Brand Impact | Strategies for a Creative Edge

Ben Rowe, Chief Creative Officer, and Drake Sauer, Senior Art Director, dive into the latest trends and challenges in life science marketing. From innovative brand positioning strategies to actionable insights on audience engagement, they break down what it takes to make an impact in the evolving life sciences industry. Whether you're a marketing leader, strategist, or simply curious about the intersection of marketing and life sciences, this conversation is packed with valuable takeaways.

Transcript

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Hey everyone this is Alec McChesney, your host of the SCORR cast, and I'm so excited for this episode, as well as a few others see right now I am in the headquarters of SCORR marketing in Kearney, Nebraska, and I'm here for a couple of days, and so I've been able to have five or six different episodes with some of the key business leaders at our organization. This episode is going to go into one detail. The next we'll go into another. We're going to talk about branding. We're going to talk about marketing, strategy, business development versus marketing. Talk about what it's like to work at an agency. And I'm just so excited for you to be able to listen to these key leaders at SCORR Marketing. Enjoy the episode., Hello and welcome to another Okay. My name is Ben Rowe. I am episode of The SCORR cast. I have two fantastic gentlemen on for an episode today. Both actually have made an appearance in different LinkedIn lives that I've done in the past. I've got Drake Sauer, I've got Ben Rowe, two of the fantastic creative minds at SCORR Marketing, and I'm going to let both of them introduce themselves in a second. But I'm really excited for today's conversation, because I am utterly passionate about this concept of the brand and the big idea and what SCORR does in this process. And I think, you know, so many of these episodes that we've reported over the last couple of months, you know, you get so specific into a specific type of marketing, and you go down, and it's a digital thing, and it's an SEO and it's, you know, trade shows, paid search, all these different areas. But one of the things, and I would argue, is the most important thing, is the blend. And so that's going to be kind of the topic of our conversation today, but before we get started, then I'll toss it to you first, if you don't mind, just kind of giving us your background time at SCORR, and then the role that you have today. And then we'll toss it over to drink. Chief Creative Officer at SCORR. I've been at SCORR for 19 years now, almost 20. And Drake. I'm Drake Sauer. I'm the Senior Art Director at SCORR. I work alongside Ben to make sure everything going out the doors on on point, and I've been with SCORR now for over 10 years, so, so we've got a lot of years, you know, experience between the two of you and Ben, one of the things that I've heard you say is that as a chief creative officer, you've probably, you know, been involved with more rebrands and branding projects than most anybody else in the industry, and SCORR does it in a really unique way. If you go on SCORR website, you go on their YouTube, there's a video of Drake with you know, you're yelling, what's the what's the big idea? And I'm curious. I'm just going to toss it out there. Either one of you guys can jump in, but can you just kind of walk through a little bit what the big idea is, and maybe how SCORR stumbled upon this fantastic process to branding and everything that we go through here. Yeah, so the big idea is really equal cart strategy and design and messaging, and what it does is it brings all those together to really articulate a company's unique value and differentiate them from the either bears and really give them clear focus and then a beautified direction moving forward. So brings together all the critical elements of their branding to really hone in on where they need to go and how they need to get there. And I mean, really, for us at SCORR, we've we've learned over years, trial and error, really honed down unique process. And we know for every client, it's a little different, but we have our proprietary process that we use that seems to work really well for us, that we've just crafted over the years, and kind of have it down to a science style Drake, I kind of saw you smile when he alluded to the trial and error over the years. And I think kind of even one of the things that you said, that I love that is that uniqueness and the differentiation that comes from and right out of the industry. We talk about it a lot, and I heard it last week a handful time. Trade Show at D farm a couple months back, was the sea of safe and how similar everything looks. And so Drake, little bit pointed question at you here, as you kind of, you know, evolved through the big idea process as well. How do you go through and find those unique aspects of an organization? And Ben alluded to strategy, messaging, branding, so many pieces of this puzzle that have to come out in order for this to be successful? Well, that's, that's the key part of it is when it by the time it gets too creative. You. Amount of work to hone in and find those key pieces in all the interviews we do, all of the research, all that comes down, and we start breaking it down to here's the pieces that make this company special and and the trick then, is for us to help articulate that to our clients and say, This is what you're known for. This is what they think can be good and bad. And then find that hook that we can help differentiate and give them that special piece to really allow their their voice to come through in that state sea of saying this, I would say something too is like make people feel something about them. That's really where the big idea shines. It kind of elevates branding from identity is the emotional element of it. I think that's such an important piece of the puzzle in the life science and specifically, and you know, you talk about the sea of sameness, but in this industry, there's a new service, a new solution, a new technology that is replacing the one from yesterday, even though maybe they're 97% the same, but it's the 3% different. And yet, as you walk around, you look there's so many that if you took away the brand, you took away the colors, the words would say the exact same, their stock imagery, stock imagery across the board. And so I think the question that kind of kind of walking to here is, how, how can a big idea, how can the brand help solve some of these business problems? Right? You think about business problem of competition being greater, more than it ever is before, and instead of competing on cost or whatever it might be, the brand kit can elevate us straight. I don't know if you have any thoughts there, yeah, the, you know, there's, there's multiple, I could go down multiple roads, yeah, you know, one being that your brand is going to be on all the time. So when people are engaging with you, whether it's through you know, anything from a cold, cold call, Hey, check cold email, check us out. Hey, I think you got something we could do here to landing on on the their home page, to their social media content, your brand ends up being that first voice a lot of times of, hey, we're a company, and we can do this for you. And if that's not clear, and if it's not leveraged correctly, right on to the next one. So you need something to pull that book in and really get them to engage. That's, you know, that's, that's one aspect of it. I don't know if you've got, I mean, the other piece of that that I would, I would fall into, is really when you are trying to sell yourself as a company and you're talking about all that, that same case in vague then We start bringing in that emotion. We start bringing in it's a lot of science, it's a lot of technical anxiety. And you want to simplify that message to a certain point so that it's great if you're selling to a scientist, yeah, they're gonna understand what you're saying. But that's very rarely the case when you're especially in B to B, yeah, when you're trying to get that message out the door, you're talking to C suite, you're going up. And they don't care about the technical jargon. They care about how's this going to affect our processes? How is this going to affect bottom line? They want to know those pieces. So you have to know where you're talking to talk to them at the right time. So there's just so many pieces of that that our brand, our big idea, the way we set that up helps guide that content out the door and make sure that it's landing where it's supposed to. Yeah, it's what role, what role were you playing, and what keeps the potential customer, client up at night. Any other thoughts on that van V I was just gonna say, you know, something that we see more and more the industry is companies growing by acquisition, or E companies building companies through acquisition, and it could be a really confusing time for that company about who they are, where they're going, and their potential and current clients, and also their their staff. Like, am I a part of this company? Am I a part of that company? Am I a part of this new company? And so I think branding plays a real important role in focusing in who they're going to be and how they're going to tell people about that, and also what's going to set them apart from their competition, and giving their their people, a sense of belonging and something they can really rally behind in a time that could be really uncertain. I love the internal lens as well as that external. And I think this a little bit of a question from left field here. But you know, we talk about the. Rallying behind and I think SCORR has such an interesting and exciting brand, where, when we go to a trade show and we're wearing the SCORR shoes and Leah or Morial has the SCORR backs and the earrings we are all the time. Gosh, you guys have such an amazing brand. I wish we could do stuff like that, but we can. Why can't you? Well, we're in the life sciences. It's different. You know, you're a marketing agency, you can do that. And you know, Drake, you and I have talked about this on a previous episode, you know, almost a year and a half ago. And better, we've talked about it offline in terms of, there's this misconception that if you're in the site space, you're not allowed to have any fun, right there. You have to be super technical, you have to be frankly boring. And I think that this big idea process allows us to be strategic, but a little bit outside of the box. And I'm thinking of some of the brands that we've even done in the last couple of years, psychogenics, Bullfrog are coming to my mind that it's scientific, but the pant looks, frankly kick acts. And so if someone was sitting here today and asking both of you, but both you on the spot, and they said, Hey, we would love to do something like that, but we can't because, you know, we're selling the scientists, and they won't want us to do that. Or, you know, the board won't let us have have fun in that way. How would we how would we respond to them? I think no matter who you are, whether you're a scientist or a CEO, like at the core, people like to be entertained. Yeah, yeah. They appreciate something clever, something smart, something different, and it's always going to get somebody's eye and then allow you to tell the story. But I think one thing that's important is make sure that your brand reflects your business and your core values. You don't want it to be disingenuous. You can't be saying one thing in your brand messaging, and you know your company doesn't reflect that, because then there's a disconnect there that people don't trust. Yeah, your brand is what you repeatedly do, right? And so you have to have that any other strike the other, the other piece of that is, is, once you do find some of those cooks, there's, there's places within your branding, while you can still maintain that, that top level, if that's what you need and feel comfortable with to get everybody on board, there's still ways that we can take that and per application, bring in some of the fun, you know, the just like the shoes, there's things like that. We do that for trade show all the time, where they want that little hook, that little piece on top that helps them stand out, and that's, that's there. You have to, you have to get everybody on board that goes back to the internal piece of that, that buy in, that, you know, you need everybody from the top down and vice versa to be on board and willing to speak that brand and and live up to it. Yeah. So, yeah, I think the example that's come to my head is the unibo. I was just with Julie at D farm a little while back, and we were kind of talking about the light, right? We were talking about name, and like, Oh, I didn't love that name at first. And then you really dive into the assess phase of why and what it means, and then how we're going to be able to use that. And now it's like, this is the best thing that's ever happened. And so I think that assess phase, where you creating that alignment is so important. Because, you know, there are a lot of agencies that could go into a silo and come back with some really funky looking brand that is not applicable at all yet, there are other brands that, if you go through this process, you can build a little bit of that funkiness into it, like, I think the light bright is such a unique example of a brand like really having fun at a trade show with an announcement, even though they are maybe the most serious of organizations that's an IRB, and yet, they've allowed themselves to kind of have that uniqueness, the unicorn on the patches, like things that they've done have been from the very beginning of that assess phase that set the foundation for that brand tuning. Yeah, I think you know that research and the assessments and strategy has to all line up, and that can really drive things moving forward, and then give you the room to house something like that. And I think for some clients, it's hard for them to put aside, maybe their personal preferences and to what the brand should be and what their audience would really resonate with. So that's always a balance that you have to find that and the you know, a lot of times as consumers, we look at what consumer brands are doing, and want to live up to that for B to B marketing. And while you can bring some of that in, we have processes in place to make sure that our designers are keeping on track of all of that, because every once in a while, there's something that we can pull over and leverage at the end of the day. See what you're doing, what the commercial you're going to see on TV, for your food that you have that night is going to feel and should feel different than a life saving organization that is doing all of those things. They should feel different. There's just, it's, it's how we play with those pieces to make something memorable, to get them excited and to have that fun gap. I think the word that you know, one of the last questions I have here, memory mole, is important to me. You know, one of the issues in the industry is that often marketing, and frankly, branding, are seen as an expense, and let's just go sell. We don't need a brand if you hire a couple more sales people. And one of the positions that you know, we've really taken at SCORR is that this is an investor in the organization, and it should be long lasting. And so if an organization, whether it was, you know, on the precipice of a merger and acquisition, or if they've been the same organization for 35 years, and the website was last touched in 2003 and it looks like I built it on licks. And they're debating right now, kind of going through this process of a brand, what message would you give to them that this should be looked at as an investment at every level of the organization, from the marketing and sales, but also internal internal culture and recruiting, retention. What would you say to somebody that's kind of on the fence about making this investment? I think that see, you know a strong brand, and gaining that brand awareness makes everything else easier. It makes talking about your business easier because you've established how you're going to talk about it, and people will start to recognize you, which makes sales a little easier. You know they don't have to go in with no recognition of this company or who they are. It makes need generation easier because you already have that in with somebody, so they're more likely to lean into that, and it's not as as cold anymore. So I really just think a strong branding foundation makes everything else in marketing easier after that, and more unified and going in the same direction. Strong branding Foundation is a strong foundation for, yeah, and that, I mean, you know, a lot of that comes along with when, when the companies we are working with go through the big idea process, yeah, they have to look at themselves. And I have talked about the big idea process multiple times. US folding up a mirror and being like, this is, are you happy with how you look right now? And some do, some it's like you should be proud of what you have put together. And other times, we find so many disconnects and and, you know, then they start just as a designer, I'll get into sales tax that are made up of the last three branding exercises they've done, yeah, plus like two that they borrowed slides from another organization, yeah? And if I'm if I was getting on a call with one of their sales people and they were walking me through with that deck, I would have zoned out by the second Yeah, slide. And I'm like, this is, who are you? What? Like, that's not professional. So when they go through the process, a lot of times there is a self awareness piece in there, that if they can, they can go through that, and that's strong. They're likely a very strong company and and sometimes you go through and we find those disconnects, and they they self fix those among the process, and they come out, moving real, real well as we launch and get going. So so there's a part of that process of just that self alignment that they could try to do all day by themselves, that's hard to do. There's a reason that people go to therapy. I can talk to myself in a mirror. They when you talk to somebody else, you start finding things out and you can fix them. I'm not saying we're gonna have a big idea. This is therapy for your grand campaign, but, but I really like the the touch point there is the consistency, right? And if you are one way on on the brand deck, and then another at a trade show, another at a website, those touch points don't count anymore, that that inconsistency is going to be difficult for for for your team to follow, but certainly externally. And one of the things that you know has been a repeated theme on this podcast is if you can go internally and ask your team to give an elevator pitch, more than likely, if you're having issues with your brand, that elevator pitch is going to be different from all of those different stakeholders, and that's a telltale sign that, you know, we've got an opportunity to fix something for the better. So, yeah, I would say too. You know, attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Yeah, we run into all the time you rebrand clients, their brand. Out there for six months they want to change to something else. Yeah, and you know, our founder, Cinda or always says, well, not the time you get tired of it is just want to start to resonate with your audience. And there's always a good brand, should have flexibility to be able to have a platform to talk to other areas. You know, your services, trade show events, think to things that can be a little different, but still spark interest within that brand, and kind of breathe new life into it, in some ways. But we hear that a lot. Wong, you make a point about you mentioned earlier, the foundation, right? This is a foundation for for the brand, and it can grow. But you know, you said it, one of the things that we say all the time on the on the business development marketing side, is 50 impressions before somebody truly remembers your value proposition. And so think about even the companies that you're like, Wow, I'm annoyed that I've seen that commercial unless it's Capital One like, I'm thinking, it's probably hasn't been 50 impressions. I wouldn't know exactly what they were selling to me, right? And so if all they're seeing you at is their your LinkedIn presence and your website and the trade show that you go to every month, I promise you, they have not been overwhelmed by seeing that brand in the market position that okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask the final takeaway. But before we do, I promise that I was gonna bring this up because I've hinted at it before on LinkedIn with a video, and it's been mentioned on the podcast. But a little over a year ago, I received a tattoo that Drake you drew, and I got it tattooed on my leg, and I've been asked numerous times to tell this story as part of the podcast. That I've never had the audacity to do it, but now that I've got you right in front of me, I'm going to share my version of the story, but then I kind of want your version, because I've never heard it from your or Ben side, who was a participant as well, other than when you saw on my Instagram that I was getting the tattoo, and I want to know how you were feeling. And so for background context here, if this was going into October of last year, and I was maybe 15 days away from my wedding, and so at a at a very high level of energy on a day to day basis, which is more than my usual amount, as you guys might know, and just a lot. It's a lot. It's an it's enough. It's enough to carry someone else, that's for sure. And I think it was Demi, who had sent out an email on our team that was like, hey, you know, designers we're going to participate in, you know, the October challenge of designers drawing, you know, X, Y and Z. And I remember being in the lion's den Omaha office and just hitting reply all and saying, right away, whoever's whoever participates, we're gonna submit this. We're gonna do a bracket, and then whoever wins, I'm gonna get tattooed on my body, and I hit send, I think within five minutes of that email being sent out, and right away, my inbox is flooded, like of people being like, one, you're insane. And two, you have to do this. This is incredible. Fast forward a month, and you win. And then fast forward a month after that, I'm back from my honeymoon, all the things, and now I've got a Mima cue on on my way, and I can't wait October. You know, it's we're past that point when this is airing. So there could be another Drake's hour tattoo on my like at this point. But it sounds like there are more people who are going to participate this year. And so I'm very intrigued Drake on what was going through your mind during this effort. So in an effort to keep our team challenged in in working on our creativity and kind of back to our basics, yeah, we participated. I participated for even before I was a SCORR, but I know you and I have participated in Inktober, or version of that for years now, where it's just, you know, do a drawing a day with a prompt through the month of October, and we've opened it up multiple times to the rest of company to try and get people engaged. And last year they sent that out. I was sitting at my desk when I got saw your reply back, I laughed really loud, and we talked about it as a group in our design room, and there was like, There's no way he's going to do this and proceed through the month. And every time I post it, you were like, I'd love this one. I would love this one. And and I was like, He's gonna do this. And we got to the end, and we did a bracket. I know your daughter's that drawing is in there. My daughter was up against, yeah, the rainbow, TX, yeah, the red and, and deserve to be honest, I was really excited for her to do to win quiz on. Sir, yeah, he's gonna do my drawing. We, you know, you said that we landed on it. And I was like, I don't know that I'll ever hear him talk about this again. And sure enough, I happened to be in Omaha on a date with my wife. When I got a message from you on Instagram, you're like, I'm here doing it right now. And I looked at her, and I was like, Should we cut our meal short and just go because you didn't know? I was No, I didn't know. I was like, Should we just go show up? Yeah. And I She's like, think of the content. And I like that, great. But we finished our meal and you had it and and to add to that, you're not the only person in this building through the years that has gotten one of my tattoos. Yours is just by far the largest. That's what my wife was stunned. My wife was all for this. And then I walk over with the mock up on my leg, and she was like, I thought we were talking about, you know, yay, yay thing. And I was like, no, let's, let's have some, let's have some fun with this. Ben, I'm curious. You had the culture at SCORR, and I think you said an unbelievable example for this organization. What was going through your mind, what? And you can be honest. Listen, this is, we're at the end of the podcast. Here you can, you can tear I loved it. I mean, that doesn't happen that often, and everyone got really excited about it too. So, I mean, anytime you can get someone excited about something, and, you know, people talking about it and kind of coming together. I think that's great culture. Well, it's coming up, or it's already happened. At this point, we're probably in the voting process when this is airing, and so I'm sure I will be providing some updates. I The rumor is that not only will there be more participating in the drawing, there might be more participating in the tattooing, which it would be incredible to just be like, hey, three people from SCORR, all have been rose. You're all like, on our cast, and that's incredibly cheap. I have a stance against doing tattoos for people, okay, but if you take a random drawing, yeah, put it on your photo that I just don't want someone to be like, could you draw a picture of my kid? Yeah, so put on my Yes. That is that totally fair. So Drake, are you gonna adapt your drawing style this year to be tattoo minded? I will say, yeah. I've thought far harder this year about what I'm going to draw and how I'm going to draw it in, in the fear, yeah, yeah, yeah, of ending up on you, on your body again, and making sure that you're not you don't regret it in 10 years when you're like, I have so many of this guy's drawings on my body, you win Every year for the next decade. Back to 711 Drake, that dude, this is my drake. Sleep. Listen. Guy, yeah. At the end, we'll just have you do the signature, like your signature will be right below them all. Okay, incredible side. Incredible bit there. I want to bring it back. Final question, both of you on the spot. I'm curious branding, you know, while I you know, I'm going to say this and you might disagree, so feel free to counterpoint me. But branding has been a consistent for companies forever, right? And the way we might have done it, or the way it looks, has changed. What maybe are you looking forward to in 2025 you know, if we Forward Look here about the evolution of branding, or maybe even the perception of branding inside the life science industry, is there something that you're excited about, about what's possible with SCORR, our clients in the industry as a whole? And then I'm gonna put you on the spot. First Fruits, home, upcoming. I think something that's interesting to me is experts as brand ambassadors. I think there's so many avenues now for individuals at companies to have a platform to speak, whether it's podcasts or webinars or LinkedIn lives. I mean, Alec, you're a great example of this, that you have a really strong personal brand like on LinkedIn, and it ties in really well to the SCORR brand. And I think that relationship between personal brand and company brand and how you strengthen that and build up individuals and experts and that have their voice ring true to the company brand and provide more expertise and more trust within each opportunity is an interesting opportunity for me to think it's an incredible answer and you just. Accidentally booked yourself for another episode of this forecast, because we're gonna have to go through that. I find that so interesting, and we're not gonna go down that tangent right now, but just things that I've heard over the last couple of months personal brands are not a negative for organizations, and I think that's shifting with some of the new of the workforce and things like that, but especially in the life sciences, every company that I talk to yearns for that they're like, we're desperate for somebody that's willing to do it, and then the moment that someone's willing to do it, we almost make it really impossible for them to be able to do it. So that's an incredible it's not where I thought you were going, and I loved it. And you are booked for 2025 Drake. You have to follow that. Yeah, that's gonna be tough. Where I was gonna go is two parts, the first one being more contents. It's a little bit more Lo Fi. You know, the pieces like this, where we're talking extending the brand through that in ways that feel more organic. I think a lot of what, when people think about life science being stuffy, they think about how corporate IT has been as an industry, and so any time where you let your hair down a little bit, but then that feels uncomfortable. But I'm seeing a shift away from that, where we're starting to get a little bit more comfortable with, like, let's be a little bit more real with these situations. And I think you're starting to see that in some of the branding, let's some of the juggernauts where they're they're starting to, you're seeing Super Bowl ads, but they're letting it be more real. Like, this is what we're doing. This is we're saving lives. We're doing they're being a little bit more honest with it, and that heart is pulling through. So I really feel like that is going to be key component in differentiating companies. The other piece of that would be simplification of what people do, what we deal with, is so complex. I've gotten on calls with scientists where I'm like, okay, dumb it down one more level. Yeah, okay, now one more so that I can understand those core components of it. And if companies can start leveraging that, especially when you were talking about mergers and acquisitions, companies are getting so many services and so many offerings that you can't you either have to get granular and talk about all those pieces, or you have to figure out a way to talk about what you're adding to someone's you know playbook by by linking up and joining with them at a very high level. So I see, you know that rawness coming through, but I also see a need to start simplifying, getting really to that core message, which is what our big ideas do, is drill down to that last little piece that you can hang your hat on. Yeah, I love that. I love the Lo Fi content. Will argue for that day after day. And I think the simplicity angle, I recently interviewed Laura Lang, who's the Head of Marketing at Medical Research Network, and she talked about, when they think about their word for the year at trade shows, they want that word to be identifiable and understood by anybody, whether they are in the industry or not, and then they're going to go a layer deeper, and then a layer and if you have that scientific content. Those people that are looking for that scientific content will find it. But if you have that at the very top, and it's over complicated, and it's jargon, and it is extremely complex that's really hard to consume at a trade show, and so I love that. I mean, I've interviewed, this is like episode 40 at this point over the last couple of months, and there's been a lot of fantastic guests. And I'm not saying this because you're sitting right next to me, but that's two of the better one minute takeaways that I've had. You know, I think going back then to your point, with the experts as part of the brand, and then being able to tie that into the Lo Fi content, there's so much of this that that and the authenticity and even the simplicity of it. Those tie hand in hand together, if you just have a human being, you know, as an expert of your brand, we should solve the problem you are alluding to too, as well, Drake. So I think that's that's really awesome. Okay, I think we went way past time. This has been, this has been fantastic, Drake, and I really appreciate it. If anybody is hearing this and says, gosh, I need to be involved with Drake and Ben. You have to go through me first message, Drake of Ben on LinkedIn, but certainly go to I know both of you guys are on video on our YouTube page for SCORR marketing, talking about branding, talking about the big idea. I really believe this is going to be super important in 2025 so I appreciate you both taking the time today. As always. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The SCORR cast, brought to you by SCORR. Marketing, we appreciate your time and hope you found this discussion insightful. Don't forget to subscribe and join us for our next episode. Until then, remember, marketing is supposed to be fun.