What Does it Take to Create a Visionary Brand?

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Brian.

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He is a brand strategist, an author, a podcaster.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thank you, eric, great to be here.

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I appreciate it.

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So, before we jump into your remarkable story, why don't you take a minute or two and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

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Yeah, I appreciate it, eric.

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So currently I head up and as president of Liquid Mine, which is a global brand strategy firm based in Southern California.

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Prior to that, I've had several roles with both domestic, global, iconic what I call iconic brands.

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A lot of people are familiar with them.

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On the consumer product side, I had some international brands as well, so some of the consumer brands where I've had executive level roles in business development, product and marketing have been with TaylorMade, adidas, k-swiss, oakley so a lot of brands that people are familiar with.

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Oakley so a lot of brands that people are familiar with.

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But, more importantly, a pretty broad spectrum of the responsibilities on an executive level that I had and most people are stuck with one.

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I had a lot, so there's a lot of background and, fortunately, a lot of things I can share with your audience as well.

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In addition, I'm an entrepreneur.

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I started my own company, ran it for 10 years and then sold it to a VC firm, so a lot of different areas that I've been involved with.

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Awesome, that must have been really easy to sell your own firm for 10 years, run it for 10 years and sell it.

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That must have been a walk in the park, right?

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Yeah, it was interesting because I actually started out in the aerospace industry and quickly pivoted over to consumer products and I felt that was probably the best way to do.

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It was to take the dive into entrepreneurship and learn it from the inside out, so from sewing buttons to zippers, to everything to building the company.

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Eventually, I learned a little bit of it, piece by piece, and I'm very proud of the fact that after 10 years of profitable growth, we were able to sell it.

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Amazing.

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We're ready to be inspired.

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So tell us a story about some of the best marketing you've done, some of the marketing you're most proud of.

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I go back to my background and the brands that I've been with and Oakley and K-Swiss and iconic brands and TaylorMade and Adidas and most people would probably think, wow, probably Brian's first story is gonna come from.

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One of these iconic brands Actually comes from an international brand.

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It's called Zams and it was actually a sports bracing and support company out of Japan that didn't have any positioning here in the States and they had come to me wanting to build a team here in the US from the ground up.

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They had no revenue, they had no branding, no marketing, but they had a great product and I find that if you can build a lifestyle that's built with authentic product from the ground up, you're going to be successful, and that's really what we did with this brand and starting from scratch.

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It was very challenging, and this is what you find with a lot of people in marketing is they'll take over a big brand like Adidas and say that they've done this or that, but really, at the end of the day, it's a brand that's already established, so your challenge is a lot less risky.

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So I like the risky challenges and this really comes from an entrepreneurial background.

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So I had to build the team from the ground up, not only the marketing team but the sales team, but also the positioning of the brand and how it was going to be placed in the market and this kind of.

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The other reason I like this story, eric, is because it goes pre-COVID.

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There was, I find, the best marketing was done when the product was actually in the store, and so when we started Zamps here in theS, it was a premium product with no brand, no positioning and no marketing here in the US.

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And the first steps that we took and what most entrepreneurs need to understand is that when you look at building a brand and marketing a brand is how you're going to position that brand, and there's three levels within the retail and consumer products is good, better, best and we took the best positioning.

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And there's three levels within the retail and consumer products is good, better, best and we took the best positioning.

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But one thing you'll find with best brands, like a Ralph Lauren, like a North Face, like an Oakley, whatever brand it is and whatever category they're in, when they say they're premium, they have to be authentically creating products that's performance driven and is authentic for the sport that you're actually selling into.

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So the first sport that we chose to sell into and we knew an aspect to building this in the US was going to be authenticating it through an athlete and we were fortunate enough to sign Steph Curry.

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So, needless to say, steph's doctor said he could wear any brace he wanted, as long as it was our brace.

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So from a marketing perspective it's like striking gold.

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We got Steph before he was a two-time NBA MVP.

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At the same time we also signed for NFL Von Miller, pre-super Bowl MVP, and then we signed Nolan Aranato from MLB.

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So those that are familiar with baseball, football, basketball are familiar with all those names.

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But we knew it was critical in order for the brand to be authenticated here in the US and then from there we really built.

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The story of the brand was really around the product and its performance characteristics and how they make basketball players, football players, better athletes and the features and benefits that give us a point of difference over the competition.

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So it really was a ground-up structural rebuild of the brand here in the US, from positioning to authentication and then eventually presenting it to accounts that we're going to be able to distribute the product that we had to have the story build first.

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So we built the story of Zamps and proud to say that after about three, four years of business we were able to open all of Dick's Sporting Good doors.

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Also, all the sport checkup in Canada also run an outdoor accounts.

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So we authenticated ourself across all these platforms.

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So the moral of the story was that and the reason I bring this story up and why it's such an inspiration for those that are doing marketing is the biggest question I always get at LiquidMind is how do I get distribution?

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Just because you market doesn't mean you have a great product and you really got to make sure you understand the principles behind the brand itself and how you're positioning it is.

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Are you premium, are you authentic, are you consistent and how are you going to translate that to the customer and build traffic?

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And people wanted to actually purchase your product versus the competition.

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So we had a lot of challenges, eric, out there, we were the little kid on the block trying to knock the big guys out of the door on the product category and we were able to do that after three and a half years, proud to say.

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And it's just one of those stories that comes along very infrequently, especially with big retailers like a Dick's Sporting, because they just don't allow the small players to go in.

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But we had best-in-class marketing, we had best-in-class athletes, we had best-in-class product and all of those three just melded together for us to successfully distribute in the US as well as Canada.

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That's fantastic.

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And what was the long-term impact of?

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it.

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The long-term impact of it was that we were able to and this is another thing when you look at distribution from a marketing perspective is that we were able to get all of Dick's sporting goods doors almost 860 doors across the country.

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And the next level that we went to a year after we got into Dick's was they gave us what were called end caps, and that's unheard of for a small little brand other than Adidas.

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I call it the big three Nike, adidas or Under Armour to get what they call end cap displays in store, and so we were able to get that through all 100, 860 doors.

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And then we were able to open up another 400 doors up in Canada and also 300 run doors.

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So, really, starting from ground zero no revenue, no doors, no distribution, no branding, no marketing we're able to establish almost 1500 doors across two countries in a matter of three and a half years.

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Wow, that is pretty remarkable and I like what you shared, because if you don't have a great product to start with, then you're going nowhere fast just by doing marketing for it.

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So the fact that it was a great product to start with is huge.

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But then what you were able to do with that to figure out the positioning and to get the celebrity endorsements and to build the story and awareness for it so you could get the distribution that's an amazing combination.

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Yeah, and the other reason I mentioned that story too Eric, because my bloodline comes from Oakley, and Jim Gennard, who's one of the visionaries I talk about in the Visionary Brand book.

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I was fortunate to be there when Jim was at the company and I've never seen such an inspirational leader and we had our own path, our own strategy and we didn't really care what the competition was doing, but we built a cool brand with performance-driven product and that was really the strategy I had around Zamps, which was successful but applied through the strategy that I learned from Oakley.

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What are the two or three biggest things you've learned from working in brand strategy for so many years with so many great brands?

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Number one is to be authentic within the category.

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What I mean by that is just a quick story on that is that if you are selling a run shoe and you're not authentic within the run category and haven't proven yourself, you don't have an authentic voice within the community.

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So that's the first thing.

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The second thing that you'll learn from branding is be consistent and look at the small details.

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That's the one thing I learned from Apple, as well as from Jim Gennard and Oakley, is the beauty is in the details.

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Simple is sophisticated, and always be consistent on the products that you're producing.

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If you're premium, be premium.

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Don't try to change your positioning.

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Always be authentic and make sure that whatever you're producing matches that expectation of your customer within that category.

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I love it.

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I think that's great advice.

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Tell us a little bit about the two books that you've written.

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Yeah, so the first one was the Visionary Brand, so it's a combination.

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It was released about two years ago now and it was an Amazon bestseller.

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We also received the Reader's Favorite Award for Best Marketing Genre Book and really it's a compilation of what I looked at in the industry both direct experience, Eric, as well as some book experience from brands that have been around for generations.

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So it was always a question of mine of how do they last and others don't?

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And the Nikes of the world, even the Oakleys of the world, Adidas what are they doing differently that other brands aren't doing?

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And the failure rate being as high as 90, 95% for companies that come into industries.

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So what I found was this formula, a formula that was whelmed around different what I call elements of what make up a visionary brand, and, by design, I called the book the Visionary Brand.

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Not A Visionary Brand, because even Apple doesn't have all the elements of the formula and to be a visionary brand, you really need to have every single one of these elements vertically integrated into your company before you can become visionary.

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It's not just the leader, it's everybody inside the company and outside the company, and it's an interesting and intriguing look inside of a brand that people, when they're writing books, I find there's book smarts and then there's actually brand smarts, where I've been and working inside of companies and brands and people have always asked me what's it like to be inside of Adidas or TaylorMade or K-Swiss?

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And I'm able to give them that perspective as to what they do differently that other brands don't.

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And is there also street smarts in addition to brand smarts?

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Yeah, I cut my teeth inside of these brands of business development.

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I was a little bit of a glutton for punishment because I was an entrepreneur and ran my own company for 10 years, so I knew a little bit of everything.

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So that's a little dangerous when you go inside a company like an Oakley where they're constantly looking for new opportunities and incremental revenue stream but they want somebody that knows what they're doing.

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So there is a lot of street smarts there.

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Yeah, you get beat up pretty good.

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And that's the next book.

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I was mentioning too, eric, that the compliment to the visionary brand is the visionary leader.

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That's really cool.

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Is it a really hard, complex formula for companies to nail to have a visionary brand?

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in a little bit since Steve has left.

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Steve is one of my iconic figures in the visionary leader and this formula is very difficult because most people will either focus on product, they'll focus on sales, they'll focus on marketing, they'll lose sight of what I call this power triad inside of the book, and a good example just a quick example of that, eric, is one thing I talk about in the book, which is a marketing concept, is the power triad, and product marketing and sales make up this power triad.

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And when you have marketing taking the lead over product, before having a great product that's commercialized and ready to go into the market, you'll have a product that's inferior and doesn't match the expectation of your customer.

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And that's what happened with Under Armour Back in the day when they were doing football cleats.

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They actually released a product too soon.

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Marketing already had programs in place.

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Product said it wasn't ready and it was a disaster and it caused them brand equity and had to pull the entire line back and redeploy the football cleat business.

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But it took them 10 years to get that brand equity back.

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So what I talk about in the book is a lot of case studies like that, things that happen like the Just Do it campaign from Nike, the Apple campaign, think Different, how that changed people's thinking and perception about brands.

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So, like most things in the sphere of marketing, having a visionary brand is not easy, not a walk in the park.

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Brands would have certain elements and other brands would have other elements, but really, at the end of the day, I found that there really wasn't one brand that had all the elements.

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So it always gives us aspiration for brands and leaders to look at the book and read it and say, okay, we've got these six elements, but we got four to go, and so I found that to be the building block of principles, these foundational principles of visionary brands, and achieving that and giving them a inspiration to aspire to be a visionary brand was what we intended to do.

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So, being the branding guru that you are, what was the story behind coming up with a name for your current company?

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It was liquid and in mind.

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I felt that when I look at, think different, and also when I looked at liquid mind, saying that I want to constantly be pivoting, constantly changing, constantly learning.

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I use these acronyms along the way always be learning, always be thinking, always be different.

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These three word acronyms are things that I looked at with Liquid Mind and that just came to my head is don't get too fixated, and what you think or what you do constantly be changing and constantly be adapting, but stick to your foundational principles in order for you to achieve success.

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And that's what these visionary brands did.

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I love it.

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And you also have a podcast that you seem to have done at least 150 episodes on along the lines of this topic.

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Tell us a little bit about that journey.

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Yeah, so the Visionary Chronicles was something that I had thought up after actually, I wrote the book the Visionary Brander while I was writing it is I just felt it was important, eric, when I listened to all of the podcasts out there and you'll see what's unique about the Visionary Chronicles is the experience that I've had the direct experience as well as when I was writing the book, all of the content that I was getting from the book itself in order to be able to put together a podcast that allowed people, both personally and professionally, having been an entrepreneur and inside of these brands, there's personal issues that you're facing as an entrepreneur.

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Plus, as an entrepreneur, you're facing a lot of different issues that I've come across in my life.

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So I felt it was important to get it directly from someone who's been through it, and it's great to have interviews, but I find and then that's why I appreciate you bringing me on Eric is we had talked a little bit before this is some people will look at podcasts and go unless he's been in my shoes.

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How can I take advice from him?

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And or, if he's interviewing somebody, they better know what they're talking about.

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So I felt with the Visionary Chronicles that being able to provide that advice from firsthand experience was really important.

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So final thoughts for marketers and business leaders out there that would want to have a visionary brand, Final advice thoughts.

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Yeah, I would say, first, it's the who, what, why, when and where.

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Eric, when they're looking at their company itself and this can be what I found, even with Liquid Mind and brands I've been with is established brands, and I find that they sometimes try to take shortcuts.

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And I'll give you an example of sales where there are certain channels that premium brands belong in.

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It's a Nordstrom and JCPenney, if I could use that analogy of you got to make a choice.

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You can't be in both and so being authentic within the channel that you're selling to and also building foundational principles.

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So the who, what, why, when and where is who are you, what are you selling, when are you looking to sell it and how are you going to create the journey for people to go on and have them purchase your product?

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And that's really what they're facing now on the direct to consumer basis is this journey and the funnel that their consumers are going through.

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But not only that making sure that when they do purchase, that you're also acquiring them post-purchase and making sure that they have lifetime value with the brand as well.

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But I would say the biggest thing, eric, when you look at being a visionary brand, is not only the positioning.

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This is the common ones marketers will go to, but it's foundational principles of the brand itself and what you stand for and that's what Phil Knight if you read the shoe dog, that's what Phil always anchored himself on was these foundational principles of what Nike was and he never changed, regardless of how they were doing.

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Great advice.

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I love it, so I'm going to link to Brian's book and podcast in the show notes, as well as his website, so if you want to learn more about what he does and visionary branding, you can easily check it out there.

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Brian, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your story and all these insights.

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Really appreciate it.

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Appreciate it, Eric.

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It was great to be with you.