Episode 4: Building Your Brand From Vision to Reality

In this episode, Meredith dives deep into the world of branding, sharing her own personal journey with Sweet Baton Rouge® as a case study. From early missteps with business names to the importance of consistent branding, Meredith offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs at every stage.

Key Takeaways:

• The Importance of Self-Reflection: Understand your target audience, your values, and what makes your brand unique.
• Building a Strong Brand Identity:
• The Power of Storytelling: Share your brand story authentically and connect with your audience on a deeper level.
• Consistency is Key: Maintain consistency across all platforms, from your website and social media to customer interactions.
• Visual Identity: Use strong visuals, such as logos, colors, and imagery, to reinforce your brand identity.

Meredith's Branding Journey:

• Early challenges with business names (Football Tees, Shop Football Tees, SFT, Southern Football T-Shirts).
• Recognizing the need to understand her target audience and their values.
• The rebranding process for Sweet Baton Rouge® and the importance of going with her gut.
• Learning from the branding process
• The importance of a strong visual identity, including color palettes and brand elements 

Call to Action:

• Define your brand values and ensure they guide your decision-making.
• Develop a clear and consistent brand voice across all channels.
• Analyze your target audience and tailor your messaging to their needs and interests.
• Create a strong visual identity that reflects your brand personality.
• Share your brand story authentically and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

Connect with Meredith:

I am a mom to three, big maw maw to seven. I've been married for 18+ years, counting the days down to the BIG 20 so we can open up a great bottle of wine.

My husband and I also own a wine bar in our town we live in, called Library Wine & Provisions.

I am the founder of Sweet Baton Rouge®, a local Louisiana business I created from scratch with no marketing plan, just a little grit and lots of geaux! This business will hit 15 years in October and by far has been my most professional career doing what I love, marketing. I have built systems and habits to stay consistent and vision focused on our goals at hand. In 2024 I started a second business, Petey’s Press, to bring all of our production in-house to screen print as our business has always been centered around locally designed & printed t-shirts.

• Listen to The Nouveau Podcast
• Follow Meredith on Instagram
• The Nouveau Podcast Instagram
• Join Our Email
• Shop Sweet Baton Rouge®
  
  

Chapters

• 0:05 Building Your Brand
• 17:47 The Power of Branding Strategy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi, I'm Meredith Wagespack, host of the Nouveau podcast. I've been an entrepreneur for almost 15 years and I'm here to share my hard-won lessons with you. On this show, we'll explore the power of data, the magic of marketing and the importance of building a strong community. Join me for insightful conversations that are as refreshing as a vanilla latte and as sparkling as the champagne we'll be toasting to your success. Welcome back to the Nuvo podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Today we're diving deep into a topic that's absolutely essential for any successful business, and that is building your brand from vision to reality. And it's all about branding. Oh my gosh, branding is probably one of my favorite things. Now that I understand it and know all the tools and resources that you need to put into it, it is the most vital thing that you do for your business. So before we start talking, I thought it would be important to give you some backstory. So let's story tell. Since today's topic is all about branding, I think I need to share how I got started and what my names were before I finally landed on Sweet Baton Rouge. Did you get that Names? Not just one? Okay, but first, before we really get into my storytelling, I just remembered I got to tell you some updates Each week.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Before I truly dive into these podcasts, I want to just share a little bit about what's going on. So I've talked a little bit about my thyroid issue. So I just had my 90 day follow-up. In that 90 day follow-up I found out that my thyroid I think it's it just has not changed. I'm going to give you actually have it right here TSH my level the first time was at 5.8% I'm assuming it's on percentages and I think it went down maybe like 0.2%, so it was like 5.6%, so it's still super high. So it almost seems like the medicine that I've been taking for the last 90 days didn't really do anything, which also makes sense, because I am just not motivated when it comes to wanting to do anything. It is mental and I really should just like do it, but I just haven't pushed myself to do it.

Speaker 1: 2:42

I play tennis, so I actually just played in my first like team tennis tournament this weekend and that was a lot of fun. It was a great experience and I'm already signed up for another one in March. So I really can't wait and I'm thinking about purchasing a walking pad, and a couple years ago we were going to Europe and I started walking every day and I began doing the rosary as I walked and I absolutely fell in love with walking two miles a day. So I did that, like May, through October of November of that year I think was 2023. And I just didn't do that last year and I really missed it, and so I want to. I want to make more effort to get my steps in every day and I also just need to do it. So maybe by the next time I've I've started. I mean, tennis burns a lot of calories, but from where I'm at, I need to really be working more on muscle retention and strength training and and cardio. So those are the things that I'm working on.

Speaker 1: 4:00

We are starting some of our baseball designs because baseball season officially starts. I think it's February 14th, on Valentine's Day that's usually around the time that they start. So we're going to have three new designs that I'm super excited about and I have tasked those out successfully to the designers that are going to be working on those. I have a designer working on a crawfish design that's going to be part of our second quarterly box for Lanyard Box, and then I am working on a few designs myself. So it should be fun. You know, other than that I am kind of working on some products and I mentioned so today actually is the day that we officially launched the Nouveau podcast, so that's super fun. And I kind of shared in my stories today at the Nouveau podcast that I want to launch like a little sticker series of some fun little taglines and things that I've come up with that I feel like will resonate with you guys, my audience, for the Nouveau podcast, which is really geared towards local small businesses, and these will be available to sell through the NouveauPodcastcom whenever that goes live. And I have like a fun hat idea, just like a fun cap with a fun saying. So I'll probably start with the stickers and then maybe roll out the hat, and then I'm working on two online products that you can download and incorporate into your business. But before I do that, I want to make sure that they're just perfect and easy to work through. So I don't know when I'll have a launch date on those, but anyway, I just wanted to tell you those things. So let's get back to my storytelling.

Speaker 1: 5:45

So in 2010, I started this company. My legal business name is, is, was, is is Football Tees. Excuse me, if you met me. You know that I just wanted to create a fun game day t-shirt back in the day. So our first t-shirt said football with a paw print, and then we did a second one with a Florida Lee. I mean, how simple is that? And the funny thing is, honestly, I really try to stick to things very simplified across all platforms and all things, and so it's not really that funny that that was the t-shirt that I went with. But you know, I graduated in marketing but I didn't put a lot of what I learned in school into practice until it was much later into my business. And, honestly, I would say, in the last few years, I really have gotten down to the nitty gritties of who this business is and what we're creating for and why branding matters. And so, um, I created this Weebatner's t-shirt. That's kind of funny. Like I created a t-shirt first in, I want to say, 2011, 2012 timeframe, and during the first five to seven years, my business name really went from Football Tees to Shop Football Tees, to SFT, to Southern Football T-shirts. And let me take a step back. So my legal business name was Football Tees because of the T-shirt and when I went online which we were an online business, the first 10 years of business, which is really crazy that we were able to build so much traction online with a horrible name. The designs were really good, but you know there was a lot of trial and error in that period of growth. And so, with the online business, since my name was Football Tees, I had to create a domain, and so the domain of this online store was shopfootballteescom, and so that's where Shop Football Tees name came from.

Speaker 1: 8:00

And then I vastly learned when I was at market one year very early into to like starting our wholesale side of the business, every person that would come to me would be like I would say, hey, do you know about shop football tees? And they'd be like what did you say? What was that? Or the branding had a Florida Lee kind of like incorporated into it and they're like, oh, I'm from Texas. Like yeah, we don't really resonate with the Florida Lee. And so I began to learn very quickly that the name wasn't very easy to like. When I said it out loud it kind of fumbled through my mouth and it also made it very hard on the consumer trying to listen to me. And then some of the potentially the icons didn't really resonate with outside of Louisiana, which at the time, like I, was really just trying to explore and see, like, where do we fit in? So From there I wanted to create SFT and let that be an acronym of shop football tees, because I thought, oh, sft, that's going to be cool.

Speaker 1: 9:07

You know it's like a cool acronym. So somebody's got to ask you what does SFT stand for? So then I wanted to kind of like incorporate that in as Southern football t-shirts Because, at the end of the day, like we're marketing as like a Southern lifestyle brand. So Southern football t-shirts because at the end of the day, we're marketing as a Southern lifestyle brand. So Southern Football T-shirts was not bad. That's kind of where things left off and it was kind of Southern Football T-shirts, sft you might even have an SFT T-shirt because I still see them out into the world.

Speaker 1: 9:40

But all of those years I never truly loved my branding nor my name. None of it felt like it truly reflected what the brand was meant to be. However, that also fell on me because I didn't know who my customer was, what they valued, what kind of brands did they like, what their interests were and beyond, the fact that they loved LSU sporting events and Louisiana culture. So we did create a lot of designs around things which we still do around Louisiana culture and LSU. But the difference is how we have grown from the days of SFT football tees we have grown from the days of SFT football tees, southern football t-shirts, shop football tees, all the things.

Speaker 1: 10:32

I'm sharing this with you because you may know some of the brand target audience details or maybe you're just starting out and that's why I started my auditing process, because I began to build out these details in a simple way that would be easier to visualize. All these things are already out there on the internet, but for me, during that two-year process, or two years ago, when I began to really audit my business, that is when I honestly began to build out basically a marketing plan for who this business is and where I really hope to see us going, and it really helped me begin to visualize better of who the Sweet Baton Rouge brand is. So, circling back to the multiple names, I did eventually change the name one final time to Sweet Baton Rouge and I can tell you I always ask myself why I waited so long. I'll tell you like, because I did the whole market circuit selling my t-shirts. I didn't want to make our products so niche, you know, and I wanted it to be like big dreams over here. I wanted to be like Southern Marsh and being sold all over the place. However, I was meant to be Sweet Baton Rouge and I'm glad I waited so long, but at the same time, I wish I would have done it sooner. Waited so long, but at the same time, I wish I would have done it sooner, but that's here or there.

Speaker 1: 12:04

So when we went to change the name, the branding we did for Sweet Baton Rouge I think this was like around 2017-2018 time frame I was happy with the branding and the designs, but we also incorporated a pelican and his name is Petey. Which little backstory on Petey. His name comes from Pete Maravich and I grew up loving basketball. I loved watching Pete Maravich and when I knew that I was going to have a mascot and it was going to be a boy and I needed a name, it just made sense to go with Petey and Petey, the Pelican became alive. So with that, I, as I mentioned, I was super happy with the designs, but something still just never really felt like home. It just like before with all these previous names, it just never felt like everything clicked. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 13:06

So fast forward to 2022, my husband and I created a restaurant from scratch and he hired X Design, a Baton Rouge Louisiana marketing firm, to create the branding, and this was my first time going through a branding presentation and brainstorming process beforehand. I loved the process so much for our restaurant that in 2023, I decided to do this for Sweet Baton Rouge. You want to follow suit with your branding. One thing I learned it took me way too long was to go with my gut and not to settle and to get what you want, even if you don't know exactly what you want yet. So I went through the process. It was, I want to say, probably a few months.

Speaker 1: 13:56

I wanted an authentic brand, something that felt long-lasting, but also wanted to be in the category of some of my favorite brands, including, like Vineyard Vine, southern Shirt Co, southern Prepper, draper James and Southern Marsh. I wanted a refresh on our colors, so we went with the Sweet Baton Rouge color palette to be a little deeply rooted into the colors of Baton Rouge itself, but we wanted some rich, vibrant purples, some subtle lavender tones and a touch of sparkling gold. The brand colors complement our neutral grays and our whites beautifully. We also wanted, as I mentioned, about Petey, the largest design element in our whole new logo process was creating the brand of Petey and we knew that he was going to become now the true face of the brand, like our main logo with multiple variations, including we have like our legacy mark. We have one with him kind of close up with an oval shape. We have a full body filled marking and then we have a full body outline marking and then, you know, we wanted to incorporate these also in our main, primary and secondary logos as well and with with that it was kind of funny.

Speaker 1: 15:23

It was like once I went through the first few presentations and then we finally landed on exactly what we were going to do and I was so giddy to like get the final presentation. I just fell in love with Pet PD himself, with the logo files. We had incorporated our one of our logos that we it's not even a logo, it was just made for a t-shirt we incorporated that font that's used on this t-shirt to become one of our main branded fonts and and it just like it all really became to flow like it flows now so much better and together and I can truly see a vision of fitting in with some of these bigger brands and we also created just some fun personalities for Petey, and I definitely we've. We haven't given him a new personality in two years, but I definitely see him making a spotlight here or there coming sometime this year. But in 2022 we also really wanted to focus like we made a lot of shifts and changes and we really wanted to focus on on Louisiana seasons, which is Mardi Gras, crawfish, a game day and holiday, and because we did that, then we incorporated our little Petey the Pelican to have the same seasons and he's just been a lot of fun and so I just love seeing our Pelican beginning to take shape. I've loved seeing in the last two years, our brand really blossom and so many things have come out of our branding our new logos, our colors, petey the Pelican, the wallpaper that you see in our store, so many design elements and aesthetics and looks all began because I wanted to do better with our branding. I wanted to make sure I was aligning with the right customers and I see the vision of the future, of where this business is going. So I hope you liked the very beginning of all of that storytelling.

Speaker 1: 17:47

And now let's get into what I have to discuss on branding. So, okay, my local business friends, your brand is more than just your logo and slogan If you haven't taken all of that in from my fun storytelling. It really is what uniquely identifies you and sets you apart from the competition and creates that emotional connection with your customers. Like some brands, you don't even have to know, like, who that brand is, you just know, based on the Pantone color or maybe by one branding style, that's on a shopping bag or a social media post like that's. That's just to give you a visual. Like that is what I was missing and that is what I went out searching for. And now I feel like people know that it's a sweet baton rouge brand, it's a product from sweet baton rouge, and so, for my local friends, I want you to be able to visualize this within your own business and really think about these things. Um, because I'm from louisiana, I'm always going to use some Louisiana references. So think about this. What comes to mind when you hear the name Southern Marsh, raising, cane's, mimosa Handcrafted, or even our favorite local coffee shop like City Roots Coffee Bar? You likely have some form of a specific image, a feeling or even a taste associated with that brand. That's the power of strong branding. Okay, going to throw the towel in Sweet Baton Rouge 2 has been a fun two years of really branding the heck out of Sweet Baton Rouge, so I hope you can see that we're Sweet Baton Rouge as you either see a t-shirt or through our social media.

Speaker 1: 19:48

One of the most crucial aspects of branding is consistency and I think for me, I love consistency and I try to make sure, across the platforms, everything is super consistent and I communicate our brand messaging across all platforms, from social media to our website and to our customer interactions. Remember our discussion on auditing your business, as we just talked about. This is the most valuable information about your target audience, your sales data, your brand story should all be reflected across all these marketing channels In our audit. I'm just going to share. I have a whole tab that's mostly social media audit, but it has where you can type in your whole ideal customer in a few sentences to a paragraph. It has where you can easily identify and look and see like where are my customers coming from as far as? Like what locations? Um, what is my customer's interest? What is their lifestyle like, do they have hobbies? What kind of hobbies do they like? What are the values that our customers want in a product that they're working with? What is my customer's pain points, how can I help them, and what are some of the brands they are loving? These are all things, plus more, that needs to go into your branding when you begin to create your business, to really begin to truly work through those consistencies and making sure that you're aligning yourselves directly to that consumer.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Authenticity is super key. Your brand should remain genuine and reflect your values, your passions and your personality. You want to make sure that you're telling and sharing your story. You want to be as transparent as possible and as comfortable, as you feel Like I'm still really on the on the cuff of this, but I know it is very important and finding ways to connect with your audience on that human level. So with this, you're asking yourself well, that isn't branding, but it is. You know there's a lot of personable branding that goes into the actual brand as a business. So with that, give your audience a glimpse into your world. Right now I have a time lapse of me recording this podcast and I'm sure I'm going to share that. You know you always want to get behind the scenes content.

Speaker 1: 22:45

When I did this audit on myself for our social media, I saw that the most recognized posts that our consumers like, really engaged in, was behind the scenes. It's like no duh, I don't need to be selling t-shirts. I mean yes, let me rephrase that I need to sell the t-shirts. Let them sell for, let them sell for themselves. I need to be showing the personality, the personable side of the business through social media, because it is supposed to be social. And I'll be very honest, that took me a really long time to have like that aha moment because I wanted to grid out my social media to be perfectly perfect for myself. But my consumers could care less, right, like they want to know, like, what is it like to run a business? They want to know like, show us how you're doing that flat lay, or show us how your screen printing, or show us how you fold the t-shirts, or show us how you're packing an order. So I am trying to do better at showing more of that, and then I'm also trying to do better at showing more of that and then I'm also trying to do better at writing blog posts.

Speaker 1: 24:03

I think we did a really great job last year but we did kind of fall through the wayside towards the end of the year in our blog posts because we got super busy. But I'm not going to put so much stress on myself. But if I could crank out one a month and maybe a few extras, that would be great. But I'm only going to focus on one a month and maybe a few extras, that would be great. But I'm only going to focus on one a month and it's going to wrap itself usually around kind of the end of the month, like what all did we do for that whole month? And sharing our thoughts and our experiences, our insights.

Speaker 1: 24:37

What you know is super important is, if you think it's not, they still may. So open your phone and start videoing and photographing your day to life and then share it with the world, and then you know branding is also about articulating your why, explaining the purpose behind your business, what problems are you solving and what impact do you want to make. So again, we kind of talked about that in that audit understanding the customer pain points, having that knowledge of better knowing what pain points you are solving for your customer, the better in your messaging consistency. Branding can play such a major role in that. Now, if you want, your business can also collaborate with brands that also align with your values. So partnering with other businesses that share your vision and values can also amplify your brand message and introduce you to new audiences.

Speaker 1: 25:47

And again, I know I talked about visual consistency is paramount, and that would be using your brand colors, integrating them into your logo, your website, your social media graphics, even your physical store, if applicable and you have one and making sure. Example is our storefront windows. So part of as I mentioned in our branding in the last two years, we created this beautiful wallpaper that's inside our store. We have used that wallpaper and it's on the outside of our store as well. We did wrapping paper this year and we also have it as the cover of a notebook. So that is becoming a very strong branding element that we are trying to use more and more of when it comes to social media or when it comes to our email marketing, because we are wanting to make sure, like people when they see that they see Sweet Baton Rouge without necessarily even having to see the word Suivant Rouge.

Speaker 1: 27:05

So just wanted to point that out there and then again, being consistent with your visual style. So, even down to photography, even if it's on your phone or your editing, just paying attention to the lighting, the color palettes, the props, the overall aesthetic of your photos and videos. So I would say, you know, if we were to just post once a day on social media, I am definitely looking at the graphics that I'm using, making sure the colors are the coloring that I want, that's in that brand color scheme, that it's also in, like the products that are being displayed, that they're very natural looking, they um, you know, everything seems to align and looks like a very consistent visual style. I think that is just so important. But also you can use a lot of that behind the scenes and that kind of stuff just by simply editing it all in the same way so it can just all remain very similar.

Speaker 1: 28:21

Like I with the restaurant, as I mentioned that we have a restaurant those photos that we have are so dark and moody that if I try to snap a photo and pop it into our social media grid it stands out like a sore thumb, and so it's important to me for us that we get the same consistent photography photographer to shoot our food content so that way, visually, when our consumers are looking at our social media, it all looks the same, it all flows. You know that this is this particular restaurant because of just the coloring behind in the photos. So I gotta get my husband on board. He doesn't understand and it frustrates me, but I have an example to show him, don't you worry. So I'm drinking some chai tea, so let me take a sip of that, because I've been talking for a minute, all right.

Speaker 1: 29:30

So understanding your why, through the data, you want to analyze your most engaged social media posts, which we just talked about, and what is resonating with your audience, what draws them in. Understanding this will help you refine your branding message and create content, content that truly connects with your customers. Again, social media is not linear. It's really hard sometimes to crack the code sometimes, but keep doing it and keep sharing your message and learn from the posts that do well. Okay, and that is why, in our audit that you can write down, you could do this every quarter instead of waiting for once a year, but you can really see what posts and reels are are attracting to your customers and then just create some strategy around that understanding what works and look sometimes, no matter what. It's not a home run out of the gate, and sometimes people see your stuff but they're not engaging. So just keep doing it because it does matter. And you're telling your story one post at a time, Okay, so I just want to make sure I tell you that. So remember that branding is more than just driving sales. It's about building a long-term relationship with your customers, nurturing their loyalty and creating an unforgettable experience. From engaging email campaigns to a charming brick and store brick and mortar store email campaigns to a charming brick and mortar store every interaction should reflect your brand and create a positive and memorable customer experience.

Speaker 1: 31:09

Let's take Nouveau for an example Our name itself, not only by the French language, but also by the Cajun French you hear throughout Louisiana. So we've incorporated elements that we love into our branding, such as the imagery of vanilla lattes, captivating books and sparkling bubbles of champagne. We've experimented with different color palettes and ultimately settled on a family of purples that complement our beloved Sweet Baton Rouge brand, while establishing a distinct and playful aesthetic for the Nouveau podcast. Developing a strong brand takes time and effort, so don't try to do everything at once. Just focus on building a solid foundation and gradually refining your brand as you grow, find your voice, tell your story and connect with your audience on an emotional level. Great branding creates an emotional connection that goes beyond simply selling a product or service. Please remember slow and steady wins the race. Focus on building your brand, not just selling your product. Gosh, we're done. How is that? I hope you really enjoyed this branding conversation and if you did enjoy this episode, please don't forget to download and subscribe. No-transcript.