An Agency Story
An Agency Story
A Brand Born in an Ambulance - Trace Brand Building
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Company: Trace Brand Building
Owners: Tracey Felicidade Jones
Year Started: 2022
Employees: 1-10
What do a cross-country road trip in an old ambulance and global brand strategy have in common? Tracey Felicidade Jones, founder of Trace Brand Building, shares her wild entrepreneurial journey from escaping danger in South Africa to building a purpose-driven agency in the U.S.
Inside this episode:
- How Tracey built an international agency rooted in clarity, creativity, and courage
- Why visual equity is a must-have for brands that want to be remembered
- The common branding mistake that leads to costly rework
- How brand archetypes shape messaging—and why your agency should lean into them
- A global perspective on doing business and what the U.S. gets surprisingly right
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:I can see the movie trailer now titled Big Jude. The story strangers turned friends, an Ambulance and a cross country road trip for two and a half years and 42 states. In this episode, I sit down with Tracey Felicidade Jones, founder of Trace Brand Building, whose global journey from South Africa to the US has shaped a vibrant and fearless approach to branding that challenges the status quo. We dive into the power of effective branding and discuss perspectives on the US business ecosystem. Along the way, Tracey shares wild stories from her personal and professional journey, including traveling the US in Big Jude and rebranding through literal fire and upheaval. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Tracey Felicidade Jones with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today Tracey.
Tracey:Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I really appreciate it.
Russel:I am glad to have you as well. Let's get right to it. What does Trace Brand Building do and who do you do it for?
Tracey:Trace Brand Building, we are all about brand magic. We create brand magic. You get everyday branding and then you get brand magic, which is a special aha moment when you see really, really cool things. That's what we want to do. We want to create beautiful brands, beautiful stories that resonate with your customers and your ideal audience. We love what we do. We're very much in the consumer package goods, as well as healthcare and business to business, B2B. Anything that you would find in the food aisle, in the beauty aisle, we do quite a lot of stuff for beauty brands on Amazon. We want to work with cool brands. You want to work with cool people. I think the longer you do this, you realize that there's a lot of egos, maybe if you, people have certain marketing budgets and we just want to have fun and work with really, really cool people. That's super important for me.
Russel:Nothing wrong with that. We all need a little magic in our lives, I would imagine.
Tracey:Absolutely. It's the fun spot.
Russel:I want to hear more about all things magic making and brand building. Before we get to that point, I want to hear about Tracey and young Tracey and where you came up from in the world. And we'll eventually get to this whole agency thing.
Tracey:I am actually an American citizen as you can hear from my, from my, uh, New York accent. I was born in the US um, and my dad was working at the hospital in New York, so I was born and whole family is from South Africa, went back to South Africa when I was about two and a half, three years old. Lived there my whole life. Went to boarding school in South Africa, uh, saw the end of Apartheid, which was really a very interesting place to be in when, when Nelson Mandela was released. Got into corporate, um, I actually didn't study marketing originally. I studied a bachelor of science dietetics.
Russel:That's unique.
Tracey:I wanted to be a surgeon just like my dad and my math and science marks weren't good enough and then went to a college and just had a heap of fun as you do and studied dietetics and then realized, actually, do I want to study for another 15 years? I don't know if that's me. Then took a bit of a road trip and came back to the US. Ended up coaching tennis at a summer camp in upstate New York and met a whole lot of other camp counselors from around the world and ended up buying an ambulance, an old ambulance, uh, a 90 Dodge and ended up touring the US for another two and a half years with a whole lot of camp counselors that I met there. That was probably one of the best times of my life. I was 22 to 24 years old and we saw 42 states and as everybody's visas ran out, we would drop them off at the nearest airport. That's where I fell in love with Colorado because it was, it was 1999, I'm really giving my age away. There were four of us left out of 12 and we were in Hilton Head Island and it was starting to get cold. We're like, what are you going to do? What should we do? We're like, well, why don't we learn how to go skiing? And Dumber and Dumber had been released pretty recently. This is how you make Aspen and this is how you make your life choices, right? Like Dumber and Dumber. We're like, well, duh, you got to go to Aspen. If you want to learn how to ski, that's where you're at. Our ambulance was called Big Jude and we rolled in with Big Jude and, um, didn't look anything like we belonged in Aspen. Ended up doing a season in Aspen, worked there for eight months, loved it, worked at The Little Nell Hotel. I worked at the hospital as a dietitian, Aspen Valley Hospital. I also worked on Gwyn's on Aspen as a, as a line, line chef. It's where I learned how to ski. And then all of my friends visas ran out so they went back to Australia and, uh, I then went on to Vegas and became a dealer. Then had a car accident and went back to, went back to South Africa. That was my two and a half year stint around the US and, um, fell in love with Colorado there. That's where I live now. That's a little bit about me.
Russel:All right. Well, I got questions. This is a fascinating story. I mean, talking about living the dream, this is the kind of thing they make movies out of. Were you guys living in the ambulance? How were you, like, sustaining and, and you know, making money through this journey?
Tracey:We arrived in the US, I had about 500 dollars, uh, this was 99. I think we got about, oh gosh, I think we got about 1, 200 for our eight weeks of work at the camp. The ambulance costs 500 dollars. Jay and I split the van and we then just all kind of plugged our money together and it was like, okay, where are we going to go? Some counselors had family in Canada. We ended up going through Canada. We would just kind of drive and stop and then you would either camp or sleep in the van or, I think it was on the East coast somewhere. I forget the exact place, somewhere in Massachusetts. There was a retreat, uh, a monk, like, for monks and you weren't allowed to talk. We worked there in exchange for food and lodging and that was interesting. It was kind of like and then stop at work and travel. I would waitress, the guys would do, like, uh, building, you know, they would do, like, hard labor. We just kind of worked and traveled, it was a crazy time, but what fun it was. We would like stay somewhere for, like, two months if we loved it, and we got work. That's kind of how we rolled.
Russel:I feel like I want to do a whole episode just on this journey alone, but, um, you know, I guess this is called An Agency Story, but I'll, I'll limit myself to one more question. Craziest story that happened in this two and a half journey? I got to know.
Tracey:There's lots of them. Probably the most fun that I think stands out is that, um, we rocked into Boston and, um, bus into Salem, Massachusetts. We were all like, oh, it's witch, you know, you've, there's all of that thing about the witches and we had our broom to clean the van. We almost, like, had a kitchen. It was a proper setup that we had arranged. One of the guys, you know, we're all 22, like, college kids, took the broom and started running around in the car park, you know, like, pretending that he's in witch country. We ended up going to the bar. Back then you were not allowed, there was no bar that was open past, I think 10 o'clock. Anyway, we persuaded him to move the party down to the basement of the bar and we ended up staying there for, like, seven, eight hours. He would have lost his license. I don't know if I can say this stuff on, on the podcast, but, um, but, but it was a lot of fun. Being in Aspen over New Year for the millennium and everyone was crazy, like, what's going to happen? It's Y2K, is everything going to shut down? And then you're seeing, like, these beautiful, like, fireworks over, um, seeing the century, turn of the century. There's so many good stories. Geez, I could talk forever. Sleeping in the, outside the White House in the van. There's a lot of them, but, but just joy and laughter and fun and just exploring life.
Russel:Last question, what happened to the ambulance?
Tracey:I was now living in Aspen. I was the only one there. We were working at The Little Nell and my very good friend who still lives there. Stephanie, she actually works at the Regis. I then decided I wanted to go to Vegas and learn how to become a dealer. She said, okay, but we're not taking Big Jude. I'm not going to be seen dead in that thing. We ended up literally dumping Big Jude at Pitkin airport.
Russel:That's sad.
Tracey:I was like, okay, well, I'm just gonna leave the van and off we go. Every time I see a high topped white, like, Dodge van, I'm like, is that Big Jude? Is that Big Jude? We deserted her. I'll probably get fined if they found out, but yeah, it, just dumped her. It was quite sad, but I was not allowed to drive it to Vegas, is the point. Very sad.
Russel:I don't know. I feel like I kind of want to go on a hunt. You could dig up the VIN number and see if Big Jude could still be out there.
Tracey:Every time I go past Aspen, I'm like, I wonder if, wonder what happened to her.
Russel:Might still be sitting there. Very fascinating story. Thanks for taking us down what I imagine, there's no shortage of memories there. Come back to South Africa, get us to where you actually, how did you start your agency?
Tracey:I didn't study marketing originally. I was doing a bachelor of science and then all the dietitians became medical sales reps. Because they just, you know, in Africa, you're not worried about a nasogastrophe, necessarily. You're worried about HIV. The patients, they don't really care about high protein feeds. I had the opportunity to join my dad's practice and talk about coronary heart disease and low cholesterol, but I just wasn't loving it. I just wasn't feeling the creativity. I ended up getting a job at the hospital and then, um, I, but I was always more creative. Then I got headhunted to go and work for LSG Sky Chefs, which was more along my lines of, like, super creative. I then got to design all the nutritional meals for Air France, Swiss Air. I really enjoyed that. Then it was, 9/11 happened and overnight the business just kind of collapsed. Two months later, the business was closed. There was no more airline catering because everything was kind of, like, shut down and now everything was moved over to, um, one of the competitors. I went into medical sales and that's where I fell in love with the marketing because you would see all the cool stuff happens in the marketing department because we would develop these as a rep, you would get these cool branding kits to take to the doctor to try and sell them the products. It was so creative and I was like, hey, I really enjoy this, this kind of creative, like, execution and, and telling the story and bringing things to life. Also from a medical family, my dad was very much like, if he's going to see a medical rep, bring me value. I don't need a pen. I don't need a gift. I don't need stuff that's going to fill up a landfill. Bring me the latest information as to why this is going to affect the heart surgery that I do. I was always aware of, like, what is the value and, and, and what are you, what are you going to do to, to just, you know, make the, change an opinion or add to the story, so to speak? I was doing that for a couple of years. I kind of missed the food side of the, of the world. Then started working at, uh, Tiger Brands, which is a big food company. By this stage, I'd already studied marketing, international marketing management, so I'd already had my degree. Then I started working at Nestle Foods, uh, where I was the marketing manager for the food division for kitKat, Maggie Brands, that kind of thing. I got bored of the corporate space. It's very, very slow. There's lots of red tape. Having to kind of report to Switzerland and Singapore from a regional and global perspective, it just weren't getting, just weren't, I wasn't loving it as much as I wanted. I just wasn't loving it. There was a gap in the market for cool agencies. Quick work, super creative, down to earth, no ego, no BS. I'm like, well, you know, why don't I just, let me just do this. I opened up Brand Spanking Marketing. That was a feat as well. I'd gotten to the stage where now I'm going to leave corporate and my husband had his own business and now he's going to start supporting me while I grow. I left in April and in May, his factory burned down to the ground.
Russel:Your husband's factory?
Tracey:My husband's factory burned down to the ground. It really was a baptism of fire, so to speak.
Russel:Oh my gosh.
Tracey:Literally. But that's, that's how we started. It's been now 13 years and that's how Brand Spanking Marketing started.
Russel:What's the name? What's the thought behind the name Brand Spanking Marketing?
Tracey:In South Africa, you need to have a sense of humor, um, because of so many political and, just, it's it's a challenging environment to work in. Brand Spanking, it's brand spanking new. We're going to spank some fun into your brand. It just resonated a lot. Look, I was a lot younger then. It really, really worked well. And then when I moved to the US, I actually realized, we're all about drink the Kool Aid. Are you looking the part to your target audience? How do you look? How do you make yourself the best version of yourself? What we realized when we landed here was the word spanking could be contentious. The word marketing has a bit of a mixed review. Some people have been, they don't like the word marketing because they've been let down or what kind of marketing, it's so broad? Is it digital? We also realized that the US market likes to know, like, what is your niche? What are you really, really, really, really good at? We're really, really good at, is brand building. I took a step back and I'm like, okay, well, maybe Brand Spanking Marketing isn't the right name for the US. It really became evident when one of our clients is a lawyer, a legal firm, and they wouldn't, they wouldn't call us Brand Spanking. They call us BSM. I'm like, okay, there's definitely something more to this. We rebranded in 2021, in September, uh, or was it 2022? Sorry. The time's just flying, um, to Trace Brand Building. The reason for that is because I am tracing my steps back to the USA after leaving. We can trace the progress of your brand. We can uncover trace elements of who you are and discover beautiful jewels that we can kind of amplify if need be. And then it happens to be a shortened version of my name. We changed it to Trace Brand Building and that is now what we're called in both markets.
Russel:I like Brand Spanking too, but I don't know, is are agencies the only place where, I don't feel like I encounter a lot of other businesses, and maybe I don't know, cause I don't work with a lot of other types of businesses or industry, but it seems like a lot of agencies change their name for one reason or another from wherever they started to wherever they're at today. Very common amongst, amongst agencies, but I find that interesting.
Tracey:I think as you, as you evolve, I'm always a thing of like every, every seven to 10 years, you need to look at your brand. I'm not saying change it, but have a look. Because are you still relevant to your target audience? What's happening in the market? Have your objectives changed? We see so much bad branding and people have stuck with the same logo for like hundreds of years without any kind of modernization. We're like, can we just move you into the century? Because are you still relevant to your target audience? Maybe that's what happens with agencies, maybe they are having that introspection of like, are we still relevant in, in how we sound?
Russel:I think it's definitely probably more the latter. I totally get it. I think we went through probably two or three name changes in our agency. Very fascinating. I want to go back to your time in South Africa. You said that the environment was challenging. I can't remember exactly how you worded it, but obviously now you have the comparison of running an agency here in the US. What were some of those challenging differences that you're, that you speak to?
Tracey:A big thing in South Africa is something called, um, black economic empowerment. It's called BEE and if you wanted to work with big corporates, there's a BEE school. It's a bit like the diversity or the DEI landscape here in the USA, but there it's very much. I wouldn't say it's law, but you get fined and, and, and big companies have to report to the government what their BEE score is. Are they using, and a white woman is not seen as diversity, whereas in the US it is, okay. You would have to sell more than 51 percent of your business, um, in order to meet those qualifications. There's a lot of stuff that comes with that. I want to work with great people and my whole team is diverse. It's about great people, great work, great output, great attitude. I don't care what color or sex you are, just do good, good work and be a great person. That was limiting to some aspect. Another thing is there's a lot of corruption in South Africa, unfortunately. There's a whole nother angle of business that you've just got to be kind of savvy. There, you don't get people paying for, like, I get paid by clients by credit card. That doesn't happen in South Africa. It's an EFT or it's a transfer into your bank account. If I've got a TV ad that I was doing, I had to make sure I had the money to front roll that, and I would only get the money maybe 30 to 60 days later, depending. Usually after deliverable. You always had to kind of be, you, you know, you had to be kind of streetwise. You're dealing with cash a lot of the time. That was the challenge. A lot of companies have cut down their marketing budgets. There's just not work. There's no work, really, in South Africa. Moving here, I have been very pleasantly surprised at how easy, I'm not saying it's easy to do business, but it seems like there are fewer roadblocks to get work. Almost like in South Africa, you had to be an approved vendor and you had to go through this, this, this, this. I'm finding it, it's completely different. It's like, I like you. I like what you're doing. Let's do it. It just seems like there's a lower barrier to entry. This really is, I know you guys have heard this a million times, but this is the land of, if you can dream it, I truly believe you can achieve it. Whatever you put your mind to in this country, you can achieve 1000%. I just see opportunities everywhere around me. If you go and get them and you want to, you want to be active in the community, oh my word, the rewards are there. 1000%.
Russel:I think it's a good perspective for a lot of people that have never really done business outside of the US to just, you know, understand. Business is tough. All of those things still breed a lot of competition and stuff like that. The opportunity is there in so much as you're willing to take advantage of it, dream it, do the work. Which could, you know, probably, I don't think anyone would argue, the most free economy in the, in the world to do that. Certainly there's definitely, sounds like there's places that are a lot different, but, uh, that's a fascinating perspective.
Tracey:Absolutely. South Africans are also known to have a very, um, good, solid work ethic. I've got a great team. I wouldn't do anything without my team. My team is, are flipping rock stars, award winning rock stars. The beauty of it is that we, we've got talent around, around the world, so I can kind of do stuff and by the morning I've got stuff already ready for my client. People are like, what, what's going on? I'm like, we're getting stuff done. We're from Africa. I make shit happen. Just get the work done. Sorry.
Russel:No, you're good. Totally allowed. This is a PG 13 podcast. You can say that. A couple of questions there of, of just in the idea that, um, you know, something that feels like you kind of glossed over, right? This had to be a pretty big decision to move from South Africa. You bring your whole business and come over here. Obviously you'd got to experience you know, the US prior to that, but was it just the restriction around business or what? Tell us a little bit more about what motivated to take that move.
Tracey:Oy vey. It really was the violence. Our neighbor was shot in the head.
Russel:Oh my.
Tracey:I was at a retreat, in inverted commas, and one of the guests had a, attempted murder against her. She was stabbed multiple times and I was a guest there and managed to help pull her up the stairs. That I think was the final deciding factor. My step mom and my sister in law were held up in my dad's home at gunpoint. Everybody has a story of being affected by the fact that there's no work, so there's desperation, there's crime, there's corruption. How long until you're a statistic? The deciding factor was really the violence, unfortunately. You couldn't necessarily bike or cycle outside because we used to go to a bike park and then they started getting, you know, people held up for their bikes, for their phones, for their watches. You're in a bike park, which is supposedly closed off in a safe environment. We had a great lifestyle because we were lucky enough to be able to afford a great lifestyle, but is it a great lifestyle when you're in a lock behind electric fences and, you know, bars on the wall? You don't see it until you're really out of it, but when you, when you're out of it, you actually realize like, oh my God. I'll be now cycling. I'll just jump on my bike, hop on my bike. There's kids that are walking on their own, like, you could never do that. Or I'm seeing squirrels or I'm seeing, like, people fishing and I'm just like, oh my word, this is the small things. The little things are the big things. This is what life is about. It's not about living behind a fancy home with high walls and electric fences. That's really what was the nail in the coffin.
Russel:I don't think anyone listening could blame you. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, uh, safety and security are first and foremost and if we don't have that, that definitely makes sense. Fascinating story so far. I mean, obviously, uh, some, some hardship there and appreciate you sharing that, but seems like you appreciate just the opportunity and, and really have this abundant mindset and that that is clearly has worked out well for you. Let's talk more agency stuff. Just tell a good client story and we'll, we'll get, that'll get us back on track here into the agency life.
Tracey:A good agency story. We had a beautiful client called, um, Dr. Oetker. O E T K E R. It's the frozen food, frozen food, uh, largest kind of frozen food and they actually invented baking powder. He was a chemist, a pharmacist, and he invented baking powder, Mr. Dr. Oetker, and he is from Germany and it's a family owned business. We landed that account, um, gosh, 13 years, 11, 12 years ago, we had the account for 10 years. What a great, like, just a relationship and being able to see grow a brand. That's a global brand to where it is. They then bought a frozen dessert section, which we then also inherited. That was very much retail as well as daily. They had, like, 15 kind of shops around South Africa. What I really love is seeing, don't want to say their baby was ugly to start with, but, but when I look at the, when I look at the dessert side of the business in particular, Chateau Gateaux, rebranding them into that beautiful space, like, inheriting a brand and then being open to, like, rebranding and, and, and really targeting their ideal target audience and then rolling that out against, you know, different stores, uh, install point of sale, packaging. It's just so gratifying to see a full 360 rollout of, of, of what you do and, and how the customer reacts to rebranding and the delight and the excite moment that we bring pride to our clients, seeing that come to life. We did television commercials with them. We did install point of sale competitions. We developed really cool animated games where you would chasing almost like Pac-Man or you're chasing this pizza and, um, that went viral. Back to school competitions, promotions. In COVID, we created this thing called Tasty Moments. It was basically one, one episode a week of, of edutainment, so to speak, and it was a comedian educating you about frozen food and how you can use it. It's been about the relationships and just walking that, that journey. I don't know if that's a really good agency story, but it's just about seeing brands go from one place to the next and challenging the status quo and believing in you. Our job is to take you out of your comfort zone and to create magic and to make you do what you normally wouldn't do. I don't want to be seen as a vendor. I want to be seen as, really, your partner because bounce ideas off me, challenge me. We're building this baby together and I want to be part of the team. I don't want to be seen as a vendor and I won't deal with clients if they don't want to be us to be seen as part of an integral part of the team, because a lot of the time, like, I've been a marketing manager, I know what is needed, so I've been on both sides. I can see it from a marketing point of view and a brand point of view, whereas a lot of agencies don't necessarily focus on brand. They don't have the, maybe the classical marketing training on brand. They've got more just, like, the agency creative space, but we can bring both to the conversation.
Russel:As you were describing that, and there's a couple of things I want to come back to, but one, it made me sit, right? I don't know if you're a golfer, but everybody talks about golf, you know, especially if you're not very good like myself. You suck, you suck, you suck, and then you have a really great hole and that great hole makes it all worth it to go back through and kind of go through the grind. We get some of those where it's just all the right circumstances, have a project or a client where we hit it out of the park or part of the team and, and really have that great success that makes some of those other projects that just aren't as sexy or whatever reason just don't have that pizzazz behind them. But that's okay. Everything can't be a Cinderella story or anything like that. That's what that reminded me of. I want to come back to, you know, cause I, I do think that is an important piece of what you're saying is, we can't just be seen as a vendor. I think marketing is a thing where we've just got to be, we've got to be part of the team. Anything that you've learned in your experience that makes that more possible than just wanting it or expecting it, if you will?
Tracey:What I've realized, in the US, is that the education systems are very, very different to South Africa.
Russel:Is that a nice way of saying, uh, crappy because I've heard this before.
Tracey:It's just very different. I've realized this, that, that in South Africa, okay, this is obviously a generalization, so hopefully I'm not going to offend anybody, but what we've realized is, in South Africa, you do four years and, three to four years, and from, like, year one, you're doing statistical analysis. You're doing research. You're doing very market specific, there's no generalist subjects that you really take. We worked on a, an education brand here and I was actually talking to, um, the president and we were talking about, um, the changes in education and the differences between the countries and she's like, well, we're very generalist. The first two years you can study whatever you want. In fact, one of our friends' kids is doing, I think it's African basket weaving at CU Boulder, because he didn't manage to sign up for the subjects quick enough. I'm like, this is very interesting because we would not have those kinds of subjects, but what she was saying to me, the president of the university was saying, you know, for two years or so, you do generalists, you do whatever you want. Then in the last year, if you want to do marketing, you choose more marketing specific subjects. I thought that was pretty interesting. I don't know if you can, if, is this what you see as well? Because what, what the outcome is, is that it's, you know, people might not feel fully equipped for going in and really being, you know, the head of marketing or the VP of marketing, not saying that you are from our side, but, but it seems like there's a little bit of a gap. There's a bit of a gap in, in I'm a VP of marketing. I'm here because either I worked my way through the ranks, which is fabulous, but I'm just not feeling that confidence in archetype analysis or in the real strategic side of growing a business. I get people telling me that all the time, that in those positions, and that does surprise me because I would not, I would never think that.
Russel:It brings up an interesting notion. I think from my own perspective and right? I can't say I'm an expert and only have my own experience, but uh, I think we definitely do lack what probably when you do have more specialization, you know, maybe especially early on in your education journey, you learn what it takes to really go in depth about something and almost just that learning how to learn how to go in depth. I could see where that could be a challenge, um, in the big scheme of things. Where people are very become very siloed in what they know about and what they can focus on in, in their career. Every day that goes by this world, we're just getting, everything is becoming intermingled, intermixed. If we can't recognize patterns across different types of things, then then we might be hurting. But I struggle with that too, because right? Have you heard that you're familiar with the T shaped concept? We didn't coin this but we use it a lot in our business. The idea that your expertise is the shape of a T and the, the, the horizontal portion is kind of your, um, your breadth of experience and then your, your long portion is your depth. We always talked about, we, we very much valued that breadth, and we said, you might become stagnant in your depth if you don't have breadth. Again, that's that pattern recognition, but, um, you know, sometimes in the US we might,our education system might give us a short T on both sides. Long story short, and I hear this from a lot of folks from other countries, there's probably a lot of room for improvement in, in, uh, in our education.
Tracey:Not to knock it at all, it's just, it's just, we feel, when we are talking to marketing managers, they, they love the fact that we can talk about archetypes. We can kind of be their advocate for like, why do you think we should do this? We become the sounding board. This is a strategic reason, like, who are you as a brand? Because a lot of them don't necessarily have a brand platform or they don't have, they don't know what their brand archetype is. Now, if you don't know who you are as a brand, then how do you know how to communicate and how do you know which channels? I always say, if you were to look at, I'm a huge F1 fan, and Red Bull is one of the Formula 1, uh, sponsors in one of the cars. They're an explorer brand and they're all about, you know, the excitement and doing things, and as a result, I will lean into them on social media maybe 20, 30 times during the race. If I'm not watching it to see who's winning, who's, who's, who's, you know, who's in the lead now? They can get away with that because of their persona and the archetype. Now, if an innocence archetype like Coca Cola or Dove, which is all about kind speech, and if you look at Dove, you know, embrace all body types, um, Coca Cola, enjoy happiness. It's all about kind speech. Can you imagine getting 30 messages from them a day on social media? You'd be like, I'm out of here. I'm unfollowing you. We always get people saying, can you do our content for us? We're like, absolutely, but who are you as an, like, what's your archetype? Cause if you don't know who you are, then how do you know? You can't become, like, luscious lover the one day. Excited, you know, you know, explorer the next day and then the sage knowledge guy the next day, you're going to confuse your audience. We always go back to that discussion. I think that adds a lot of value into just making people think a little bit more about their brand. If you want to build business, build a brand. That's kind of our starting point.
Russel:It's funny. I generally don't think I respected brand in the way that you're talking about and until more recently. I absolutely now, um, align with that thought that we, we got to have the right foundation and then make marketing makes sense to that foundation from there versus, I do think marketing in general and it's becoming such a strong science and we've got to know just so many different platforms and while we might even just build websites, we don't get to ignore the fact of things like brand and just all the other mediums that a brand might communicate with, um, and just live in our little website world. The idea that because there is all this competition and all this noise in the world, so many people want want to be able to run an ad campaign and get customers and stuff like that. That all just doesn't work anymore because, probably to exactly what you're saying, that, uh, you've just got to have that core brand, those foundations. You can't just yell at people to buy your products. Maybe unless you're, like, the luxury of Coke or something like that, that yeah, sure. Throw up a commercial and you're going to make me want to drink a Coke, but that's, that's not going to work, um, for you're smaller or less recognized brands or anything like that. You've got to have a really core message.
Tracey:Besides that, it's also, like, how are you looking? Do you look the part? We're big on visual identity. What exactly is that? If you were to cover your logo, okay, what are the visual cues or what are you looking at that makes you still know as the reader or the consumer that it's your brand? Is it a use of color? Is it a use of layout? Is it a pattern? What are the visual assets that you own so that you don't just insert other branding agency or insert other, other, um, companies? We had recently had a, um, a flooring company approach us and we like, there's no visual equity. You could literally take your name and replace any other company. If you don't have visual equity, um, you're not building, you don't have a strong enough brand. We always build that in. It's not about rebranding every single person, but do they have a strong enough visual identity to be able to self identify on a billboard far away? Because those are the things that add value to your bottom line. And when people look at your brand, what do they feel? What's the emotion that you bring to them? Because that's what they're buying. They're buying the reliability and the emotion, which is the promise that you're delivering on.
Russel:I love that. It's just such a good reminder. Going back to, we know this, we hear this, but then all things clients and making this whole thing work might, might sometimes cause that to go by the wayside at times. But so, so true. Really what it comes down to is authenticity. I think everyone craves authenticity at the end of the day. I think we learned this more internally and culturally, it's, we can't, our values can't be what we want them to be. Our values are what our values are. We can have aspirational values and we can move in that direction, but we have to be honest about what, what our current values and brand, if you will, says and work from there, not just say it and hope it. I guess you could say, hope is not a strategy. That old saying.
Tracey:Hold on and hope like hell.
Russel:There we go. That sounds like a bumper sticker, maybe even a tattoo. I love that. Gosh, man, what a great conversation and great insight. I know you've got big aspirations for this business. What are the goals, hopes and dreams of Tracey and Trace Brand Building?
Tracey:We've got a flipping rockstar team. The design work that we do and the creative big ideas that we come up with are just so much fun and clever and well thought out and well executed. I really believe that we can be one of the largest independent agencies in the US, but bringing joy to brands. I feel like there's a lot of ugly design out there, which surprised me because we're in America, but it's almost like I've got an eight and a half by 11, I've got to fill every single inch of it. Some of the most clever adverts or marketing we've seen, they don't even need many words. I believe, through good visual storytelling, we can really become a serious contender in the US, um, and just bring fresh thinking and fresh ideation.
Russel:That's amazing. I've got my popcorn out, ready to watch that journey. Can't wait to see what comes to that. A great starting point is, is the the ambition and the, and the positive mindset. I can imagine that will definitely take you a long way. All right. I guess someday this episode has to end so I guess I'll, I'll get us in that direction, which is the, the old question of, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Tracey:I never thought I was an entrepreneur. I think a bit of both, gee, that's a tough, tough one. But again, people are like, oh, I'm not a salesperson. You can get taught how to sell, sell. People are like, oh, I'm an introvert. I don't know how to sell. That is complete bollocks. You can get taught how to sell. Entrepreneurs, I think they, they are, I think they're born, but, but geez. I'm not helping you with this answer. I'm just looking at myself. I never saw myself as an entrepreneur ever. I was like, corporate girl and then it's like, why not? I would say they're born, but you don't necessarily start off as an entrepreneur. It's your journey through life that makes you start kind of challenging the status quo and thinking outside the box. For us, it was necessity, like, oh my God, we've got a TV commercial coming up, but there's no electricity because there's no power in South Africa. We got to make a plan. Now we make plan B C D E F because, you know, that ABC is going to get kind of thrown off course. That's very entrepreneurial, like, thinking out the box. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. I'm not really good at answering that question, I'm afraid.
Russel:You did it far better than you're giving yourself credit for. I think that's what makes it a pretty fun question is, is there is no easy de facto answer and, and people's own experiences color which, which side of the coin there they might be on. I thought it was a really good answer. If people want to know more about Trace Brand Building, where can they go?
Tracey:Www.tracebrandbuilding.com. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Tracey Felicidade Jones. We've obviously rebranded ourselves from Brand Spanking Marketing so we're getting all of our socials off, you know, zero, we're busy growing that at the moment. LinkedIn would be the best way to connect with me or Tracey with an E, T R A C E Y, tracebrandbuilding. com.
Russel:Perfect. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing your, your amazing story from ambulance, touring around the country in an old ambulance to, um, you know, some of the hardship that you had to endure to get to where you're at today, but love the attitude, love the mindset. More than anything, I love that and appreciate you taking the time to share your story today.
Tracey:Thanks Russel, I really appreciate being here and go make magic.
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Tracey:One of the, the horrors, well, it was a bit of a horror story is we did a rebrand for the, this business and, um, we then handed it over to the interior design team to, to actually go and do the fit, the fitting of the store, the way it should be. The color of the brand was, it was the color of my shirt. It's like a raspberry peach color. The day of opening one of their, one of their stores, I was looking at these photos and I'm like, what's going, like, what is going on with the store? Because there's, the tiles were yellow. I'm like, oh my, like, what is going on? I phoned up the MD and I said, listen, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I am your brand custodian and I do not think that the design installation team, who we had nothing to do with. They were self kind of, um, procured. They haven't followed the brand guidelines. Now you are looking like, your floor looks like a box of M&Ms. It's so off brand. It's so ugly. I didn't say this to him, but I mean, it's completely off brand. It's like, the McDonald's arches are a certain color. You don't just start making them Ignacio and Sedona blue. You don't just change the yellow. There is very specific Pantone color yellow and they had gone yellow. Now this is a raspberry colored brand with gold accents. He ended up not opening the store that day and having to, I mean, I think it costs them hundreds of thousands, basically refurb all of this, all of the stock that had been bought, the tiles we've imported from Italy. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, should I really be that much of a brand custodian? But, like, brand is brand. It wasn't funny at all. It was a bit of a horror story. It wasn't our fault, but having to make that phone call and, like, they'd just gone gung ho on their own. Lesson in that is, really, if you, you need to make sure that whoever is following you understands the brand and understands the execution and understands the rollout so that it becomes the vision that you promised. Cause that was a really expensive exercise.
Russel:My moral of the story there is always listen to your brand person. Have a brand person, number one, and listen to them. That will avoid some costly mistakes. That's a good lesson.