David Aaker | Vice Chair, Prophet | Why is Brand Value Still Not a Generally Accepted Principle?

Summary

CMO Confidential Podcast Summary

Episode: David Aaker | Vice Chair, Prophet | Why is Brand Value Still Not a Generally Accepted Principle?
Release Date: August 12, 2025
Host: Mike Linton
Guest: David Aaker, Professor Emeritus at Haas School of Business, Vice Chair of Prophet, Author of Aaker on Branding: The Playbook to Building Strong Brands

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1. Introduction to the Episode

In this insightful episode of the CMO Confidential podcast, host Mike Linton engages with David Aaker, a luminary in the field of branding, to explore the enduring debate surrounding brand value. Despite decades of discourse, Aaker highlights why brand value has yet to become a universally accepted principle within the business landscape.

2. Historical Context of Brand Equity

David Aaker begins by tracing the origins of brand equity to around 1990, a period marked by the dominance of the BCG (Boston Consulting Group) matrix and the "cash cow" and "stars" framework introduced by Peter Drucker. He critiques the prevailing assumption that increasing market share directly leads to profitability, labeling it a fallacy grounded in cross-sectional data.

David Aaker [01:53]: "Brand equity came into the world in around 1990... it encouraged people to respond to short-term problems and with short-term solutions. They destroyed brands and didn't generate growth."

3. The Shift from Performance Marketing to Branding

Aaker emphasizes the transition from a focus on short-term performance marketing to a more holistic approach that treats the brand as an asset. He underscores that brand equity encompasses not just communication, but every interaction with the customer, including product development and the customer journey.

David Aaker [02:50]: "And when you do that and you say it's not just a communication thing, it's everything that touches a customer... then you get a seat at the C-suite."

4. Communicating Brand Value in the Age of Instant Data

Addressing the challenge of demonstrating brand value amidst the rise of instant data and performance marketing, Aaker warns against the pitfalls of relying solely on short-term metrics. He argues that big data analytics can often misguide brand strategy if not interpreted correctly.

David Aaker [09:00]: "There's a great danger that the big data and analytics are going to lead us down the wrong path."

5. B2C vs. B2B Branding

Aaker delineates the differences between Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) branding. In B2C, brand personality and self-expressive benefits play a significant role, whereas in B2B, the organizational values and the reliability of the relationship take precedence.

David Aaker [14:00]: "In a B2B setting, what is much more important is the organization that's behind the brand... you're buying a relationship with an organization."

6. Common Branding Mistakes in a Hostile Environment

In today's media-saturated and skeptical environment, Aaker identifies several critical mistakes marketers make:

• Isolating Brand Building: Failing to recognize that a brand does not exist in a vacuum and neglecting the collective strength of brand teams.
• Short-Termism: Prioritizing immediate gains over long-term brand equity.
• Ineffective Communication: Not adapting to the new ways of storytelling and engagement required to break through media clutter.

David Aaker [22:56]: "The biggest branding mistake that I see is a lack of appreciation that a brand is not built in isolation."

7. The Role of Super Bowl Ads in Modern Branding

Aaker discusses the efficacy of high-profile advertising events like the Super Bowl. He asserts that to stand out in such a cluttered media environment, ads must transcend traditional messaging by being highly entertaining, emotional, and memorable.

David Aaker [27:47]: "You have to be something that is so entertaining, so informative, so emotional, so interesting that you will listen to it or you will read it."

He also notes the importance of strong taglines and symbols to ensure the brand message is retained by the audience.

David Aaker [30:14]: "The role of a tagline and symbol become more and more important than ever."

8. Impact of AI on Branding and Marketing Careers

When discussing the future, Aaker acknowledges the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on marketing and branding. He suggests that AI will democratize creativity, making professional branding more accessible to smaller companies by reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

David Aaker [32:22]: "If you can learn to be an expert in AI, there's going to be a place for you because companies, marketing groups are trying to adapt to AI and they're struggling."

Aaker also anticipates that AI will enable rapid, cost-effective branding processes, allowing even modest companies to perform high-quality branding previously affordable only to larger enterprises.

9. Final Advice to Marketers

Aaker concludes by urging marketers to elevate their brands into valuable assets. He emphasizes the importance of building brand loyalty, utilizing social programs, and integrating AI to enhance branding efforts.

David Aaker [35:50]: "People really have a challenge and a duty to elevate brands to an asset and to convince people that you need to build assets."

10. Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• David Aaker [01:53]: "Brand equity came into the world in around 1990... it encouraged people to respond to short-term problems and with short-term solutions."
• David Aaker [02:50]: "When you say it's not just a communication thing, it's everything that touches a customer... you bring to the C-suite customer insight and segmentation."
• David Aaker [09:00]: "There's a great danger that the big data and analytics are going to lead us down the wrong path."
• David Aaker [14:00]: "In a B2B setting, what is much more important is the organization that's behind the brand..."
• David Aaker [22:56]: "The biggest branding mistake that I see is a lack of appreciation that a brand is not built in isolation."
• David Aaker [27:47]: "You have to be something that is so entertaining, so informative, so emotional, so interesting..."
• David Aaker [30:14]: "The role of a tagline and symbol become more and more important than ever."
• David Aaker [32:22]: "If you can learn to be an expert in AI, there's going to be a place for you..."
• David Aaker [35:50]: "People really have a challenge and a duty to elevate brands to an asset..."

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Conclusion

This episode of CMO Confidential offers a profound exploration of the complexities surrounding brand value. David Aaker's expertise illuminates the ongoing struggle to integrate brand equity into mainstream business strategies, particularly amidst the challenges posed by short-term performance metrics and the evolving digital landscape. Marketers are encouraged to adopt a holistic, asset-based approach to branding, leveraging both traditional storytelling and modern AI tools to build enduring brand value.

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Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

Transcript

[Mike Linton]

The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.

[David Aker]

The podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton.

[Mike Linton]

Welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them. The Chief Marketing Officer, Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the decisions, the drama and the politics that go with being the head head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, ebay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com here today with my guest David Aker. Today's topic why is brand value still not a generally accepted principle? David is a professor emeritus at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He's also the Vice Chair of Profit, a brand consulting agency, and he's written over 14 books on marketing and branding. He recently released a book titled Aker on Branding the Playbook to Building Strong Brands. This book was widely praised by marketers all over the world that lays out the concepts of brand assets and brand value. We thought it made sense to discuss this book and talk about why the debate about the value of brands is still going after decades of this discussion. Welcome to the show, David.

[David Aker]

Well, thank you for having me. And yes, brand equity came into the world in around 1990. It was at just the right time because the strategy of the day was the BCG matrix, the gross share matrix, which said that any way you buy market share, you're going to get profitable. Which was a fallacy based on cross sectional data. But nevertheless, it held sway. I mean, half the people had gone on record as saying they were obeying that model. And so that and other things like scanner data and the old Proctor and Gamble brand management model encouraged people and taught people to respond to short term problems and with short term solutions. And they destroyed brands and they didn't generate growth and they, and they lost profits.

[Mike Linton]

And that model you're. That model you're talking about, David. That was. You had the cash cow and the stars and the thing, you were starving and you know, and then you were just moving up money. And that was really more of a growth model than it was a branding model, right?

[David Aker]

Yeah, but it said the way you grow and the way you thrive is to increase market share. Then there's a, you go down the experience curve and you get economies of scale and on and on. So, and the basic idea of cows and stars was created by Peter Drucker ten years before that. And it's a perfectly sound model, but what's not sound is the idea that market share drives. And so in 1990, people were ripe for having brand equity enter the scene. And they said this isn't working. And so let's look at something else. And they said brand is an asset. Makes sense. And then I wrote that first book on that defined brand equity and what I did was say brand equity includes brand loyalty. And when you do that and you say it's not just a communication thing, it's everything that touches a customer, it's product development, it's a customer journey, and so on, then everything changes. Then you get a seat at the C suite and you're not a middle manager anymore and, and you bring to the C suite customer insight and segmentation and, and so on. And, and that just got planted in the 90s and it grew and grew and got stronger and stronger until almost everybody has a marketing person at the C suite now. And, and you think, well, that battle's over. Well, it turns out that it's, there's, it's not over, it's not even close. And yeah, and, and well, I think there's been a revival of short termism and it's come under, it's really well branded. It comes under the label brand marketing or performance marketing. Now who could be against, you know, building demand or who could be against high performance? And so it's saying that, well, you've got brand, you got brand marketing and you've got demand marketing. And you know, we can't let demand marketing take a backseat because that's driving our business next week, next month. And we need leads, we need sales. And so there's this, this pressure is, is come to the, to the fore. And so I wrote a whole chapter in this second edition of my Ocarina branding book, justifying why brand as an asset makes sense. And, and I went back to this early book I did on brand equity where I outlined 14 or 15 ways that brands provide value. And for example, just take visibility. If your brand is visible, it means that there's some level, there's some reason, I've heard about it and it's probably because it does its job, it's been successful, people have used it and so I'm the push comes to shove, I'm going to buy it or at least I'm not going to avoid not buying, I'm not going to not buy it because I had never heard of it. And so there's big question marks. So just visibility means a lot. And there's 14 other dimensions. But when you ask yourself the following question, what is your business strategy or organizational strategy? And then you ask the follow up question, how critical is brands and what is the brand's role? And that's how you justify. That's the best way to justify branding. There's other ways too I can talk about, but that's really the best way.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah. So the brand has a job to do and it's not just the advertising of the brand, it's what the brand does with the customer. And there's a lot of measures like lifetime value and everything else where you can actually start implementing computing. A lot of stuff here, but to your point, a lot of the performance marketing is I, I wash in instant data. And a lot of the things that the brand does, the data build on that is a longer time. And, and I will say Google and Meta and everybody else have said oh my gosh, we can give you data in an hour or a day. And, and they've taken a lot of money that way. How do you think through communicating the value of the brand in a world where I have instant data on performance marketing and slower data on branding.

[David Aker]

Well, let me go back to my history story. In the 80s so if you look at, that's when scanner data came in. I don't know if you old enough to remember that Mike, but sadly I am.

[Mike Linton]

I was at Procter and Gamble then.

[David Aker]

Yeah. And remember scander data? Remember the test cities in Iowa? You can go into a test city and measure advertising scientifically because you could do experiments. You know, you take an advertising budget, cut it in half and double it and show it to different people and see what happened. You can change the message and see what happened. And so, and they ran these things over sometimes one to two, three years. So they got a lot of results. And what they conclude the bottom line was, the only thing that moves the Dino is price promotions. So they all went into price promotions. They destroyed brands. It took them years to. That was one of the things that prompted brand equity to come in. Let me tell you one more thing and that is this, this market share stuff. They were doing analytics where they had a whole bunch of cross sectional data. A guy named Bob Bazelle wrote a Whole book on it. Using cross sectional data that he proved that if you increase the market share, one point ROI will go up a half a point. Yeah, absolutely dead. It was, it was perfect evidence and everybody believed that. And I, and I with a friend did some study that showed that if you correctly analyze it, use time series data instead of cross sectional data, that the effect disappears. That if you increase market share, you do not increase ROI at all. And so the point is that the statistics were done wrong. And if you have data that as you say, gives you instant and really good knowledge of short term sales, that's going to drive your models because your models are going to involve as a dependent variable, short term sales. They just are. And so you're going to have the same kind of, you know, we're going to have same kind of statistical issues we had back then and now. Of course we're more sophisticated, but the user is not more sophisticated. The user just wants to know, you know, what's the value of the brand now? What's the value of this promotion? What's the value of this advertising? And, and the statisticians are going to sit there. Yeah, but you should worry about, now they're off and running. And so I think there's a great danger that the big data and analytics are going to lead us down the wrong path.

[Mike Linton]

Look, I agree with this and I also think, and I'd love your take on this, one of the things that almost everybody recognizes the value of a brand like an Apple or Nike or you know, all these brands that are a lot of the Proctor brands like Tide and surely Coca Cola and Pepsi. But then we hear from a lot of listeners why their CFOs and CEOs and boards acknowledge all these cool brands. They're wearing an Apple watch and they drove their BMW to work and they're wearing it, you know, a branded suit or shirt or dress. They still don't believe in marketing or branding for their company. Even though you have all this data that show the brand over time is powerful. Why is that the case? Like why are people not adopting this science?

[David Aker]

Well, as I say, there's a lot of ways you can demonstrate the value of the brand. The best is with case studies in, in, in the scientific community, there's a, an experiment that's very appreciated and respected. It's called the before after study. Yeah. And so if you, if you take, for example, take Dove and go back to 2004 when just before they instituted the Real Beauty program and you can look at Dove sales and Profits and so forth and image back then. And then you institute the Real Beauty program, and then you look at the sales and so forth after. And you see in this case, you've controlled for the same management, the same company, the same products, the same distribution, same customers, and what happened. And so a lot of things that escape you in a normal statistical analysis are not there. And what you find is that Dove took a business that was $2.6 billion and grew it to $6.5 billion over the next 20 years. And it was all, all on the backs of the Real Beauty program. And there's, there's. It's just very clear because the alternative explanations are, are not as convincing. So that's one thing you can do. You do a before, after thing. And I'll say one more thing, Mike. One of the reasons is that brand building is not respected as much as it should be is because it's not that good. And we can get into this too. How do you communicate in today's hostile environment? But the reality is there aren't very many real beauty programs that are generating visibility, image, lift and engagement for brands.

[Mike Linton]

I want to go back to this, but first I want to say, is there a difference between brands? When you go in the B2B world and you're selling like middleware or software or something versus the B2C world. Because the B2C world, you know, you got all. You got a lot of. Actually a bunch of people that believe in brands, particularly in, you know, pure consumer goods. How about in the B2B world where it's all about sales and leads in a lot of companies? Are brands perform the same way in the B2B space?

[David Aker]

No, no, there's a quite a difference. One of the. My second book, I talked about how you manage brands and what my point was. There's no preconceived set of dimensions for a brand, right. That you check off a box. You develop the dimensions that are appropriate for you. And there's a quite a difference between B2B to B2C. I mean, as a generality, of course, all brands are different, but in the B2C space, it's probably brand personality is more important and to the relationship and than it is in a B2B setting. And the other thing is in a B2B setting, what is much more important is the organization that's behind the brand. So organizational values have some role to play in B2C, but nothing like they do in B2B. Because in B2B you are not buying so much a product or service as you are, you're buying a relationship with an organization that you need to make sure they deliver on that product or service and that they're implicit to deal with. They're not annoying, they're not so complicated or complex or cumbersome that it's a pain in the ass. You want somebody that's easy to deal with. You what, like somebody that's fun and, and positive to deal with, but you want somebody that will deliver on there.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah, you have to. Well, the other thing about B2B is, you know, unlike consumer goods, where I have a giant market, a lot of times in B2B, if I'm selling like middleware, I don't have that many buyers. And so if I don't do what you just said, which is my whole company is designed to help you get the benefit I'm selling, I don't win, I lose the buyer. I want to go back to your comment about people are doing branding poorly now or they're doing brand management poorly. Tell me what you mean by that and what you're seeing.

[David Aker]

Well, if I look at the future of branding, I see several challenges and, and one of the most difficult challenges is the fact that we've got a hostile communication environment. We have skeptical audiences and these audiences are control of the media as they never have been before. And we have all this media clutter coming and coding. We have, and we have enormous information overload. And so what you have out there is a customer that's looking at the media and saying, you know, this isn't relevant to me, I'm not even going to look at it. Or I mean, I don't care about it, too busy, or they're going to say it's even worse. This is annoying. I don't want it spending my time on this. Why are they annoying me with this stuff? I get it out of here. And, and then even if they, they somehow get ex. Get over that barrier, they're going to be skeptical. They're going to say, yeah, but, and, and so it's necessary to, to communicate quite differently than we've ever communicated before. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. And I think it's worse in the B2B space, especially high tech space, because you've got these people in the C suite that really believe that people are rational. They really believe they're going to actually rationally look at the decision and objectively look at the evidence and that they really will benefit and welcome. You telling me the specs of your product. And it's never been true, but it's sure as hell not true now.

[Mike Linton]

No. And I also think that is where the B2B people are saying my logic is your logic as a buyer and in many instances, and we know it from all marketplaces, the consumer logic is not based on your ROI or your thinking. It's based on how even if you.

[David Aker]

Buy a car and you can access all this computerized knowledge about all the dimensions of the car. Right. Or if you're buying an airplane, you're comparing Boeing to Airbus and you got all this data, you know, at the end of the day you're gonna say plus is minus confusing too much to process? I go by my instinct.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah.

[David Aker]

I mean you're gonna say, you know, Boeing's gonna deliver or, and, or you know, you know, Toyota, you know, they're, I'm not going to make too big a mistake buying a Toyota and it's going to come to the brand they're instinctively feeling about how they trust that brand and how much they would like to have a relationship. But one thing I would say about the B2C world that I didn't mention is that self expressive benefits are often more relevant in the B2C world than they are to B2B. And of course in the B2B there's old saying you never could get fired by buying IBM. But in the B2C world you really do represent yourself and your lifestyle to others and to yourself from what you buy and use. And so self expressive benefits can play a bigger role.

[Mike Linton]

Give us some examples of brands that are doing that well now if you see any.

[David Aker]

Well, my, my, I really like the dove real beauty thing and I, I also wrote a book called Pursuit of, of Purpose Driven Branding. The future of Purpose Driven Branding which I argued that, that you know, you, you need to have social programs that help the business because, and, and because then they'll thrive in the long run because they'll, they'll be a partner and not a, you know, a charity case and they provide to the business things. You can't get any other way. You can't get energy and visibility and image left any other way. I mean especially if you're a bar soap and if you put up a social program that can and really work magic and people, I mean that's another thing that people have to learn going forward more generally. They have to learn how to communicate.

[Mike Linton]

I want to make sure we're being really clear because when you are talking about the real beauty program. One of the things you're saying is the social cause is inherently connected to the brand. It's not like we're talking about something that is far away from the brand or as you said, a charitable case. You're talking about a pillar of the brand benefit. Is that right? Am I getting that right?

[David Aker]

I think that you have to. What's right is that you have to be committed to the social issue. You have to be committed to it, you have to be a thought leader, you have to be knowledgeable, you have to be making a difference as a partner. You have to be actively involved. It doesn't mean that if you're a soap, you are restricted to lifebuoys. Help a child Reach five is a hand washing program and that's of course connected to bar soap. But beauty is not that connected to a bar soap. The audience for a soap or the prime segment for soap is women and they care about real beauty, but it's not that. And I'll give you another example. Thrivent, the financial services company adopted about 17 years ago Habitat for Humanity. And they have their 2 million customers by zip code organized into brand communities. And they do social good and half their social good goes to Habitat for Humanity. And if you ask any of their members what is it about ThriveIt you respect? And they say, well, they do this Habitat for Admin, they really believe it and they really are into it and they've done it for a long time and they're committed. And that has nothing to do with financial services.

[Mike Linton]

Got it. Hey, let me flip this a little bit and say in the marketplace you just described in this, I like the concept hostile environment. What are the biggest mistakes today's marketers are making?

[David Aker]

Well, I think the biggest branding mistake that I see is a lack of appreciation that a brand is not built in isolation and there's other brands. It's a brand team approach. And for that reason and for the reason that we started the conversation that short termism was coming in, I developed this 5B's as a reminder to people that branding is more than awareness and image. It's an asset you have to build. It's brand loyalty is in there and I include it as a fifth B brand portfolio because I think the lowest hanging fruit is to use companion brands more extensively, more visibly and more actively. So if you're a brand, it's just not your brand. You're not a lonesome hole in the desert. You've got co brands, you've got endorser brands, you've got sub Brands and they can help you be stronger in certain markets. And then most of all you've got what I call silver bullet brands and they are what I call branded differentiators, branded energizers and branded source of credibility. I go into a, a company and I work with some nonprofits now I say what is your secret sauce? Why are you better than anybody else? What are you proud of? And they can give me a three minute articulated beautiful description of what that secret sauce is. And then I ask why isn't it branded? I mean you got to brand these things. If you don't brand it, it doesn't activate as a co for culture dimension and it's not communicated very well.

[Mike Linton]

Hey, can you give us an example of. You just ran down a list of different ways of brands where you had companion brands and supporter brands and silver bullet brands. Give us an example. You know, under the brands do not standalone thing of a of where some of these are at play.

[David Aker]

Well, one of my favorite examples is Uniqlo, the Japanese retailer. And they're just simply a remarkable company. And one of the things they branded is their innovation and fabric. And they really went this huge growth thing with a disruptive innovation. They learned how to make these, what do you call them, these jackets that are foaming thing. They learned to make them cheap and they could sell them really good stuff at thing. And their business exploded around in 1980, 98 or 99. And so then they decided, well, we're gonna actually do this more broadly. We're going to become the retailer that pioneers and innovates fabrics. And they invested a lot of money, they got a partner in a fabric company and four years later they came out with HeatTech, a fabric that keeps heat inside if it's underwear inside the clothes. Yeah. And then they later came out with aerism fabric that it retains coolness in the summertime. And so they now have about 50 different garments that have heat tech in them and they got 30 or so that got airism in them. And that's a branded differentiator. It's a, it's something that, that and all these other retailers are trying to get something like that. And, and you know my favorite example was Heavenly Bed that came out and, and so anyway, if you brand something like that, you have not only a short term advantage, not only you can create a new subcategory and be the only relevant player as all disruptive innovations are potentially capable of doing, but you can own that forever.

[Mike Linton]

So I want to flip this over a little bit. Because we've talked about branding and the Uniqlo example is excellent, where you have disruptive innovation over time that is continuing to build the brand. And then you have the super bowl where people are pouring millions of dollars into the ad and the media buy and blowing stuff up or having massive celebrities. How do you think about all the super bowl ads and what goes on there in your vision of branding?

[David Aker]

Well, if you stop and think about it, if you have information overload, if you have media clutter, if you have audience skepticism, how do you break through? Well, you have to distract from counter arguing. You have to be something that is so entertaining, so informative, so emotional, so interesting that you will listen to it or you will read it.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah.

[David Aker]

You can't just say, let me tell you my brand. It's got four bullet points. You're going to be really impressed.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah, here's my PowerPoint.

[David Aker]

You just can't do that anymore. And so therefore, you know, if you go to the super bowl, do you have ads that are very good? And then you've got the companion problem. And, you know, we've. The. The street is littered with lads over the last half century that were very well attended. Nobody could remember what the brand was, was, what brand was being advertised in, never mind what their point of the ad was. So you've got that challenge, but you really have to, you have to be entertaining, you have to be interesting, you have to be emotional, you just. Because you have to distract from Conor and you have to gain attention. And so it's. And so therefore the super bowl is an. As a vehicle or a place where, you know, conventional quote unquote ads still are important. And so it's really important to go in that direction. And then you got to find a way to tell a story while doing that.

[Mike Linton]

A lot of people are doing borrowed interest in the super bowl ads where you have not just one celebrity, but sometimes two or three. Is that working now or not in your mind?

[David Aker]

I have no idea. I don't know.

[Mike Linton]

Okay, got it.

[David Aker]

What do you think?

[Mike Linton]

I think there's too much borrowed interest if you don't have an inherent brand story. I'm not sure. You know, look, it's one thing to have a celebrity really tied to the brand and making it work shortly. We did that with J.K. simmons at Farmers. But I think if you are borrowing celebrities all the time for this, I'm not sure it actually works because, well, I'll say this.

[David Aker]

In fact, I'm trying to write a paper for the political people about this, if you're in this situation, information overload, skeptical audience and so on, that, and you do get through and you do have a message. Maybe it was entertaining, but it had a message. You really need a tagline or you really need a symbol. Because if, if you don't have that, you're not, it's not going to be remembered, it's not going to affect anything. So the, the role of a tagline and symbol become more and more important than ever. And, and so because you got it at the end of the ad, you got us, you don't want to hope that they figure it out. You're looking out, you want to point at this ad. Here is the point of the ad.

[Mike Linton]

Yes.

[David Aker]

And then, and then over time you'll remember the point. Oh yeah, I don't have to remember this, I can just retrieve it from memory. And the symbol is the same thing. Now in the case, if there's a celebrity that can become a symbol, in that case it might be helpful. But if in the absence of that, I don't think, or if the celebrity can help make the ad more entertaining or so forth, then maybe it has a role. But I don't think as far as trying to borrow the Celebrities association makes much sense.

[Mike Linton]

Hey, I want to. Before we get to our traditional last question, AI is changing the world. There's maybe less jobs in a lot of starting marketing and agency roles. What is your advice to up and coming marketers as to how to actually have a good career in the age of AI going forward? And, and how do you even teach them in college, how to be ready for all of this?

[David Aker]

Well, there are courses at AI. In fact, my daughter taught a course at Stanford. It still does on, on the softer side of AI. So you can, there's AI courses. I think we used to tell people then, if you're young people and you want a job in a branding or marketing department, learn social media because the people running that are petrified of its impact and they don't understand it at all. And I think the same thing is sort of true with AI. Now, if you can learn to be an expert in AI, there's going to be a place for you because companies, marketing groups are trying to adapt to AI and, and it's a moving target and they're struggling. And so that's a foot in the door. I think that what's going to happen in the branding sense is that we can do this professional branding job that took so much money and took so much time. We can do it Faster and cheaper. What that's going to mean is that the number of, of companies that can afford to do quality branding are going to expand greatly. So a small startup or a modest company here and there can, can now do professional branding because it's going to get cheaper than before.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah, because I can now be. If I could just think of the idea, AI can make it cool, create it for me. I can.

[David Aker]

Well, I don't think that's. Well, I don't think that's true. At least not now. I don't know if it'll ever be true. But you can, you know, you can staff your people, you can staff with somebody that can do that or you can hire a firm that now can do it for you. That was heretofore unaffordable.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah. One of our guests called it the democratization of creativity. And, and that he was making the same point you're making which is smaller and medium sized companies will be able to do what big companies have had to spend a ton of money on going forward.

[David Aker]

And that I don't think they necessarily have to learn to do it themselves. That's a big, huge.

[Mike Linton]

Exactly.

[David Aker]

They can still hire people to do it or they can staff up to do it. But the people they staff up with or the companies they hire can have an option for them that's you know, 25% of what they, they had to charge before.

[Mike Linton]

Exactly. And I think, I think that will be super interesting. Which brings us to our traditional last question. It's. There's two parts. You can take one or both but you have to take at least one part. Funniest story you can tell on the air and. Or practical advice to our listeners we haven't discussed yet.

[David Aker]

Wow. Gosh. I can't. I, I'm a very humorous guy, I think. Yeah. But I, I usually have to react in order to. Yeah, I'm not good at remembering stories.

[Mike Linton]

Let's go with the second point.

[David Aker]

Back when I was lecturing at then I would have some stories I would reuse a lot. But advice I think it comes down to marketing. People really have a challenge and a duty to elevate brands to an asset and to convince people that you need to build assets. In doing so you need to consider these things. We talked about self expressive benefits like organizational values and so forth. And they need to learn to use stories, they need to learn to use social programs, they need to use branded differentiators and other branded partners and yeah. And they do of course need to with everybody else learn to apply AI to elevate, elevate their branding.

[Mike Linton]

I think that's a great way to end the show. You have a duty, marketers, to build your brand into an asset. And thank you, David, for joining us. And thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you're enjoying the show, hit the like button and subscribe. Look for all of our shows on Spotify, Apple and YouTube, which include marketing. The battle between believers and non believers, Parts one and two. Is the CMO position the hardest job in business? The top five mistakes CEOs and boards make when hiring CMOs, and the case for and against CMOs. Hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential.