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- [00:01]
Stephen
Is brand strategy bullshit? That is the question Austin, Frankie and me are trying to answer in this new podcast episode. I'm very excited to be back after a summer break with this first fascinating conversation, and I really hope you enjoy. So buckle up and let's talk branding.
- [00:24]
Austin Franke
I'm doing good. How are you doing, Stephen?
- [00:26]
Stephen
Great. Great. I'm very excited to have you back on the show. I think it's been over a year.
- [00:33]
Austin Franke
I think it's like three years, maybe.
- [00:34]
Stephen
Three years.
- [00:35]
Austin Franke
Wow. I think so.
- [00:37]
Stephen
Three years. A long overdue conversation. But we.
- [00:40]
Austin Franke
Unless you're talking about our sideshow we did for a while, the BS show, then that was, I think, about a year ago.
- [00:48]
Stephen
And you are the BS man. Not as in you're selling bs, but you're calling out bs. But maybe before we dive into, like, for the people that don't know you or haven't listened to that episode yet, like, can you introduce yourself?
- [01:03]
Austin Franke
Yeah. I'm Austin Franke. I am the founder of Woo Punch, and I'm a recovering brand strategist. Now, I have really leaned into distinctive brand assets, which we'll talk about. If you're not familiar, you can find me@woopunch.com and I also write a newsletter at brandingbullshit.com where I've, at least in the past, historically written a lot about different myths that exist in the brand strategy, kind of brand design, mix of community there.
- [01:38]
Stephen
What is the biggest myth of them all, Austin?
- [01:45]
Austin Franke
I think that it might be the one that I'm going to talk about today on your show.
- [01:51]
Stephen
All right, let's just dive into it.
- [01:55]
Austin Franke
Yeah. So I think overarching all of the myths that I've just been uncovering over the last four years, I think is. So I guess maybe I'll start with kind of how I got to the conclusion that I'm at right now. I started out as a brand designer that was very insecure about the ability of brand design to. To help businesses to grow, which I think. I think most brand designers, when they get into the industry, are a little insecure about that. They're not really sure. They love design, they have a passion for it, but they don't necessarily know or believe how it plays into the larger role of business. And so they kind of consume all of the different brand design influencers out there that are not just talking about how to design, but also the strategy of design, how to sell your services as a designer. And I was in that camp. I dove headfirst into all those guys and was convicted this was great. I bought a brand strategy course and template and worked with my first not just design client, but strategy and design client. And I just winged it mostly using this template and pretended, you know, I was some expert in all of it, which, you know, I guess I knew more than most about brand strategy if I bought a course, right? So, so, so I worked with the client and my first client, she absolutely loved all of the strategy and I love doing it. I thought I was really good at it. I think I really excelled in it. And then after that client came like a six month drought of clients coming in. And I had the freedom at the time. Also, my, my daughter was just born, so I had a lot of just free time from paternity leave as well. And I just, like, because I was insecure about how brand design plays into the larger role of business, I just started, you know, getting off of YouTube and Instagram and, and went to my library and, and looked for some interesting books that might maybe had a different perspective. That just led me down a path where I uncovered behavioral economics and started getting really interested in that. And for a while I was really interested in neuroscience and how that could play into brand design. And then I think it was actually your video. You had a recap of your favorite books or something from ages ago. And I saw that video. I'd listened to your podcast a little bit. I wasn't a religious listener, but I knew you were, you were familiar. So I was like, all right, let me give this a shot. And you, you mentioned how brands grow and building distinctive brand assets. I started with how brands grow, and it, it played in beautifully with everything I've learned about behavioral economics and behavioral science in general and how customers actually buy products. It lined up perfectly with Robert Heath's work on advertising psychology that I was really interested in at the time as well. And it just kind of opened up. It was just kind of like the last straw, I guess that like, completely opened up my world and got me rethinking about how I approach design. And then, you know, shortly after, I started branding bullshit.com where I just enjoyed uncovering these myths in between clients and that, you know, started getting my interest, I started getting really interested in that. And then, you know, as I started like, you know, knocking down or, or seeing other people knock down different strategy approaches one by one, I. I kind of started to realize, okay, well, what does work? And as I also, at the same time, I was getting more interested in proper marketing, like, you know, Mark Ritson, Byron Sharp, you know, outside of the brand design gurus version of marketing, which I found eventually was very different than most marketing experts and the discipline of senior marketers. And so I kind of took all of that and just realized the fickleness of customers. And I had always kind of devalued my ability as a designer as like, I'm a pixel pusher, right? I'm just pushing around pixels, and that's all I am. I really need something to position myself as something better and grander and can charge more for something else. That's where strategy really played its role. But when I started to uncover distinctive brand assets, and not just from Byron Sharp and Ginny Romanak, but started realizing that almost every serious marketer, they might disagree with the like, distinctiveness versus differentiation debate, none of them disagree about the power of distinctive brand assets. And that was like, eye opening for me. I love designing. I just like, devalued myself as a designer. And so I completely transitioned slowly over the last three years away from strategy and towards design. And so the myth that I have, like, really recently almost, you know, in the last couple of months, like, I've been just excited about, you know, thinking about it, become more and more convicted that brand strategy is often. And I want to distinguish between brand strategy as designers see it and brand strategy as marketers see it. Right? So designers usually use brand strategy as a means to design. And they also, like, you know, their clients, you know, have a defined brand strategy moving forward. Obviously that's a big part of it, but a lot of it is like, okay, well how does that inform the design that we're going for based on the strategy that we've identified in marketing circles, it's very different in brand design. It's very much like, this is your brand almost for forever, right? You gotta, like, we're gonna define it. You're gonna keep going down this track for as long as possible, really lean in hard on this. And in the marketing world, it's like, let's reevaluate every year or so and let's, like, look at our brand, you know, Unilever, P and G, they have that conversation every year with all other brands and decide, okay, what are we gonna do with these that might be different than we've done before? How has the market evolved? How has the customer changed? Um, and, and I, I think that when designers approach brand strategy, they often box their clients into a particular strategy that will never change. And then when they design based on that strategy, they usually design something that is either really trendy because they're trying to appeal to some, you know, really, like, hip new generational stereotype, which isn't usually actually representative of the whole generation, but is this, like, stereotype in their minds? And so they'll see what design trends are out there. All right, well, we gotta, like, appeal to millennial women with our skincare brand. Well, let's do some boho minimalism, you know, that they really like that, especially white women, you know, so we'll go that route. And then they, like, end up creating this brand that the client is stuck with, and that can't really navigate the world. So, one, it's trendy, which means that it won't be trendy in 10 years. All design trends that are recent at least fade. Right. I think, you know, San serif versus Serif, like, not. Neither of those are ever going to go away, right? No, but boho minimalism and, like, psychedelic fonts, which are really big right now, all of that stuff is going to go away. And so, so there's the trends, but then there's also, like, this meaningful piece behind it as well that creates generic brands because a strategist will maybe identify an attribute of, like, a skincare brand as, you know, natural or sustainable or whatever. And then they'll design, like, a leaf logo and they'll use the color green or they'll use, like, pastel colors. And. And they'll really, like, box their client in to this very specific brand identity that if their client ever evolves beyond millennial white women from this particular era, the brand's not going to work. Right. And so I just started being more and more convicted that brand strategy. More often than not, when I look at the brand design gurus out there and I look at the brands they've designed, and I'm talking. I'm not going to mention names, but probably the most popular brand design guru in the world, you look at his actual work, it's not distinctive. And that which we can get into in a second is really problematic for clients when a brand is not distinctive. So. So brand strategy often leads to, like, triggering some gut feeling, but then they don't realize that a bunch of other brands in the category are also trying to trigger that exact same gut feeling. And so now you're left with a brand that looks like everyone else's. I think that's the biggest issue that I have with brand strategy from a design perspective.
- [11:01]
Stephen
Interesting. Interesting. I mean, there's a million things to unpack here. I think, like, first, to some extent, I agree that I think what kind of happened. And I went to a very similar process as you did. And I talked about this a lot, so not gonna reiterate on it, but, like, we threw away. I don't know if this is a saying you say in, like, American, in English, but we say we threw away the child with the bath water. Like, I think something went wrong. Like, the. The idea of what designers and branding agencies were trying to do was actually good and I think legitimately the right thing to. To do. Like, okay, maybe we're not valued enough. Maybe we. We were not making the right decisions because we don't have the conversations with the right people, et cetera, et cetera. So I agree on that level. So, okay, then let's think about being more strategic, using language that marketers understand, blah, blah, blah. That's all good. But then what happened is, IND somewhere along the way, we got, like, so bamboozled with all of these fancy frameworks and, like, the focus on differentiation that somehow we end up, like, being overly focused on things like positioning and messaging and, like, focusing on the why. And then what we linked to that was an undistinctive brand identity because we thought, yeah, if our positioning is so powerful, then we can look like whatever people would know because, you know, attached to a brand. I think that's where, like, a lot of the things went wrong. It's not that the problem was that designers became more strategic, but it's just that they forgot about the key function of branding, which is distinctiveness, I guess.
- [12:57]
Austin Franke
Yeah, Yeah. I think that. That there's really something to be said. There is a good in that designers have a way to position themselves, to charge for what they're actually worth. Right. I think. And that gets twisted right to again, I was insecure about designers design's ability to help a brand grow. It's business effects. Right. And for those of you who don't know, you know, the Ehrenberg Bass Institute and primarily Ginny Romanak's work, her book Building Distinctive Brand Assets for the First Time, it showed us proof to some extent. No, all science isn't necessarily proof. It's always usually a theory. It's a hypothesis. And some are stronger than others. But the closest thing that we have to proof that design on its own can actually drive business results. And with my clients, I've just helped them to see that shift. Most of them don't really come to me for strategy anyway. I'm working with pretty small clients that don't really understand strategy or they haven't been in that world very Long. And for me, it's just really easy to say, like, look, distinctiveness is king. We actually have data to support this. And there's always going to be, like, some inherent strategy. I think I heard Michael Johnson once say that, like, he heard a quote from someone, I can't remember who it was, that, like design, the best designers are inherently strategic. And I think that's very true. There's always going to be, like, some sort of figuring out that you have to do to design a brand that's going to work for your client. But the big issue is messaging, personality, tone of voice, the why all of these things can change over time, and they often do for some of the biggest brands in the world. The one thing that cannot change, if you are going to stick with this for the long haul, the one thing that cannot change is your distinctive brand assets. And those, according to Ginny Romaniac, are anything that triggers or cues people to recognize your brand. So it can be a character or mascot, it can be a logo, it can be colors, it can be audio assets, like jingle sonic logos, all of these things. Ideally, you can design your distinctive brand assets will be distinctive, and then you can build fame if you have the budget for those assets. But the one thing that cannot change, and this is why Jeanne Romaniac would say almost all rebrands are unhelpful and dangerous and risky. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think there's some other things. I think if your brand isn't distinctive or your logo isn't distinctive, it depends. You got to. That's where brand strategy really comes in, actually. Right. So. So to me, if you're working with a client to develop a new brand, an identity system that they haven't had before, then, like, distinctiveness is key. If you're rebranding a company that's been around for a long time and they're really well established, it requires a lot of strategy, but it looks very different than the strategy that designers use. Right. The strategy that you need then is to measure your distinctive brand assets to see which ones are unique and famous in the market, which ones are not, which ones are hurting you, which ones are helping you, which ones aren't doing anything, how can you add something to those? That's where identity design can come in. Or what design assets did we used to have, or brand assets that we used to have that did really well in the market, and then we got bored with them and abandoned them and now they don't exist anymore, or you have an established company that's launching a new product. Well, then you got to think about brand architecture. All right? Is this new product going to exist as a house of brands or a branded house or what's going to happen there? That's where the real strategy comes into play that informs design. There's all kinds of ways that real brand strategy comes into play outside of design. And I am not against that. I'm against the methods that people use to like, brand archetypes, color psychology, unique selling propositions or onlyness statements, which is just unique selling propositions, rebranded. I'm against those ideas and those strategies. But I'm not against using brand strategy outside of design. I think it is fundamental. You cannot survive without it. I want to be really clear. I'm not against all brand strategy. I am just against it for design and mostly for new brands or brands that like, have been around a while but don't really have any kind of recognition in the market. Those are the ones that, that I think brand strategy can either be useless for or even dangerous.
- [17:54]
Stephen
Very interesting. I mean, like, even looking at my own, let's say, like, if I would pull up decks from now and like five years ago, a hundred percent, those decks, like five years ago would have been like, fully focused on personality, brand id, brand essence. Today they're a hybrid. Like, I, I don't, like, I do still help a lot of clients with like, okay, what is our main message going to be? Also maybe like tonally wise. Okay, like, how do we then say it? Like, there's, there's. I think there's value in defining a brand message, a brand voice. But as you say, like, it's. Keeping in mind the marketing reality of like, these things can shift very quickly versus indeed, like, identifying what assets are already working, what need to be scaled up and scaled down. Competitive analysis from a visual standpoint, not from like a positioning standpoint, because that. And then. And then having like a nice quadrant where it's like, they're premium but we're accessible and this is going to solve our market problems. That, like, that's a bit light and I leaned on that a lot before and I don't do that as much anymore today. So I definitely, I see your point there and I think, like, there's. There's this guy from Netherlands, he's called Stavorius or something. I will put his name in the show notes. He wrote this book called Strategic Brand Design. It's on foreign only in Dutch for now. But actually it's interesting because he says, like, you know, you have to approach brand design strategically. And he talks a lot about the things we've been discussing about distinctive assets. And I think even inherently, for me, if we accept that branding in its core function is making companies distinctive, then there is an obvious component to that that is strategic, because you can only understand distinctiveness in the context where the brand will live, AKA you have to do a competitive audit. Like, you cannot do it otherwise.
- [20:10]
Austin Franke
Y. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I also, too, I like to differentiate between messaging too. So I think brand identity design has like, morphed into this thing where it's not just distinctive brand assets anymore. Right.
- [20:23]
Stephen
It's holistic.
- [20:25]
Austin Franke
It's holistic. Right.
- [20:26]
Stephen
Spatial.
- [20:27]
Austin Franke
Right, right. And I think that there is definitely a place for brand strategy and messaging. There is definitely a place in brand strategy to an extent for personality. Customers usually don't pick up on it very much, but there are going to be. There are going to be things that you will do that you could do with your brand that would be very out of character for your brand. And you got to know what those things are going to be. But also, like Paul Feldwick talks about how a lot of brands, some of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time, went completely the opposite direction of whatever their brand essence or onion or whatever it was, had in favorability of just humor and raw creativity. And some of those campaigns are the most successful of all time because they weren't so glued to this, like, very specific, like, approach that they had to take. And then I think, you know, brand strategy, it enters into play into distribution and pricing and promotion and the four Ps, like, brand strategy is intimately involved in all of that and advertising, brand strategy needs to be intimately involved in that. And identity design, it doesn't. And I think that's where, where I'm seeing a finer and finer line. As I think more about this in terms of brand design, again, not for rebrands of very established companies, not for new products of very established companies, but in terms of those brands that are just launching or in their early stages, they pick the logo from Vecteezy or Fiverr for 25 bucks five years ago or something. And they haven't really had a brand and now they need one. There's a place there for brand identity design, and I think not as much of a place for brand strategy in those cases.
- [22:16]
Stephen
That's interesting. Like, I'm. I'm wondering where the, the, like, the mistake happens because in some, like, I also, I teach brand strategy, for example, like at a postgraduate here in Belgium. And like, we're having these discussions. And what I see is on the one hand, the part about strategy that helps them is it forces them to, like, go out, look at the competitors, understand the customers, understand the market, basically understand what they're building. Like, so in that sense. And then you can see that reflected in a brand strategy presentation where basically they're. They're kind of signposting to their client like, hey, we get you. Don't worry. The identity will be fitted to that. But I'm wondering, where do you think it, like, goes off the tracks? What is that moment in strategy that you lose? Like, the. Yeah, the key point, basically.
- [23:18]
Austin Franke
I think you could do all of the stuff, whether it's proven to work or not, barring some of the strategies, like color psychology, which very much works against distinctiveness. But you could do most brand strategy, you know, you could do most, most brand strategy workshops as long as you have a very keen eye for distinctiveness. Yeah, I think, I think you're gonna be like, spinning your wheels a lot unnecessarily. I think it's gonna be a lot of work for you that, like, clients don't always even, like, value that much, you know, Like, I have not had problems charging a just wage for the, the logos alone that I've been designing for clients. If I just explain to them what science says about distinctive brand assets and just build that trust in those conversations. And I think, you know, there's obviously some element of getting to know the client and getting to know the market beyond just a visual competitive analysis. If, you know, somebody is produced, is. Is selling scalpels, right. Their brand is not going to be, like, jovial and funny and like, quirky and, you know, and. And the opposite, like, if, you know, you are not a very serious. You're selling a soft drink, you know, you're probably not going to have a very premium, you know, like, scientific, like medicinal almost approach to that. And I think too, there's. There's some element of getting to know the client and, like, where they are, where they work best and how they fit in the market best. If their personalities just themselves, like, let's say it's a solo entrepreneur and their personality is a particular way, then their brand shouldn't be the opposite. Right? Yeah, but. But I think it really doesn't take a strategy workshop to do that. I think it just takes common sense in most cases. Like, almost every, like, insight that I hear about that comes from a design thinking workshop is just like, you couldn't just think of that on your own, like, it's not that complicated, you know? Um, and yeah, I think that. That where it might go off the rails is. Is just like forgetting about distinctiveness. If you ignore distinctiveness in the mix of all of it, you're going to screw over your client. They're going to love the brand you design for them, because you probably designed a brand that they like visually.
- [25:40]
Stephen
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [25:41]
Austin Franke
If you are, you know, trying to sell skincare to millennial white women, the founder of that company is probably a millennial white woman. She's going to love boho minimalism. It's going to be like her whole. You go into her house, it's going to be boho minimalism all over the walls, watercolors, you know, jungle plants, all that stuff, right? You know, little minimalist sayings of just type and descriptions of things, you know, definitions, like, all of that. Like, she's going to love, right? So the client. And then also you're going to have this intimate relationship that you. That you form this, like, bond, right? When you get a. A lot of times, when you get a client into a room to do some kind of workshop, it's the first time that they're actually, like, letting loose and, like, you know, just breathing a little bit and trying something creative for the first time. So you. You build this, like, really strong bond with clients. And I think that's where, like, maybe the most value is for brand strategy workshops. And so at the end of the day, like, clients are totally happy with the brand that you just designed for them. That's going to screw them over in five years. They are totally happy. They love it. Like, my first client, like, thankfully, I learned all of this, like, a little bit on the front end. Like, I started to get formed just a little bit while I was working with her and, you know, designed a distinctive brand identity, you know, that was distinctive regardless. And I even designed brands before I knew anything about distinctive brand assets or the importance of distinctiveness. And they were highly distinctive just because I intuited that it was necessary. But, like, if I would have designed a boho minimalism, you know, brand for, you know, my client, who was a white woman in the birth resource world, right, which everyone uses in that. In that world, then I would have screwed her over. She would have loved working with me. We would have had a great time. We would have been so bonded. We are friends to this day. And. And yet if I did that for her, she'd be screwed, you know, so, like, at the end of the day, all of that great. You know, that great bond that you can form with a client if you don't design a distinctive brand identity at the end of the day, then you are doing them a disservice, no matter how happy they are with what you've been doing with them.
- [27:52]
Stephen
Yeah. And something I've seen as well, like, what's really interesting to me because I've shifted a bit from like, being a. Like a. Okay, first designer, then designer turned strategist, still doing design, to now being more of a marketer in house for a company. And what's interesting to me is like. Like, first you need to develop the distinctive assets that you need to have proper marketing because you can't put any communications or touch points in the market that aren't recognizable. And I think the funny thing is, to me that a lot of marketers miss that point. And basically they're running with a brand that is very undistinctive and they're. They're struggling to be recognized. And like, what's interesting to me, I don't know if you have a point of view on this, but, like, where I also think that the right brand strategy or even for designers, there's an opportunity is to be thinking a lot more about how it will be put in the market in marketing, literally. I think that's. I don't know how you think about it, but I've been thinking about that a lot. I think there's like a big opportunity there, but also a big gap in the market right now.
- [29:04]
Austin Franke
Yeah. You know, it's funny, I could have gone a different approach once I started, like, getting interested in marketing. I could have actually complicated brand design even more. And I think maybe that's. That's why a lot of brand design gurus that teach marketing, I think that's where they. Maybe they go wrong too. Is. Is. I could have learned all of that in marketing, and then I could have, like, really tried to think strategically more about brand identity design. But. But thankfully I. I came across, you know, distinctive brand assets and the concept of distinctive brand assets. And if it wasn't for that, then. Then, you know, I think I would have. I would have definitely complicated my process even more. So you can, like, learn a lot about marketing and actually go in the wrong direction in terms of identity design. So it's not. It's not necessarily like, I think every designer needs to have a firm understanding of marketing, but I also think they need to be careful of who they listen to about marketing, because brand design guru marketing is not Marketing, that's just not what most marketers do. It's just so. It's so different. Like, you know, most. Most serious marketers, they inherit. They inherit a brand or they start working with a brand after they've worked with, you know, a designer turned strategist, and they look at all of the brand onion and the brand essence and they, like, take maybe a couple of things that might be helpful and they just throw the rest of it out because they've seen it before, they've moved past it. You know, they, they. A lot of the, like, strategy trends in our design community right now have been abandoned by marketers years ago.
- [30:40]
Stephen
Yeah.
- [30:40]
Austin Franke
And we're just now figuring them out and we're behind the eight ball on it. You know, I think as a. As an industry.
- [30:47]
Stephen
Yeah. I think that that's where the real opportunity is. Like, if you're a good brand designer, able to, you know, design proper. Not. I'm not even going to say brand identity because I think actually, like, I've been thinking about this a lot. Like, if I would start an agency today, because I had one like, 10 years ago with my brother branding agency, I would probably, like, position it as some kind of, like, distinctive brand asset building boutique, which is something I haven't seen in the market yet. And I think it could be very interesting because it might be that, like, a brand comes to you audit it, and what comes out of it is like, hey, everything you have is great. We're going to slap a mascot on top of it because that will help you and we're going to develop that mascot for you. I think that's like, not a lot of designers look at a brand that way, but there's a lot of opportunity there. I don't know if you've done things where, like adding or subtracting distinctive assets from existing brands.
- [31:51]
Austin Franke
Yeah, not much. I'm usually working with companies that are young. I am working with the really established company right now. They're in the Catholic space. They're probably one of the most recognizable. There's a lot of Catholics that use this brand daily for years, and I haven't run across that, but I did run across this problem. So they're launching an app to help with the resource that they provide for the first time. It's their first app, which is desperately needed, and they went to some innovation workshop and somebody. They have this name that's very much established in the market. It has huge brand equity behind it. It is the name of the resource and some innovation strategists. Told them that they needed a different name for their app than for the actual resource. And. And so they came to me saying, like, you know, we have this other name, but now we need a new logo for this name. And. And. And in my very first conversation with her, I said, no, you have a lot of brand equity built on this name. You need to lean into that. And it, like, she was just like, you know what? I've also. I believe that, too. Like, why did I change? Why did I think that this other route was the better route? Just because somebody told me that it was. You know, um, it's a little different, but. But in that case, like, you know, I might have gone into it wondering, all right, do you need a new name? Because I also work with. With clients to define a name, but the best thing that I could have done as a naming strategist was to tell them, no, use your name. Use your name. Like, what are you doing? Use your name.
- [33:31]
Stephen
Yeah, that's like. That's a. I think there's a real, like, issue there. It's just that, like, if you. It's the same, like, let's say you're selling bread and you're telling people, like, don't buy new brand. Like, it's the same with brand designers. Like, they always rebrand because, you know, that's what they're offering. And I think there is value in being able to have more of, like, that consultative role where you can step away from it and say, like, okay, maybe this is not what you need, but I can help you if we do it that or that way. But it's very hard because, you know, like, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot a lot of times as well.
- [34:12]
Austin Franke
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think. Yeah, it's. It's a. It's a very interesting contradiction that a lot of brand designers, you know, build their careers on rebrands that are unnecessary. They don't realize they're unnecessary. It's not. They're doing it, like, to screw over the client just to get a paycheck, you know, but. But I get the temptation, you know, to just say, oh, I could design a whole new brand for, you know, $20,000, you know, or even more obviously, with bigger. Bigger agencies, you know, why not do it? You know? And I think, you know, I wonder if, like, the Tropicana rebrand and the Pepsi rebrand, both by the same idiot who, like, applied all of this ridiculous, like, philosophy to design. I think, like, he. If he. He would have missed out on I think it was like a million dollars for the Tropicana logo. It might have even been 20 million for Pepsi. I'm not sure how much it was, but that's 21 million. Do, like, where all I had to do was say, don't change anything. It's working. Like $21 million. Like, who's gonna pay $21 million for that? Don't change anything. It's working, you know, Like, I get the temptation, I really do. But at the end of the day, you got to do what's best for the client, whether it's. It's in your best interest or not. And, you know, I can't say for sure that some, some brand design gurus, like, no, I, I know that some of them know about distinctive brand assets and never mention them. I know that they've been confronted by people in the past on it and what have you been doing and disagreed strongly with it and then never mentioned it again or never made an actual case against it. In those cases, I do wonder, like, are they, are they just so dug in that they can't see the case for distinctive brand assets and its importance, or do they realize that at the end of the day, distinctive brand assets negate a lot of the brand strategy that these gurus are selling? Right. And that's an interesting question that you can never prove. You. You really don't know. It's impossible to know. And I don't like to assume people know, but some people, you know, like, you know, yeah, some people, I'll say somebody outside of the brand design world, Gary Vee, because everybody can pick on Gary Vee.
- [36:32]
Stephen
Oh, yeah, that's no problem.
- [36:34]
Austin Franke
Everybody loves to pick on Gary Vee. Like, that guy has been called out for debate by Mark Ritson, I don't know how many times. And he just pretends like Mark Ritson doesn't exist. You know, like, clearly he's just like ignoring actual data that just goes against his theories. Right. I think it's pretty evident that Gary Vee is full of shit and knows.
- [36:53]
Stephen
It, but he has no incentive to go do that.
- [36:59]
Austin Franke
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. I find it harder for other people, but there's clues. But then there's also brand design gurus who are very well aware of distinctive brand assets. They still believe a lot in the strategies that they used to use. And I think usually they're very well intentioned. Right. You know, they believe that they've seen the power of those bonds that you can form with clients. They send clients loving it. And if they can do that and they can design distinctive brand identities. I don't have any problem with that. Yeah, but. But if you don't design a distinctive brand identity in favor of all of this, these, these strategy workshops, then it's not their fault. They just don't know. Right. In most cases. But that's why I'm here. Right. I want to try to, like, spread this message of distinctive brand assets so that clients are getting screwed over.
- [37:51]
Stephen
Yeah. And, like, it's two things I want to add to that. Like, one, I think in, like, in 99% of what I have seen, like, I'm talking with young people wanting to learn this strategy stuff. I'm talking to older people that have been around, know all the stuff. In general, it's like, as you say, like, people just want to get closer to their clients. Want to have. Want to be. Want to be valued more, want to get paid more. Like, these are all quite normal things to do, but in some cases, like, indeed, like, you're wondering where you're being on the edge of, like, either it's just such a confirmation bias that, like, you can't get out of it. But it's hard to see. But and the other thing I wanted to mention is I think what we need to do as brand designers, like, even if you get into the whole storytelling, brand essence, like, go ahead and make up a nice story if that helps you, if that helps the client get on board. Because I think that's one thing. Sometimes you need this story to convince internal stakeholders, not the external ones. But at the end of the day, like, in the execution, this is where everything either goes, like, down the drain or is good. And I think that's what we need to keep in mind. No matter how much strategy work we put in and what kind of strategy work, if the identity is not distinctive, which is in this case the core function, then it doesn't matter at all. Like, it doesn't matter. A million years of strategy or one minute or no strategy, it doesn't matter. I think that's. We just need to keep that in mind, and then. Then we're quite good.
- [39:27]
Austin Franke
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's so many really talented brand designers that are fully capable of designing distinctive brand identities, and they're leaving it on the table in favor of all of this other stuff. They're being distracted themselves.
- [39:39]
Stephen
You know, I'm wondering, like, and I haven't done this experiment, but, like, it would be very interesting to do, like, a sort of a B test where you're able to do a project without any strategy and with strategy and then see if the outcome is more distinctive or less distinctive. Obviously, we have it.
- [40:00]
Austin Franke
We have it.
- [40:01]
Stephen
Yeah.
- [40:01]
Austin Franke
Rand, Paul, Michael, Beirut, Paula. Share. Natasha, Jin. Right. Like, these are people who do not subscribe to all of the brand strategy that our design community subscribes to. Their brands are very distinctive. They're iconic. You know, I was watching an interview with Paul Rand the other day where he's on, like, he's like, in the 80s or 90s, and he's on this guy, I can't remember his name, Bugs T or something. It's this weird, like, you know, hippie dude who's like, got him on his show. It's like a public access Cincinnati show or something. And. And he's trying to, like, get out of Paul Rand, like, the deeper meaning behind the IBM logo and the NBC logo and all of these others. And he's just, he keeps trying. And Paul Rand just says, you know, I had that many lines on the IBM logo because if there were more, it would be harder to see. You know, the. What was Westinghouse? I chose the two dots above or three dots above the W on the Westinghouse logo because just a W isn't distinctive. You know, like, that's all. That's. That's what went into his mind. It's just solving. It was just solving really simple, obvious problems.
- [41:13]
Stephen
Yeah.
- [41:13]
Austin Franke
You know? Yeah.
- [41:14]
Stephen
Like, what's really interesting there. And I think that that's where like, a lot of the, Indeed, like, the, the storytelling we do for clients is like, to make it palpable for them and to give them a story. Yeah. I'm like, there's not a lot of clients that I have seen where you can take the other approach. And you've been doing that. So I'm interested in your take it like, where you say, like, really, truly, it doesn't matter anything. Your name, your logo. They don't need any deeper meaning. They need to be distinctive because X, Y and Z. It's a much harder path to explain than something that I think feels more, like, inherent to humans, feels more logical. Where it's like, yeah, and this, this ball means our community and this line means the thing we're going for. Like, so. So I'm wondering, like, first, like, have you. If you are trying to explain this to clients in a more dry, like, way, if you're doing it, do you get fraction and like, how do you handle that?
- [42:17]
Austin Franke
Yeah. So I would say there's a difference between names and logos for one so like a name like, it's, if it's, if it doesn't have any meaning to the brand at all, then it's, it's, you know, like it's going to probably confuse customers a little bit. Sometimes names, I think, can be a different animal, but you can, you can find. What I often do is I'll, I'll find a distinctive name that, that doesn't have any trademark issues, that has an available domain or at least something close enough. And then I'll like think through. Well, that could actually fit retroactively, you know.
- [42:53]
Stephen
Yeah, that's what we do. 90% is like.
- [42:56]
Austin Franke
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you get a message from that. So, so for example, like I, when I was working for a client, they were developing a new product that couldn't be under a house of brands because a bunch of other businesses were going to also use it. It was kind of like a side product for what they were doing. It was a kind of an organization product for NetSuite, which is like the back end of a lot of businesses. So kind of helps you to, to navigate sales data and different, different data to make decisions, business decisions. And they had like an AI tool that they were developing. And when I found out that Zookeeper, the name was available as a trademark and that Zookeeper AI was available and the only other, like zookeeper.com was like a design agency. So the furthest thing from this that you could think of, it worked beautifully. And then I thought netsuite is a zoo tame. It was Zookeeper, you know, like. Right, right, right. It's a great name. And then you just kind of retroactively, like put something to it. Another example was I worked with a remodeling company and the. It was, it was under the name of the founder, who's his last name translated to perch, as in the fish. And he was remodeling company. So like fish remodeling, it's not really much of a connection there. But then I thought, well, perch is a great name and perch means something else, thankfully. Right. It's not just a fish. It's also where birds spend their time and at least in bird cages where they live. Right? Yeah. And so then came like this idea of remodeling, which was like, reclaim your perch. You bought this house from someone else maybe, or you've lived in it as a kid or something, and you want to make it yours again or you want to make it different. You want to make a change. Reclaiming your home with remodeling. It made sense. And then the visuals come and then another distinctive asset can be formed of a door. And inside the doorways, some clouds. And the door is sitting on the logo, which itself looks like a perch and is distinctive. Like, it all just, like, kind of comes together in most cases. Right. It. It's like a good designer can just. Again, they're inherently strategic, as that quote is. Right. So, like, these things just come. And Paul Feldbach talks about that a lot. Where, like, the greatest campaigns came out of, ad campaigns came out of necessity. Like the Andrex puppy, which I don't really know anything outside of, you know, marketing circles because they don't have it in the us but apparently it was going to be a lion or something and they couldn't get the lion last minute, so they found a puppy instead. You know, like.
- [45:49]
Stephen
Yeah.
- [45:50]
Austin Franke
Then they. And then they retroactively said, puppies are soft.
- [45:53]
Stephen
Yeah.
- [45:53]
Austin Franke
So is toilet paper. You know, like. Like they didn't even think that through. Yeah. You know, it's just things like that are just, you know, that's how some of the best, you know, brand identities have come about. They haven't come about from all of this ridiculous, you know. Yeah.
- [46:09]
Stephen
It's a lot more alchemic, or do you say that alchemic than we make it out to be. It's not like you do the research and this will come out and because this will come out, you will need this design. And that's the solution. Like, it's not like that at all. But we do need storytelling to help clients get on board with distinctive, because distinctive, being distinctive is often quite a. Like, and I don't like to use this word, I'm going to use them. It's a bit brave puking inside when I say it, but it's a bit brave because at least, like, you're not conforming to what is out there. And that's a lot harder than just looking like a very cool, hip brand, but not per se, like something else. I think that's very interesting.
- [46:52]
Austin Franke
And distinctiveness doesn't have to be brave.
- [46:54]
Stephen
No.
- [46:55]
Austin Franke
Like, I think it shouldn't be in a way. Right. I think, like, the Geico Gecko is not brave.
- [47:00]
Stephen
Right.
- [47:01]
Austin Franke
There's nothing brave about the Geico gecko. And yet it's probably the greatest distinctive brand asset of all time.
- [47:06]
Stephen
Yeah. When I say brave, I probably. I'm thinking more like it takes some. Some goodwill from the client to say, yeah, let's put this weird animal out there, or let's be funny, or let's be a bit different. And in that sense. Yeah, yeah. All right.
- [47:22]
Austin Franke
But I think you can retroactively say, well, this actually can mean this. And they usually buy it. I've done that a few times.
- [47:28]
Stephen
So, I mean, we're running against the 50 minute mark, so I don't want to take up too much of your time. Maybe just to wrap it up. Like, if you're a brand designer listening to this and maybe like, you, okay, you're like, wow, this whole strategy thing, I've been looking at it all wrong. Like, maybe give some tips like where to start making that shift again, unlearning, or whatever you want to call.
- [47:53]
Austin Franke
Right. Well, so my design process goes like this. And you alluded to it already. I get to know the customer or the client and the market and the customer. And, you know, in most cases, like just some conversations with your client can get that out of the way. Right. You don't need a whole workshop for that. It's usually not that complicated. Often you're working, sometimes you're working with a client. That's like the NetSuite client that I worked with. I knew nothing about NetSuite going into that conversation, so I had to obviously do research on what is netsuite to know that, oh my gosh, this is a terrible system that's like cluttered and crowded and oh, gosh, as a designer, I hate it, you know, to know that, like, Zookeeper makes a lot of sense for this as a name. But also you don't, like I said earlier, you don't want to be too far out of left field. Some people can, like, be a luxury brand while, like, being quirky. I think that can happen if your messaging is on point and your distribution. Like, again, a lot of the, the things, the, the gut feelings that, that designers try to infuse into brand design can be resolved in different ways. And distribution, right? If, if, like, you know, your watch brand is kind of goofy and quirky, but it's only sold next to Rolexes, then like, it's going to be pretty obvious this is a premium brand. Right. There's so many different ways to do that. And so, so that's what I'm doing. I'm getting to know the client. Like, you know, what, what kind of price point would make sense for them? Like, where are they in the mix? What are they doing maybe that other people aren't doing or are able to do? What's like, the people that I'm talking to, what's their personality? Just like, really general stuff and Then I go in, and I. If it's a character or it's a logo or whatever it is, I go in. I look at all of their direct and indirect competitors, at least the ones I can find. I see. Are there any cliches in this industry, like design cliches for logos, like leaf, for sustainable brands, whatever. And. And then I try my best to avoid those. And then the ones that are actually a little bit more distinctive and that aren't an obvious cliche, I take. I put them. Put them into Illustrator, and I'm looking at them as I'm designing a logo. I'm just continually checking back in. Okay, does it look anything like this? Ah, the M looks a little bit too much like that M. I should probably try something different, and I take a different approach, and I'm just, like, just feeling around, you know, until I get to something with the name. It's the same thing. Right. Like, one of my techniques for names is like, you know, looking at a list of, like, a dictionary of animals, you know, because there's a lot of animals that are. That are familiar, but also distinctive because no one ever talks about them, you know, And I might look at those lists and then I might find one and then say, oh, does that, like, fit with this. This client? Not really. I can't really find anything to retroactively put meaning onto it, so maybe I'll find something else. You know, it's just so fluid, you know, And. And then. And then when you're showing it to the client, you got to know their taste a little bit, but you also have to be really careful about that, because their taste might screw you over. Right. If they have a boho, minimalist aesthetic taste and they love it, then, like, you got to say, all right, well, that taste we're not going with, you know, like.
- [51:14]
Stephen
Yeah.
- [51:14]
Austin Franke
And you got to explain to them why that doesn't work, because everyone's doing it, you know, But I think in general, it's just kind of feeling. Feeling your way around things and being creative. It's just like. It's the Paul Rand approach. It's just moving around and playing with things. And play is really important. I'm always just playing with different ideas, and I think that as designers, we need more of that and less of, like, you know, it's not going to be a good design unless there is, like, really, really strong strategy behind it. And it's just, you know, most of the best assets of all time did not come from that.
- [51:50]
Stephen
Yeah.
- [51:50]
Austin Franke
In fact, this whole idea of Brand strategy to inform identity design is relatively new. Last 20 years, you know, before that, it just wasn't really a thing. Maybe you had some oddballs here and there that did it, but the greatest, like it's funny, the greatest design firms, the biggest ones right now, that have always been the most historically iconic, now you'll see brand strategy on their websites, but they never did that stuff back in the day. Pentagram wasn't doing that. Michael Beirut wasn't defining a unique selling proposition when he was designing logos. It's just not how we've ever really worked. And that's actually an asset for designers because you're working with people that know they're not that creative. In many cases, they know exactly. Some marketers might be more creative or believe they're more creative, but for the most part, your clients are going to know they're not creative. They're coming to you because you're creative. That's why they're coming to you. Not because you can form a strategy that they can't. In many cases, marketers get pissed off when they go to design agencies because the design agencies are trying to like, form some strategy that the marketers already know in and out intimately and they just want your creativity. That's why they're coming to you. And I think in most cases, the vast majority of cases, clients are coming to you for creativity. They're not coming to you for strategy. You have to sell them on strategy. And that's what usually happens. And it works in that you can, you can charge more for it, but I think you can also charge, if you help them understand the science of design really well, then you can charge more for good distinctive design as well. And that's what I've been able to do and it's been working amazing.
- [53:27]
Stephen
Well. Thanks so much, Austin, for coming on the show and like being so honest about this topic. I think it's something. It's under highlighted and I love that you're bringing this new, new or old perspective on the table again.
- [53:43]
Austin Franke
Yeah, yeah. It's refreshing when you start thinking about it this way. I think.