Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

How to Build an Army of Irrationally Loyal Fans to Your Brand [Deb Gabor Interview]

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 321

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Imagine building an army of irrationally loyal fans for your brand, fans who keep coming back for more and help your business thrive in today's competitive marketplace. In our captivating conversation with branding expert and author Deb Gabor, we discuss just that - the secrets to turning customers into devoted followers and her latest book, 'Person-Ality Cultivate Your Human Authority to Ignite Irrational Brand Loyalty'.

Deb's journey from working at AT&T Bell Labs and other technology startups to becoming an accidental entrepreneur is both fascinating and inspiring. We dive deep into the concept of irrational loyalty, the Brand Values Pyramid, and the four-point formula for creating a winning brand strategy. Deb also shares her passion for working with unsexy brands in unsexy categories, and the importance of branding in the B2B world for building strong connections with clients.

We even explore the potential of AI in marketing and branding, and whether it could ever replace the human touch when it comes to creating content that resonates with customers. So, tune in and discover how to elevate your brand strategy, hack Maslow's hierarchy, and create a loyal fan base eager to stand by your brand!

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Speaker 1: Irrational loyalty. It's when fans of a brand buy anything and everything they put out onto the market. Wouldn't you want to have those irrationally loyal fans for your brand or business? Well, you're going to find out exactly how to do that on this next episode of the Digital Marketing Coach podcast. 

Speaker 2: Digital social media content, influencer marketing, vlogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktoking, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing. There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neal on your side, because Neal Schaefer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with Digital First Marketing, one episode at a time. This is your Digital Marketing Coach and this is Neal Schaffer. 

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Neal Schaffer, your Digital Marketing Coach, and it is a pleasure and honor to be serving you once again today. If you didn't know unless you've been living under a rock which, well, maybe you haven't that's where you're listening to this podcast. But over the last several weeks, i have started to livestream every single podcast episode, whether it is an interview or whether it is a solo broadcast. And I mention this because, well, if you wanted to be able to hear these episodes sooner, if you wanted to have a chance to interact with me and my guests, to ask them questions, to get your name put up on the screen, to have everlasting fame in the archives of YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook, where I am live streaming all these episodes, the opportunity is yours. So hopefully we're connected. On LinkedIn, linkedincom You should know how to spell my name N-E-A-L-S-C-H-A-F-E-R. It's Neal Schaffer page on Facebook and on YouTube it is YouTubecom. I am trying to do these every Friday morning at 9 am Pacific. Don't hold me to it, but I'm doing my best. But hey, i do hope you'll give me a subscribe over at YouTube and check out some of the interviews And hopefully I'll see you live for the next one. So today's special interview is all about branding. 

Speaker 1: Branding is not something that I talk a lot about on this podcast, but obviously it is an essential part of marketing, both traditional and digital, and today I have a absolute branding expert. Her name is Deb Gabor. She is the author of a few different books about branding, her most recent being Person-Ality Cultivate your human authority to ignite irrational brand loyalty, and we're going to dig deep into this topic of building an army of irrationally loyal fans. They are not rational, they are irrational, and these are the types of fans that I think, well any business would love. So we're going to cover exactly what irrational loyalty is, how to hack Maslow's hierarchy to get the one thing that attracts and retains legends of fans And get the four point formula for creating the underlying strategy for your own brand. Now, branding is often this esoteric thing that doesn't seem very actionable or tactical, but Deb and I challenged Deb and well, she challenged me back, but she did an excellent job of I have never heard of branding in such an actionable and tactical way as I did do this interview. So I think you're really going to love this. 

Speaker 1: Without further ado, here is my interview with Deb Gabor Deb, welcome to the Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about well, I mean, you know, branding is sexy and you've written a lot of provocative books about branding, looking at it from a very unique perspective that I'm excited to dive in today. Obviously, i know we're going to be talking a lot about your latest book Personality Cultivate Your Human Authority to Ignite Irrational Brand Loyalty. Deb, we talked before him. Branding is often seen as this esoteric exercise that you have a very, very different perspective on, and I guess I want to start with how did this all start? Where did your career begin in branding? 

Speaker 3: Well, i've been doing some kind of marketing, or branding if you will, for basically my entire adult life, and where my love and interest and obsession for branding came from is really from my unbranded upbringing. So just quick story how I got into this like, i grew up in a really interesting household with kind of frugal Eastern European parents who never let us have brand name anything. Therefore, because it was taboo, i developed an obsession with all things branded. You know, to the point that I'd never even had a McDonald's hamburger until the day that I got my driver's license and I could drive myself to McDonald's. Wow. And since then you know the allure and sort of the mystique behind brands and how having a strong brand and a strong emotional connection could lead companies and organizations to create products that were really at parity with other products in similar categories yet charge higher prices for them, earn higher margins, sell more of them in gender, more loyalty. So I've been obsessed with it for, you know, kind of like forever. 

Speaker 3: I always tell people that I'm born to brand, or at least this is the information that I'm compelled to share with the world. So 30 plus years of a career in some form of marketing started out in the technology business so many, many years ago. Like my first job, i worked at AT&T Bell Labs, which there's nothing less sexy and unbrandy than that, and then, you know, working actually for a couple of at the time technology startups in the original days of the internet, and then moving to the agency side of the business sort of mid career and then starting my own company about 20 years ago. So I've been doing this, you know, with all kinds of brands for a really really long time, and even though I am the person who wrote a book with the title branding is sex. I like really, really unsexy brands and unsexy categories. That's my obsession. 

Speaker 1: Nice. I have a B2B background as well and I believe, i believe B2B can really be exciting and sexy, so I appreciate the respect of what prompted you to launch your own business 20 years ago. 

Speaker 3: Okay, like. This is probably similar to other people's entrepreneurial stories. There was no traditional job that could contain me, maybe because I had problems with authority, unless, of course, it was me. No, that's not the real truth there. So some life changes where I was feeling a little bit out of control, being someone else's employee, put me into the headspace of trying to figure out how could I like parentheses crazily get more control over my life and have better work life integration. 

Speaker 3: I was in my own company question mark, but that's really how it happened. I was kind of an accidental entrepreneur but I was in in the jobs that I had prior to that. I felt really strongly about doing really good work for really great clients and I wanted to decide what that was And, oddly, i felt I felt more in control of my environment and my livelihood and my career and my time and my boundaries and things like that. If I was the person who was sort of defining that, i was into a really great, successful business and you know I'm happy to be still involved with it today. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny, when I left corporate they looked at me like I was insane. But I think you'd agree, we look at people that work at corporate as sort of being insane, of not having control of that work-life balance, and so it's an interesting world we live in, for sure. 

Speaker 3: Oh, it definitely is, and I think people got a real taste for that during the pandemic, especially corporate people who who were starting to, you know, maybe in a forced manner, live the kind of lifestyle that we live. I told you before we started this interview that I'm in my home near Salt Lake City, utah. The whole reason that I'm here during ski season is so that I can ski basically every day of the ski season. So I work a little, i ski a little, i work a little more, i hang with friends and family, all of that kind of stuff. I truly have like a very rich life that I don't know that that opportunity would have been afforded me, you know, staying in the agency business or, you know, still continuing to be on the corporate side. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, very cool, and I want to let people know this is not you don't just like quit a job and this happens overnight, obviously. Oh God, no, yeah, heck of a lot of work, blood, sweat and tears have went into it. So you know, before we get to it, i want to ask you so you launched, and I think the entrepreneurial journey is something that a lot of the listeners are interested in, because we a lot of us are entrepreneurs. So I'm just curious, when you began this company about branding? we have a lot of listeners that might start a company about you know they manage SEO or social media. You know, what services do you offer to manage branding, would be my question. or or did you offer different services when you began? 

Speaker 3: When I started I actually I had come out of a strategic communications firm for the technology industry which covered things like executive communication, thought leadership and public relations for tech companies, and I was running a practice within that business that was really focused on early stage companies and kind of in the business strategy and communications realm And also we did kind of early stage PR. And when I originally hung my shingle what I was doing was like I, you know, i I caught a couple of clients that were coming out of that business and you know they hired me to do PR kind of stuff. But then before that I worked. I actually have a research background, like a quantitative research background, specifically in the branding world, and I took like this idea of like storytelling and research and methodologies and quantitative and qualitative and all that and brought it together And I got an assignment with a company to train product managers to become brand managers. So this was a company that was going through a transformation from a very product centric company to more of like a brand and customer focused company And I was given this like weird, bizarre assignment like take these people and turn them into these kind of people And through that like developed this branding methodology. 

Speaker 3: I had to take What is this weird and I said it before like kind of esoteric and squishy qualitative thing, which is the emotional connection that people have with organizations and the people and the and the products behind them and things like that, and turn that into something that was very, very tactical, that then former product managers could execute as brand managers, and so that's how like sort of the branding practice was born. So I didn't exactly set out to start a brand strategy consultancy. I started out, really as a lot of entrepreneurs in the marketing world do, as an independent consultant. There was a lot of demand for what I was doing And all of a sudden I got a bunch of clients and I needed help. So I started hiring helpers and then, low and behold, i was a company. So I was an accidental entrepreneur, we'll say, because I would have been very happy just doing consulting, you know, maybe for the rest of my life. 

Speaker 1: So I just had a curiosity. That brand well, the company that wanted you to train their product managers to become brand managers was that a B2B brand? 

Speaker 3: It wasn't. It's a really interesting thing. It was in the consumer world but they sold through a channel, so there was a B2B aspect to it. Actually, it was a huge company that makes commemorative products and, like the centerpiece of it was class rings. Okay, got it. So I had a couple of friends that were in the school and college class rings, but they also made super bowl rings and the bowling 300 ring and all kinds of stuff like that. So I cut my teeth on an interesting like a really interesting consumer brand because of the way that they sold. They had a retail channel, plus they had these like resale channels, and then they had independent reps who went into high schools and sold class rings, like standing at a table, you know, in the cafeteria during lunch hour and stuff like that. And so I came out of technology into CPG and then went very, very quickly back into technology because it was really something that I had a passion for. 

Speaker 1: Got it Very cool. Yeah, i don't know of many B2B companies. Well, back in the day when I worked, that there were no brand managers. In fact, i worked in Japan, where they don't even have product managers Whole other story, but very cool experience. So from this experience right, i do not talk much about branding, but I'll say you know, if you're at the drug store and you are selling CVS or you're selling Tylenol, you want to become the Tylenol that people pay more for, that they have this emotional attachment to. So I don't know if that's a type of irrational brand loyalty that you speak of, but I know that that's the main topic of your newest book, personality. So let's dive into the topic. What is irrational brand loyalty? 

Speaker 3: I am so excited that you asked that, because having an understanding of irrational loyalty is something that helps you understand me my books, my practice, all that kind of stuff. Here's how I define irrational loyalty. Irrational loyalty is that feeling, or it's that condition where people are so indelibly bonded to a brand that they'd feel like they were cheating on it if they were to choose an alternative. An example that I always give is I'm irrationally loyal to i thingies Quick story, because this illustrates it just perfectly. So I've owned probably every one of these ever made right And if you look at my desk it's like covered in i thingies. So a couple of years ago Samsung came out with a competing product to that and I thought you know what that thing costs $400, $500 less than the latest iPhone. So I'm going to go check it out. So I went down to my local Best Buy. I met a wonderful, adorable, very well educated sales associate who told me everything about that Samsung Galaxy S, whatever, and then I learned some things. I learned I learned that it had faster memory, it had more durable glass, it cost $500 less, it had this big, wide open ecosystem and no apps that were like native apps on the phone. I could like, pick and choose from all of those different things, yet when I held that beautiful lickable technology in my hand, i felt dirty, like I felt like I was cheating on Apple, and at the end of the day, i bought another iPhone, and so there is nothing rational about that. And irrational loyalty is that condition where people are so bonded to a brand they'd feel like they were cheating. It's the reason why, when you go into CVS and you're like, here's the CVS brand, acetaminophen, and here is Tylenol, and you're like, which one of these do I trust more? Which one actually killed people and came back from it? right, we still like. Tylenol is still the number one selling brand, and so I've been fascinated by that condition. 

Speaker 3: What creates irrational loyalty? How do brands in every category like? what is the origin of that irrational loyalty? And the one thing that we narrow it down to, at least based on some quantitative research that we just launched at the end of last year, the one thing we learned is that the strongest contributor to irrational loyalty is indispensable When a product becomes indispensable to someone, and products and brands don't necessarily become indispensable to people just because of their functional benefits. It's all of the other stuff that's above and beyond those functional benefits that create that brand loyalty and allow companies to charge more for their products and services. They scale more rapidly, more profitably, more focused. They have bigger footprints. In our study We measured brands 50 of the world's most valuable global brands and, i think, 10 different categories. What we learned was the brands that have more irrational loyalty have a bigger footprint and they earn, on average, 40% more revenue than like unbranded or lower ranked brands and irrational loyalty. 

Speaker 1: I hope that helps. Yes, that's amazing, thank you. Curious. I'm assuming, because your B2B background, that this is also applicable to B2B brands. I'm curious if it is, which I assume it is, how might it be different? Is functionality a little bit more important with B2B or it's still the same? It's still the same. 

Speaker 3: It's still the same When you look at the characteristics of the best brands in the world, like truly legendary brands. They all behave the same way and they all have similar attributes. Branding and irrational loyalty and getting above and beyond those basic functional benefits and what I also refer to as proximal emotional benefits, contributes as much to the growth and scale of B2B organizations as it does for consumer organizations. In fact, i would say branding is even more important in the B2B world because of this notion. You have very, very complex sales in the B2B world, right? You have, like I don't know, five or six different purchasing roles The person who identifies the need, the person who selects alternatives and presents. The person who recommends a particular brand, a person who sort of tests it, a person who approves the purchase, and then the sixth one would be the person who actually uses the brand. 

Speaker 3: In very, very complex scenarios like that, you really really need a brand to stand out, and if you look at the rankings of the most valuable global brands in the world, there are as many B2B brands on that list as there are consumer brands brands like SAP, salesforce, some of the clients that I have worked with, like Microsoft and Dell and whatever. These are among the most valuable global brands in the world. When people can't differentiate between options and all things are equal and you know a rack system is the same as a rack system, as the same as a rack system with regard to you know bits and bytes and speeds and feeds and how many hops to a tier one network. You need brand to help people make a decision and make them feel a particular way. And when we talk about hacking Maslow's hierarchy for fun and profit and the branding methodology and some of those actionable tactics, i can share with people at B2B companies as well as consumer companies how they can use brand to their advantage. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, i definitely want to get to that. You know how do we hack that and talk to advice. But one more question You mentioned, obviously you know, big brands. Can small businesses leverage the same tactics? 

Speaker 3: 100%. So I always tell people and I wrote about this extensively in branding as sex. The branding isn't always on activity and brand early, often in all ways, and branding really is about identifying, nailing and being able to articulate the core DNA of your brand in a way that's meaningful to your most important, most highly predictive of your success customer, even for small companies. You don't want to be a commodity. I tell people this all the time. So I run a strategy and marketing firm for B2B technology and professional services businesses. That business operates out of Austin, texas. 

Speaker 3: You cannot swing a cat over your head and not hit 150 other people who say they do exactly what we do. However, my closest competitor so the company that we're always neck and neck for like biggest women owned business in Austin, are like biggest marketing and advertising agency in the rankings. We're always neck and neck. We never compete for clients because we have vastly different brands And the reason that people hire us isn't only for those marketing services which, frankly, like you know, i don't believe that I offer something above and beyond what anybody else does in terms of capabilities or functional benefits, but how we elevate our customers and how we help them achieve their goals is vastly different from anyone else, and so brand is really important for smaller businesses. 

Speaker 3: We're a small business I mean, i only have eight employees at this point and you know been chugging along at this for 20 years but we have a very, very distinctive brand and a very unique point of view and an authority footprint that belongs to only us. So I think it's even more important for small businesses to really really clarify their brand and understand who they are, who they are for and how they elevate those people in their experience. 

Speaker 1: Well, that was amazing. Brand early, brand always, brand often. Yeah, that's the quotable tweet from today's interview so far, but I know there's more to come, so you had hinted at this of hacking Maslow's hierarchy to get to the one thing that attracts and retains the legions of fans. It's funny Once a year I'll go to a marketing conference and someone will talk about Hasl's hierarchy And everyone in the room will be sort of like blown away. But it's this constant thing that we in marketing are always talking about. I'm sure that most of our listeners are familiar with it, but why don't we start with what it is? and then, how do you hack that? 

Speaker 3: Yeah, totally So. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I always say that Maslow was a marketer and Maslow's hierarchy applies in two ways when we're talking about branding. So real, quickly, just a review of Maslow, like going back to psych 101 and undergrad, or you know, even if you had a high school psychology class. 

Speaker 3: Maslow's hierarchy it's this pyramid construct like psychology, consumer behavior, economics, social studies, like we love our pyramids. Because the pyramid construct suggests that you have to satisfy things at the base before you can get to the next level, before you can get to the next level. Next level, maslow's hierarchy basically says at the bottom of the pyramid, the baseline requirements to sustain life are food, water, shelter, air, the ability to procreate. At the next level, once you've satisfied those things, then people can start to feel safety right. So safety is in the next tier. In the next tier, which is a little bit smaller, our belongingness or affiliation. So basically, maslow's hierarchy suggests that unless you satisfy, like, the basic needs, the basic human needs that people have, make them feel safe and secure. So they feel like you know when they go to bed at night they're not going to get eaten by a bear. Until you satisfy those things, they can't feel like they belong to a group and feel love. And then, once they feel like they belong to a group and they feel love, that raises their self-esteem And eventually they get to the top of Maslow's hierarchy, which is self-actualization. And Maslow defines self-actualization as this like sort of personal nirvana point where people are vibrating on a higher plane, they're free of judgment, they're their highest performing, best selves as Americans or North Americans And this is something just a side note. 

Speaker 3: When I, when I speak to audiences outside the United States, you know, i always ask people I'm like, how many of you are fully self-actualized individuals outside the US? I get, you know, dozens of hands raised in the United States. We all sit on our hands, not really sure what that means, but we all have these moments where we feel fully self-actualized, right. And so for me it's like I'm a professional speaker and a writer and I do media and I run a company and all that kind of stuff. But for me, when I feel fully self-actualized, i am in my zone of genius, i have all eyes looking at me. I'm like getting breakthrough after breakthrough, after breakthrough. 

Speaker 3: So you know that feeling right, so understanding Maslow's hierarchy and like it's, it is truly this hierarchy. You have to achieve this before you get to this level. Before you get to this level, this level You have to believe that what people buy what they eat, what they drink, what they wear, the software they buy for their businesses, the computers they buy for their employees are all part of their ascension of Maslow's hierarchy, like, what people are buying and what brands they buy is part of what elevates them to this place of self-actualization, right, so are you with me, Neal? Do you buy into that? 

Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean it's. it's really fascinating. It's a different. Obviously, the Maslow's hierarchy is what it is and people interpret it differently. And, most recently here, a lot of people interpret it. People want community, and it's you know. This is why a lot of brands and what have you are trying to, you know, build community, and community marketing is becoming big. I've never heard of it expressed this way from a branding perspective, but I get it. So keep going. I'm really curious as to where you're going to go. 

Speaker 3: All right, great. So at the beginning I highlighted for you that Maslow's hierarchy, like it, applies in two different ways. One is like, if you buy into the fact that what people buy what they eat, what they drink, what they wear, what they drive otherwise, like very, very expensive sports cars, wouldn't exist, right, because it's all part of people's path to self-actualization. Maslow's hierarchy applies in this way as well, because every brand has its own sort of Maslow's hierarchy, right. And so, Neal, do you have a car? Uh-huh. 

Speaker 1: When did you purchase that car? I lease cars every three years, so this one was just like six months ago. 

Speaker 3: Okay, all right, what kind of car do you have? It's a Volvo. It's a Volvo, okay. 

Speaker 1: My first Volvo. I've never owned a Volvo and never thought I would own a Volvo, So All right, So does your Volvo. 

Speaker 3: does it have wheels? 

Speaker 1: Yes. 

Speaker 3: Does it have a steering wheel? Yes, does it have a chassis? 

Speaker 1: Yes. 

Speaker 3: Does it have some motor perambulation, like a combustion, internal combustion engine, or your motors and the wheels? so you have a way to get from point A to point B. Let me ask you does it have a power door locks, power windows, power steering? Yes. Does your car have Bluetooth? Yes, okay, these are what we refer to as baseline requirements. 

Speaker 3: Baseline requirements the ante to get into the game the things that a brand, a product, a company needs to have in order to be considered a that in the category, those things we call them functional benefits in Maslow's hierarchy for brands, which is called the brand values pyramid. They are sort of equal to those basic physiological needs and safety needs that people have. Right, gotcha, okay. And so every brand has to satisfy those needs. Now, when you went to buy that Volvo, you probably considered a bunch of other brands. You looked at other things or a bunch of brands in the consideration set. Maybe you test drove some things and stuff like that. Did any one of those brands advertise to you on the basis of our car has wheels? No, right. Yet, and this is especially true in technology markets Yet we have companies and brands out there advertising basically on the basis of our car has wheels bits by speed speeds How many tops to a tier one network? right, it would be the equivalent of selling ice cream on the basis of it's cold and it's sweet, right? 

Speaker 3: Baseline requirements every brand has a bunch of baseline requirements that they have to satisfy those baseline requirements. Interesting thing, they change. They change over time. So, for instance I know you can't believe this I'm old enough that the very first car that I purchased I had to pay extra for power door locks and power windows. I paid $400 for vanity mirror, which is that mirror on the back of the vibes are right now, today, in 2023, if you're going out to buy a brand new Volvo the 2023 model that you bought in 2022, i'm guessing you least in 2022 you wouldn't even think of getting that if it didn't have Bluetooth. You have, like, apple CarPlay or Android Play or something like that in there as well. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, that was one of the things I made sure that the car had. 

Speaker 3: This is really, really important, especially for B2B people. In the middle of Maslow's hierarchy for brands, the brand values pyramid, are what we call emotional benefits, which are like features and options, bells and whistles, lipstick on a pig, the stuff that sort of sweetens the pot. These things in and of themselves are not imitatable, because and if you want to tweet something else from today's episode, it's this because today's options packages Become tomorrow's standard equipment, brands cannot differentiate themselves on the basis of power door locks, power windows, power steering, because when you put it out there to the world and it becomes an expectation, then everyone else in the industry is going to adopt that into their products. Right, that's why we have innovation At the top of Maslow's hierarchy. Fully self-actualized brands are the ones that make people feel like they are part of a group you mentioned communities here part of a group of like-minded people, sort of birds of a feather flock together kind of thing, and that Elevates their self-esteem and makes them feel a particular way. 

Speaker 3: The top of the brand values pyramid, the thing that is like self actualization, are the values and beliefs of both the brand and The people who use it. So I know something about you, Neal. This is the first time we've ever met, the fact that you lost least of all the last year. I know about you that You like nice things. You're not flashy. You probably value safety. You probably have a very practical, down-to-earth, very pragmatic side. Yet you are discerning and feel like you are deserving of something that offers precision, swedish engineering right. That's at least what I know about you through Your use of the Volvo brand. 

Speaker 3: So the brands that we use, what we eat, what we drink, what we drive, what we wear, the software We buy for our companies, all of those things, they say something about us, not just to the rest of the world, but to us as individuals, and the best brands in the world. They get to the top of that pyramid And they have a set of values and beliefs. And I'll say like this is just a side note, this is really important. It's demographically appropriate now And it's actually an imperative. 

Speaker 3: As younger purchase influencers come of age, they are demanding to see the gooey insides of brands in every category. They need to know what do brands stand for? what processes do they use? How do they actually procure the materials that they make their products from? do they treat their employees Well? are they investing in responsible and sustainable ways in our environment and our world and all those kind of things. People need to know what's on the gooey inside of brands, and the best brands in the world become part of the identity Of the people who use them. Does that make sense? like hacking Maslow's hierarchy for that. 

Speaker 1: It does. So I mean, is it tied to Innovation? or I guess, like, how did now Volvo for like the last you know? ever since I was young It was always about safety, like in the television advertising, right, so I get that. Some other things you talked about they have never directly, maybe indirectly, in their promotions. They've talked about it, but I guess you know how do they hack it. Maybe it gets down to you. Were we were talking earlier this four point formula for creating you know the strategy for your brand And maybe that that is how you go about hacking it. 

Speaker 3: I'm really. I get to the top of the pyramid, exactly, yeah, so I encourage everybody to like build the brand values pyramid for their brand. The stuff at the bottom, those baseline requirements, these are the baseline requirements for your category, right? So, in order to be called like a mid-sized luxury sedan, which I would, are you driving a sedan or you driving an SUV? Like what do you have? 

Speaker 1: I have the XC90. So it's a. It's a mid-sized SUV. 

Speaker 3: Right, i would call it like a mid-sized, mid-sized luxury SUV. I drive an Audi Q5 and I also have a Mercedes GLB 250, so all of them are sort of in the same my wife drives a GLB 250 too funny, okay, so like they're all in the same category. 

Speaker 3: They have to have some of the same things. You have to put a check mark next to them or otherwise people will defect, right, those are the baseline requirements. So, for your brand whoever's listening to this and God I hope someone's listening for for your category, like, right down, what are all those things? wing wheels, steering wheel Like you probably have really, really nice headlights, you got a kick-ass, stereo. You have leather seats, you've got like 12-point restraint system You have, in order to become, you know, to be considered a luxury anything It probably has to have a sunroof or a moonroof or you know, like my Audi has, like a panoramic roof, all that kind of stuff. Those are baseline requirements. Those are not the things that you market out, but make a list of those and then put a check mark next to the things that you Do better than other people and where you may be deficient, right, so that you understand, from a product perspective, what do I need to build into my product? or what are the attributes that maybe I'm going to ignore in the middle part of the tier Pyramid list, like what are some of the bells and whistles? Well, some of the bells and whistles that come with a Volvo are like this extra safety record and the Crash test dummies and you know, like extra safety engineering and maybe it has like a reinforced I don't remember what all those have, this special stuff, but these are the things that you have. Make a list of what those things are that are your bells and whistles and Then think about how does it make my customer feel right? So you probably feel safe, confident, secure, deserving, like. You feel reliable, you feel special. You can't even honor someone far tooads. I've done at what they wanted a massive peel from as a customer or as an employee, but they have decorate 千 J. I saw expected you, you, you, you, you comes in. So I encourage everybody to like build that brand value pyramid. 

Speaker 3: But when I'm gonna tell you what, i'm gonna tell you now, this is the actionable part of this. This is the stuff that every single person can do by themselves, with their team. Is the four things. Four things best brands in the world. They do four things and you can, you can do these things. Now, i'm not saying they're easy, but you can start to, you know, kind of go through this process for yourself to like really clearly define the strategic foundation for your brand. 

Speaker 3: First thing the best brands in the world, all of them. They aim their brand at a singular, ideal, archetypal customer, one customer. They aim their brand at this one person. It doesn't mean that segment marketing is dead, it doesn't mean that personas are dead or anything like that, but the best brands in the world, they aim their brand at that one person, right, who is the most ideal, who is the most highly predictive of their success, the one who is the most profitable, the one that's going to buy from them again and again and again and advocate for them. That's who they aim their brand at And that brand it shows up regardless of the channel that it's purchased in or the segment that it's sold to or what the product is. So that's the first thing. 

Speaker 3: The exercise is as easy as this, and this is what I do with my clients. We get out a big piece of paper. We freaking draw that person. If that person is a good listener, we draw them with giant ears. If they have a big heart, they have a big heart in the picture. If they have a lot of money under their control, we show them standing on a pile of money The ideal customer for my company. 

Speaker 3: In her picture and we have a picture and we bring her to the table when we do our strategic planning her name is Lindsay and she's based on a real human being that we have worked with at five different companies. 

Speaker 3: She is the chief marketing officer of an enterprise software company And she's so irrationally loyal to us that she takes us with her everywhere she goes. But in her picture she has what we call Lindsay's Golden Shovel. She's got, she literally has a Golden Shovel in her hand, which is what she uses when she hears that her agency partner has a compelling idea that's going to help her meet her goals, she will use her Golden Shovel and go dig for budget to pay for it, right? So be very, very specific about who that singular human being is and have that person be part of all of your conversations about the brand. So it's your goal to become part of that person's identity. Think of that person wearing a Neal T-shirt, right, who is the ideal person who is going to be consuming your content and using your services, and draw a picture of that and get everybody on the same page. So that's the first thing the best brands in the world do. Are you ready for the next ones? 

Speaker 1: I know This is amazing, deb, keep going. 

Speaker 3: Okay, the next ones are in the category of what I called the three brand swagger questions. So you've done the first step, which is create this profile, the ideal archetype or custer. And it's not a demographic profile, it's demographic, thermographic, but mostly important, psychographic, attitudinal, behavioral, because if you understand that person, you understand that person's values and beliefs, you understand why they're going to buy from you. It goes well above and beyond those functional benefits that we talked about, right? So, best brands in the world. you have that as a picture, that ideal customer. 

Speaker 3: Next, you're going to answer the three brand swagger questions. Question number one what does it say about that person that they buy my brand? What does it say about them? That question really helps you understand the story of how your brand becomes part of that person's identity, how it becomes part of who they are, the story that it tells the rest of the world about them that they purchased your brand. What does it say about me that I use Salesforce versus Zoho, right? What does it say about me that I use HubSpot versus Salesforce, right? That it's really trying to pick up on what makes my brand indispensable to that ideal customer. So the first question is what does it say about that customer that they use your brand, not that they use a mobile phone, but what does it say about them that they use an iPhone, right? Second question to answer the hardest question to answer it's where I earn all my money. You got a question. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, And that is almost like when you were analyzing why I chose a Volvo. those were some of the things that the people at Volvo should have been thinking about, right? 

Speaker 3: And I know that the people at Volvo are thinking about that all the time, right? Yeah, totally, volvo is a very strong brand. It's one of the top 100 most valuable global brands and perennially it is there because there's like fierce loyalty there. And I've owned two Volvos in my life. I just have. I have moved into a different phase of my life, which is I don't have babies and baby seats anymore. Right, got it. So you know they're boxy, but they're good, right? 

Speaker 3: So back to the. You know the formula, the four things that you need to do. You've identified your ideal customer. You've answered the question of what does it say about them that they buy my brand? The next question this is the most important question to ask. It is the most difficult to answer, and this is one. If you don't know the answer to this, go out and ask your customers. But that question is what is the one thing that people get from my brand that they can't get anywhere else? What is the one thing? 

Speaker 3: This is about singularity, because the best brands in the world. They aim their brand at a singular ideal customer. They become part of that person's identity. They are unique, they're singular, they're not just different. The best brands in the world are singular. There is nothing else like them. Google, amazon, are examples of singular brands, right Meaning they stand alone. They are truly unique. 

Speaker 3: So I gave you the story before about marketing agencies in Austin. And you can't swing a cat over your head, not hit 150 other people who say that they do exactly what I do. The way that we answer this question is the one thing that you get from us that you can't get from anyone else is you get a kick in the ass, like we're the marketing firm that you hire when you have audacious goals. You have short runway to get there and you wanna be pushed not just to do the best you can, but do whatever it takes to 10X your business or whatever those audacious goals are. You need a kick in the ass to get that done. So the one thing that you get from us, you can get marketing services from us. You can get the same marketing services from the people across the street, but they come to us for the kick in the ass, right? So what's the one thing that customers get from your brand that they don't get from anyone else? So that's about singularity and uniqueness. 

Speaker 3: And the third question, which this is like the Maso's hierarchy question. It's a really simple question How does your brand make your customer the hero in his or her own story? So challenge everybody who's listening to it or reading your notes or whatever. Go on your computer or on your mobile phone, open up your company's webpage. If the first word on the page is the company name or the word we, you're doing it wrong, because your brand should be about them, not about you. 

Speaker 3: People need to feel heroic. They get to stand on top of the mountain. They get to get to their Maso's hierarchy. They get the guy, they get the girl, they get the prize, they get the trophy, they get nirvana through use of your brand. Specifically, how do you help them get to their nirvana? So, if you put this all together, best Brands in the World. 

Speaker 3: They have four characteristics. They aim their brand at a singular, ideal, archetypal customer. They become part of that person's identity by answering the question what does it say about Neal that he drives a Volvo? They are unique, they're singular. So what's the one thing that they get from your brand? They can't get from anyone else? So from Neal's purchase of a Volvo, like one thing he gets from Volvo he doesn't get from anyone else? is that undeniable like maniacal obsession with safety, right, or at least the feeling of? And then, finally, how does that make you a hero in your own story? Well, it probably makes you feel confident, secure, safe and like you can go anywhere right, and that you're gonna do it safely and sconce in the love of a Volvo. So that, right there you guys, that is the formula for building a brand. 

Speaker 3: If you do nothing else in branding, if you do absolutely nothing else, just do those four things. I do a customer profile and answer the three brands' wagger questions And you have at least the strategic foundation for your brand. That's inclusive of your best customer versus. Here's a story about speeds and feeds and bits and bytes. 

Speaker 1: And I suppose so that that last point, I was wondering if the concept of the story brand was gonna come out, and that last point definitely came out. And I suppose that everyone listening is like okay, I get it. they're like nodding, It's like, okay, what do I do next? And I know I have a client that I've actually worked with, a official, certified story brand consultant. So I know the process of, hey, how do we make the customer hear the story? Well, what is our messaging? What is our website? It really gets included in everything. I'm assuming that everything you're talking about as well just gets included in everything that brand does the messaging, the product. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. So a brand is an experience And I think that this is really important. Like that brand is a relationship. So this idea of a rational loyalty, i think it's important to understand, like the origin of this. Neal, are you married? Do you have a significant other? I'm married, yeah, yeah, okay, all right. 

Speaker 3: The relationship that you have with your significant other, your spouse. Every time you guys behave on brand for your relationship, you make deposits into an emotional bank account that you share, right, hopefully. Are you married to a woman? Yes, okay, so your wife, conceivably. You and your wife, like, when you do things, like you do something nice for her, you fix something without being asked, or you walk by an overflowing trash can and you're like, oh you know what, maybe I should take that out. You do that without being prompted. You bring your flowers, you cook her dinner, you pick up the kids from school, whatever those things are. You're making deposits into this emotional bank account that you both share. When you both deposit into this shared emotional bank account, it goes well in the positive and that is the thing that prevents her from divorcing you when you do a shitty job of loading the dishwasher, right, mm-hmm, right. 

Speaker 3: This irrational loyalty relationship exists between brands and their customers, right, and this relationship is enhanced through every touchpoint of the brand. 

Speaker 3: And that's gonna be like you said. It's gonna be in all of your written deliverables, it's gonna be in your marketing materials, it's gonna be in your advertisements, but it's also going to be in the way that say you educate employees to serve customers. It's going to be in the way that the media and analysts cover you. Brand is delivered in 360 degrees and if you look at brand as a relationship, all of those marketing things are like the tip of the iceberg. That's the part of the brand that people see. What's most important is all the stuff that's below the surface, which is mission, vision, values like your standards of conduct, the relationships that employees have with each other and with customers, how you look outside in the world, but, more importantly, how you look inside, like how you deliver on your values and beliefs. So that's why I say branding isn't always on activity and it's early, often and always. For brands to remain relevant, they have to be relevant in 360 degrees, like that. 

Speaker 1: So you're exactly right and it's more, and I assume that it's not just the VP of marketing. it really has to become part of the DNA. I'm assuming, like every Apple employee, every Tesla employee, that this sort of branding almost becomes like a religion. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, i mean it's like a religion or a cult or something like that. I mean, for instance, like we have a set of core values for my company that, like every single employee doesn't just know what they are, they can say them, they can explain them and they can recognize those behaviors and other people. That serve as like a set of guidelines or like guardrails for behavior for how we deliver on the promise of our brand And so the best brands in the world, the people understand the brand, they know what the brand stands for, they're proud to wear the logo of the brand on a shirt when they walk around out there in public and things like that. And so branding is as much internal as it is external, and so it really is about defining that sort of core DNA. The formula that I gave you the one, two, three, four thing is part of defining the core DNA of the brand, yeah, and it just I'm just thinking for like the very small business. 

Speaker 1: I'm just correlating something I heard recently that a gentleman named Kevin Ruse, who's a New York Times author, he wrote a book about artificial intelligence and this was a conference about AI And he was talking about what jobs remain even with AI. And he says I'm gonna tell you about my accountant. He goes I love like people hate tax season. He goes I love going to my accountant during tax season. The accountant well, the head accountant, the CEO of the company is a former comedian, right, and he only hires people that are either former comedians or actually go to comedy school, you know, after work to learn how to become a comedian. So you have accountants that are all comedians and it's their brand. I mean, it's a very tangible one, very intuitive to understand, but it is one example of how they elevate themselves to be completely different and make this very irrational loyalty. they're fun to work with. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's I mean, and like that's part of the core DNA of the brand, right? 

Speaker 3: I know somebody who has like a huge application and custom software development company and he hired only people for whom coding was a second career and they didn't go to computer science school And it gave his brand a really, really unique perspective that he hired people who had been in the real, like the real world, or who had been in the outside world, who had actually worked with like other humans in real life applications and things like that, and it really was like part of the DNA of his brand And so, like I love the example of the comedian accountant man I could sure use one of those, that's for sure. 

Speaker 3: Like, on this topic of AI, it's interesting to note when I wrote personality, which, like mostly was conceived during the pandemic, like the book that I was working on when the pandemic hit, like the working title was Why AI Can't Solve AI's Marketing Problem, like I continued to be like a little bit uneasy about AI. Yet, like the strategists that work for my company are taking classes and learning, like prompt engineering and things like that, to be able to accelerate processes and train AI with brand voice and point of view and all of that kind of stuff and whatever, i don't think that AI is ever going to take over marketing jobs entirely. 

Speaker 3: I think we're gonna see a lot of lazy uses of chat, gpt and the like and things like that And what we're gonna see is like the death of content, but I think we're also gonna see the rebirth of content with a very clear branded point of view and a footprint of authority, and I think that that's really, really important. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, like I'm nervous because I'm nervous about what it can do to my business, because I've been talking to a lot of other CEOs who are like, oh yeah, i'm using chat, gpt to write my company newsletter And I'm like, oh God right, because, as the CEO of a scaling organization that sells office furniture, he doesn't have the innate gift that a lot of us marketers have, which is for clearly defining a brand through the emotional connection and the relationship that we wanna have with customers. And so my prediction is we're gonna see like a dumbing down and sort of like a commoditization of content, which is gonna create a need for the strategically minded, brand oriented people to like really dial that stuff in. So, yeah, i mean I could talk all day about this And I may still write that book about why AI can't solve AI's marketing problem. 

Speaker 1: We'll see, like I know, I have another book in me. You're being wrong. This talk was in San Francisco. There were talks of prompt engineers that are making seven figure salaries not seven, I'm sorry High six figure salaries. It's become so hot And Jaspers Jaspersai, which was the sponsor of the conference. They announced a new brand voice tool that they're trying to build in. I think we have a long way to go, But I do think that is the future that every brand will have their own individual AI, that if an employee wants to use it, it will create content that is at least aligned with the brand. But no, it's still AI content on human content. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, i mean yesterday I went to chat GPT and I was like write a thoughtful email to the clients of Soul Marketing announcing a price increase and also feature the irrational loyalty index study as a benefit. And what it came out with was this like really robotic response which never would have been written by me. I mean, if you've read any of my books like they read exactly like I talk, like I'm a no bullshit kind of person. But then I said, now rewrite that message in the voice of Deb Gabor. And it came back with something that was almost a little bit sarcastic. And then I told her and I said, okay, using that last one, now make it slightly more professional in Deb Gabor's voice, as if she's talking to a group of CEOs. And when it came back with it was uncanny, like I was, like I could have written this Right. 

Speaker 3: I mean, i guess there's enough content in the world and on the internet and the books that I've written, the media have done videos, all that kind of stuff that, that the AI can go out there and glean like what is the voice of Deb Gabor? but likewise I could say do it in the tone of a skateboarder. No man, our prices are going up, we're going to shred. You know, whatever It's like it's getting there is what I'm saying. But it's going to. It really is going to take. It's like a garbage in, garbage out kind of scenario and it's going to. It's going to take some thoughtful, strategic people. And so I'm just worried about a mismatch between, like we are marketers and marketing skills and storytelling skills, and what prompt engineers are doing like like how do we merge those kinds of things together? it'd be interesting to watch. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean two takeaways what you just talked about there. Number one is that it's all about the prompts And I think people just know like type of question like a Google search, they don't get the answer and and like, okay, i'll try Google search when it's these prompts that get you these good answers. But the number two thing is also based on what's whatever is out there in the internet. So correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the chat GPT well, that the GPT three model at least stopped like June 2021. 

Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah and you were fortunate that you're a best-selling author of three book. You already have tons of content out there, but for people that don't have content out there, they're not going to be able to write in their own voice. 

Speaker 3: You know you're not going to be able to write in your own voice. 

Speaker 3: You're not going to be able to write in your own voice. You're not going to be able to write in your own voice. You're not going to be able to write in your own voice. Yeah, exactly, yeah. 

Speaker 3: So, and you know the content that it's pulling from right now, at least the free version of the chat GPT that we're using, you know, just screwing around with it, like that content, like in the last two years, i could have completely gone whack a doodle and like gone off the farm and and now, all of a sudden I don't talk about a rational loyalty and I don't, you know, and I don't have that like direct playing talking point of view or whatever I think we, as, as marketers and storytellers and strategists, we need to embrace it and figure out how to use it to like maybe accelerate research and discovery, but like it is not truth, it is, it is not truth. And in branding, what is truth is what is like going to emotionally ignite the ideal customer to vote for us again and again and again, with like mind heart and wallet right? 

Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And I mean it just goes to show you two things. Number one, that AI really is the center of any marketing conversation these days. Even I had no idea we'd go there today, but we did. But number two, it really doesn't have a place in everything we talked about up until now, at least not yet. We don't know what the future holds. But, deb, this has been an amazing interview. Thank you so much for your time And for those of you out there. Deb the author, deb Gabor. Author personality Obviously, i know that you're the author. Three books. They're all available on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. How can the listener who wants to get back, how can the Lindsay that is listening to this podcast who wants to kick in, the who wants 10x tomorrow or yesterday? How can they go out and find you and connect and engage with you? 

Speaker 3: Well, you can look me up on chat GPT. No, just kidding, deb Gabor. Calm is the best way to get in touch with me and I will say all of these exercises that I talked about ideal customer brain values are the three brain questions, also some material about brain archetypes, which we didn't talk about here today, and brand personality, etc. I give free downloads on my website. Like go get these exercises, do them yourself, do them with your team. Also, write to me, text me, call me. You know whatever I'll talk to anybody. Just tell me where you came from. 

Speaker 3: I give this stuff away for free and if you read personality, you'll learn all about this. I give this stuff away for free because I'm compelled to show this information with other people. When organizations create this condition of irrational loyalty and they create strong brands, it contributes to their ability to contribute to their economies, and healthier economies are better for human beings. And and I give things away without asking for anything in return. I don't want anything from you. I'm just giving this to you because I'm on a mission. I'm personally on a million brand mission to ignite irrational loyalty in brands all over the world. So like go get those things for free. 

Speaker 1: I give them away. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Once that. That's Deb Gabor, d-e-b-g-a-b-o-r. It sort of is spelled like it sounds, but just to make sure. Well, deb, thank you so much. Really enjoyed interviewing you. I'm sure there's a lot of Lindsay's out there that'll reach out to you. And what an amazing mission. So good luck with that mission And I can't wait to catch up with you when you've written that book about AI and branding. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'll let you know. Well, thanks very much. Thanks for having me on today. 

Speaker 1: Wasn't that a fantastic interview. I loved every minute of it. Obviously, this is one of those interviews hint hint that you can see on my YouTube channel, youtubecom slash Neal Schaffer, where you know I'd love to get to know you better and, in fact, if you want to get to know me better and if you'd like to work together with me, i do have a fractional CMO program. It is basically one-on-one customized marketing consulting for whatever stage you or your business is at on your digital content influencer social media marketing journey. So hit me up, nealschaffer.com slash CMO, fill out the form, you'll get a link and we can schedule some time together and see if and how we might be able to work with each other. All right, well, that is it for another episode of the digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, Neal Schaffer, signing off. 

Speaker 1: While you're there, check out Neal's digital first group coaching membership community If you or your business needs a little helping hand. see you next time on your digital marketing coach.