#264: When the Analyst’s Toolbox Includes Assessing the Zeitgeist with Erika Olson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Analytics Power Hour, Episode #264: "When the Analyst’s Toolbox Includes Assessing the Zeitgeist with Erika Olson"

Introduction

In Episode #264 of The Analytics Power Hour, hosts Michael Helbling, Moe Kiss, Tim Wilson, Val Kroll, and guest Erika Olson delve into the intricate and often challenging domain of brand measurement within business analytics. Recorded on February 4, 2025, this episode explores the multifaceted aspects of measuring brand health, the distinction between brand expansion and perception, and the interplay between qualitative insights and quantitative data. Through insightful discussions and real-world examples, the episode offers valuable perspectives for professionals aiming to navigate the complexities of brand analytics.

---

1. Measuring Brand: Challenges and Approaches

The episode kicks off with Tim Wilson introducing the central theme: the difficulty of measuring brand effectiveness. Tim humorously likens brand measurement to "memorizing PI to 70,000 decimal places" (00:13), highlighting its perceived complexity and the skepticism surrounding its measurability.

Tim Wilson: “Trying to get me to make a coherent point. Right up with all of these, some would say... is measuring brand.” (00:13)

Val Kroll echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that many marketers consider brand measurement a "hard thing" due to its abstract nature (02:02).

Val Kroll: “They have heard of Canva and they associate it with whatever this particular category or use cases.” (07:49)

Erika Olson, co-founder of Forward, articulates Forward’s role as an "insights driven brand consultancy," focusing on diagnosing brand issues, optimizing strategies, and predicting cultural shifts (03:34).

Erika Olson: “We help clients with any questions that involve consumers or culture... we do a bit of diagnosing, optimizing, and predicting.” (03:10)

---

2. Brand Expansion vs. Brand Perception

A significant portion of the discussion distinguishes between brand expansion and brand perception. Val probes whether brands like Canva are transitioning between different market buckets, seeking to expand their brand affinity and association.

Val Kroll: “Do you have brands that really need to kind of get out there... they have to expand their awareness or expand their affiliation?” (07:49)

Erika clarifies that brand expansion is an intentional, strategic action, whereas brand perception is influenced by consumers and cannot be directly controlled by the company.

Erika Olson: “Brand expansion is an action that a company can take intentionally and with a strategy... whereas brand perception, they can't do that.” (08:46)

---

3. Utility and Limitations of Brand Trackers

The conversation moves to the effectiveness of brand trackers—tools commonly used to monitor brand health. Moe Kiss raises a crucial point about the ambiguity of brand health scores across different audiences.

Moe Kiss: “When you think about measuring the health of a brand, it's like among who and for what.” (10:07)

Erika critiques brand trackers for their potential misleading nature when tracking vague attributes like "trust" and "loyalty," which can be interpreted differently by various audiences.

Erika Olson: “Trust is like a solar system. You don't trust something or you don't... when you put a big broad word like trust... it's so big it's undiagnosable.” (13:15)

Val expresses enthusiasm for having brand trackers, prompting a light-hearted exchange about their effectiveness.

Val Kroll: “I get so excited when somebody has a brand tracker.” (11:49)

---

4. Linking Brand Health to Business Outcomes

The discussion advances to connecting brand health metrics with tangible business results. Erika acknowledges the difficulty in assigning a direct dollar value to brand metrics but emphasizes intuitive benefits like inherent consumer trust and reduced skepticism.

Erika Olson: “I don't put that much weight in those big vague things... but lower standards for success.” (21:31)

Moe adds that even historical data might lose relevance as market contexts shift, questioning the utility of comparing current brand health to past metrics.

Moe Kiss: “How do you even talk about a second ago... context shifting means that comparison is probably less valuable.” (18:20)

---

5. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Measures in Brand Analytics

A pivotal segment contrasts qualitative insights with quantitative data. Erika advocates for qualitative methods, arguing that they often provide more actionable and intuitive insights than purely quantitative metrics.

Erika Olson: “Quant will say the sky is purple... and qual feels more truthful.” (28:03)

Val interjects with the challenge of setting expectations for brand tracking, recognizing the inherent "squishiness" in measuring abstract brand attributes.

Val Kroll: “There's squishiness in what's being measured... setting expectations is a challenge.” (16:00)

---

6. Case Studies and Examples: Coach and Jaguar

Erika shares real-world examples to illustrate effective brand measurement and strategy. She cites Coach’s targeted metrics towards Gen Z as a success story, where focused and articulate metrics align closely with the brand’s strategic goals.

Erika Olson: “Coach decided they wanted to be younger, appeal to Gen Z... they're far more sharp and articulate.” (16:06)

Conversely, the episode touches on rebranding pitfalls, referencing Jaguar’s rebrand as a cautionary tale about making significant brand shifts without adequate market validation.

Erika Olson: “Jaguar took a swing... Time will tell how it'll go.” (41:43)

---

7. Changing Brand Perceptions and Market Trends

The hosts and Erika examine how brands must adapt to evolving cultural and societal trends. Erika discusses the shift from "maximalist to quiet luxury," illustrating how brands like Gucci have transformed their image to stay relevant.

Erika Olson: “Quiet luxury involves neutrals and no logos... it's about access, knowledge, and taste.” (34:03)

Val and Moe further explore the complexities of adjusting brand perception in response to societal changes, emphasizing the need for brands to remain authentic while evolving.

Val Kroll: “We need ways to say how could we measure, how could we triangulate...” (45:22)

---

8. Human Intuition vs. Data in Brand Metrics

The episode explores the balance between human intuition and data-driven decisions in brand analytics. Erika highlights the importance of human judgment in interpreting data, asserting that humans are adept at sensing brand health beyond mere numbers.

Erika Olson: “Humans are pretty good barometers of some brand metrics... they're not giving a perfect measure.” (28:03)

Val underscores the necessity of combining qualitative insights with quantitative data to form a comprehensive understanding of brand health.

Val Kroll: “It's making the case for human thought and rationalizing...” (43:44)

---

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a "last call" segment where guests and hosts share personal recommendations and reflections related to the topics discussed. Erika Olson emphasizes the importance of intuitive and culturally relevant brand strategies, while Val, Moe, and Tim contribute their unique takes on brand aesthetics and analytics.

Erika Olson: “If you did have your ears prick up... look around, it's really interesting.” (60:15)

Val and Moe share insights from their professional experiences, reinforcing the episode’s core themes of adaptability, authenticity, and the nuanced nature of brand measurement.

Closing Remarks: The hosts extend gratitude to their producer and invite listeners to engage through various platforms, encouraging ongoing conversations about the challenges and innovations in brand analytics.

Tim Wilson: “No matter how hard it is to measure what you're measuring, keep analyzing.” (67:21)

---

Key Takeaways:

1. Brand Measurement is Complex: Measuring brand health involves navigating abstract concepts that can vary across different audiences and contexts.

2. Strategic Brand Expansion: Intentional brand expansion, as opposed to attempting to shift brand perception, leads to more actionable and manageable strategies.

3. Limitations of Brand Trackers: While useful, brand trackers can be misleading if they rely on vague metrics without clear definitions and context.

4. Qualitative Insights are Crucial: Combining qualitative methods with quantitative data offers a more comprehensive understanding of brand health, leveraging human intuition alongside data.

5. Adaptability to Cultural Shifts: Brands must remain adaptable to evolving cultural and societal trends, ensuring that their strategies align with current consumer sentiments.

6. Balance Between Intuition and Data: Effective brand analytics requires a balance between data-driven insights and human intuition to capture the nuanced nature of brand perception.

This episode serves as a valuable resource for analytics professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of brand measurement, offering practical insights and highlighting the importance of a multifaceted approach to brand analytics.

Transcript

[Tim Wilson]

Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. Analytics topics covered conversationally and sometimes with explicit language.

[Val Kroll]

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. This is episode number 264 and I'm Tim Wilson from Facts and Feelings. On this episode, we're going to talk about hard things. I mean, there are a lot of hard things out there. There's Tuvan throat singing, there's tightrope walking, there's memorizing PI to 70,000 decimal places, differential calculus, trying to get me to make a coherent point. Right up with all of these, some would say, or at least many marketers would say, is measuring brand. Anyone within a country mile of marketing or marketing analytics has heard the declaration, we're spending a bunch of money for branding. It's a top of the funnel investment. It really just can't be measured. Well, on this episode we're going to dig into that specific hard measuring brand. My suspicion or my hope maybe my expectation is that, well, first and foremost we'll surface some useful thoughts about how to approach measuring brand, what that means and what is and isn't advisable. I suspect though that along the way we'll get some perspective that can be brought to bear on measuring other things that are hard to measure. We'll see. Joining me for this episode is Val Kroll, also from Facts and Feelings. Val, how you doing? Have you ever tried Tuvan throat singing?

[Mo Kiss]

What would you have done if I had given you a little sample right there?

[Erica Olson]

I want, I want a sample right now.

[Val Kroll]

And that other voice we just heard from down under is Mo Kiss. Who is from, Is it, was it Canvia? It's Calvania. It's. What's your company's name again?

[Erica Olson]

Mo Canva.

[Mo Kiss]

What a comedian.

[Val Kroll]

Well, yeah, I think just maybe need, need a little bit more branding work for Canva. Canva follows me around quite a lot.

[Erica Olson]

I'll let the team know. We should do more brand marketing this year.

[Val Kroll]

You know what you need to do? You need to do some podcast marketing is what you need to do on niche analytics podcasts. Well, since all three of us have dealt with this particular challenge of measuring brand in various ways during our careers, we thought we could use the podcast to pick someone's brain who has really dealt with it. And for that we reached out to Erica Olson. Erica is a co founder of Forward, which is an insights and empathy driven brand consultancy that has done work with a ton of well known brands including ESPN, Comedy Central, Nike, L'Oreal Paris, or is it supposed to be L'Oreal Paris? That's why I don't do French Smirnoff. She was listing a whole bunch of other booze brands before the show, which I was tempted to just rattle off all of those to really skew people as to exactly what they work on and many, many, many more. And today Erica is our guest. So welcome to the show, Erica.

[Guest Speaker]

Thank you. Excited to be here.

[Val Kroll]

All right, so we rarely sort of start shows this way, but in this case I think it actually might be useful to have you talk a little bit about what kind of what types of work forward does and maybe along with that, how and where does brand measurement fit in and whatever that means.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, so we say we're an insights driven brand consultancy and it's pretty vague, I think, somewhat by design, in more plain English, I would say. We essentially help clients with any questions that involve consumers or culture. And even that is quite broad. Right. So I kind of think about it as we do a bit of like diagnosing, right. Or reacting like where there's problems. And this is going to foreshadow where some of those brand metrics come in. But, you know, lack of relevancy, lack of recall, slowing sales. Anywhere they see there are issues, we often help them figure out why those issues are happening, how they might be able to reverse them, what things are contributing to them or taking away from the success they're looking for. So we do a bit of that and then we do, I would say like optimizing. So that could be very tactical, like optimizing, pack formula, comms, whatever it is, tactical stuff and a little bit of target understanding. So sort of optimizing empathy within the organization so that they can really understand and know who they're speaking to and make sure those people are receiving the message that they're trying to communicate as best as possible. And then the last one, I sometimes call it predicting. I think that's actually like a poor word for it. But we try to make sense of things. So often those briefs will start with things like help us make sense of X or how should we be thinking about Y? So when a category is shifting or the world is changing, we help them think differently about it. And oftentimes how you have to think about that category is misaligned with the organizational structure that has been in place. So there's that and then a little bit of future stuff. So like the world is changing. We, we know that. How is it changing? Almost like scenario planning some people would call it. So I know that was a long list, but that's why it's quite vague by design.

[Erica Olson]

One, one thing I do want to get an understanding of. I've been having lots of different conversations about people, I suppose more in the like big tech company space. And you obviously had this like really interesting remit because you get to work with so many different companies. What are you seeing as kind of the level of appetite at the moment for, for sort of experimentation and you know, marketing mix models? Like are people like still on that train of thought of like, yes, I believe in brand marketing from an ideological perspective or are you finding like clients are really like we want to experiment and prove the value here or is it like such a mixed bag depending on the client?

[Guest Speaker]

You know, I feel actually like I've been seeing more and more briefs come from teams that are building themselves up to be the brand marketing team, whether that's their official designation or not within an organization. You know, we, we work with Apple, obviously huge brand marketers. They believe in that. We work with Google largely on YouTube again, huge brand marketing and even smaller ones. We've been doing a little bit of work with, with Instacart for example, or booking.com or credit karma and all of those kind of started as like engineer LED technologies really. And they've been moved into products which then create a brand. And I think, yeah, I would say I'm seeing an appreciation for brand and even marketing generally in those industries. Why? I don't know. I think there's just so much technology, it's hard to, you know, market a technology or a product without it living in an ecosystem maybe at this point. But, but I do, I do see that. I think we're moving more toward brand marketing in those spaces, at least based on what's coming our way, which is probably a bit biased.

[Val Kroll]

I mean a lot of those, the, the brands that are like totally household brand names and it does seem like kind of a relevance or a sentiment. Like they're, they're ones that they're, they're trying to, in many cases trying to be the, the good guys. Do you run, do you have brands that are, they really need to kind of get out there. They're, they're not widely known and you're trying to expand their awareness or expand their affiliation, affinity for some category because they're like, we're thought of as a X, but really we want to be X and Y. Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

So that's where like of the stuff that we do, I would put almost that like future facing or how do we think of X or Y A lot of times the impetus for that is like we know we're a brand that's really good at X, but the world, I'll. I'll use an example, right. We're a brand that's really good at being competitive, being the best standing for winning, but the world is moving more toward expression and emotions and sometimes those things don't always align. So we know we're really good at this, but the world is moving this way. So you could call it a category expansion, but it's almost a brand expansion in some way based on metrics and measurements of some kind somewhere. So yeah, I'm not sure if I answered the question, but yeah, yes.

[Erica Olson]

Just to tease that out a bit bit, you use the word brand expansion versus like shifting perception of a brand. It sounds like you see like a real diff difference between those two things.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, well, I would say brand expansion is an action that a company can take intentionally and with a strategy. Whereas brand perception, they can't do that. Right. I mean that's on consumers. That's not something a company can do. They can do things to try and change perception, but they can't, you know, go from A to B or this to that. And those who think they can or that they have, you know, even the lion's share of control in that, I think have a, have another thing coming oftentimes.

[Val Kroll]

Well, mo do you wind up dealing? I mean, I look at Canva and I may have this completely wrong because I haven't been. But Canva started as like, I think presentation, like better presentation. It has continued to expand every time I turn around. It's a collaboration platform, it's a, you know, it's your image generating thing. I'm getting these in the wrong order, but it feels like you're in a spot where Canva gets put in, was in one bucket and then said, no, we're also in this other bucket and now we're in this other bucket. So when you're teams are like, are they looking at Canva? People have heard of it. Canva. They have heard of it and they associate it with whatever this particular category or use cases. Are those two separate discussions?

[Erica Olson]

Yeah, we definitely look at association and I would say that like expansion is very much top of mind, like over kind of the last period of time. You know, we are very focused on the visual suite. But it really is about also how people use Canva at work. Because I think predominantly like I was a person who started using Canva, you know, in my personal life. Like I made my wedding invite and my, you know, birthday invites and stuff. But now it's like a core part of my job. And that is like Erica was saying, that's like an expansion of how we think about the product. And the same is true of, like, our focus on education. That's, that's like a real expansion play. But yeah, we primarily measure all of that through our brand. Brand health tracking and through category association.

[Mo Kiss]

So that's actually one of the questions that I had. I'm glad you brought up brand health tracking. So it's because we're talking about this, like multiple product lines or extensions, multiple different entry points into each of these brands. When you think about, like measuring the health of a brand, it's like among who and for what. Right. Because like those different audiences, that's probably pretty core and key to just even giving context to whatever even that health score really is. But I'm curious your thoughts on, on that, Erica, and how brands kind of grapple with those different kind of entry points.

[Guest Speaker]

I mean, there's so much to say about brand trackers. They're like, great. And they're so misleading and they're, you know, deeply analytical and they're incredibly vague and all of the things, it's like an. And, and, and well, but I, I.

[Val Kroll]

Salivate when I, when somebody has a brand tracker. So. And keep bash brand trackers for. And I don't know if it goes to. It's the wrong audience. But like, what's the. I get so excited when somebody has a brand tracker. Like, what's that?

[Erica Olson]

Why do you salivate? Yeah, I'm curious. Okay, let's, let's let Erica answer that and then I want to hear why you salivate when people do have them.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, yeah, it's better than nothing. I mean, that's what I like about it is like, okay, we have something that's not just the people inside the building who live and breathe this brand all day. Like, you are the worst gauge of the brand health possible. So let's, let's start there. Right? So at least there's something that pulls someone outside of the, you know, of the email domains. But gosh. Okay, so what I, what am I. What question am I asking the brand bat Brand tracker bashing or are we. What was Val's question? I lost it. We can get back to Val's Val Repe question.

[Mo Kiss]

No, no worries.

[Guest Speaker]

It's.

[Mo Kiss]

It's all in the same family. I'm just, I'm just curious about the among who. Like when you're talking about the different Audiences relative to the score that you get and, and understanding, like, you know, the value of their dollar versus the other audiences you can be measuring against and just some of the complexities and nuances there.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, okay, sorry, I'm back on the chart. There's so many things to talk about when it comes to brand trackers. I'm like, what do we go to first? I mean, first of all, I think they're very, they're very helpful, right? Like it's somewhere to start the piece that, that makes me frustrated. And where I think they can go awry is how they're built and how you think about what to track and critically how you define what to track. I think actually people get the audience bit as far as I've seen.

[Erica Olson]

Pretty.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. I mean, you know, it's like demographic and they get the, they get the bones. The bones are there. But it's when you start tracking words that are vague. So like, trust is one of my favorites. Loyalty, like all of these things like, like trust is actually one that, that really gets my go every time. Because almost inevitably a client with a brand tracker will come and they'll say, well, it shows that trust is the, you know, they did some conjoint analysis that trust is going to drive sales great. So we want trust in brand and that's how we're linking brand marketing to results. Clear, everything's clear. But then you, then they come and they say, okay, so, you know, this is a diagnosed problem. They come with, we need to figure out why this brand doesn't have a lot of trust and how to get it there. Well, trust is like a solar system. You know, it's like, trust isn't binary. You don't trust something or you don't, like, take a, you know, I have, I have a lip product right in front of me. It's like, do I trust this lip product is not going to burn my lips off? I do. Do I trust it's going to be just about fine compared to everything else. Probably do. I think it's going to deliver my most luscious, amazing, never chapped lips in the middle of the Chicago winter? Absolutely not. So, so when you, when you put a work, when you put a big broad word like trust or loyalty or a lot of these common tracking words or attributes onto a brand level thing. Like, I could barely answer that for a product level thing. When you put that on brand, that's where I feel like it can get so big that while I understand where, you know, the brief or the client is Coming from, we kind of get like, okay, well, we have to just reinterrogate and the whole project becomes, well, you know, these 8,000 people that filled out this quant survey, what did they think trust meant? What were they thinking? And now you're like, second guessing. And now we're always to Friday, you know, and we kind of start at the very beginning. So that is. Is A, where the brand tracker can start to get, I guess, sometimes misleading, and B, like, I find the audience is right, but starting to interrogate those words and what the audiences sort of understand by those words and the questionnaire itself, that's where things can get quite muddy. And you often find when you dig in that you're almost starting from, you know, square one.

[Val Kroll]

So is that. Is the. The instinct is we're going to use something like trust or loyalty because we want it to be timeless. We want to be able to track this over a long period of time. Therefore, we don't want to get specific. This will be better, but in the, in the process, you kind of make it sort of less useful because then you're back to saying, well, now we need to figure out what trust means, and it means different things to different people and what the hell.

[Erica Olson]

Okay, so, Erica, what. What should we be measuring?

[Guest Speaker]

Great question. So I'm a strong believer that tracking should be built from a strategy and not the other way around. And what I mean by that, I think Coach is a really good example. We work with Tapestry and the folks that, you know, they have Coach, Kate Spade, Stuart Weitzman, and Coach has been a really interesting one because they decided that they wanted to be younger, appeal to Gen Z, and they were so clear about that strategy and they started tracking the metrics that built toward that strategy. And I think they still track metrics that don't. Maybe, you know, how much Gen X likes it or whatever. But they're so focused on very distinct and articulate metrics around Gen Z. Like, is this brand cool? Is this brand relevant? Do I see this brand on social media? Do I equate this brand with, like, some of the other brands that were kind of their North Star? You know, who do I think? I think they have, like, a few different talent people in their roster. Like, do you think of these people when you think of this brand? So they're far more, like, sharp and articulate, and I think that makes them more actionable and, like, diagnosable when it goes wrong, there's clearly something to change that's within a far more, like, actionable scope than like, okay, well, we have to build trust or loyalty. It's like, okay, well that's marketing. You know, I don't know what to tell you. We gotta do a lot of things, whereas when they're more narrow and singular, I think it's a lot easier.

[Erica Olson]

And out of curiosity though, do you feel like there's a compromise there with the ability to measure long term then? Because like, your strategies change hopefully every couple of years at least at a minimum. Like, how do you balance that longevity of measurement with being quite specific on the strategy of. Of now?

[Guest Speaker]

Good question. Yes and no. Like, I guess I just don't put that much weight in those big vague things. So I'm like, what is that even indicating to you? Because when you scratch it a little bit, that could come from a million different places. That's all pretty reactive to the strategy you're implementing at any one time. So I guess, yes, it does come at the expense of that in my opinion. But I'm not sure how useful that is when it gets to such an altitude that it's undiagnosable or unattributable or.

[Mo Kiss]

Even some of the older data. Like, I'm not sure how, like, you know, compared to past three years ago, like, how are you even talking about a second ago, Eric, about the changing ecosystem and like, what think what's, you know, trends are current or popular really says the context for how your brand kind of fits in the mix. Right? So that context shifting and changing means that that comparison is probably less valuable. I don't know, I'm just, just thinking about that out loud.

[Val Kroll]

But, but that doesn't that equate to, I mean, even with like easy metrics, like, you know, traffic to a website and you start hearing you get pushback because you're moving to a new tool or moving to something else and there's, there's this like, intuit, this natural reaction, like, but this is gonna blow up our ability to track, you know, the last seven years. And I feel like, Erica, you were just being polite because it was kind of like a. Yeah, who the hell cares? Like, like who cares how you know if your brand has moved on trust by X basis points over five years? Like, nobody's actually looking at your sales from five years ago. Like, you want to know what have I done this year? Right? I felt like you were pulling punches.

[Guest Speaker]

I just don't know what that tells me as a marketer. Like, okay, so we're more trustworthy now by six points than we were then. I'm not sure. What to do with that? Like, okay, so our strategy was good, but even that's like, like you're looking back a bit and if your strategy is good, you're going to know by sales you don't need a trust metric. Right? Like, so, yeah, I think it kind of, it's like big but vague, and I just find those a little bit difficult to attribute or learn from. Even maybe not learn from, but action at least.

[Erica Olson]

I've got to ask then, what's your perspective on measuring brand awareness and brand consideration?

[Guest Speaker]

I think it's really important, you know, like, I, I think it's really important because I think you figure out where to put resources and what questions to ask based on those things. Like, if you have low awareness but high consideration, then it's like, okay, well, we need to get our name out there. Why am I putting resources into bottom funnel stuff? I think it shows you what you should be focusing on given limited resources. And I think there's a playbook, a broad playbook for awareness versus consideration versus conversion. You know, like, we have a ton of great clients who, once you get someone in the brand, they stay in the brand because the products are great, but it's really about getting them in the brand. So then it's like, okay, and then, then you get into like, you know, performance marketing and things like that. So I think it's really helpful to figure out kind of what basket to put your eggs in in that. In that way.

[Mo Kiss]

So you mentioned talking about, like, if you're, if the brand is strong and it's, it's healthy that that's going to show up in sales. Like, I'm curious about the projects where like the CFO's office is interested in understanding and tying together the investment in brand or like, even Tim was kind of teeing up in the intro to what can we expect in terms of business outcomes. And so how do you, how do you approach that conversation with organizations and like, what do you put in place to help draw those connections where, where possible?

[Guest Speaker]

So luckily I'm not usually the one that has to have the conversations. I feel like people, people come to us after they've had that con conversation and they have a little bit of budget. So in full transparency, I don't have to, but obviously I'm quite close to it. And I would say there's a few things, like, I do think it's pretty hard to draw a dollar value, but there are pretty like intuitive actions. So, you know, when, when a brand is healthy, I think you have Inherent trust from the consumer versus immediate skepticism. So you're playing offense, you're not playing defense, which is really nice. And then you know you have lower standards for success. Right. If a brand is vetted just with that lack of skepticism, you're already being chosen. And so like any like consumer, you know, CX issues or any issues like that, I think you get the benefit of the doubt and you're not, you know, the switching barriers are lower. So all of those things that are true metrics and are like pretty adjacent to sales but maybe is not like a dollar value or like a return per dollar spent type type thing. And then the second thing I'll say is what I see a lot which is instead of saying like, oh this investment is working, I think people often come at it from like an alarmist point of view. The argument that I see working quite often is like what would I say? Like we're losing to so and so. No one knows us. Retailers aren't wanting us. Our shelf space is getting taken up. So anything that shows like an inherent inferiority on a brand level I feel like is the stronger argument to like a cfo. Like what are we going to do about this? Because we're going to keep losing dollars until we invest versus here's the return on this is the. Is the approach I see taken more often.

[Erica Olson]

Yeah, I get asked very regularly what the dollar value of one point of consideration is worth. Like that's a question.

[Guest Speaker]

How do you answer that?

[Erica Olson]

Not well.

[Mo Kiss]

Mo's like obnoxious.

[Erica Olson]

Not well. But we are actually building something out over the next, well the next few months that are going to be able to help us do that. So I will keep you posted on progress there. But it does feel like the dream. I'll, I'll let you know if we pull it off.

[Guest Speaker]

I mean there's definitely customer value. Right. And now we're getting a little bit away from brand. But like you know, everyone talks about Gen Z, Gen Z and now it's gen Alpha, Gen Alpha. And you know, still boomers carry the majority of wealth. So there are like I've heard a lot of different equations. Like for each boomer we lose, we're gonna have to acquire three Gen Z. So like all, all of this resource is going toward Gen Z. But you know, there's some like customer equations like that. So you know that ladders to like so are we shifting our brand to be better position for Gen Z when really we're trying to retain boomers. Like does that equation make sense? So although it's not a direct dollar value. I have kind of heard, heard that kind of equation.

[Mo Kiss]

That's interesting.

[Erica Olson]

That's super interesting.

[Mo Kiss]

Like that.

[Val Kroll]

Well like with the one point that has me thinking as well about one, what does it take to shift a lot of things? It seems like here are trying to actually shift. It's one thing to measure it, but to say what's the lag from? We're trying to move with this population from point A to point B and we're investing a lot maybe different tactics to do that. Even when we're measuring it, no matter how we're measuring it, there's squishiness in what's being measured. So that seems like a challenge that one. There's a time component saying we're going to have to run down this path for a while to see if it moves the needle. And the needle is kind of fluctuating at one spot and it's, we're hoping it's going to fluctuate at some other spot. Like running into this kind of precision challenge of we're measuring it next month we're going to look at it again. I guess this is back to brand trackers with kind of a expectation that it's giving some perfect measurements of something that is, it's not giving a perfect measure of something that's difficult to measure. How do you kind of set expectations or coach to say are we doing the right thing? Are we getting the signals back that what we're doing is actually working?

[Erica Olson]

But I think that's why like I don't know this. Some of this knowledge is a little bit out of date. But a lot of the companies like where we've, you know, taken talent from or whatever, like they're basically running hold out experiments. That's kind of their like tactic to measurement. But then they have gone, okay, we've done that experiment. We just now fundamentally believe in brand marketing and we're going to keep spending on brand marketing until we run our next experiment in 12 months or two years or whatever, like versus because like, I mean ultimately brand experimentation is really hard. Right. And I, I think the thing that I always come up against is well, we want to buy nationally because it's cheaper. So as soon as you want to run an experiment, you can't do a national buy. You have to buy, you know, at local levels and that becomes more expensive and more difficult to execute. So like it seems like what some companies do is like I'm going to run this experiment. We as a company are going to believe that brand marketing works based on these experiment results and then we will revisit and run another experiment down the line. I'm, I'm curious, Erica, like, is that something that you've, you've kind of been exposed to or like less so?

[Guest Speaker]

I would say less so. I think, yeah, I think we wouldn't get a client coming to us if they didn't believe in brand marketing because we're not engineers. And I talked a lot about what we do do, what we don't do. We do not do any quant in house, nor do we do any execution. So I don't think, you know, it's maybe like a little bit of a hot take, especially amongst you three, but I tend to think like your gut is like a little bit of an important measurement when it comes to brand as well. Like, you know, like I said, you know, you're in the building and you shouldn't be a measurement of how the brand is doing. But you're also someone who's hyper aware of every time the brand is mentioned, you know, everywhere you see it or don't see it, every person who kind of you are third degree connected to who's heard of your brand or not. So I do think that's an important metric and it's one that is an amalgamation of all the things. You have a better sense of where it should be and if it's not there, that's a problem. You have a good sense of where you would be surprised to see it pop up. And if you do see it there, you're like, okay. Or even like this person in this space has heard of this. That feels like a really important data point. So I do think we're really smart as humans in ways that sometimes quant tools of all kinds cannot measure. So I. But I would say, like people don't get to us because we can't really optimize. I mean, I guess we can optimize a little bit. But that point, you're in the weeds of optimizing product and that you're in like RNI land at that point. So most people that come to us to varying degrees believe in brand marketing or at least want to see what it can do and are excited to figure it out. And you know what I find? Like, it's so I feel like quant sometimes is so much more subjective than qual. And I know that's like the opposite of what most people would say, but I feel like quant if I said the sky is purple because this Quant survey says 40% of the sky is actually purple. Everybody would say, okay, you know, and then in qual, if I went up to you and I said, you know, I've taken all these data points in, and I think about 40% of the sky is purple, people say, no, it's not like I live in the same world you live in. We're looking at the same sky. And I feel like people kind of know when it's not true. And so I do think, I guess that that is the lesson that has sort of taught me this. Like, humans are pretty good barometers of some brand metrics, relevancy, probably one of them. If it's in the spaces it's supposed to be, if it's moving in a direction they want it to move. I think I ruined the question.

[Mo Kiss]

Oh, no.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Erica Olson]

But so when you go back to a business after a piece of work and you're like, this either went well or it didn't. Well, go well, like, what. What do you share back? How do you. What's part of that narrative that you. You talk to the business about?

[Guest Speaker]

So I would say, when we're doing our jobs well, we find the answer. And the answer is often an insight about people or the world, and it's explaining why something is happening that they're seeing or why something's going to happen. And like I said, it's qual, so it should feel pretty intuitive. Like sometimes I think when we do our jobs really well, people don't appreciate it because they're like, yeah, you know, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. But then. So we try to give that answer, but what we try to do as part of the narrative, and I think this helps both understanding and adoption. And then actionability is giving context as. So it's not just like, here's this thing in the moment that you should know to be true. It's here's this thing, and we're going to surface it as an answer or helpful data, point to your question, your issue, the opportunity, whatever. And here's the context. Here's how we got here. Here's what's happening that's making this thing be true. Whether it's, you know, the world is moving this way, we see that, you know, luxury. Right. We'll take that. I think sometimes examples are a little bit easier.

[Erica Olson]

Yes, I love. I want to hear about.

[Guest Speaker]

It's like, we have a lot of brands in various categories that play in luxury or a really high price point. And I think there was a moment where they were like, what's going on? Like, luxury marketing is changing, and we're kind of seeing it, but we're kind of not. And it was this moment, and we looked around in the world, and it was when that movie. What was it called? Was it called Parasite? It won the best best Picture. And it was when Bernie Sanders was really having a run. And it's like, there is this notion in culture right now that's a little bit like, eat the rich. And then you. You are. You are the, you know, signal of rich. And so how do we, like, evolve what this means? That isn't just money. Does it mean taste? Does it mean access? Does it mean, like, can we evolve this? So what we try to do is say, well, people don't want to look ostentatiously rich. Okay, they clear. But why? And then we try to explain it. We try to give data points around that so they can understand what's going on and kind of what this looks like outside of their bubble. And then we try to say, so this is going on. This is what we're seeing that's explaining, you know, what. Whatever you came to us with. And here's what we think you should do. Here's some examples of brands out of category or in category that have done that, you know, or you. You flip it on its head. Like, look at Gucci. They've since changed designers, but when Alessandro was Gucci, he was having fun. That was like the Harry Styles era. It was. He made shirts that said Gucci with a Y, right? Like, he's just having fun with it. And all of a sudden, it's not this, like, untouchable, better than thou brand. It's like this fun, playful, very maximalist kind of cultural icon. And so that's what. That's what we try to do.

[Erica Olson]

I've got to ask. I promise, after this, we can stop talking about luxury fashion. But is this also where, like, the quiet luxury movement came from?

[Mo Kiss]

I was just gonna ask. Yes, that's exactly. I was just gonna ask that.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's like, look around us, right? I mean, even, you know, we won't go here, but even what just happened with the UnitedHealthcare CEO and all of the cultural conversation that's spawning. I think we really are in this era, you know, as. As wealth bifurcates. I think people are feeling really resentful and really treated unjust by the system or by a person or by capitalism or whatever it is. And I think it's really Interesting. As brands who obviously operate in a capitalist system, how do they react to that? How do they sell a product in this environment? That's like, the stuff that we grapple with. Those things are really important, you know, when it comes to marketing and comms and talent. And I don't know if you guys ever get into semiotics, but, like, the semiotics of luxury, right? It used to be gold. It used to be palace of Versailles. And we've really. The cultural pendulum has shifted to, like, neutrals and whisper and no logos. And if you know, you know, and it's. It's. It's access, you know, it's knowledge, it's taste. It's all of these things that maybe money can't buy. So. So, yes, yes. Tldr. Yes.

[Erica Olson]

And so, okay, a way to stay on this topic. But. But like, in the spirit of the show.

[Guest Speaker]

That's sneaky, though. I like.

[Erica Olson]

Yeah, yeah. So, like, let's say you're working with a brand who wants to make this transition. How would you measure, like, with that brand that they've done that successfully, that they've gone from that kind of, like, I don't know. I don't know, gaudy or like, splashing their logo everywhere to that, like, really, the neutrals. You can't really notice the logo if, you know. You know, like, how do you. How do you know when the brand's done that?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, so a lot of different ways. I don't know if any of them would be, like, a tool. You guys might know better than me. But I would say one, where it's appearing and who's wearing it. So the cultural sort of heads of quiet luxury. Let's say Sophia Richie, let's say Hailey Bieber, let's say some of these influencers who are, you know, very wealthy and showing the Upper east side moms how to dress like this kind of thing. So I'd say one, is it appearing in the spaces and amongst the people who are driving the narrative or driving the conversation or driving what that looks like in culture. So the spaces, it's in the people who are wearing it, too, is our. I would say sales. I mean, sales is. I keep coming back to this, and it's so silly, but, like, if this is where the world is going, then if people start buying it more, I think you're doing it right. And three, is looking at. And Val, this comes back to kind of what you were saying, but figuring out the people who like this quiet luxury and making sure you're tracking them and what they think about your brand. So you're sort of isolating off this variable of taste, finding the people who have this taste, whether it's like by tracking competitive brands, spend, demographic, where you live, whatever, whatever, and figuring out what they think. Those would be my top three, I would think, kind of off the top of my head.

[Erica Olson]

And so do you work with your clients? Sorry, guys, I promise I will shut up after this. And so do you, do you, do you work with your clients and basically be like, right, if we achieve these three things, then that's success? Like, is that what you do at the start of your guess, project plan or engagement?

[Guest Speaker]

No, because we don't really. I mean, I saw it in the, in the show notes, but it really is like turning an aircraft carrier. Like, these things are sometimes in pods, Sometimes we say, you can't do that. If you are a brand known for being green and pink, you're not going to be a brand known for being neutral. At least in the next, like five years. You just seem like you woke up and decided you were someone else today, you know, and there, there goes all your authenticity. There goes everything. So I think you have to be very careful and delicate and intentional with what's possible. So sometimes that means not chasing a score, right? It's like, well, you know, you could win on this score, but then you're, you're winning the fight at the expense of the war. And so we'll say, we'll say, here's what you should, you know, aim to, to sound like. Here's what you should aim to look like. Here's who you should aim to engage. Here are the spaces you should aim to be in. So we try to give them a lot of fodder, like whether it's an external agency or internal teams, and those could be from comms to pack, to which retailers you appear in to, you know, like pr, product placement, like everything like that. Anywhere a consumer or culture would see your brand, we try to give them, like, north stars of what that looks like. And then on the other side, like, here's what to avoid. You know, we love a this, not that. Like, you want to be quiet, you don't want to be loud, you want to whisper, you don't want to shout, you want to, you know, sneak around, you don't want to stomp things like that. Because I think it just helps people understand sort of what you're going for in a world where there's not one metric, define it. So that's what we do. And then do we come back in five years and say, did we do it? Honestly, No. I mean, we have ongoing client engagements, but usually the strategy changes at that time.

[Val Kroll]

Well, we talked about trackers as a measurement. A lot of this seems like, do you. Is there a more timely kind of a focus group or a small panel at times that if you're trying to affect a shift where it doesn't give you, it doesn't give you a tracker level of a measure, but sitting down with 10 people in a. Well facilitated and trying out some pieces of saying, have we, if we moved, have we moved anyone on this? Or did we get our selection for our focus group and everyone's still like, no, you're a pink and green brand. Like, that is ridiculous. Like, does that, does that fit into it, into the mix?

[Guest Speaker]

Absolutely, absolutely. Like, this is where you can get really precise right down to like, we have a campaign. And, you know, sometimes we even get like a company will hire us when they have like three agencies pitching for like a rebrand or a campaign. And they'll say, okay, here's the initial kind of storyboards or, you know, whatever the deliverable is. And they say, can you guys look at this yourselves and take it to focus groups, take it to consumers, whatever you think the right methodology is, and tell us like, which feels in the direction we're trying to go in. And there they can give like, you know, a pretty qualitative idea of what they want to go in. Like, they say, okay, well, we care that people say we look cool. We care that people say it looks like a brand for someone who's in high school. We care. I'm making these up, right? But they can so clearly articulate what they want people to say. And then so we look for that and we understand why people are saying those and we try to understand the, the very distinct, like, even codes. Right? Like, I remember we did this one thing, I won't say the brand, but there was. They wanted to. It felt like an antiquated brand and they wanted to be relevant, refreshed. And I remember they made One Direction and the people in the room had blow up furniture. Like, it was kind of, you know, that blow up furniture. It's like kind of gross and not comfortable, but it looks really cool on film. And I remember people were like, it looks cool because, like, that looks like a cool bedroom that looks like a 90s bedroom. You know, 90s is in. Everyone wants 90s. And so it was like those little tiny creative executions that at that point, at that, like granular level you're able to point to and you're able to say, okay, this helps it look 90s and 90s. This is doing this. This girl is chewing gum. And that makes it feel really casual and a little bit transgressive in a way that like mirrors what a 17 year old does. So you can find those little bits if you do something on like a very tactical level, whether that's like comms or a campaign or copy, you can do that with. And then you start to build those things up and you start to build toward, you know, understanding why. Maybe a score changes for one direction versus another, but that's what we need is like that ability to point to. Okay, here's the seven things that this articulation had that this one didn't that is actually driving people to see it as younger and cooler. And all these scores that you want to see move to move your brand in the direction you're looking for.

[Mo Kiss]

I'm curious your thought with all of that shared, like where my mind goes is like, what is your assessment or how do you think about when those brand refreshes go south? I'm thinking about last year's Jaguar rebrand is front of mind for me and I cannot get enough of content about it. But because you can just imagine that there were so many people in so many rooms discussing it that there was perhaps data or qualitative or quantitative that said this is the direction to go and why. But like how does that kind of, how does that kind of come to be or what is your assessment when, when things like that happen? I'm just curious.

[Guest Speaker]

Oh man, I don't know. But the comments section's so good, right? I could, I could scroll on those comments forever.

[Erica Olson]

Always, always the comments, how they come to be.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, you know, I kind of, I kind of respect when that happens because at least someone took a swing. At least someone was like, I believe like I actually come from a fashion background. I worked in fashion before I any marketing stuff. And I always thought fashion is so different in that it's driven by a creative, it's driven by someone with a vision. It's not driven by consumers. Right. Someone is selling a vision. They are an artist, literally an artist creating art that people wear. And they're selling a lifestyle, they're selling an identity. And fashion is so driven by a creative at the top and then like you know, kind of watered down so that people buy it at like Nordstrom or whatever. But I often think it's interesting that like brands, you know, Consumer brands, car brands, those don't really behave like that. Like, everything's so bottom up. We need so much data and so much, like, reassurance. And even then it's like, oh, we changed this from, you know, this big to this big. And it's like, you didn't even do anything. But I've always really respected fashion brands in that way. And Val, I think that's. My answer is like, at least Jaguar took a swing. Like, tired of brands acting. Yeah, you know, like, you did something interesting, you tried, you put yourself out there, you did something different. Time will tell how it'll go. And I tend to think, like, history looks more favorably on these things than we think it's going to. Their swing was big. It was a big one. Maybe bigger than I would have taken, but I don't know. How does it go wrong? I think someone has conviction. I think someone has conviction and they sell their vision and someone lets them run with it. And like I said, I think both quant and qual are more subjective than people think. So I'm sure they found numbers and quotes that supported whatever they wanted to do somewhere and they were off to the races and here we are.

[Val Kroll]

But that seems like that is, that is part of it, is that it's really made. You're making the case for human thought and like rationalizing and trusting the, the brains of saying, we've picked up these nuggets, we put them all together and doesn't make sense. The pitfall is that winding up in an echo chamber where you think you found some glorious insight and you're like, if you put this in front of like one Gen Z intern, they would literally, you know, fall off their chair laughing. And so it seems like that's finding ways to say, how could we measure, how could we triangulate, how could we validate. We had this idea, I have no idea how to fix, I mean, what, what Jaguar could have done. I love that you're saying the, the big swings. For whatever reason, it's making me think of JCPenney back. I don't know, was it five or ten years ago when they, they were struggling, but they kind of just changed their logo? Like, they didn't. It seems very much like they didn't. And I may not be remembering the facts of that correctly. They tried to make this kind of surface level branding, visual change and that. I mean, they were struggling. They needed to take a big swing and they kind of took a surface level big swing that kind of fell flat. So I don't know it, it feels like it's making the case for take qual, take quant, take a mix of people, make sure they've got the psychological safety to be set up to challenge and push back, but not push back so hard that no. No big swings get taken because they get, you know, smackdown.

[Mo Kiss]

That's messy, compromised out. Yeah.

[Erica Olson]

I think the thing that's kind of resonating or, like, rolling around in my head at the moment. Right. Is it. It sounds like we need to, like, package the learnings in quite an intuitive way. But the one bit that I'm kind of trying to reconcile is, like, it then gets really hard to challenge those beliefs down the line once they become kind of, like, deeply held within the company. And maybe this is kind of what Tim's saying as well. Of, like, once you start to inherently believe something as an organization, then when you have a learning a year later, that kind of contradicts that. It makes the presenting of that contradicting idea really challenging because people hold on so deeply. Is that like, have you experienced that working with Bratz?

[Guest Speaker]

I have. I have, I have. And, you know, it's a hard thing. Like, it's. It's even hard for me. I think about a lot about this in life. Like, I think we all do this as humans, too. I've been really challenging myself to say, what do I hear over and over again? That every time I hear it, I dismiss it. Like, it's so easy to lose sight of how quickly you dismiss the same thing over and over again. And I have an example of this. We work for a lot of different beauty clients, and for a long time, beauty has been framed by various brands all over the beauty category, broadly hair, skin, makeup, whatever, as expression. Right? It's a woman's expression. It's not a societal obligation. We're not in the 50s. She doesn't have to do it to make her husband happy. It's like, we talk about this, like, beauty as agency. I do it because I like to do it. You know, you're worth it. We have all of these product names and slogans and positionings that are based off of this. Like, beauty is women's expression. And, you know, I just. I started to be like, all the time. Like, but everyone wants no makeup. Makeup. Everyone wants to look natural. Everyone want, like. Like, I am hearing over and over again that people are like, no, I'm not expressing myself through beauty. I don't want to, like, participate. Like, I'm looking as good as I have to look to go to work or to be in a social setting. And I'm like, I don't think it's expression. Guys. Like, guys, we keep hearing this over and it's like, I even realized I was starting to already know how I dismiss it in my head. I was like, what? I'm hearing this all the time. I have to stop and interrogate. Like, hang on, this isn't true. We just keep telling ourselves this and people are telling us over and over and over and over and we're not listening. So I think one of the things, one of your answers mo is, you know, I actually think you can see this with the US Election, right? Like, pollsters, like, we got it so wrong. And I feel like we're hearing the same thing over and over and over and no one kind of believes it. And everyone dismisses it with this, that, and the other number or this or that. And it's like, no, like, we heard it. Like, we heard it coming and we dismissed it and we mitigated it and we made it smaller than it is and it wasn't. And so, yeah, I guess, like, you know, when you, when you keep throwing something at the wall and you just see it increasingly not stick, you have to be like, really aware of that and listen to it.

[Erica Olson]

How. How are you building that into. I mean, that is phenomenal because, like, the thing I always think about is, like, when you come to work and you're not normally wearing makeup, and then someone's like, you look great. And you're like, because I'm wearing makeup, most days I just look like a trash fire. It's like, you're right. Like, that's not an expression for me. That's me doing the bare minimum. But, like, how are you building that into your workflow or your, your mindset each day so that you come at those deeply held beliefs and have a new, like, perspective to challenge them. Like, how do you hold yourself accountable?

[Guest Speaker]

That's like, my favorite part of my job is that, like, I, you know, we. Everyone calls us an agency. I think that's just because. An easier thing to say in this industry. But technically we're a consultancy. We don't make anything. We don't act as an agent on behalf of anyone. We don't make anything for them. And so I think, you know, a. I don't, I don't live in the building of any of my clients. I don't live. We work with a lot of different industries and verticals. So that's the other thing you start to hear the Same sentiment across industries, right? Like, you start to kind of see the same patterns of behavior and reasonings for making a decision this way or the other. And then you realize, oh, this is a human thing. This isn't a beauty thing or a media thing or a tech thing. This isn't a product thing. This is a human thing. And people are choosing all the things based on this variable or this thing that's changed or this thing that's now of greater importance to them in the world. But I can, you know, my job is to just be really curious and come in and actually listen and tell that story to clients. And if they listen, great, hopefully they do. You know, that's what they pay to do. So hopefully they listen. But sometimes it's tough news, right? Like, I think pandemic is a really good example. Like, a lot of things change. We, you know, Tim said we work with a lot of alcohol clients and alcohol consumption and occasions really changed pre and post pandemic. And, you know, some alcohol brands out there stood for like clubbing and partying and very high energy, you know, occasions. And, and those aren't happening as much anymore. And that's, that's more of an easy one to see and an easy truth to face because you kind of see it in sales. You see clubs closing and we ourselves as humans. You're like, yeah, wait, I go out less or I go home earlier, I'm drinking less. You see it all around you. So at some point you have to be like, wait, this has changed. And I have to, I can either listen and learn or I can continue to push back, but pushing back is not going to serve me in the long term.

[Val Kroll]

So on. Like the expression. I mean, I can't help but hear the. You having a hypothesis that's counter to kind of an accepted truth, which is, I don't think it's about expression. Presumably you could validate that. Like, how would you go about. And maybe you have already done this, that, like, I think we've got this generally accepted truth that may be flawed. Do you first have to get somebody to pay you to go, you know, validate your idea? Or like, how, how would you go about? Like, that seems like that's something that wouldn't be that hard to say. I just need a big enough sample and I just need to do a well designed, unbiased set of questions and find out that, yeah, there are people who see it as expression. Like, how would you go about validating that, that hypothesis?

[Guest Speaker]

So we'd always, I mean, I kind of start. And this is how our company approaches it, with that context bit. So, like what, like people's opinions at large don't just change. Something is changing them. So if I can find that thing that's changing them, that can explain why this shift might be happening. You can always find people to tell you the thing you think is true, right? So I don't want to rely on that. I try to, like, explain it and see if that makes sense, you know. So I think one of the, there's a few things. So like with this, with this example in particular, it's like, what has changed? And I think one thing that's changed is now you see all these stats that like, women are graduating college at a higher rate than men. And I think, okay, well that means women have a lot of power, right? Like we, women are getting jobs, women are getting higher paid jobs than men. And at the same time you see this kind of, you know, we won't get into it totally, but you see a lot of cultural writing about this like, crisis of masculinity. So at a high level, I'm like, okay, I'm seeing headlines, I'm seeing cultural fodder that would suggest there is a power shift happening. And of course, like, beauty is an expression of femininity. It's always been tied to womanhood. And so it would make sense that if you see one big thing changing, that another thing that's, that's adjacent to it is also changing. So I start by trying to make sense of it and seeing if it, if it tracks and trying to find holes or like, but then why would that happen? So it's kind of a cultural puzzle a little bit, kind of. With the luxury example. Tumo. So I start by making sense of like, what's happening out there and are we seeing other, like you could consider them data sets, right? Like, whether it's movies that are doing really well, whether it's like figures that are rising in popularity, like everyone is glomming on to something about these various cultural figures or people or things or media. And why is that? And what do they have in common? And then I'll go like, you know, ideally we start talking to people. Experts are always a good thing. Like journalists, people who like, have a bird's eye view and are not in the corporate weeds, but who are very analytical of shifts. We maybe talk to experts and then we might talk to consumers. Then if we really see some sentiments making, making their way to us from like regular people, then we would figure out how to size it and see if it's really a thing or is this confirmation bias? And we've just set up this whole project to, you know, confirm something that wasn't true.

[Mo Kiss]

That's really interesting. I have to ask because I feel like Tim's going to move to wrap us.

[Val Kroll]

I'm going to go ahead and say we're going to wrap. So then, Valve question. So.

[Mo Kiss]

So I think it's more rare than common in my experience to find a company or a brand who uses competitive benchmarking successfully to say, like, oh, well, we want to be like that. I mean, I did a lot of CX and optimization experimentation work in my previous role and there was a jewelry company that wanted to do some competitive research and even the list of competitors that they gave us, I was like, I did a spit take. I'm like, are you serious? Like, you really think that those are your competitors? So I'm just curious about some of the, the, the helpful ways that you've seen organizations use competitors or competitive intelligence in that way to kind of drive what they choose to do or choose not to do or where they choose to play or not.

[Val Kroll]

Oh, good. Val, you asked, you asked a question that has a short little answer that's.

[Mo Kiss]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quick little.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, I think you're so right. Valid. I have experienced that so many times where, you know, even as part of the screening process to figure out who we're going to talk to, you know, we, the whole time we're like, yeah, yeah, the competitive set. The competitive set. And then we write the competitive set. And people like, wait, no, no, no. And you're like, oh, we are way far apart right now and what you think you are and what the world thinks you are. But so validation complete there. But where I do see it as really helpful and some of it is interrogating like, you know, I think I said in the lead up to this, like a lot of times brands will come to us and say, I want to be Nike or I want to be Apple. And it's like, okay, what are they trying to say there? And you know, those companies right now, for example, Nike, right, They're going through a lot. There's a lot written out there and their earnings are not great. Like, those companies aren't necessarily doing well financially. And so it's like, what are they trying to say? And I think they always want to be. They have high awareness and they're generally considered aspirational. So I guess it's like a. Trying to figure out what the competitive set they're giving you is trying to do. And it's taking that step to say, okay, maybe you aren't that, but let's try and find a metric or like some way to understand that delta and figure out how you might close that delta, whether it's being more aspirational or have greater awareness or being like the leader of a category or having a hero product or whatever it might be. But I do think the other way that I wanted to say, which I've always found really brilliant and really helpful from my end, is when you use competitive tracking or benchmarking to figure out your strengths and weaknesses and use that to inform back to where we started Mo using that to inform sort of brand expansion, category expansion, business expansion, even putting resources toward RNI in the areas where whether it's true or not, sometimes it's just because of the name or the pack or your retail strategy, somewhat inadvertently you have a niche strength somewhere that people believe and if consumers believe it, it's true. Right? There you go. Like all you have to do is if people believe something, then it's fairly true because it informs their experience. So I've often found competitive benchmarking really interesting when you use it to sort of build on a strength that the public already thinks you have versus trying to turn it around or fill a gap or something like that.

[Val Kroll]

So what I heard Mo is that Canva someday might have the user experience as positive as Microsoft PowerPoint. I mean, keep going for that.

[Mo Kiss]

Have you thought about Clippy Mo Just.

[Erica Olson]

I just really my face, I want to convey to the listeners my face right now.

[Val Kroll]

Strive for that Microsoft user experience. Okay, well on that wisecrack we do need to start to wrap and there I feel like there are a million more questions. 1 I based on the last discussion, I want to know if anybody was tallying how many times I mansplained during this episode and hopefully it's a small number.

[Erica Olson]

I'm sure some lovely listener will let us know. That would be great.

[Mo Kiss]

Back to the comments.

[Erica Olson]

Please write in direct directed to Tim Wilson.

[Mo Kiss]

Get into those comments.

[Val Kroll]

So this is really I've got my brain is going in many many different directions and I want to ask another 20 questions but unfortunately we are up against the clock. So before we wrap this up, we do like to do a last call go around, have everyone share something that related to the topic or not that is interesting or they were intrigued with. And Erica, you're our guest. Would you like to go first?

[Guest Speaker]

Oh, the guest has to start. That's cool guys. Mo, I'll get. I'll. I'll give one. That. Actually, I was thinking of when we were talking about luxury and, you know, this pendulum swing from maximalist to quiet luxury. I've actually been following this artist and redecorating my apartment, and his name's Tony Kelly. I think on Instagram, he's like, tony, Tony Kelly, world. And I keep thinking he has such a unique esthetic for this time. It's like, it's very evocative. It's sometimes a little sexual. It's very repetitive. It's very colorful, but not in a way that's like, in your face. And he's starting to do more commercial work. And I keep thinking he's, like, a great creative mind for luxury right now. And it's, like, really serving. Yeah, it's serving the aesthetic of the moment, like, where I think luxury is going, and none of that is metriced out. I have nothing other than my human brain to say that. But take a look, because it's really interesting, and I just. It's a little bit of a throwback, but a little bit new, a little bit colorful, but not too crazy.

[Erica Olson]

My wing was that I just opened it on Instagram and was like, hopefully everyone does the same thing because it is really interesting. Like, yeah, I wouldn't have picked that as the direction, but it's really. Yeah, evocative.

[Guest Speaker]

Feels right. Right. See, that's the thing. It's like, oh, yeah, I could see it.

[Val Kroll]

I'm so uncomfortable. This is like, I'm. I'm still stuck in the early 90s, I think, with my aesthetic.

[Mo Kiss]

So it's back around. It's back.

[Val Kroll]

Yeah, it's coming back.

[Guest Speaker]

This is your time to shine. You're good.

[Val Kroll]

Well, Mo, you've already. If we can get you off Instagram for a minute, what's your last call?

[Erica Olson]

Well, the problem is I've got three, but they're all very, very quick. Okay, so the first one I've mentioned before, but if you did have your ears prick up talking about luxury brands, I definitely recommend going back to the equivalent required podcast episode on lvmh. It's phenomenal, and it's what piqued my interest in this topic because I am not a luxury brand girl. The second.

[Val Kroll]

Wait, what kind of. What's your favorite drink? Bubbly.

[Erica Olson]

It's champagne. That's not a luxury brand. That's a lifestyle choice.

[Mo Kiss]

That's a luxury lifestyle.

[Val Kroll]

Expression. Okay.

[Erica Olson]

The second is that Canva creates. Coming up, it's at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 10. And it's going to have a bit of. A bit more of a data focus this year. So if you are interested, I'm hoping to be there myself. I'm not 100% sure yet, but you can get tickets at Canva and it should be really fun, really fun brand event. And then the last one, which is my real last call, is I did listen to a really fun podcast the other day. It was actually Trevor Noah's podcast Past, and it's called Adam Grant Gives Trevor an Intellectual Wedgie. But the thing that was really fun about it is they were basically talking about, like, what happens when your values are tested or like, how you deal with prejudice. And one of the things they discuss is, like, the new Heineken. Well, it's not new anymore, but an old Heineken commercial where people were talking about their political beliefs. And I don't know, I just like. Trevor Noah's obviously very, very funny. And we all know I'm obsessed with. With Adam Grant. So it was like a really fun play of two of my favorite people hanging out. And I'm done. I'm done. I'll put down the mic and hand it over to Val.

[Val Kroll]

Do me proud. Triple. Yeah, it's awesome. Val, what about you?

[Mo Kiss]

So I recently listened to a podcast. It was Manuel dacosta of Effective Experiments was the guest. It's called the Product Process Gap. How to stop this leak in your organization's budget. And I think we've kind of seen over the past couple years that more product organizations are really getting into experimentation, especially digital product teams. And so now that we have less of that center of analytics or center of Excellence kind of running the experimentation, it's this more decentralized model. And so these product teams are kind of running into some of the same hurdles that those centralized teams saw, like, five years ago. And I think the way that he reframed the. The tripping points that they're experiencing, it's. It's really interesting. And I think he gave some really tactical advice for those product teams and how they can kind of stop the bleed as he kind of talks about. And also there was. I had heard this forever ago and had forgotten about it, but who. Who is familiar with the term harking H A R K I N G.

[Val Kroll]

Like harking back like a bird. I just know it in the parking.

[Mo Kiss]

Hypothesizing after results are known. I forgot about that. But it's so good. It's really good. And so it's like this. This fallacy of that. After you see the results, then you kind of back yourself into the why and how dangerous that can be. And so anyways, it's a nice concise like 30 minute episode that's like chock full of good stuff. So highly recommend that lesson.

[Val Kroll]

Wow.

[Mo Kiss]

All right, Tim, how about you?

[Val Kroll]

So I am going to actually recommend a YouTube video. And this was. I was at a Columbus Data Analyst Wednesday event and was talking to a lady named Lauren Van Sloon, who she and her partner or met as gamers. And we were, I'm not a gamer. So she wound up sending me. There's a video called what games are like for someone who doesn't play games. And it's like a 20 minute video. And this guy who's like a lifelong gamer had his wife and he picked like three different categories of games and two games per. And he kind of made this super cut and was pointing out like all the reasons that people who don't game at all are just like completely lost. And it's, it's kind of funny. It made me feel better about like how lost I am if I ever do pick up a controller. And it was just kind of an interesting analysis of, I mean, talking about how even some of the, the documentation in game documentation actually winds up not being that helpful. There's a presumption that you have a level of expertise that you likely got because you started gaming at a point where someone was like walking you along to, to do it. So it was just a. I rarely make it through an entire YouTube video of any length. And the fact that I watched a 20 minute video over like three sittings was pretty.

[Mo Kiss]

I'm excited for that. My husband is a gamer and I've never, never touched any systems. I don't even know the right words to say. I didn't even know the right word to say just there. But like I'll, I'll walk past him playing a game. At a certain point he'll be like chasing a horse. And so then that becomes like the horse chase game. I'm like, oh, you playing horse chase? He's like, that's not, it's not horse chase. He's like, I chased a horse for five seconds one time and you happen to see it. So I can't, I can't wait to watch that.

[Erica Olson]

I think it's called a console, right? Like, I think that's the. Yeah, yeah.

[Val Kroll]

Well, he even, he had, he had her play some that were kind of keyboard PC games. He had her play some that were with controllers and talked about how there are conventions for different buttons. They're like, yeah, they're not going to tell you to sprint. You can sprint. So like play. I don't know.

[Mo Kiss]

It was enjoyable.

[Val Kroll]

It was enjoyable so completely. I felt somehow better about my lack of eye hand coordination from watching it. So anyway, of course no show would be complete without a huge thank you to Mr. Josh Crowhurst, our producer who does all of the editing and fun stuff behind the scenes that make this come across coherently. And as always, we'd love to hear from you. Dear listeners. You can find us on the Measure Slack group or you can find us on our LinkedIn page, or you can just good old fashioned email at contactnalyticshourio or comments on our YouTube channel. Feel free to reach out. I mean you could even leave us a rating or a review or on whatever podcast platform you listen to us on. That is our once per six months request for ratings and reviews on podcast platforms. But I know I can speak for both of my co hosts Mo and Val when I say no matter how hard it is to measure what you're measuring, keep analyzing.

[Tim Wilson]

Thanks for listening. Let's keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions and questions on Twitter at analyticshour, on the web at analyticshour IO, our LinkedIn group and the MeasuredChat Slack group. Music for the Podcast by Josh Crowhurst.

[Val Kroll]

So smart guys wanted to fit in.

[Mo Kiss]

So they made up a term called analytics. Analytics don't work.

[Tim Wilson]

Do the analytics say go for it no matter who's going for it. So if you, you and I were on the field, the analytics say go for it. It's the stupidest, laziest, lamest thing I've ever heard. For reasoning in competition.

[Mo Kiss]

Rock Flag and Whisper Lux.