← The Art of the Brand
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- [00:00]
Camille Moore
I'm actually noticing like you actually have to do ridiculous shit to like break through. Like it's at the point where your brain has to just be like, I don't care. I'm an expert. I've got an opinion and a perspective and I'm just, I'm gonna stop trying.
- [00:13]
Orin Miller
To over control this as soon as you say trend. What I think to most people who are doing something is they're gonna get lost. If it's already a trend, it's already saturated. What you should be doing is something different than disrupts.
- [00:22]
Camille Moore
Everybody is creating content. If you're not just showing up and being you, like you don't have to not be you, but if you're not doing that, like it's, it's actually not going to work anymore.
- [00:31]
Orin Miller
People are interested in controversy. When you take control of your own press and your own media, you're not really counselable, even though people think you should be.
- [00:38]
Camille Moore
Edits is a comparable to Cap Cut. Cap Cut is different than TikTok. So basically you would record a bunch of clips, usually on your just your phone video, like when you're traveling and stuff and then you load those into a template in capcut. Basically they're basically pushing you to move it into a template in edits. And there's no watermark. It's like unlimited downloads. And like Cap Cut premium is like 200 or something crazy. Welcome back everyone for another week of Art of the Brand. We're changing up our format a little bit this week, so give us feedback on what you think.
- [01:17]
Orin Miller
Let's get into her.
- [01:18]
Camille Moore
All right, so first, first headline is James Charles. He is in the news and I want to talk about being un cancelable. So for those who don't know, especially for our slightly older audience, James Charles is a famous makeup artist who has really become, has kind of ridden this wave of like being famous and infamous. So he was super famous. He was one of the breakout YouTube makeup artists. And then he was kind of bound to be like a bit of a tyrant, a bit of a predator, a not very nice gay man because there's, there's a, an element to his predator illness with trying to change straight men. And anyway, so he would face some backlash a few years ago and he completely bounced back. Like he's got a super loyal following as far as like the cancellation goes. Like he was as bad as they got as far as like during that cancellation wave and he bounced back. But now he's under fire again for another basically allegation of like being with A man that was once straight who is in a current court case for abuse of someone he was friends with. So the woman that he was friends with was dating this guy. She abused her. They're in court battle and he's now under fire for effectively dating a guy that was abusive.
- [02:38]
Orin Miller
All right, so I, like the listeners, are waiting to hear what is relevant to our discussion today.
- [02:45]
Camille Moore
To me, he's such a perfect case study. Cause I was talking to the, like to the Gen Zs in our office. Because to me, one, James Charles is like super irrelevant. But two, just how short of an attention span the average person online has and how they actually want this. Like, they almost want you to ignore the cancellation and to come back and just like business as usual. Because truly the consumer online doesn't care. They only care if you stop. So if you stop being when you get canceled and it becomes like a. Ooh. Like, and you allow that to set in, that's what ruins you, not the actual going under fire.
- [03:19]
Orin Miller
The nuances maybe lies in the move away from mainstream media. Like, if you're dependent on mainstream media, then you can be canceled because then the Twitter Nazis who decide who is a good person and who isn't, can mount a campaign to get you fired from Fox, MSNBC News, or blacklisted. But when you exist in the world of social media, where there's a lot more kind of democracy to people making individual choices, people are interested in controversy and how you respond to the controversy can frame how you're seen. And this is an example of when you take control of your own press and your own media, you're not really counselable, even though people think you should be. In the end, the market will decide if you're interesting or not.
- [04:03]
Camille Moore
That's the absolute mic drop point, is that we actually need to redefine the word cancel. Because, like, to be canceled is to not have control over your space of employment. But that's the whole reason of why you invest in a personal brand is it's your platform. But you're not going to grow a platform if you're not yourself and who you are. Not everyone is going to agree with, especially if you're being authentically you, because ultimately there's just so many people and so many opinions and so many perspectives.
- [04:27]
Orin Miller
It's actually the disease that infects a lot of corporations and CMOs, and that is they're terrified of being cancelable because they're operating in the old power structure of like, we don't want to be banned by traditional advertisers or we don't want to be told that we can't go on NBC. Right. But if you take control of your brand, take control of your own messaging, you can actually be far more risky and your audience will respect it. Even though maybe people in some organizations don't like it.
- [04:57]
Camille Moore
It's not even like an if. It's that you have no power when you are beholden to organizations because they don't want to take on risk. But the risk isn't the same when you're like when you're a faceless company. The risk is much larger than when you are a person because there's context to your perspective. There isn't context to a faceless corporation and how the faceless individuals acted on behalf of the corporation. And that's a really important difference.
- [05:25]
Orin Miller
Can I give a throwback to one of my favorite media moments? That again, qualifier, you might not like Elon Musk. You know, I personally think he is one of the brightest minds in our history and is doing amazing things. But he was on the stage being interviewed during an investor inquiry. And I remember the question where the interviewer goes, how do you respond to Apple and Disney and these advertisers saying that they're gonna boycott X because you're opening the doors to free speech. And what I like about him is he takes time before he answers so you can see the eyes flutter like a computer. And he was quiet for a while. He goes, I just tell him, fuck you. He goes, apple, Disney, you wanna not advertise on X because I'm opening up free speech. He goes, fuck you, you don't control me. He goes, you're like, he just, he literally said F you. And in the end, Disney stock is through the tank. Apple has now come back onto X. Right. He wasn't counselable because he, you know, he was one fearless of being manipulated by people who, who have an agenda. But I was, it's a strong thing for me.
- [06:26]
Camille Moore
It's just you, you actually like kill somebody, you know, like. Or you do something really, really, really, really bad. For the most part. The Internet has a 10 minute attention span. Like it's going to be here and it's going to go. And that's what the, the reason why I want to talk about James Charles from almost a different perspective is. I was talking with the team and there's a bunch of these characters that, that exist definitely within the younger audience sphere because also again to your point, these people that are huge online didn't have to go through traditional Media. So, like, anyone older than even 30 that, like, existed in the media sphere was a part of an outdated model, and there's a different level of fear. But these younger people that are, like, they're doing these things that are controversial. There was this one girl they were telling me about that did something crazy at like, a Met gal event. Like a. Made, like, a really ridiculous comment. I don't know. But the point was, is that she just, like, never addressed it online. She just, like, kept creating content. And then ultimately, like, like, the comments were, like, bad for, like, two weeks and then, like, everyone moved on.
- [07:26]
Orin Miller
Reminds me of that song. Wasn't Me.
- [07:28]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [07:28]
Orin Miller
No, like, yeah, like, it wasn't me. But what I want to. I think what's helpful to the audience maybe is I have some skill sets in assessing risk from the military and some legal training and risk. Risk tolerance, I think, is a big issue in a lot of companies right now in their approach to marketing.
- [07:44]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [07:44]
Orin Miller
If you're scared of pissing off anybody, you're not going to make decisions that allow you to grow at a fast rate and you don't want to be reckless. But I encourage people to think of risk tolerance not in terms of what people who don't like you will say, but risk tolerance is in relation to your target market. So you say, like, if I make this campaign, what is the risk that I alienate my target market? Or what is the risk that I. Right. Not what is the risk that some subsidiary group on the outside comes in and says, we're bad people? Because I think, as we're going to talk later, I think that criticism can actually make your target audience more loyal if you're staying true to that messaging.
- [08:20]
Camille Moore
It's even simpler than that. Like, honestly, fear is the mind killer. Because for social media, in order to break through, you have to say something.
- [08:28]
Orin Miller
So there has to be a higher acceptance of risk.
- [08:31]
Camille Moore
There has to be successful. On social media, I was even. This is like a whole thing that I want to touch on today is that it's. I'm actually experiencing it firsthand. It's never been harder to break through the algorithm. Like, everybody is struggling. Nobody is spending money. Everybody is turning to creating content and trying to market themselves. Like, the phone has become the real only method of connecting, building, selling.
- [08:59]
Orin Miller
When you ask young people what their ideal job is, like, it used to be firefighter, YouTuber, teacher. It's influencer.
- [09:06]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [09:06]
Orin Miller
Like a huge proportion.
- [09:09]
Camille Moore
Yes. And that, because there's just even like, Instagram stories, like, the view count is so down. Unless you have, like, a crazy story, like you're literally announcing you're pregnant or like, you're in Japan. Because everybody is creating content if you're not just showing up and being you, like, you don't have to not be you. But if you're not doing that, like, it's. It's actually not going to work anymore. And that's, like, the sad reality. I was. I was watching this video, and they talked about, like, the Howard Stern effect and how Howard Stern realized that, like, there's, like, a standard kind of, like, there's a line of safe. And just like, being safe didn't result in viewership. And this was years ago, before the algorithm. And he realized, like, he needed to have. He needed to say crazy things. So because people that loved what he had to say had the exact same thing of what people that hated him had to say. And it was that regardless of what he said, they couldn't wait to hear what he had to say next. And people who hated him wanted to give their opinion, and people that loved him wanted to share their opinion and to use that opinion to help further their opinion. But social media has amplified that. It's like what these radio show hosts that were controversial realized is now just amplified in a way that, like, I can comment on your post and say, I disagree with you, and people want. That people want to, like, show up and tell you they don't agree.
- [10:24]
Orin Miller
I think one of the things you have to relook at is these companies or social media people who are putting out this kind of blah, vanilla stuff is it's. It's disrespectful to your target audience to not put out something that's at least interesting to them.
- [10:38]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [10:38]
Orin Miller
To think that they're going to like it just because it has your logo on a couple of graphics and the right type of people there, like, that's. That's just old. You might as well be advertising in the telephone book, like, it's time to change.
- [10:50]
Camille Moore
I think it's. It's actually disrespectful to your team, I think is disrespectful to the hired people you're hiring. It's disrespectful to your own time because if you're not saying anything, it's just. It's not going to work.
- [11:02]
Orin Miller
We had somebody sometime last week who's like, I have a team of marketing people that I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on. I listen to the social media masterclass from Camille Moore, and I feel like I know more than all of them put together.
- [11:13]
Camille Moore
They do.
- [11:14]
Orin Miller
And they're like, oh, my God, we can do this. It's like all of these people have been trained to do things the way we always did it, and they're not dynamic. And. And there's. There's so much room for improvement there.
- [11:23]
Camille Moore
Well, it makes me want. Before I move on from this, this topic, I just want to quickly illustrate this new model that I'm communicating. You're actually fighting when you're posting on any platform, two ceilings. And most people think the only ceiling they're fighting is new followers. But through deductive reasoning, what you're missing is if you're. Every single post you're trying to create is to grow, and you assess how many views or impressions that you're getting per post, and it is a disproportionately small percentage to the followers you have. What you're not realizing is that Instagram is telling you that your post isn't even good enough to get to your followers. So if you have 2,000 followers and your post got 200 views, Instagram told you that it's literally not worth your 2000 followers to get that piece of code.
- [12:09]
Orin Miller
What it actually said is, we showed this to 200 of your followers, and the engagement was so poor that we didn't show it to more exactly.
- [12:16]
Camille Moore
Like, that was. The max that we could show it to was those people, because they have.
- [12:19]
Orin Miller
That sample and they didn't like it. They gave it a chance.
- [12:22]
Camille Moore
And the algorithm doesn't have this, like, evil vendetta against you personally. It's that your content sucks. And that's like, people want to grow on socials. But, like, before you can even get to the growth ceiling. So, like, here's follower ceiling. So if you're creating content and it's not breaking through the follower ceiling, you're not getting to the followers.
- [12:38]
Orin Miller
We should create a meme of, like, a sports person, either a team, a coach, or a fan, blaming the ref for losing the game and then having somebody who's trying to do social media just saying, you know, blaming the algorithm as opposed to just losing because they're not doing good.
- [12:54]
Camille Moore
But that's exactly it. And it's like, it's actually at the point where. And that's what we're going to get into talking about later. Penn Badgley's, like, social strategy right now. But I'm actually noticing, like, you actually have to do ridiculous shit to, like, break through. Like, it's at the point where your brain has to just Be like, I don't care. I'm a, I'm an expert. I've got an opinion and a perspective and I'm just, I'm gonna stop trying to over control this. I did a video week in a hoodie with the hood up talking about Met Gala. It like disproportionately outperformed and for the longest time everything was like pretty dresses, have your makeup done. Like you literally have to show up without your makeup on to break the news, to get the point out. And if you're not prepared to do that, it's not going to work because there's just so many people creating content.
- [13:35]
Orin Miller
Why I find it interesting in a competitive arena is it actually is rewarding intelligence. And it's not academic intelligence, it's EQ scrappy. It's eq. It's like what can I do that will capture, capture a human being's attention? So you're seeing a lot of creativity by the people who are doing well. But like standard people who are educated in stuffy ways, who aren't naturally creative, they're not going to get it done for you. You actually really need that secret sauce.
- [13:59]
Camille Moore
It's a great point.
- [13:59]
Orin Miller
So let's move on to the next CMO. CEOs.
- [14:02]
Camille Moore
Yeah, CMOs of CEOs. So there's a headline that came out on the Australian, which I know, haha. But it's actually blowing up on LinkedIn right now and the headline is that effectively CMOs make for the best CEOs because they understand business and their customer and their customers buying preference and buying psychology.
- [14:21]
Orin Miller
Insert meme of Jack Galifianakis laughing at that, that headline.
- [14:28]
Camille Moore
Well this is like literally people are going off on LinkedIn about this because CMOs are like absolutely about time we're recognized to lead the company.
- [14:36]
Orin Miller
The data that I'm familiar with is that with. And it's not like the last year or. But is that CMOs were the lowest percentage of C suite executives. So you have Chief Financial Officer, chief Information Officer, chief Operations, operations Officer. There's a lot of chiefs and chief Marketing Officer, but of all of them the CMO is the lowest to get promoted. And it's because they were often their trade was rooted in the kind of Ephral, you know, non qualitative or non quantitative element. Whereas money talk. I can see this happening in a virtue signaling world because the CMO has now got disproportionate influence on making the company feel like they're good people who are complying with ESG stuff. Right. So the CMO is getting more attention because they're saying, hey, look at how ESG friendly we are. And so that person is getting promoted into the spot as the brand. But I think it's actually resulting in most of the companies that are failing are the people who are doing that. Because CMOs are generally educated at a business school, they're not really creative, and then they go down a path of pleasing people rather than making tough, risky, courageous decisions. Leaders have to be able to make decisions that piss people off. I don't see many CMOs that are prepared to do that. I was just thinking about a business coaching thing I was doing the other day where he had the whole team talking about, oh, we're doing this, we're doing that. And I would just go, how much money did your company bring in last week? And nobody in the room knew. I'm like, you're talking about all of these things. Like, but when it comes down to business success, in the end, it's like, how much money did you make last month? Like, what did you actually put? And I find, like, these types of articles on LinkedIn are designed to make marketing people look wonderful. And because they have messaging platforms, they're all talking about it. But I call BS on the whole thing.
- [16:17]
Camille Moore
I'm gonna take a different approach.
- [16:18]
Orin Miller
All right, hit me.
- [16:20]
Camille Moore
I think it's complicated because more often than not, the CMOs I meet in the average big company are not fit for this statement. However, I also find the CEOs in most of these companies are also just. We're not producing people that are dynamic, that are scrappy. And because there's just been this perpetual focus on increased quarters, there is no focus on longevity in market. However, outside of what exists in the masses, when I study the brands that are really doing the best right now, like the Liquid Deaths, like, I mean, there's just so many examples of these top brands that are, like, in the. In the market, that are killing it in branding. The CEO is the cmo. Like, they really have both. Even, like, you know, Malwan, we were talking to them the other day. It's complicated because the.
- [17:08]
Orin Miller
The founder of Liquid Death was a cmo, right?
- [17:12]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [17:12]
Orin Miller
Another company, but he's an outlier, but then he actually started his own company.
- [17:15]
Camille Moore
I think the direction we're moving in, though, which is relevant to analyze for this headline is I think that there's. With everything that's happening with tariffs, there's just. The house is falling. Right. Like, I think there's not going to be as Many businesses selling like there used to be. And there's going to be select businesses that ride the course because we're going into hard times. And I think the ones that are going to survive, there's not going to be a need for all these different skill sets that don't have overlap. Like the best people at branding and marketing are probably going to be running the companies because there's just going to be less companies.
- [17:48]
Orin Miller
But it depends on how the company selects CEOs. Like if it's a public company and the board selects it or the shareholders. But I don't think it means just because there's going to be less companies doesn't mean more are going to be CMOs.
- [17:59]
Camille Moore
No, I just think the ones that are going to survive are going to have those skill sets like because also.
- [18:03]
Orin Miller
In tough times, I'm just to make a counterargument like CFO's no numbers. Right. They don't get distracted like they reinforce on the numbers at work. I think CFOs who understand creativity can become an amazing CEO or CMOs who are truly, you know, entrepreneurial and understand numbers can be it. But it sounds like a fluff police article that's designed to get, you know, interaction because I think depending on the industry, it matters to matters.
- [18:28]
Camille Moore
Oh, that's a huge point of it. Yeah. I just, I do think that there's something relevant to or rather the takeaway point on my side is CEOs have been rewarded for before the age of the Internet for doing their job behind the scenes and like executing a well done business and brand where I think it's complicated or there is a wrinkle is that we're demanding founder led brands or at least a face on the brand so that we can get to know the brand better. And maybe it's not like the traditional CMO who's in the role right now, but needing more of those marketing skill sets to navigate the business.
- [19:04]
Orin Miller
I would say a CEO wants to keep their job. Better be watching your content or understanding how brand works because if you don't, it's a matter of time before you're going to be replacing.
- [19:14]
Camille Moore
And that's my point is that I do think that the amalgamation of skills has to happen but like there's a larger issue because like most CMOs are useless. So. But I agree, I think that we are agreeing.
- [19:23]
Orin Miller
Not that we have to agree, not.
- [19:24]
Camille Moore
That we have to agree, but I do think we agree on this one.
- [19:26]
Orin Miller
Yeah.
- [19:26]
Camille Moore
All right.
- [19:27]
Orin Miller
I don't want to label a whole sector Bad. But I just think the way honestly most are useless.
- [19:31]
Camille Moore
I'll just go out and say it. But let us know your guys thoughts on this headline. Okay, next topic.
- [19:37]
Orin Miller
Home hardware versus Canadian Tire.
- [19:39]
Camille Moore
Okay, this is a really interesting one.
- [19:41]
Orin Miller
Canadian Tire is a hardware store. Although it says tire. They did auto repair in the beginning, but then they became the biggest kind of Home Depot in Canada for a while before Home Depot came in.
- [19:50]
Camille Moore
But it was different than Home Depot cause it wasn't like lumber and stuff. It was like fishing and like outdoor chairs and.
- [19:57]
Orin Miller
Yeah, no, and tools. And tools. It was a hardware store slash department store. But it was, it became a Canadian favorite because they introduced being very forward thinking. The founders Canadian Tire money. Now think 30 years ago, 40 years ago that if you spent money at Canadian Tire they would give you Canadian Tire money back. Like 10 cents, 25 cents a dollar.
- [20:18]
Camille Moore
It was like monopoly money. Like it was legit monopoly money.
- [20:21]
Orin Miller
But I just remember when I was young my parents would, would store their Canadian Tire money and then if I did enough chores, they'd give me the Canadian Tire money. I'd go and buy like a fishing lure or something.
- [20:30]
Camille Moore
Like it was amazing.
- [20:31]
Orin Miller
It was, it was a reward system before reward systems existed like point systems and all that.
- [20:35]
Camille Moore
And it was. Nobody else did it. It was like super special. And the Canadian Tire did such a great job because they were the first to market in their category. They had really good real estate. So there was always a Canadian Tire close by. And it was such a. It became honestly was like colloquial to like call it Crappy Tire because it was like kind of where you went to like go buy all your crap. This is even before Walmart because Walmart entered into Canada late. Right. So this was kind of our like oh, the coffee maker's broken, let's go to Crappy. Like it. Yeah, that was kind of. It was also pre Amazon. It's where you got kind of all your house shit.
- [21:13]
Orin Miller
I told the story during the executive mba.
- [21:15]
Camille Moore
Which two that knows you had the chief marketing or whatever.
- [21:19]
Orin Miller
Yeah. Came in to talk until she was a graduate of this very respected business school. And she came in and she was talking about Canadian Tire and how we're doing this. And it's amazing.
- [21:29]
Camille Moore
It's amazing triangle.
- [21:31]
Orin Miller
We're diverse. We're diverse. And I just thought I would share with them because my friends have like high discretion money to go and buy things and fix things around their house. And every one of my male friends at the time complained that when they went into Canadian Tire they couldn't find somebody that would help them find what they were looking for. And the only people who were in there were either kids or people who were new to the country who knew nothing about anything. Yeah, when we did our Home Depot.
- [21:55]
Camille Moore
Study, the number one differentiator is that they hired four personalities and, like, insane level of training and knowledge.
- [22:02]
Orin Miller
This lady was talking and it was like everybody was like a wow festival. She's a graduate. Look how high up she is. She reports right to the CEO. And I stood up because I'm a little bit interesting. And I said, look, I just want to give a suggestion if you talk to the CEO, because I've loved Canadian Tire my whole life. I thought you guys were forward thinkers with your Canadian Tire money. You're an institution in Canada, but you're losing us. You're losing my friends who have discretionary income, because every time we go in the store, we can't find anybody to help us find anything. And I said, I know so many men who have moved because of that reason specifically. And I go, I know there's labor costs, but why not create an app that I could go into the store and open up an app and just type in what I want and it could direct me, or somebody could pop up on my phone and go, look, I'll help you find what you are in the store. Like, it could be something like that. And you should have seen everybody in the course was, like, nodding, yeah, that's a great idea. I've experienced it. And what happened is she just goes, I don't know what you're talking about. We have a trillium triangle reward system that is the most. Is the best system ever. And she goes, and right now, it's easy to find things in Canadian Tire. So I don't even think that's a real. And I said, well, I just thought maybe you would pass that on to the CEO from somebody who was a loyal target. And this is what we're feeling. She goes, I don't think that's really appropriate to talk about. And then the Prof. Who sponsored came in and goes, we don't need any more questions like that. We'll just end the session. And then after the session, all the guys came over and goes, man, I hate going to Canadian Target because I can't find it. But the reason why I think we're bringing it up, well, that's just an example, one of people who don't want to hear real feedback because Canadian Tire has struggled more since then. But when you go to Another company called Home Hardware we went to the other day and you had some comments about it. I thought we would share to you.
- [23:36]
Camille Moore
Well, the thing that's really interesting is that Home Hardware. So Canadian Tire has been like the iconic department store forever and they started making budget cuts, they stopped focusing on their brand and the brand slowly started to die. Their upside is their real estate. So like that's been like what's kind of saved them is that they had a stage established real estate that was convenient. This other brand in Canada called Home Hardware has been kind of. I would say it's been kind of a sleepy brand. It's like family owned. It's mom and pop. It's kind of smaller. It was never. It was a national brand, but it didn't have the same cache. Like Canadian Tire is like Walmart in Canada. Home Hardware is like some rant like an Aldi, like a random kind of other brand that's like in. It's just not comparable. It's also more smaller town. Like you don't have.
- [24:24]
Orin Miller
I think it moved away when Canadian Tire took the big box locations. Home Hardware kept presence in the smaller areas that didn't have big boxes.
- [24:32]
Camille Moore
But Home Hardware also had lumber and stuff. Like they were kind of more of like a smaller town competitor to a Home Depot and probably has been around for just as long. But in the last few years Home Hardware has made a huge push on brand and there's a lot of a talk happening for kind of Home Hardware being the better kind of hardware home store solution. And it shows you how the fixation and focus on brand so greatly changes the conversation and the dialogue because home. Everyone's talking about it. Yeah.
- [25:04]
Orin Miller
So Canadian Tire has a brand and experience and they, they're now known for having cheap great sales on tools like and you know, they buy from China. But when we went into Home Hardware that's a little bit bigger than, than their stores, I think we were both shocked right away. Like this place looks exceptional.
- [25:20]
Camille Moore
It was like they had great brands.
- [25:21]
Orin Miller
Like the cut.
- [25:22]
Camille Moore
Like the brand people were hugging the staff. Like they came in and they were like. It was like literally like a Maxwell's commercial. Like they were like coming in and hugging their friends and like, and the lady.
- [25:32]
Orin Miller
They were all jovial. But also like I, I've started picking this up more since we're. We're doing this. But the visual presentation when you walk into the was exceptional. It wasn't like a kind of cluttered hardware store, right?
- [25:44]
Camille Moore
No, it was. Somebody is advising organized. Well, well, that Was also too because he worked with a huge grocery store chain. There's a whole industry of like aisle mapping, product mapping. It's a whole science of flow. Cuz there was one grocery store in their brand that I just. I didn't like the way the store was laid out and I actually had the opportunity to talk to the CEO and they're like yes. Like here was our constraints based on that location because this person couldn't do that. And I didn't realize how big of a play it is. But hardware is invested heavy in retail mapping flow of aisles.
- [26:18]
Orin Miller
Their color, their palette's good and they're. And they're hiring great people and it's clean, it's organized and because it's individually owned they're actually doing a great job from a franchise model of. Of making the experience. An amazing experience.
- [26:33]
Camille Moore
Yes. But also too I think it's important two things for me to touch on. One when I went to Home Hardware they had everything Yeti which was and they have it like on display when you walk in. So it's like you walk in and the whole left wall is like a Yeti wall. And one I mean who doesn't like looking at YETI stuff? Like yeti stuff is designed with their color waves and their product skus it's like it's a really cool like brain experience because they have great products. When I went into Canadian Tire because you had to charge the Tesla when you're bank when we're in Bancroft I anticipated the with the similarity of their brand for them to also have Yeti products. And it was so disappointing because when I go in person to stores I like seeing the ninja products. I like seeing like the branded brands that like I don't get to see in real life because I never go into physical stores. Home Hardware had way better brands like for the like bringing you back into the physical shopping experience. Like I want to go to harm hardware when you need to go get tools or something. Because I want to go look at the Yeti stuff. It's driving me back.
- [27:31]
Orin Miller
That's why store redesign is good. And some of the older Canadian tires are still kind of like the baskets everywhere and the cluttered and. But why I thought it was relevant for the podcast for us to talk about is to show that your brand has to have everything.
- [27:44]
Camille Moore
Yeah. A good product, a good story, good experience and consistency. Like you need all four.
- [27:49]
Orin Miller
And so Canadian Tire has had a well recognized brand. Home Hardware didn't and what I thought we would share with the audience or if anybody from home hardware is listening is like you are killing it at the experience level. At the outward messaging, you haven't captured it. I wasn't prepared for how good home hardware was. So the message hasn't gotten to me or to other people right about how good it is in there. So they're doing something really right. But the person who is doing outward messaging I don't think is doing it in a way that gives respect or homage to how good the experience is.
- [28:22]
Camille Moore
You're not wrong. There's space for them to, there's, there's space for them to do more. However, I don't have a problem with executing fantastically and allowing your like customer to find you because we also left that experience and we also told like a lot of people and we put it on the podcast. Like there also is something to not having to pay like hundreds of influencers to sell to sing your praise. And like that's actually what I think the better takeaway is.
- [28:50]
Orin Miller
No, I'm not saying they should do that. I agree with you. They're still spending money, but maybe they're spending less. And this is their brand strategy is to make the experience. But I think if one of their people took your social media masterclass, I think it would change their lives because there's so many good themes. Like I would do content that would show me wandering around a Canadian tire looking store like trying to find something and just being, just it being like a foreign, like I'm in a country where nobody speaks English, like and I can't find it. And then I would show the welcoming, cool aspect of in home hardware, you know, like to speak that language. I think that would bring more, more profit to them.
- [29:22]
Camille Moore
I don't think there's a problem with investing in your community. Like I think that's actually kind of the problem right now is they're very selective on who their retail, like who their retail partners are. They're very selected on who their franchise partners are. They're very focused on in delivering a strong experience and they're actually focusing on the things that matter. Like you're right. Like sure, they could have a funny socials, but it's also at a franchise business.
- [29:43]
Orin Miller
But I'm not saying, I'm saying they need a brand refresh because my understanding of home hardware before doesn't reflect what it is today. And that message hasn't got across to me because I would be a customer. I am. Yeah. But I had to accidentally walk in and to me that's not good strategy. If you invest in changing it, you have to. You have to let people know that there's a different experience in there. I think I'm just looking up their logo to see if they changed.
- [30:06]
Camille Moore
I think that their brand is good. I think that their brand is good. And I think that.
- [30:10]
Orin Miller
But you never wanted to go to a Home Hardware because you thought it was cheap and garbage. And then when I brought you in, now you love Home Hardware, but before that you didn't want to go.
- [30:16]
Camille Moore
Yeah, but I'm also. That's not a fair statement because prior to going into Home Hardware, I also didn't have a house. Right. Like, I was living in a downtown city side of home.
- [30:24]
Orin Miller
I know, but you didn't think Home Hardware was a cool store.
- [30:26]
Camille Moore
But I would only go into Home Hardware when I had a reason to go into Home Hardware. And the moment that I did, which is the period of when we went into it, I'm going to become a loyal fan.
- [30:34]
Orin Miller
Okay. But don't ignore if you want to argue that you didn't think Home Hardware was a cool store and then when you went in. So there might have been a way to mess with that.
- [30:41]
Camille Moore
I think that Home Hardware was a cool store when I was a young person living in the heart of downtown. Right. Like, Home Hardware wasn't relevant to me as a customer.
- [30:49]
Orin Miller
No, I'm not saying you were ignorant of it. Like, you may have been ignorant of it, but you didn't think it was a cool brand. Right?
- [30:55]
Camille Moore
Why would I?
- [30:56]
Orin Miller
Well, because of their messaging of what it is. The same reason, if you had never.
- [30:59]
Camille Moore
Used it messaging for what it is, is that I never was one of their target customers until I had a house. I didn't think Home Depot was cool when my dad went when I was a kid because I wasn't the home. But my dad was a huge raving fan because of their DIY book and like.
- [31:12]
Orin Miller
Okay, so your dad was a raving fan, which then influenced you to think Home Depot was the place to go. So from a brand perspective, that's. I'm just saying, like, you're messaging. They weren't messaging down the chain as well. So when somebody buys a home, where does the first place they think to go? That's their logo. I think, I think they could do it.
- [31:29]
Camille Moore
I think there's, there's definitely, like, you're not wrong. Like, there's space for more. But I also respect that they're also focusing on what matters most. Like, there's so many brands that are putting so much money into TikTok content. And there's a limit, right? Like it's either traditional TV or radio or some kind of like billboard or ad or it's social media. And if you. That isn't their core focus for like improving their brand, which I can respect, right? Like they're doing a fantastic job at their in store brand level because ultimately Canadian Tire has a better logo. They have like TV commercials, they have, they own the like stadium in Ottawa for the sens. Like they're doing more on that front, but their experience and their in store sucks.
- [32:10]
Orin Miller
So it's interesting. Like, do you, do you spend all your money on TikTok videos or do you spend it on good people? And that's a balance that you want to look at because spending it on good people, I think in the long run can be better for your brand, right, because you get, you get like raving fans. And in the example that I would share with people, I was, I had occasion to be in a town that was to drive to it. It was far away and there was two hotels, Best Western and a Home Hardware. No, no, sorry, a Best Western at a holiday. So I got mixed up and I was booked in the Holiday Inn. And I give two examples of hospitality that you can comment on. But I thought I was booked in the Best Western. They're the only two hotels in this smaller town. And I got there like at the end of my charge on the Tesla. And they had a charger there, but you had to kind of unlock it. And I went in to check in and they're like, sorry, you're not here. And then I eventually found out that I was at the Holiday Inn across the road, which didn't have a charger. So I thought I had been booked in the Charger. I asked the lady, I said, hey, can I just get a little charged so that I can get through to the next day? Like, I'll give you 50 bucks. I know, I thought I had booked here. And she goes, let me talk to the manager. The manager comes out and goes, sorry, our policy is that only registered guests can charge here. I'm like, well, I can see them. They're both empty right there. Like, I travel a lot. Can I just pay you $50 and let me get enough clicks so that it doesn't cause me another hour delay. And he's like, sir, I'm sorry, the policy is you have to be a registered guest to use our charger. And I'm like, are you sure that's the right decision? Like, I travel and he said, no. And I just walked out thinking, you guys suck. Like, why don't you have the authority to say, yeah, go there? And then I would have left a five star review. I would have said, best Western is amazing. I didn't even register there. And they let me, like, you need to hire people who have the knowledge to make the right call for your brand. If the CEO of Best Western knew about that, he would be upset. He wants his people to know, to make the right decision to keep the brand in the right spot. First of all, what do you think about that? And I'll tell you the Holiday Inn story.
- [34:05]
Camille Moore
So what I think about that. Yeah, there's this book that I read. I think it was either Buy back your Time by Dan Martel or it was the four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, like one of those kinds of books. And he said he basically gives the autonomy to anybody to make a decision up to. It's like 500 and the same thing. Isadore Sharp in the Four Seasons, his book on the four seasons, said effectively the exact same thing that people were able to make a decision up to 5, $500. And based on what you were looking for in the autonomy, like, it's difficult because, like, I understand, like if there were guests and they were charging and like, blah, blah, blah, but the fact that like it was a random weekday, there was nobody charging and they could have made the decision that wouldn't have cost the brand anything, but wouldn't have changed your perspective of the brand would have been the better thing to do.
- [34:52]
Orin Miller
Yeah, I think it's relevant to Home Hardware because their people seem so attuned to what their clients need. And they, the people that we talked to at Home Hardware seemed to have knowledge of what was there and an ability to help. Because when I went across and I stayed at the other hotel, a Holiday Inn, which I'm some sort of elite member of because I travel so much. When I checked out the next day, I was delayed, but I know that I have late checkout till 3 o' clock. And I didn't call because I know as that member I have late checkout. So I came back at 3 o' clock and as I'm checking out, the front desk person goes, I need, the manager needs to chat with you. And I'm like. And they come out, they go, we just want to Let you know, Mr. Miller, that you didn't call ahead and tell us you wanted late checkout. And so at 11 o' clock we were all wondering what's going on and our cleaning staff. And I'm like, you're pretty empty right now. She's like, it doesn't matter. We have to schedule our cleaning staff. And so I could have charged you for another night, but I didn't because you're an elite member, but next time, please make sure. And I'm just like, I don't think that's how you would want your manager to be an ambassador to your elite status members. Maybe I should have. I didn't know I had to. I was actually in a meeting. So straight through. But to come and get lectured by a manager about policy. And this is what I want to get across is that your policies are there for a purpose. It's probably so your company is successful. Right. It's not to be just enforced, you know, by the letter of the law. And you need to delegate authority to people to protect your brand at the lowest level.
- [36:11]
Camille Moore
It is complicated though, because also how like did that ruin your experience with the brand?
- [36:16]
Orin Miller
Somebody who travels a lot to get chastised for not calling you could say, you could have said that so in such a nicer way. But what I'm saying is the quality of your hire makes a difference in terms of how they manage a customer relations because people go and talk about it if they don't have a good experience.
- [36:30]
Camille Moore
But I think that's a relevant point. It's not what they said to you, it's. It was the, the person's like conveyance.
- [36:36]
Orin Miller
But it's also exactly what they said to me because they were empty. That was a small person who wanted to make a point. Right. And too many people break relationships with people they care about and with their clients trying to be right rather than be successful. Like if I knew that, I would fire that manager for the way they dealt with that. Right. You can turn something into a good sir. We reckon we realized that you were a little late today and although we didn't know about it, we extended you to 2 o' clock because that's what you're worth as a value elite member anyhow. And it's, it's a completely positive experience versus a negative one.
- [37:08]
Camille Moore
Yeah, I do think it's complicated when you're not a high end brand though, because when you are like a lower rung brand and they don't have crazy margins in small towns, it's hard to find great people. Right. Like the Four Seasons trains and that's.
- [37:21]
Orin Miller
Where Home Hardware is.
- [37:21]
Camille Moore
But I also think Home Hardware pays their people very well. A lot of the Issue for like these brands that have not great employees is that they're not paying people. Fantastic, right? And it doesn't attract the best people because there isn't an incentive for great service. And that's like a relevant point too, is that, like, you get what you give. All right, so let's talk about Penn Badgley. There's this big trend that's coming out where people are basically creating content that like, disrupts. So it's like it departs from your typical content and it's designed to be more entertaining. So like, Penn Badgley is doing this right now and he's effectively, he's doing this big push for this movie and he's going on all these shows and doing all these podcasts and he's effectively doing this like skit or like dance based content as a way to pattern disrupt and like, make him show up on more algorithms so that his content does better on these shows.
- [38:07]
Orin Miller
I advocate in some ways against trend hunting. As soon as you say trend, what I think to most people who are doing something is they're going to get lost. If it's already a trend, it's already saturated. What you should be doing is something different than disrupts. But as soon as you see everybody is doing the dance, you don't want to be the person who does the dance because everybody's done it. What does it say? I'm not creative, I'm just copying what other people do. What he did, the way he did it, it was innovative and it was kind of new and it supported where he was. Right. But I think too many people follow trends rather than curate content that speaks to what their brand is and what their audience is looking for. Because I feel like I would just be copying what somebody else has proven successful to get likes, which I think is not what we should be using social media for.
- [38:50]
Camille Moore
I agree and I disagree. I agree that being fed a trend and asking you to do something that doesn't feel authentic is largely what I criticize businesses for doing. However, what I'm also noticing though with the algorithm is that there becomes an over reliance on like your style of content and it becomes boring for the user, for the audience. So you need to do something that like, breaks through the audience and connects with your community. And a really good way to connect with your community is to not take yourself too seriously.
- [39:21]
Orin Miller
Is that a trend or is that a truism?
- [39:24]
Camille Moore
It's a truism. And I'm not saying that you need to tap into trends for the sake of tapping into Trends. I'm saying you need to disrupt in your content and find different ways to create content that aligns with your brand. And I've noticed even with like with our social media coordinator who works in house full time, she's shown us trends in the past where I've been like no, that's not my brand. Like no, I'm not interested in that. And I've started trying them and it's interesting how well they're breaking through to the algorithm. But I'm not doing trends to chase trends. I'm doing them to adapt to, to my brand and making it work for me and it's really working for growth.
- [39:58]
Orin Miller
I'll push back. I'm not sure you don't know what the quality of the growth is. So one of the problems with social media is, you know, you don't know if the quality of the engagements is longer. Which I don't think that's what we're. I think the you might get more likes or maybe some more followers. But I think she's amazing obviously. But we have to be careful of short term bumps that give us dopamine hits. Are they good for the brand? So I think like if you're going to do things that disrupt, do intelligent things that disrupt state of your brand, right. There are some trends that you would do that. Right.
- [40:28]
Camille Moore
So that's where you need to have intelligent strategy. But what I'm noticing is that your page is being suppressed unless you are actively creating content that like breaks the news and like breaks through the algorithm. And like being controversial is one way to do that. Showing up with different forms of content that's entertaining also is a way to do that. And what's what I'm noticing with the few examples that we did and I'm noticing people doing this also online we're actually getting comments and likes from like our OG people that I haven't seen comment and like on our content in a while. And it's, I don't think it's because our content hasn't been good enough for them. It's that they scrolled past a few of our videos and Instagram decided that our content wasn't the most relevant to them. And this broke through the algorithm because Instagram deemed that this is a way for them to reconnect with us.
- [41:15]
Orin Miller
I would be focused for a business of making, making a trend in their industry. Right. Or stealing like an artist from other trends. Right. And doing something that's disruptive.
- [41:26]
Camille Moore
That's what I'm suggesting. It's Stealing like an artist, like when you see a trend, like a trend right now is like, I almost forgot that this was the point, right? And like, basically most people are doing it in a very lifestyle way. I've asked the team to help me edit footage from us like traveling and doing the person, like, as a way to adapt it to our message. So I'm taking a concept and I'm adapting it to our brand. It's that stealing like an artist, it's not doing the trend for the trend's sake. It's adapting something that's working to break through.
- [41:55]
Orin Miller
I think we've talked about it though, that trends can be seen as shortcuts to get immediate that say, oh, look, I'm growing, right? As opposed to sitting down and putting four hours aside and thinking, how do we make a very creative, entertaining and exceptional piece of content?
- [42:10]
Camille Moore
You're making a great point and I'm, I'm adding on to what, what you're saying. It's important for you to continue to diversify your content because if you're, if you're not diversifying your content, you're actually not breaking through. Like, your followers aren't seeing your content on top of that in order to break through with using strategy, ensuring that it's on brand, doing something that like, disrupts from your typical content type, breaks through to your audience that are following you, and then it increases a higher likelihood of your following posts and stories to be shown to them because they engage with that people of content.
- [42:39]
Orin Miller
No, no, I, I can get that. But I think the level of thing that I'm looking at, because I, I was talking one of our staff members from Russia. And so I got on the, on my feed, Russia therapy, right? It's like, your man's not emotionally connected with you. Good. He's got a job. You know what I mean? And it was actually really funny and she blew up. But then all of a sudden I saw four or five other people doing it, the same thing, and they weren't getting that. You know what I mean? Like, and so I don't want to anybody to do that, but you can learn from that and apply it to your thing. I also think maybe like the dance video we saw from that guy, you could almost do, make it look like you're going to do the dance and then stop and go, forget it, we're not going to do this. And then go into a message like just other ways to do something rather than just copying what somebody else has done.
- [43:23]
Camille Moore
Totally. Well, even the one that we did the like feel you guys are here for the zipline? Like I use that line but like people are redoing that concept type. It's not like me ripping off a fake Russian accent.
- [43:35]
Orin Miller
It's kind of a meme that's growing.
- [43:37]
Camille Moore
Yes, right. It's, it's a way to apply.
- [43:39]
Orin Miller
So memes are very sorry to cut you off. Memes are very powerful if you can tap into what society thinks is humorous at the time and then create it.
- [43:48]
Camille Moore
But doing it for your brand, that's like the core point of that. Let's talk about H and M. So let's talk about this next headline. This is a crazy headline and it's H and M is working directly with models and their agencies to create digital replicas of 30 different models this year that will be able to use in, in AI generated images for purposes such as social media posts and marketing campaigns. The models themselves will own the rights to their twins and will even be able to let other brands use them. Basically this has like been obviously super controversial because these models have like allowed for their rights to be manipulated for ongoing campaigns. They're getting paid for their likeness. And I want your thoughts on this.
- [44:29]
Orin Miller
A lot of the Actors Guild union strike in Hollywood was based on concerns over digital use of an actor's Persona and likeness. And they seem to get bogged down in it. I'm not that familiar with the story, but from a modeling perspective, if they've worked it in so the model can make money when they're sleeping because they're using an avatar, you don't have to go to 50 shoots. They'll probably get less, less pay if the avatar is getting used. But then they don't have to do as much work. So it's kind of an interesting way to license since your likeness, your likeness that AI can then generate into doing things on commercial. So at least the person is creating some IP in their likeness. But at some point it'd be interesting if AI can just make better looking models. And then you're going to have. But the only thing is there's no.
- [45:15]
Camille Moore
Personal brand to that. Right. So like.
- [45:17]
Orin Miller
But a model doesn't have a personal brand.
- [45:18]
Camille Moore
Yeah, they are. They do. They have huge followings online.
- [45:21]
Orin Miller
Well, they may once they get known. Right. But they're generally one dimensional humans.
- [45:26]
Camille Moore
But that's the whole point though of like, like what a Zara and an H and M that they choose is that they're, it's for the people. So like the models are like followable people. They're not they're not thought leaders. They're not like dropping education, but they show what their life looks like.
- [45:42]
Orin Miller
Yeah, I just think they're going to be creating full AI models.
- [45:45]
Camille Moore
What's interesting is the quotes that come with it. My digital twin is proof that technology can enhance our profession, not not replace it. She's like me without the jet lag. I control my digital twins availability. And finally a way for me to be in New York and Tokyo on the same day. So it's exactly what you're saying. It's like these models are celebrating it because it allows them to effectively get more modeling gigs because once they sign the contract, they don't have to go and do the shoot.
- [46:14]
Orin Miller
I think they may be biting themselves in their own butt because people will have shorter attention spots span so the career of the model will last longer. And so I think you'll just see more and more models coming up out of everywhere, more temporary. So posting that, it's amazing. Today they're celebrating themselves, but it might be doing long term damage to the industry.
- [46:32]
Camille Moore
I agree with you. I think that it's sticky territory. I think these models think it's a cool for them to be the first to do this in kind of a global campaign. Not only from the perspective of one, the obvious of where does this go? But two, what is your joy of life if it just becomes that you're just licensing out your image and you don't even have to do the shoots, like what are you doing? You know that the natural next step is that you're going to be replaced. But if the next two or three years is you just like signing off.
- [46:58]
Orin Miller
Your likeness, the analysis from my perspective is it kind of reflects that models are more egoic and shallow because they're celebrating, oh look, I can just do that. Whereas the Actors Guild was like, no, you can't just replace us with AI. Like we have a skill set that comes. We're not going to let you try to. And the people who are posting, oh my God, look how cool I am because this happened. They're going to be temporary human beings.
- [47:19]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [47:21]
Orin Miller
Because they are. They're showing that they're replaceable.
- [47:23]
Camille Moore
But the core thing with the Actors Guild was that they were pushing for the AI likeness without a compensation model that was set up to it for it. Right. It was that like basically we, we have you in a movie, we can like basically use that AI. Like because they're doing so much green screen already and like cg, it's effectively like they already own their Likeness.
- [47:42]
Orin Miller
Well, they were trying to prevent studios from not using without the compensation or just not using actors at all. Yeah, just kind of using AI to select from a bunch of people and creating digital actors. Yeah, but that looks so real that people don't know that it's a digital movie as opposed to a real movie.
- [48:01]
Camille Moore
Agree totally. Agree totally. I would like your guys thoughts on it. Okay, so the last thing is kind of a breaking news. So Edits Instagram has come up with this app called Edits App and I wanted to talk about it on the podcast because really nobody is talking about it or using it. And capcut has become a massive tool for creators by like basically being able to like edit videos at a very high end experience like on your phone. CapCut Premium costs money. Instagram launched at its app, which is effectively a competitor to Capcut Premium. And it's free and it's, there's murmurs right now. It's very much whispers of Instagram is going to be preferring that application because the metadata that's going to be built into it and it's effectively the exact same app as capcut. So for people that listen to us, they get like first insight of download that app, that it's free and start using the tools, the templates, the audio so that you can get ahead of this application.
- [48:58]
Orin Miller
Two things there I think. One, they're responding to just general knowledge that people are often filming their videos on TikTok because the content creator on TikTok generally makes better videos. People prefer it. So they probably saw that trend. And so what this is a response to bring them back to making their videos on Instagram?
- [49:17]
Camille Moore
Well, it's more than that because Cap Cut is owned by ByteDance. So TikTok actually preferred CAP Cut editing because of the like they were connected applications. But like Cap Cut still had like a shared Instagram and button and stuff. But it was just, it was, you're right, pushing more people towards TikTok than.
- [49:34]
Orin Miller
To Instagram probably if you want to stay on the cutting edge of your content, like if you have a video, you film your video and then you go through Instagram for it. But you know, in the past, you know, people would make a video through TikTok, save it and then post that back up into Instagram. Like you might not want to be doing that. You might want to be using your platform's preferences to get the best traction within the platform.
- [49:54]
Camille Moore
Well, the thing that, the reason why most people use the TikTok tock to record is that they have a really subtle Beauty filter. So the thing that's like nice about recording on TikTok is that it gives you like kind of a slight blur. And not that it's like a full blown filter, it's that the way that you can look when you're recording on your front camera is. IPhone kind of distorts it and depending on, like the way that the light is, you actually look worse than you do in real life. So the thing that's nice about TikTok is it kind of like balances it out. The thing, though, the reason why people don't love the TikTok is that, like posting it to TikTok is that the CC captioning on TikTok is a little bit more masculine. It's a little bit more like aggressive in like, its captioning style. Whereas TikTok's a bit more cleaner, a bit more. Sorry, Instagram is a bit more cleaner, a bit more professional. So that's why people are recording it in TikTok and then saving it to Instagram. It's easy to record on Instagram. It's not as easy on TikTok. But cap cut versus edits isn't a comparable to what you're talking about. Edits is a comparable to Cap Cut. Cap Cut is different than TikTok. So basically you would record a bunch of clips, usually on your just your phone video, like when you're traveling and stuff, and then you load those into a template in capcut, basically. They're basically pushing you to move it into a template in Edits. And there's no watermarks like unlimited downloads. And like Cap Cut premium is like 200 or something crazy. So it's like it's actually worth it to get ahead of it on this app.
- [51:22]
Orin Miller
Try it out, let us know if it works.
- [51:23]
Camille Moore
All right, so let's get into Hot or Not. We have three Hot or Nots to go over today. A bit of a different direction. The first is the Kind rebrand. So Kind bars went through a rebrand and it literally looks almost the exact same. What do you think? Is it hot or is it not? They basically did a full video on socials with like their whole office. They did it by the elevator. They like made it seem like there was this massive unveiling. And then the kind of the joke is that it's almost the exact same logo. And obviously it went crazy on the Internet and became like a meme because so often agencies are hired for a rebrand and then it's like the product that comes out is not Different.
- [52:01]
Orin Miller
Yeah. It could either be brilliant or a fail. Like, if you spent a lot of money and it came out like that, then it's a fail. But if the purpose of a rebrand is to get people to pay attention to your brand and double down in it, most rebrands don't do that. But if they kind of made it look like we have to make our brand better, and they do it and they go through and then they go, no, it's actually perfect. Having seen that, when you see that color scheme in the supermarket, you're more embedded with Kind. So they actually may have met the aim through a rebrand that didn't rebrand.
- [52:31]
Camille Moore
What really changed my perspective on all of this was that book, how Brands Grow. Because a big part, really, the only takeaway that I felt like I learned from that famous branding book and I use air quotes, is that they talk about how detrimental it is often to brands. Because when you do a complete different rebrand, how long it takes for the human brain to, like, remap that product in the, like, visual association. And because Kind has such strong distribution, they're probably pretty handcuffed for doing, like, an absolute, like, total rebrand. So this is probably more like a refresh, which would make sense because, one, their brand is good. You know, it's strong in market, but they probably needed to just modernize their packaging. And I think this is a really hot way of making a slight change, become a social moment.
- [53:17]
Orin Miller
But if everybody did that, it would lose cachet. So the first person to do it gets the bump.
- [53:22]
Camille Moore
Yeah, so it's me. It's hot. All right, next one is PwC. It's Price WaterhouseCooper. They're like a big five consulting firm. They also did a rebrand brand that very similar to Kind, but not as funny. So they basically did their rebrand and their tagline is as you can, which Orin hilariously says he's like, this sounds like a, a motto from one of the Chinese cities. It's like, as you can. What do you think?
- [53:50]
Orin Miller
I just can't believe that that's actually a rebrand. Like, it seems like for PricewaterhouseCooper to have credibility with, with business people from. In terms of giving an advisory perspective, whoever advised them on just adding more blocks just seems ridiculous. Like, I don't know how much they spent on that. It's as you can is. I don't. I don't know who's in charge. I'm speechless. But how bad that is.
- [54:12]
Camille Moore
I am too. Honestly, it's so bad. Their first one was bad. Their first one was outdated. I can't believe they had that up until this point.
- [54:21]
Orin Miller
But at least it's recognizable. You know what I mean? Like, it's been around for a while. But the other one, it's like it looks like a Minecraft Tetris. I don't know what the hell it is. The font is the same. And then to say as you can is bad English. It's like, it's. I don't know. To me it sounds like these are not the droids you're looking for kind of statement.
- [54:38]
Camille Moore
Like, no, it's like, it's like it's actually the. Well, they've had a huge layoff, actually. Also so, so you can is their tagline. So you can.
- [54:46]
Orin Miller
Oh, no, that makes more sense. So you can.
- [54:49]
Camille Moore
I don't know.
- [54:50]
Orin Miller
So you can expand. So you can. But it's a number crunching company. It's got the creativity of, you know, five accountants and five librarians, you know, who are visually impaired. Like, that's, that's what that, that's who created that.
- [55:02]
Camille Moore
I agree with you. But like the whole thing is like the so you can slogan is intended to be similar to Nike's just do it.
- [55:08]
Orin Miller
And it's like, oh my God. Intended to be. No, it's, it's not.
- [55:13]
Camille Moore
But also, like, there's also. This is happening as PwC is going through massive layoffs. So the whole joke is that this like rebrand cost them so much money they to let everybody go. And then the rebrand is like the worst rebrand that has ever happened.
- [55:28]
Orin Miller
So you can lay people off. That's what I'm going to be working.
- [55:31]
Camille Moore
It's a nod. It's. It just. But it's also one. It's like you honestly couldn't pay me to be the agency that they hired to go through that. Like for them to end up with.
- [55:39]
Orin Miller
That, oh my gosh, you could pay me and I'd make it good. But that's horrible happen.
- [55:44]
Camille Moore
Like those people cannot.
- [55:45]
Orin Miller
Yeah. I just think it goes back to what a change agent is. Today's world requires change agents.
- [55:50]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [55:50]
Orin Miller
Not rule followers. Right. In order to make change, you have to disrupt. You cannot make any change in society unless you're willing to disrupt and accept the friction that comes with change. And your marketing needs change agents to get new, to get new markets. The CEO needs to be a change agent. We've seen it in politics. Doing things the old way doesn't work. It just burns money.
- [56:10]
Camille Moore
All right, We Got one quick last one. So, last one is Alex Earle. She did a collaborative campaign with Pantene and I want to explain this so that it actually like has its weight and gravitas. So Alex Earle is like a big tiktoker. She's really relevant to like a younger audience. She's like, you know, kind of sexualized. She's like rough around the edges. She's like, very real. And she basically, over a year ago created this post where she's like, her expired Pantene, like literally best before date had passed, worked better on her hair than non expired Pantene product. And effectively, because this post, like, did so well. And then she did a bunch of other posts on it because it's a beauty hack, right? Like, she's basically saying that. So, like, people were like rushing to, like gas stations and convenience stores, like, trying to find places where like, you could buy expired, expired Pantene. They had like the perfect recipe. Like it was an accessible price point, it was cheap, which her audience is like, young. It was like hard to access. And like she was saying like, how amazing her hair felt because it was expired. Pantene did a collaboration with her. They just launched it's the unexpired Pantene line with Alix Earl. And her whole message is that like, she reformulated this Pantene for this product and it's better than her expired Pantene, but it's like not expired. So it's allowing her 7.5 million TikTok followers to buy into a trend that they could now purchase.
- [57:26]
Orin Miller
Well, it's a very intelligent campaign, right? To not just get upset and say, what do you mean? Our stuff is, you know, I don't even know why shampoo has an expiry date. Like, what I would have done is gone up and bought a bunch of Pantene, sat on it for a month and sold on it and sold it on ebay.
- [57:41]
Camille Moore
It takes like years for Pantene to go bad.
- [57:43]
Orin Miller
Yeah.
- [57:43]
Camille Moore
Like, it's not like a, you know, four week expiration.
- [57:46]
Orin Miller
How did she have one bottle of shampoo for years? That's really the question.
- [57:49]
Camille Moore
I feel like a lot, but I feel like Pantene is one of those things where like your mom buys for a spare bathroom, you know, and like you end up showering in the spare bathroom and then you're like, shit, this was work.
- [57:58]
Orin Miller
But so that's a, that's a, that's a brilliant. Whoever. That's probably one of the good CMOs or whoever who saw that and said, look, there's an opportunity there not to be defensive, but to just say, hey, let's figure out what actually happens when Pantene ages the chem. The ph balance changes probably a few degrees or something happens. So let's. Let's now generate that in our current one. It's brilliant.
- [58:18]
Camille Moore
The reason why I loved it is it shows you a move for intelligent influencer marketing. Because when I say, like, the influencer marketing is dying is because brands are looking for, like, an easy way to sales. They've been saying, like, they've been trying to purchase an influencer. They get their rate and they're like, hey, I need to sell this new product. Let's go into our list of influencers, let's pay their rate and let's push it on their feeds. And that isn't working anymore. And influencers are charging too much money and that whole system is broken. What Pantene did is how you should use influencers because she. She's got an audience of 7.5 million followers that love Alex Earle, that want to follow what she does, and they're not trying to create a product, like, for the masses in Walmart. It's for, like a non. Like it's a niche audience, but like an audience of 25 million people because she's got that many followers on both platforms. Plus there's a ton of people that see the content that don't follow her. So they're basically tapping into the Alex Earle community to sell millions of product, but by doing it in a way that actually makes sense for the following she built.
- [59:17]
Orin Miller
Again, it goes to first order thinking versus second and third. First order thinking is pay somebody to pretend they like your thing. And humans can sniff out fakes most of the time. The question is tapping into influencers in genuine moments. And sometimes the influencer isn't famous when they become an influencer. If you remember that guy who was skateboarding, I think it was Latino man, and he was skateboarding and he was listening to Landslide, Fleetwood Mac, right?
- [59:41]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [59:42]
Orin Miller
And he was eating a brain burrito or something, right?
- [59:44]
Camille Moore
No, I think it's like an Oreo. Yeah. Yes. It was like a generic product.
- [59:47]
Orin Miller
I think it was. But they sold out that day across the nation, Right. I think it was. I think it was eating something, was a Subway. We should look it up.
- [59:53]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [59:54]
Orin Miller
But that really worked because that person did something unique with something that they really liked. Like, it wasn't curated to be fake. Like, if you tried to make that fake, it might not work as well.
- [60:03]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [60:03]
Orin Miller
The Question is just maybe brands need to reach out to their audience and encourage them to show how they enjoy their product in a real way.
- [60:12]
Camille Moore
It was the cranberry juice, the ocean Spray. Ocean Spray.
- [60:16]
Orin Miller
And they sold out like for the next month. That one person's video did more for sales than ever, right?
- [60:23]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [60:23]
Orin Miller
But I think what the gorilla approaches if you're a brand is to actually have better communications with your, your actual buyers.
- [60:30]
Camille Moore
Yeah.
- [60:31]
Orin Miller
And encourage them to be like, you know, like if you make a piece of content where you're authentically showing our product and it does well, will pay you. Because do those guys get paid? Did that guy get paid after the fact or did he just try to sell something so you could kind of incentivize people showing how they relate to your product in a way that could go viral, but pay them. If it goes viral, then pay them. And then that would encourage people to try to make those moments.
- [60:52]
Camille Moore
Well, there's a lot of, there's a, that's actually kind of where the Internet like runs in your favor is that those, like typically those moments tend to result in like a branded campaign or like the brand will reach out and like we'll pay you for rights to use the video. So there is like an incentive for like those moments. In fact, that's actually what one of our really good friends does. And she took a really big pivot in her influencing career. So she's a very well known influencer and she goes to all these events and they're paid events. There's always an expectation that you post. And she was at an event for actually Tim Hortons, funny enough. So they were rolling out this new menu and she realized like she went to this event, they were all rolling out this new menu and they were all doing the same thing where they were taking videos, they were taking photos. But like the rollout was going to be like four days, five days. Her whole pivot was like, if my job is to break the news, let me do a same day edit and put it out so that I'm the first one within the legal rights to break the news on the new menu that items that Tim Hortons had. And what she realized is that her content performed the best out of the entire group because it hers broke the news. And based on that, she ended up actually getting paid the most amount of money they would. They came back to her and was like, hey, like, can we have your post? Because yours performed the best. And she wasn't even on that contract with them. So she started changing her relationship with these brands because she didn't care about what contract she was on. She understood that she needed to break the news.
- [62:24]
Orin Miller
You almost want to kind of think of what's a product that you use in a way where you're kind of in flow.
- [62:29]
Camille Moore
Oh, you're ready to be an influencer.
- [62:30]
Orin Miller
Or you're in Zen. I'm just thinking, like, you could do that with any brand. But, like, those are, like, the magic moments of every product is when they actually really resonate with the user in a way that creates a state of flow.
- [62:40]
Camille Moore
Well, that's actually like literally the true magic. When the video was just so good, but they weren't trying. Like, that guy on the skateboard wasn't trying.
- [62:46]
Orin Miller
You know, he just happened to have an ocean space.
- [62:48]
Camille Moore
Yeah. And it ended up doing, like, really well for the brand. But that's also the other thing too, is like, you need to have a. To go back to, like, the home. Home hardware concept. You just have to have an iconic brand so that that magic can happen. There's so many points of randomness that needs to occur in order for that, like, miracle to come together. The miracle of virality.
- [63:08]
Orin Miller
And with that, that wraps up another.
- [63:10]
Camille Moore
Week of art of the brand.
- [63:12]
Orin Miller
Yeah. Till next time.
- [63:13]
Camille Moore
Oh, and don't forget, if you like.
- [63:14]
Orin Miller
Us, share us and get the social media masterclass.
- [63:17]
Camille Moore
Right. That too. Thank you.