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- [00:08]
Rob Meyerson
Welcome to How Brands Are Built, where branding professionals get into the details of what they do and how they do it. I'm your host, Rob Meyerson. Thanks for listening. Today's episode is special. It's the edited version of a live stream on LinkedIn that I recorded with Fabian Gerhalter. Fabian introduces himself on the conversation, so I won't do too much of that here, but I just want to say a couple of things. He is the host of his own podcast, Hitting the Mark, which you should definitely check out. He's also the author of several best selling books including how to Launch a Brand and the Brand Therapy Book. But he's the principal and founder of his own agency in LA called Finian, and he calls that a purposely small consultancy based in Los Angeles. I love that purposely small part. I interviewed Fabian on the podcast a few years ago, so his voice may sound familiar. You should go check out that episode. And I had a great time talking with him then as well as this time. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as well. Here it is. Hi everybody, I'm Rob Meyerson. For those of you who don't know me, I'll just kick off by introducing myself and then I'll ask Fadian to do the same. Share a little bit about what we'll be discussing today. So I run Heirloom. We're a brand strategy and identity firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Do a lot of brand positioning work, brand architecture work, and naming. I wrote a book about naming called Brand Naming, which we may talk about a little bit. Today I host a podcast called How Brands Are Built, which is also a blog. And then most recently, I have co authored the latest edition of Designing Brand Identity, which I think really is sort of the impetus for this call. Fabian and I chat all the time. We've talked about previous books that he's written and that I've written. But Designing Brand Identity was something that kind of got us wanting to have this live chat. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about brand identity in general. We'll talk about some, some books and some products that Fabian has brought into the world as well. But Fabian, why don't you talk about that a little bit and introduce yourself.
- [02:19]
Fabian Gerhalter
Sounds good. I realized we're basically a complete mirror image of each other, not only because of the awkward promotion that my designer designed, but we're like equal height and everyone knows Rob very, very tall. That was totally a design choice. No, but there is. It's amazing how we both do a lot of the same things. So, in fact, we're actually direct competitors. And I should actually head out of here, so bye.
- [02:45]
Rob Meyerson
Rob, this is all you know or I should.
- [02:47]
Fabian Gerhalter
Well, or you should. Right. So basically, we both provide naming and identity services. We both run a podcast about brand creation. We both have books about branding on Amazon. So it's kind of. It's kind of crazy and. And really cool. I think that makes it so interesting to hear both of our opinions today. So I run a brand strategy and identity consultancy. We create clarity for brand transformations. I also a partner at Chameleon Collective, which is a brand transformation consultancy, wrote books on branding bigger than this. How to launch a brand Run a podcast where I don't talk to marketers because I don't like talking to people that are exactly like myself, besides Rob. So I talk to founders.
- [03:34]
Rob Meyerson
Special exception for me, thanks.
- [03:36]
Fabian Gerhalter
Very special. I talk to founders about how they actually created clarity for their own brand. So I talked to, like, the founder of liquid dev and JetBlue, intelligentso, et cetera, et cetera. And that's pretty much it for intros, I think, because most of you know either Rob or myself or both of us. So one more housekeeping note I should mention. Rob named this session today about building and launching successful brands in 2024 and what does it take? And of course, we're going to have that as the carrot until the very end. So at the very end, we will both kind of reveal, like right now for us, what is that big thing that we think is the biggest advice that we can give. So just stick around to the end for that. But with that being said, and while I have the mic, let me start interrogating you, Rob, because I know this is going to go both ways. Let's talk about that subject, though, about 2024. Branding. In 2024, you wrote a book about brand identity. Right now it just got released. In your mind, like, what changed? You know, especially it's the 6th edition now of the book, like what Changed in Brand Identity? What is the state of brand identity in 2024?
- [04:54]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I think the fact, as you put it, the fact that this is the sixth edition of a classic book, which we should mention right off the bat that this is Alina Wheeler's book. Alina Wheeler wrote Designing brand identity in 2003. She created five more editions of it, including this one, which I just came on board to co author with her. But I think the state of brand identity right now is sort of encapsulated in that fact that it's the sixth edition of a classic. Because a lot of the basics still ring true. That's the reason this book has lived as long as it has, and of course it has changed dramatically since 2, 2003. But also many of the topics that are in it and some of the just basic definitions and descriptions of those topics still hold true. But we also need to create new editions of this book every three to five years, or Alina did, and I've helped with this one because so much has changed also. I mean, since the first edition, you know, back in 2003, we didn't have iPhones. Social media has exploded since then. You know, everything that's happened in just the world, the pandemic, social change, cultural change, brands. You know, it may feel like, well, what does it have to do with brands? On one level, you can sort of separate those in your mind. But of course brands have to react to that whether they like it or not. And brands can even help drive some of that in some, maybe very special cases where brands kind of drive or take a front seat in cultural changes. And so there is a whole section of this book called Brand Dynamics that has to do with some of those trends. Social justice, AI, new digital interfaces. And because we all need to react to these and brands need to react to them, I think, you know, I think it's important to stay up to date. And so that's sort of the state of brand identity today, I think. But I mean, you're, you're an expert on this topic as well. As you mentioned, we do a lot of the same things. So what do you think is changing? What do you feel like is the state of brand identity?
- [06:54]
Fabian Gerhalter
It's a crazy state right now. It's like I feel like in the last six to 12 months, with AI being really introduced to the masses, I think everything is in flux. So to me, it's a really hard, it's a hard question to answer because first there was Adobe and Photoshop and that completely changed how brand identity was created and how the entire industry works. Then it was fiverr and a fast slope downhill and now it's AI. And I really feel like what is happening because of all of these tools and I can also attest to that myself because now that I'm driving my own little startup hardware brand, I'm doing things differently than I would have advised my clients, which is interesting, right? So I see that, I see that everything is more fluid. I feel like that a brand's overall identity, so less the name and the logo, but really the overall vibe, right. I feel like it is becoming ever more fluid. It is constantly kind of like adjusting a little bit and I think that's kind of great. I think brands and brand identity itself with will start to take itself less seriously and I think that's a great thing as long as it is within some sort of guide rails. Because if this is going, you know, going out of, out of, out of any guardrails, sorry, it's going to be a hot mess. Right. But I love that idea that brands are consistently kind of like changing their look a little bit and moving forwards. But, but the foundations of how a brand, how a name is crafted, how a brand is crafted, how an identity is shaped, that very much stays the same. And I think that that's the idea of why there is a sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity because it's this age old saying, you need to know the rules in order to break them. Right. And I think now we are going to very quickly identify by the brands that don't know the rules and the intern in AI is running it. Right. Versus the brands that actually know those foundational, you know, rules. Which I guess. Yeah, go ahead.
- [09:22]
Rob Meyerson
No, I was gonna say, I just saw, I don't know if you saw this. Somebody posted on LinkedIn the other day and I wanna, I don't wanna call people out, but I didn't read the full post so maybe there was more to it than I thought there was. But it said why have one logo when you can have 20? And my action was because you don't want 20. Now 20 to your point, 20 variations on a very distinctive clear logo sort of idea. Because there was also a recent post by. I'm going to forget his name, but he's a big Instagram influencer. I feel bad for getting his name, who does a lot of like Photoshop and Illustrator kind of tips and tools. And he just showed off how Adobe Firefly can help you create these really cool interpretations and iterations of your logo. And sort of like MTV did back in the, in the 90s where you had.
- [10:12]
Fabian Gerhalter
Right.
- [10:12]
Rob Meyerson
You know, and that I think is cool. Right. That's a way to kind of flex your identity. That I think is. And that's using AI and that I think that's similar to what you're talking about. Whereas having 20 very different logos, that's where you start to veer off kind of some of the fundamentals of just like, yeah, you want to be recognizable.
- [10:28]
Fabian Gerhalter
You know, I think this is a super interesting conversation. I would love everyone to jump in, in the comments too. Right. Because this is pretty juic. I feel like brands, brands that I really loved back when I was growing up, which of course is five years ago, like Burton snowboards, right. Burton had this thing where literally every season they came out with all kinds of new logos, like new ideas of how the logo can work. And to me that was kind of like the skate snowboard kind of like attitude where you're not corporate. And so I think that again, it's rooted in brand strategy. There are brands where that idea of, you know, Marty Neuma, zigzag, right. Like that idea of like, oh well, if corporate goes this way, why don't we have 20 logos? Because our, our, our tribe doesn't care about that. Because as long as the logos all have some similarity in attitude, it can be amazing. But, but I think, I think because now we have those tools, like we had the tools, like Photoshop, there's going to be a crazy amount of stuff happening in the next couple of years of like, how will brands take this? Well, that said, talking about those guardrails, let's go back to your book for a little longer here. This is the first time I believe that Alina had a co author for her book. Why you? Why not me? No, how did you, how were you chosen and how did you take this on? And it must have been a massive, massive undertaking.
- [12:07]
Rob Meyerson
It's a great question. I think. Not you, simply because Alina hadn't met you and I made sure that that didn't happen. Yeah, no, I, I kept you a secret. No, I mean, I didn't think it would be me either. Alina and I met because I interviewed her for my podcast years ago and you know, we, we hit it off, I guess you could say, and, and sort of became fast friends and kept in touch. But I think that has a lot to do just with Alina's personality, which, you know, we can talk about as well. But she, she is, she was just the friendliest, most down to earth person for, for all these sort of heroes of mine that I got to interview on the podcast. She is one of those people who is just, yeah, so, so sort of kind and generous and does not come off as kind of a, like a guru that's up on a, on a mountaintop somewhere that's untouchable. She's very kind of just a real person. And so she stayed in touch with me and we talked a lot about work, what I was doing. When I wrote my book, Brand Naming, I asked her if she would write the forward for it and she did that. And I think that was a big milestone in that we got to write together, you know, edit each other. She looked at my book, I looked at her forward, and we gave comments back and forth to each other. And I think that's when she probably started to get the idea that I might be a good partner on this. She did know years ago when I interviewed her that she was going to be stepping away from designing Brand Identity. The way she told it, her husband gave her an ultimatum that it was either him or the book. As you can imagine, this book was a huge part of her life. And I think, you know, he was ready for her to spend a little more time enjoying the, the golden years and spending time with him, which, you know, they were such a fun couple and spent a lot of time with friends and family. And so she was able to take a step back a little bit just by having me as a co author and not being the sole person who this edition, you know, it wasn't solely on her shoulders, but yeah, in terms of why me? You know, the way she put it, and this is in the introduction to the sixth edition, she wrote a little blurb about this. We each answered three kind of big questions about the new edition and about designing brand identity. And one of hers was essentially why, why me? And it kind of came down to two things. She wanted somebody who, whose head was in this space in sort of a deeper way than just, you know, all of us are practitioners or strategists or designers or neighbors, but somebody who kind of thinks about it on a day to day basis. And so the fact that she liked the fact that I had had a lot of different roles, both client side and agency side, that I'd done it in the US but also Asia. So I brought some of that kind of cultural awareness to it, which is really important to her and to me. And the fact that I have a podcast and was writing a book about naming just gave her this sense that I like talking about this stuff, I like thinking about this stuff, and to do a book like this, you have to kind of have that mindset or you're going to burn out on it quickly. So I think those two things combined that I was sort of in the space in, in more than just a superficial way and that she felt I would commit to creating the best possible version of this book. Just having seen my work and seen the amount of work that I put into things like the podcast and the book, yeah, I think that was It. But I should know one thing. It also wasn't just me. She was fond of saying, no one does it alone. You'll see that in the book. You'll see that in pretty much every edition of the book. This is a huge team of collaborators. Most significantly, Robin Goffman, who's the creative director on the book. I'm not a designer. She helped lay out every page. She was a real partner in this as well. And then, of course, the publishing team, the editor and everybody else, and lots of people contributed content. So it's not a solo effort. It's not even a, you know, an effort of just me and Alina, but. But a team. So a lot of people to thank, and we do thank them in the book.
- [16:17]
Fabian Gerhalter
And Rob, sorry, one thing, you know, some. Some listeners might not know, but sadly, Alina passed away. And so it is. It is pretty hard for Rob to talk about this. I noticed this right now. Right. It's not. It's not the easiest of things, but it. But it. But it is joyful because. Because it's in remembrance. So I just want to. That people are. People are aware of that. And you were the perfect person to do this for so many reasons. As you know, I'm really busy these days with running companies, which one was already enough. But I did get enough chance to go through the book to very quickly understand why this was the perfect pair. And I think everyone should be very, very excited diving into it.
- [17:02]
Rob Meyerson
Thank you for saying that. And, you know, when she asked me, and also, I didn't immediately say yes, believe it or not, which feels kind of crazy now because it's been such a huge honor and such an amazing experience and opportunity. But when she first came to me, I sort of like you just said, I felt like, man, you know, I've written a book before. I know how much work that takes. I have young kids. I have. I'm running a business. I just wasn't sure I could get on board for something that felt so overwhelming. And it was overwhelming in a lot of ways, but we talked about it a lot. She was very transparent about kind of the pros and cons of doing something like this. Having Robin involved, both as a point of continuity, but also as just someone who I could really lean on to help with. It was a huge. Made a huge difference. And so, yeah, in the end, I was just too excited to have that opportunity to learn from Alina, to work closely with her, to talk to branding professionals all over the world, find out what they're doing, and Just kind of, you know, look at their work and get their work into the book. Yeah. So it's an honor and very bittersweet launching this book. We really had hoped that Alina would, would be here to promote it with me. The, the happy news on that front is that she was able to see this through to completion. She saw the digital, you know, the PDF copies of the final pages as they went to the publisher. The only change we made after she passed away was adding a tribute to her at the front of the book as quickly as we could. You know, I mean, it was like already on the way to the printer. Crazy when she passed away. So sad that she never got to hold it in her hands. But I take some solace in just the fact that she knew it was done and she loved, you know, everything in this edition. She, she contributed everything in this edition. She's the kind of person who, as you know, it's almost like maybe she shouldn't have been, but she was down to the last few months giving feedback on pages in this book. So it has her fingerprints all over it. And it's such a better product and book as a result of that. It was a true collaboration and she got to see that it was done and got to know that it was done and that there would be a sixth edition and, and that there was a team, not just me, but a team of people that were committed to carrying slightestly forward.
- [19:28]
Fabian Gerhalter
And I mean, the book, for those of you who don't know about the book, I mean it is really a brand classic. I mean, for me it was such a staple for when we started writing how to launch a brand. And back in the beginning it was really we. Because it was more of like, hey, this is how brands should be launched. And so really going not trying to, to innovate how brands are launched, but for our way, like these are the steps that we really think are important. We leaned heavily on, on I don't know what edition it was of at Lena's book. Right. I quote, I, you know, in how to launch a brand, the naming section, the different types of brand names came straight from, from, from Designing Brand Identity, of course, with credits and we mentioned it that we take it right from that book. Right. So it really like the influence that she had on not just me, you know, like in the practice, but everyone in the design world is unbelievable. And it is wonderful that you were able to kind of carry not the full torch, right. But you carry this, you carry it over right now with being able to have that book out there. So bravo, bravo. And I know that in the book, in the very back you say Alina warned me that this will be much, much more work than you could ever imagine. And it was even more than that. Right. So I know it was a lot of you that was put into.
- [20:59]
Rob Meyerson
Was more work than I imagined, but also more rewarding than I could have imagined. So. Yeah, so I underestimated on both counts.
- [21:06]
Fabian Gerhalter
Let's talk a little bit more, more about that process. Right. Like how was it creating a new addition? Like how did you kind of like we to the last edition and adding to it. Where do you start? What are the hardest parts?
- [21:20]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, well, you've written multiple great books. I'm looking at them up on my shelf here. And how to launch a brand. I imagine like my naming book to some degree, it's sort of a dump of your own brain onto the page. Right. And it's mostly words, so it's a lot of just kind of prose and writing and editing your own writing and getting feedback on your writing. This book was very different. And maybe, I wonder if, if any of your books were like this, but this was kind of going outside of myself and collecting a bunch of good content from other people. Whether those are case studies or just there are topics in this book that frankly, I don't know. I'm not. I either don't know anything about or I'm not. Not an expert on. And so we really wanted to get experts. You know, if I'm writing about typography, I want someone who knows typography. Even if I'm editing a page about typography, I want an expert. And so for that we went to James Edmondson of oh no, Typeco and just said, hey, look at these two pages about typography. Is there anything on here that you would change? Is there anything that you would add any newer, fresher examples that you would add? And that was a lot of the process was kind of getting in touch with experts, getting in touch with the agencies, getting their work into the book, getting better examples of things into the book. And that made it really different from, from sort of writing a book.
- [22:43]
Fabian Gerhalter
Yeah, yeah, it's. And, and, and you know, I mean, I would get such panic attacks and anxiety over the idea of having, you know, thousands of logos and other people's work and photography and everything in this book. I mean, this book is like filled with case studies and examples, which makes it so amazing and so rich. Right. But how do you not wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, wait, did I give the right person credit or did we forget about this or this happened last minute or we miscredited someone like this must be very stressful.
- [23:13]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, thank. No, thanks, Fabian. I'll probably not be able to sleep tonight because of, because of this question. The answer is I probably did. I probably did, you know, have a lot of that. I think. Well, I'm going to pull this down here because I think, is this the one holding Fabian's book bigger than this? Is this the one where you go. It's like, I think it's like five or six case studies about.
- [23:35]
Fabian Gerhalter
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [23:37]
Rob Meyerson
With that great fish fishing company. Right. I love this book's great, by the way, for anyone who has not checked it out and wants like really sort of in depth case studies and explanations of how businesses build great brands. Yeah. So you had to do a little of that, I assume, right?
- [23:55]
Fabian Gerhalter
Kind of. Not really. No, no, no. I mean, seriously, like, because, because really all that. All I did is I, is I just talked about what these companies do in the way that I see it. Right. So. So I didn't include images, I didn't include quotes from their CEOs, and if so, I credited them to Forbes or wherever I saw the quotes. So in a way it was kind of like a cop out situation because I. No, no, I have so much anxiety about that. Like, oh my God, they're gonna come after me.
- [24:25]
Rob Meyerson
I mean, I, I learned, I learned so much about this and I'm not, you know, I'm not a lawyer. So don't, don't anyone take away from this that I'm giving you sort of the final word on it. But yeah, we could quote people, especially if we're pulling it from an article. We could do that without permission. Although Alina really liked to ask permission anyway. Just as a courtesy, we could put logos in the book. I learned with. Without really asking for permission, just to show a logo, maybe not on the COVID but inside the book. If it's for educational purposes, we could do that. But for images, diagrams, anything like that, we needed written permission. Luckily, I had Alina, who had done this many times. The publisher had been involved in this many times. They had a form that we asked people to sign. But still, from a process standpoint, it was really hard. We had, you know, I can't remember what it's called, but one of those, like boards where you have like sticky notes or cards on it for each case study, for example, and really for each page of the book where we remove them from left to right from like having even looked at this one yet all the way over to we have a signature and we got them to send us a high res image that, you know, we confirmed is the right resolution for printing. Wow. And in between all these steps of like, we're waiting for them to reply to our latest email.
- [25:42]
Fabian Gerhalter
And was that a physical, a physical board or was it, was it digital?
- [25:45]
Rob Meyerson
No, because it was digital.
- [25:47]
Fabian Gerhalter
I figured.
- [25:48]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, we used Trello. Yeah, we used Trello because we're spread all over the place. Right. Robin's based in New Jersey, I'm out here in California. We had other people involved in other places. Alina was in Philadelphia most of the.
- [25:59]
Fabian Gerhalter
Time because Alina had these boards like back, you know, like back back in the day. I see the pictures in there. That's why I asked because she literally, that book was a room of her life. It was pretty amazing.
- [26:11]
Rob Meyerson
Yes. Yeah. Well, we did, we did do that on our own that you, you may have seen a picture of me online with these printed spreads all over the floor of my office. Alina also was doing things like that, as was Robin. And then we did get together in Philadelphia and fill the coffee table, you know, in her, in her home with these spreads and marked them up and things like that. So we did a little of it physically. Alina liked to do that. I'll show again, if you're listening to this, you won't be able to see it, but on the fifth edition she sent me this really close to when we started. It's her fifth edition with just Sharpie all over it throughout it. You know, get rid of this, get a new example here, keep this. I love it. You know, what do you think of this? And just throughout the whole book. And so that was kind of the starting point of like, okay, well I guess I have to find a new example here or you know, do I agree with her that this needs to stay or go? And let's talk about that. That was one of the jumping off points for this project. But I want to ask you, fandin your book, how to launch a brand, how long ago now did that come out?
- [27:15]
Fabian Gerhalter
That's a mighty long time ago. I have no idea. Nine years? Ten years?
- [27:20]
Rob Meyerson
I thought about ten years. Yeah, about ten years. Well, let's do this. I wanted to ask you about that. And then also this brand tone optic that you've launched, so maybe you can tell us and tell everyone about launching a brand, but in the context of now you've actually done It With a real physical product that you've created. So I guess just for the listeners, Toneoptic is. Correct me if I'm wrong here. It's. It's a rotating way of displaying and storing your vinyl records in your home. So correct me on that. How would you describe Tone Optic?
- [27:55]
Fabian Gerhalter
No, that's. No, that's good.
- [27:58]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. What was the process of creating that brand and launching it?
- [28:02]
Fabian Gerhalter
Well, it's a strange. It's a strange kind of niche. Niche. Niche brand. Right. But it is fascinating for me to see how I rethink how brands are launched and how the process goes when I'm in the first person experiencing it. Right. So Toneoptic is a niche product. It's basically records. Vinyl records are back. People love them. I have over 2,000 of them. I always like them. Right. So you basically store them on the wall, just like books. Right. So you've got your library and you've got your record collection. The problem is you can't find anything because all you see is these tiny spines. So not like book spines that you can read, record spines. Most of them are tiny. They're worn out, especially the older ones. And so during the pandemic, I had more time to listen to music and I realized I listened to the same 10 records over and over because they have big fat spines and they're like, in color and whatever. Right. And so it brought back an idea that I sketched down a long time ago. Like, we all do. We sketch down, like, tons of ideas of, like, wouldn't that be cool? And wouldn't that be cool and we never do anything about it. And the idea was that I could just pull out these records from the shelf, you know, from. From the nice library, pull them out, it rotates towards me. I can flip through them like in a record shop and then push them back in, and they're still library style. So that was the idea. And then the silly thing is I actually asked someone, how difficult would that be to create? And that was my biggest problem, because from there on, you know, it was a slippery road because the next thing I know is I pay money for someone to start thinking about it, you know, and one thing leads to another, and here we are, you know, like three years later, and I'm producing them and selling them. But it was really an exercise of form and function and bringing. Bringing this together. And I know, Rob, you mentioned on LinkedIn that it was in Design Milk, it was actually the number one post in home furnishing and Design milk in 2020. Two, which is insane because the product didn't really exist yet and I was competing with, with all the big furnishing companies. So it was really, really cool, but so jealous.
- [30:05]
Rob Meyerson
Design Milk. Design Milk is such a cool, huge interior design. And yeah, so that was, that's awesome.
- [30:12]
Fabian Gerhalter
It was amazing for me, for, for someone who's not a product designer to, to get that because, you know, it was just absolutely amazing. But thinking about from a branding perspective, launching this brand, the branding part was so, so easy because obviously I do it day in, day out, right? Like, I mean, that's what I do. So the brand strategy I did on a, on a, on a, on a flight to Europe. I remember that I used my own Kool Aid and did my Resonate workshop and went through that. The name came very easily to. Everything kind of fell in place. What was really hard was everything else. And it was really, it was hardest. Not even the implementation of the brand. It was just running a hardware startup, producing a product, mass producing, shipping a product. You know, like that part, the manufacturing and the design and they go into all these hoops was so stressful. I tell you, it was the most stressful thing I've ever done in my life. And I thought it would be easy because hey, it's D2C. Just get a product and put it online, Shopify, it's all easy. But it was extremely, extremely stressful.
- [31:19]
Rob Meyerson
I want to, I definitely want to hear about that and why, what, what the maybe unexpected stressors were. But, but going back just to the strategy that you did on a plane and everything did it. You said you drank your own Kool Aid. But like my experience, it's hard to, it's actually hard to do that because you're the client all of a sudden and you realize you. How tough it is to make some of these decisions and you know, it's going to reflect on you whether you get the strategy right and the identity right. So was there anything from that that you took away that you might do differently with clients going forward? Even if it's just kind of the empathy of like. I know, I know this is a tough decision for you.
- [32:01]
Fabian Gerhalter
Well, all of, all of the above. I mean, first of all, yes, I, I felt, I felt extremely vulnerable and exposed creating my own brand. That I'm, I'm the guy who wrote the book how to launch a Brand and I'm telling people how to do it. And here I am like, kind of like either failing or making it in front of everyone, right. And we had a Kickstarter campaign and the Kickstarter, and when we. It's really me, but it's like, I. Obviously, I have a team of people that helps me, too, like Florian and Jesse and, you know, tons of other people. But we had a Kickstarter campaign, and it totally didn't make it. Like, it totally didn't get to that goal. And it was so stressful because I'm, like, exposed, right? So. But a lot of that is ego, and you just get over it. But from. From a brand. From a brand perspective, now that we are flourishing and things are great and things are. Things are looking very, very positive. It. It definitely goes back to what I said in the very beginning of this, that I used to be. Here's the style guide. Here's. Here's the rules, and here's how we are going to be for, like, the first couple of years to make sure people know how this brand behaves online, what the colors are, what the fonts are, et cetera. But sure enough, you know, like, six months in, Jesse, my creative director, is, like, putting a different font in there, and I'm like, jesse, what's up? Why is the font different? And why is the color slightly different? And she's like, yeah, it's more the vibe right now. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is so good. It's more the vibe right now because it's so true, right? And I'm like, oh, my God, you're so right. It's more the vibe right now. This is more us now. And so what I learned with all these crazy founders that are constantly like, oh, let's change this, let's change this. And it drives us brand people crazy to a certain.
- [33:43]
Rob Meyerson
You would roll your eyes, probably.
- [33:44]
Fabian Gerhalter
Yes. But, I mean, we didn't pivot. We weren't like, we're gold. And then we're. We're hot green, Right? It wasn't like that, but it was just kind of like, hey, let's go sans serif, and let's go a little bit more, like, darker on the color lighter. But it's. It's that kind of stuff where as you put content out and as you get feedback from people and as you start seeing your audience slightly skew younger or this way or that way, you. You start changing things. Things. Right? And I think that's. I think it's a healthy thing, and I think brands should be doing that more. And so I think that these, like, style guides, they should constantly start evolving, and they should have wiggle room and playfulness to it. Where it's like, hey, these are the things we're never going to change, at least for the next couple of years. But here, go and play. Go have fun. Don't be stale. And so that's something that I learned. And so when I work with founders now and with companies, it is definitely more like, here are the suggestions now, now fly now, now make it to be organic, and let's touch base in two months, see where you're going. Right. So that, that was hugely different for me.
- [34:48]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I think. Absolutely agree. It's been my experience I haven't launched a product brand, but just in sort of trying to build my own brands around my agency or the podcast, you. You start experimenting a little bit. And I think the experimentation is something that healthy brands do, and you need to allow a little. That's how you figure out what the vibe is. Sometimes, you know, you, you, you try something a little different and it sort of blows up on social media or something like that, and you realize, oh, maybe we need to be doing a little more of that, or it just feels right. And so I, yeah, I completely agree that there's got to be this balance between. That's kind of classic rigidity of the brand guidelines that, you know, will be like this for 10 years until we hire Pentagram to redesign the logo. No, I think it needs to be a lot more flexible, allow for some experimentation, and some of the best brands out there, some of the biggest brands out there. And this goes back to something you said at the very beginning, Fabian, is there's kind of this increase, I think, in everything being in a little bit of a state of flux, the fluidity of a brand, and it's like it's got this core that stays true. It never feels like it's a completely different brand if you're doing it right. But it does feel like it's alive. Like it's, you know, it's not just showing up identically every single time.
- [36:05]
Fabian Gerhalter
And that is easy when you're, when you're a small company, like, like Tone Optic, where it's really more solopreneur stuff in the beginning. Right. And you can kind of like fly with a seat of your pants, and you can do that because it still feels right and it feels on brand. But it gets interesting of what happens when you have a team and what happens when you're a couple hundred people company. How do you keep this kind of intrinsic fluidity going? And that's when things like the book, you know, come back into. Come back into the Game.
- [36:33]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. I should mention we have these ideals in the book, sort of the, the, the principles that we think every strong brand should strive for. Things like authenticity and, and, and two of them are coherence and flexibility and they're, they're right next to each other and they seem like contradictions. But I think it's exactly what we're talking about. It's this tension between having some recognizability over time across countries, across different people, across, you know, co branding partnerships. Your brand is hopefully growing and doing lots of different things in lots of different places. But it has to be similar enough that people recognize it everywhere they see it. And so there, yeah, there's that flexibility as well. That's, that's really critical and that's why they're both in there. I want to ask. Now let's get back to the, the, the unexpected difficulty of running a product company. What, what was, what were some of the things that you didn't expect that were like tougher than you thought they would be? And you know, are there any like, what are some stories of things that went wrong and how did you. Course correct.
- [37:38]
Fabian Gerhalter
I mean, I mean everything went wrong, Rob. I mean this, this could take two hours. No, I mean everything is difficult when you run hardware startup, they say in the industry, now that I'm in it, right. Hardware is hard. Right. There's a reason for it. So you know, we, we, I mean just the production, the production, every single detail can go wrong and it will go wrong. Right. So, you know, but it's also, it's also, you know, things that you, good things that, that, that, that completely change your day. Right. I remember I was about to, to, to go on vacation to Portugal and then right before I shut down my computer and say I'm going to go offline for a little bit. Someone, someone sent me a tweet. What do they call them now? An ex. Whatever. Silly stuff but like a tweet. A formerly known tweet.
- [38:25]
Rob Meyerson
It was a tweet at the time.
- [38:26]
Fabian Gerhalter
It was a tweet at the time. I like that. That's almost romantic, right? It was a tweet at the time of my storage unit doing its thing. Because it's kind of sexy the way that it does that and it's perfect for social and within him posting it and I didn't know that person and he just knew that I'm not aware of it with within like 12 hours it had a million views and it's insane. Right. And so this, this thing started blowing up like crazy. The only problem was that they didn't mention my product name. So I basically spent the entire night before I went on vacation with my wife online replying to every one of the, of the thousands of comments, you know, you know, with Tone Optic to make sure that they know what that is. Right. But it's, but it's things like that you don't think about, right? And you know, or shipping, you know, you put something in a box and you protect it well. And then you don't realize that there's a mechanism within your product that when it gets shipped at a certain, at a certain, you know, level that it actually starts, you know, just being off 1 millimeter and it's stuff like that. But it goes, but there's, there's tons of cool stories. I'm actually writing a book now about it because I figured, you know, if anything I get a book book out of it. Right? So that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm doing now with, with.
- [39:44]
Rob Meyerson
All kinds of how I launched a brand.
- [39:47]
Fabian Gerhalter
I love that. I love that. Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to have it co authored by Rob Myers to have a different viewpoint.
- [39:56]
Rob Meyerson
Tone Optic. You've mentioned the name a few times and I should say go to toneoptic.com if you're watching this because you do have to see this product to kind of get what it is and the way that it moves is really sexy. So go take a look at. But let's talk about the name. We've talked about naming a little bit and I have a couple of things I want to mention just about naming in general. But before we do that, tell me about that name. Was that. What was the process of coming up with it? Was it difficult? Why, why was that?
- [40:21]
Fabian Gerhalter
So Rob, I'm so glad someone finally asks me. Literally no one asks about it because it is.
- [40:27]
Rob Meyerson
So the namer is going to ask about it.
- [40:29]
Fabian Gerhalter
No, I love it because, because it's so normal. Right. The name feels almost uninspired because it's so normal. And I was so, I was so amazed that in the last two, three years no one actually picked on it. Right. So you have to know your audience, right? And with, with me, you know, vinyl collectors, serious vinyl collectors who also have the funds to buy something like my product. They're usually 60 year old men, right? I mean that's kind of like what it is. That's my audience. They have their hi fi rooms. They have the money to spend the time to enjoy. I'm A startup with no background at all in hi Fi or, you know, like product or audio or vinyl in that sense. Right. I wanted to come on and not sound like the cool, hip, fun, young company, but I wanted to sound like something that's basically like a boombox or like something that's been around forever. Like, it also, it almost sounds like an audio tape. Right? Tone Optic. Like, it sounds like something that could have been around in the 70s or 80s. And tone is what is what is always what. What is sound, right? That's music. That's what it's always about. And then Optic is the vision. Right? So. So. So it's basically like David Bowie, who I very much appreciate. It's. It's sound and vision, right? So it's like his song name. Music and design, those are the two things for anyone launching a brand. Right. You have to think about, okay, right now you have this rotating record storage unit, but in the future, what else will you do with it? Right? Like, where could the brand go? How can it have legs? And so by calling it Tone Optic, I noted it will always have to do with music, which is tone, and Optic, which is design. So that's. That's how the name came about.
- [42:14]
Rob Meyerson
I love the name. Actually. It. It totally sounds like something that Don Draper would, you know, would have been one of his clients. Right. It's like, got a mid century modern feel to it that I think works perfectly. Especially now that you've explained the audience, which, you know, I'm not. I. I'm not old enough, I guess maybe I'm not. I'm not in your audience. I'm not a vinyl collector. But you will be. I will be me. Ten years. Yeah. No.
- [42:38]
Fabian Gerhalter
Thinking about Marcus and Mark, by the way. I appreciate your. Your nice comments about it. Yes. Buy the product.
- [42:44]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So, and by the way, you mentioned David Bowie. It's just such a funny coincidence. Anyone who knows Alina Wheeler know will know that she was a huge David Bowie fan. One of her heroes. She gave an entire talk that you can still find on YouTube all about David Bowie. It was about branding.
- [43:01]
Fabian Gerhalter
Oh, amazing. I'm gonna. I'm gonna watch that. Which I am not surprised. I'm not surprised that. That she was a big fan of his. And from a branding perspective, when you look at him and what he pulled off. Yeah, right.
- [43:15]
Rob Meyerson
It's exactly what we've.
- [43:16]
Fabian Gerhalter
It's like way before Prince.
- [43:18]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. And it's kind of what we've been talking about. He was always David Bowie, but He reinvented himself so many times throughout his career. So it's, it's really that. It's that dichotomy. Again, I was going to say just on naming. It's something given my background that I looked at pretty closely in this book. You mentioned the name types that were mentioned in designing brand identity when you looked at it for your book, how to Launch a Brand that it may have. We may have updated it or added to it a little bit because that was one of. Yeah, just one of the first things for me to go in and say, well, how would I take everything from my book and, you know, take the best parts and get it onto these two pages? And so I definitely have.
- [43:55]
Fabian Gerhalter
And you only. See, that's the thing. I looked at this like every. It's. It's one spread for each part of the branding process in the book. Right. And looking at. Here's Rob, Mr. Naming. And he gets a sprint.
- [44:10]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Fabian Gerhalter
Which of course has lots of white space so you can't really fill it with info. Yeah. So that's really interesting. And what changed? So I know that the brand. The types of brand names changed even when we wrote how to Launch a Brand. And I say we because it really was an effort in the beginning. We actually pulled a new name, a new type of name. Back then, I think it was the numeric name. Right. Like 409 formula. 409. Right. We added that to the mix. I know now when we work with clients, we added another one or two into the mix. So things are always fluid. How did you update the naming section? Because I know that this is on topic and a lot of people are interested.
- [44:53]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. So there's a chart that I like to use that talks about the different types of names on sort of two axes. So anyone that's familiar with my work will be familiar with this or even if you're not familiar with my work, because I can't claim to have invented it, but it talks about names in terms of how descriptive or abstract they are. This range from names like the Container Store, which is a store that sells containers, or Whole Foods, which sells food. So it's pretty descriptive all the way out there to things like Virgin and Apple, where, you know, this has nothing to do with the products directly. And then the other axis on it is the type of word. So this is where you would get into numbers, for example, is one type, but much more common are real English words or completely invented words like Ultria. And then these compounds where they take two words like tone. And optic and smush them together. Those are kind of the three main types.
- [45:46]
Fabian Gerhalter
Smush. They were neat to be placed together seamlessly.
- [45:50]
Rob Meyerson
Exactly. Good point.
- [45:52]
Fabian Gerhalter
Seamlessly connected.
- [45:54]
Rob Meyerson
There are others as well. And maybe some of the things you're talking about are, you know, there are founders names, there are brands that are named after their place of origin. I would just call those descriptive real word names. They're just sort of a subtype of that. And there are lots of other ways of thinking about names, but I like to, I think that breakdown really helps kind of orient you in the space of all the different types of names you could come up with.
- [46:22]
Fabian Gerhalter
For anyone who hasn't seen that chart, and I'm sure, Rob, you also had it in your naming book. But that is a chart that if you don't mind sharing it afterwards, maybe in the comments section or a link to where people can find it, that is, it's really great because that way it's not here the seven or eight or 12 different types, but it's kind of like more where. Where, where do you.
- [46:41]
Rob Meyerson
Exactly. Yeah. If you Google how many, you know, what are the different types of names? You will find a lot of those posts. Unfortunately, my SEO is not good enough to take over all of those posts that claim that there are exactly X types of names. And I just, that kind of thinking, not only for naming, but anything really in marketing that claims to be that sort of precise and absolute about, you know, there are three ways to position your brand or there are exactly this many archetypes or whatever it is. I'm always kind of like, I think it's probably more nuanced than that.
- [47:12]
Fabian Gerhalter
And naming, definitely it goes back to the fluidity. Right. Okay, so five minutes left. You titled the live stream building and launching successful brands.
- [47:23]
Rob Meyerson
Yes.
- [47:23]
Fabian Gerhalter
What is your current answer? Because I know it changes every week, every month, every year. For us, at least for me it would. Right. Because there's so many things that go, you know, that can go wrong.
- [47:34]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah.
- [47:34]
Fabian Gerhalter
Well, I want to talk what makes it.
- [47:36]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I mean there's so many ways I could answer this. And I do, I do want to mention, I mean, some of the updates we made to this book were to get some of that thinking into the book. Some of the things that have changed are not necessarily things, but we have new experts and new points of view. And so in this edition for the first time, we have a spread on evidence based marketing, which many of you may know as sort of how brands grow or the Aaron Berg Bass Institute way of thinking about building Strong brands which you can either adopt wholeheartedly or just, you know, even if you don't, you can I think acknowledge that it has impacted the way we think about brands. And if you're not familiar with those books or that way of thinking, then encourage you to look into it, which you can do by buying, designing brand identity and looking at that two page script.
- [48:25]
Fabian Gerhalter
Well played, Roy, well played. Here's the marketer.
- [48:29]
Rob Meyerson
You know, we have Mark Ritson quoted in this book for the first time about brand strategy. We have David Aker's model, his brand vision framework in the book. It wasn't in there before, although he of course was quoted in the book before. So there is some, well, that's not new, but there is some new and developing and for different perspectives on how to build strong brands that we try to cover in the book. The thing that I want to talk about though, to answer your question, that's kind of top of mind. Oh, I should say that James Barnard is the influencer that I mentioned earlier who shares these incredible tips. You've got like half a million followers on Instagram, so shame on me for forgetting the name. There's a different James also very influential on social media. Another designer, James Martin, made by James. He has a great book out now about logo design. He posted something the other day that got me thinking. He posted this idea that you can't sell what you don't do. And his point was that a lot of brand strategists seem to not have their own strategy. Logo designers don't even have a logo. You know that. And to use his words, he said the Internet is like the wild, wild west when it comes to creative services. And it amazes me how many people talk the talk but don't walk the walk. So I think that's a really good point. All of us. And Fabian, it's so like refreshing and great to hear that you used your own process to build the toneoptic brand and it worked. You weren't like, oh God, I need to completely change how I do this now. You know, it was been proven by all of your clients. But of course, you know, I think it's different when you experience it yourself. But I kind of, I replied with a joke, which it wasn't a joke. Half joking that I've been, and maybe many of our listeners have been at agencies where unfortunately it's more like try to sell whatever you can and then figure out how to do it after the fact. I mean, I've literally had bosses who I'd be in the pitch. And the client would say, can you do xyz? And they would say, sure. And then after the meeting they'd say, they'd turn to me and say, go figure out how to do that. It's the worst, it's unethical. But it got us into this kind of debate about. And I think this is really relevant especially because a lot of us who are building our own brands, you know, are thinking about branding from the perspective of professional services and maybe we're solopreneurs or small agencies. I do think there's a balance to strike between sort of trying to what people call niche down and say like I am a specialist in just this one thing. It's great if you can have a real depth of expertise in something. But I do want to. There's a counterbalance to that which is to not over be overly narrow. I think I've seen people out there who say like, we only do branding for this one very specific niche industry. And I mean more power to them if that's working. But I feel like that's probably overly limiting and you want to be able to provide your services to, to a lot of different industries and I think it's okay to have kind of a periphery on what you offer and say, you know, this gets a little bit out, like what are the edges of what you offer and are those places where you can collaborate with people to provide more value for your clients? So I don't do web design, I don't do web development through heirloom. But if, if we're designing a visual identity and we want to show what that's going to look like on a website, of course we're going to be able to help you find a developer and we can work with that developer to create that website and make it real. And so I just, that's kind of my most recent thinking is this debate between niche down versus go as broad as you can is to kind of think really carefully. And two takeaways from that are build your network. I think especially for us small guys in the agency space, it's so important to get on live streams like this and you know, listen and meet people and go to live in, in person events, stay active online and just know people who do the things that you can't do and figure out ways to collaborate with them potentially. And then I think it's just about honesty and transparency. I feel like there's been a little bit of a shift in work culture since the pandemic and I feel like, now more than ever, I'm just talking to clients really directly about, like, that's not something I do. I've never done that before. If you want me to try to do that for you, you know, maybe we can figure out a way to do it. But, you know, I'll be bringing in this partner that I've worked with before and they're going to kind of lead this, you know, just, just have that super candid conversation with the client and yeah, be honest and provide value where you can.
- [53:09]
Fabian Gerhalter
And Rob, this is exactly why I joined the Chameleon Collective, because we're 110 specialists, right. And we work in teams, right. So if they need a brand strategist or a name or they put me into the team and vice versa, Right. So I think that whole idea of, like how the agency model is broken can be a whole different live stream. I know we're past the hour too. I'm going to, I'm going to finish it off real quick with my thoughts on the on and just go a couple minutes over. I do have a call right now, but I texted that person. So basically for me, what I learned, this is not so much about. This is more about launching a brand rather than building a brand. Right. Which I think is great. Rob, you went into building, I go into launching. So, yes, branding is key, of course. Right. But you have to know what you don't know, right? So if you're launching a brand, if you're there actually and it's your company, if you don't know branding, right, you need a specialist. Exactly what you said. For me at Toneoptic, I didn't know the audio industry at all. I went into a complete new industry. I didn't know anything about manufacturing at all. And I was now manufacturing a product. Right. So what I did very early on is I started a board of advisors and an advisory board. Sounds so fancy, but it's really a couple of highly capable people helping you. Right. So I actually have the founder of Hydro Flask on it, who I have an advisory call starting a minute ago and I just texted him. But so, you know, it's like the founder of Hydro Flask who knows manufacturing in and out, right. I have the founder of Cambridge Audio who knows the audio world in and out, Right. And I have these people on my advisory board. I have like, with some of them, like Travis, I have a weekly call with some of them, have a monthly call and they just help me navigate and I feel supported by that. And an advisory board doesn't need to cost money. It doesn't even need to cost stock options. You know, neither of the two I have with Turnoptic right now.
- [55:10]
Rob Meyerson
Right.
- [55:10]
Fabian Gerhalter
So with them, it's basically like colleagues, right? Like I, I advise on brand, I advise on that strategy, you know, and they advise on manufacturing or advise on the industry. So I think that idea that when you launch a brand that you, that you have the people that know what you don't know along the ride made it be experts you hire, or may it be a board of advisor of advisors. That is my biggest, biggest thing that I did right with toneoptics. I leave it right, I leave it right there because I know we all have to, we all have to jam. But we didn't get many questions. If there are any questions that we didn't see, I'm sure Rob, you and I can jump in to. Is this going to be on LinkedIn too? We can actually.
- [55:53]
Rob Meyerson
This will be on. Okay, well, I'm not the technical expert on the questions, but I'll stick around if you have to jump. I'll try to answer some now and make sure we collect everything here. Great point on finding people to support you. And I just want to thank you, Fabian, for joining me here today for supporting me on this book and everybody else who's dialed in and is watching and supporting us. So thanks everybody for making the time.
- [56:17]
Fabian Gerhalter
Absolutely. It was awesome, Rob. I appreciate it. See everyone.
- [56:21]
Rob Meyerson
Bye. Thanks again for listening to How Brands Are Built. If you like this episode, please leave a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts. How Brands Are Built is a production of Heirloom Agency, Inc. Our theme music is by Esha Erskine Project. I'm Rob Meyerson and I'll talk to you next time.