49: Stop Branding for Yourself. Start Branding for Impact.

What do a lot of brands get wrong? 

They build for themselves, not for their audience.

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about why your personal preferences shouldn’t lead the branding process, and how real audience research can completely change the game.

We break down:
✅ How to identify your actual audience
✅ What goes into a strong brand persona
✅ Why the best brands are built on insight, not instinct
✅ And how branding for your audience drives real ROI

If you want your brand to connect, convert, and grow, tune into this latest episode for some amazing tips and insights.

Transcript

Meet Sumi and today’s focus

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Practical Rebels Podcast. This is Verenik, and with me today I have Sumi from our creative team. Welcome, Somee. Hi, everybody. Sumi is here to talk about all things brand. Somee, do you want to tell us a little bit about what you do here at Hatsmark?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Yeah, I'm a senior designer here. Actually, one of the newest members joining in this year. So it's been really fun to work with designers and that's been great.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

So, Sumi, you have a pretty heavy background in brand design too. I know that's one of the core things that you really love and have a solid history with. So I think that it was perfect to have you join us for this conversation today.

unknown 0:47

Yeah.

Personal taste vs real audience needs

SPEAKER_01 0:47

All right. So what we want to talk about today is the idea of, we've heard it many times throughout all of our careers when we are dealing with an organization that's looking to rebrand. And there are a lot of strong opinions in the room about how that brand should come to life, what it should, you know, sound like and and feel like. And those things are all super important because those people represent the organizations. But we every now and then we'll hit a point where people start to bring their personal preferences in specifically to design. And we really try to curb that and build brands that are purposeful around the organization and what the organization stands for outside of, you know, our CEO doesn't like orange. And also the idea of reflecting not only the brand, but also, you know, appealing to the audiences that that brand is built for the consumers, whether that's a consumer-facing brand or something that is B2B, making it feel like it resonates and will connect with the people that you're trying to reach.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

So let's kind of start from the top. The obvious question like, why isn't a brand supposed to reflect the personal taste of the founder, the internal team? Like, what is the risk in branding based on personal taste?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Whenever I get the question, I usually like to question back are you the audience? Are you the target market of your brand? Often when you go in by the taste of what you are wanting to see, you alienate the uh actual audience of your brand.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

That's usually the first steps to um ask yourself.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yeah, and I think that's so important. And why when we talk about branding and are undergoing a brand project, like one of the first things we talked about is yes, what is your organization about? What does it stand for? How do we bring these things to life visually? But also like who are your audiences? What do they need to hear from you? And how do you connect with them in that connection? Part of that is in the visual system, you know, and really those elements that will be incorporated into the brand.

Research as the brand foundation

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Often, like my personal preference, and so everything is black and white, by the way. Just something clean, something that doesn't say anything else other than making me curious about it. So often I do get like tend to grab towards certain certain styles, and I have to be pushed also as well as a designer to hear better between different stakeholders and the actual audiences, doing a lot of research around it.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

So yeah, exactly. To push ourselves as designers outside of our like comfort zone on a regular basis. Yeah. Be little design chameleons. All right. Um, and so how do you like explaining that concept to a client? That's what you just said. Like, who is your audience? Who is making the decisions, who is driving the purchase, who is driving the economy of your organization? Yeah, it's none, but you as the consumer. So when we talk about audience first branding, I think I just touched on this a little bit, but what does that mean in practice?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Uh it truly means you uh looking back and researching into where your brand is trying to go and who's who's talking to your brand. I mean, the talking to is a weird part because who's listening to your brand, who is your target market, just researching that first. And um that way you can define your audience, which also is never concrete, by the way. First, one research doesn't mean everything. It has cumulative effect of your brand building, like it's growing as the audience shifts as well. So to me, is research thoroughly competitors or something aspirational, and also open for the infinite feedback loop that your brand and any campaign has to grow together with your audiences.

Instant Financial: evolving with data

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, exactly. Something that just came to mind is um so we've been working with Instant Financial for years now. We were involved in their branding four years back, and we are undergoing like a refresh and a lift of it just a few years later, because the company is kind of shifting in its target and its market industry has changed. So, with that, this isn't visuals necessarily, but we are building out on their new website like very niche pages towards different industries, whether that's, you know, QSR or retail and shopping or trucking is like one of the industries that they lean into. And the messaging specifically on that page isn't what we think those people need to hear. It's like what we know they need to hear because they were conversations with those customers around those pain points. So it not only applies to the visual system, but it applies to knowing your audience's pain points and speaking to them in a way that shows how you can solve those problems for them.

unknown 5:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

So it's visual and messy, yeah. And I'm pretty sure those data would have not been there in the first place when the company was early. This all these data came through through the journey.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Exactly. Exactly. So that's why we always say, even like with brand guidelines, like they are living and breathing and evolve, and they're gonna change over time. Like the foundation of what your company is is about and what it's doing is is probably gonna stay the same or very similar. But how you reach those people or even the services it provides might shift, and you have to be proactive in flexing your brand system and your messaging with that.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Right. Right. Constant evolving.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah. Where should a brand start if they want to figure out who their real audience is? Like what kind of research matters most?

Common pitfalls in audience personas

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Well, obviously, research, research is the first step, and the kind of research, um, market research, very important. Competitors research, very important. Market research, very important because trend is a thing. And being able to uh immerse yourself in that environment and being able to pivot it is very important. So those two, I would say market and competitor research will be the most yeah, important.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah, like what is the market needing at this point in time? How are you solving that? And then how are competitors addressing that too? And you know, with our client kudos, we very much like they are the 100% cotton-tention babies, but disposable diaper only one in the market, but they have other competitors, uh diaper, DY, PER, like honest. Yes, there's several other Pampers, pure, you know, there are several other companies in their world. And, you know, I know their marketing director is constantly like watching what they're saying in the market to make sure that we can still have like a strong differentiator and that's ongoing and it's changed over the past few years.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

And they were the trevilizer, honestly, in this industry, because the sustainability concept around the diaper wasn't really affordable until pretty recent, I believe. So yeah, it's really cool to see how they're like moving the needles a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah. What are some of the common mistakes uh brands make when trying to define their audience or build a persona?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

That they're assuming that audience is gonna want to see what they want to see.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Very easy mistake, very first mistake.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

And I think one of the things that I see often is people say, okay, these are two to three audiences, and they don't dig deeper. Like there are probably half a dozen per company. That's right. Of people that are gonna come to them for various needs. And the more you can get niche in the messaging, how you talk to them, how you solve your problems, the more that resonates. That's correct. Build messaging and all the sort of stuff that attracts them specifically. Go ahead, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, often like people do stop in the first layer of just something, something years old woman needing this. I think people need a story built around this persona that we we build in for and always like draft your messaging and like the user flow or however you want to interact with the person to have more stories behind who are you interacting with. Because that really helps with the messaging that's resonate with the people.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Yeah, exactly. And don't even stop at like, so you you go through the messaging, but also like what are our photo libraries that are used for this page versus that? Like, what is the photography that the 40-year-old mom connects with versus the, you know, the 17-year-old new driver, whatever that is, right? You know, but having your broad brand imagery, but then also niching down into your audiences and having like photosets, having, you know, if you're running paid ads, having ads that are targeting different audiences very smartly, so that you can really speak to different people in the way that resonates with them.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Down to color theory. Certain button colors really dictate who wants to make like who wants to click in or not. Because, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Exactly. It permeates into every single detail. All right. So once you've kind of done the research and have a solid idea of who your audiences are, I mean, even some of the things like write a draft up a document that is listing your six plus audiences, who they are, what are the problems that they are they're experiencing, and how are you solving every single one of those problems? Tied to your brand, of course, not in their life, that would be impossible. Um, but this idea of having those written down very clearly and then adjusting them as you learn more by learning from data who's actually making, you know, interacting with your brand, purchasing, and choosing to trust your brand. So once you've done the research, how do you start translating those insights into messaging, tone, visual identity? It's the idea of what we just talked about.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

It's a lot of work. Yeah. It's just not one answer word, you know. This is several people coming together, talking constantly based on the research and translating every every information into how does it like how do we look like, how does it say, what does it say, and what are we asking? Right. Yeah. And what does it look like? And what does it sound like?

Spotify Wrapped: personalization as moat

SPEAKER_01 11:10

There's easy ways to test that stuff quickly. I think one of the beauties, uh beautiful things about the data that we can gather now from whether people are going to a website and staying on a page and actually consuming the content on it, or what blogs are people looking at and spending time on, what social media posts are getting more engagement. That can help you hone in on not only the messaging that's working really well, but also specifically with like social, like what kind of stuff are people interacting with? Do they want to see other consumer testimonials? Do they want to see more lifestyle type videos of you know how XYZ brand has improved somebody's life or whatever it is, right? Right. But you can start taking a closer look at like what makes the most sense for what audience based on the data. Yeah. It's been a lot easier to pull those data. Can you share an example for how kind of this audience-led branding actually impacted performance for a brand, has really pushed them out of out of above the competition? Yeah.

Right message, right platform

SPEAKER_00 12:18

I actually recently just read about Spotify as I was working on some other clients' work. And though they have so many options, you know, like Pandora, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Spotify, they were like the mega ones that's been around. Spotify is still doing very, very, very well strongly, even though with their premium cost is a little more than Pandora. And only three, four years ago, I've heard quite a big shift. And what they have done is they have started doing this Spotify rep where they engage people into personalize the content. So they have, they can, they have opened the door to become like a not only just a listening platform, but somewhat social platform as well. So they have listened that, like, okay, we cannot ask audiences to just listen music anymore. Yeah. It's needing a lot more interaction based on the data. It's needing a lot of sharing their tastes and what they like to other people, and also be able to put it on social as well. So I think by incorporating that into their early thing, where some people look forward to that time to be able to see their data. Um, I thought that was a really good um, one of the good examples.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

People get super proud of like their playlists. Like we, I mean, it's since I think it's only been out rap for probably a few years. I want to say, I might be wrong, maybe a little longer than that. But I know like when that comes around at the end of the year, everybody is like, what's on your raps? You know, at the office here. So it's it becomes super fun. And also like music is so personal. I think that one of the things that it makes people feel, it makes them feel like Spotify like knows them and recognizes their unique or lack of unique. I mean, my Spotify rap is like the national and Taylor Swift, and it's pretty basic. But like they let people like it's a way for people to just like own and share what they absolutely love, you know, and it's something that's so personal, so it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, and lately it's been beyond that. If you see Spotify have changed their interface to have a different top menus, it's when you want to share a song with your friend, they actually have a separate message room within Spotify. So they're very incorporating into this idea of creating a social media platform which has a service. And I'm pretty sure this is all driven by data.

Balancing data, values, and instinct

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah, 100%. Super subtle too. Like they're just kind of adding layers to make it part of what people expect when they go to the app and why they are loyal to the app. They're not trying to be like, oh, the next Facebook. It's just like these little smart social sharing ways that they're incorporating it, which makes it not annoying. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, what role does like platform selection play when we talk about different audiences? Like, how important is it to show up to the right places where the audience you're trying to actually reach is?

SPEAKER_00 15:24

I I actually have a really good example to talk about this because this is something me and my mom has talked about before, where YouTube will be a really good example of like choosing the right platform or not. You can easily say, let's say, like I'm like a health guru and I want to talk about arthritis, and I want to like have a video all made up, like to share on YouTube. If you look at the YouTube number for people age over 65 and plus, they are they have a very low engagement there. It's like 65%, which in the age group is the lowest. Versus like, let's talk about period awareness for teenager to over over ages. YouTube may be the perfect place because age between 18 and 29 are using YouTube. 93%. Yeah, it's a big stage for them. So even though you're within like a health like umbrella, based on the content and the idea and the topic, you wanna be in the right place because you could have a good information that nobody in your market group is even on.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yeah. Facebook is like the senior, like go to the Facebook channels, like 30 over.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Yeah.

Practical first steps to recalibrate

SPEAKER_01 16:35

30, even like 40 and over. I think. I think Facebook is the only reason I think that I mean, it's so much more used in like a town like Pensacles. People use it for like events and things like that. Right. But you know, a lot of people aren't. Marketplace. Marketplace, yeah. What cute stuff can I buy today? Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, channel section selection is super important. And that's also something that you can learn. Like you can run content across several channels and get good insight on who's looking at it there, what their age range, what their interests are, all that sort of stuff. And then you can customize what content you put onto what channels based off of where the audiences are and yeah, which ones are consuming your content on there. Yeah. That's correct. All right. So, how do you balance kind of like this audience research? So I know we've talked a lot about like you are not branding for yourself as an individual, listen to your audience, but at the same time, the brand is also, you know, representing your company, the mission of the company, the goals, like what it stands for. So, how do you balance that audience research with a brand's values, long-term vision? Is there like a middle ground between instinct for that and data?

SPEAKER_00 18:01

So far, based on my experience and what I have witnessed, instinct comes in very handy when you have the data that stops in one letter or like doesn't explain everything or doesn't tell the full stories. That's when you can pull in your instinct. But other than that, I would say you you probably want to have a North Star. Yeah. Like what's your goal and what's your vision that's like non-negotiable, which supposedly value, mission, and everything. But then that's like a bottom level of foundation. Then you pile up with research, correct? Like research that identifies like what are the opportunities within that? And then you get the data from that. And while you're reading and researching the reading through the data and translating the data, that's when you could bring in your instinct to be able to fill in some story that you're missing.

unknown 18:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

I'm trying to think of what's a good example for that.

Takeaways and closing

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Well, we always start, like, and I think this is another podcast episode we need to do soon. This whole idea of like the North Star and getting the foundation of your organization on, you know, a handful of pages that kind of helps guide the vision, guides the message, all that sort of stuff. And a lot of times too, you're talking about, you know, gathering data, gathering, you know, part of the branding process is getting that feedback and testing and seeing what people react to. So there is a foundation for like for startups, you know, they might be thinking, like, how do I apply this? I I have no, I have no brand, I have nothing. But that's when it is even more important to get a solid idea of that audience, see what resonates with them, test things before you even roll out. So you've got a foundation to start with. Right. Yeah. Awesome. All right. So for someone who's listening who's realizing they they've maybe built a brand for themselves and not their audience, I don't want to say one simple step that they can try to start fixing it, but how can they start shifting to reassess, you know, how they've how they're showing up in the world?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

I think honestly, usually that's just like needing an open mind. Yeah. You know, being able to start from the beginning with the open mind, the very first thing you do is research. However, you just brought a very good point about the foundation part of it.

unknown 20:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Having some sort of um research and direction around what's your goal, like what's your internal goal and where you're trying to go. Like, let's that dial that down. And then now like you can define what are the areas you need to research and actually ask a lot of questions back to the people. And often like when and where, what does it mean? Like, so I would ask back, what's your touch point? Like, when are those moments that you meet with the clients and what does it look like? And what do they say and how do they interact with? So those are the very first few steps to get on and ask with in the meantime. Your your idea and your gut feelings and a lot of instinct could still be right, but um validate it.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Start with your audience, ask questions, get a solid idea of who you are, then ask your audience questions around how you are filling a void in their life, business, whatever it is, and you know, really build on your own foundation from there. It's like this, it's like this merger of these two things. It's who you are, what you are as an organization, not an individual, and then also what your audience needs and how you marry those.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Right. I mean, I meant to mention this as like when we're talking about the instinct, like how much when what's like a middle ground of it. There's a good example of iPhone 6. iPhone has been only wanted to be like based on their research, based on their data, people wanted like small, small phones, and we're gonna go for the small phone. But there's some instinct and some gut feeling that happened in the middle of it where iPhone 6 has released plus, which was the bigger size. Yeah, and that has that has reshaped a lot of things. So I think that's when you start listening to your gut feelings or trusting the instinct, but this only could work because they have done numerous, numerous data just as a foundation to even be able to work, work with and go back and forth with. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

And they also had the Apple budget where they can play a little bit more. I'm sure data doesn't work that way. Yeah, I don't think it does. They're like, there's a reason for this. Yeah. All right. Yeah, this is awesome. Um, I think this is some really good guidance for people to start thinking about how they think audience first, think their consumer first, and can craft a brand that's there to ultimately like serve them and solve their problems.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

It's a great beginning of a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah. Exactly, exactly. All right, thank you so much for joining us, Somi. That was great. And I hope that everybody listening out there got some useful tidbits. This is stuff that we do every day, and I could talk about this for hours, but we try to keep it short and sweet. And we will see you next time. So, with that, practical rebels.