Visible Yet Unrecognisable: How Brands Build Memory

You can hit big numbers and still be invisible where it matters most, and that is in someone’s memory. In this episode, I'm getting blunt about the difference between brand reach and brand recognition, because too many businesses are optimising for what the analytics can show while ignoring what buyers actually remember. If your content is everywhere but nobody can explain what you do, the problem isn’t your posting frequency. It’s your signal.

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Transcript

Welcome Back And The Fiji Reset

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You're listening to Brandon Butter, for straight talking, occasionally in your face, no BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. For those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing association with consumer behaviour and design thinking can impact what people see, think and feel. I'm your host, Mara Ladd, for sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable, and often unapologetically blunt, founder and creative director of Brand and Design Agency, your one and only. Hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. If you're a regular listener, hear how quickly I just segued into that. I'm so sorry. But if you're a regular listener, I have taken a break. One, I went to Fiji a couple of weeks back and it was great. While I was over there, I decided to just completely flip off my laptop and just stay tuned out. I took it, left it in the wardrobe, and it was the best break that I've had in a really, really long time. So it was such a good, I don't know, restart. I don't know what you want to call it, but it's something that I've been needing to do for a really long time. And I've gone away and I've done things, but I think it was just the style of break. My parents went, I went with my sister. We had the I guess kids' club that was there, which they went to only three times, they had two hour blocks, but they just had such a good time. It was just a stress-free holiday, and I feel much better because of it. Saturday I came back the week after. Love that. So it's been in and out. What I wanted to do didn't get done, so that's why I'm recording a podcast on a Thursday. Hopefully, we're back on track now. Anyway, today is a good one. If you're all about learning about the brain and understanding how we I guess it's like visibility, visibility, retention, consideration sets, which I've spoken about in the past. But what I want to talk about specifically for today is the difference between recognition and reach. Now, here is something that we I guess we can dive into is that you can be completely visible, but completely unrecognizable at the same time. I see this is the difference when people post all the time hoping that more is better, and you'll hear people say it's not about how much you post, it's about the quality that you post, and there is so much truth to that. But you do need to find your own rhythm. But we see it all the time, and I guess the thing is that the analytics won't show you the intricate details of that because the analytics say that everything is fine, they look at the vanity metrics. This is the difference between I guess tactile marketing and strategic marketing or brand building. Brand building is longevity, it never stops. It's something that you should be doing all the time. This is why Coca-Cola will have different types of marketing. They will be promoting their product, or they will do their campaign pieces. So the one where they're jumping out of a Coke bottle in the middle of the ocean, like something that always comes to my mind. That is a perfect example of recognition. So you will remember things when they have an emotion attached to it. Ironically, it was all about, you know, sharing happiness. That was that's the core message of that coke. Anyway, coke are being boycotted in multiple different reasons for multiple different reasons at the moment. But and then there's another different version of recognition for a lot of people. But I guess when we're looking at what's broken, is first and foremost, there's a difference between people seeing you and people knowing you. And most brands are always trying to optimize for the first one. It's like, how can I get attention? How can I get visibility? Now, you could get the same amount of visibility by grabbing a megaphone and walking through a huge crowd of people sharing and shouting a message. It doesn't mean they're gonna come up to you and ask you how they can buy from you after that. You'll get all the attention that you need, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to equate sale out of it or you know the result is going to be what you want. So there is a strategy that's involved in the way you do things and why you do things. And of course, this needs to be, and I put in inverted commas, on brand. And on brand basically means does it fit in the constraints of what you have shown people that you are, your brand identity. This is who you are, what you do about who you're here for. And if you're someone like Chanel and you're a really upmarket, luxurious brand, and you do this slapstick, down-to-earth, bogany kind of style, you know, ad or campaign, it won't fit. And people will be like, what's this? And that's why you need to stay within the boundaries of what people know you as. When you get to the point where you're like, I don't want to be like this anymore, that's when the brand repositionings come in. And you need to shift the direction, and then you need to re-educate the audience as to who you are now and where you're moving to. A lot of brands are currently in the repositioning stage because a lot of consumers have changed. Well, because people have changed, because the world has drastically changed really quickly over the last few years, more so than ever. So most content strategies are well, they're kind of like metric based on reach, right? So they're looking at that, came out the wrong way. They're looking to they're designed around reach metrics, right? How far you can get your message out. Views, followers, engagement rate, all of that type of stuff. Now that is important, obviously, it's important. And they're real signals. So they are able to give, and I still look at these. This isn't saying to negate that, you still need to look at that stuff. But they aren't signals of brand health, they're simply performative value. So how are you going on social media? Sure, lots of people are liking our stuff. I know people with huge audiences that are nowhere near the revenue they want to be. They've got a bunch of people that like and follow and share their stuff, but they don't have that sales pool. And it doesn't necessarily mean it's about sales either. It might mean that people just don't have that familiar kind of alignment to them. They might share memes or something that's relatable, but there's no deeper connection there. It's just something that they see. Recognition is deeper. It's something that stays in your mind. It's like part of the memory bank, and it's the reason people want to hang around. It's like it's an emotional driver. And that's where you really want to tap. You would be much more inclined to spend a whole heap of time on an emotionally driven ad than you would be on five shitty, you know, posts that you could could get out and get quick reach on. And there's a big difference. That's why you need to have a strategic strategy and a tactical strategy. If you don't know, I've done a whole episode on this with Beck Chappell, who's a marketing strategist. I suggest you can go back and listen. It was a really good one. But it talks about the key differences are so if you're brand building, trust building, long-term building, recognition building, you're looking at brand. Uh, if you're looking at, you know, a campaign or you're trying to sell something or, you know, getting people in the door, that's when you're looking at the tactile stuff. So brand marketing is what they consider like brand awareness. It's like who we are, what we do, what we're about, who we're here for, what your culture's like, what's it like to work with you, and the other stuff, all the other stuff fits under tactile. It's like short-term, long-term stuff. We at Your One and Only fit into the long-term stuff. We're about how you establish an identity and continue to grow that reputation and that recognition and trust over a long period of time because it's it it what's the word? It compounds. You want it to compound to get bigger and stronger and you know, people you want people to remember you and build a much deeper connection. Loyalists usually come from that. But the sign of brand health is really about it's it's essentially where the word of mouth comes from. It's when you're looking at the short-term, I guess, reach aspect, you're looking at a brand that may be reaching new people every day but can't be described in one sentence by someone who's followed you for six months. And to me, when someone can't explain what you do, that means that the message that you're pushing out hasn't resonated with them enough to build any recognition. That's a problem. And so it's building a presence that doesn't compound and content that accumulates but doesn't compound. Does that make sense? You want you people are there and they see you and they know, but there's no substance. So that means that there's no loyalty to you and they're quite easy to switch if you're selling something they can go somewhere else because there's no alignment or connection there. So in a really simple way, we look at it as because reach is measurable and recognition isn't, not in the analytics. That's what I'm talking about. So you can't really anyway, that's when you kind of get into sentiment tracking. You've got to look at uh brands optimized for what they can see. It's this is the whole visible versus invisible thing. We talk about disability, you know, you will give someone the benefit of the doubt when you see that they're in a wheelchair, but someone that has a mental health issue, you know nothing about them, so you treat them completely different. The minute you find out that they're different mentally is the moment that you change your whole attitude and behavior towards them. It's the same thing with this. It comes down to what you can see is right there in front of you. Therefore, you're able to change what you do. But if you're not tracking or understanding how recognition works, then you could be changing the front end and completely missing what's working in the back end. Or, you know, you're fixing something that isn't broken because you're not getting the front end, I guess, outcome that you're wanting, which isn't really the thing that you want to build. You want to be building long-term goals. So, to give you a really good explanation, example, I have rebuilt U One and Only over the past few years, and that was deep brand building. So I was making sure that everyone knew who we were, what we do, what we're about. I didn't put as much this is what we do because there was a lot going on behind the scenes. But now that stuff's coming out. The building who we were attracted the right clients. And because of that, we now have the execution that we can say, this is what we meant. This is what we've been saying that we did, these are the people that came in. This is how we've worked with them. Now, this is the result of that working. If we were pushing work out that wasn't in alignment to what we were thinking and building, then it would have been a disconnect. So that's one thing that we were really trying to build. And ours was really cemented, and this is our brand model, obviously, or business model, is that retainer service relationship connection. And that comes from understanding how long it takes a person to come into our buyer's journey, where they start, what they're consuming, what they're thinking about, understanding their psychographics, their motivations and drivers and pain points, where they fit, their emotional state. All of this stuff is what we're really interested in. And when you know that about a person, you can build such deep connections with them. This is what people aren't doing. They're not tracking the behavior. They're tracking the way that they consume content, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're tracking the way that they think and how they act as a human being in society because how they act online could be quite different to who they are outside of that. Very different things. For example, you could see someone that buys a Billabong bag. I mean, I'm saying, let's put this into perspective when uh everyone's like, who buys Billabong bags? Well, I did when I was a child. So let's give you a story when I was a kid. In year seven, I wanted a brand name, Billabong bag, because they were the thing. Everyone had a cool, you know, uh, surf brand bag. And they were like 80 bucks. And my mum got me a Billabong bag. I didn't even like it that much. It was just the fact that I had a brand name, surf brand, and that I felt like I was part of the group, also known as in-group bias. So when you feel like you belong and you're part of a group, you can have the conversations and you feel like you fit in to that group of people that have similar things and similar interests. People are like this. So sometimes they will buy things that they don't necessarily love because they're trying to fit in. And so I'm not saying to sell to those people, but I'm saying you need to understand the behaviors as to why people are buying things. So you kind of want to know the reason as to why they're buying and you want them to really deeply connect with you, not just buy something for the sake of buying, right? So that goes into a whole different, a whole different category. But it's about who that person is and how they're feeling in that moment. Now, if we come back to why optim a brands optimize for what they can see, they look, then look for more posts, more formats, more variety. All of this stuff increases the reach, but none of which necessarily builds the neural association. That makes someone think of you the very moment they need to need what you do, I say, I guess essentially. So when we're looking at the consideration set, someone needs to buy XYZ service or XYZ product, you want to be in that, in that consideration set. And a consideration set is basically your short-term memory or your long-term memory going, ah, I know brands in this space. Who are the brands that pop up? And they will be different for everyone based on the exposure that they've had to brands. So if I said to you, hey, here's a thousand bucks, can you go out and buy me a TV? You would have brands that fit in your head straight away from the brand name. Bang, bang, bang. And then you would then look at attributes of that. So price, and you look at definition of, you know, of the screen size, where you can buy it online, you know what I mean? That's when all the other stuff, price comparisons come in. If your brand is strong enough, it will be in the consideration set. People are not just choosing based on price. So, and even if they do, they will wait for a sale, buy the brand that they want at a cheaper price when there's a sale. And that's a whole thing. So the thing that we want to make sure that we're doing is building recognition, building memorability. And everyone's going, how do I become more visible? When they should be saying, How do I become more memorable? Two very different things. You want to be described in that one sentence I mentioned before by someone where they go, hey, what are this, what are these, what do these people do, or what does this brand sell or do? You want them to be able to wrap it up straight away. If they can't explain or sell you to someone, they're not going to. It is really that simple. So recognition requires repetition of a signal, not just repetition of a presence, if that makes sense. So the brain habituates for frequency, and it does not habituate to meaning. So what I mean by that is if you understand what the compound effect is, it's kind of like I've done a reel on this in the past, but if you think of it like listening to a song, you listen to a song for the first time, you're not going to remember anything. You listen to it again, then you listen to it again, then you start to know the beat, you listen to it again, you might know a few words, you listen to it again, you know the chorus, you listen to it again, you know what I mean? It's that being exposed to the same thing over and over and over again will make you more memorable. So when you put something out to market, the thing that you need to be pushing out, when I say consistency and repetition, is your brand message. Who are you? What do you do? What are you about? Who are you here for? That and your selling proposition, your positioning in market needs to be front and center so that when anyone sees you, they know what you're about. You presenting that message across all of your socials, across the way that you speak to people, across your email taglines, across your hero on your website, on your podcast callouts, on your sales pitch and bio, like everywhere. And it needs to be consistent and well, I said say said multiple times in your feed. So as a CTA or the premise of what you do, all of it needs to be there. And the more that you say that, the more that people start to remember you. Now, when we first started your one and only, or was in the stage of shifting your one and only into the new direction that we were in, we were always known as like the visual design agency. And I had studied brain development strategy for a really long time. And I was like, I want to do the strategy. This is what my brain was built for. So I started to jump into all of this stuff and do all of the stuff that I'd, you know, spent years doing in an agency and then came out to do, you know, 20 years on the game now. I had to reshift the plan for that. But I also was studying behavioral science. So I wanted to really build in my knowledge of understanding behavior, associations, and heuristics and the way that we think about things. And heuristic is a brain chalker, by the way. Uh, what are they also called? Um, mental blank schemas are what they're also called. So, like if you're thinking about, I don't know, summer, you might think of smoothies and the sun and ice cream and things that associate with summer. Like they're like it's like a set. And that's what you have to think about when you're marketing and when you're creating design for a strategy, you want to make sure that you're building into the stereotypes and the considerations of what people think about already, pre-existing things that they think about. And I don't know if you've seen it because it's everywhere already. They go like Duolingo, but XYZ, because everyone knows what Duolingo do, and then they just use that memory. That's a heuristic, they use that memory to as a way for you to connect what they do really quickly. It's actually a really cheap and tacky way of marketing, if you if you ask me. Everyone's doing it, it's you know. So that's what we talk about when we're talking about memorability. Now, if we talk about the mere exposure effect, which is what it like, which is basically the compounding, the compounding as we go, I'm like doing the movement and not actually letting it come out of my mouth, only works when the exposure is carrying a consistent, meaningful signal. So what I meant by that is that you have to have the same message being produced over and over and over again. Because random exposure habituates meaningful repeated signal compounds. So that's why they say consistency is key, but making sure that the consistency is also the same message because consistency doesn't mean posting, consistency means the same message being posted consistently so that they know what you do, so that it can sink into their brain. And when you know that people are experiencing, and I probably would say this is higher, but I've always known it to be seven to nine thousand ads a day or whatever it is. I would, it's probably way more than that now. I'll fact check that. But when you're online and you're consuming copious amounts of things, things that will stay within your brain have to be something that's memorable, emotional hitter. It's a smell, it's a touch, that's when all of these different things come into play. That's why if you have a brand, it's highly recommended that you do, just smash my microphone, sorry. You do audio so that someone, if it's someone's an audio, auditory processor, visual so that they can take in things ver visually. A lot of us are visual processors. Uh, there's ways that you can do scent. So subway do this, lush do this. You can smell, you know what that smell of that brand is about. It's like sensory memory. And people build that into things. Tactile, how something feels. Apple do this really well. You would know the shape of an Apple phone. Now everyone's copying that, but you would have known the shape of an Apple phone earlier in the day. But you would know the box, like all of it is done in a way that is recognizable, so much so that that's why Apple were the most valuable brand because they had done those touch points so well. The message was consistent, the visuals were consistent, the way that they showed up was consistent, that that was just so easy to retain. Simplicity is key as well in that case. So when we look at most people, they think that the problem is that they're not posting enough. If you're not posting at all, there's that's obviously a thing. But the actual problem is that they haven't been posting with that consistent message. And so that means posting more makes the problem worse, not better, if you're not using the same message. You're just like, here's a bunch of extra shit that I don't need to be taking in, and no one will understand it. So, in order for you to, you would be better off posting three times a week with the same message done three different ways. And that's that's something that people need to take into consideration. It's not more is more, as we always say in design, less is more, and that's true because you don't want to cognitively overwhelm your audience. You want them to be able to see what you do. That's why the best brand may not always be the one with the best brand with the product, I should say, may not always be the best choice because the one that is most easy to retain and remember will be the one that gets chosen. So always make sure that that is front of mind. So when we're looking, I guess, in terms of identifying three to four things that the brand stands for for Apple, you could easily by memory say a lot of designers use Apple. I know that things have changed for them recently, but they were always like the chosen brand for you know products for design for creatives would always buy Apple. And I mean I've got Apple everywhere. Then you would look at them for the way that they did their product, you would always look forward to their releases. They you knew when they would come you knew the iPhone was going to be released in September or the new waves of things. So you they had the same dates and the same way of doing things so that you knew when they were going to do something and you would be you would be able to remember that. They did it so well that this is what built their reputation. And Steve Jobs obviously had a huge role in that. Like if you even look at Steve Jobs as the founder himself, he wore the same thing all the time the turtleneck top. Like it was the same thing. It was like his uniform and so he became recognizable in terms of personal brand and visual appearance without even realizing. So if you're doing a video, this is something that I've been doing lately I don't know if you've noticed but if you're looking at any of our reels I will wear the same jacket. I will wear the same jacket which is like a denim overthrow because when you see that it is a symbol of what I am wearing. I'm just testing a few things out. And then there's ways you will see other people that have really strong synonymous visual hooks. So they will have maybe a green microphone I saw a girl with green microphone green green shoes or they might wear certain glasses or they might have a certain picture. So the framing of that environment is important, right? It's that consistent framing and space. You know shooting in different places is good, but make sure the the place that you're shooting in is the same place that you're shooting, you know? So video has a huge role. Visuals have a huge role the way that you shoot the visuals so if you're doing a different shoot with a different photographer every time and they look different there's not consistency there. So that's where the visuals come in. And so there's a way that you want to make sure that you're pushing that message across and the message doesn't always have to be what you say. It can be what it looks like. And that's why visual consistency matters. Verbal consistency matters and this is where branding guidelines come in. When you look the same you sound the same and that's that's I guess it's a static kind of version of the brand you want it to be moving but you want those fixed areas of the foundation to remain core so that people are able to identify you on first glance. There's constant movement there you're going to really confuse the audience and make yourself harder to find so I guess when we're looking at um I guess the algorithm being used for exposure doesn't necessarily mean that your marketing is working for brand recognition. Does that make sense? Like it it can mean that the reach went and you did really well in a reel and you might have got millions of views, but it doesn't mean that people remember you I couldn't tell you who I remember I can send a reel to a friend I'll be like haha this is funny and I couldn't remember a thing about them. It's when you see the same thing done the same way multiple times you're like ah I've seen this before ah and then a few times you see them you're like I actually like this content. I've been following or liking this person a few times and then you follow and that's essentially what happens it's that oh it's that being familiar with with what you've seen and resonating with it because it's very hard to just get a follow on first view unless you've done something quite amazing. And I know people have done that I were like I really resonate with this message and then you go to their profile and you suss them out and you see what they talk about and then you kind of follow from there. But I guess when you're looking at identifying the familiar parts of a brand it's about making sure that you're repeating them as well. So like I said being consistent being repetitious with it and not changing that because you don't want to have it counterintuitive for the brain. You want to make it sure it's really easy to recognize and it's necessary for recognition. So you can look at what you can do right now. I've got a whole bunch of stuff here that I've skipped over because I do that and you want to kind of assess where you think your recognition gap could be so until someone has followed you for a really long time and you've stayed within their engagement feed so that's when the engagement matters you want them to be able to tell your work apart or tell what you do apart from someone else. That's a differentiation. So this is where we talk this is what we specialize in is strategic positioning differentiation. And then you want them to be able to go ah that's them and if that's not happening for you there's an issue and you need to fix it. And it doesn't mean it's a big issue it just could be the slightest tweak that could completely change the game for you. So what I would say if you want to figure it out is to ask someone that follows you consistently or has followed you for a you know a period of time longer than six months and they're able to describe what you do in a sentence ask them what do you think we do in a sentence so coming back to what I was saying earlier when we were a visual designer before we moved into brand design and brand building I asked the question is what what do you think of when we say you're one and only now obviously they said me Tara Ladd obviously I'm the face of the brand because I'm the founder but they also mentioned you know Sam. They also mentioned visual design and design and branding I was like great so they know what we do. Recently I've asked the same question and they say brand psychology, behavior, brand strategy and so all of the things that we've worked to rebuild, we're now being identified for. So that's why it's important to ask the questions and even now do it. Do it before do the test run and get those because this is what the association is what people remember you by. How are people seeing you right now? And you get that initial data and then when you do the work to reposition or or change something up and you ask again in six months if you've done the work, you ask them again and you see what if the response has changed. Now given that it can take up to 12 weeks for these things to change like that's at a minimum you have to understand that brand building is a long haul. So anyone that starts and launches a brand and goes yes we're going to be like successful straight off the bat no you have to build that audience and it's harder now more than ever because people are just consumed with information. So I want you to remember if the answer is unclear from the people that you're working in with or who have given you your feedback if it takes them I guess more than two sentences to be able to explain what it is that you do, you've got a recognition gap. That's not a reach gap. And that is the diagnosis for you right there. That's the layer that it lives on because reach won't fix it but the architecture will branded architecture will. And so I guess I'll leave you with this is that visibility isn't the goal. You want to be visible but it's not the goal. Being the first thing someone thinks of when they need what you do that's the goal and they're not the same thing. So anyway this is that this week's podcast and if you don't know if you're in Sydney or you want to travel to Sydney we have the underground workshop full day workshop on Tuesday June 9 running from 10 to 4 and we are really excited because we've got 26 actually we've got less than that now. We've sold some tickets off the emails but we launched it this week it's going to be a day where we're going to look at the differences between personal brand and business brand how they intersect we're actually going to be diving a lot into the mirror so like I've created a whole framework foundation that we're building off that is a lot of reflection introspection understanding the market figuring out where we're comparing and then we're actually going to well you're you're going to I'm going to feed you the ideas and you're going to brainstorm them down on paper and I can guarantee you by the time you leave you'll have a whole bunch of new direction that you wouldn't have even thought of so if you're interested in that I will drop the link in the show notes but until then I will chat to you next week. Did you like that episode? Hope so because if you did why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review. It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about if you want to follow us you can find us at youan and only underscoreau on Instagram or head to www.ywan and only dot com dotau