Rob Meyerson (0:07)

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 brought to you by Tracksuit Want always on brand metrics to deliver value to stakeholders. Tracksuit is a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps consumer marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working? Check them out@gotracksuit.com again that's gotracksuit.com a few weeks ago on social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, I asked if anybody had any questions. I was thinking about doing a Q and A episode of the podcast and this is that episode. So got a lot of great questions from a lot of people. I will go through those questions now. I've organized them into topic areas so as you might expect, got some about naming, got a few just about general branding questions, some about writing a book or publishing a book. So I'll answer those and then one at the end that's kind of just a joke about font design. I'll. I'll do my best on that one as well. But here we go. We're going to dive into the questions now. Thanks to those of you who submitted them. First up in the naming category, we have a question from Nick McGraw at McGrawson Design in Toronto, Canada. Nick is very funny on social media. Highly suggest that you find him and follow him to see some of the stuff that he posts. But Nick asks, I've got a client who loves the brand naming process I took him through. It's yours. He loves it so much he can't wait to start up new companies and do it again with me. How can we convince other clients to have this much enthusiasm for the process? Is it just a matter of, of finding the right high ticket clients? Is it about being the expert and selling them the thing? So Nick's of course talking about the process that I outlined in brand naming, also in the course that I taught and on a bunch of blog posts and podcast interviews. So if you're curious what that process is, it shouldn't be too hard to find. And Nick, it's great to hear that your client loves it. It's kind of funny that they love it that much given that making it fun, frankly, making it really fun was not a goal of mine. My goal always was effectiveness. What's going to get us to a good name at the end of this process? What's a good repeatable process to do exactly that? So I'm really glad to hear that your client enjoyed it so much. I think you sort of answered your own question there. I wouldn't say it's about high ticket clients necessarily. I don't think there's a correlation between how much money they're spending or kind of how big of a company they, they run or work at and how enthusiastic they'll be about the process. I think you'll find that some really big clients just kind of want you to do it and come back when you have the names. Others want to be really engaged and the same for small businesses or, you know, mid sized businesses as well. But I do think it's just about finding the right clients and there are some that'll get it and some that won't. And I think your best opportunity, maybe your only opportunity to really do that before it's sort of too late, is during initial call with a client or a prospect, you typically would be presenting your expertise, the approach that you plan on taking, and hopefully you can get a sense in that meeting what they would be like to work with. Do they seem engaged, do they seem enthusiastic about the process? And you can factor that into how you approach it and whether or not you, you take on the business. But generally I think what gets people excited about the, the naming process is just the, the promise, so to speak, of getting a usable name at the end. I, I've said it before, but some of the best and probably most enthusiastic clients I've had are the ones who've tried to do naming on their own and seen exactly how hard it is, or they've run into very specific challenges and they just want help. And that's, you know, the best place to be, I think as a consultant is when you can really just come in and help. The next question is from, I'm going to, speaking of naming, I'm going to butcher this name, sorry, Bulyakov Artem I think is the name. And Belyakov says, I've been doing naming myself since 2009, but almost every project I do is under a non disclosure agreement. How can you attract new clients if you can't show your work on Instagram, for example? Yeah, that is tough. I guess the first question is, do you have to accept those NDAs going forward? Can you negotiate, you know, in any way? Could you say, yeah, of course I'll keep it secret before it launches, maybe for a year, after it launches, maybe for five years. But eventually, is this something I could talk about? Depending on the NDA, you might be able to just Share the client company name without sharing the specific project you worked on. So you could say I, I worked for Hewlett Packard Enterprise or I worked for NASA or whatever it is without saying what the project was. That'll still get you a lot of that social proof, so to speak, that you're looking for. You can maybe write a case study with the names redacted just to give a sense of, yes, I worked with this company or maybe even redacting the company name. But just here's how I approached it. We came up with this many name ideas, we presented this many times so that prospective clients can get a sense of what you're like to work with. You know, it's basically just an outline of your process, but it's given a little bit more flavor by the fact that it's tied to a real project, even though a lot of the details are redacted. You can also ask your client for a testimony. So again, even if they aren't willing to share their name or even their company name, they might be willing to say, you know, you were great to work with, the project went really smoothly. And so that could be really, really helpful as just something that you can use as marketing for yourself. You can post that testimonial. You could go to a site like Clutch, which does sort of B2B business reviews, and see if they'll let you post the review there. You know, often it's not really the final name that matters that much. I know people think it is, and some prospective clients probably understandably want to see what are the names you've come up with. But a lot of times that final name, you know, so much went into that, a lot that they can't know back and forth with with a client. They're probably not the right target audience for that name. And so a lot of it really should be about what's the process you went through, what's was your client satisfied, happy at the end of it? You know, are there any business results you can point to, like this product launched or whatever it is, and it's been quite successful and maybe some of that is attributable back to the name. So there are quite a few things I think you can do without actually sharing the name. But I, I, I, I agree and I get it. It's a tough challenge and so good luck navigating that. Another question also from Belyakov, is an overview of the different ways of working and which of them work really well. I guess the question is, could you provide that overview the differences between the methods of Interbrand and couchword Branding and Lexicon are somewhat different. So what's the difference? Well, I've only worked out of the ones you named. I've only worked at Interbrand. I've also worked at Siegel and Gale at smaller brand consulting firms as well. And now, of course, on my own, I have subcontracted to some of the these other agencies. I have friends who work at them, but I can't really, you know, share that much about the inner workings of them, partly because I don't know necessarily, and partly because it probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to do that anyway. It's probably better if I just talk generally about differences that different agencies take and maybe some differences between big and small firms that I've seen. So there's actually something in my book where I talk about how to structure a naming team. And one thing that I say doesn't work, which I have seen at a big agency that shall remain unnamed, is just asking a huge number of people on the team. And by huge, I mean. I mean maybe a dozen or more. So not that huge, but asking a big team to each throw in a few names or spend like an hour on it. Hey, can you spend your lunch break coming up with names? And this is even asking. I mean, these people technically are professional namers that work at the agency if they're that big. But instead of really deeply briefing them and then asking them to spend a lot of time thinking about it, it's sort of the scattershot, like, hey, can everyone just throw a few names into a Google Doc? Don't spend more than an hour or two because we're tracking hours and, you know, we don't have budget for you to spend more than that. My stance is that that just really doesn't work. It sucks. You know, everybody gives you the same first five ideas. The reason that big agencies do this sometimes is they have a bunch of young, relatively inexpensive people on staff. They're usually very smart, very well educated. You know, it's not that they won't be or aren't great namers already, but the way they're being asked to do it, I think does not do service to their talent, nor does it do service to the the client or the project. Smaller agencies can't do that. They don't have that team. And so they're usually looking at a smaller number of namers. And I think whether you're big or small, the better agencies do it with that smaller number of highly experienced namers. That can sink a lot of hours into the naming project because you have to scratch beneath the surface. You have to do some digging to get past the first hundred names that anybody almost could come up with that are probably not available legally, that aren't that interesting from a creative standpoint. And so I think that's one of the big differences I've seen at different agencies. The rest of it, and not to diminish the importance of it, I think is hugely important. The rest of the difference comes in all of the other steps outside of generation. So what's their approach to presenting names? How do they manage clients? You know, how much do they sort of hold hands versus taking more of a vendor approach where they, you know, we'll come back to you when we have it. What is the briefing process like? How deeply do they get into the strategy versus expecting the strategy to come to them as agencies? So I don't know that it's a big agency, small agency. Again, I'm not pinpointing or picking on any of the agencies that you name checked there. I think they just all have different approaches, understandably. Just like I have an approach and I'm sure any other person out there doing naming has their own sort of presentation style, and it's ultimately sort of what works best for you and for the clients that you're serving. I will mention one thing since you mentioned, I think, Lexicon. Just an interesting point that you may not know David Placic, who runs Lexicon, if you'd like to hear him present names, he does that on an episode of the first season of a great podcast called Startup. It's years old now. I don't know how much the presentation that you hear on the podcast is the same as what he would do if the microphones were off. But I found it really fascinating to hear him kind of doing his thing in that episode. And it's kind of a fun. I mean, for anyone who does naming or branding, it's fun to listen in on how that. How that company got named. Anyway, so check that out. All right, next question comes from Brad Flowers. Brad is the author of the naming book, a fantastic book about naming. He's also partner at Bullhorn, a great branding agency in the Lexington, Kentucky area. Hi, Brad. Thanks for your question. So Brad says, I assume everyone is talking about it, but I haven't seen much in the last six months or more. What is the current state of AI and naming? It's a great question, and by the time you listen to this, my answer will probably be out of date. The biggest news in the space recently, although it's not that recent anymore, was Monica. Monica is they're billing themselves as kind of an AI first naming agency. They had a big splash, kind of with a Fast Company article talking about how they were sort of breaking the naming industry, doing it a lot cheaper and quicker. I wrote an article about them and I interviewed one of the founders, Jack Wimmer, on the blog. So. So do check those articles out. I'm not really sure. I don't have, you know, I'm not talking to Jack on a regular basis. I don't know how they're doing. I think they're still up and running, so I assume it's going well or going fine. But I'll just sort of restate some of my core thoughts. What I think Jack and his partner have built is they're using a lot of these large language models in really interesting ways to approach name generation in ways that are more similar to the ways that humans do. As opposed to, you know, just asking ChatGPT to come up with name ideas, which, if you've tried, it does not work well. So that's really interesting and I think there's, you know, a lot of potential in that. But I don't really think it's the creative part, the name generation aspect of naming that we need help with from AI. You know, frankly, there are some very talented human professionals who do this very cost effectively. Really quickly. I would still go to them every single time. Sure. Would I, you know, use a great AI tool like this if it existed to supplement, why not? You know, I don't have a strong argument against it, but it's still not going to help me that much because, you know, my. A lot of my job, of course I generate names too, but a lot of my job when I'm working with a client is before and after that name generation. It's getting to the point of the brief being really clear and everyone aligned on it. And what are we trying to do with the name? What's going to work, what isn't going to work? That's really, really hard. And I think I haven't seen AI really, you know, set up to try to do that yet. I'm not saying it couldn't, but I just haven't seen anyone really try to do that. And then after the generation, it gets even harder because then it's presenting names, making the case for names, helping clients imagine those names exist in the real world as the names of their company or a product or whatever. It is. We're naming and driving a decision, getting them to consensus if that's what they need. You know, getting that final name across the finish line. And again, I've seen enough of AI through clients of mine that are in that space to know that it's capable of a lot of things that we may not even think of it as being capable of. I don't doubt that it could potentially manage a difficult client through a difficult decision making process, but I just haven't seen anyone really trying to do that yet. And I don't know how clients would react if they knew they were being managed by AI versus a human in that way. So that's, I think, the current state. I will say there are some AI tools cropping up now for preliminary trademark search. I think Halloo H A L O O is one of those. I'm not super familiar with it. I'll just say, you know, from what I've seen, which maybe is not up to date, I haven't seen anything that has convinced me that I want to use that instead of using a human. I don't. Maybe it's as good but costs more, or maybe it's not as good but cost less. I'm not sure. I think it's sort of. It looks like it may get there, but I just haven't seen that it's there yet. So, you know, I think n. I think AI could do a lot of naming pretty well, honestly, and maybe it'll get there soon, but I just haven't really seen it yet. And so, you know, as. As with everything else with AI, it's just something for us all to. To keep our eyes on the next naming question. And then I think we're going to pivot here in a bit to branding, general branding questions. The next naming question is from Liev Lewitt, logo designer and brand neighbor namer and he runs Limerick Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland. Shout out to Silver Spring. That's where my grandparents lived and I grew up going there all the time. Thanks for your question, Liev. So he says about the legal screening side of naming. My clients rarely have their own lawyer for full legal screening, so whatever I do with Google and the wipo database is all they're going to get. I remember listening to an episode of How Brands Are Built. Thanks for Listening, where the guest was talking about legal screening results being phrased as something along the lines of either no go, maybe or go. But the process of translating the results into those buckets was hazy and clients always ask for more granular data about certain names. Okay, so Liev is referring to a season one episode of this podcast with Stephen Price of Tessera Trademark screening Steve groups names as go maybe or maybe not. And yes, he has a, you know, detailed process for that that is part art and part science. Sorry. One more comment from. From Leo. He goes on to say, I always stress that I'm not a lawyer. Good for you. And my advice is not legal advice, but more insight into that part of the process. If you're doing it all solo would be valuable. So, yeah, good call on reminding people you're not a lawyer. I should do that right now as well. So I'm not a trademark attorney. I'm not an attorney at all. So take what I say here with a grain of salt and I'm going to do my best not to provide any kind of legal advice. Look, I get it. When you're bootstrapping a business and you're just looking for a name and to get things off the ground, it's really daunting to think about hiring a lawyer if you don't feel like you have to because you just, you don't want to have to tackle that price tag right at the beginning. I think the good news is there's a lot you can do on your own these days. As you said, Liev, you can through Google, through the US Patent and Trademark Office, their free database called tess. Through wipo, which is a European equivalent, you can do a lot of searching. And the thing is, you're going to kind of have basically three, broadly speaking, three buckets of outcomes when you look at something. And by the way, you know, it's not just Googling it. There are some nuances to how you look at. Look at it. I've written about that and I'll put a link in the show notes. You need to understand that trademarks are attached to industry classes, for example, or specific goods and services. So just because they're using Dove for the name of a soap doesn't mean you can't use Dove for the name of your chocolate. So just some sort of basic things like that. But if you have the basics and you're doing the searching yourself, you'll wind up in three scenarios. One is you immediately realize something is unavailable. So that's pretty easy. Good thing you didn't pay a lawyer to do that for you. In fact, yeah, I would advise you to do it on your own and just knock things out to save money before you ask anyone else for help. Second scenario is it you can't find a thing. It just seems like nobody else is using this name, nobody else is using anything similar to this name and anything that even at all resembles the products and services you're planning on using. In other words, it appears to you as an amateur to be really, really clear or available or however you want to phrase that. You know, there, yeah, this is where I don't want to give legal advice. So I'm not saying just do it and don't worry about talking to a lawyer, but coming from the perspective of an entrepreneur and trying to save money, you know, it would, I would be hard pressed to go spend a lot of money having someone dig deeper on that when it just seems like there is absolutely nothing out there. This name is unique. And so, you know, I do have some suggestions of what you could do, but I don't think what you need to do there is necessarily having a lawyer spend hours and hours and hours giving you some huge report that it's just going to say basically the same thing that you found. What's much, much, much more likely though is that you don't have, well, sorry, it's actually pretty likely that you do find that it's not available. What's much more likely than you finding it to be completely free and clear, so to speak, is that it's gray. And that's why you need a lawyer. Generally, you know, you found a company that's sort of similar to yours, but you don't think it's that similar or the name is similar, but they spelled it differently or they added a word or took a word away. And that's where you should be questioning your own ability to make this decision as a non experienced trademark attorney. And so in that case, that's where you want to get somebody else involved. The good news is it doesn't at first, at least it doesn't necessarily have to be a lawyer that you're asking to pay, you know, to do a deep search with. You can do that preliminary trademark screening and for that you can use someone like Steve. I list other lawyers in my book. Angela Wilcox of Wilcox IP Perry Gattagno of Alitwin Koch, Angela Ann Perry happen to be in Chicago. So especially if you're in the US and you're looking for help, any of those three people, Steve, Angela or Perry, and I'm sure there are others like them you could go to and say, look, I'm not looking for that deep search. I'm just doing sort of a preliminary trademark search now. And you know, I'm down To these five ideas, could you give me some sense of what might work, what might not work, and that's really affordable. You know, we're probably talking about under a thousand dollars to look at a handful of names depending on a bunch of different variables. So that might give you the peace of mind that you need. And then, you know, the thing is, even when, when you get the name to, to really kind of protect it, you're probably going to want to file a trademark application. You might want a lawyer for that anyway. You could potentially do it through something like legal zoom, but at some point, you're probably going to want to engage a lawyer. The thing to remember here, I think, is that the real expense is not this searching upfront. It's not the setup costs. It's, it's. And I, I'm preaching to the choir here, probably liev. But the real expense is, is setting it up, thinking that you did the right thing, and then years later finding out that you shouldn't have used that name because somebody else is using it or had it registered as a trademark and they complain and all of a sudden you have to rebrand without having planned to do that. That's the real risk and that sort of opportunity cost or money down the drain. And so yeah, there, there definitive answer or workaround. I mean, we need great trademark attorneys when we're building brands, but there are a lot of things that you can do on your own or short of having an attorney do sort of a deep, deeper search of what we call a full legal search that might save you some money on the front end. Again, I just want to repeat, this episode of how brands are built is brought to you by Tracksuit. Tracksuit is a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps consumer marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working a tool like Tracksuit helps track the impact of your marketing and find out the unique selling points your brand has over its competitors. Tracksuit is fast becoming the common language for businesses in competitive categories to measure and communicate the value of brand building. Thanks to our friends at Tracksuit for sponsoring this episode. Check it out@gotracksuit.com that's G O tracksuit.com all right, that is it for naming questions or naming specific questions. Got a few questions about branding or. Or just sort of general questions. So the first one really short from someone who goes by Brands mention on, I think Instagram. When I said I was going to do this Q and A episode, Brands Mention said good idea. I think most of the audience will ask about if brand equals design and then in parentheses. Of course not. I don't really have an answer to that except right. Brand is more than just design. So thanks for your question, but let's, let's move on. Will Hawkins, director of brand and creative at HHS LLC in Austin, Texas, says branding question how do you maintain consistency with your visual identity, logo usage, color palette, typography, et cetera, within a medium to large sized organization, meaning 20,000 employees, multiple divisions where people may not adhere to design templates or modify them without approval, and a centralized asset management system is not supported? Yeah, great question. Tough question. Those of us who have worked in house have been there. I'm sure a lot of brand marketers are smiling and nodding with your question. I guess the first question is, why aren't they using the templates? Why isn't like a digital asset management system supported by the company? Because those are, as I think you're sort of implying here, those are two of the solutions to the problem that you're having. But you're saying that they're not working for some reason. So I might, you know, the answer might be figuring out how to get those to work. That could be more training for employees. It could be better training, you know, training that they actually want to do that's somehow more engaging or that they're incentivized to do somehow. It could be about better templates or easier access to templates. You could talk to employees about why they're not using them. You know, you could do an internal sort of research project like, why are these not being used? What would make you use them more? Maybe there's a functionality issue. Maybe people can't find them when they need them, or they're huge files that they don't like keeping on their desktop. You know, it could be any number of things. Same with digital asset management. It could be having a better one than you have. There are so many tools cropping up now for these sort of off the shelf dams, as they're called. I think they're getting pretty good. And also it could be just about training on how to use it. Not just how to use it, but why it's so important to use it. So also, of course, training on why brand consistency is important. You know, why brand is important. What are we building here by. By using these templates consistently? I know maybe it seems silly, you know, you have a job to do, you need to communicate with your co workers and with clients and everybody else. And it's maybe Feels like a distraction to have to download and use this template, but here's why it's important. You know, I will say there are some agencies who sort of focus on this, who are, who are really, really, really good. And I mentioned them not, not to plug them, not only because I, I think, you know, you might go hire them potentially, but, you know, they may just also have a lot more to say on this topic. So I would look at their blogs, you know, see if they have downloadable materials that, that might help here. So one of them is called 1010 written out T E N T E N. Another is Monagle. M O N I G L E. A third is Brand Active. They're a little bit different, but overlapping, I think, in what they do. The first two, 1010 and Monagle especially, really helped with these sections in the book Designing Brand Identity, the sixth edition that I worked on. Monagle had helped on previous editions as well. You could also look, of course, in that book at those pages and see if there's any advice there that could help. And again, knowing that some of it came from the experts at these firms. So you might, you might contact them, ask them for advice. You might look at any kind of thought leadership that they provide. All right. Also from Will Hawkins, another branding question. Thoughts on changing the colors of your sales proposals and presentations to the prospect company's brand. Colors to show personalization. Good to do, not good to do. Why or why not? Generally speaking, I wouldn't so. And it's funny, this brings back memories to me of like being at Interbrand and sending out physical proposals and locking up the Interbrand logo next to the client's logo, maybe with a little key line in between, just like you said, just to show them. Hey, we know who we're sending this to. I don't really know what it shows. We downloaded your logo file. But here's why. I think there's a strategic reason to not do it, which is just that your job here sort of is to build your own brand. Whether you're an agency or freelancer or whether you're talking about a different nature of business, you're trying to build your own brand and show off your own brand assets. If you are an agency, you know, show off your own branding expertise by showing your own brand identity. There's also a tactical reason here or a logistical reason reason, which is just that it's kind of a pain to do and you don't want to do it wrong. Right. So are you sure that you are really using their brand in A way that they would approve of. Have you read their brand guidelines? Do they allow you to lock up their logo or to use their color palette in that way? And my sense is that depending on who this is going to, I guess it might be worse to do it wrong than to just not do it at all. I mean, you don't want to slap their logo on the front and then find out that you used an old logo. I feel like that would be worse than just not doing it at all. And so, yeah, I would steer clear, I think. You know, I even had a client complain this is related, maybe complain that the files that we were sending over from Heirloom had their name in the file. So, of course, you know, I work with lots of different clients, so I'll save it with the client name usually and the description of what it is and the date. But I was sending all these files over to a client and they said, why do you put our name at the beginning of everything you send us as a deliverable or whatever else it is? Like, we know it's for us, of course, and once it's on our server, like, why would it have our name on it? That was a good point. So started putting Heirloom's name on it, actually, to remind them, like, this is where this came from. And so, yeah, I think the same thinking generally kind of applies, applies here. I, you know, I think it's fine to do a little bit of this, maybe to, you know, put their name on the COVID Maybe if you're really sure it's the right logo, maybe feature it somewhere. But I wouldn't try to brand everything to look like their stuff as opposed to looking like your stuff. At least not until you've had a conversation with them. You know, if you're deep into a project and the client wants you to send stuff on their templates so that they don't have to rebrand it to their look and feel when they share it internally or something, then of course that's, that's an option. Thanks for the questions, Will. The next one is from Nick Kimbrough, A brand strategy question. Assuming you're not implementing the strategy or platform, what instructions, guidance, resources do you provide clients to help them effectively implement themselves? So I always consider the implications of the strategy that I'm recommending, and I think you should too. You know, beyond just here are the words some at least bullet points on. Here's what I think this means for your business, for, you know, whether that's a marketing consideration or something that Sort of goes deeper or beyond marketing. You know, maybe it's about retail, the way the retail is set up, or maybe it's about pricing, maybe it's about launching a new product that sort of substantiates this strategy or that, you know, is just kind of a proof point for this strategy. So I always recommend you do that not only for the reason that you've given, you know, ensuring that they know how to roll it out, but it also can really just help sell in a strategy or help them decide between multiple strategic directions and see that there really is a difference, that these are not just words on PowerPoint slides or whatever, you know, however you're sharing it, that these actually have tangible implications for your business. So, yeah, I would. I would do that. It shows that it's not just words on a page. That said, once you've sold in your strategy, depending on what your skill set is, depending on what the scope of your project is, you're right. There's sort of only so much you can do that is that. That is the nature of strategy. That is the reality of being a strategy consultant is that sometimes at some point things are out of your hands. I think you can always offer to do more. You can offer to check in with your client, or you can just do it. You can wait a few months after the engagement ends and just say, hey, how are things going with that strategy? What have you done to implement it? You know, hopefully without sounding like you're nagging them, but being, you know, more helpful, Maybe the good side, you know, maybe it actually creates more work for you. And they say, oh, we're really having trouble implementing it. Can you come in and give us some advice on that? Or maybe you do something for free and, you know, it's just part of your service is to follow up three or six months later and see how things are going and provide some free advice on how they might better implement or continue implementing. Implementing whatever that strategy was. The other thing I'll say, aside from just staying in touch with clients, which is always a best practice anyway, is try to build out your own professional network with a stable of great partners who can also help them implement in ways that maybe you can't. So if you think that the strategy should result in an ad campaign, but you don't do that, it's great. If you know somebody that might be able to help them do that, that's another way to ensure that strategies get implemented, that they're happy with it. That because it's someone great that you're recommending, maybe you even get to continue to play a role or at least have some line of sight into what's happening because it's a partner that you brought on. So that's great for your clients, great for you. If you can just know people that can do some of those implementation things that you can't do, that's another way to sort of help ensure that things keep moving in the right direction. All right, another question from Nick Kimbrough, and I forgot to say earlier, Nick is a brand strategist and a copywriter in Georgia. That's Georgia, the state here in the U.S. so, Nick, thanks for your questions. Nick says another brand strategy question. How do you manage feedback quotes around feedback on a strategy that prevent and prevent clients tendency to wordsmith from undermining the strategy's integrity? Yeah, great question. This is hard. We've all been there. Sometimes it's like the strategy project that'll never die because there are too many cooks in the kitchen and everybody has an opinion on that comma or semicolon or whether it's of, or that or, and, or, you know, whatever the word is. So I guess the first thing is try not to have too many cooks in the kitchen. I think the more experienced you get as a consultant and the more experienced people that I work with have gotten pretty savvy about asking early on in the process, how, asking their clients, how will you make decisions, who will be involved? If it feels like it's not, you know, like it's going to be messy, then trying to nip that in the bud and say, okay, well, let's, let's figure out who is this smaller group of people that's really going to have decision making power. When do we engage with these other people that are just influencers? When do we decide? Okay, we've heard enough from them and now we're just going to just make the decision and sort of assertively roll it out. So that's part of it, but mostly I think it's, it's about knowing when wordsmithing actually matters. So I think, Nick, you probably know this. It sounds like maybe some of your clients have trouble with it. The words are important, of course, and you know, as strategists, we want to get the words right because the right word will inspire the right action coming out of the strategy. But ultimately that strategy by definition is an internal document. It's to make sure that we're all on the same page with the intent for where the brand is headed. So, you know, these Debates that I've also gotten into about should we be saying contemporary or modern, should we be saying premium or high end or luxury or premium? It kind of doesn't matter. Like, we all know we're circling. I say this a lot. I think we're circling around the same ideas at this point. The ideas we've agreed on, the ideas we're just looking for exactly the right words. And at that strategy phase, you know, again, like there, it's a balance. Of course I want to get the word right, but I also just want to make sure that we're all on the same page about the idea. And so what that means is I think it's actually okay to be a little more flexible, to tell your clients, if you can, in a nice way, to be a little more flexible on this. But also for you, you know, don't fall on your sword over premium versus luxury. Maybe let them change it to what they think is better because you know that what really matters is when it gets executed. And when it gets executed, that's where wordsmithing might matter. When it, when it's going on an ad that consumers are going to see, for example, maybe then we're focus grouping and we find out that, you know, these consumers for this product hate the word luxury because it sounds pretentious to them. And so it's a no brainer. We all say, let's use premium instead because the reactions were much more positive to that or vice versa. I think it really depends on the customers, the product, the, you know, everything. And so that's when you want to get into the wordsmithing at the strategy phase. I think it, part of it is about like having this striking, this balance between, yes, the words matter, but also, let's stay a little flexible and just keep the momentum of the project and get to the work of turning the strategy into reality. And so hopefully that helps Nick, with getting some of your clients past that wordsmithing. All right, we have another question from Beliakov Artem. Thank you for all the questions. Okay, this question, it just said another topic is client testimonials. So not really a question. I think what the question is is how to get them maybe because yes, of course, they're great to get. As I mentioned earlier, I think I talked when I was answering your question about, you know, if you can't share the name that you created, how do you sort of get. Get credit or build a business around as a namer? Yeah, client testimonials are another one. How to get them is Just ask. I actually, I have a stock email that I saved that I use sometimes that has some of the language that I like to ask for. Say a review on a site like Clutch that I mentioned before. You know, don't just copy and paste that, but it's nice to, you know, put some real thought into the best way to phrase this that is respectful and polite, but, you know, assertive about exactly what you want and why. And then, you know, have that ready so that you could just edit it and don't have to recreate the wheel every time, you know, a few things to think about. Make it clear to your client how helpful it would be. So I always say, you know, I'm a small business. You know, we sort of trade on our reputation and prospective clients. Seeing that people like you have had a good experience with us goes a huge way towards helping us build our business. So, you know, this is really helpful. So make sure you clearly state that and then make it as painless for them as you can. You know, if, if you can just call them, say It's a, a 10 minute call and ask if you can record it and just talk about their experience working with you and the business. And then say, okay, can I put together some quotes from this recorded call and then share those with you and just get a thumbs up or, you know, or an edit. Maybe that's easier than asking them to sit down and write something from scratch, which might just, you know, it's sort of that tyranny of the blank page. Like, I'm not quite sure what to say. Yeah, I loved working with you, but I don't know what to write. Think very carefully about the timing of when you ask. I guess this goes without saying, but, you know, don't ask too early where they feel like they don't really know what it was like to work with you yet, kind of. Yes, I know I'm using a lot of American cliches here, sorry for that, but strike while the iron is hot. So after a successful project, immediately afterward, when they seem like they're really happy with the work, is a great time to ask, or at least mention that you're going to ask for that. And then lastly, just be patient, you know, don't hound them. Honestly, I think, you know, if they don't respond, maybe you follow up once, maybe twice, and then you kind of have to give up because it just seems like you never know. Maybe they don't want to do it, maybe they weren't as happy as you thought they were, or Maybe they do want to do it, but they're just way too busy. But I think it starts to get really annoying and work against you. If you're asking again and again and again, that's going to make them less likely to do it. And ultimately, you know, I think a happy client is more important than getting that, that testimonial. All right, that is it for the general branding questions. And we talked about naming. So now a couple of questions about book publishing and writing books. So those of you listening who don't know, I wrote Brand Naming that I talked about earlier. I was lucky enough to partner and co author Designing Brand Identity, the sixth edition of Alina Wheeler's book. She wrote she created the book and created five editions of it on her own over a 20 year span and then invited me to work with her on this most recent edition, which was a great experience for all kinds of reasons that you can imagine, but also gave me access to another publisher, Wiley, which is one of the biggest publishers in the world. My first book was published with a very small publisher and then more recently I wrote kind of a fun little book that's not branding related. And so I only mention it because it gave me the experience working with yet another publisher. So now three different books, three different publishers. First question is from Jacob Kass at Just Creative, who hosts the Just Branding podcast. You probably know Jacob if you're listening to this, but Jacob also ran the Brand Builder Summit last summer, which was huge, and I, I spoke at that. And now he is building his Brand Builders alliance, which is a membership group for branding professionals. So Jacob says, I'm curious on the whole book publishing process, so if you could walk through that process for someone that may want to write and publish a book. And then he says, cheers, mate, which I won't attempt his accent, but you can just hear that in your head. I'm going to pause, I'm going to sort of table your question, Jacob, and answer it along with the next one. The next question is from Paul Bailey, who you should also know. Follow Paul on LinkedIn. Paul is the Brand Strategy Director at Halo in Bristol, England. Another accent I won't attempt. Paul's also a really prolific writer on branding, so, you know, read what he has to say. Paul asks, I've wanted to write a book for years now. How much of a book do you need to write before you can take it to publishers? Is an outline enough? Do you need to write a section of it so they can see your writing style? Okay, so for both Paul and The sort of more general question from Jacob. So my experience, again, it's mostly with B2B business books. The publishers I've worked with range from Wiley really big to those really small ones, and one that's kind of in between. And honestly, the experience has not been as different as you might think it would be between those different size publishers. In my experience, most will want to see a chapter or two of your book. It doesn't have to be the first two chapters necessarily. It could be the ones that you're just most comfortable writing or that you think are sort of like the crux of the book would be great. They might also either instead of that or separately want to see an outline of the whole book. So Here are the 14 chapters I'm planning on writing. And then I've written these two. Here they are. It varies a little bit. Some will say they want one, some will say they want two. And they don't have to be final, of course. It's to get a sense of what's your plan for this whole book. Yes, you can actually write. What is your writing style that you've thought this through? I think a lot of the, A lot of what publishers are looking for is like, is this person really going to do this? Or are they just sort of dabbling and exploring and they're going to, you know, get a book deal and then not even write anything? Because I'm assuming that happens sometimes that people fail to meet their deadlines. A lot of publishers have a book proposal format that they ask authors to fill out. You can often find that on their websites if you dig around. And so that's usually, that's partly where I'm getting my information because I looked at, you know, probably a dozen or more publishers, so beyond the ones that I worked with, and they pretty much all asked for something like that, but it asked for other stuff too, that, that honestly may be more important. I'm not sure it will ask for your social media following usually, you know, how many Twitter followers do you have? LinkedIn. It'll ask you what are the other books on this topic. So doing a little bit of your own competitive research like you would for a brand that you're trying to build and Paul, Jacob, Anyone listening? I'm happy to send some of the proposals I filled out when I was writing my first book, if you're just curious to see what that can look like to answer Jacob's question. So kind of taking a step back from Paul's about, yes, you should probably write a chapter at least big picture on publishers. The first thing to think about is whether you want to self publish or use a publisher or do some kind of. There are these hybrid publishers now that sort of sit in between. I will say, and you know, not to disparage any of the publishers I've mentioned. My experience with publishers has not been entirely positive. And that is to say this. Look, I mean, the people I've worked with have been great, but the publishing industry, I think has changed significantly in the past decade and certainly in the last 30 years. It's not what I think a lot of people imagine it to be anymore. And so, yeah, there's a strong argument to be made and it has been made very well about self publishing. That said, I haven't done it. I'm sure there are huge downsides to it as well. It's probably kind of a pain in the butt going through some of the logistics of self publishing. You might have to pay, you would have to pay for your own proofreader, things like that, that the publisher might cover for you. So it's just something to be aware of and to explore. Another thing to be aware of that I was not at first is to look into the possibility of a literary agent, which is a sort of a go between, between you as the author and your publisher. If you can find a literary agent that's interested in you and your book, that could take a huge amount of work off your shoulders in terms of finding a good publisher. And then they know this industry so much better than you will and they can negotiate on your behalf. Maybe they do get you in advance. Maybe they, you know, get some commitments out of the publisher in terms of how they're going to promote it or you know, what they're going to do for you. And so, yeah, if you can find one and get them on board, that is also a great option, I think, again, based on my limited experience. And then, yeah, Jake. I don't know, Jacob, if I'm still answering your question. But just to kind of finish the thought, once you have a publisher, you'll sign an agreement with them. You start writing in order to get a book done. It's a huge undertaking, as I'm sure you can imagine. And so you want to give yourself a schedule. I think I, for my first book, I was like writing every Wednesday night and had a word count I was trying to hit and things like that. Submit your book by the deadline and. And then you at that point are nowhere near done. That's when the real work of many Many rounds of editing starts in the case of a book like designing brand identity with all those images, getting permissions from people to use those images, getting written permissions so that you're, you're sort of safe from a copyright standpoint. Getting input from other people takes a long time and it's a lot of work and a lot of it is like a project management exercise as opposed to writing necessarily. It just depends what kind of book you're doing. It feels like it takes forever for the book to actually come out. Even once you feel like you're done, you know, you'll have your friends and your family will be saying like, didn't you write that book? Like where, why is it not coming out for six months or more? Like what's, what's even happening? And to be honest, again, with publishers, sometimes I don't know, I'm like, I don't know what is happening. Other times it makes perfect sense. There's a lot of things that have to happen before the book is real and is for sale online. And you want a little bit of ramp up time also to hopefully try to build some buzz, get some pre orders so that it launches a little more effectively than if it just kind of surprised everybody. So it's a painful process, as you can probably hear from my answer. But I do recommend it, you know, if you have something that you really want to say or write. I wouldn't do it if you don't. But if there's really something that you think you want to write or that is missing out there, that would be a great book to have, you know, in your industry or something like that, it is pretty rewarding. Maybe not financially, but for those of us who, you know, we talked a lot about how strategy can end up just being words sometimes. For those of us who don't create physical objects in our jobs, it can just feel really nice to have something that you created out in the world that is physical. And so yeah, I, I recommend doing it if you think that would be rewarding. So that's my last question and answer on publishing. We had one more kind of joke question that I promised at the beginning about fonts. So this is from my friend Liev again, who's asked a couple of other questions and he says, how do you mass produce a cheese font injection mold? So this requires a little bit of explanation. I posted this kind of silly image on threads a few months back of letters that looked like they had been cut out of Swiss cheese and it sort of went viral. I don't know what viral means on threads but it got like 35000 likes. I did not cut them out of cheese. A lot of people were very disappointed and angry about that. I designed them in 2D and yeah a lot of people liked it and so what I did, just because it got a lot of attention and I thought it would be fun and interesting is I actually went and turn that into a font and you can buy it for a few bucks. I'll put the link in the show notes for that as well. How I made that font Liev you probably know better than I do. This is not my area of expertise. I ended up downloading a piece of software called Glyph. I think it's glyphs mini. I used Illustrator and that and had fun making that font and I've I've made one or two others since then but I do not really know what I'm doing. So the real answer and to Leah's more general question about how to produce a font, I would go to James Edmondson of oh no Type Co to learn about real font design and typography. James also helped out with designing Brand Identity. There's a whole spread on typography and he weighed in on that. He runs his own font foundry and design agency, design Studio, and he also teaches some things for free and I think there's a paid course you can take as well about font design, but also just the logistical side, the technical side of creating a font. He uses a different piece of software. I think it's Robo font, but you can learn a ton from him. I'm sure there are other great experts out there. I'm not really the expert, but hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea and hopefully you have fun looking at the cheese font if you haven't already. So thank you so much for listening to this Q and A episode of How Brands Are Built. If you like the episode, please give a rating and a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you have questions for a future episode, if I decide to do a Q and A again, please get in touch via social media or the contact page on howbrandsarebuilt.com how brands are Built is a production of Heirloom Agency, llc. Our theme music is by Esha Erskine Project. I'm Rahm Meyer and I'll talk to you next time.