The Power of Brand Loyalty and How Brands Make us Feel

Branding aficionados, prepare to be enlightened as we welcome Kim Derrick Rozdeba, a branding expert with over three decades of experience in branding, communications, and marketing. Kim takes us on a journey through his  career, from time at global powerhouses like Ogilvy to ventures in writing and thought leadership. Together, we unravel the five Cs of branding, a unique framework Kim crafted to decode and influence brand perception. Discover how a brand's essence resonates through emotions, and mastering the art of making customers feel valued and connected.

Ever wondered how a brand can thrive even before a product hits the shelves? Look no further than the case of Liquid Death, a brand that ingeniously harnessed the power of social media and viral trends to carve its identity. We dissect how emotional resonance and that elusive element of "coolness" can captivate consumers, drawing parallels with traditional giants like Apple. Through tales of emotional brand loyalty, we unveil how memorable experiences, like those offered by the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program, forge unbreakable bonds with customers, driving long-term allegiance and advocacy.

Innovation is the heartbeat of enduring brands, and we highlight the strategies of trailblazing entrepreneurs and iconic companies. While social media remains a crucial tool, the episode underscores the importance of substance over superficial metrics, urging brands to align their strategies with genuine business goals. From the interplay of personal and corporate branding showcased by figures like Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk to the strategic insights Kim offers, our conversation is a goldmine for anyone looking to enhance their branding expertise. Prepare to walk away with actionable advice and inspiration that will help your brand shine brighter in the competitive landscape.

Check out Kim's blog and books on branding.

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Transcript

Eric Eden 0:02

We are talking about branding strategies and we have the perfect guest, a branding expert, to help us talk through this today. Kim, welcome to the show.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 0:15

Thank you very much, Eric. I appreciate being on your show.

Eric Eden 0:20

So why don't we start off, why don't you share just a minute or two, a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 0:25

For over 30 years on branding and communications and marketing, working for companies, global companies, and now I'm actually able to spend my time doing this, writing books about branding, taking all the knowledge I have. I mean I go back my days when I was in an advertising agency and what I know today and what I knew then, I wish, I wish somebody had, you know, taken me aside and explained to me what a brand was. You know when I look at it, you know from the. Again, I'd read everything that was available at the time, way back when, you know, I worked for Ogilvy, so David Ogilvy was one of the mentors that definitely I followed. But really, I mean, today understanding what a brand is is very different than it was.

Eric Eden 1:17

Congratulations on that retirement. Some of us are not retired, we're just tired. So that must be great for you and you're well. You're well earned after 30 years, so I'm glad to have you here and talking about it. And you've also written a book, like you mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about your books, just so people know what your body of work is?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 1:37

there I write a blog on branding. That's kind of how I started this whole journey and I stumbled upon, you know, a woman back in the 1810, viv Clicquot, the champagne, and Barbara Nicole Clicquot-Pasarden was the founder and the owner and the actual brand builder that was behind that champagne and it really got me thinking about. Are there other women out there that I don't, because I did not know Veuve? I don't know if you speak French, I don't, but Veuve is widow. So when I found out she had put on the bottleow Clicquot, I go why? Why would you put Widow? So, anyways, you'll have to read the book to find out more about them.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 2:33

But where that book took me to this next book was I framed out what I call the five Cs of branding.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 2:40

I needed some sort of way to compartmentalize what a brand is and how can you infect it and not infect it, but how do you influence it?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 2:53

And so I came up with the five Cs. And the five Cs is really the foundation for my second book, which is Loyalnomics, the Power of Branding, and it's taking the holistic viewpoint of what a brand is. And I love to give my definition, if you'll allow me, of what a brand is because I think it's so important to understand what it is that you're trying to do, and so definition, very simply, is a brand isn't what it does or says, but how it makes its customer feel. Now, it's a very similar to Maya Angelou. Absolutely, I've taken one of the greatest quotes in the world, but what I'm really trying to say here is that it's the feeling that the customer has. Now, if I knew that when I was working in advertising, wow, I would have been able to have done probably better work all the time, because I would have had a better measuring stick as to the success of every campaign that I did.

Eric Eden 3:58

I think that's a great point. How something makes the customer feel is huge. You know you can do a very strong, aggressive sales pitch and feel good that you touted all of the features of your products and you got in all the points, but if it leaves people feeling yucky, that's not great right.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 4:23

Well, and you know what. There are some brands that want to make you feel yucky. You know. If you start looking at some of the brands, you know Stop Smoking, I think, is a really good example. There are lots of different emotions. They're not all necessarily positive emotions, and so you can use negative emotions just as effectively, but understand what you're trying to do. But branding to me is about all those touch points. So you know everybody, you know goes oh yeah, it's the advertising. Well, yeah, it is, and it is the marketing, it is the product, but it's also your employees, it's also your stakeholders. You know your influencers who are out there, you know talking about you in a, you know, a positive way. So to me it's that very high level. Look at what is it that you're doing? Every touch point builds on that feeling of what that brand is it's really the whole vibe, not just the advertising.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 5:22

I agree, yes so you know, and a lot of brands, they really, you know, the, the the weakest, the the weakest link is, generally, you know, the salesperson. It's the person that's got, you know, the less invested in the business. Uh, you know, doesn't understand possibly what the brand actually stands for and and that's the transaction. That's where you get to touch point. That's one of the biggest touch points that brands have, so it becomes a really important one from looking at it from again very high level perspective.

Eric Eden 5:59

So can you give an example from recent times? You have such an illustrious career of someone either one of your clients that you've worked with on branding or something that you've worked on either way, where you think they embody the best success, and done something really remarkable branding-wise that you'd like to highlight?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 6:22

So I'm going to highlight and I did not work on it directly, but I did a whole bunch of research and I wrote an article on it, and it's also an example in my book, loyalnomics, because I use a lot of examples of addressing what I'm saying because there's theory and then there's expertise, but, as you're asking here today, where did the rubber hit the road and how was it successful? And I think, before I actually get into this example, one of the trends that I'm seeing today, which I think is really important for people to understand, is a brand. Today is far more important because the actual product in a lot of cases isn't physical. When you start looking at Uber, you look at a lot of these things that are. And so the example I'm going to use here today, which is really interesting because it started off as a brand before it became a product and that was liquid death. Now, I don't know if you know liquid death, Liquid death is a water, okay, spring water. Okay, it's spring water, but it's in a can, you know, and it's in a large can, and it started out this and the person behind this brand is from advertising and he actually started this whole brand.

Building Brands Through Coolness and Feeling

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 7:46

Bit of a lark as to see if he could build a brand, and so he did. He built this brand. He brought you know, figured out sort of what it was going to feel like, look like, and started with social media. It went viral. They did a video and it started a following. Had no product and the reason they came up with this canned product was they actually started.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 8:10

He'd noticed at a couple of different concerts he went to that the musicians were drinking out of cans, out of other products that were out there and going have a Red Bull. You know like five Red Bulls on a stage. So it was water. They were actually putting water in there, but they wanted to look cool. You know they didn't want to have just a water bottle on the stage. So that was the concept. The concept came from this idea that there are people out there that want to have a water when you're partying, you're out and you know health is, is a is a really important aspect in today's culture, and so he started this whole idea.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 8:57

But he built the brand first and you know, in history I've looked at many brands and how they start and they don't start with a brand. Apple never started with a brand. Apple started with a product and most, most companies start that way and the reason being is because they have a, they have a solution. There's a problem out there. They built something. It's physical and they've got something to sell because it's solving a problem. Eventually they get to the brand Because the brand, as I said, it's owned by the customer. So whether you do anything consciously about the brand, it will live with or without you Because you know it's owned by the customer. Now you can consciously start building a brand and I, you know, I looked at Liquid Death and I thought, you know, this is a really good example of consciously building a brand.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 9:58

Before the product and that product sold out, they had no distribution. They finally found a company in Europe. They could not find Because, if you start looking at the production of water, generally the packaging is near the source and there was no packaging that could handle cans, because most can products didn't need to be by the water source directly. So I only found one in Europe. So I had to get a whole, I think, boatload of this stuff because it was cheaper to get. I was supposed to get a couple of and it was sold out on Amazon because that's the only network he had to get this product out and it was sold out because of the brand and you can imagine by putting it on Amazon. It's not going to be cheap, but it wasn't.

Eric Eden 11:01

And so how did liquid death succeed by making people feel a certain way?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 11:07

So it was cool and coolness is. I mean, I've listened to one of your podcasts, earlier I think, with Justin Oberman, who talked about personal branding, which I thought was really good. I mean, he's a bright man and you know he talked about fame and you know being famous and you know I think famous is really important. I take a different approach. To me, it's being cool. If a brand's cool, it doesn't have to be trendy. It can be, but you got to be on the leading edge. You've got to be ahead of the game. You've got to have an attitude. You've got to have. You know there's people out there you go.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 11:55

I go back to my example of you know, going to school there was cool kids and you know you kind of look and go what makes them different than me. I was not a cool kid and you know it's the way they walk, the way they talk. You know there's a panache there, of sorts. We look at some brands. Design becomes hugely important. The logo becomes, the color palette becomes really important. There's all these different signals that give you that coolness. That give you that coolness. Famous is about people wanting to know you, people that do know you, that you're out there all the time and that's really hard, but you can be really cool and you don't have to be out there.

Eric Eden 12:42

It's interesting because, at the end of the day, a lot of products are very similar. Right, they do things slightly differently or slightly better in some ways than others, but water being a good example. I mean, there's all different brands of water that you can buy, but it's water. It largely tastes the same, with maybe a slight difference. But it's interesting that how something makes people feel is what drives people to be loyal and make repeat purchases.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 13:16

Right, and that's what makes it so interesting, because we're human and you know it is about feeling. At the end of the day, we are a rational creature as well. Yeah, absolutely you know. But you know, talk to anybody that's bought a house, you know, and, and they'll give you all the rational. It's near the schools. Really, one of the best schools, it's this. It's near this transit, blah, blah. But that's not the reason why they bought it. That's the rational reason that they've justified. They walked in, they felt it. You feel these things, and so that part, I think, is hugely important.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 13:53

You're right about water. The reason why I use that example is because it's water, it's H2O. There's a great little you go on YouTube of a test done of using New York water and they did a blind test of several of the top bottled waters and the New York tap water. Guess who? Which? Guess which one one. It was the New York tap water, that one. So I mean it's water.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 14:26

I do not know of any connoisseur of. I you know I love wine and I'd love to be a connoisseur of wine, but I don't know anybody that you know can decipher one water from another water, and that was, you know, interesting. Going back to liquid death. That was not his driver. He was not pursuing to get the best product out there. Okay, putting it in a can made it cooler. Also. He argued and argues, and the brand argues, that it's more environmentally friendly because there is a recycling program, because of all the bottled or canned beer and canned pops that are out there, that this product is being recycled. So there is a positive other aspect to it. But you know the actual water inside.

Eric Eden 15:21

Interesting. So I'm going to give you my favorite brand loyalty example because I think, as a whole, you know people are very emotional about brand loyalty and the one that I'd be emotional about is Marriott's loyalty program, bonvoy, which I think with over a billion people in it, because they have 8,000 hotels around the world and they're always encouraging anyone who stays at their hotel to sign up for it. I think it's one of the largest loyalty programs out there. And because my personal travel is hobbying my personal hobby is traveling.

Eric Eden 15:58

I've been to 63 countries and stayed in different types of Marriott hotels all over the world and I like the Marriott Bonvoy program because of how it makes me feel In the sense of they have these levels and you do get benefits and they recognize that you're a loyal customer.

Eric Eden 16:20

I happen to be the top level ambassador elite and when you check in they say thank you for being an ambassador elite with us and you get great benefits, everything from late checkout to 20% discount on food and beverage, to upgraded rooms really great benefits.

Eric Eden 16:39

They recognize that you're loyal to them and that's a great feeling. And a funny thing is this one lady behind me in line was new to Stanky Marriott's and she said what country are you an ambassador from? But you know, I think, joking aside, it does make me, you know, feel a certain way to be a part of that, when a lot of hotels there's a lot of other nice hotels you can stay at, like very high end hotels, like Four Seasons, that have equally great five-star experiences, but they don't actually have a loyalty program and they don't actually seem to care as much if I'm loyal to them when I travel around the world. And so I think it's very interesting, both from a B2B and a B2C perspective, how people feel about the brands, because I will almost always stay at a Marriott for that reason. They get my repeat business every year and it's cool. It's not because of the benefits of the program, while they're good, it's because you feel like you're part of something right.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 17:50

Eric, that's a wonderful example. I'm also a member of their awards program. I'm a lifetime Platinum member, so I've been using them quite a bit as well. And if I've got the time, one small little story, because it's a side story to how you feel when you walk into the place and how they feel I used to get cards from people because I was a frequent flyer as well and I would stay at the same place multiple times and the staff I knew them by name and they knew me by name because I was there so often and that actually was.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 18:31

I continually said this was my second in a business, it was humid, it was hot and I needed a cab and I was trying to get a cab, an Uber, I was trying to get anything, but I needed one really quick because I was late for a meeting.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 18:47

It was like four blocks, it wasn't that far, but it was so humid that I did not want to go in a suit, you know, in a tie and absolutely soaking wet, and walk into that meeting. So across the street was a, was a hotel, you know, and generally you can get a okay, fine. Did he think I was from the hotel? It didn't seem to matter. I was in a situation I needed a cab very quickly and they solved my problem, but again they didn't realize that I was a customer like I was a major customer for them and they did that, and I tell that story all the time. And they did that and I tell that story all the time. So when you have those kinds of those moments, those touch points of a brand, that is unbelievable advertising, because we're talking about it here.

Eric Eden 19:43

Yeah, absolutely. I think you reap what you sow in those sorts of situations, and they have the culture of that at Marriott, even one of their many brands, ritz-carlton, they even tell their employees that they can spend up to a certain amount of money per customer to just make their experience great. Right, like? That's an extreme example of it, because they're a five-star brand, and so I think that this is really great insight. I wanted to ask you, based on your 30 years of experience in branding, how do people get to creating a brand that gives the right feeling Like? What advice would you give marketers and business leaders who want to create a brand that makes people feel a certain way? What are some of the tips you'd have for people who want to do that?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 20:41

So I'm going to draw from the 20 women that I followed and tried to understand how they built their iconic brands. These are all big brands and what was common amongst all of them was their passion of getting the solution for a problem and making sure their product was the best product in the marketplace and they did not cut corners in the marketplace. And they did not cut corners and they were absolutely, you know, driven to ensure their product was the best product on the market. So it's not about the best ad or the best slogan. That will follow. All of those things will follow, as long as you've got the eye on the right thing, which is the product. Apple, great example Today.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 21:42

One of the best marketers question today is will they be the best product? And that's where I think the market is starting to say where's the next evolution? Innovation, Innovation, sorry, and it is about the product or the service. So if you go out of your way to make sure that the experience is going to be the best experience the customer is going to have, you see luxury products all the time because they focus on that, because it's expected, and so if you actually focus on giving the best experience overall experience but make sure the product is the best too.

Eric Eden 22:36

Yeah, I think the Apple example is an interesting one because I bought the first iPhone the first day it came out, many years ago. I'm very old and older than the iPhone, in fact, and I've had a reiteration of it almost since then and a lot of people in recent times, like you're saying, is like, oh, after the 16 versions, like the last 10 versions of it, there's not really much innovation there from phone to phone, Like the camera's a little bit better every time and in fact, in the latest release of the latest phone and the latest version of iOS, some people have complained that like they've completely messed up the photos app and they completely have under delivered on the AI Apple intelligence piece of it. It's sort of terrible and like there are certain things with the iOS operating system and version the latest version that people are very unhappy about. It's like they didn't, and like there are certain things with the iOS operating system and version the latest version that people are very unhappy about. It's like they didn't do any quality control at all.

Eric Eden 23:32

So I think you know the thing I learned from that is that you have to keep your eye on the ball. Just because you did something great 15 years ago. You can't just leave it on autopilot. You have to continue to innovate. You have to continue to deliver that experience, like you're saying. You have to continue to innovate. You have to continue to deliver that experience, like you're saying, otherwise you could fumble right.

Eric Eden 24:07

Yeah Well, there is new innovations that are happening every day on the podcast here, and you said that you have some strong opinions on it. I'd like to hear what your views on it are, because I think it is relatively controversial. Some people believe in it, others believe in it less, so I'm curious what your take on it is.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 24:28

So I'm glad you started off our discussion about strategy, because I think strategy is really important and I see social media as tactics and so to me, you got to back up and go. Do you need to be on social media? Because that's the delivery. When you talk about personal branding, that's where you deliver most of the content. And sometimes I wonder maybe this is driven by the social media organizations that are out there because they need content. So if everyone's a brand, then you know they can compartmentalize you. And I think what's really important and actually you know you had Justin on and I thought one of the points he made and I think it's really important that he made it, because most people don't make this point and that is that you know, when we talk about personal branding, it's not to be a brand.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 25:26

Now there are people out there that I would say are brands. Oprah Winfrey is a brand, martha Stewart is a brand, but her personal life all about her is behind the curtain. There is a brand in front and you know she did not accept that she was a brand for many years. And there's again on YouTube, there's a great video of her actually admitting that she's a brand and the reason she admitted that she's a brand is because she understood that consistency was important in building a brand. And that's one of the five C's that I have when I go through the sort of the how to build a brand and that consistency becomes really important. But for most of us, you know, we don't need to be a box of cereal, we don't. You know, there's a great, there's a great quote out there I don't know who, who actually coined it, but I use it often is brands are trying to be more like people and people are trying more to be like a brand, which is kind of funny because we're far more complex, we are far more dynamic in and you know, our personalities are, you know, we can't conform.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 26:49

As I said, consistent and it's two-dimensional, and what I mean by two-dimensional is it's constructed and so we can learn from it. Absolutely, and that's what Justin mentioned as well. We can learn from how you know building a brand and use some of those, but understand, starting with your strategy, as to why do you want to build a brand. Ideally, you've got a product or service, and if you've got a product and service, then that's the brand that you're trying to build on your back. But you also got to understand where do you stop and where does it go. Because if it's all on you, the brand, the product stops too, and that's fine. If you want to retire like me, if you want to retire like me, you want hopefully to build a brand that you can sell, that has value attached to it, that can continue, and again that happens. I mean, martha Stewart's brand continues with or without her, but that takes time and that's hard.

Eric Eden 28:11

Absolutely. I think it's interesting that people in business founders, business leaders, in particular CEOs have to think about how to balance their personal brand and their company's brand, and I don't know that it necessarily needs to be one or the other. It's more how do the two work together in concert for your benefit? I think the benefit of a personal brand in addition to a company brand is that nobody likes to just buy from a faceless company. My big question is always is this a scam or do I believe, if I'm investing in this company and their products, that they're going to be headed in the right direction down the road? I think that's why people get excited about being customers of some of the biggest tech companies, like Salesforce. People are like Mark Benioff will lead us to the right way in being the CEO of Salesforce right. And similarly, I think a lot of people buy Teslas because of Elon Musk. They believe in Elon Musk's vision, in Elon Musk's vision.

Eric Eden 29:29

So I think there's lots of good examples out there of people who are able to build both their company brand of Tesla and Elon Musk has a great personal brand that's built on like I'm successful, I'm really smart, I have a vision, and so I think it's interesting for people to think about the balance between those two things. It's interesting for people to think about the balance between those two things and you know, I don't think the right balance is to completely over index on one or the other for the reasons you were saying. Like, if you make it all about your personal brand and not your company, then that's probably too extreme. And if you make it all about the company and there's no personality behind it, then people like to buy from people, not just faceless entities. So I think that balance is interesting. Have you seen that?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 30:14

Yeah, I have, and I mean Tesla is a really good example. I mean, if he disappears, will that brand be the same brand Apple? We had the same situation in Apple. So people want to buy from people. I get that, but people change and people aren't here 150 years. There are brands out there that are 150 years old and there's even older brands than 150. And so I get that people want to buy from people, but if the brand is trusted and is consistent continuously, you don't need people on that.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 31:11

I spend a lot of time in my book talking about mascots, because mascots are a nice way to bridge that Human qualities, human attributes but they're not real. And with AI today, how real can these mascots be? Probably really real. But they're controllable, they will be consistent and that is one of the I mean Quaker Oats, great example of a mascot that's been on McDonald's. Ronald McDonald, good example of a mascot that is the face and it's a consistent face.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 32:03

Language doesn't matter, so it goes across countries, cultures. So I look at mascots and going. Mascots have been looked at and going. Those are something that back in the 60s but yes, correct, back in the 50s and 60s a lot of these mascots that exist today were built then and they're still relevant today because they can be tweaked, they can be changed to the new market, to the new trends, and so people are important, absolutely. And if you are service-driven, you are the face. Lawyers, accountants, you are the face, you are the brand, you are the. So it makes perfect sense. You can be a voice, you could be a stakeholder, but you don't have to be the brand, but you don't have to be the brand.

Eric Eden 33:09

It's all about finding balance in the force, I think, because I think it's different a little bit for every business. I've heard naysayers on personal branding say that their personal brand has not really driven their business forward, Like Neil Patel, who's a famous marketing podcaster. He has marketing school. He said oh, I spent all this time building my brand of Neil Patel around. I'm an SEO expert and he's like I don't really, for my company, win any business because of my personal brand anymore and he's like I just focus on you know, you know, replying to RFPs, and I don't get RFPs because of my personal brand, and so I don't think it's cookie cutter for every business that you run a service business, or if your business lends itself to you, it'll help you stand out, differentiate from a crowded market.

Eric Eden 34:20

There are lots of reasons why people could find the right balance between their company brand and their personal brand, and I think that's a fascinating area of a branding strategy. So I encourage everyone to get your books and drill in on that. And is there anything else that you wanted to mention that we didn't dive into today?

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 34:43

So no, just again reiterating what you just said Everyone's different, every brand is different, every situation is different. So every tactic isn't going to be the same. And I think we're so easy. We want a solution, right, we want to give me a solution, give me a tactic. What should I do?

Effective Branding Strategy Advice

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 35:03

And really, what you need to really understand is what is your strategy, what is it that you're really trying to achieve? And get to that higher level. Really understand is what is your strategy, what is it that you're really trying to achieve? And get to that higher level of understanding of what is it you want to do. I mean, you have to invest a lot of time as a person to your business and to your brand and you've got to ask the question, like how much do I need to do as part of the brand or being the brand of that success? So, go back to the strategy, go back to understanding what is it that you're really trying to achieve? I mean a lot of services that are out there. How many clients do you need? Like, do you need a brand that's global or across North America? Do you need 10,000 followers when you really only need 100 customers? Don't know.

Eric Eden 36:02

Great advice Start with a strategy and work backwards from that. Again, I'm going to link to your website and your books in the show notes so people can get them easily and check them out and get in touch if they want to chat more with you about this topic. Thanks so much for being with us today and sharing these stories and your insights. We appreciate it.

Kim Derrick Rozdeba 36:27

Thank you, Eric. I enjoyed the conversation with you today.