry or become a stronger strategist or branding professional. Don't forget to go back and listen or read transcripts from this season and last on HowBrandsAreBuilt.com. While you're there, you can find more content on brand positioning as well as a list of books recommended by guests this season. Thanks to all of you for listening to the show, and especially to everyone who subscribed, left a rating or review, signed up for the newsletter, or connected on social media. If you haven't done those things, please do-I really appreciate the support, and it helps ensure, eventually, a season three of How Brands Are Built!

He's been called "The Father of Modern Branding." If you've ever read anything about branding or brand strategy, my guest today requires no introduction. I'm talking to David Aaker, author of over a dozen books and hundreds of articles about marketing and branding, Professor Emeritus at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and Vice-Chair at Prophet, a global marketing and branding consultancy. Given this season is about positioning and brand platforms, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to ask David directly about his brand vision model, which most people refer to simply as "the Aaker Model." We also talked about two of his most recent books, some of his favorite brands, a few books, and his advice for junior people in the branding industry. Aaker on Branding I kicked off the conversation by asking David about one of his latest books, Aaker on Branding: 20 Principles That Drive Success. David says he wrote the book because employees at Prophet were asking him what they should read and he was tired of saying "these 40 pages in this book...these 80 pages in this book." He wrote Aaker on Branding to "capsulize the main ideas that were in each of those books" into a "Reader's Digest version." Aside from the brand vision model (see below), other big-picture advice in the book includes:

• "Move from brand competition to subcategory competition if you want to grow."
• Regarding portfolio strategy, "you have to make [a family of brands] work so they generate synergy and they generate clarity and they generate relevance."
• Develop a "shared interest program."
• Tell stories.

The brand vision model (the Aaker model) Seven of the principles in Aaker on Branding have to do with what he calls "brand vision," which others (including Prophet) refer to as "brand positioning." David says, "There's a lot of things you can call it...actually, the terminology is not so important. What is important are some fundamental ideas." He created his brand vision model (originally called the brand identity model) because he was convinced advertising agencies were doing it wrong by attempting to reduce brands to three-word phrases. Brands are multidimensional, so David created a model that allows for any number of elements (some are core, others are extended and "provide extra texture and guidance"). He's also against "fill-in-the-box" models that force strategists to populate a model with ideas that may not be relevant to the brand in question. For example, a product brand won't need organizational values and a B2B corporate brand may not need a brand personality. I asked David what determines whether an idea rises to the level of a brand vision element. According to David, elements should:

1. Differentiate from other brands,
2. Resonate with customers, and
3. Be something you can deliver (either a proof point, which you can already deliver, or a strategic imperative, which is aspirational but attainable).

David agreed, however, that not every element has to meet all three of these criteria, although there's "no hard and fast rule." The model consists of 12 elements arranged into four dimensions: Brand as Product, Brand as Organization, Brand as Person (including brand personality), and Brand as Symbol. David clarified that these dimensions are really there to ensure you've thought about every possible way of expressing the brand's identity, rather than requiring the strategist to answer every question or fill in every box. Creating Signature Stories Next, we turned to Creating Signature Stories, David's most recent book. To write the book, David first had to define "what is not a story," given how overused the word has become in branding and marketing today. It's not facts, programs, descriptions, or attributes. He says, "It's a narrative-a once-upon-a-time narrative. It's involving, it's authentic, it's intriguing, and it has some sort of a 'wow' factor. It really jumps out at you. It's something you want to share with others because it's so entertaining, so informative, so relevant. And it has a strategic message." Throughout the conversation, David gives several examples of great signature stories, including UCHealth-specifically, Becky's story. David's has four high-level pieces of advice for creating signature stories:

1. Believe in the power of stories. "You just have to get religion."
2. Find strong stories. Not just any story will do.
3. Figure out a way to get the stories produced so they're effective. Good presentation is key.
4. Figure out a way to distribute the stories effectively.

As to why stories are important for brands, David says, "Stories are just unbelievably powerful. It's astounding ... It turns out that stories get attention. It turns out that stories persuade-they change perceptions. ... They avoid counterargument." And the emotions from stories are transferred to the brand telling them. This is known as "affect transfer." Wrapping up In a handful of wrap-up questions, David shared his appreciation for Dove soap and their Real Beauty campaign and two "elephant books" (Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff and Who Says an Elephant Can't Dance by Lou Gerstner. David's advice for junior people looking to get into the branding industry is to take advantage of the fact consultancies and client organizations are "just absolutely terrified about becoming relevant in the digital age." If you're young, he says, take advantage of the fact you understand social media, statistics, or data analysis, and use that knowledge as a way to open the door. To learn more about David, visit davidaaker.com. That URL will redirect you to his blog on the Prophet website, where you can also read about his latest books and find links to buy them. You can also follow David on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Medium.

Today's guest is Tim Riches, Group Strategy Director at Principals in Melbourne. I met Tim in Singapore, at FutureBrand. When I joined FutureBrand's strategy team in 2011, Tim was running the Singapore office and serving as Chief Growth Officer for all of Asia Pacific. He left shortly after I arrived, but in the few months we overlapped, Tim made a big impression on me. He's a fast-talking, no bullshit, powerhouse thinker who often seems to be offering solutions before anyone else in the room has even fully grasped the problem.

I asked Tim about an article he wrote a few months back, titled "The greatest change branding agencies have faced in a generation," in which he states "branding 101 hasn't changed ... but the shift toward experiences has permanently altered how people assess 'different' and 'better'." He calls out a shift in focus-on the client side-toward a broader definition of "customer experience" that no longer holds marketing or brand as the exclusive "business lens" on the customer relationship. For agencies to maintain relevance going forward, he argues, they must be able to build bridges "between the promise of the brand and the delivery of that promise" by creating actionable principles that experience designers can use to deliver the pillars of a brand.

We also talked about brand strategy frameworks and how rigid or flexible they should be. Tim has strong opinions here, which I alluded to briefly in my conversation with Gareth Kay. (When I said a friend referred to some frameworks as "parking lots," I was referring to Tim.) Tim's main point is that, in order for concepts like pillars, values, and personality traits to provide any guidance as to how a brand (or organization) should look, feel, or behave, there must be some coherence between them. "I don't see how you can create a cohesive story unless there is some relationship," Tim says. "At least trying to do that helps you show where you have disjoints and incongruities within the thinking."

When I asked Tim about books, he justified his own love of sci-fi by claiming "it's good fuel for the imagination, and I do think strategists have to have imagination-not just analytical skills." He also recommended strategists read The Economist and at least understand the core concepts of books like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow.

Wrapping up, I asked Tim for his advice to those just starting their careers in branding. He advised junior people to stay focused on what value looks like for each client rather than getting drawn into an obsession with methodology. He also emphasized the importance of having good "practitioner skills," such as being able to run an interview, present to clients, and design and facilitate workshops.

To learn more about Tim and Principals, visit Principals.com.au.

This week's guest is Miriam Stone, an independent strategist who works with agencies around the Bay Area, including lifestyle branding agency Noise 13, where she's Strategy Director. In addition to her brand consulting work, Miriam's helped create and develop brands from inside the organization, as a Co-Founder of Swing Left, a national political movement, and previously as VP of Business Development for VisionSpring. Miriam and I first met at Interbrand San Francisco in 2012. Since then, we've become good friends and frequent collaborators. She's one of the smartest, most thoughtful strategists I know. When she told me she'd been working on documenting her process for getting from facts and observations to useful findings and insights, I jumped at the opportunity to have her walk through it on the podcast. This is exactly the "practical and tactical" information for which I created How Brands Are Built. It's an in-the-weeds conversation, but if you're working in branding and looking to get more systematic in your approach to insight generation, you'll want to tune in. Miriam walked through four steps to insight generation. Her perspective is that, while some parts of brand strategy may require "that little, extra, innate spark or talent," other parts, like those below, can be approached systematically. Step 1: Collecting

• Try not to make any judgements until the research is done. Miriam: "Just listen. Read, and listen. ... Just be a sponge."
• Use the "Three C's" to collect information about the Company, the Category (including competitors), and Customers.
• At a minimum, do a few fact-gathering sessions with the client team and supplement with desktop research.
• One exercise recommendation: Have the client list every competitor, then prioritize the top three. Break into groups and list out points of differentiation between the client's brand and competitors' brands-not just product benefits, but brand strengths and weaknesses.

Step 2: Grouping

• Put everything up on the wall with sticky notes-one fact per note.
• Group similar or related facts and findings, without trying to draw out insights yet. Miriam: "I think that takes the pressure off of you as a strategist. It takes the pressure off of the data."
• At this point, you might have 10 or 20 different groupings, which is way too many to present to a client as "insights."

Step 3: Synthesizing

• Take a step back and ask yourself what themes you see-what the groupings are telling you on a deeper level.
• Look for points of tension between the themes, ideas that are strongly supported, or anything that doesn't make sense.
• Ultimately, you should be able to get down to five or six big insights.

Step 4: Storytelling

• Don't think in PowerPoint. (Credit to Caren Williams)
• Write an outline-what's the key observation or insight on each slide, and what facts or quotes will you use to back each one up.
• You should feel like your outline is 70-80% complete before you move to slides (assuming that's how you'll present).
• The outline allows you to see any holes in the story.

Miriam's a big proponent of using sticky notes throughout these steps, an approach she learned from Caren Williams, with whom we both worked at Interbrand. Caren is now an independent brand strategist working in the Bay Area. Despite having tried other methods, Miriam finds that sticky notes work best for a number of reasons:

• They "force you to distill as you're doing your research."
• "Because you can only write so much, you have to abstract a little bit as you're writing."
• "You can move them around really easily."
• They force you to switch medium (from screen to physical paper).
• You stand up and move around while using them. "I think it does something good for the brain."
• When working with other people, you can look at the wall together and discuss what you're finding.

We also talked about competitive audits, getting from insights to a brand platform, what "ingredients" should be included in a brand platform, and what makes a good brand essence. To learn more about Miriam, visit her website Brand Plume, or Noise 13. You can also find some blog posts she's written on How Brands Are Built.

This week's guest is Allen Adamson, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Metaforce, a boutique, hybrid marketing services firm focused on growth strategies. Allen was previously Chairman, North America of Landor Associates, and has written four books:

• BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed
• BrandDigital: Simple Ways Top Brands Succeed in the Digital World
• The Edge: 50 Tips from Brands that Lead
• Shift Ahead: How the Best Companies Stay Relevant in a Fast-Changing World

We started the conversation by talking about the importance of simplicity-the premise of his first book. Allen says he likes to think of your brand as your story and asks, "When someone hears your name, what do you want to pop into their head?" While he acknowledges the utility of the various components of a typical brand platform (i.e., brand pillars, brand personality, etc.), he keeps coming back to the ultimate goals of focus and simplicity. I asked how companies or brand managers should find that simple, relevant, differentiating story or idea, and Allen recommended one exercise he likes to do with clients: Write down everything special about the brand on index cards, and try to prioritize them into pyramids. Force yourself (or your clients) to put one card on the top of the pyramid. Once you have one or two brand stories, he recommends developing some prototype to ensure a story can be translated into execution. We talked about longer brand narratives (that read like ad copy), adlobs, and other potential prototypes. As I've done a few times recently, I ended the interview by asking Allen for a book recommendation. Rather than suggesting a brand or business book, Allen said he likes to read anything that helps him "get out of [his] bubble." A recent book he enjoyed was Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. To see other books recommended by podcast guests and branding people, check out our recent post, Useful List: Books recommended by branding experts. To learn more about Allen, visit Metaforce.co. His books are available on Amazon.

Erminio Putignano is founding partner and managing director of PUSH, a brand strategy and design firm based in Melbourne, Australia. He's also an adjunct professor at the School of Economics, Finance, and Marketing at RMIT University. When I met Erminio, we were both working for FutureBrand, where he was managing director of Australian operations and I was strategy director for Southeast Asia. We met in Vietnam, where Erminio was giving a series of presentations to a client. I was immediately impressed by his ability to clearly and persuasively talk about brand strategy-what it is, how it works, and why it matters. I asked Erminio to walk through his process and deliverables from the moment a client asks for help with "brand positioning." After making the point that he'd first try to understand the client's underlying business problem (i.e., Why do they think brand positioning will help their business?), Erminio talked through a phased approach that includes exploring possibilities (through workshops, market research, etc.), defining a strategy while simultaneously validating through prototypes, and developing a final brand platform. Like Marty Neumeier and Gareth Kay, Erminio emphasized the importance of "helping the client...visualize what this brand could be" with prototypes such as visual/verbal identity elements, brand environments, or implications for culture. Erminio also outlined what he considers some of the essential "ingredients" of a brand platform:

• A clear articulation of the business problem(s)
• Who the brand is aiming for (could be demographic segmentation or a more conceptual target)
• "The shift." What is the brand trying to change or become?
• Brand essence (crystallization of the core idea of the brand in two or three words)
• Promise statement (elaborates on the essence)
• Pillars
• Proof points, including those we can activate now, those in the pipeline, and "what if," blue-sky ideas for future proof points
• Brand personality and/or cultural traits

I asked Erminio for an example of a good brand essence, and he walked through a detailed explanation of his firm's work for a Catholic university. PUSH developed a brand essence for the school-impact through empathy-which Erminio says works well because it is succinct, meaningful, and immediately sparks ideas for far-reaching implications. We rounded out the conversation talking about trends in brand strategy and some brands Erminio thinks are good at defining their core idea, staying true to it as they grow, and continually moving themselves forward: MUJI, IKEA, Patagonia, Nike, Airbnb, and Aesop, which started in Melbourne. I ended the conversation by asking Erminio his advice for newcomers to branding. While he loves the entrepreneurial spirit he sees in young professionals, and encourages them to set out on their own if they want to, he cautions against doing so too soon. "If you, as a young practitioner, have the chance to identify an agency...that can be a good school for you, where you can receive good mentorship, be guided...stick to it. Try to learn as much as you can, like a sponge." Visit the PUSH website to learn more about Erminio and the work his firm is doing. I also recommend Erminio's recent talk: "Managing brands in the Trump era: not for the faint-hearted."

When Adam Morgan wrote Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders in 1999, he introduced a new term to the marketing, advertising, and branding worlds: "challenger brand." Avis, with their "When you're only No. 2, you try harder" campaign from the 60s, is the most commonly cited example of this concept. But Adam, also the founder of a brand consultancy named eatbigfish, is quick to point out challenger brands need not be No. 2 in their category. Instead, he defines a challenger brand as "about mindset and attitude…Do you have business ambitions that are bigger than your conventional marketing resources and are you prepared to do something bold and ambitious to close the implications of that gap?" I was curious about 10 challenger brand "stances" Adam has proposed, such as The Irreverent Maverick, who uses "wit, humor, and sometimes even shock tactics to puncture the category complacency" or The Next Generation, who challenges "the appropriateness of the market leader for the new times we live in." I asked him whether his list of challenger stances ever changes (it does) and whether he considers the stances mutually exclusive (he doesn't). I also asked him how he uses the list of challenger stances with clients. Adam explained: "We use it as a shortcut to make [clients] understand that being a challenger is not about 'me versus another player.' It's about challenging something rather than somebody. What we tend to do is choose four of them, just as examples, and say, 'Let's look at each of these four lenses in turn and see what it would mean to think like this kind of challenger and that kind of challenger…[It] allows them to start to get a sense of the kind of challenger they feel most comfortable being and then sets the tone for the much more significant piece of work about how you bring that to life." In terms of process, Adam is a big fan of workshops because "you have to create a culture around a strategy at the same time as developing the strategy itself." In workshops, he likes to help clients articulate what they believe by first asking what they reject or hate in their category. He also recommends an exercise called the "pre-mortem," advocated by economist Daniel Kahneman. We wrapped up talking about one of Adam's favorite brands, BrewDog, and his advice for new strategists and brand consultants: Have an angle.

To learn more about Adam, visit eatbigfish.com and thechallengerproject.com. All his books are available for sale online:

• Eating the Big Fish
• The Pirate Inside
• Overthrow
• A Beautiful Constraint

Below, you'll find the full transcript of the episode (may contain typos and/or transcription errors). Click above to listen to the episode, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or elsewhere to hear every episode of How Brands Are Built. 

Episode sponsors

• Squadhelp. To begin a business name contest with hundreds of business naming experts, check out their services to get a fresh perspective on your company.
• Rev.com. Rev offers fast, reliable, and accurate audio transcriptions. Right now, Rev is offering listeners $10 off their first order. Follow this link for your $10-off coupon.

Gareth Kay believes brands should show, not just tell Gareth Kay is cofounder of Chapter, a San Francisco-based creative studio. Before Chapter, he was Chief Strategy Officer at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, the advertising agency known for work such as 1993's iconic "Got Milk?" campaign for the California Milk Processors Board. I was excited to talk to Gareth because, while he's a strategist, he doesn't come from the world of traditional brand consulting that I come from (and so many of my other guests come from). In fact, one of my first questions for him was, "What do you think the general perception of the brand consulting world is amongst people in the advertising world?" Gareth says advertising agencies are increasingly seeing clients that have already been through a brand consultancy, and "when [the brand consultancy's work] was good you would be a little bit miffed because [cracking the strategy] was something, as a strategist, you really loved doing." On the flip-side, he'd sometimes see brand consultancy work that looked "clever on a piece of paper but…frankly, it was un-executable or, worse still, was a piece of thinking that was clearly designed to get through the armies of different interests inside a client organization and it kind of got watered down…through rounds and rounds of meetings and consensus-building." I asked Gareth about an article he published in WARC, titled "The 'brand' word." When you think about how we throw the term [brand] about, more often than not we are describing something we do-a brand strategy or campaign, not the associations we are trying to create. … We use it too often to create a false sense of control and a mistaken belief that we manage the brand. The models we use reinforce this: the tools of temples and pyramids are about what we build, not how people respond to them. The tools we use to shape brands are not fit for purpose. They are used to create simplicity and consistency which run counter to a culture of complexity and change. This led us to a fascinating conversation on what agencies should be using instead of these "temples and pyramids." Gareth argues consultancies should:

• "Show the thing," a mantra at Chapter-essentially prototyping real-world applications to showcase brand ideas rather than trying to capture them with words alone, which he calls "a very lossy form of compression."
• Avoid wordsmithing. He quotes a friend, Russel Davies, "you'll be discussing whether a brand is funny or…humorous." "Is that really the best use of our time, of our money, of our resources?" he asks.

The brand model used at Chapter is a "Brand Operating System," the underlying code and principles that define everything a brand does. The framework includes three layers:

1. Belief: What does this brand genuinely believe in the world? This is the problem it's trying to solve or the opportunity it sees.
2. Purpose: What do you do as a brand given your belief?
3. Pursuits: Because we believe X (our Belief) and we're going to do Y about it in the world (our Purpose), we will do the following things. The Pursuits are normally three, action-oriented principles.

Gareth provided a detailed example of the Brand Operating System by talking through Chapter's work for Silent Circle. We ended the conversation talking about brands Gareth thinks get all the fundamentals right (Hiut Denim and Allbirds) and his advice to young strategists and planners. For more of Gareth's insights, read his posts on Medium and follow him on Twitter. Below, you'll find the full transcript of the episode (may contain typos and/or transcription errors). Click above to listen to the episode, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or elsewhere to hear every episode of How Brands Are Built. Episode sponsors · Squadhelp. To begin a business name contest with hundreds of business naming experts, check out their services to get a fresh perspective on your company. · Rev.com. Rev offers fast, reliable, and accurate audio transcriptions. Right now, Rev is offering listeners $10 off their first order. Follow this link for your $10-off coupon.

The concept of brand positioning was introduced to the marketing and advertising world in the 70s and 80s by Al Ries and Jack Trout in a series of Ad Age articles and a subsequent book titled Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. (If you haven't read it, Positioning is definitely recommended reading for anyone in the branding world.)

Today's episode features Laura Ries. Laura is Al Ries's daughter, and has been his business partner for 25 years at their consulting firm, Ries & Ries, where they advise clients such as Disney, Ford, Frito-Lay, Papa John's, Samsung, and Unilever. Laura is a bestselling author in her own right. She's co-authored five books with Al, including The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, and she's also written her own books: Visual Hammer and Battlecry. We discuss both during the episode.

Laura and I start with her definition of brand positioning (it's about "owning an idea in the mind"), and the introduction of an illustrative example we come back to again and again during the conversation: Red Bull. Laura says Red Bull "owns the energy drink category because it is the leader," while Monster Energy Drink positioned itself as the opposite of Red Bull by launching with a much larger can. 5-hour Energy, on the other hand, created their own, related category by positioning as an "energy shot." Throughout the course of the conversation, Laura presented her six principles of positioning:

1. Find an open hole. "If somebody owns a position, you're not going to take it away from them. You have to look for another open hole that you can take advantage of...by being the opposite of the leader."
2. Narrow the focus. "Too often, brands and companies, they want to be everything to everybody."
3. The name is so important and significant. "Not just the brand name but the category name."
4. Visual hammer. "Not just a pretty logo or a person-the product itself can be the visual [hammer]. It's something that communicates an idea about the brand."
5. Verbal battlecry. "Not just a slogan, although it might be a slogan or tagline, but it's really the battlecry that'll be used both internally and externally to really understand the brand."
6. PR, not advertising, is what builds brands. "New brands and new categories have more news value to them. That's where new brands need to leverage that opportunity for PR."

To learn more about Laura, her books, and her consulting services, visit visit www.ries.com. You'll find some great content on her blog, and more information on their consulting practice. With the exception of an upcoming, revised edition of Positioning, all the books we mentioned on the episode are available online:

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
• Visual Hammer
• Battlecry

Below, you'll find the full transcript of the episode (may contain typos and/or transcription errors). Click above to listen to the episode, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or elsewhere to hear every episode of How Brands Are Built. Episode sponsors

• Squadhelp. To begin a business name contest with hundreds of business naming experts, check out their services to get a fresh perspective on your company.
• Rev.com. Rev offers fast, reliable, and accurate audio transcriptions. Right now, Rev is offering listeners $10 off their first order. Follow this link for your $10-off coupon.

Within the branding community, Marty Neumeier needs no introduction. But just for good measure, here's a quick rundown:

- Director of Transformation for the Liquid Agency

- Author of The Brand Gap, hailed as one of the best 100 Business Books of All Time

- Also wrote Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands, and Brand A-Z

Marty and I kicked things off talking about his latest book Scramble: A Business Thriller, which launches today on Amazon. What makes Scramble different from Marty's previous books is that it's a fictional story. It tells the tale of a CEO and leadership team in peril, with five weeks to turn things around. The story becomes a vehicle for the two core themes of the book:

1. Agile strategy; and

2. Design thinking.

Marty and I talked about what inspired him to try out a different format and how the book explores the branding process in a realistic and deeper way than most traditional business books.

So, what is agile strategy? Marty uses five strategy Qs (questions) and five design-thinking Ps (principles) to break it down:

The five Qs of strategy

- What is our purpose?

- Who do we serve?

- Where should we compete?

- How will we win?

- How will we grow?

The five Ps of design thinking

- Problemizing

- Pinballing

- Probing

- Prototyping

- Proofing

The design thinking principles can be used to help answer some of the strategy questions in a way that forces you to go beyond conventional thinking.

I asked Marty about positioning and brand strategy frameworks., and he brought up a model he introduced in his previous book, The Brand Flip: the Brand Commitment Matrix. The Matrix features six boxes, each to be filled with the answer to one of six corresponding questions.

To learn more about Marty and his work visit his website, www.martyneumeier.com. I suggest signing up for his newsletter while you're there.

Scramble is now available on Amazon as a paperback, audiobook, or ebook. Or, if you're interested in a beautiful version with an embossed cover and French folds, visit 800ceoread.com. Even better, if you order two or more copies, you'll receive a 40% discount!

Below, you'll find the full transcript of the episode (may contain typos and/or transcription errors).

Click above to listen to the episode, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or elsewhere to hear every episode of How Brands Are Built. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Squadhelp. To begin a business name contest with hundreds of business naming experts, check out their services to get a fresh perspective on your company.

Today's episode marks the end of season one, but certainly not the end of this podcast. Plans for season two are already underway, and I'm very excited about some of the guests who've already signed on. But I won't be ready to release those episodes for a little while, so…to make sure you're the first to know when they're available, please make sure you've signed up for the newsletter at HowBrandsAreBuilt.com. And between now and season two, we'll still be posting new articles and information on the website. You can follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook to make sure your seeing the latest content.

I've organized this season-one wrap-up episode loosely around the naming process: the naming brief, name generation (as well as a few tips on what to do if you get stuck), shortlisting, prescreening, and presenting names. For each step, I'll call out some comments I found especially interesting or informative from interviews with nine naming experts: Anthony Shore of Operative Words; Shannon DeJong of House of Who; Clive Chafer of Namebrand; Steven Price of Tessera Trademark Screening; Amanda Peterson, formerly of Google; Jonathan Bell of WANT; Laurel Sutton of Sutton Strategy (and formerly of Catchword); Scott Milano of Tanj; and Eli Altman of A Hundred Monkeys.

Eli Altman runs A Hundred Monkeys, a naming and branding agency in Berkeley, California. A Hundred Monkeys was founded by Eli's dad, Danny Altman, in 1990. Eli grew up helping his dad come up with name ideas, and the second he was old enough to sound like an adult on the phone, he was taking on freelance naming projects. In addition to running A Hundred Monkeys, Eli wrote the Amazon bestselling naming workbook, Don't Call it That. He has a new book coming out soon called Run Studio Run, all about the business of running a small creative studio.

On this episode of How Brands Are Built, Eli talks about his "naming workbook" (Don't Call It That), the naming process he uses at A Hundred Monkeys, pitfalls for new namers, and what it was like growing up the son of a professional namer.

Scott Milano is Founder and Managing Director of Tanj, a boutique brand language firm specializing in names, taglines, stories, messaging and voice strategies, and copy. Scott has over 15 years of experience in verbal identity and has worked on names like Scott's worked on some big brand names, like Nintendo Wii, Ally Bank, Sony Bravia, and Film Struck, among many others.

Scott and I talked about the naming guides Tanj makes available online, the naming process, tools he uses (like stock photography sites and the MRC Psycholinguistic Database from University of Western Australia), and some naming trends. We ended the conversation talking about what Scott likes best about being a namer: "It's essential for any business to go to market. If you don't have a name, you don't have a business. So we're helping people, and businesses, take flight. And being able to do that, right at their inception, or so early on, and having such a big impact, is cool."

Laurel Sutton is a co-founder of Catchword, a Bay Area naming firm behind names like Asana, Vudu, and many of the activity trackers from Fitbit, like Zip, One, Flex, and Force. She is also the Information Officer for the American Name Society; but Laurel's not only a naming expert. She's also a trained linguist, with a Master's Degree in linguistics from UC Berkeley.

Laurel's expertise in naming and linguistics make her perfectly suited for her current role: She now runs Sutton Strategy, where she focuses on providing linguistic analysis on name ideas. Linguistic analysis is a crucial step in the naming process, ensuring you (or your client) don't end up with a name on one of those listicles of "worst naming disasters" because you failed to realize your brand name was slang for something offensive. For some reason, the most famous example of a linguistic disaster in naming is actually fake news: the story of Chevy Nova selling poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because it translates to "doesn't go." Never happened. But there are real examples, too, like Zyklon, Incubus, LaCrosse, and Strange Fruit.

Laurel kicked off our conversation by defining linguistic analysis as "pieces of research that are designed to make sure that any name is going to work globally." She then shared her process, what it means to do a "global" check, whether it's still important to do linguistic checks when your brand will only sell in the US (it is), and the difference between translation and transliteration.

Jonathan Bell is Managing Director of Want Branding, a brand consultancy with offices in Miami, Denver, and New York, and clients like Bose, Royal Caribbean, and Call of Duty. Jonathan has about 30 years of experience in the branding industry, during which he's completed over 800 projects and worked with over a third of the companies in the Fortune 100—companies like Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, and Disney. He's also a visiting professor at Wharton and a frequent conference speaker, including a 2016 TED talk, "How to create a great brand name."

Jonathan shares clear, straightforward thoughts and advice on naming, including his four-step naming process, an approach to shortlisting, recommendations for presenting names, and more.

On this episode, I spoke with Amanda Peterson, formerly the Head of Naming and Leader of Brand Management at Google. While there, she helped establish Alphabet, Google's parent company, as well as sister companies like Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car company. Before Google, Amanda headed up naming at HP—before I held that role—and also worked at Logitech and Landor. She recently left Silicon Valley and is now Head of Marketing and Communications at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Amanda and I go way back. I first met her when I was Director of Verbal Identity at Interbrand San Francisco and she was my client at HP. And then, funny enough, when she went to Google, I went over and took her place as Global Head of Naming at HP.

Amanda and I talked about naming briefs, her approach to name generation, one of her favorite names (Bluetooth), her pet peeves in brand names, and what she likes most about being a namer.